EXCERPT #2
He turned as the door clicked shut behind them and noticed that there was no doorknob on this side. The metal was completely smooth, no way to return from where they came. Joshua began to sweat.
Wheels rolling across the floor sounded from across the room. The sound was approaching them, getting closer. Joshua’s body temperature dropped rapidly, his heart pumping to keep up. What approached looked like a giant tangerine with three spindly legs, each with three joints made from what looked like gimbals. Four arms, very similar to the three legs, the same three joints, protruded from the tangerine textured body equidistant from one another. A band of roughly three inches in height striped the circumference about a quarter of the way down the body. This appeared to be some kind of visual scanner.
It stood no more than four foot in height. The thing stopped about five feet in front of the woman. A mechanical voice, though with emotional inflection, said, “Katya, I was beginning to worry.”
Joshua froze in place staring at the talking tangerine. Though he was frightened, the scientist in him was curious. He noticed the color and texture of it, but something told him that it was actually a construct made from metal and plastic. He had seen robot dogs and cats as children’s toys, mechanical fish made for movies, but robots had basically been abandoned years ago as unrealistic and impractical research destined to exist only in science fiction. Nobody tried to make functioning robots anymore. Yet, here stood the walking, rolling giant tangerine.
Katya, if that was the woman’s name, said in an almost child-like voice to the robot, “Olas, you never spoke English before.”
“Yes, a man of many talents, most of which are unrecognized or unappreciated. English isn’t all that different from the Spanish program you installed; easily picked it up by a brain as complex as mine from scanning the broadcasted radio frequencies on this planet.”
Joshua was flabbergasted. Katya was actually using her mouth to speak. Why had she reverted to manual conversation with this robot when she could so easily talk with his mind? These two were actually having a conversation as if the talking tangerine could think for itself. Did it have a personality, maybe even emotion? Wasn’t there pride in its accomplishment of learning the English language on its own? What did it mean when it said on this planet? Was this thing from another planet? Riiiight!
Katya, while talking, walked over to a panel on the wall, flipped a few switches and turned some dials thus illuminating the room. The place was a casino/restaurant, a small room with doorways on all four walls leading out to tunneled hallways. “I’ve got to get out of these cloths. They simply put too much pressure on my caudal vertebrae.” She rubbed her lower back as she excused herself and left the room through the door on the right. “Olas, be nice to our guest. Show him around.”
“Is this the human you’ve been talking so unceasingly about?” asked the tangerine.
NEXT: EXCEPT #3 |
