How to Date an Android

How to Date an Android Chapter 15 (revised!)

I saw people hurrying when they were walking places too like they were more stressed out than usual.

"If it's OK, I'd like to confirm the items on your order," the android said like nothing was out of the ordinary and nothing stressful going on. His voice modulator was somehow really bad.

Weird...

I hadn't noticed it before, but his clothes were torn up like he'd been in a fight. His sleeve on one side was completely gone. The work suspenders he wore over that shirt had only one suspender working and the other had something like a red brown stain splashed across the front but that was nearly dried.

It also didn't look like android fluid...whatever fluids his type of model used. Actually that's something to pick Barbara's mind about. I still didn't know which models had fake blood or what it looked like compared to which androids were entirely mechanical. I suspected it was the non-Mellifera androids that were all mechanical though.

Oh there was also some kind of gash in this android's bicep too. It was too shallow to be much damage but it didn't look good. This android was made before synthetic bio upgrades were added so there weren't any synthetic fluids coming out or whatever they were; it just showed like, metal parts and wiring poking out from under the gash in the skin. But the newer models wouldn't show metal parts if you cut them open I believe.

His fake skin was cracked unnaturally in a lot of places too from lack of proper maintenance.

Jeez this guy was hella old then. It looked really suspicious.

"Sir, Is EvErYtHiNG oK?" he asked with his bad voice modulator.

"Fine. Everything's fine," I said. "Let's go over the order again, to confirm," I said going along with it, while he stood there like a door post. I didn't want him getting worried that something was off.

"Are you an older model?" I asked him, trying to be polite.

"HoW DiD YoU KnOW I'm ANDroid?" he asked.

"How could I not?" I sighed. "Look itt doesn't matter. Actually people are so dishonest you being an android is good. It may have helped you get through whatever you did with less trouble," I countered. It was pretty well known some of the more robotic based androids sometimes were really durable and rugged.

He took a minute and came back and forth to my door several times. He was bringing in the groceries two sacks at a time. Finally he was ready to confirm the list and it did look like everything was there.

Except the sack of onions had blood spatter on it; yeah I probably wasn't going to be able to eat those onions now. I could probably plant them in the garden still. But they were just onions right? And the blood if it didn't come from the android suggested more of what I'd suspected.

Yep, sure enough he'd probably been attacked while leaving the grocery store or something. His truck was more banged up than it should be too and the windshield had been splashed with thrown bricks it seemed. But maybe asking him about it wouldn't be a good idea right now.

"Potatoes, a dozen twenty pound sacks, flour also six sacks, fifty pound bags of rice of which there are ten in number. How unusual, you bought rice but not soy sauce. Did you malfunction?" The android leered at me strangely.

"I did forget the soy sauce," I admitted. Still, this would last awhile. With that many huge bags of rice it would be bland but I wouldn't die anytime soon.

Shit...what's the point of rice with no soy sauce; already the level of despair was now +1.

"Perhaps you need to do more maintenance sir," he flapped his jaws at me.