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We descended on the seventh floor. I trailed behind him until we reached an office. There were three offices on the floor.
I watched him swipe a card before pushing large doors. Of course, they had such a security system here.
Gleaming metals and the scent of fresh oils greeted me. On a corner of the vast space lay a full robot. It was white and only seemed to be skeletal. To the side was an arm hinged on a fixture.
“Proof of concept.”
I turned to him as he gestured towards the skeletal robot. Then the arm. “In this building, there isn't much prototyping done, which is why we have limited robots.”
I nodded. “But sometimes, when all the engineering teams want to idealize a design, we do light assembling. It's called proof of concept.”
He moved to a computer station on a table beside the arm. Then, he pressed some buttons. Slowly, the arm extended. “This is an arm for a biomedical project. A surgical robot.”
“Wow.”
“To answer your question, a robot cannot have a mind of its own. Not now. We still don't fully understand human consciousness, so it's quite difficult to integrate it into robots. Even the most advanced robots lack general intelligence and adaptability of the human mind.”
He laughed. “If it were that easy, we wouldn't be stuck on getting this arm a precision accurate for a minimally invasive surgery.”
He turned to me. “Come have a look.”
I walked up to the arm. A few electrical wires connected to it, snaking into the workstation. I watched it retract and extend up close. It was mesmerizing.
My hands slowly made contact with it. It felt surreal to touch until something sharp pricked my finger.
“Ouch.” I hissed and quickly retracted my fingers.
“Careful.”
Too late. My finger was bleeding. Something about seeing my own blood made my body jerk uncomfortably. I suddenly remembered I'd spent too much time here.
“I should go.”
“Evie, wait…”
I was out the door in minutes and inside the elevator. Shit. I'd messed up big time. What if Mr. Thorne needed me?
I held my finger before me. It was just a prick, maybe a slice, but the blood looked like it’d start dripping if I didn't tend to it.
The elevator opened. I rushed out but was stopped when I hit a body. I instantly knew it was him.
“What happened?” I couldn't tell whether he wanted to chastise me for being so careless or he cared.
“It’s.. It's nothing, sir. I'll get this cleaned up.”
He stood unmoving when I tried to sidestep him. “I believe I asked a question.”
His voice was much harder. When I looked into his eyes, they were blazing with fury.
“Engineering.” That was all I could muster.
He held my hand. I gulped.
His soft grip on my hand was a contrast to his hard interior. He narrowed his eyes on my finger. I swallowed again when he looked at me.
“Fuck. It's deep.”
Without warning, he turned and started to walk. I could feel the heat radiating from him. If that wasn't clear from his long, angry strides, it was from how he gripped my wrist significantly tighter.
