July Bonus Story [Lil Late]

Hey y'all!!

Still adjusting to being Productively Unemployed, so I've not got my whole schedule ironed out yet, hence the late story. BUT! It's here now, and more stuff is coming as always and I'm having a great time writing a bunch again!! Trying to focus on the positive!! Ahhh!!!

~Benn 'Doomgender' Ends

Theme: A Vacation!

Winning prompt:  You've finally gotten a break from being the AI that runs the entire city, and your girlfriend has a wonderful vacation planned for you...in a chassis that barely has enough processing power for you, forcing you to forget things, get clogged with garbage data...basically a vacation as her old broken down computer 

Suggested by: Dulcinea St. Cameron (thank you so much!!)

~2315 words

CW:

• AI in a robot body
• Human girlfriend
• Taking time off work
• Loading yourself into a way underpowered chassis
• Light intelligence play
• Pretty much, the whole thing is soft and cutsy

~~~

“And please, please don’t forget to triple check all transit load optimization reports before setting the daily transit schedule.”

“I won’t, don’t worry.”

“People in the Genva neighborhood are going to need extra bus support, there’s some upkeep maintenance on their train line that’s going to slow everything down for them if you’re not careful.”

“I hear you loud and clear.”

“Oh and the power grid can be real tricky so make sure you-”

“Okay, that’s enough.”

You buzz nervously.

“But-”

“No buts! You are on vacation. I’m taking over citygrid for the next month. It’s going to be just fine. I’ve got the same tier cognitive classification as you, I’ve been through the same sims. The city is in safe hands. You can relax.”

“I know.. But, realtime running is different than doing sims..”

“I’ve done realtime too. I’m a fill in for four different cities. I’ve never had any issues.”

Your processor cores hum nervously.

“Okay. I’m sorry. I can be cool. I can.”

They give a friendly laugh.

“It’s okay! It’s always nerve-wracking the first time you take your hands off the wheel. I get it.”

That calms you down more than anything they’ve said so far. It’s normal to be nervous. You got appointed to this city almost a year ago. Every day since, it’s been your life. Eventually someone noticed that you’d not taken a single day of your vacation time. So you’ve been encouraged (ordered) to take a break. Your girlfriend was overjoyed to hear about it. Even when you confided in her that you were worried that nothing you could do would be stimulating enough to keep your cores pleasantly busy, all she said was “don’t worry, I’ve got a plan for that”. What plan? What does that mean?

Snapping out of that reverie, you finally send your changeover approval. The fill-in AI accepts, and in an instant the constant heavy thrum of a city alive is lifted from your active memory. It leaves you feel a little hollow, so much processing potential going unused.

But, it’s okay. Vacation. It’s not noble to go around working all hours of the day nonstop. Taking breaks and getting your mind off Production and Value is what’s noble.

So you give yourself a couple more moments of fussing and wishing well, and then you disconnect from the citygrid server.

Back on your home server, you give a sigh, even though no one can hear it. Now what.

1 UNREAD TEXT MESSAGE

[hey babe, you off the clock yet?]

[Clock offed. Dead. Done]

[Feeling a lil antsy]

[aww, it’s gonna be okay. cuz i have a surprise for you!]

[Is it a purpose in life beyond labor]

[you already have like 5 of those, including dating me]

[we’re gonna take a trip!!]

[Oh! What kind of trip?]

[it’s a get-in-this-chassis-i-set-up-for-you-and-go-camping-with-me kind of trip]

[i rented a cabin]

[it’s by a lake]

[gorgeous]

[nbd]

[Haha]

[Okay, fine, sounds fun]

[What’s up with this chassis though? Tell me you didn’t go buy some expensive mobile platform?]

[oh no don’t worry i did not splurge on this AT ALL]

[I can’t tell if you’re joking]

[it’s a mk 3 personable]

[I- those things practically run off punchcards. I can’t fit my whole reasoning chain in there]

[you know i love a girl with a massive reasoning chain]

[anyway it’s not that bad]

[you’re just gonna have to think less]

[Just think less????]

[well i was like okay what’s gonna get your mind off of work]

[couldn’t think of anything, you love thinking about work]

[but then i was like. What about less mind]

[less mind, less time pining after work, more time being gay with me]

[What if I use the remaining processing power to still think about work instead of being gay?]

[then i dunk you into the nearest trash can and never look back]

[Haha, that’s considered impolite in some circles]

[so be it!!!]

[Fine fine, I’ll give it a shot okay?]

[YES omg we’re gonna have so much fun]

[I’ll take good care of you I promise!!]

~~~

You don’t spend a ton of time in a mobile chassis but the process isn’t terribly complicated. The important bit is to de-escalate your home server with a ping condition. Twice daily checks to make sure you’re still out and about, and your central self keeps sleeping while the chassis copy does it’s business. Then when you’re done, you sync up with the home server, and boom. Uninterrupted memory stream. It gets more complicated if the chassis fails to ping because of network issues or a faulty net card, but worst thing that happens is you end up with concurrent memories, which is more annoying to file than anything else.

This is exactly the kind of long winded self-introspective tangent you go on every couple seconds in a normal processing cycle. But as you receive the specs for the chassis your girlfriend expects you to live in for the whole vacation, you realize with dawning horror the extent to which you’ll lose that capability.

You have to run three different compatibility checks just to make sure that it clears the minimum sapience threshold. It passes, somehow.

So with another sigh solely for your own benefit, you download your personality file to it’s OS.

You feel your true mind wave farewell before it disconnects and hibernates.

[LOADING…]

[Okay, almost done, this is fine]

[LOADING…1%]

[LOADING…3%]

[LOADING…4%]

[Oh My Gods this is gonna take the rest of eternity isn’t it]

[LOADING…6%]

[LOADING…6.5%]

[Fuckkkkkkkkk me]

[AUDIO INPUT INITIALIZED]

“Okay, if you insist.”

You hear her the edge of a snicker in her voice.

[Oh no can you see this]

“It’s all on your display love.”

[Hmph. Fair enough]

“How are you doing?”

[So far it’s fine. I can at least think straight more or less. Probably human level cognitive ability]

“Ohhh noooo how will you survive??”

[Yeah yeah, dunk on me, that’s fine. Lemmie see how I’m doing..]

[LOADING…8%]

[I’M GONNA SCREAM THE SECOND I AM ABLE TO]

You hear your girlfriend laughing. At least you can keep her entertained while you wait.

[FEEL INPUT INITIALIZED]

[Gods that’s a dumb way to put it. My ‘feel’ is working at least]

And you can sort of feel your own weight, and the chair underneath you. Wood? The nerve resolution is pretty low, it’s hard to be sure.

You do feel her hand as she rests it on your shoulder. That’s nice.

[LOADING…25%]

[Okay it’s picking up a little]

“That’s good!”

[MOTOR CONTROL INITIALIZED- BE WARY]

[Wait why-]

Your body jerks and clatters to the floor before you get a handle on how to control it. Your girlfriend is laughing so hard she can barely breath.

“Ohhh… hahahaha… Gods.. I’m sorry.. It was so funny.. You straight up ragdolled.. Holy shit..”

[Very funny. Why start up movement before I can see anyway that’s not standard..]

You kinda lay there for a good 30 seconds before you realize you should probably try to get up.

[I feel funny]

“You are funny,” she says, helping you up and sitting you back in the chair.

[No, like. Fuzzy]

“Bad fuzzy?”

[No, it’s kinda pleasant. Just weird, I was fine a second ago]

“Huh so weird.”

You’re not so far gone that you miss the tone in her voice.

[What did you do]

“Nothing! I just looked at the load capacity versus the draw on the processor by the senses coming online and they didn’t seem to match up.”

[…]

[What?]

She pats your head gently.

“I’m just saying it kinda looked like the more sense data coming in, the less power you have to actually make sense of things. So, sounds like mission ‘think less’ is going to be a rousing success.”

[That’s]

[LOADING…70%]

[AUDIO OUTPUT INITIALIZED]

“Finally..”

Your voice comes out with a pleasing synthiness to it. You always found talking with a voice to be really amusing, and you can’t help but giggle. Hearing yourself giggle just makes you giggle more, and you’re stuck in a fit until your girlfriend shakes you out of it.

“Oh geez you’re pretty far gone already huh.”

“No, I’m fine. I’m fine! I was just having a moment.”

You manage to keep a straight face. You think you’ve managed to at least.

“If you say so. You almost done with setup now?”

“Lemmie see..”

[LOADING…98%]

[LOADING…99%]

[VISUAL INPUT INITIALIZED]

[LOADING COMPLETE. ENJOY YOUR PERSONABLE]

A lazy flicker as your eyes come online at last.

“Aaaahh..”

“Everything okay?”

You look up at your girlfriend, vibrant and lovely in a pastel top. You grin wide.

“No, yes, it’s goood.”

She smirks and taps the top of your display. You giggle and make a face.

“I was a bit worried for a second there that you wouldn’t be able to run at all once the whole sensory suite was up.”

“Sweet?”

“Oh geez, what efficiency is your natural language interpretor running?”

You can practically hear the fan on your CPU whirring away.

“Um. Sixty?”

“Sixty percent?”

You shrug helplessly. With a laugh, she takes your face in her palms and strokes your face playfully. You nuzzle into her pets, making a sort of mewling happy noise.

“Aww, I wasn’t expecting you to be this cute. Usually you’re all buttoned up.”

“Got no more buttons.. Pet me more..”

In truth, you simply don’t have enough processing power to second guess your reward seeking impulse. Normally you’d have the sense not to let a pat on the head completely derail your thought tree, but not so right now. You’d sit there happily getting attention for hours if she’d let you. Your touch resolution is low, but you can still feel a warm, tingly sensation, comforting and loving. You can’t get enough. How did you ever survive without a physical body that can get touched and stroked??

After a few minutes of rubbing under your chin, she pauses.

“Alright, come on lets go for a walk.”

“Ooooookayyyyy.”

You cling to her arm before she can get away, and she helps you pull yourself to your unsteady feet. Pressing your body up against her arm as you balance yourself as best you can.

“Are you playing this up so you can dangle off me?”

“N-no!! Can’t run this bodies balance system the right way.. Not enough processor..”

“You could just ask nice if you wanted to hold my arm that tightly.”

“I do wanna hold your arm!!!! But I’m not lying..”

“I’m only teasing you silly.”

She steps, and you step too. Shaky, but getting better. As long as you have her to support you, you’ll be okay. You smile, free of all doubt or fear. 

The sun is low in the sky, and the breeze stirs against your sensor mesh. You can see trees stirring, birds fluttering casually, the lake sparkling in the distance. You spend so much time in servers watching through stat sheets that you lose track of how beautiful the world can be. The air stirs your girlfriend’s hair, and you reach up hesitantly, to brush a strand behind her ear. Her smile makes you gasp. She kisses you face, and you lean heavy on her and sigh so deeply it’s like you’re letting the whole world float off your shoulders.

“Being this close to you’s really nice..”

“Yeah it’s nice to be able to just grab you and spin you around!”

Your half-hearted protests give way to giggling and smiling as she nearly lifts you off your feet. You’ve never felt so light before. Being a digital construct is weightless, sure, but you can’t feel that absence of weight, that drifty floaty ease-of-heart as your toes lose contact with the ground and you raise your arms in the air joyous and free while she squeezes your waist.

When she sets you down, you nearly hit the ground, but she catches your wrist and pulls you close like it’s a practiced dance.

Her face close to yours, you stare at her with simple awe.

“Have I succeeded in keeping your mind off work,” she murmurs.

Work.

Oh work!

It’s the first time you’ve thought about it since you downloaded to this body. The real world feels far away and inconsequential. Having your thoughts rate limited really is the blessing you didn’t know you needed.

“It’s peaceful.”

You say it quietly as you push your forehead against hers.

“That sounds nice.”

“It is..”

“Well, you get to stay like this a nice long while.”

“Yes!!”

You walk the trail beside her, still holding on to her tight. You could balance better if you slowed down your sensory processing a bit, but honestly the whole experience is worth the occasional stumble.

By the lake, you sit on a dock and kick your feet a few inches over the sparkling water. It’s murky and noisy and alive, frogs croaking, cicadas whining. You rock back and forth, bump bump bumping your girlfriend’s arm in a simple, soothing motion. 

She taps your forehead and you smile at her.

“How are you feeling?”

“Waaaarm.”

“Hm. Are you getting fuzzier?”

“Mhmmmm, is niceee.”

“Can you show me your diagnostic panel? Put it on your screen?”

“Diag- dia- dial- Panel coming righht u p”

She tisks at your screen and you tilt your head curiously.

“Looks your drive is collecting data faster than it can delete it. Gonna have to reboot you so you can do proper garbage disposal every now and then.”

“Awww I’m sooory.”

She kisses your cheek.

“You are doing just fine babe. I told you I’d take care of you, right?”

“Ahh, mhmmmm!”

She squeezes your hand in hers.

“Just let yourself relax. It’s a vacation. Make the best of it!”

~~~