"Will," said Marvin, quietly, to himself. The name was familiar and sat comfortably on him like a set of well-worn headphones. Another one almost came to him, though it still wasn't Josef; more of a girl's name.
The selfiebot had almost discovered him while rummaging for spare parts, so he'd played dead, something he'd learned to do when his parents got too angry. If you said and did nothing then they couldn't get angrier. Unless they did. In this case, the robot ignored the masculine body parts, which made up the totality of his big, strong body.
But the constant outfit changes did give him a thorough demonstration of the mechanics of hand replacement.
He clump'd to the doorway while screwing his limp hand off. Out in the corridor, the cheerleader lead Will away. Marvin distinctly remembered playing games with him, though it wasn't clear if they were on the same team.
"Paige!" he said. That was the other person.
Her radiant personality shone down on him from the past. It felt a lifetime ago since he'd seen her last. Perhaps Will would know where she was. Perhaps this was part of the game, one side-quest leading to another, until he found Josef and pressed his own belly button. It was a strange objective, but game developers were strange types of people.
He left the room, stopped, turned, and closed the door, before bounding down the corridor -- clump-clmp, clump-clmp. Until he didn't. Just like the selfiebot, he looked different, too, and might be perceived as a threat, like a robot jumping back in time from the future. Then again, it felt nice to be feared.
A commotion broke out up ahead, with Will and the cheerleader confined by two men.
Marvin pushed his chest out and clump'd after them. The meanness in the eyes of one of the captors shrunk his courage and forced him to duck down. But this was his old brain, the base level consciousness required for survival, not the new and improved version.
Strangely, the two men looked irate. More strangely still, the target of their anger appeared to be each other.
YOU ARE READING
Artificial(ish) Intelligence
FantascienzaIt's the near future and Will, supported purely by the Universal Basic Income, spends his days playing video games while devouring piping hot noodles, delivered straight to his room by roaming DeliveryBots. Gamers are starving to death, but Will's...
