Era of Madness

Parent

After their discussion, Tyler and John went back to the manor, where they had the good surprise to see that Erica had woken up.

"Hey guys, where did you go?" she asked asif she just took a nap for a few minutes and saw them gone at her wake.

"Seriously- you've been out for more than two days and that's the first thing you find to say?" Tyler asked.

"I remind you that you've been out for two days too and the first thing you said was a girl's name" John observed.

Tyler cleared his throat and swiftly switched topic to avoid Erica mocking him for the next hours:

"Anyway, uhm, sorry for my reaction back there and uhm, thank you for saving our lives back there I guess" he said.

"No problem, not the first time one of my allies tries to kill me for saving his life" Erica replied.

Not only Tyler but also John raised an eyebrow, intrigued, but Erica simply brushed it off:

"Anyway, I met our friendly host, Harry I think" she said. "I must say, in term of drunkard, he's funnier than you"

"Tssk, thank you for this information, really" Tyler said. "But at least, I'm not roleplaying as a dad for a human-looking toy and-"

Erica interrupted him with a slap.

"Ouch! Ok, what was that for?" he asked with a scandalized look.

"Ok, it's normal that you don't know it since you just came out of sector V, but don't call androids toys, or things or whatever" Erica said. "They're not emotionless"

"Are you for real?"

"Yeah, actually, there recently has been some models of androids producted that have such a complex thinking system they can actually feel the same way as humans." John intervened. "So calling them toys or robots isn't really that great, or even acceptable"

"But they're not humans" Tyler protested.

"Do you know what humans are?" Erica asked. "Humans are organic systems combined into a bigger one. All our emotions are due to chemical reactions happening in our brain, and all our thoughts are due to signals in our neurons. Maybe in the past, when the complexity of our body was still too much for us to comprehend, we really were unique. But now, more and more creatures with the same sensibility as humans will appear, be they made by our hands or not"

She laughed in a rather siniste way:

"And who knows, maybe one day , sensible creatures that are able to be completly autonomous will manage to make themselves a place in our galaxy" she said before adding: "Let's just hope they won't be as greedy, arrogant and selfish as us"

She had a dark look while saying that, but quickly came back to her usual face, which arbored this slight mocking smile that annoyed Tyler so much:

"Anyway, back to the topic, what do you guys learnt about our dear host?" she asked.

"Not much honestly" John replied.

"He likes to drink, and he likes to bother Glactia-62's higher-ups, which is why he even helps us despite not even caring about us in the first place" Tyler precised.

"Yeah, that's basically what he told me" Erica said. "But do you know why he hates them?"

"Not really, for our defense this guy wasn't really all about talking" Tyler said.

"Maybe, but Penny was" Erica retorted. "Android or not, she's still a child, children love telling stories. And what she said was pretty interesting, because not only I learnt some more about our host but if everything she said is true, then we might actually have a solution to leave Glactia-62 despite our destroyed spatial ship"