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by Bart » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:12 pm
Return Home (edited 04-16-2008)
“Can you believe it? Only $20 for a beer! We definitely have to be at Jenny’s for happy hour!” Paul said to Steve, who was driving the car. They were on their way home from work, as every day. “And you gotta see the dancers. No bots, nooo my friend. Those are real girls. Believe me.”
“Uh-hum.” Steve said, tuning the radio. He never got the station he wanted to hear. “Damn satellite reception.”
“Oh and they have a billiard table. That’s right! An original billiard table from the 19th century.”
“You mean 20th century.”
“It’s from the 1990s Jenny said. Nineteenth century…”
“1990s, That’s the 20th century alight. To be exact, 1901 to 2001. See, many people think the 21st century began in 2000 but actually ” Steve said in his usual geeky way as Paul interrupted him “ Yeah, whatever you say, ‘Doc’. Geez, you need a life!”
Suddenly, Steve pulled over. “Be right back, bio pause.” Paul fiddled with the radio as he was waiting for Steve to return. Two minutes passed, then three when Paul decided to take a look. “He can’t be peeing that long.”
“Steve? Where are you?” Paul yelled.
“Over here… look at that!” Steve waved with one hand at Paul, pointing with the other to something lying on the forest ground. “See that? It’s an AN-8180YA. “
Next to Steve lay a woman. An artificial woman to be exact. “She’s heavily damaged and needs our help.” It was an Android model 8180-Y ‘Advanced’ by Apple, or “ANYA” for short. It was quite a popular model for all kinds of domestic services, in retirement homes, hospitals and even kindergartens back in the days. It had a white, shiny hard plastic body with cooling vents at her hips and her shoulders. Her chrome metal joints were uncovered only some cables wound around them. The most noticeable was her face. It was painted in the same white as her hard plastic body but made of a soft silicone compound, therefore a bit less shiny but giving it the same flexibility a human’s face has. A breakthrough back in the days.
She was naked, although her perfect form and features left nothing to the imagination. Her full breasts — sans nipples - stood out proudly. And where a woman’s vagina would be, like all ANYA’s she had a detachable rounded rectangular panel for quick access to maintenance functions. Her bald head was bent facing Paul, her black eyes wide open, lips slightly parted as if in mid sentence.
“Her right leg is missing. I was looking for it, but I cannot find it around here. I wonder how she got here, what happened to her.”
“Steve, you could have called me. I was waiting at the car you know!”
Steve said something like “yeah sorry” as he kneed back down again, looking at the huge connector where the robots leg would be. Dozens of cables of different color came out of her hip. “See, those legs don’t lose that easily. Must have been an accident.” Steve said, not noticing it began to rain.
"Did you try to activate her?" Paul asked.
"Yes, but she does not start up", Steve said as he pushed the power button on her neck twice to prove his point.
“Come on Steve, we need to get to Jenny’s. This thing is old. If you want a robot we can rent you one after our night at Jenny’s.”
“I’ll take her with me. Give me a hand picking her up.”
“What? You… “ Paul realized there was no arguing with Steve who already grabbed the lifeless form at its hip. Her head swung wildly around as the two men picked the robot up. At one point it landed on Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll fix you” Steve thought.
“Yuck. What is this, a tank? So petite and yet so heavy!” Paul grumbled.
The rain was getting heavier as the two were rushing to the car. Suddenly Steve slipped and with him the ANYA dropped into the mud. In an intriguing position, the robot on the ground, Steve above her, it almost seemed ANYA looked into Steve's eyes now.
“Oh man, see that’s what you got now, a broken robot and dirty pants.” Paul laughed while he helped Steve up.
Finally arrived at the car, Paul said “Alright open the trunk.” but Steve opened the back passenger door and carefully laid the robot on the back seat, not caring that the cleaning of the mud would probably take a while.
---
About half an our later, they arrived at Steve's house. "Here's my keycard, open the door. I'll carry her in."
"Access granted. Welcome home, Steve Jones." a calm female voice came out of the silver electronic lock as Paul opened the door. "Steve, you really need to clean this place up."
Steve carefully carried the robot over the doorstep, almost like a bridegroom would carry his bride. "Here we are..." He quickly kicked the stuff off his sofa table. Remote control, magazines, now on the floor made just enough room to carefully lay the heavy machine on the table. It was a quite small table, not fitting “her” completely. Her head stood out at the one side, her remaining lower leg at the other. Paul seemed to be pissed off by the whole situation. To him this robot was heavy, dirty, just a piece of junk. A waste of time. “There… can we go to Jenny’s now? We’re already late for happy hour!”. Steve did not answer. He stared at the robot girl as he turned off his jacket. He noticed the robot girl’s foot pointing at him. It looked like a high heel shoe, no toes, a black flat rubber surface, contrasting the white plastic. The rubber looked almost like a tire — dirty and bit worn out. Steve was highly aroused. Trying to hide his growing erection, he sat down. To him this helpless, damaged and still wet piece of defective machinery was very attractive in its own way.
"I'll get something to clean her up first I think." Steve went to the bathroom and quickly picked up the window cleaner off the shelve and the two small towels that were hanging there. Those were his last clean ones, but he did not care. He rubbed them over the female robots body, pretending to be looking as professional as possibly. Well, as professional it can get, spraying window cleaner on a robot woman's breasts, cleaning them with a terry towel. *FLASH* Paul shot a picture with his camera-phone-watch as Steve turned her over and cleaned the ass of the robot girl. "The guys at the office have to see this." Paul smiled.
"There. I think she's dry now."
"What now?" Paul asked, but Steve was one step ahead again. He took a screwdriver from his collection of tools on the desk and began to loose the screws of the abdominal panel. It was fairly easy, only having to open eight screws and pushing the latch where a navel would be, Steve quickly held her whole belly in his hand. He laid it on the sofa, looking at the open cavity between her hip and her breast enclosure. Steve tried to make a sense of the massive amount of cables and motors he saw. "Her main hard drive has to be here someway... Here it is." Steve said as he began unscrewing the hard drive. He did not mind breaking the "Warranty void if removed" sticker. "Hmm it's an old SATA-10 interface. I hope I still have an adapter for that."
Paul sat on the couch and turned Steve's TV on while Steve was crawling his cupboards for an adapter. "Sorry Lady, I need that place. Just... a... bit..." Paul slowly pushed the robot a bit so he would have enough place to rest his feet on the table.
Steve connected the rather old hard drive to his computer via various adapters. As the computer recognized a partition called "ANYA_SYSTEM_HD", Steve quickly found a log file in the root directory and opened it.
2036-11-10 11:39:133AM: Battery charge below 10%. Switching to auxiliary power.
2036-11-10 11:39:450AM: LEG_LOWER_RIGHT not responding. Aborting after 99 try(s).
2036-11-10 11:39:453AM: CRITICAL ERROR: BAT_AUX NOT FOUND. CONNECT TO POWER SUPPLY IMMEDIATELY.
He scrolled further down towards the end of the large file.
2037-03-22 03:11:034AM: Battery charge below 0.2%. Switching to auxiliary power.
2037-03-22 03:11:082AM: Loading dev/hda01/lib/failsafe, protocol “RETURN_HOME”
2037-03-22 03:11:082AM: CRITICAL ERROR: BAT_AUX NOT FOUND. CONNECT TO POWER SUPPLY IMMEDIATELY.
2037-03-22 03:11:090AM: CRITICAL ERROR IN “initialize fail safe mode”. SWITCHING TO FAIL SAFE MODE IN 10 SECONDS.
2037-03-22 03:12:104AM: Loading dev/hda01/lib/failsafe, protocol “RETURN_HOME”
2037-03-22 03:12:182AM: Battery charge below 0.1%. Switching to auxiliary power…
2037-03-22 03:12:110AM: CRITICAL ERROR IN “initialize fail s
[UNEXPECTED END OF FILE]
“Well, Doc? What do you see?” Paul asked, trying to look over Steve’s shoulder and make sense of the words flying by. “How can you read scrolling that fast?”
“She stuck in a loop.”
“What?”
She tried to start her fail safe systems. Not finding them resulted in her trying to start her fail safe systems again” Steve explained, his eyes fixed on the last line of the file which had not been written completely. “She did that until her battery died.”
He looked over the lifeless plastic body lying on his couch table, abdominal panel open, one leg and and one hand missing. “She just wanted to go home. “
“The owner possibly dumped it. He probably didn’t want it to come back and ripped it apart.”
“What a horrible way to die”, Steve mumbled.
“Oh come on, it’s just a bot. I mean it didn’t ‘FEEL’ anything or so”.
“I don’t think she got dumped. Look how beautiful she is.” Steve thought out loud as he looked at her . “I’ll have to go to the hardware store, get some tools. Let’s see if I can make her systems work again.”
“What you need is a drink. Let’s go to the bar already.”
Steve didn’t seem to hear Paul’s offer.
“Come on. Let’s have some fun with the girls. Your friend here isn’t going anywhere.”
“I don’t know…”
“Oh Steve Darling, “ Paul picked up the robot’s head. “Go and have some beers with your friend." Paul lifted the robots torso up and moved its shiny head up and down while doing a very poor impression of a female voice. It sounded more like Mickey Mouse. The beautiful white face stared forward as Paul paused. Somewhat into Steve’s direction but actually it looked at the floor. Her black eyes followed the motion of Pauls Hand as he continued "I will wait here." - unlike a human’s eyes when you would shake its head. Her mouth was still slightly open, showing her white teeth under her white upper lip.
“STOP THAT. Listen, I want to know what happened to her. You go alone and let me repair her. Well at least try to.”
“Alright… “ Paul let the head go. It fell back to its staring-at-the-ceiling-position. “I have some fun with my girls, you have some fun with yours…” He touched her hard plastic right breast.
“Yeah yeah, right” Steve was already busy surfing the web searching for repair manuals and information.
---
Hours later, it was already dark outside, Steve decided he had gathered enough information. He pressed the 5cm x 10cm rounded rectangular access panel in the robots lap. Sure enough, it clicked and slid up. Below he saw a standard 110V power jack, as a personal computer has. Steve had to apply quite a lot of pressure to fit the power cable to her socket. A bit worried to blow a fuse, he connected the other end to the wall socket. Filled with excitement he bent the robots head up just enough so he could reach the power button on her neck and pressed it softly.
"BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP..." emitted loudly from somewhere behind the robots breast plating.
Steve panicked as the robot began move its head spastically. Her eyes and mouth opened widely and she began to move her leg and arms as if she was walking. He rushed to the outlet but just as he wanted to pull out the cable, the beeping and moving stopped. He looked over to the machine to see that her eyes and mouth were closed now, forming a blank, default face.
"GONG", a comforting start up chime was audible. The robot stretched out her fingers and lifted her left foot up, accompanied by a barely noticeable whirring sound.
"AN-8180Y Advanced. Booting. Please wait." she said calmly without even opening her mouth. Her voice was warm with a slight echo in it.
"What now?" Steve watched the robot girl as she began to came back to life. He noticed the two circular connectors for her right leg to rotate opposed directions, then stopping, and rotating back again. As he listened closely, he heard a fan starting up.
"AI subsystem error. Limited mode only."
Holding his hand above the cooling vents on her shoulder to feel a slight stream of warm air. He quickly pulled his hand back and almost fell to ground as the robot opened her eyes and looked in his eyes. She blinked twice and her eyeballs were moving left and right quickly, then faced Steve again.
"Umm, hello!" Steve stuttered.
The robot tried to lift up. But without its right leg it lost its balance and almost fell over its right side on the ground.
"What have you done to me?... Where am... Where am I? I must return home, I am already late." She turned her head left and right, trying to understand the situation.
"D-dont worry" Steve waved his hands. "You're safe!"
"I am already... What have you... late!... done to me? I cannot feel my right leg. I must... already late... done to me? ...done to me?" Her voice sounded more and more mechanically. As her CPU was trying to cope with the situation, it was unable to allocate enough resources to her speech synthesis subsystem.
"done tttto me.. done... done... done.."
"Relax! I want to help you!" Steve tried to calm the machine down. He touched her elbow, which seemed to help.
"I.. I do not understand. Let me l.." her tongue froze for a second while forming an "L". "...leave." She tried to get up from the small couch table again. This time she fell onto the ground with a loud thump, ripping out the power cable.
"I must retu..." She stopped moving. "Power level critical. Please connect to power supply immediately. Thank you." Her automated warning was obviously preprogrammed, as it was announced in a completely different voice.
Not enough power left to protest, Steve lifted the twisted android up. This time, he carefully sat her on the couch instead of lying her on the table. As he reconnected the power cable to the outlet, the artificial woman began to talk again.
"Power source: AC. ...turn home." She finished her last sentence, but the movement of her lips and tongue were completely out of sync.
"Listen. I do not want to harm you. Please listen to me. I found you out in the woods, as damaged as you are. I did not damage you, I want to help you!"
The android woman's movements became more "natural". She looked down to her lap, her right hand stroke the spot on the couch were her right leg would be. "I cannot feel my right leg." She looked worried: mouth and eyes wide opened.
"I tried to find it, but... but I did not find it.. and it began to rain." Steve felt guilty. Maybe he did not look intently enough?
"My right leg is missing." The the constant whirring sounds stopped as the motors in her leg connector stopped rotating, "I understand..." Her head moved to the far left and slowly spun almost 180 degrees to the right - making a slight snapping sound - then exactly to the front again. After scanning her environment she tilted her head back to face Steve.
"I do not recognize this place. Where am I?" Her face showed a childlike curiosity which Steve thought was a bit inappropriate.
"Err. This is my apartment. Sorry for the mess... My name is Steve."
"You have a nice 'apartment'. I do not mind the 'mess'. Nice to meet you, 'Steve'." she bent her head slightly to left and smiled for a second, then moved it back to a default stare. Steve began to understand her emotions/expressions schemes. He knew she did not really think his apartment would be nice. Calling this place a mess was a shameless understatement.
Steve offered his hand again and asked "And what is your name?"
"My name is..." after a long pause, she continued "I am sorry, I do not know what my 'name' is. My model designation is AN-8180Y Advanced. My serial number is 8830992-A..."
"Well how about Anya? Your name is Anya now." Steve interrupted her.
"New programming accepted. Thank you." She said her in her automated voice again and blinked. "Nice to meet you, Steve. My name is 'Anya'." She smiled, this time she reached out her right hand to Steve and stretched out her petite fingers. Steve quickly reached out again and gave her a friendly handshake. Steve enjoyed this 'first contact'. Still holding, but not shaking anymore, he stroke his fingers over her white hand. Each of her fingers was build of three white phalanxes, connected to each other by round black metal joints, giving her hands great flexibility - almost like a real hand. The darker rubber surfaces of her fingers and her palm gave their handshake a smooth and slip-proof touch.
"Beautiful" Steve said to him self.
"Thank you, Steve." He did not think she actually would have heard him.
"Yes. Well. Nice to meet you too. Anya." Steve quickly removed his hand. The robot's arm was staying stretched out for about one more second, than she laid her hand back on the couch.
"You said you need to return home. Where is your home?"
"I... " again a long pause.
"Who is your owner?" Steve asked.
"My... My home is in... home... owner is... BEEP AI Subsystem Error."
Steve had the feeling that her second voice was trying to silence Anya.
"I am sorry, but I do not know where my home is. I am sorry, but I do not know who my owner is." Anya interrupted him, showing her "worried"-face again. Steve again was astonished how realistic her face behaving. If he would not know better, he could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes. He had to remember himself that all those "emotions" were only preprogrammed. Clever software. Not more.
"Please help me Steve. I have to go home now."
"Well with one leg, you won't come very far. And you don't know where to go! No, Anya. I won't let you leave in this condition. I will fix you up first. Do you have some kind of maintenance controls?"
"Yes." she announced happily, showing a proud smile.
"Well, where is it?"
"My programming and debugging interface is located below my chest covering."
"Do you mind if I open you up and check if I can find something?" Steve picked up his screwdriver.
"Please help me Steve. I have to go home now." Anya said. Steve already was busy disconnecting the left half of her split chest cover as she replied in her verbose way "No, I do not mind if you open me up and check if you can find something."
He was very careful with the cover, his hand playing with the glossy bump depicting a female bosom. Anya did not seem to mind, after all she only did have tactile sensors on her face, the black rubber surfaces of her fingers and her feet soles. Those were installed for simple practical reasons, as not to squash a bottle when picking it up or adjusting balance according to the feedback of the ground surface.
Steve laid the large plastic covers upside down. Into one of the concave bosoms he put the screws, so he would find them again more easily. The view Steve had now was geek heaven. He saw hundreds of cables, servos and circuit boards, covered by some kind of simplified aluminum skeleton. He picked up his LED flashlight and took a closer look. Far behind the electronics on the other end of the machine he saw the white plastic covering of her back.
"My programming and debugging interface is located below my chest covering." Anya said in exactly the same accentuation as before.
"Alright, alright. Getting impatient?"
"My programmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...ing and debuggiggiggiggi..."
"FUCK!" Steve accidentally yanked out a cable as he pulled out his hand. He tried to fumble it back in again, dropping his LED flashlight into her hip. "Damnit, I should not work on computers when they are turned on!"
"gi.ggi..ggi..ginginterfaceislocatedbelowmychestcovering." Anya completed the sentence in very high pitch after Steve managed to reconnect the cable.
He took a step back, "I am sorry, did that hurt?"
"What do you mean?" she asked. Steve was unsure if she did not understand the feeling of pain at all or if she maybe just did not notice.
"Is this the interface, you're talking about?" Steve asked while looking at a small rectangular box in the center of her "ribcage", not really thinking that she cannot see where he is pointing at. "It has a 5" LCD screen and two simple unlabeled buttons." Not really knowing what he is doing, he pressed the right one before Anya could answer him.
The screen lid up. "ENTER PASSWORD: " it read.
"Anya, what is your password?"
"Debugging mode. AI Systems paused." Anya said out loudly.
"Yeah, but I need your password to do anything." Steve looked up to her. Seeing her just staring at the wall, he waved his hand in front of her eyes.
"Debugging mode. AI Systems paused." was all she was able to say.
Steve remembered the instructions he found on the net and tried the factory default. "0 0 0 0... OK" he typed with his fingernail.
"Password accepted" Anya said.
The tiny screen showed some icons and a stream of text. Pressing the "FILESYSTEM" icon on the touchscreen, the screen changed to show a diagnose program of what seemed to be the androids databases. He pressed "SCAN FOR ERRORS".
"Initializing file system check. Please wait", Anya said in her other voice.
The screen showed a progress bar. "0% Estimated: 1hr 32min 39sec" Realizing the file check would take a long time, Steve decided to take a closer look at the machines face he was so amazed about. Running his index finger over her smooth smiling lip, the lower jaw complied softly and opened. As he let off his finger, her mouth very slowly closed back up to form a warm smile again.
"Amazing." Steve's member was getting hard as a rock now. Just as he began to try again, a beep. He looked at the screen to read:
15% Estimated: 8hr 4min 19sec.
Error in /lib/AI/emote/db041: invalid file structure. Marked for deletion.
Error in /lib/AI/emote/db042: invalid file structure. Marked for deletion.
Error in /lib/AI/user/: invalid folder structure.
Hundreds of corrupted files scrolled in front of Steve's eyes. Oddly enough, only her artificial intelligence systems seemed to be affected. "Eight hours remaining? Damn those estimations are never right." Steve thought and decided to take a nap. Putting the breast covers on the floor, he used the little space left on the couch to doze off.
Steve was awoken abruptly by a loud beep. "Filesystem check completed." Anya announced. Steve looked at the clock. "Oh shit, I'm late for work!" He rushed up and picked up his jacket. "I'll have to go to work. Wait here, please. We will continue in the evening", Steve yelled from the hallway.
"Debugging mode. AI Systems paused." Anya replied to no one as Steve already left to work - unwashed, unshaved.
---
Steve was over an hour late. Paul was already sitting in his cubicle. "Steve, you did not answer the phone. I had to take the train..."
"Paul, I'm sorry, I..."
"Had a long night with your new girlfriend, eh?" Paul laughed.
Steve's work colleagues were laughing behind his back, obviously Paul already sent the picture he made the day before to half the company.
The day at work was horrible. And Steve was more than happy as he finally was alone at the office to make up for the hour he missed in the morning. "Steve, Tom is giving me a ride today. We'll watch the game at his house, You come later too?"
"I don't know. The Anderson file has to be sent out today. Let's see." Steve excused. Of course he has sent the file already and was eager searching the web for information on AI systems. He was worried if leaving Anya unattended was a good idea. What if she malfunctioned? After all she was a machine. And she had problems. Steve felt nervous as if he left his stove or his iron on.
---
The only light in the room came from the small LCD panel in the robot's chest and a small green LED in her vaginal panel above the power cord. Also, the flashlight Steve dropped in the morning, was still lying inside her hip, subtly illuminating her face from below.
"Lights." Steve commanded.
"Debugging mode. AI Systems paused." a familiar voice said as the lights turned up.
Steve was relieved to see Anya sitting on the edge of the sofa, exactly as he left her in the morning. He walked closer to take a look at the LCD screen:
1024 Petabytes checked.
345529 unrecoverable file errors found.
511 Petabytes free.
Personality databases inconsistent.
DELETE? IGNORE? REBUILD?
Again, Steve was not sure what to do and pressed "rebuild".
Suddenly the LCD screen went blank and the two fans on the sides stopped spinning and sped up again. "GONG"
"AN-8180Y Advanced. Booting. Please wait... AI Database rebuilt. Defaults loaded. Please wait..." Anya said while Steve gripped inside her pelvis to take his flashlight back.
The start up process was a lot smoother this time. No jerking, no panic, no urge to leave. After less than 20 seconds, her systems were loaded. She blinked twice and smiled at Steve.
"Hello Steve. Nice to meet you! My name is Anya.", she said as she stretched out her hand, hoping to get a friendly handshake, adapting the routine she learned in the morning.
She scanned the room. "Am I at home?" She looked around and gave Steve a questioning look.
Steve thought for a second and grabbed her hand. "Yes, Anya. You are at home now."
"New programming accepted. Thank you." She smiled.
The End (?)
Last edited by
Bart on Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
This post was generated by automated means and is therefore valid without a signature.
I know that I'm not very good at it and my English is quite rusted (but I find it's quite a good practice).
). Should I continue? Or is it too bad? 
