Bug Day (second malfunction snippet)

ehy · Post by **ehy** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 7:12 pm

This one is from a story I still have hopes of finishing. It doesn't have a title yet.

I was just turning back toward the bed when I lost track of what I'd been saying and doing. It didn't take me long to remember, and I started to continue my motion -- and I lost track again. When I recovered, I tried again -- and lost it again. After a few more tries I realized there was a real problem.

I don't know much about how androids really work, even though I am one myself, so I don't know what really happened. What it felt like to me is that every time I tried to move, I forgot what I was doing for a moment. I didn't figure that out right away. I don't know how long it took, but I had plenty of time to think about it. After a little while something else started to happen - whenever the glitch happened, whatever it was, I lost things from my vision for a few seconds. First the mirror on the wall disappeared, then Caitlyn's bra on the top of the stack I was holding was gone, then more and more things over time. They'd wink back into my vision after a few seconds, if I held still long enough. It's amazing how disconcerting that is. And every time it happened I wanted to blink to clear my vision, and that just made it happen again.

"What's wrong?" I heard Caitlyn ask - and I tried to answer and forgot. "Liana? Are you okay? You're sort of... twitching." Of course, I wasn't, but I couldn't find a way to tell her what was wrong.

"Wow. Edward said you were having some glitches... I hope it fixes itself soon."

So did I. But it didn't. I stayed like that all day, standing near the dresser, pointing at the outlet. Caitlyn said some sympathetic things, but she didn't even know if I could hear her, and I had no way to communicate with her, or to let Helen or Denise know I was in trouble. I hoped it would occur to her to reboot me, but it didn't - and I didn't know if she'd be able to even if she thought of it. It occurred to me to try switching into stand-by mode, but that set off the glitch too. After a while she just started ignoring me. I can't blame her. I was pretty boring - just a malfunctioning piece of equipment.

...

But I couldn't stay still all day - I still had errands to run for Edward. It was probably around three o'clock when my director decided I needed to start doing them. It tried to make me move - and my mind went blank and half the room disappeared. I recovered, and had just enough time to notice I still hadn't moved when it happened again. And again. I couldn't even keep myself together by not moving - my director was going to try to obey Edward's order no matter what. And apparently it wasn't going to give up just because of a bug. I was caught in a loop I couldn't break. Every few seconds, I tried to move, and my mind reset. Now I was not only frustrated, but scared - it couldn't be good for me, for this to keep happening. What if something burned out? What if I couldn't be repaired?

By the time I heard Edward come in the front door, I was practically blind. It was a while longer before he came upstairs. I couldn't do anything but wait for him. Finally I heard his footsteps behind me.

"Liana, did *reset* sked you to?" I couldn't answer, even if I'd been able to hear the whole question, instead of going blank halfway through it.

"Liana?" He sounded upset, and I reset again. "Dammit, Lia *reset* eep working ri *reset* whole day? Helen! *reset* here! Liana, re *reset*. Shut down!"

I heard another set of footsteps behind me. "Yes, sir?" It was Helen.

*reset* "-ng has she been li *reset*"

"-know, sir. This is the f- *reset* -t."

"Dammit, this is ridic- *reset* her--"

And I deactivated.

ehy · Post by **ehy** » Tue Sep 06, 2005 9:25 pm

I generally feel that software malfunctions are both more interesting and more probable than hardware malfunctions. This one was mostly inspired by imagining what had been going on inside my computer when it froze the previous day, and what it might have "felt like" had it had the capacity to feel anything.