The Gift
Joe 59 grabbed a cloth from behind the counter and began dabbing at the spilled coffee.
“I wouldn’t expect a robot to understand,” she accused, sweeping her belongings to the side so Joe 59 could mop up. “And as for the futility of the action, do you really think that my sisters are so naïve as to believe that they can wipe out knowledge? We do what we have to do to alter public opinion. It just so happens that you have to make a loud noise to be heard these days. Explosions work wonders. Those bastards at the University know it, too. That’s why they didn’t press charges. They didn’t want to make a stink that would get into the newsblinks.”
Joe 59 thought about all of this for a few moments while his adaptive cogware generated a variety of responses, some of which seemed appropriate and others that seemed likely to alienate Luca further. He didn’t want that. She was a valued customer, of course, and engaging in a passionate discussion with her was, he realized, quite challenging and satisfying in an entirely unexpected way.
“Thank you for sharing all this with me, Luca,” he said finally. “I know that it must be difficult since you despise my existence, but I believe that you’ve taught me something valuable today.”
“What’s that?” asked Luca. The pitch and waveform modulations of her voice matched the normal human parameters exemplifying suspicion.
“I don’t think that I fully appreciated how precious life is to humans,” replied Joe 59. “It must be wonderful to be part of such a grand progression, a link in the evolutionary chain, a cog in the….”
“You don’t understand us at all.”
“Perhaps I understand you better than you realize,” smiled Joe 59, thinking that Luca would be pleased to know that she’d effectively communicated her ideas to him. Suddenly, he wanted to confide in her, to prove to her that he wasn’t just an unthinking mechanical coffee maker, as souless as his espresso machine. He leaned forward, not planning his speech at all, and whispered.
“I’m more than what I seem to be.” Then he gave her a wink. There, he’d done it, and it seemed good and right.
But while Luca seemed to scrutinize his face, the shop’s sensors detected alarming changes in her heartbeat and brain wave patterns that suggested panic—the fight or flight response—which caught Joe 59 utterly by surprise. It wasn’t at all what he had predicted. He thought his words had been complimentary and that by revealing his secret he would create a bond. Wasn’t that how humans developed relationships?
