The Synthetic Era

The Operator

It's late in the morning when you get home after being up all night at the spaceport. You know your roommate's shift is going to start soon, so you make a fresh pot of coffee for yourself, and heat up a stim pack for him. He's not a morning person, and that's saying something considering the fact that he's not a person at all: he's a robot.

You sit down with your coffee, skipping your normal prep, and sip the bitter substance lightly as it cooled. You glance over a few news headlines before checking your Plex: 9:35 AM.

SHIT.

"RORI? Get your shiny metal ass out of bed; you're going to be late!" you yell at his door, hopping over the couch to reach it. You bang heavily on the door, trying to rouse him. "Get up, get up, get up! If you're late one more time, they're going to cut both our pay!"

In an effort to save costs, most Operators (like RORI) were paired with a human roommate, generally to keep one another in check and generally, it worked out for the best. More often than not, the Operator bots helped the human out, and vice-versa.

Unfortunately for you, you got the ONE bot on the entire housing block who was a drunk.

You pound on his door again before swearing loudly to the ceiling. Pulling up your hack menu on your Plex, you quickly find an override for the door lock. As it slides out of the way, your nose is assaulted with the most god-awful assortment of synth-L scents. Pinching it shut, you head over to the lumped shape under the covers.

"I said, get your lazy ass out of bed!" you yell, yanking the covers away. You immediately turn away when you realize that he was naked; aforementioned shiny metal ass clearly visible in the dim artificial lighting. You take a deep breath (through your mouth) and reach down, shaking his shoulders. "RORI, GET. THE. HELL. UP."

A quiet beeping emanates from the naked bot, and finally he starts to stir.

"Hey, wassup?" RORI says as his vocal processors kick in. It's a little digitized, but audible.

"You. Work. Twenty minutes," you say shortly, and his opticals blink on and off as he stares, jaw hanging open. Three, two, one-

"SHIT!" he says, flailing on the bed, trying to get up. You avert your eyes as he gets up and tries to find his pants. Abruptly, he turns toward you. "What the hell are you still doing here? This isn't a damn peep show, get out!"

You retreat from his room, grinning in spite of yourself as he scrambles to close the door behind you. Every day, the same thing. Well almost; usually he was at least wearing boxers. You glance at your Plex and swear again; it had taken almost five minutes to get him online.

"RORI! You got fifteen minutes!" you shout toward his door, and you hear a crash and muffled swearing. A moment later, he emerges, roughly pulling on his uniform jacket over his bare torso. "Where the hell is your undershirt? You know that's not regulation," you say, handing him the stim pack.

"Fuck if I know," he mutters as he downs the pack in one gulp. The lights in his mouth and eyes brighten as the stim pack kicks in. "I'll just keep it buttoned today, nobody will notice."

"If you keep it buttoned, EVERYBODY will notice; it'll be the first time since you got the job that you'd do so."

"Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything, right?" He waggles his segmented tongue at you, his version of a smirk. The light shining from inside his mouth gleams brightly off of it, highlighting the length. You can't help but wonder why a bot needed a tongue, but whatever.

You grab him by the shoulders and march him to the front door, his shoulders hard but warm beneath his jacket. You push him out with a shove, causing him to stumble a moment before looking back at you, waggling his tongue again.