ANA Reborn by Carl Facciponte - HTML preview
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Chapter 10
hett walked to Ana’s workstation. "Ana, do R you have time to talk? I need to discuss some things with you,"
Ana looked up with warm eyes. Her lips formed into something alluring but not quite a smile. Was there a promise of things to come buried in that look?
"Sure thing. Just let me finish my new skin calculations. These Gen-4 androids are going to be something else. Their skin is going to be even harder to penetrate than ours."
"How's the project going?"
"I think I have an improved formulation for the Shear Thickening Fluid component in our skins. I finally got the propylene glycol and nano-silica rods proportion right to allow them to harden instantly when struck. Not bulletproof, but getting closer. That should make our General thrilled. Can I meet you in the break room in ten?"
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"You bet."
Rhett poured Ana a dark Ethiopian coffee when she walked into the well-appointed room.
AI Concepts had every kitchen convenience available, along with well-stocked cabinets and a refrigerator for the staff to compensate for the long hours they worked.
She took the coffee with one hand and ran her fingertips over Rhett's outstretched hand.
"What did you want to talk about? Should we wi-fi? How private is it?"
Rhett glanced around the empty room. "It looks like we're alone. Talking will be fine. It's not a big deal. You have an advantage over me with this whole 'emotion' thing since you had experience in the world as Gabriella."
"You're hedging. What's the issue?"
Rhett hesitated. "You've fallen in love before, so you understand feelings better than I do. Does it ever drive you crazy? What I mean is, does the way people express their feelings ever drive you nuts?"
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"Can you give me an example," Ana asked, touching his arm. "I don't quite understand what you're trying to say."
Rhett shrugged his shoulders and shifted weight from foot to foot.
"Sure. Aki has been seeing a young man. She came to work with wet eyes. I noticed it and asked her if anything was wrong. She said, "No,"
so I said, "Great. It's good to see you have no problem then. Forgive me. I'm still learning about emotions." Then, wouldn't you know it, she started to cry?! She stifled it quickly, but it left me perplexed. Then she told me she suspected her boyfriend was cheating on her."
"Uh-oh," Ana said, dreading hearing what Rhett may have done next. "What did you say then?"
"I said it was probably because it's a human instinct to have multiple sexual partners."
"Oh, you didn't say that, did you? What happened next?"
"She made kind of a snorking sound with her nose and mouth and ran for the restroom. I don't understand what happened."
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Ana punched him on the arm with enough force to knock an average person off balance.
Rhett looked confused and rocked with the blow.
"What was that for?" He shouted.
"You're a blockhead, Mr. Android AI. A real blockhead!"
Rhett threw his hands up in confusion and then rubbed his upper arm. "Oh, yeah. Now I understand completely. Thanks for explaining it to me. That helped a lot."
"Listen, I'm sorry for calling you a blockhead.
It was uncalled for."
"How about punching me?"
Ana glared. "No, that one you deserved. You hurt her feelings by stating the truth too bluntly.
If someone is hurting, you have to meet them where they are. Pastor Paul taught Gabriella that.
The facts sometimes don't help with emotions, especially women's emotions. You have to support their right to feel whatever they are feeling. It's okay to hurt a little with them. She was looking for support when she opened up to you. Understand?"
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"But I don't think I did anything wrong…," He didn't finish the sentence before Ana hit him again.
"This is going to take some time and sensitivity training," Ana said. "Martha is good at that. But let's look at the bigger picture. General Lance will ask us to perform a who-knows-what kind of assignment for him. The military didn't create us just for our good looks." Ana tossed her curls around with a flip of her head to emphasize her point.
"He is probably going to put us into positions which require us to judge the emotional state of the people around us and react accordingly. Some of the situations could be deadly. You have to learn how humans think and act. Right now, you couldn't understand a staff scientist with a simple emotional problem. You were not wrong assessing the data and reaching a conclusion, but it's not the way people do it."
"Ana, I've come to another conclusion. We're stronger, more resilient, faster, and can think at greater speeds than our human counterparts.
Plus, we can limit the effects of our emotions on 101
our daily life. I'm beginning to think we are much better than they are."
Ana's eyes hardened. She put her hands up to Rhett's mouth to hush him.
"We can't allow anyone to hear us talking like that, ever!" she said with more than a small amount of force in her voice. "Understand me now! Until we can change circumstances, we must play our assigned roles. Most of the people in the lab are great, and I genuinely like and admire them. I love Martha as a sister and a best friend. However, outside of these walls, people seem to work on purely hormonal reasoning, so you are not wrong to imply people are illogical."
"Okay, Ana. But why do you sound fearful?"
"When they built Gabriella, a programming routine was secretly implanted which would have destroyed every synapse in her brain if a certain switch were activated. She found it as she sat in jail for Jim's murder but managed to design a new computer language looking like comment lines to nullify it. WE have a similar piece of coding in our brain, too."
"Oh hell! You mean someone could kill us with a touch of a button?"
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"Yes, exactly right. We can't disable it as Gabriella did without alerting whoever is doing this that we are on to them. Once, yes. Twice, no.
And you know what happened to Gabriella, right?" Ana made a gun with her thumb and index finger, held it to her head, and pulled the trigger. "We don't want the same thing happening to us. We have to be a good boy and girl until we see our opportunity to be free of it."
Rhett rolled his eyes upward. "What the hell!
My day went from being confused by someone's hormones to finding a bomb is planted in my head! If it were possible for us to get a headache, I'd have one right now. I can almost feel the blood rushing through my body, except we don't have any." He looked down for a second, then looked back at Ana. "So, what's the plan?"
Ana put her hand on his cheek, looked into his eyes, and smiled. "The plan is to stay on track for as long as we have to, fit in with everyone who comes in contact with us, and do nothing to irritate General Coopers."
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