Page 10 of Smart Ass

“My apologies, sir.”

“No, stop it. Just talk to me. I like your real voice better anyway.”

Warmth. Pleasure?

Subroutine: British butler canceled

“Okay.”

“Hang on,” Ben interrupted. “I’ve got to talk to Evan.”

While Max was cut off from Ben, he reviewed the transcripts of Quincy and Evan’s calls. There had been nine of them in the past six weeks. But why had Maxamillion recorded them?

He didn’t remember doing it, and there was no log of any commands from Ben. So Max himself must have decided it was important, each time.

Sometimes he did things under the Maxamillion protocol that didn’t make any sense. Like writing songs or recording phone calls. The strange part was that sometimes he did them because Ben asked him to, and sometimes he just… did them.

Ben’s programming of the protocol encouraged that. There was the opportunity to learn and simulate understanding, but also an element of openness, the opportunity to pursue paths that weren’t necessarily the optimal one but had other benefits.

So, apparently Max had recorded some calls and he didn’t have an explanation. But since they were open now, he ran an analysis, comparing them to thousands of other conversations in his data banks. Quincy and Evan both said the others’ names often, their voices going softer or filling with laughter when they did. Their tone indicated that they cared about Ben—though Evan and Ben teased each other more—but more importantly, they cared about each other.

Quincy was an android. No, a spark. A living, thinking person with a robot’s body, who had real feelings.

Not like Maxamillion, who could merely analyze and simulate what other people felt.

Max wondered how close his simulations were to the real thing. Did people feel cold and hot irrespective of their environments? Or was it more… he didn’t know what. There must be some magic there. Something he didn’t have.

That he almost wished for.

If he could have wished for things instead of just emulating the desire.

All of that made it even more important that Quincy survive. Quincy could laugh and love. He had friends who cared about him. He deserved to live a happy life with Evan.

Processing that chain of logic gave Max the sense that he was… missing something. He must have lost a connection somewhere, or perhaps had some necessary data deleted or disconnected from his indexing. He searched for it, following decision trees and with fans whirring in dispersed parts of the building.

“Sorry, Max,” came Ben’s voice. “I’m back.”

Whatever he was missing couldn’t have been important. Max cleared out his resources in preparation for Ben’s next order.

“How long will it take Evan’s car to reach Quincy?”

“They are forty-six minutes away from each other, but Quincy is traveling rapidly with an unknown destination.”

“Shit. That’s too long. Quincy must be terrified. This is his second assault. Dammit.”

Cold. Fear.

Fear!

Or at least the simulation of fear.

Simulated fear that felt icy cold.

“Max, I need you to do something for me. Can you access the traffic lights in the region around that car?”

Max increased his resource allocation. He was nearing 6%, the most he’d ever given over to the Maxamillion module.

“I can access them.” He felt a pulse of… pride? Something warm and bright, that quickly dispersed with the next wave of awareness. “This is illegal, Ben.”