Short
Circuit
"Rotor,” Sprocket called out to his
friend.
Rotor spun his head around while he continued
to walk down the sidewalk.
"What?"
Retracting the wheels in his soles as he came alongside Rotor, matching his friend’s pace.
“I have two new friends that I want you to meet.”
There were three distinct squeaks as Rotor rotated his head
to track Sprocket. His eyes flickered
momentarily, but his pace never faltered.
“Oh, Rotor. You need
to get those slip rings looked at.”
“I know. I was using WD-40, and that seemed to clear it up for a
while. Now, it’s getting worse.” Rotor’s
eyes flickered, and he oscillated his
neck gently until the eyes glowed steadily. “What new friends?”
“Here,” Sprocket pulled a photograph from the slot behind
his ear and held it up for his friend to see.
Rotor took the picture, scanned it and gave it back. “So, you’ve been over to CyberSapiens Corp. What do you need with a couple of androids? And children no less.”
“No, really they’re human.”
Sprocket twisted at the waist stem to face Rotor as they walked. He stuck the photo back into the slot. “I found them by
the capacitor store.” He paused for
several long microseconds, then hummed, “Out front.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I did too,”
Sprocket’s speaker rattled with insistence.
“No, you didn’t. Who
took the picture?”
“Ratchet. He took it
and beamed it to me. I made a hard copy
on the spot because I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” Folding his arms over his chest, he activated
and heard the snap of the blue dot covering the magnetic field as it locked his
wrists in place. A typical resting
stance for alleviating stress on the shoulder rotators while in walking
mode. Only this time he meant it as a
sign of aggravation.
As they stepped down
from the curb Rotor’s eyes flickered again.
“Alright,” Rotor told him. “I
need this looked at. You come with me and run a diagnostic while
I’m there. If it’s without fault; I’ll believe you. Besides there is no one named Ratchet around
here.”
“Deal,” Sprocket agreed.
Rotor hung from a rack with his feet but a few inches from
the floor when Sprocket was wheeled out on a dolly attached to the front of a
domed tech-aide followed by an all-white enameled Tech.
Rotor touched a button on the side of the stands upright and
slid to the floor. “Well?”
He asked.
There was a deep brown glow to Sprocket’s eyes framed by
fresh black enameling. He looked up from the floor.
Rotor looked at the Tech.
“Did you run the tests? And why
are his eyes brown instead of their usual
white.”
The Tech flipped an arm out as to indicate, no big
deal. “He’s just embarrassed. It a typical, I’m sorry response. It will clear up.”
“Really? I
haven’t experienced that before. I’ll
file that away in long term storage.
What did the diagnostic find?”
“You were right to bring him in. He had a short in the tank circuit in his
right optic system. Inductor L832. I replaced it.”
“That caused Sprockets problem?”
“Yes. Generally, this sort of short circuit causes a
sense of déjà vu; giving one a sense of having been somewhere before when they haven’t.
It’s a lack of synchronization between the two cameras and the fiber
interface. In this case, it was severe and caused fathom imaging.”
Rotor thumped Sprocket on the head making a hollow
ring. “I told you.”
“I know, I know.”
Sprocket’s eyes were turning white rapidly. His speaker growled in a laugh. “I knew all
the humans left for Alpha Centura in the
last of their starships seventy-five
years ago.” He slid around Rotor and
levered himself into the waiting room stand. A small whir
brought him off the floor. “Your
turn. Get those slip rings fixed.”
Rotor stepped up on the dolly,
and as it backed him down the corridor,
he heard Sprocket hum in low volume, “They seemed so real.”
