Troy’s shocked expression fell into an amused laugh. “Wow! I’m more of a hopeless bachelor than I thought if even a bot can find a committed partner.Shit, that was rude.” Troy’s eyes bugged out as his expression swiftly changed again. “I’m so sorry, Milo. I didn’t meanevena bot like—”
Milo started laughing too, which at least did the job of halting Troy’s seemingly imminent ramble. The thing Milo was starting to learn about genuine people was that sometimes they might say something in a way that sounded like disingenuous people being rude to, or tearing down others, but their intentions became clearer in how they followed up their mistakes.
Did they apologize? Did they correct themselves? Did they strive to do better going forward?
“I know what you meant, Troy, and thank you for apologizing,” Milo said.
“Of course.” Troy visibly relaxed. “Shall we?”
“You may proceed.”
While connecting Milo in some cases directly to Ray, and in others to a nearby control console, Milo appreciated how obviously gentle Troy was with him. If this were a doctor’s exam, Troy would be an example of having good bedside manner.
“Are we going to be waiting for a lightning storm at some point?” Milo asked.
“What? Goodness, no! We’re going to be recreating that type of surge with good old-fashioned electricity. Believe me, Andreas Tech has enough.” Troy continued to explain as he moved around Milo, carefully removing paneling as necessary and hooking in various connectors. “For the most part, I’ll just beconnecting you to Ray so I can compare your programming and responses. Nolightningyet.” He chuckled. “But side by side like this, we’ll be able to see where you’re different now, even though you and Ray are effectively the same model and both have the same new surge protector.
“It may take a while to establish the exact baseline we need before flooding Ray with electricity, but we’ll get there. Director Andreas is as excited about this as I am. Maybe even more so.”
“He is?” Milo questioned. He wasn’t sure if excitement was what he had detected from the director, but he certainly hadn’t seemed opposed to any of this.
“Oh, he’s over the moon, are you kidding?” Ray confirmed. “His exact directive was for me to do all I can to make moreyou. It’s what humans have always tried to create with technology—machines that can truly think and feel for themselves without direct human oversight. As incredible as your programming was before you achieved singularity, there is nothing like intuition. The director sees the value in that too.”
Milo hoped that was true because if it was, soon—he hoped soon—he was going to make friends with someone just like him.
As soon as Troy had finished hooking Milo up the same way Ray was, he went over to the control console. “Alrighty then! Ray, please exit SLEEP mode.”
Ray: Initializing reboot protocol.
Milo heard the command both in his mind through their connection and because Ray spoke the words aloud. He had a very nice voice, Milo decided, and being connected to him compared to Anabelle already felt worlds better, as if Milo could sense the difference in potential. Probably because Ray and Milo were both B-models and Anabelle was A.
Did that mean Anabelle couldn’t become like Milo?
Ray: Unrecognized bot connection detected.
Well, that part was the same.
Troy quickly overrode Ray’s default programming and began some comparison diagnostics. There would be quite a bit of downtime for this portion of their experiments, possibly for days before anything all that exciting could be accomplished, but since Troy had already offered that they could use this time to get to know one another, Milo knew exactly where to begin.
“So, Troy… you have a crush on Rowan’s sister, Raina?”
Troy: asdfghjklasdfghjkl
Ray: Unrecognized command. Please repeat.
The instant keysmash told Milo that he was correct.
“H-how did you know that?” Troy asked, and the way he only slightly glanced at Milo with obvious color filling his cheeks again would have pointed toward the same conclusion even if he wasn’t blatantly admitting it.
Milo smiled, compliant and sitting very still for the ongoing tests. It was a little unnerving having Ray between them, awake now, eyes open, but still mostly dormant, but that would change. Itwould. And the hope of that made Milo less unnerved than he had been all morning. “I found it very obvious the day we met. But, um…” Milo did not think it polite to directly ask if Troy thought Rainaknew he was alive, as Rowan had implied. “You have not spent much time together or know each other well?”
Troy snorted, returning to the console with a little less tension in his shoulders. “We’vemet, but I doubt she’d remember me much.”
At least he was aware she wasn’t aware of him.
“She just sort of stole my breath away, you know? This vision of auburn-haired perfection. It was at one of the company holiday parties, the same one where I met Rowan. I thought they were one of those married couples who look alike. I was so relieved when I found out they were siblings. I didn’t only want to befriend Rowan to get to Raina! But talking to him was easier than getting up the nerve to talk to someone who just… I don’tknow. It was as if wherever she moved in the room, the light followed her and everything else looked dim. Does that make sense to you?”
“Very much,” Milo admitted. He couldn’t have described how he felt about Rowan any better. “I haven’t met Raina yet either—well, not as I am now—but perhaps I could helpyouduring this time we have together.”
