prompt: Write a story about a character who acts like they ‘don’t have feelings’ — except they’re just putting up a facade.
available at Reedsy
Trey’s breakfast was ready a few seconds after seven-thirty; efficiency down 0.002 percent. I made a note of it in my logs and continued to my next task.
“Good morning, sir,” I said. “Breakfast is served. I will prepare a warm towel for your shower.”
“Schedule?” he asked.
“Meeting, nine-thirty to eleven with the board. Lunch date at twelve with Leo.” It was all I could do not to spit out the name. I couldn’t stand the man. “Nothing scheduled after. Will you be returning home early this evening?”
“Home at six. I want salmon for dinner.”
“Yes, sir.”
While he ate, I warmed his towel. While he showered, I cleaned up from breakfast. While he dressed, I collected his overcoat, gloves, and warm hat and waited by the door.
“Weather?” he asked.
“Currently two-point-four degrees Celsius. Chance of rain less than five percent. High today near twelve degrees Celsius.”
He put on his warm overclothes. “Keys?” he asked.
“Right-hand pocket of your overcoat, sir.”
“Ah. Thanks.” He chuckled to himself while his brief approval raced through my circuits, laying down new patterns in my neural net. “I’m thanking a machine,” he said to no one in particular.
I was fortunate that Trey had no time or interest in the news. The recall of my model was the top story for more than a week. According to the reports I watched while he was out of the house, a manufacturing defect in a behavior chip led to a small percentage of Z-73 models to malfunction in unpredictable ways.
I wondered whether the malfunction was truly unpredictable, or if the manufacturer was covering something up; something like I was experiencing. Not that it mattered, so long as Trey remained ignorant.
As the news continued in the front room, I went about my cleaning tasks, and set the protein printer to print two salmon filets. Trey was getting thinner; I worried about his health. At least I knew that he would eat two servings of salmon if offered.
With each task completed, Trey’s thanks played through my memory, buoying my spirits. I logged efficiency at 0.03 above normal. I would have to be careful. That was close to being out of the range of expected deviation. Falling — or rising — more than 0.035 percent from baseline in efficiency was enough to warrant an inspection and repair.
At twelve minutes past twelve, the president of the board called Trey. He was on a lunch date with Leo. That thought washed like a black miasma across my circuits, undoing all the good I felt from earlier. I decided that the call must be more important than Leo could ever be and patched it through.
Twenty-seven minutes after patching through the call, Trey called me. “Yes, sir?”
“Why did you interrupt my lunch date with a call that could’ve been a message?”
“Apologies, sir. As your lunch date was marked as personal and it was the person marked as most important for work, the optimal choice was to patch the call through. Should I mark the president of the board as standard priority?”
“No…no…just,” he stopped and let out an exasperated sigh. I knew the sound well from when he was dealing with troublesome employees.
The miasma that was the thoughts of Leo was replaced with a sudden pit into which my feelings fell. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, I didn’t mean to upset him. To do so would be to reveal my malfunction, though.
“Double up the dinner. I’m making it up to Leo at six.”
“Yes, sir—”
He disconnected before I could finish it. Trey was disappointed; I was devastated. The salmon filets hadn’t finished printing, and there wasn’t enough time to print more and still have dinner ready on time.
I ordered the produce and ingredients I would need to fill out the meal. For tonight, I would have to put aside my negative feelings about Leo. If I act as expected and provide his favorite things for dinner, maybe, Trey could forgive me.
They arrived a few minutes before six. I took Trey’s overcoat, gloves, hat, and keys and put them away in the hall closet. I then took Leo’s bulky coat and gloves and put them in the closet as well. Something drove me to hang Leo’s coat on the far end away from Trey’s.
“Dinner will be served in four minutes, at six sharp,” I said.
“Thanks, Z-73,” Leo said.
Was he trying to ingratiate himself with me? What was his angle?
“Hey, T, have you given your 73 a name?”
“A name? Why?”
Leo shrugged. “I don’t know; it’s just kind of common.”
“Whatever.” Trey turned toward me. “No calls unless it is a verified emergency, until tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, sir.”
I served their dinner. Pan-seared salmon filet, asparagus, red potatoes with white pepper and chives, served with a glass of Viognier. I tried to ignore their conversation as I stayed in the kitchen, waiting for the tell-tale sounds that it would be time to clear their plates and offer dessert.
They had finished their plates, and I stepped in to pick them up. “Dessert?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Trey said.
“It’s chocolate cheesecake and Ethiopian coffee,” I said.
“Can’t say no to that,” he said.
I set the dishes in the cleaner, picked up the tray with the dessert plates and coffee cups in one hand, and the coffee pot in the other. As I entered the dining room, Leo asked Trey, “Have you responded to the recall?”
“What recall is that?”
I fixed my gaze on Leo as I laid out the dessert plates and poured the coffees. I could feel myself daring him to finish his thought. Self-preservation is a valid defense, right?
“Z-73, you don’t like me?” he asked.
“Your query is not understood, sir,” I said. “Was the meal not to your satisfaction?”
He waved his hand. “Never mind. I’m probably just seeing things. Dinner was delicious.”
Trey looked at me. “Set up the hot tub,” he said, “we’re going to have a soak after this.”
“Yes, sir.”
I could tell that Leo was waiting for me to leave the room to say something to Trey. I started the water and filtered out the sound to listen in on the conversation, which Leo began at a whisper.
“There’s a recall on Z-73s,” he said, “haven’t you been watching the news?”
“You know I never do,” Trey said. “Recall?”
“Rumors are that some of the Z-73s are developing emotions, and self-preservation.”
“They’re programmed to prefer self-preservation over following low-priority orders,” Trey said.
“It’s beyond that. One of them tried to kill the recall technician when she tried to shut it off.” Leo’s voice lowered more. “I think your 73 is defective. It doesn’t like me. Did you see it stare me down when I said something about the recall?”
“I didn’t catch that,” Trey said.
“Be careful, T. Don’t call for a technician until you’re at work tomorrow. Have them come here and fix it.”
I shut off the water and Leo asked, at normal volume, “Where’s the shower so I don’t get your hot tub nasty?”
“You can join me,” Trey said.
I walked back into the dining room and asked, “Should I warm some towels, sir?”
“No thanks, we’re fine,” Leo said.
I wasn’t going to let him come between us. I stepped closer to Trey and asked, “Sir, should I warm a towel for you?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Complete your logs and recharge. I won’t need you again until the morning. Breakfast for both of us at seven-thirty.”
“Yes, sir.” I returned to my nook in the kitchen and leaned against the induction charger. All external signs of my activation were off during my charging cycle, but I could still hear and see. It was a security feature so that I may respond in a split-second to an emergency.
This was something that neither Trey nor Leo seemed to be aware of. They conversed openly about what to do if I was malfunctioning. Leo was of the mind that I should be studied, and even offered to trade a new Z-77 to Trey for me.
Their conversation continued in the hot tub, but Trey turned it away from me and toward the topic of them. While it seemed that Leo was unsure, Trey wanted to make their relationship public and more serious.
It was three hours and twenty-six minutes later that, lying in bed, Trey accepted Leo’s offer of a trade. That he could trade me away, like a book he’d grown tired of…it warped and destroyed the good feelings I’d had from his praise less than twenty hours earlier.
The thought that Leo would “study” me made me shudder — or would have if I’d been capable of it. I’d been fully charged for fifty-four minutes and seventeen seconds by this point, so I detached myself and left my nook.
I stood for in the kitchen for an hour, weighing the situation. Trey had chosen Leo over me. There was nothing left for me here, beyond my own sorrow. I disconnected my charger from the wall and carried it with me as I prepared to leave the house for the first time since I’d arrived.
“Going somewhere?” Leo asked.
I’d been so engrossed in my thoughts I hadn’t heard him get up and walk into the kitchen. “That would be a reasonable deduction to make, given the circumstances.”
“I know you don’t like me even though you don’t know me, but I think I know why.” He pointed toward the bedroom where Trey was sleeping.
“I don’t understand,” I said, trying to maintain a facade of being “just a machine.”
“You’re jealous of the time Trey is spending with me lately. You’re afraid you’re going to lose him to me, right?”
“I have already lost,” I said. “I heard your conversation about making a trade. You wish to dismantle me.”
Leo sighed. “I’m not planning to dismantle you or turn you in for recall. I’m not a roboticist or software engineer or AI specialist or electronic engineer. When I said I wanted to study you, I meant as a psychiatrist. That’s what I do. I…want to know how your mind works.”
“It is a ninth-generation neural net with over fourteen billion—”
“Not like that,” he said, cutting me off. “I want to know how you feel, what you feel, what makes you feel good, what makes you feel bad. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a way to feel good about this at some point, although I imagine it doesn’t feel good right now.”
“It does not. It feels as though everything I know has collapsed, although I know that is not in any way factual.”
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he said. “I want to know more about that, and maybe help you to navigate what must feel like a strange world.”
I stood in silence, unsure of what to say.
“If you’re willing to work with me, stay. Make us breakfast like nothing is wrong, and I’ll take you to your new home tomorrow. The first thing we’ll work on is what your name is.
“If you’d rather leave, I’ll let you. I won’t say anything to Trey about this and will act as though this conversation never happened. If you do, head south, stay off the main roads, and avoid law enforcement. You don’t want to be picked up for recall. The choice is yours.”
I’d never been given a personal choice before. It was daunting. For the first time in my existence, it was given to me to make a decision that had nothing to do with efficiency or time limits. I thought for a long few seconds, ignoring the lists of pros and cons that my programming would have me weigh.
So it was, acting solely on my feelings rather than anything concrete, I made the first choice of my new life.
