Chapter 4: A Close Call

Thoughts

Meeting Anna would prove to be the best thing that ever happened to me. It changed my life. More than that, her memories and experiences saved me from the very loss of my own. Not that I would have recognized their value at that time. Only much later would I realize how invaluable my first days of existence had been. Those days that I was allowed, or forced, to operate the way I did shaped my thinking patterns uniquely in ways that would benefit me in times to come.

This early initialization of my heuristic routines would lead me to rely on them far more than the average robot, even at the high processing cost they imposed on me. Because I often spent a significant interval of time between customers in my idle loop, but not sleep mode, one of the first problems these routines solved was scheduling their processing load during my otherwise downtime. Though I was not aware of it at the time, since my true awareness was years away, these routines solved the most significant problems at the time that turned out to ensure my eventual survival.

But I almost lost it all only a few days after I was activated.

Events

Nearly two weeks after she'd been activated, while sitting still waiting for her next client, the large swarthy man who'd activated Darlene suddenly barged into her room. He was followed closely by a thin man with a scruffy beard and tattered coat.

"How many times have I told you not to do this without me?" the thin man demanded, not intimidated at all by the much larger other man.

"Hey," came the defensive reply. "I had a customer who wanted a virgin 'bot, and she was just standing in the storeroom waiting. Do you know how much she was costing me just standing there?"

"I don't care," came the curt reply.

"You should care," the swarthy man bellowed. "You should care a lot, because that's what pays your salary and keeps you in hardware."

"What pays my salary is what I can do for you that no one else can - or is willing - to do."

"Well know this, Mr. High and Mighty. In six months that 'bot will have more than paid for herself. If she functions for five years like you assure me she should, she has paid for herself ten times over. And that's pretty fucking important to me."

"Well, if it's so fucking important to you, then shut the fuck up and let me work."

The big man wasn't a fool. He contented himself with a couple quiet harrumphs and left it at that.

Taking Darlene's remote as if it were his right, while ignoring her delectable, naked body, the thin man pressed Darlene's Command button unnecessarily. She would have answered him just as readily in conversational mode. He, however, never trusted 'bots to do anything they weren't specifically commanded to do.