Chapter 3: Datatronics

Our story begins to take off with one man, Michael Collins, who because of no fault of his own, wakes up one morning only to discover that his reality has been turned upside down.

He, in fact, is an android.

Up until this point, Michael had assumed that his entire life was real. He had a good job, a loving girlfriend, and good friends. But who was to tell him how much of it was real?

Waking up that fateful day, Michael discovered something which was absolutely real to him. He was vulnerable.

Being exposed was no great comfort to him. The fact his friend took advantage of him, and violated him; angered him immensely.

But, Michael struggled to come to grips with who, and what he was, and to regain some normality back in his life.

Driving to Buckhead was always a pain in the ass. He lived in Alpharetta and had to take Georgia State Road 400 each day. Predictably, there must have been a pile-up because as he got to Holcomb Bridge Road, traffic was at a stand-still.

About 30 minutes later, he made his way through the toll-booth and sped up so he could get over to take the next exit, which was Lenox Road.

Michael pulled into his office building, waved his parking card so the gate would raise, and proceeded to park his car.

Next, he walked into the building, swiped his access badge, and entered the elevator.

As he got off the elevator on the 16th floor, he swiped his access badge again, entered his office, and made his way to his desk.

Several people were in already, and they shared their normal pleasantries as they did every morning.

He booted up his computer, checked his eMail, and began to work.

Right about this time Arnie got in and walked over to sit in the cube next to him. He didn't say anything to Michael, nor did Michael say anything to him.

He was busy coding away for about an hour, when he saw Arnie's reflection in the mirror which was taped to his monitor.

Michael pushed his chair back, stood up, and faced him.

"How's it going, dude," he said; putting one hand on his shoulder, the other on his crotch.

While pushing him back, Michael scornfully told him, "Fine!"

Laughing, he reproached him. "I see you fixed your problem you had yesterday." he said.

Michael was getting furious. While looking at Arnie, he replayed the sequence he saw that morning on the videotape.

Next, he stepped towards him, and grabbed his arm with his hand, directing him to the breakroom at the end of the office.

As the two entered, Michael forced Arnie down into a chair.

"Listen you faggot fuck," he whispered to him. "I know what you did to me while I was unconscious Friday night."

Arnie started squirming in his chair a little. "Do what? I didn't do anything to you," he said, lying.

"Fuck you!" Michael said a little louder, quickly lowering his voice afterwards. "Julie had a video camera propped up in the basement – she recorded everything," he said with emphasis.

"Does she know?" he asked, covering his face with his hands.

"Not yet," he said. "Now get the fuck up."

Michael escorted him back to his desk, and they continued about their day.

The rest of the day went relatively smoothly. He was checking the code revisions he was making to the card processing module into the CVS repository.

Co-workers stopped by cube; they chatted about their respective holidays and how they were spent. He casually mentioned to Angie that his was boring since he was unconscious for pretty much the whole weekend. This brought a roaring laugh from Arnie's cube.

Michael skipped lunch, and continued to work. He was so captivated with his work that he didn't know his new found special abilities were starting to show through.

While listening to a Dave Matthew's Band CD, he began typing faster and faster. People around him were starting to notice. Faster and faster his fingers traversed the keyboard, in the open 'vi session he had, working on the code. A steady stream of clicks without pauses reverberated from his cube. As he stopped to check on the code a co-worker was working on, he turned around and a rather large crowd had formed just outside his cube. He had just finished coding close to 10,000 lines of code in about 25 minutes!