After he was registered as a resident of Golgotha II, KAREN took her charge to his quarters, which, since he was the highest ranking human on the colony (by virtue of the fact that he was the only human on the colony) were quite a bit more luxurious than he was used to. Like much of the colony, it was as aesthetically pleasing as it was functional; this was consistent with the creators’ apparent philosophy, which acknowledged that form should follow function but also recognized that a complete focus on function was incredibly boring and would probably not be conducive to long-term mental stability.
The first thing Ranma noticed was the bed—it had been quite a while since he’d slept in one, particularly one that looked so comfortable. The room itself was mostly decorated in various shades of gray and off-white, but the room’s shifting, multicolored lighting decreased kept it from looking overly stark and clinical. Set into one wall, there appeared to be a really fancy looking television—though KAREN explained that it was far more than that—it was his primary communication device, as well as a state-of-the-art entertainment center and personal computer. Next to his bed, there was a box that appeared to be solid from a distance, but proved upon closer inspection to have several drawers, all of which were empty.
“We’ll be getting you some clothing as soon as possible—we have to make it from scratch, since all of the uniforms currently here are for adults.”
Ranma nodded and continued looking around. A doorway led to a luxurious bathroom, with both a shower and a furo—at least it looked like a furo. The boy was almost overwhelmed as he turned back to his metallic companion. “Wow… is this my room?”
“Yes, it is, Ranma—actually, this whole apartment belongs, though I’ll be staying here with you, if you don’t mind.” Actually, Ranma didn’t have a choice—he was far too young to live alone without some sort of supervision—but KAREN was certain that he wouldn’t mind her presence.
“Really?” The boy was nearly stunned—he’d just been given more stuff than he’d ever owned in his entire life.
“Yes. Now, we still have a lot to do before you can settle down to a routine, but it’s getting a bit late, and most of that can wait until tomorrow.”
“Okay…”
“But for now, how about dinner? You must be hungry.”
“You bet I am!” shouted Ranma, who was clearly excited by the prospect of immanent food consumption.
“Good,” replied the gynoid in her most matronly tone. “Well, let’s see if we can fill you up.”
Thirty minutes later, KAREN really was wondering if the hydroponic facilities on Golgotha II were capable of satiating the hunger of its sole resident. She simply observed Ranma devour everything that was put in front of him, collecting as much data as possible. Subject exhibits an abnormally high appetite for a child his age – 5.47 standard adult meals eaten in past 30 minutes. Recommendation: Test for parasites and/or eating disorders. Increase food production accordingly. Of course, KAREN knew that there was a reasonably good chance that Ranma had a high metabolism from his martial arts training, but there was no way she was going to take any unnecessary risks with the heath of the first human to arrive at the colony in years.
The next day, after Ranma’s physical (and after he’d received quite a few immunizations) Ranma had his first day of school. To keep things from getting boring, the various subjects were divided between two teaching units with very different personality matrices. The humanities, such as literature, history, and (most pertinent at the moment) foreign languages, were delegated to ALI (Analytical Learning Instructor), a very outgoing robot with a brass-colored “male” body frame and a voice emulation program that gave him a slight Middle Eastern accent (unless he was teaching languages—he couldn’t very well allow his charge to mangle pronunciations). Though, like the rest of the artificial intelligences on Golgotha II, he didn’t have any experience with children, Ranma seemed to take a liking to him right away.
For the sciences, there was ALICE, who, given her proportions, had obviously been designed by an anime fan, and one who was into the whole “girls with glasses” thing at that. While she would never be mistaken for a human due to the segmented joints on her limbs, her “skin” was a dull flesh tone instead of a glittering silver, and her fully articulated face was covered in a flexible skin-like material, and topped off with turquoise wig. And of course, there were the glasses, which were obviously not corrective—and even if they were, they were much bigger than would be necessary on a human. But then, ALICE wasn’t human—and her “glasses” were actually covered with light sensitive diodes—in other words, they were her actual “eyes,” and the false “eyes” behind them served only to simulate emotion.
As one might expect, she had the personality quirks of the “girl with glasses” character type—where ALI was an extrovert, she was introverted, with a mousey, bookish demeanor about her, and was even programmed to occasionally be a little clumsy when she wasn’t handling valuable and/or irreplaceable Despite the differences in their personalities, her teaching software was the same as ALI’s—the only reason “Continuing Education” was tacked on to the end of her acronym was so that she would have a different name than her “male” counterpart.
Ranma wasn’t quite sure what to make of the apparent twentysomething gynoid at first, but he warmed up to her quickly—her nervousness (which in this case was not entirely preprogrammed) made him want to do as well as he could for her, if only to reassure her of her abilities. Of course, whether this enthusiasm would continue once the novelty of having his lessons taught by robots wore off couldn’t be predicted.
Today, Ranma had simply spent time with them so he could get used to interacting with them, and so his teachers could record some raw data on the behavior of a human child for analysis—data which would be disseminated very quickly amongst the community, as Ranma himself was without a doubt the best resource available on the subject, and everyone needed to know how to properly interact with him. Tomorrow, they’d begin testing him academically to see what the boy already knew—after all, it’s hard to complete a race if you don’t know where the starting line is.
The testing was thorough, and as is often the case when children are tested thoroughly, Ranma found it to be a bit dull at times, and the fact that the room where most of his lessons would take place was (at the moment) the first really boring room he’d seen since he’d arrived (the furnishings consisted of chairs and a large screen on one wall for presentations) didn’t help matters. There seemed to be so much he didn’t know—which was odd, because when he was with his father, he’d always felt like he knew everything that he really needed to know, like how to survive in the wilderness, or how to handle large groups of people who wanted to cause you bodily harm. That’s not to say he’d never been curious about some of the things ALI and ALICE were talking about, but whenever he’d brought up topics like why the sky was blue, or how a car worked, or why people from different parts of the world talked differently, he’d been rebuked for bringing up inconsequential matters. What difference did it make that the sky was blue? His life wouldn’t be any different if it was green, after all.
But that was before he came here, to this place that was unlike anything he’d ever imagined—and from the way his teachers were acting, it seemed like all the things that were supposed to be mere “distractions” actually were important if he was to get by while he was staying here. He wondered why his father had decided to send him here—they seemed to approach teaching with a completely different set of priorities. They actually wanted him to put the Art on the backburner while he learned “useless facts”! But surely they had a good reason for doing things this way—Daddy had trusted them to train him, after all, and Daddy always did things the best way.
So he bit his lip as he sat through the questioning—which actually was pretty interesting at times, especially when he realized that the people here wanted to him to learn some pretty neat stuff. Still, he felt a little guilty for not getting in any morning training.
ALICE was about halfway through her testing of Ranma in her subjects when ALI finished his preliminary analysis.
Unit F4S-X74 (Accelerated Learning Instructor)
Analysis of knowledge base of resident/operator Saotome, Ranma – Humanities.
Evaluations adjusted to take subject’s age into account.Subjects
History/Social Sciences: Moderately high (though biased) knowledge of Japanese history. Poor otherwise.
Languages: Satisfactory reading/writing ability in Japanese (first language). No second languages.
Literature: None.
Music: None.
Philosophy/Religion: Grasps basic concepts of several philosophies and religions of Asian origin.
Visual Arts: None.Comments: Subject indicates that previous instructor discouraged curiosity in areas with no immediately discernable benefit to studies of martial arts. Subject has expressed desire to gain knowledge in all of the above categories. Anomaly: Subject believes the current year to be approximately 1988 C.E., an error of more than 1500 years. Data from psychological examination rules out dementia and related mental states as likely origin of belief. Further investigation may explain subject’s anomalous arrival at facility.
Conclusion: Though his overall lack of factual knowledge is somewhat disturbing, in conversation, subject shows himself to be quite intelligent, and almost certainly capable of benefiting from a diverse education.
Recommendation: Subject must acquire fluency in English as soon as possible, as many programs in the facility only accept commands in that language. In addition, subject’s erroneous belief regarding his current temporal reality must be corrected fairly quickly. Other subjects to be addressed more fully when subject’s skills in these are deemed adequate.
After he sent the report to the CPU, the android continued to observe ALICE’s testing, gathering as much data as he could on his student. The gynoid’s conclusions were similar to her counterpart’s: though Ranma was obviously intelligent, he was sorely lacking in the factual base necessary for him to fully take advantage of that intelligence. Her initial focus would be on mathematics, since basically all of the sciences used it to one degree or another.
As she finished, she noticed her student becoming restless. “Is something wrong, Ranma?”
“Um… well, it’s nothing, really, but it’s just that I’ve been inside sittin’ all day… and my Daddy really wants me ta be a martial artist…”
“Well, last I checked, we were still working on developing a specific plan to train you, so it might be a while…”
“I… I know, ALICE-sensei, but does that mean I can’t do my kata ’til then?”
ALICE hadn’t yet downloaded many of the specialized terms of martial arts, so she responded by “blushing” (her facial “skin” was thermally sensitive, allowing it to turn red when the heaters underneath her cheeks activated) and asking for clarification. “Um, what is a kata?”
“Ya know, like an exercise.”
“Oh, I see. Well, do you need to have an instructor present to do them?”
“Uh, not really, unless yer learnin’ a new one.”
ALICE glanced over at her colleague and had a brief conference with him using their wireless connection. She then turned back to her student. “Um, I don’t really see why there would be a problem, as long as you did it on your personal time.”
“Oh. Okay.” The boy paused for a moment before continuing. “Uh, when does my ‘personal time’ start?”
It was ALI who fielded this one. “Actually, I think we’re done for the day. I’ll notify KAREN, and then you can have some time to do what you please.”
“Okay!” Ranma was glad; he wouldn’t have to let his skills lapse while the robot people were setting things up for him.
“We’ll see you again tomorrow, at about the same time.”
“Alright.”
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(Posted Sat, 11 Mar 2006 16:09)
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