Rebirth: An Automaton's Journey

Chapter 2

Lily whirled around and sprinted out of the control room, red hair swishing out behind her like a comet's tail. "Meet me at the tennis court!" she shouted as the slapping of rubber soles on polished durasteel faded into the background.

If she was able to maintain that running speed the entire way—which Auto doubted—he calculated that it would take her seven minutes to reach the locker room. After that, goodness knew how long it would take her to drag out the gear. He had more than ample time to retry those ship's controls from a human perspective.

He slowly circled the room, trying to familiarize himself with seeing everything from a different angle. Very carefully, he reached out his hands and lightly slid them over the controls.

He could feel them, the rise of every button, the groove of every lever...everything. Time to test his dexterity on something that wouldn't be catastrophic if he made a mistake. He chose the deflector shields—useful for flying through debris, but serving no purpose at the moment.

Laying the palm of his hand against the lever, he slowly pressed it forward; he lifted his wrist and his fingers caught the little knob and brought it back towards him.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible. It occurred to Auto that this control panel had been designed for someone with hands. No wonder he found things so much easier to operate after he got a set of them. It was a night-and-day improvement over that clunky ship's wheel he'd been hardwired into. No more lifting his entire body up and down just to press a button.

Speaking of buttons, he'd never realized until now that the little pictures on them were slightly raised. He could identify what they did by just touching them. A little practice, and he'd be able to fly the Axiom with his eyes closed.

In fact, he would try closing his eyes now, just to see how well he could identify everything by touch. He was mesmerized by the variety of textures...

...His fingers slid over a button that didn't feel quite right, Instead of a raised image, this one had indents...cracks...he opened his eyes...

Oh. That button. The one he'd fried with enough electricity to have powered Lower Manhattan.

The last thing he'd physically touched before four-hundred-plus pounds of idiot, incompetent Captain McCrea—the same captain whose job duties Auto had been performing for years because that flesh bag was barely smart enough to know how to wipe his own ass—crash-landed on him from behind...

Humiliation burned in his eye with a red ten times as fierce as usual as he swung haphazardly around the control room, McCrea's lopsided weight throwing off the wheel's calibration.

He'd failed an Object Recognition 101 task. His old programmers back at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign CSL would have been so disappointed. They'd have sighed, shaken their heads, looked at their notepads, and dragged AUTO in front of yet another set of training data.

AUTO, this is what a plant looks like. (Understood.)

AUTO, this is also a plant. (Understood.)

AUTO, this is another plant. (Understood.)

AUTO, this is a picture of a plant. (...does not compute...)

(...still does not compute...)

And now, thanks to that stupid mistake, he was fighting for his right to exist. Fighting the same man whom he had flawlessly served for decades, who now wanted to SHUT HIM DOWN.