Turn Them Into Robots, Make Them Civil Servants

Story Submitted by Jesse:

Crystal and I had been having a regular conversation at dinner, nothing at all unexpected or red-flag-worthy.  She had told me that she worked in a state government office.  Then, she said, "They have me doing enough administrative work to keep a dozen people busy, but when you're part robot, you get taken advantage of."

I asked her to elaborate on her statement.  She took out a pen and handed me a piece of paper.  She said, "Write down any two numbers.  I don't care what they are or how many digits they have."

I wrote down something like 102,122,332,040 and 80,323,231,421,997.  She glanced at the paper and said, after a few moments, "80,425,353,754,037," or whatever the correct sum was.

It was very impressive, and I told her so, "But that hardly proves you're a robot."

She said, "Name a human who can do what I just did."

I said, "You."

She said, "I'm only part human.  When I was young, I had a surgery to replace part of my brain with a computer.  My grandfather worked at IBM and told me."

I asked, "Was your grandfather a bit of a joker?"

She leaned across the table and said, "Look into my eyes."  I did.  They were brown, pretty, and otherwise uneventful.  She said, "Do you see the lights?"

I saw no such thing and told her so.  She said, "Look closer.  They're faint but you'll see them."  She leaned in further, almost close enough to kiss.  I kept it professional, though, and looked into her eyes as best as I could.  I saw nothing but two beautiful, deluded eyes.

"What else can you do?" I asked her, hoping to see more robot action.

She said, "I have to drink an electrolyte shake every night to keep up my energy.  And I can run really fast and I have amazing reflexes."

I balled up a paper napkin and threw it at her, fast.  She caught it, then threw it at my head.  Maybe she really was a robot.

We had a good remainder of dinner and even kissed at the evening's end.  She really seemed into the idea that she was a robot, though, and so I decided it would be best if we stayed friends.  I just couldn't bring myself to be anything more than that with a robot.