Selected Assistant

by Robin Roseau

“Can we do it in such a way that the cables follow the same path as they currently do?” Felicia asked, “as much as possible?”

  “Yes,” Bay said. “I’ll show you. Do you want to do that today?”

  “When could you make new cables?”

  “It won’t take long, perhaps fifteen minutes. I can have them waiting for you tomorrow morning, if that is soon enough.”

  “That’s perfect,” Felicia agreed.

  “Bay, how do you feel about this?”

  “This is a good plan,” he said.

  “All right. If you need me for anything, your visor can help.”

  “I’ll ensure they know how,” Muriel offered.

  “Thank you, Darling,” Jasmine said. “All right then.” She slipped from me, gave Muriel’s avatar a caress, and then strode from the room. As soon as she was gone, Felicia and Bay went in one direction, Muriel and I in the other.

  * * * *

  Muriel showed me, well, everything, or it seemed like it. We began with the enhanced capabilities of the visor. It would be a few days before I felt fully proficient, but I could find all the features I needed.

  The most important features, of course, were the controls for the bed as well as the avatar. And then she had me slip into the bed and do everything. A minute later, after warning Bay and Felicia, I “woke” in the avatar. They gave me a minute to learn how to release the avatar from its suspended home and then how to return when I was done. Muriel also showed me the control panel for adjusting the avatar’s sensitivity and other settings.

  “And here is the diagnostics system,” she said. We went through it, and then we put the avatar back. “Let’s meet in virtual reality.” She helped me find that, and then we were back in the meadow.

  We spent time there. She didn’t show me everything, not by any stretch, as time was limited. But she showed me enough that I could teach myself the rest.

  And then she had to go.

  I checked in with Felicia. She told me to use my judgment, but would ping me when she was done with Bay.

  So I explored.

  * * * *

  “Well,” Felicia said. “Wow.”

  I laughed. “You think that’s ‘wow’. You should see their virtual reality system.”

  She laughed. “Are you sure you’re okay with this?”

  “More than okay,” I said. “Unless diagnostics tell us something, we’re going to have to figure out how to reproduce it.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Care to make a prediction?”

  “The hardware is going to test perfect,” I said.

  “Yep.”

  “We’ll add monitoring and won’t learn a thing.”

  “Yep.”

  “Muriel has notes about what was happening when it failed the other times.”

  “So, we have things to test.”

  “Right. So far, I don’t see anything in common between the three incidents, but it’s only been three. Okay, that’s not quite it. They’ve spent a lot of time in controlled environments, and everything performed flawlessly, or when it didn’t, they resolved it. All three incidents were while Muriel was out and about. The notes are detailed, complete with the diagnostics information they could recover. But that part is thin. We have exact locations, and what she was doing.”

  “But nothing in common.”

  “No. Different locations. Different activities. Different times of day. There were no sudden movements. Nothing had displaced the robot, so it wasn’t a sudden trigger of the stability system, or at least nothing out of the ordinary. All three were on uneven ground, though, so the system was probably working harder than strolling around the corridors. One was flat ground, but hard-packed sand.”

  “A beach?”

  “No. Some sort of sporting facility they have here. In one, she reports a loud noise, and she turned to look.” I paused. “There’s one thing they all have in common.”

  “I thought you said there wasn’t.”

  “Not in setting,” I said. “But in all of them, Muriel remarks the robot began to fall, although not consistently in any particular way. The robot began to fall, and then the catastrophic reset.”

  “Not the other way around?”

  “Well, I presume if the robot is falling, that’s a failure of the stability system,” I said. “And I think that’s why they’re blaming us. The first symptom has been the stability system.”

  “Something else is failing the stability system,” Felicia said. “Before hitting the other systems.”

  “That’s my guess, Felicia.”

  “Amanda said we’re here to find it,” she said. “So, no finger-pointing.”

  “Right. We’re going to have to reproduce it. Muriel reports the failures as extremely unpleasant.”

  “Are we going to have to take turns?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll see how rough it is.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “You just want your turn.”

  She grinned. “I sure do. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “You’re the boss.” I offered my own grin. “It’s sure going to suck if it takes us a few months to figure out how to reproduce it.”

  Felicia laughed. “I know. I’d be heartbroken at eating good food, staying in a beautiful place, and meeting all the aliens.”

  “Yeah, me, too. What’s first, Boss?”

  “Let’s replace the stability unit. Can you unpack our equipment?”

  “Sure.”

  “I need the toolbox first.”

  “It’s on top, so easy.”

  “Excellent.”

  * * * *

  We worked until lunch. There were empty tables for us, so I fully unpacked each crate. We’d organized carefully, so I was able to put tools on one table, spare parts on another, and all our diagnostic devices on the remaining two.

  We’d brought everything with us we could think of, after all.

  We even had one of our own robots. I woke it up and moved it to stand beside Muriel’s avatar. Then Felicia and I compared the two. Together, we sighed.

  “We could match the look,” I said.

  “Not with Bay’s artistry,” she replied. “But we could make it look less like a robot. That’s not really what we’re after, though.”

  “No way can we make it as immersive as they do.”

  “Not any time soon. But we could use a puppet master suit.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, it might not be what anyone else calls it,” she exclaimed. “It’s from an old movie. In the movie, the operator wore a black, skin-tight suit, and it was filled with sensors.”

  “That measured body position.”

  “Right. We could do that, after a fashion.”

  “After a fashion,” I agreed. “Walking remains problematic, unless you can walk around a big room.”

  “You could be suspended in place.”

  “Yeah, but then you’re not standing, you’re held up, and your entire body is different.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “We’re smart people. I bet we could figure something out.”

  “It would be a fun problem. God, I love this job.”

  She laughed. “Me, too. I need another minute.”

  I hung out, watching as she finished withdrawing our stability unit from Muriel’s avatar. I took it from her. As she stretched for a moment, I set that unit on the table with the diagnostic equipment then fetched one of our spares for her. It was marked as passing the tests we’d done to it. She took it from me and said, “I can install this if you want to start the diagnostics.”

  “On it.”

  I was monitoring tests and Felicia was still reassembling the avatar when the door opened. I didn’t hear it, but then I heard an accented voice. “Would the two of you like to join me for lunch?”

  I looked to see Violet waiting.

  “This will run on automatic for a while,” I said. “I told it to loop and record all results.”

  “This is goin
g to take another half-hour,” Felicia said. “I could eat.”

  Violet gestured and then led us to a cafeteria. We collected food and sat down. After a minute, Felicia asked, “What is this facility for?”

  “The primary purpose is to serve the mating candidate process.”

  “This is where you bring the women you take from Beginnings?” I asked.

  “Yes. We host a variety of events. The mating needs of different species can be extremely varied. We find ways to make it work. Some of it would shock you.”

  “Yvette D’altrea talked about that on a talk show,” Felicia said.

  “A few times,” Violet confirmed.

  “So, what is your job here?”

  “Ah. Jasmine is in overall authority of the entire program. I am in authority here and Beginnings, although the resort is nearly entirely operated by humans. Bluebell has authority over the testing centers. It’s been hard on our family, but a lot harder on Jasmine. That’s a long story.”

  “What does Muriel do?”

  “She is a technician here, and now she does virtually all our computer programming. She’s split between enhancements to our system and helping to run our events. She does all of that from virtual reality. Her avatars are to give her a connection outside VR, and so she can see to her own needs most of the time.”

  “So not part of her job.”

  “No, not really.”

  “You’re doing all this…”

  “To help her stay sane,” Violet said.

  “A good goal,” Felicia declared after a moment.

  “Do you two need anything from me?” Violet asked.

  Felicia didn’t answer right away, so I did. “If Bay and Muriel couldn’t reproduce the problem in a controlled environment, I bet there’s something about a chaotic environment that is the trigger, or a contributing trigger. I think that means we’re going to have to take the robot to some of the sites where Muriel took it.”

  “We tried that.”

  “We understand that,” Felicia said. “But if the stability system is involved, then we probably need to exercise the system in a more challenging environment than these even floors.”

  “Ah,” she said. “Yes. I’m not an engineer, you understand. Do you know how soon?”

  “A few days,” Felicia suggested.

  “All right. I’ll make arrangements.”

  “Thank you.”

  We made small talk after that. We talked a little about the Catseye home world, and more about the beauty of Earth. She was significantly more traveled than I was, and that’s not a comment on space travel. We talked about the similarities and differences in childhood.

  I’ve called all this surreal I don’t know how many times. This was another surreal moment. We were sitting at a table with a member of an alien species, calmly sharing a meal while discussing what it was like to be a kid. In other words, we were doing the most normal thing we could have been doing, and there wasn’t anything normal about it. I commented on that.

  “But it should be normal,” Violet said. “Sure, we have differences, but you have differences from each other, and even more differences if there was a male at the table, or a child, or someone significantly older than any of us. We are all three easily speaking the same language.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong to feel this way?”

  “No,” she replied. “Not at all. In fact, let’s add to it. Posey was born during the trip here. She has never known any of the Catseye worlds. I was young when we left, and barely remember our old home.”

  “That has to be hard.”

  “It is,” she said. “But let’s keep going. My daughters will all be born here. It is unlikely they will ever go back to a Catseye world, although they might. But it is unlikely, and so it is unlikely they will ever walk a street where nearly everyone is Catseye. Humans refer to us as ‘The Aliens’ or ‘The ETs’, and while we don’t know for certain, we believe this will last for generations. My own wife still sees me as part of ‘them’. Oh, there’s definitely an ‘us’, and sometimes she means she and I and our daughter, and sometimes she means the entire family. But she will oftentimes say ‘you’ when she means ‘the collective group of aliens’, and while she might not ever admit it, I think in her mind, she includes our own daughter.”

  Violet let that sit out there, and then Felicia asked, “Are you bitter about that?”

  “No. I couldn’t love Skye more than I do, or she me and our daughter. And she loves my sister and our mothers. Our relationship is as close to perfect as anyone could possibly hope.”

  “That’s good, then,” I said.

  “Very good,” Violet agreed.

  “She works for you, right?”

  “She does, yes,” Violet said.

  “How is that?”

  “This is a very Catseye arrangement,” Violet said. “For me, it’s normal. And she’s said she likes it, too.”

  “I can’t imagine working with my parents,” I said. “Or a sibling.”

  “You don’t get along?”

  “We get along fine,” I said. “But a little distance helps.”

  “Tell me about it,” Felicia muttered.

  We sat quietly, and then Violet said, “I should get back. I can walk you to the robotics lab if you want, but your visors can guide you. Please only go where guided.”

  “Jasmine warned us of dire consequences if we strayed,” Felicia said.

  “All right, then.”

  * * * *

  The diagnostics were still running. They’d done six full cycles so far, but I had programmed for twenty. “It will be done by dinner,” I said.

  “Assuming they won’t find anything, we’ll tell it to run to more extreme limits overnight.”

  “Sure.” I gestured. “Need help finishing?”

  “You can keep me company, or you can go back into VR.”

  “I don’t want to do that until I show you how to monitor me, or at least we make sure you’ll get alerted if something happens.”

  “All right. Keep me company, then.”

  “Sure.”

  It didn’t take long until she had it buttoned back up again. Then we stared at it. Finally, she grinned at me. “Mom and Dad left us with the keys to the car.”

  “Not just the car,” I said. “The sports car!”

  “Totally,” she said.

  “Too bad you don’t know how to drive, and I think someone with more practice than I’ve had should teach you.”

  “I think I agree with you. Hop in and let’s run laps around the lab or something.”

  “I think if you mean that literally, I’d rather go somewhere with a little more room, at least until I understand the limits.”

  “I was kidding,” she replied. “Are you serious?”

  “I haven’t tried running…” I said slowly. “Muriel told me to keep the sensitivity low for now. I bet it’s fast.”

  “We’re going to have to push limits.”

  “I don’t think I’m done learning to walk. Do you mind if we’re a little cautious? I don’t want to tell Muriel we crashed her car.”

  “You’re right, although we’re going to have to crash it eventually.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s a different kind of crash. Do you want me running into all the diagnostic gear?”

  “No,” she agreed. “But hop in.”

  “Right. Hopping…”

  * * * *

  Five minutes later, I’d released myself from the hoist and stood before Felicia. Inside, I was grinning. And she said, “That’s so cool. You’re totally digging this.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “That’s the biggest grin I’ve ever seen.” She gestured to my robotic face.

  “You can see that?”

  “Yes. Make other faces.”

  So, I stuck my tongue out. She laughed. I lifted my hands to my ears and made wriggling moose antlers at her. She laughed again.

  “All right. Let me verify we’re getting basi
c diagnostics.” I followed her to the table with the remote monitoring equipment. She clicked around for a minute then said, “Walk around. Let’s see what happens.” I did that, and she said, “Good. Do whatever feels comfortable to you.”

  “Just don’t cause a pile-up.”

  “Good plan,” she agreed.

  I didn’t do anything fancy. I walked around. I did circles. I changed direction. I picked things up. I set them down.

  I did anything I thought I could do while being fully in control of my movements.

  And, of course, everything worked perfectly, disregarding the driver’s unfamiliarity with the device she was driving.

  From time to time, I asked Felicia, “Seeing anything interesting?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I’m seeing a space alien robot roaming around.”

  “Funny.”

  “Everything is in the green,” she said. After that, it was just, “All green,” or, “You’ll be the second to know.”

  There were no signal spikes. No signal drops. No twitches where there shouldn’t be twitches. Everything worked perfectly. Finally, I came to a stop facing Felicia. “I’m out of ideas.”

  “Are you running at the same control levels that Muriel uses?”

  “No.”

  “It might matter,” she said.

  “Right.”

  And so, I made the adjustments, although I did them gradually. Muriel was right; everything was far more sensitive, and I had to be a little careful. And the feedback from the robot was also far more sensitive.

  I could feel everything.

  Or so it seemed.

  I touched my own face. Well. The robot’s face. And it was nearly overwhelming. At that, I sat down, which probably wasn’t necessary, but I sat down, then finally I turned to Felicia. “Touch me.”

  “What?”

  “Consider it for science.”

  “Right,” she replied. She stepped over. “Where?”

  “Anywhere that looks like skin, I suppose,” I directed. “Just…” I reached up and ran two fingers across her cheek.

  She had the smoothest skin, and it felt just like I was running my own fingers along her cheek.

  She stared at me. “You’re making me nervous.”

  “I’m not trying to come on to you. You told me to turn the sensitivity up. I did. It’s a little intense.”

  “Fine, fine.” She stroked my arm first. It gave me the tingles. Then she did my face, and that was… I don’t even know how to describe it. I held still for it.