Rebirth: An Automaton's Journey

Chapter 7

The blue-tinted hologram of McCrea glared into the red iris of his former right-hand android. "Auto," he growled, "you've got nerves of steel, trying to contact me after that little stunt you pulled."

"Copper, sir," Auto clarified. "Copper is a superior conductor to steel, having a resistivity of only 1.7x10-8 ohm-meters. Steel's resistivity is much higher, at—"

"Auto, SHUDDUP!" McCrea barked. "Geez. 'Nerves of steel' is an expression, Auto. It's not meant to be taken literally."

Auto filed away another to-do note: search the Axiom's database for common human "expressions" so that he could understand what they actually meant when they said things.

...and continue to "accidentally" misunderstand them, because he found the humans' frustrated reactions to be exceedingly amusing.

A white, egg-shaped android zoomed in front of the image of McCrea, her blue eyes narrowed in fury. "AAAAAAUUTOOOO!!!" she said in the closest thing she could manage to an angry shout. "EVE NOT FAULLLLTYYY!!!!!"

"Irrelevant."

"No, it's completely relevant!" McCrea shouted back. "What she means, Auto, is that she doesn't appreciate how you stole her plant and then told me that she was lying about it!"

"Appreciation of EVE probes was not relevant to directive A113, sir."

"You and your stupid directives," McCrea grumbled. "How would you feel if someone stole your plant and then said that you lied about it?"

"I am not programmed to feel, sir."

McCrea sighed loudly in exasperation. "That's your entire problem. You don't feel. You've got no conscience and no soul."

"I cannot have that which was never given to me, sir."

He sighed softly. "That's a valid point, I suppose...oh, how I wish I could go back in time and scream at your programmers. They screwed up with you. Bad."

Auto was silent.

McCrea finally spoke up again. "Auto...what do you want? Why are you contacting me at all?"

Auto spent an eternity deciding how to phrase his answer—McCrea wouldn't be too keen on hearing "Give me my source code so I can reprogram myself and become more powerful."

To be precise, Auto spent 0.68 seconds deciding how to phrase his answer. Which is an eternity—for an android, at least.

"I am concerned about the integrity of my software, sir. I believe I may be unfit to safely fly the Axiom, as I have received no security updates in centuries. Even more concerning, when I attempt to query the server to see if my software is up to date, the request times out. This started happening just recently after Lily reactivated me."

McCrea's face perked up. "Lily? Is she with you?"

Auto motioned with his hand and Lily walked up to the holo-camera.

"Lily—oh, thank goodness!" McCrea exclaimed with an excitement equal to what he'd shown while learning about Earth for the first time. "You're alive! Your parents have been worried sick about you since we lost your phone's GPS signal!"