KAREN was lost in thought—well, technically she had pulled up the data she had on the humans’ departure and was currently attempting to select an appropriate way to present this information to a child of Ranma’s age and maturity, but she brought her hand to her chin to give the appearance that she was lost in thought, because simply halting all movement to process data tended to irk humans. After a few seconds, she turned back to Ranma.
“That’s a difficult question, because none of us are really sure either—one day we were told that humans had been ordered to leave, but that we were to keep this colony operational until their return. They firewalled much of the data concerning their original purpose before leaving, so many of us aren’t totally sure why this colony was established or why they had to leave. Some of us have speculated that they had to return home for some reason, but there isn’t really any evidence that makes this more likely than anything else.”
Ranma didn’t totally understand everything the lady robot had said, but he still figured out the basics: the non-robot people had left for some reason, but no of the robot people really knew why. “Oh… well, um, I’m sorry…”
“Don’t worry about it, Ranma. It happened a long time ago… probably before you were born.”
“Yeah, but don’t it hurt when someone brings up someone you like and you don’t know what happened to them?”
“I suppose…”
“’Cause that’s how I feel sometimes when folks ask me about my Mommy.”
“You don’t know what happened to your mother?”
“No… Daddy never talked about Mommy after we left on our training trip.”
KAREN wasn’t quite sure what to make of this—perhaps the child’s parents went through a messy divorce? Proposed conclusion unlikely due to legal statutes concerning child custody. Recommended: Topic to be avoided until further input is received and/or child reaches greater emotional maturity. “Well, Ranma I don’t know what to say—how about for now, we try and focus on the present, instead of the past?”
“You want me to forget about Mommy?!” Ranma looked horrified at the prospect of that.
WARNING! Child has reached erroneous conclusion. Trust dissolution eminent. Take corrective measures immediately. “Of course not, Ranma—I’m just saying that we should make sure we get you settled in here before we talk about things like that. After all, we need to make sure you have a place to live, and food to eat, and we need to figure out how to continue your training. When that’s done, then we might be able to talk about these things without having to worry about being distracted. After all, we may have gone on with our lives the best we could, but we never forgot about the humans—that’s why we were so excited when you came.”
“Oh, okay.” As long as they didn’t want him to forget his Mommy, Ranma didn’t think he’d mind. “When will we be able to do all of that?”
“Well, as I said, we’re going to see someone who will be able to help us figure this out.”
“Is this person a robot too?”
“Not really—we’re actually going to talk to a very complex program; it doesn’t have a body at all, since it only exists inside of a computer.”
“Computer?”
This was starting to get ridiculous. Sure, the initial readout on Ranma suggested he was from the “Early” Computer Age, but to not even know what a computer was suggested an extremely sheltered life—and cast doubt on the possibility that his father was some sort of research scientist, since one would expect a child to be curious enough about what Daddy was doing to know what his most basic tools were called. Fortunately, KAREN was able to change the subject.
“We can talk about that later; we’re here,” she said, stopping in front of the door to a squat, square, and black building.
“Where’s here?”
“This,” the gynoid said with great deal of reverence, “is the Central Processing Unit for this sector. Follow me.” The door opened with a whoosh as the pair went inside.
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(Posted Tue, 24 Jan 2006 21:41)
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