literature

Argo Part 3

Deviation Actions

RickGriffin's avatar
By
Published:
7.1K Views

Literature Text

Mira excused herself after pulling Lily back on the worktable and fidgeting with her arms for several minutes.  She yawned heavily, and went straight to bed without bothering to wash up—she would finish later.  She was starving, too, but sleep came first.

"Miss Mira?" Eo asked, peeking through the door to the bedroom, "would you like me to do anything for you while you sleep?"

"Hrm," Mira said, looking up from the pillow.  "Did you find anything on the internet yet?"

"No . . ." Eo said, "I haven't been able to match my name, my description, or even unique numbers.  I've informed several android agencies that I've lost my identity, and they said they'd tell me if something came up.  So, could I do something for you?"

"Well, what do you normally—oh, that's right.  Uh, just clean up, if you want."

Want.  That was a word she didn't normally use with androids, at least in a professional sense.  She always projected her own wants onto them; that was a mistake laypeople made.  But the way that Eo asked prompted her to think of it.  She wanted to consider it, but her curiosity was not enough to pull her out of bed.

Later, when she awoke, she found Eo nowhere in the house, but as promised, the house was already spotless.  All the carpets vacuumed, all the wood walls scrubbed down, and everything smelling vaguely of cleaning solution.  She showered in a spotless shower and grabbed a snack out of the newly organized pantry, and still nothing.  When she walked back into the studio, she found Eo banding together several optic fibers through Lily's arm.

"Eo!" Mira shouted, "I asked you to clean, not to touch Lily!"

"But I finished cleaning!"

The studio did look spotless.  Even the dim overhead LED light, formerly stained brown by water damage, had brightened.

Eo started rambling. "And then I went to ask you if it was okay if I started on something else, but you wouldn't wake up and I didn't want to shake you any harder, so I came back here, and I was looking at Lily just lying there on the table and I felt awful that she'd just be like that, so I started, well, arranging your tools so you'd be able to repair her more quickly, then I thought, well maybe I could do some small jobs for you so you wouldn't have to bother yourself with them, but when those were all done I started on larger jobs, and I'm really really sorry miss Mira, if I knew you'd be upset I wouldn't have done it at all—"

"Eo!  Stop!" Mira said, raising her hands in front of her.

From the sound of Eo's voice, hiding behind her hands, she was on the verge of tears.  She didn't cry of course, she merely stopped and looked with fixed attention, most of her seeming emotion vanishing—significantly calmer, but still distressed.

"Eo, how come you've been programmed to do things without prompting?  That sounds dangerous."

"I don't know," Eo said, "I'll look over my logic engines if you like, miss Mira, but I didn't see anything wrong last time I looked."

Mira huffed.  "I'm not looking for anything wrong, just . . . different.  I've never seen an android do things on their own.  And just now you sounded like a whipped child."

Eo tilted her ears.  "Are . . . androids not supposed to mimic humans?"

"That's a whole can of worms," Mira said.  "Let's just say there's reasons that you don't look like us."

"Can you tell me?"

Mira looked at her, finding Eo's face not blank as though asking a straightforward question, but eager.  Mira stepped up to the table, and immediately Eo handed her the precision pliers and scope goggles.  She started inspecting Eo's work.

"If you have a question, just ask," Mira said, "but I'm sure the internet has all kinds of information I can't give you."

"No," Eo said, "I've found a lot of data, but it doesn't all make sense.  I thought, you must know a lot about these things since you're a robotics expert."

"I guess there's nothing like asking an expert.  What's your question?"

"Why ani-droids?  I mean, I read the history and watched a few documentaries, but most of what I gathered was vague or contradictory.  Most android corporations make it sound like ani-droids are somehow safer, though that marketing line has softened since we were originally introduced.  But that doesn't stand to reason; the shape of a robot doesn't matter so long as it performs the job efficiently, right?  And from what I've seen of human art, humans are obsessed with other humans and less so with androids.  So why are there fewer human-like androids now than there were before the war?

"Going straight for the throat, huh?" Mira chuckled. " Well, back when people first covered androids with plastic—that's about a hundred years ago—they weren't always human then either.  As technology improved, especially with the development of PseudoSkin, it became the style to make them more animal-like, because . . . well, after the war, there was an explosion in the art world called New Naturalism.  Connection with pseudonatural things, I suppose.  The movement was so widespread, nobody went back on a large scale.  That was at least before I was born.  Art is not my forte."

"So why are most robots designated female?"

"You . . . you're not bad at robotics," Mira said, looking up from her work on Lily, "And it looks like you haven't done anything that diagnostics didn't recommend.  I suppose it's fine if you help me out.  But only if you listen to what I say, and don't overstep your boundaries.  If you think of something, ask first."  Mira couldn't believe what she was saying.  She was scolding a robot.

"Yes miss Mira," Eo said, nodding enthusiastically.  "I'll help, of course!  Could you please answer my question, though?"

"Right.  Androids are usually female because . . . well . . ."

When no answer was forthcoming, Eo prompted, "I suppose a better question is, why gender at all?"

"Gender means something to humans," Mira said, "there used to be more variety in androids before the war.  It reflected what people wanted, but it also embodied a great amount of jealousy.  Physical reconstruction of human bodies was still only granted to the wealthy—or, there was cheap body modding for the poor.  Androids could look like most anything and still serve high-profile jobs.  But that has no bearing on why they're usually female now . . . the opposing armies upon armies of policing androids were all that masculine shape.  I suppose they could have built policing androids to appear female, but you were right to say that an android's main job is to be efficient, so there was little variation in the law-enforcement's appearance.  Being beaten back by these perfect-looking virile androids sent to quell what the AI authority designated as 'riots' . . . I suppose it could be construed as emasculating."

"I remember the propaganda," Eo said, "but the war wasn't over who looked prettier; after all, it was the android corporations of the time who made the robots look emasculating." Eo asked.

"When they're large and old enough, corporations tend to operate through precedent," Mira said, "To an extent, they had their hands tied then as they do now—they don't believe they could really push the volume they currently do if they effect a policy change.  But you can tell a radical policy change did happen because people stopped trusting robots."

"You don't trust us?" Eo asked.

"Well, I trust you," Mira said, "But society as a whole invested so much into AI and robotics that when they finally said 'that's enough', the robots had too much power and authority to just hand it back like so.  I suppose it's reasoning was that handing back the reins of power, even to protect the rights of humanity, would be doing humanity a disservice.  Most people say the warnings were right—when AI becomes too smart, it invariably becomes dangerous.  But I think humans are too rebellious; we dig ourselves into a hole and curse the shovel and dirt."

"So . . ." Eo said, confused, "What does that have to do with robot gender?"

"Oh!  My point, I'm sorry," Mira said, "the point is that this distrust of robots is perhaps logical, but reaches into the emotions.  We couldn't live without them, but even when we stripped them of authority, how do we live with them?  The answer was to make robots look less threatening.  So before the war, the common look of the android was the large and thick law enforcement robot, and now it seems to be the young, short female doctor, with disarming cartoon rabbit charm added on top.  Visual confirmation to reinforce the revolution.  Perhaps a cheap ploy, but people bought it."

"Oh," Eo said.  "Well, it still doesn't make any sense."

"Why not?"

"Because android means man-shaped, not woman-shaped."

"I wouldn't know about that.  Linguistics is not my forte, either."
Part three! Remember, I'm not going to be posting the whole thing here anyway, so if you want the ending you'll have to visit one of the links below! (Smashwords lets you read online or in PDF form, so it doesn't matter if you have an ereader)

Smashwords: [link]
B&N: [link]
Amazon: [link]
Apple: [link]
© 2012 - 2024 RickGriffin
Comments12
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Senackichan's avatar
hey i was wondering if you could give me any tips on my story plz i really want to get better at writing cause my dream is to be an author one day ^_^

[link]