Chapter 14

As Jeff opened his eyes he found himself inside a room, clinically white. That was okay. Not really, but at least he was alive. Or was he? What wasn’t okay, was that all he seemed to taken with him was his sight?

Let’s just put it as it made him nervous, okay, upset?

As he moved his, ah, eyes? He saw a desk, behind it a most proper looking lady, for the moment occupied with filing some documents. As she she looked up, she didn’t seem to have any problems recognizing him.

“Ah, Jeff, is it?”

“You’re late!”

“Huh?”

“No matter, we’ll just have to fit you in.”

‘Well’ Jeff thought a little cynically. ‘not much to fit in here, in vain searching for his nonexistent body.

“No need to take that tone with me, young man.” she said irritated.

“The director will see you, in a moment. Now keep quiet”

Thomas had a way with robots, some called it social engineering but that didn’t really apply to the laws of robotics. He found them rather fun to manipulate as they all was steered by the idea of doing no harm to humans. You just had to pick the right for it, messing with those military ones could become quite complicated as their definitions of ‘doing harm’ was, let’s just call it more loosely defined.

As his luck was he found a cleaning robot just outside maintenance.

“Arrrgh” then he fell down. Eleonora stared shocked at him, laying on the floor writhing.

“Arrrgh”

“Thomas, what is it?”

“Don’t bug in” He whispered fiercly.

“Arrrgggh”

The little cleaning robot stopped, swiveling its eyestalks at the human writhing on the floor. It had a limited AI, sufficient for cleaning but not really up to handling a human laying on the floor. It rolled up to the humans head, bending its eystalks to look it asked.

“Do you need something Sir?”

“My inhaler.”

“Inhaler Sir?”

“Behind the door there.” pointing to maintenance.

The robot went up to the door, then stopped.

“Sorry Sir, it’s locked.”

“Open it then.”

“Sorry Sir, can’t do that, only corridors Sir.”

“I’m dyinggg idiot, Arrrg.”

By now Leonora had gotten the gist of it. She tried to stop smiling as she looked down at the helpless robot, as always with them, its first priority was not to endanger a human life, on the other hand, it’s second commandment was to clean, and clean well. It rolled helplessly back to Jeff.

If now a robot can be of two minds, this little helper was. One small flexible arm started to wipe snot of Thomas nose as the eystalks once more bent down to take a look at the helpless human.

“Wan´t me to call medical Sir”

“No no, not necessary, just open the door” Jeff responded. ‘Damn’, that robot was too smart for him.

“You’re dying Sir?”

“unless you open, yes!”