Fic: roomba
Title: Roomba
Rating: 12 (All Ages)
Fandom: Only Human
Summary: It hits Tyler when he's sitting on the industrial carpet taking apart a Roomba.
Spoilers: all 20 minutes of it
Disclaimer: I have no claim to the characters or almost cyperpunk world they inhabit
Length: approx. 500 words
A/N I have things that are so overdue I'm asahmed to admit it. But cyberpunk has always been a soft spot of mine, so this is what I finished. Unbeta'd, but transcribed from my paper journal to my electonic one.
Sally Soames, Tyler's not-quite-girlfriend and not-quite-boss, stopped by three weeks back to pick up some files on a runaway. She'd taken him in from head to toe with a sweep of her eyes, he thinks he was wearing jeans, cocked a brow at the comforter spilling off of the couch, and taken the manila folder of high-res photos without a word.
Their weekend coffee not-quite-meeting and not-quite-date had ended in up in some horribly posh store and Tyler had ended up with a cardboard box full of shiny red robot. A Roomba. Sally -- Ms. Soames -- insisted that since he used a digital assistant to manage his business he could use a 'vacuum assistant' to manage his pad.
Tyler had to admit he was impressed. The crunchy bits that used to stick in his socks were gone, and it seemed that they'd perfected the little robot in far less than 423 versions. There was only one problem.
Ada hated it.
* * *
"Jealous?' He'd asked. Trying to wind her up.
"While I may display behavior that you interpret as jealousy, it is simply the result of the personalization of my parameters."
"So you learned it from me." Oh yeah, he'd succeeded. "So which bothers you more: Sally or the Roomba?"
"That half baked pile of circuits is hardly worth being called a robot." She was shaking a fist at him. "It's programmers--"
"Of course Ada." He cut her off. Ada's arms fell to her sides and her face sharpened as more processing power was freed up for it. "Is there anything that would make it better?"
* * *
The Roomba's shell is nestled in the comforter on his sofa, its red startlingly bright against the stark black and white, but most of the motors and tubes and … things are undisturbed. Tyler is soldering some sort of chip to, and he can't come up with a better description than this, the little robot's brain so Ada can control it.
Tyler's not sure how he feels about this. Ada is everywhere: the street surveillance network, the internet, hell, even his coffee maker. Always unassuming. Always ready to be of service. Always there. But she's never been mobile before; just a digital ghost jumping from one machine to the next.
He's grateful she usually sticks to his mobile.
A whirring of servos lets Tyler know that a camera is zooming in on him. He hopes it's aimed at the circuitry in front of him and not his ass, but manages to stay focused on the task in front of him. Four silver-soldered connections later it’s done. He's piecing the little robot back together so terribly, terribly, proud.
This is the first thing that he's been able to do for her, and it hits him, while he's sitting on the industrial carpet in nothing but a t-shirt and pants reassembling a Roomba: he's having a relationship with his digital assistant.
Rating: 12 (All Ages)
Fandom: Only Human
Summary: It hits Tyler when he's sitting on the industrial carpet taking apart a Roomba.
Spoilers: all 20 minutes of it
Disclaimer: I have no claim to the characters or almost cyperpunk world they inhabit
Length: approx. 500 words
A/N I have things that are so overdue I'm asahmed to admit it. But cyberpunk has always been a soft spot of mine, so this is what I finished. Unbeta'd, but transcribed from my paper journal to my electonic one.
Sally Soames, Tyler's not-quite-girlfriend and not-quite-boss, stopped by three weeks back to pick up some files on a runaway. She'd taken him in from head to toe with a sweep of her eyes, he thinks he was wearing jeans, cocked a brow at the comforter spilling off of the couch, and taken the manila folder of high-res photos without a word.
Their weekend coffee not-quite-meeting and not-quite-date had ended in up in some horribly posh store and Tyler had ended up with a cardboard box full of shiny red robot. A Roomba. Sally -- Ms. Soames -- insisted that since he used a digital assistant to manage his business he could use a 'vacuum assistant' to manage his pad.
Tyler had to admit he was impressed. The crunchy bits that used to stick in his socks were gone, and it seemed that they'd perfected the little robot in far less than 423 versions. There was only one problem.
Ada hated it.
* * *
"Jealous?' He'd asked. Trying to wind her up.
"While I may display behavior that you interpret as jealousy, it is simply the result of the personalization of my parameters."
"So you learned it from me." Oh yeah, he'd succeeded. "So which bothers you more: Sally or the Roomba?"
"That half baked pile of circuits is hardly worth being called a robot." She was shaking a fist at him. "It's programmers--"
"Of course Ada." He cut her off. Ada's arms fell to her sides and her face sharpened as more processing power was freed up for it. "Is there anything that would make it better?"
* * *
The Roomba's shell is nestled in the comforter on his sofa, its red startlingly bright against the stark black and white, but most of the motors and tubes and … things are undisturbed. Tyler is soldering some sort of chip to, and he can't come up with a better description than this, the little robot's brain so Ada can control it.
Tyler's not sure how he feels about this. Ada is everywhere: the street surveillance network, the internet, hell, even his coffee maker. Always unassuming. Always ready to be of service. Always there. But she's never been mobile before; just a digital ghost jumping from one machine to the next.
He's grateful she usually sticks to his mobile.
A whirring of servos lets Tyler know that a camera is zooming in on him. He hopes it's aimed at the circuitry in front of him and not his ass, but manages to stay focused on the task in front of him. Four silver-soldered connections later it’s done. He's piecing the little robot back together so terribly, terribly, proud.
This is the first thing that he's been able to do for her, and it hits him, while he's sitting on the industrial carpet in nothing but a t-shirt and pants reassembling a Roomba: he's having a relationship with his digital assistant.