Project Oros s.v. 3.24 - REACTIVE

“Why do we have to stay inside?”

“You know the answer to that, bubs.”

“I do? Are you sure?”

“As sure as I am that we can’t go outside.”

He chuckled.

“I guess I just don’t understand… Can you explain it to me again?”

“Father?”

“Yeah, bubba?”

“Why do you get to keep playing with your toys after bedtime?”

“It’s not MY bedtime, Levi. It’s yours.”

“But that's not fair! I want to play…”

“And these aren’t toys. You father is working to help people. As maaaaaaany people as he can. You want to go outside, don’t you?

He swigged his beverage and sulked in his corner, hoping for an uninterrupted night of hard editing, another night of forgetting. He didn’t like to go out in public, knowing full well that he was one of the most recognizable men in his little domed city, but still… he couldn’t bare another night alone either. He loathed the conundrum.

“What’ll it be, Doc? You’re such a busy man, and yet… here you are! There must be a very important discovery at the bottom of that pint glass, no?”

The voice was thin, but warm, despite emanating from an electronic module set within a cluster of malleable plating that mimicked the muscle groupings of a pair of lips. Its silhouette cut the image of a man who had a run-in with hack magician, as its lower half was conspicuously missing. Thanks to a series of tracks that lined the ceiling, with which it slid around, it was able to tend it's patrons, suspended to bar level by wires and harnesses.

Service class bots needn’t masquerade as anything besides exactly what they were: Products of efficiency. The track provided the most fluid, expedient means of delivering an unspilled beverage. The mechanical lips mimicked human movements for ease of communication in case the night-life became particularly rowdy, rather than for reasons of vanity, evident by the remainder of its facial features being decidedly “other.”

The Doctor lifted his empty pint and cupped his eye, treating the glass like a telescope. “Eureka! I’ve discovered a pompous waste of circuitry!”

They laughed. They had rehearsed similar bits on other dreamy nights, but life’s fondness for improvisational comedy kept it from feeling rote.