How to Date an Android

Chapter 7, revised & improved

Chapter 7

Nurse Emma was in front of me again this morning. "Hey Jack, how are you feeling today?" she asked.

"Pain is less today, but I still don't feel good," I answered.

She'd caught me today when I'd just woken up.

"That's OK. It's all a normal process of getting back on your feet. All organisms need recovery maintenance, and not just androids. Is it OK, if I push you around in your wheelchair?" she asked. She gave me a sweet smile, the exact opposite of Edna's smile.

"OK, I guess."

"So where'd nurse Edna go?" I asked.

She frowned. "Well she's been acting out a lot lately so they sent her in for maintenance work after we got some complaints from the patients. They think she had a virus, but it's just her quirky personality and their human impatience."

"Sorry. I hope they aren't too hard on her."

"Jack, I don't understand why humans have impatience. They have everything, and dominate the planetary food web. But they are very easy to act out on anger or impatience. I think this may be what triggered Edna going to maintenance. I'm so worried about what they'll do to her. It bothers me," she said.

"People should be more patient. Impatience and anger are character flaws. I think also that acting on them is a flaw," I replied.

"But they won't scrap her will they? I'm so ...I think my personality engine is triggering a want to protect response for ...I think It's...concern that they'll scrap her for being defective?" she said, thinking aloud.

"Wow. You guys can calculate pretty well then," I noted.

"They won't scrap her will they?" she asked.

"I don't think so. She seemed like a good nurse to me. I did notice her personality oddities, but I just that it was sort of cute punky attitude. I'm surprised some people could be offended by it as it wasn't harmful. Maybe they'll just give her some more personality training? Even humans still need training their whole life for dealing with other humans," I sighed.

But that was apparently the wrong thing to say.

"Oh no! Shoot! I should have helped her more! I could have lowered the probability of her going to maintenance if I'd only done extra things on my shift. If only I could have raised my production by 14% to offset her quirky efficiency loss!" Emma had her hand over her mouth.

Oh this was classic. I'd seen this look on my mom's face and this type of reasoning before. But seeing Emma with it surprised me. This is what comes from if I'd only done one more thing to save the sibling that was being rebellious...or bad.

"You can't think it's your fault. Sheltering it would only have grown it more. If it would have grown more then it would look like the problem is bigger. While the problem is big, then the punishment or corrective action might have been more. But don't worry, I'm sure it's probably too expensive to replace her for just saying weird things to patients. They will calculate that its cheaper to send her to a rehabilitation class or two, than to replace her with a new android," I said.

"Oh I hadn't considered that. It's true it would be expensive to replace one of our models, since we're so advanced. Just an hour ago a customer complemented my hair protein matrix," she cooed.