Rebirth: An Automaton's Journey

Chapter 3

"Waaaaaaaay too much force," Lily pointed out unnecessarily when the tennis ball sailed two feet over her head before colliding with the wall on the opposite side.

"Give me a chance to calibrate," Auto grumbled. He barely tapped the second ball, it dropped to the table, bounced four times, and rolled a few inches.

"You're supposed to hit it, not barely poke it," Lily corrected. "We're 2-0 now."

"Why are you keeping score? This is just practice."

Lily giggled. "I've gotta take every opportunity I get, Mr. Perfect. It's not every day that I beat you at something."

"In that case...I encourage you to enjoy it while it lasts."

She served another ball; he managed to send it flying too far to the left and completely missed the table. 3-0.

The next ball he correctly returned twice but missed the third swipe. 4-0.

5-0.

6-0. This was harder than it looked.

7-0.

"Gaaaaaaammmmmeeee!!!" Lily squealed. "I finally won something!"

She was jumping up and down, punching her fists in the air. Very distracted...

Auto lightly tossed the ball into the air and swatted it across the table. To his relief, it went in the correct direction, bouncing once on her side of the net before landing on the floor.

"Why, look at that. 0-1. My lead."

Lily stared at the tennis ball for a minute, realized what had happened, and erupted into a fit of giggles. "Ch-ch-cheater!" she gasped. "You can't do that!"

"So stop me." Auto picked up another tennis ball from the bag and lightly tossed it up and caught it.

"Cheater!" Lily playfully whacked him over the head with her tennis racket, still giggling.

His hand shot out and grabbed her arm, forestalling a second swipe. Long fingers curled around her wrist. Beneath her soft skin, he could feel her carpals—ingenious joint systems, those humans had. A slight squeeze brought his index finger firmly enough against her wrist to feel the gentle throb of her brachial artery synchronized with her heartbeat.

A pulse—the human's subtle-but-faithful biometric that signaled that she was alive. Something he didn't have.

Did that mean he wasn't alive?

If he wasn't alive, did that mean he was dead? Last time he checked his programming, the variable "alive" was a binary one. Meaning there were two mutually exclusive options: "alive", and "not alive" (aka dead).

It didn't add up. Where had he made the logic error? ...ah, yes, there it was. Everything with a pulse was alive, but everything that was alive did not always have a pulse. Like plants, for example.

"Erm...ahem..." *cough*

He turned his head to see a blushing Lily twisting her wrist, struggling to extricate herself from his grasp.

"I was not cutting off your circulation," he grumbled, but released her anyway.

"That isn't the issue, you dork!" Lily snapped. "Did you realize you were still holding my hand? It's considered creepy for a guy to grab a girl's hand and just stare off into space like that!"