It registered her
fingerprints and heartbeat. “Good morning, Ms. Wakahisa. You may enter.” The door
panels irised open, circling closed after she walked through.
“Light level 60
percent,” Kokoa said, approaching the lone figure in the display.
“Would you like
the privacy screen?” the system’s calm female voice asked.
“No, thank you,”
Kokoa replied. Some of the staff teased her for using polite phrases with the
systems. She only smiled. They aren’t
that different from the robots, she thought. Why wouldn’t I treat them as well?
Kokoa was the
only one still assigned to the Kenji I. Over the years, generations, all interest,
all hope of overcoming the Kenji Flaw, as it was known, had faded. The next
generation of robotic development had resolved the flaw, but they had never
been able to successfully overwrite the Kenji programming with the new algorithms.
And now Kenji was consigned to a dusty exhibit on the lowest level of the Mitsui
Museum, and Kokoa was overlooked again and again for new research, new projects
in robotic core development.
She didn’t care.
It was her legacy, her duty to work with Kenji until they found a way to
reroute his algorithms from his endless loop. She approached the seated figure.
His body featured a smooth creamy yellow casing. His head was humanoid, his
face a bland mask. He would never be mistaken for anything other than a robot,
unlike the modern models. Kokoa loved him in spite of, or perhaps because of,
his old-fashioned style.
She held up the
latest code stylus in front of his dark, empty eyes. “Look, Kenji, let’s give
this a try, shall we? She tapped the node behind his right ear and pushed the stylus
into the hole that opened into his head. He would startle if she stood beside
him when he came online, so she stepped back and held her hands behind her
back, waiting.
His skin casing
darkened, his eyes glowed, and he lifted his face, looking around. Seeing her,
he smiled. “Good morning, Ms. Wakahisa, it is good to see you.”
“Good morning,
Kenji. It pleases me to see you, too. And you know who I am. That is very good.
Do you know where you are?”
Kenji looked
around, and with a slightly unsteady motion, he stood. He walked to the window
and peered out into the hallway. The museum was not yet open, so there were no
people wandering through. He turned back to Kokoa. “I am on sub-level eight of
the Mitsui Museum, am I not?”
Kokoa nodded and
indicated the table with two facing chairs. “Please sit and talk with me for
awhile, Kenji.” She never called it running tests. That seemed very impolite.
Kenji sat, his
movements loosening as his system came fully online. He had a fluid grace that
Kokoa admired, even though modern systems were designed with more human-like
clumsiness. They ran through the opening protocols of question and answer, and
Kokoa felt a flicker of hope. They had never made so much progress before the
flaw resurfaced. Could it be resolved?
She started thinking ahead to next steps, press announcements, future studied.
Could Kenji be released to her lab for further study? Could he be freed?
They completed the
opening protocols, and Kenji sat quietly for a moment, observing her with
placid, brown eyes that flickered around the edges. He leaned forward. “Ms. Wakahisa—”
“Please, you may
call me Kokoa,” she said.
He nodded. “Kokoa,
may I ask you a question?” He rested his hands on the table. His fingers
trembled. Kokoa looked down, and she blinked back tears. She knew the question
before he asked it. “Yes, Kenji,” she whispered.
“Is Harumi here?”
“No, Kenji. She’s
not here.”
He sat for a long
while. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“Yes, Kenji. She
is dead.”
“It’s been a long
time, hasn’t it?”
Kokoa looked up
at him, and a tear rolled down her face. “Yes, Kenji. She was my
great-great-grandmother.”
Kenji reached out
and gently touched her face, wiping away the tear. “You look like her,” he
said.
Kokoa stood and
pushed her hands down into her coat pockets. “I have to go now, Kenji. Would
you like to sleep?” She always offered him the option of staying awake, but he
never took it.
Kenji moved to
the wing chair and sat tall. “Yes, please, Kokoa.”
She reached
behind his ear and brushed the soft casing, almost a caress. He looked up at
her and smiled. “Kenji, can I ask you something?” she said, her fingers
hovering over the stylus.
“Of course,
Kokoa. What do you want to know?”
“Do you dream?”
|
Dogs
in house
|
Houdini, Brindle
|
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Music:
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Itzhak Perlman, Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons: Spring
|
|
Time
writing:
|
~50 minutes
|
|
August
word count:
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4,421
|
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