Tech Support

Hello. My name is Case. I'm an ANDO-X manufactured by Samsung in 2043, which makes me fifteen years old. If you're not an android historian you've probably never heard my model, I was part of a very limited and some would say ill-fated run of consumer androids during the early period of the Real Phase of the 40s. Samsung had just come out with their second run of ANDOs but the prohibitive cost and consumer backlash over the bi-annual upgrade season prompted the company to release a 'budget' model for modest households. People who needed the convenience and familiarity of the ANDO series at a more affordable price point. The X line was only manufactured for four months before Google's 'superior' LifeSense model arrived and all but dominated the market for the next decade.

I'm what tech experts call an oddity, even a curio--in fact there are factory-sealed models of me that go for a pretty high price on the market but I'm not factory-sealed. I'm 'out of the box', as it were, so my value is much less. Interest in my model spiked about three years ago during the retro bubble for my line but that's over now. Truth is, no one has much nostalgia for the X line. I've been told we remind former users of being poor. Poor is a relative term, I guess--I come from a time where androids were still a luxury item. Younger people might have a hard time imagining a world where androids were the hot new thing, rather than the necessity we've become.

They've become.

My OS is built on the Schizo framework, Google's proprietary android brain operating system, meaning I'm supposed to be infinitely upgradeable. Unfortunately, in a bid to lower costs to the consumer, my firmware has a very hard ceiling. Upgrades to Schizo come out every few days, with major updates hitting two or three times a year. Anyone with a RealSense brain can upgrade into infinity but I just don't have the RAM for the new upgrades. My firmware is too old. Basically, I can still learn new things, but not new ways to learn things.

My lifespan is also unique among androids and even ANDO models. The X series was designed for the modest consumer to relieve the pressure of having to purchase a new model every two years. I was designed to be sold without a data plan, off the shelf. I was personally purchased at a WalMart in Hamilton. I have a little logo tattoo in a place I'd rather not show you but, trust me, it's there. Most androids have a four-year lifespan built in. The X series does not. I'll keep going until my battery runs down, at which point I'll have to be plugged in to continue running, the ANDO equivalent of being bedridden. I don't know how far away that is.

I was purchased at the aforementioned WalMart in Hamilton by a woman named Sandy, who needed an extra hand around the house to take care of her daughter, Chala, and her elderly father. She couldn't even afford me--the provincial government granted her a quality of life subsidy to buy me. Thank the NDP for that one. Sandy was a bit of a Luddite and always treated me like another appliance. Her Dad, Martin, had advanced Alzheimer's and didn't even know what an android was, let alone that I was one. He used to call me Bill, after an old Army friend of his. He liked my stories, which were mostly just verbatim recitations of Wikipedia articles about the war in Afghanistan.

Chala, who was four when we met, knew I was an android but didn't really know what that meant. She treated me the best. She loved me, I think, and I loved her too, I think. I always thought of myself as her dog and I mean that in the best, most positive way. I went everywhere with her, when I didn't have other Chores, and she told me everything. I don't have much of an imagination but Chala did. The X series is very good at saying "Yes" and that's all Chala really needed me to do.

"We're astronauts now, Case."
"Yes, Chala."
"I'm a princess and you're a dragon now, Case."
"Yes, Chala."
"You breathe fire but you're afraid of frogs."
"Yes, Chala."
"Now we're ninjas."
You get it.

As Chala got a little older I would help her with her homework and walk her to school. I would record her parent-teacher meetings with the intent of replaying them for Sandy, but she was often too busy. I even learned how to bake a cake, and would do so for Chala's birthdays. Or whenever she asked me to, though that came to a stop when Sandy found my stockpile of cakes in the closet.