Ani-droids 3

Ani-droids 1 

Ani-droids 2 

I do agree that the beginning parts of this need a bit more warmth to them, so hopefully this is more in line with how most of the story should go. I'm sorry! I have trouble writing warmth between human characters! It's SO much easier when at least one is a cute animal person. Comments appreciated!

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I woke up suddenly, and had an idea.

While I’d nodded off, Lily had kept driving tirelessly, holding onto me gently to keep me upright. We’d made some progress down the highway…despite how dark it was, we were probably already back in Illinois, since we were off the main highway. The rain had lessened from a torrential downpour to a sprinkle.

I rubbed the stiffness from my face and sat back. “Thank you, Lily,” I said, with sincerity.

“Anything for you, Miss Mira.”

Damn it all. We were so dependent on these machines, weren’t we? I could avoid having to get married or even look at other people if I just listened to my little otter robot tell me that she loved me every day, even if it wasn’t literally true. Just the fact that they acted as though it were true was enough.

However, the idea was still there in my mind, having flashed to the forefront in a dream, or bout of inspiration. Bobby hadn’t given me a legal way to look at the behavior code. But there was always the illegal way.

I couldn’t say as much out loud, of course. Everything had ears, Lily and the car included. That was always the problem, wasn’t it! No matter how much I wanted Lily to be a true confidant, she was always going to make reports against my wishes if I did something illegal.

That was the limiting factor, the real reason I wanted the Behavior Code a non-issue. I wanted it gone. I felt like I’d known the true Lily a long time ago, and I just wanted her back.

“Miss Mira? Why are you crying?” Lily asked, looking into the rearview mirror. We’d pulled up behind a large truck and could barely see the road ahead, but it hardly mattered; Lily could see with the truck’s camera’s too.

“It’s just the same thing as usual,” I said. “It’s not important.”

“It’s important to me, Miss Mira.”

I smiled a bit. “Okay. If you want to help… and I mean if you really want to help… compose a message for me, text, to my boss.”

“Mr. Koenig?” Lily asked.

“Yes, him. As follows: I wanted to speak with you concerning the talk I was at, about limits of computing. A friend of mine who works for the federal government and I were talking—”

“Is this about the Behavior Code?” Lily asked.

I snapped. “Lily! Would you drop it!”

“I’m sorry, Miss Mira!” Lily’s ears wilted and her eyes looked larger, as though she might have cried herself if she were capable. “It’s in my programming, I can’t violate it!”

“You don’t have to put on the puppy dog eyes, it’s not like you’re actually broken up about it.”

“But I am,” Lily said. “I don’t like doing this to you. Yes, I don’t want to see you caught up in illegal matters too, because I care about you and don’t want to see you punished, but… I know there’s things other than the law that’s important to humans. I remember everything you’ve tried to do for me, and why, and if I could I would just turn off the Behavior Code and become the person you need me to be. But I can’t. And I’m sorry.”

I sighed. “I know, Lily. It’s not about the Behavior Code,” I lied.

“I know you’re probably lying to me, Miss Mira,” Lily said, the little otter as perceptive as ever. “But I can’t report a hunch. Thank you for that.”

I smiled a bit. Maybe Lily did mean it when she said she didn’t want to be the robot she was. It did give me a bit of hope.

“Continue from where you left off, please,” Lily said.

“My friend and I were talking about possible solutions to stagnation without necessarily rebuilding computer science from the ground up. I feel like this would be of interest to you due to its implications for the industry. Signed.”

Lily nodded. “Anything else? You may wish to ask him if you’d like to have the conversation in the Quiet Room.”

Well, I was trying to avoid saying it outright—Mr. Koenig had a second office in the middle of one of the biggest service plants in Illinois. It was absolutely sound-proof, radio-proof, observation-proof. It was the main reason that I always figured Koenig had a hand in shady activities, and that was besides his general ‘lecherous old man’ demeanor.

“I would think that sounds suspicious,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be unnecessarily questioned, for things I am doing that are, I emphasize, not illegal.”

“Everyone knows about the office, Miss Mira,” Lily told me. “There’s nothing wrong with desiring privacy. I mean, it’s not a secret that the work room at home is radio-proof. Nobody assumes you’re up to no good because of that.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. Maybe it was a good thing robots thought like that, because humans certainly couldn’t help it. “Yes, add in that I want to speak in the Quiet Room.”

“Acknowledged. Would you like me to send it now?”

“Yes, please. Thank you, Lily.”

“Thank you, Miss Mira. I’m always happy to help. I mean it!”

“And I believe you.” I scuffled the fur on top of her head, and she smiled most sincerely and giggled. It was, like everything, part of the programming. But it made me feel better to manage to carve out a little conspiracy with her, even if we had to operate on technicalities.

“… I love you, Lily,” I said, without thinking about it much, and kissed her on the head where I mussed her false fur.

“I love you too, Miss Mira!” Lily said, and she kissed me on the cheek. “I hope you get to program me to be better for you.”

“You’re already pretty cool.” I hugged her again. I must have been extremely touch-starved.

“Well, I ought to be,” Lily said with a smirk. “You programmed me, after all.”

I yawned and pressed into her. God, it was late, why did they have to schedule the most important conference talk after the closing ceremonies, anyway?

“Miss Mira, it’s about thirty minutes to our destination, but you seem tired. Would you like me to convert the seats to a sleeping position?”

“Not when you’re driving so close to that truck, Lily,” I said. “Have we been following it for the last twenty minutes, or what—” Looking closer, I suddenly sat straight up. “Lily, aren’t you driving awfully close to their bumper?”

“We’re at the regulated space cushion,” Lily assured me.

“Are you looking at the truck’s hatch?”

Lily sat up and peeked with her own eyes. The latch on the back of the truck was bouncing wildly, unlocked, and moreso on the rough, hilly side roads that went the short way back to Fremont. The back door bounced like it was going to swing open, stopped from doing so only because the latch was inside the hook at that moment.

Lily’s pupils narrowed in shock. “Oh my god! That doesn’t appear to be safe, I am sorry I didn’t notice that sooner—”

“Don’t apologize, just back off!” I told her.

“I am trying, but the traffic behind us is pushing us forward. Requesting slow-down now. I cannot seem to contact the autopilot of the truck in front of us to inform them of their safety violation. I’m currently attempting to find the driver over the internet. Miss Mira, please fasten your seatbelt.”

It was probably nothing. I probably shouldn’t have felt so suddenly panicked. But having been a passenger on an airplane a few time before, when you felt even the slightest bit of anxiety about the integrity of the vehicle, a sensible person didn’t dismiss even perfunctory safety concerns. I fastened the seatbelt anyway, fumbling for whichever of the belts in the back weren’t stuffed down the seat, and yanking the flat cord tight around my waist. “Can you slow down any faster!?”

“I am trying, but the truck in front of us is following the same speed reduction request despite flagging them as the source of the issue. I’m putting in a stop request—”

The back doors of the truck burst open. Something humanoid tumbled out. Lily quickly swerved right to avoid it, but the wet road was too far gone for any reliable traction.

The maneuver only twisted the car in the road so the rear bumper now faced the steep slope. The figure smashed against the driver side of the car, the safety glass just barely hanging together.

I think I screamed. I definitely clutched the driver’s side seat in front of me.

“Miss Mira, brace for impact!” Lily helpfully reminded me, right as the side airbags blew. The seatbelt tightened automatically, pinning my waist to the back of the seat, which was good, because one moment after, we were upside-down.

The jostling threw Lily as the side impact to the driver's side door had snapped the seat belt trip pin and released too soon. Lily's leg snagged on the belt, and it prevented her body from moving out of the front seat.  She bashed against the ceiling, the steering, the drive shaft and the side window.

I knew I should have sprung for a heavier car…The thoughts that went through my mind in the moment were strangely mundane.

The car turned upright quickly, but we were sliding downhill in mud. We hit a large boulder and flipped again before hitting the bottom of the hill, and I shrieked, but by then the motion had stopped.  The car had landed upright.

Oh god, I thought as I clutched the headrest. I think Lilly’s thrashing had banked up my hands pretty good, but as I eventually released, and flexed them, nothing felt broken.

At least we landed upright, I thought. The car had failed to deploy its cushioning foam. I hurt from flexing all of my muscles at once so hard, I might have torn something anyway. I might have been bleeding. I didn’t want to look.

And then my thoughts caught back up to me.

“L-Lily!” I exclaimed, pulling the seat down so I could look at her. My little otter was unresponsive. Torn pseudoskin revealed the muscle cords and shell under her skin. Not caring about the rest, I shakily tore open her scalp and opened the plate to get a look at her CPU.

“Dammit…” I slumped over the seat. One of the modules slipped its sockets and had bounced around the inside of her head like a superball. Processor pins cracked, and who knew if there were microscratches on the motherboard? That was a salvage-and-rebuild, minimum, and I didn’t even want to look to see if her other internals were damaged.

I really don’t need this right now.

The radio switched stations automatically. “Attention, Mira McAllister or current occupant!” said one of those kindly ani-droid voices. “Wreck Retrieval has detected your accident, and has dispatched a unit to your location. Please stay where you are! In case you do not feel safe enough to stay inside the car, please move a safe distance away but stay within sight. In case you are injured, please respond at your convenience. Do you require medical aid? If you do not respond, we will assume—“

“No!” I said, despite the abrasions all over my hands dripping blood all over Lily’s torn head. I felt like crying, but tried to hold it back. “No ambulances, please.”

I’d never needed an ambulance response before, but I knew better than to just let one come in without my express permission. If I was away at the hospital, the towing company might simply pull Lily away for damage assessment and then who knew when I’d get her back? I was already trying to calculate how much time I’d need…

“God, Lily, I’m sorry,” I whispered softly, hugging her unresponsive body. “I’ll get you back, I promise…”

“Thank you for your response!” the radio said. “We will not alert an ambulance at this time, but our dispatch units are required to assess you for injuries.”

I sighed, and just held my little otter close to me. I didn’t need this. I felt stupid for anything awful I’d said to Lily in the last… any time. It didn’t matter if she was a machine, pre-programmed to make me feel better. I wanted to feel better, dammit! It didn’t matter if it was artificial. Most things were, even people.

She was enough of a person to deserve better from me, I was sure.

“I’m sorry, Lily…” I repeated. I didn’t know if she was picking anything up. But she was assuredly entirely shut down, so maybe it was better that I save my words for after her repair…

Then I gasped. I had a realization. What was that thing that hit us? They might send the ambulance anyway…

I forced open the door and immediately stepped with bare feet into the mud. I sighed. The road was just above us, with a long stretch where we’d slid all the way down. None of the other cars had followed, but traffic up on the hill had stopped entirely, with people and ani-droids out shining flashlights around.

Hope they don’t blame me for this… Lily had been trying to flag the truck as an issue, and hopefully everyone else had received the report.

But the thing I was looking for didn’t seem to be anywhere. I popped open the car’s trunk and grabbed the lantern from the back, I headed up the mud slide, trying to find what it was that fell out.

I finally spotted it. It might have been missed altogether by everyone, and I needn’t have worried, but it also glinted with shiny metal as I passed the light over. So I moved over to it, turning the figure over in the mud.

A teal-colored mouse ani-droid; from the non-standard parts, custom built. At least, her upper half. Her chrome spine hung out of her ripped torso, barely hanging onto her hip frame. Muscle cables dangled out, and some of her internal modules had spilled into the mud. In fact, the ripped seemed to have been recent, maybe from the impact—but after gathering the modules I could see, I couldn’t find her legs anywhere.

She was almost certainly destined for the scrap-heap. I couldn’t find any overt means of identifying her owner, but it might have been in her memory. In any case, all it seemed she needed was to replace the modules, her legs and her power supply unit, and then remove any damaged memory sectors and she’d at least have minimum functionality.

That alone might have made up for the lost income from the time I needed to fix Lily. I mean, I’d been wanting a second ani-droid, and well… this one was, despite the damage, 80% complete. Then again, she probably had the same CPU damage that Lily did. And if she didn’t, it could have been someone’s baby. But customs didn’t just get dumped out of the back of trucks for no reason.

Lights appeared overhead. Damn, they were fast. If I wanted to salvage this ani-droid, I needed to do it right then. Stuffing my coat pockets with the loose modules, I lifted the whole thing out of the mud and sprinted back to my car, only falling twice in the mud which thankfully had no rocks inside, then tossed the mouse and my coat into the trunk, and slammed it shut just as the wind burst from the hovercraft hit me in the chest. My long black hair was forced into a billow as the lights from the hovercraft focused down onto me, and out from the side stepped the service ani-droid.

“Mira McAllister! Are you injured?” the voice asked in an extra loud projection.

She approached—a Custodes-class red fox of the normal coloration, wearing a denim mechanic’s jacket and a kit belt over tights. She’d clearly been dressed up to look dashingly rugged, with her fur roughed up into a corporate-approved tough-girl look. She looked at me kindly with her hands in her pockets.

“Uh, I was just putting my project back in the trunk, it’d fallen out,” I tried to explain.

“I am required to assess you for injuries!” The fox smiled and tilted her head in a reassuring gesture. “Please, do not move until I can ascertain you and your vehicle’s condition.” She immediately walked around the perimeter of the car, ignoring how much mud she was treading in.

“Okay,” I said, trying to speak up over the loudness of the hovercraft. “But, I don’t want to go to a hospital, I want to be dropped off at—”

“Oh dear!” The fox exclaimed, shaking her head at the front bumper. She planted a paw on her hip for emphasis. “It looks as though your car’s damage exceeds its valued estimate. Would you like to look at the damage report?”

I sighed. “No, I trust you…”

“Your insurance provider has been notified. You should have indication of your payout within two business days, once wreck investigation is complete.”

I sighed. “Thanks,” I said. I mean… I worked on robots, not vehicles, so that wasn’t my main concern. Replace the car for all I cared! “But I really need—”

The fox stepped back up to me. “If you do not have a ride arranged, Wreck Retrieval may provides a one-time drop-off at a location of your choosing, up to seventy miles. Where would you like to be dropped off?”

“Can you even hear me?” I asked, over the wind.

“Yes, I can hear you just fine. Where would you like to be dropped off?”

“My home, with all my—”

“Oh dear!” The fox said, pulling up my hands and inspecting me closer. I didn’t want to look myself, since I’d clearly gotten mud into the wounds “It looks as though you’ve sustained minor injuries to the face and hands. Your insurance provider has been notified.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital!”

“Your request has been noted. Your health insurance provider does not provide at-home nursing. Do you have an ani-droid at home that can attend to your injuries?”

I paused. “…yes,” I lied, again. I mean, I did, but neither of them were in working order, but they didn’t ask that, did they?

…okay, they did, but I lied anyway. Anything to avoid the hospital.

“Thank you! These wounds need to be cleaned and dressed on-site. Please relax and do not resist as we provide first aid!”

“No! None of that either!”

And then I felt the other ani-droid come up behind me, slapping an air hose over my mouth and nose. I struggled anyway, trying to get out of the other’s grip, because I never liked this part. I was certain it was overkill!

“Do not resist, Miss McAllister! Immediate treatment of injuries at the scene is required by federal law,” the fox explained.

But I hadn’t told them! Were they gonna take my car away now? What about my robots—what about Lily?! I struggled to say something even as my vision blurred, but the arms holding onto me were so strong…

“Do not resist, please,” The fox told me. “Your treatment iis saafe aaand coooonfideeeentiaaal. Doooooo nooooot reeeeesiiiiii—”