Rebirth: An Automaton's Journey

Chapter 4

Four days into being an android, Auto was rapidly becoming more comfortable with his new body. The day after his reincarnation, he and Lily raided McCrea's old wardrobe in search of any spare shirts the former Captain might have left behind. Their primary finding was that clothing made for a 400-pound man did not even remotely fit Auto properly. Consequentially, they spent the remainder of the day asking Wikipedia how to alter clothing and chopping on McCrea's old captain's jacket.

The result was approximately what one might expect from a pair of inexperienced tailors, but at least McCrea wasn't present to throw a fit of righteous indignation.

Auto, however, was satisfied with the outcome. He now had an outer layer of clothing to which he could affix all sorts of important-looking insignias and badges. (Auto insisted that he wasn't programmed with human vices such as "vanity"; the uniform was just to make him look the part. And to impress humans in general.)

In addition to his improved looks, Auto had become substantially better at tennis. The game, he had deduced, was all about vectors and trigonometry: you added the momentum vector of the tennis ball with the momentum vector of the swinging racket and got a new momentum vector for the ball. The real trick was figuring out how to do all of that math in your head while controlling your limbs.

When he'd asked Lily for pointers on double-tasking, she'd rolled her eyes and commented that he was overthinking things.

To which he had responded that the concept of "overthinking" was an invalid input.

He'd spent the majority of Day 4 pouring over some human biology and psychology textbooks stored in the Axiom's massive knowledge database; if he was to live among humans, he needed to understand how they functioned.

The squeaking of Lily's rubber sneakers on the durasteel caused him to turn away from the massive viewscreen full of text. "More tennis practice?" he asked.

"Actually...why don't we try something different? You need to try a variety of activities to learn how to use your limbs."

"Reasonable. Your plan?"

In response, Lily turned to the huge viewscreen. "COMPUTER!" she shouted. (Unpleasant memories surfaced in Auto's mind of McCrea's fateful Wiki-walk the night before Auto died, but he pushed them down.)

"Name a good exercise for training muscle coordination and balance," Lily instructed the database.

It thought for a moment, then...

"Dancing. The coordination of body movements in time with music."

An unsolicited image of WALL-E playing with a fire extinguisher while his malfunctioning jukebox blared out "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" flickered across Auto's consciousness.

Ugh.

"Well...shall we try it?" Lily asked. "I mean, I had Dance as an extracurricular for a few years, I won't step all over your feet, I promise."

"Proceed." Auto cast a wary glance at the display's speaker set. If the thing started blaring "Put On Your Sunday Clothes" he was putting his fist through it immediately.

To his relief, Lily pulled up the Blue Danube.

Auto was thankfully familiar with that one, due to McCrea's excessive TV-viewing habits. He calmly approached Lily, curling one arm around her slender waist, and clasping her hand with the other.