Now with the name of Roll, she looked like a little blonde girl in a red dress with red boots and a green ribbon. Similar in age and height to Ranma, it was felt that associating with larger robots would possibly be intimidating to the lone human.
Robots were not born, they were manufactured - each had a purpose to which they had been designed and developed. Many had near-human forms as they interacted with humans and something similar made certain things easier. Those with minimal interaction were free to let function fully determine form.
Roll looked like a human child because she was designed that way and her original purpose was human relations, specifically as a support character for human daycare. She had blanked the memories of THAT DAY, as practically every robot had. One moment everything had been fine, the next they were powered down and rebooting themselves. Everyone had been gone and they had been alone.
They had been built in man's distorted image, designed to be mankind's best friend and support. In their biomechanical hearts they loved humanity, with all its quirks and failures. From the most inhuman-looking sewage processor to the deep-space mining acquisition 'bot, each one of them held their service to humanity as not only their reason for being but their joy.
When Roll had rebooted and found empty clothes and dropped toys, and no sign of her little charges - she had gone crazy at first. What had happened? Why had they gone? What could she do? She was built to serve and safeguard and now there was no one to do either for. She was created to be useful and suddenly there was no use for her.
There had been briefly a flurry of activity as the robots linked their resources and tried to find the missing humanity. Technology shot forward as the robot intelligences sought to join their creators, if they could simply locate them or determine what had happened.
Finally though, they began shutting themselves down. Without purpose now, they calmed down and took measure of their resources and finally sent probes out to other star systems. They would wait for humanity, or see if they could find them - but they would simply shut down and wait in the meantime.
Humanity was wanted. Humanity was needed. Without humans, in their machine logic, there was no need for robots.
Then came Ranma.
Roll watched over the human boy, it was her purpose refound. She was now main support for the human named Ranma and she thanked her maker that she had been the appropriate unit closest to his point of emergence.
To be given a name and not a number-designate carried further consequence. NAMED robots were special. NAMED robots were directly owned or directly served humans. Roll had simply been Number Twelve when she had been with the NTTR Day Care Center, and had answered to a "nickname" of Chipper (which she'd always felt made her sound like she was a mulching robot and never cared for) during that time. Now she had HER VERY OWN HUMAN and could continue to serve directly.
There came 2,441 congratulatory messages, 114 protests that there were other units better equipped for this duty, and 1 coupon for free dry cleaning from some unit that was apparently malfunctioning.
Roll smiled brightly, proud and happy all at the same time.
Ranma looked over at her and tried to figure this out in the terms a five-year-old Japanese boy could.
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(Posted Sat, 22 Jul 2006 10:15)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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