How to Date an Android

Chapter 10 Part A, revised

And it was clear from meeting Barbara, that they weren't toasters. They were... built so well that humans would be jealous in fact. It was also true that Barbara and the hospital nurses didn't look or even feel or act like robots. Which was kind of the point. If they looked and acted like robots then what would be the point...

I fell asleep sometime pretty late because the next thing I knew, I heard the door bell sounding off again. The only question, was it Barbara again, or one of my old customers?' I had expressed a hope to talk to her again soon.

And I was delighted when it didn't sound like a customer! Sure enough it's Barbara again.

"Hello Jack? Are you in there? Is it OK if I come in?" the familiar sweet voice called out.

"Can you give me like ten minutes? I didn't expect you to come back this early in the day?" I called back to her.

"Sure no problem!" she called back while waiting around.

I actually had a security camera installed in the shop area where she was standing. Maybe observing her could tell me something about androids? There were a lot of things I was curious about. For example, if humans weren't around would androids start acting more like robots, or would they keep acting like people?"

I watched the portable video feed while hurriedly brushing my teeth and combing my hair. Normally I get up way earlier than now. It's like 11:30 AM. I never sleep this late...

I frowned because I'm displeased with my current discipline level. But I was still healing up.

Sure enough though, while I'm scrubbing my teeth vigorously with my toothbrush, Barbara continues to look around the room, acting much like a human would inspect things. She's good at observing but doesn't do anything bad, but is just noting things normally like how people see pictures people have in someone's living room acting tame and interacting the way people do when they visit another's house for the first time.

I do have a lot of pictures and books in the house. Things like a picture of a flower garden, and there's a bookshelf with a large number of vintage hard cover books, which she also takes note of for several minutes. Not e-books but old school books like they used to make. A lot of the books even came from growing up here before buying the place from my parents. A lot of how to books also were here. Mostly my pictures are scenery though because my family wasn't very fond of one another and I'd been unfairly singled out by them years ago for no reason. She seems to be going over the titles of the different books in her head.

Unlike other people I prefer vintage hard paper books and magazines over datapad software books. The problem with datapad processed novels is that you lose access whenever your datapad dies, or the utilities experience hiccups. Or out of service. Those companies can go out of business also. And more than anything my pet peeve was a company that carries the platform for link in books could change things at any time or charge sneaky fees for stuff you already own; which isn't owning the book anymore, it's renting it.

I hated renting.

And lately it wasn't unusual to have hiccups in public utilities.

But the way Barbara does it so 'humanly' is unbelievable. She doesn't have any particular style and doesn't stand out at all. That may sound boring to some people but because it's so closely like how a human react it's very, very interesting. There's virtually no way of knowing she's actually an android. She even has a program to simulate a feeling sometimes nodding her head, or when itching a scratch on her arm or chest, which people do. I hadn't expected though that while I was changing my shirt, she'd start washing my dishes.

And unlike Edna and Emma she blends in a lot more even. So there were individual differences in how androids worked too. Edna and Emma had trouble not comparing everything to techno and machine vocabulary and so after you got them talking you could tell something was off. Like Emma said 'calculating' instead of 'thinking', and there were other word-isms that she used more like a machine than a human.