Page 28 of Even Robots Die
Except, I do want to be back as soon as possible.
If dad emptying his bank account is any indication, I’m not sure the girls are going to have everything they need if I’m not there anymore.
Hell, I’m not even sure any of them know how to start the washing machine. What is going to happen when they’ve run out of clothes from their closets?
Yes, I know it sounds like I’m coddling them, but it’s always been like that, and it’s not going to change because I’ve been absent for a day.
But do I want to be away longer than necessary? No. So, I hide my pride in a corner.
“Milton, can you scan the evil machine?”
“Of course,” the AI answers me.
After a few seconds, Milton projects the three-dimensional view of what was left on my new desk.
“The outer view is all loaded. You will have to open the core for me to confirm some of the composants,” it adds.
Do I want to open it already?
No. I need to see how it functions first. I turn it on and a holographic screen projects on top of it.
It’s obviously locked with a password, but I plug Milton into the box and it unlocks it in under a minute.
I toy with the interface for a few minutes and finally find the code page.
Or pages. There are hundreds of pages and I realize that modifying this machine to get it to heal Brice won’t take me just a few days.
Fuck. How long am I going to be stuck here?
Because Brice may pay me handsomely, but I didn’t sign up for this kind of work.
I actually didn’t sign anything at all.
I feel disheartened.
“How strong are the electrical shocks?” I ask Milton when I finally stop moping around.
Feeling sad for myself won’t make this go faster.
I don’t have time for a pity party.
“Six milliamperes,” Milton tells me.
“Oh, that’s way less than my gloves,” I exclaim to myself. The shocks they deliver are around thirty amperes, so yeah, my gloves are five thousand times stronger than the probes of the torture machine. I’m not even sure I would feel anything if I touched them while they worked.
“At least I won’t have to be careful while working,” I mumble to myself.
It won’t solve the problem at hand, though, because I have no idea how this infernal device works. Although I might trust Milton to know we can modify it, I’m not sure I trust the data it gets from strangers to do it.
We’re about to fry someone’s brain with this thing after all.
I won’t let it be because I didn’t double check everything.
I sit on the chair behind the desk and push the machine so it’s against the wall and I can drop my elbow to the desk.
I guess I have a whole day of reading in front of me.
Why didn’t those asshole birds write a manual like normal beings?
