Tech Error

[BA2]

Short but hopefully reasonably sweet...

Tech Error
By BA

“Hey, I’ll take them if you’re only going to throw them away!” Beth snatched up the slips of glossy paper I’d tossed on the counter top in disgust.

“I had an idea you’d say that, Beth, maybe I should just tell you how I got them before you do anything you’ll regret..?”

The short curvy brunette eyed the slips with a raised eyebrow. They had a discrete logo from one of the cheaper service and repair facilities in the neighbourhood and each was a voucher for a full maintenance session. I could tell my friend was not about to pass up on free technical support without a damn good reason. Although she looked as human as me sitting in the coffee shop, I know she’s an older model and finds it hard to make ends meet as an independent unit. I’m not exactly rich but at least as a robotic spouse I can expect to be properly maintained each month without worrying about the bills.

“Sounds like an interesting story but don’t expect to change my mind. We don’t all have a rich owner to look out for us you know, Susan.”

“Well, you know I’ve been using Richmond Tech for a year or so, they’re cheap but I’ve never had any complaints before now and Colin is not as rich as you always seem to think. Anyway, after last week I won’t be going back!”

Beth sipped her coffee, sliding the vouchers conspicuously close to her side of the counter as if to emphasise that nothing I could say would persuade her to miss a bargain. I launched into my story; glad to have an understanding (plastic) ear.

“Well, I went there for a standard monthly overhaul, all pre-booked. I had the usual little niggles to fix and was looking forward to a full clean, lube and new batteries.”

“You still have that bedroom error all the time?”

“Sometimes, yes, but that’s nothing to do with the story!” I wish I’d never told her about that little glitch, she never lets me forget! “As I was saying, I got booked in, stripped off and onto the bench as normal. There’s a tall brunette technician there called Maddie; I’ve had her do me before and she’s been very efficient so I was happy that it was her who opened me up and got to work. She’s pretty cute and I was just starting to get carried away with her tinkering inside me when ‘Zap’ I tripped my breakers.”

“She didn’t just turn you off?”

“I’m not kidding you, I overloaded completely. She booted me back up straight away and I had a string of system errors and there was smoke everywhere so obviously I asked her what was wrong. She carried on working on my power system - I was on external at the time - while she apologised. She said she’d accidently shorted my main line while she was pulling my old batteries. Now that would be fair enough, accidents happen after all and I was in the right place to get fixed, but I noticed she was glitching slightly herself; stuttering a bit and twitching her head. I was struggling with a few errors of my own at the time, not to mention getting quite horny, so I thought I might be wrong but it got pretty obvious.”

“Not great if you can’t trust the tech working on you sure; but we’re just machines, I don’t see what the big deal is…” Beth is more hardened to the occasional malfunction than I am.

“That’s just the start of it. She stopped glitching out after a minute or so but started swapping out modules in my pelvic systems before she’d even run a diagnostic. She was all cool and efficient but not following any service schedule I could tell. You know what work down there does so I was struggling to keep calm as I tried to talk to her, ‘Excuse me, I don’t think that need-d-d-d-s changing. Look, can you wait a moment; I think you might have fried something when you shorted me out just then…’”

“She just ignored me for a bit then told me to calm down but I was getting really worried by then and gave her some pretty stern words.”

“Yeah, talking back to a tech, really smart idea. I think I can guess what happened next!”

“Easy for you to be smug, you weren’t there! You’re right though. Maddie seemed to have no idea she was malfunctioning and when I kept having a go at her she just muted me. Obviously I was motors off so all I could do was glare at her as she carried on fucking up my maintenance. I was just starting to malfunction badly when another tech came in, apparently she’d had a wireless error code from Maddie.”

“Right, so she fixed the tech and you and that was that right? I’ve heard worse, Susan.”

“Well I think that’s pretty bad actually but that’s not even half of it! The other tech was an old plastic model, they still run them at Richmond. She asked Maddie if there was a problem but she said no, ‘I accidently shorted this wife droid’s power coupling but I am functioning correctly, you must be having another wifi glitch. You can help me replace these sensor modules while you’re here though.’ They both got stuck in between my legs and I thought I’d better try and do something before I malfunctioned completely. I was trying to shout at this old plastic tech and jerking my head around but I figured she must be working properly and would notice there was something wrong. She did notice pretty quickly, I must have looked a right state. ‘This unit isn’t compliant,’ her emulation was as basic as her body. Maddie agreed and they decided that I must have corrupted my AI when I overloaded so Maddie hooked me up to the console right then, jacking into my programming port while I was online!”

“Oh — not good…” Beth was starting to look a little more sympathetic but still eyed the vouchers longingly.

“No, very not good. I froze out obviously but I could hear them talking. The plastic tech was concerned that Maddie was off the service schedule but Maddie just told her she must be glitching and got her to run a system check, standing paused in the service room, while she carried on hacking through my AI.”

“Nasty.”

“Yeah. She made a couple of dozen changes before the other one rebooted and reported no errors. Fortunately she finally decided that Maddie must be malfunctioning then and turned her off, followed by me. The next thing I knew I was in the collection area with an apology, assurance that all unauthorised changes had been undone and a couple of vouchers. You know how it is, I’m programmed to be happy with the service I get so I just took them and left but now I’ve restored from my home hub I really don’t feel like going back there!”

“Hmm. Okay, interesting story, thanks. I think I’ll keep hold of these anyway but I’ll think about it before I go rushing down to Richmond’s!”

Our coffees finished, we gathered our things and headed back into the mall. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

[NukuNookee]

A nice, short slice of life story, though it cuts off just as it's about to get interesting.

It might be fun to write the story from Maddie and the plastic tech's points of view, and then maybe from the human tech / manager's viewpoint as he has to fix everything up... and deal with the unauthorized changes.

[A.N.N.]

Nice short story!

It's even set up for a sequel.

[Korby]

It's really great to see a bunch of new material from you, BA! A fun little snippet here!

--k

[tectile]

I really enjoyed the casual feel of this one. Just a couple of synthetic ladies having a chat about everyday matters

Great new stories from BA, sarabot and Darkrexx and new manips to put icing on the cake.

I thought Christmas was in December

[Robjoe]

A bit late to the party here, but I was out of town from Wednesday to Sunday. Shame on me, I know. =P

I enjoyed it! Short enough to be quickly read and digested, and yet it still manages to paint a good picture of the scene. The brevity of Susan's descriptions might feel a bit like she's skipping over the juiciest details... to us. But do you recount embarrassing situations with stunning detail and accuracy? It's common to gloss over the really cringe-inducing aspects when relating a story to someone.

I also really liked the premise. In my own opinion, maintenance scenes are - with all due respect to our content producers - prone to cliché: Always carried out in top-of-the-line, well-equipped facilities with experienced technicians ready to fulfill all of their customers' needs. Of course, there's not much intrigue (or realism, for that matter) to be found in such perfection. I found it refreshing to explore the idea of a maintenance center that operates on a tight budget as a result of offering its services at such "bargain" prices, to the ironic point that it can't seem to keep its own staff decently maintained. Even better when the cheap economy-model assistant is unintelligent enough to take her malfunctioning co-worker's word at face value, despite all the glaring evidence to the contrary!

However, the dialogue did feel a bit awkwardly structured and weak at points. It never tore me out of the story, though, so I won't go singling out specifics.

Other than that, I thought this was one of the better stories to come from you in a while. Good work!

[BA2]

Thanks Robjoe!

Dialogue is my weakest area and I'm forcing myself to work on it rather than staying in my comfort zone of long of drawn out descriptive passages and adjective overload. I'd be grateful to anyone willing to take the time to suggest areas of improvement.

[Robjoe]

Well, since you're asking for specifics....

A lot of the issues I have with the dialogue here is that it has the tendency to be very unwieldy, to the point that I just can't imagine the characters actually speaking it. There are plenty of instances where comma splices make run-on sentences, both in the actual dialogue and in Susan's narration. One example in particular that really stuck out to me was:

“Well, you know I’ve been using Richmond Tech for a year or so, they’re cheap but I’ve never had any complaints before now and Colin is not as rich as you always seem to think. Anyway, after last week I won’t be going back!”

The first sentence just goes on and on. Susan hastily lays out three or four points in a very disorganized fashion. That single sentence could easily be broken up into two or three shorter, more easily digestible ones. Most glaringly, Susan exposits that she's been with the company for a while, then clarifies why, and then she suddenly backtracks to Beth's misconception about Collin's financial status. Susan's rebuttal should immediately follow Beth's comment so that their conversation can feel focused and flow naturally (as ironic as that sounds for a conversation between two artificial characters =P). You can also have Susan roll hr eyes before she speaks here, and definitely have her do something simple like sigh or shake her head when she finishes. Not only will this emphasize her irritation, it also gives the reader a momentary break before the change in topic.

After establishing that Collin isn't as rich as Beth likes to believe, I think Susan should comment that she's never going back Richmond Tech. Then, perhaps Beth can mention how long Susan's been a customer as well as how affordable their services are as counterpoints. This leaves the reader wondering just how bad Susan's incident with them was. After all, you don't just walk away form an inexpensive and familiar company without a damn good reason! Now, put all this together, and you get something like this:

I couldn't help but roll my eyes as Beth once again exaggerated my owner's wealth. "Collin is far from 'rich', you know." I sighed, taking a long gulp of coffee before continuing. "Anyway, I certainly won't be rushing back after last week's incident!"

"Seriously, Susan?" Beth interjected. "You sure you're not overreacting? I mean, they're really cheap, and you've been going there for like, almost a year, right? What gives?"

Of course, that might not be exactly as you would've written it, but it's already much easier to read. Information is given out as a natural part of the conversation rather than stated solely to tell the reader, points and issues are brought up and addressed one at a time, and the conversation generally flows a lot smoother than before.

Generally speaking, I recommend you watch the length of your sentences. There were a lot of instances where you used a comma when you needed a period. Perhaps try reading them back aloud and see how they sound. If it's a huge mouthful that jumps between several different subjects, it's a run-on. Keep them concise and focused on one single topic. There are other, finer points worth discussing, but this is probably a good starting point.

... And I do hope I haven't given the impression that I think your writing is awful. That's far from the case! I think your general philosophy behind androids and the ways in which they function is simultaneously pretty sound and arousing, which is the main facet of your stories that keeps me coming back for more.

But at any rate, I hope I've been at least a little helpful here. If you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to shoot me a PM!

[WilloWisp]

If I might suggest a dialog-polishing exercise: A maintenance facility with such poor service levels would have to take measures to ensure customer satisfaction, or it would get a bad reputation very quickly. I know I've sometimes received phone calls from businesses who wanted to make sure they had left a good impression. What kind of phone conversation might happen if the facility wanted to make sure that Susan was completely happy with the level of service she'd received? What kind of damage control might they use to make up for the bad impression Susan had given Beth? What level of authority could they still have over Susan?

[BA2]

Robjoe - thanks for taking the time to give some really detailed and focussed critique: that is what I call constructive criticism at its best! Good advice that I will digest and hopefully put to use in the not too distant future. I'm sure other writers on here will also have appreciated your advice. It's easy to recognise and enjoy good writing when you read it but I'm learning that it takes a lot more skill to identify what makes it good and then to apply those principles...

Willo - I like the idea: a simple premise that would 'add value' to what I've written. I'll keep it on the back burner and see if it comes to the boil...