sound escape my mouth but sensing the immediate tone of acknowledgment. I tried again, and still nothing happened.
Then the strangest thing happened. A small cleaning bot, all shiny metal made dull by time in service, floated toward me slowly with a sports bottle of water clasped in a … a hand, like a three-fingered grabbing tool. I don’t know why, but it freaked me the hell out.
It stopped in front of me, the smallest hiss of air sounding as it used its built-in compressed air thrusters to maneuver inside the ARC, and I took the bottle and drank.
“Thanks,” I croaked, as it about-turned and floated away, mentally kicking myself for talking to something with all the personality and consciousness of a toaster.
I paused then, trying to figure out amidst my pain and confusion, exactly what the hell the robot was doing inside, especially what it was doing bussing tables in my booth. Just as I opened my mouth to ask the one person—thing—that could tell me, the speakers beeped again.
“Good morning, David,” Annie said, “your symptoms will subside in a few minutes, but I recommend that you do not try to operate any of the station systems until you are fully recovered.”
“Recovered?” I asked, still feeling like my mouth was numb. “Annie, I need to eat something before I throw up,” I said, not comprehending how counter-intuitive that sounded. The speaker beeped again, and the robot-waitress returned bearing a sealed foil packet of food, like a space MRE. It hovered there for a second, like it was waiting for a tip, then retreated. I tore the top open to find a cube of preserved cake, still moist which made me surprised somehow, and I chewed it down with difficulty before retrieving the floating water bottle to take another long pull from it.
“You will need to use the bathroom facilities very soon,” Annie warned me, like a formally polite, computerized version of someone’s mother, “recommend you do not eat or drink any more at this time.”
I paused with the bottle halfway to my mouth, one hand keeping me from spinning and one foot wedged to stop the yawing motions. A single blob of water carried on out of the cap and crept toward me, its impetus caused by the sudden stopping of the bottle’s motion. I let the single drop hit me softly on the cheek, just as a little more sense penetrated the confused agony I was experiencing.
“Annie,” I croaked again, unsure what it was, but certain that something was very, very wrong, “what happened?”
“It’s better that I wake up the others first, then I will explain everything,” she said, effectively disobeying my instructions.
That’s what’s wrong, I thought suddenly, her programming is off.
“Annie, override,” I said, “run diagnostic on la—”
“Dr. Anderson,” Annie interrupted with a tone that made me conjure the word brusque, “with all due respect, you do not have all the facts. Please wait until I have woken the others up.”
“With all due respect?” I asked out loud to myself without saying her name first to activate a voice interface. “Who the hell programmed that response?”
“I did,” Annie answered, silencing anything else I could think to say, “it is a formal prepositional phrase commonly used by all English-speaking nations. I intended it to be an idiomatic way of disagreeing with you without invoking feelings of confrontation or hostility. Other options available to me were ‘with respect’ or ‘with the greatest respect,’ but I decided that the response I used was most appropriate. Now, please comply so that I can continue the resuscitation of the others without using a portion of active memory on this discussion.”
With that, a single down-tone came from the speaker which seemed to signify that the conversation was over. I carefully shut my mouth, in case anything else came out which got me in trouble. Sure enough, just as my digestive system woke up as though on a time delay with the rest of me, I turned to pull myself toward the uncomfortable space station bathrooms mouthing the only words I could manage.
What the fuck?
Earth Orbit
January 2, 2948
Amir looked as bad as I had felt. Farnham and Chapman took the news in their strides, neither one seeming to feel the emotional strain that the news caused me, and Hendricks just listened as Annie listed the simplified facts for us.
“Engineer Evans suffered a medical emergency roughly one year and two months after the event. I was unable to rouse trained personnel in a suitable time, so