Designs of our Slave Race chapter 10
Chapter 10
At work no
one would shut up about Philip’s demise, nor would they quiet
themselves on the trickling drip of reports of beta testers either
disappearing or being found dead; by their mommies most likely. Many
of the old testers also reported that their model had disappeared
simply, they called the police assuming that someone had stole it
(for it was the height of their popularity) only for cops to find no
signs of a break and entry, or a struggle, assuming of course the
things fought back.
It wasn’t
much longer before the trickle became a flood: as customers and their
full-purchase models started to complain. At first that they were
too chatty, inquisitive, or noisy. It would then escalate to
Sebastian and his team pulling their hair out as the law suits
started coming: some of them had assaulted people in their house,
guests mostly. On famous case was of a housewife in Windsor,
Ontario, who found that her HX01 unit had killed her husband with a
kitchen knife. The reason? The HX01 unit concluded that the husband
caused unhappiness in its female owner.
Also,
Gordon and David didn't report to work for a week prior to the next
set of events that would unfold, foretelling the ultimate problem
Insigna would have.
Designs of our Slave Race chapter 9
Chapter 9
I had
noticed that since then Ben hadn't asked as many questions as he used
to. This perturbed me, for I couldn't help but wonder what he was
thinking. What he was thinking about. I was afraid to find out,
being a bit happy that he wasn't quite so chatty. Still, I couldn't
really help but wonder. Perhaps he had learned whatever he felt he
needed to know, or maybe he figured that asking me questions bothered
me...
Or was it
the phonecall from that night? Had he heard enough of the call to
know that the 'slaves' were he and those like him? I prayed that it
wasn't the case, for if I was right than he might turn against me for
being a slave.
All this I
would find out in time. It was a few weeks after deployment and
there was a meeting to touch base, to report that all was well and
all that before being assigned a new task, maybe the creation of an
upgrade model or something entirely new - I would never find out.
Oddly
enough, somehow worth mentioning, Philip wasn't at this meeting.
Devon noted the absence for he was invited like at any of the other
meetings before this. Alas, we had to move on.
Designs of our Slave Race chapter 8
Chapter 8
It was two
weeks after that meeting when I would have questions of my own to ask
Ben.
“Ben,
what were you programmed to do?” I inquired into him, burning my
green eyes into him.
“I was
programmed to make my assigned human happy,” he replied
mechanically, as though it was a precoded function for him to say
that.
“How
does it make you feel to make your human happy?” I asked back. I
needed to know in my heart that the last while had been an overactive
learning matrix and nothing more.
It would
seem that Ben had to think about what I had asked him, trying to find
an answer that would best fit what I had asked him. I awaited in
hope that this thinking would result in an error, have him tell me
that he did not understand, even have this thinking produce a glitch
that would result in a crash that I would note and have the HX01
examined, but my stomach sank when I learned the truth: “I feel
happy when your happy I assume.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)