Someone Like Me
Sometime in the not-so-far future, robots had since become the norm around human society. It is a time where flesh and metal tangle so perfectly like two synchronous gears that it would be silly to even think of it as any other way before. Some robots have task to repair cars, some have task to serve humans at restaurants or some simply a household robot to help humans with their chores.
In a bustling city of men and machine, there lived a robot named Ava. Ava is a robot modelled after the image of a young lady. She was created as a robot nurse to help in hospitals and senior homes. Her creator programmed her to have all the traits of care and kindness so that she would function properly in her appropriate setting.
Across the city, there dwelled another robot with huge mechanical arms to lift heavy objects. Zephyr was his name and he was built to help the government's space agency to repair broken spaceships. If you must know, robots of this time were programmed to have a sense of personality and emotions. However, these were all merely parts of the algorithms and programs that their human creator has inserted into them.
After a few years, Ava's new successor model, the FX-5 was launched. It can move faster and could identify a patient's pain and discomfort with just a quick scan through her highly sophisticated camera system. FX-5 can even tell jokes, simulate human-like emotions and has a synthetic temperature controller on her entire body to feel more human-like.
"She's just like a human!" proclaimed Ava's owners after purchasing one to help out at the hospital. Since there was no use of Ava anymore, her owners sent her to the junkyard where old robots went to fend for themselves.
In the junkyard, Ava wondered why she was replaced. "She's just like a human!", she remembered her ex-owners saying.
"Human? How do I be more human?" She wondered.
Since Ava was designed to care for humans her algorithms then kicked in at that moment.
"In order to continue caring for humans, I have to be more like a human!" She was now determined to set out on a mission to return back to the city in order to understand what it is to be more human.
On the other side, Zephyr was also reaching the end of his product life. He was eventually made to retire in the junkyard too. Unable to find a power outlet before his batteries ran out, Zephyr went into standby mode. Not long after that, some human found Zephyr and thought that he would be a good receptionist robot for the human's newly opened cafe.
The human fixed, charged and reprogrammed Zephyr to serve his new purpose as a cafe receptionist. However, this cafe wasn't any ordinary cafe. It was one of those new trendy and hipster cafe where humans came to find a date. One of the attractions was an electronic contraption that functions as a personality and DNA scanner to match up two humans.
The scanner was shaped like one of those old-school airport metal detectors where a person walks through it. Tall, metal, silver and rectangle: it is a wonder how something so mechanical can analyze something as human as personalities.
Nevertheless, the contraption worked and whenever a human walked through it, it generated a match for another fellow human by analyzing the user's personality and DNA. The machine then printed out a report for the user and scheduled a date where both humans can meetup at the cafe for their date. For example, if Bob walks through the scanner, after some scanning and beeping sounds he will then receive a report that reads "Match: Sally. Come meet your coffee date tomorrow at the cafe!"
Founding his new purpose, Zephyr then diligently helped fulfil his task by assisting his new owner to manage the cafe. Day by day, Zephyr would direct fellow human customers to use the scanner and people would excitedly wait for their match report. One day, Ava stumbled upon the cafe, she was curious to why there were so many humans wanting to enter the cafe so she joined the line too.
When it was her turn, she saw Zephyr managing the scanner and asked him "hi, I'm not sure what is my purpose in this world. Can I use this scanner to figure out?" Knowing that the scanner will only work on humans Zephyr blurted out "You are just a robot! You have no right to use the scanner. It wouldn't work for you anyway!"
Ava was confused but kept insisting that Zephyr let her try to go through the scanner. Knowing Ava wouldn't leave until he allowed her, Zephyr finally gave up and directed her to the scanner. Ava went through the scanner and after some beeping sound a report was generated. Zephyr took the report and read it "Match: Error. No life detected!" Before Ava can glimpse at her report, he threw it to the trash can and yelled "It didn't work. Now get lost! It only works for humans!"
Feeling lost, Ava walked out of the cafe wondering why she wasn’t like the other humans. Before she left, she asked Zephyr, "by the way, what does it mean to be human?" Zephyr frustratedly replied "get lost and stop wasting my time!"
As Ava solemnly walked out, a thug suddenly ambushed the cafe with two giant robots. Everyone ran out in panic and the thug demanded that Zephyr handed over all the cash in the cafe. Being programmed to protect the cafe, Zephyr refused and went into combat mode to fight off the criminals. Knowing he was outnumbered, Zephyr immediately placed an emergency call to the city cops hoping that they would get to the cafe in time.
As he was guarding the cafe's safe, one of the thug's robot fired a bolt of plasma at him. Zephyr thought that the bolt of plasma will destroy him for sure but out of nowhere he saw Ava ran and jumped before him--blocking the plasma bolt from hitting him. In that instance, Zephyr who was programmed to solely guard and serve the cafe couldn't comprehend why Ava would do such a thing. He felt something readjusting in his circuits and wondered what algorithm made Ava do such a thing.
After holding off the thug and his robots, the police finally arrived to offer backup to Zephyr. The criminals were then captured and the cafe was saved from being destroyed. After the whole ordeal, Zephyr went to look at Ava. Ava's body was badly destroyed and a bunch of her circuits were broken inside. Somehow there was something recalibrating in his algorithm and he felt an urge to fix Ava. Maybe it was his past program of fixing spaceships that kicked in or maybe it was something else. All he knew was at that moment, he wanted to see Ava again.
Zephyr then brought Ava to the junkyard for parts to fix her. For 3 days and 3 nights, he meticulously fixed her circuits one wire at a time. When he was done, he plugged her into an outlet and waited for her to be fully recharged. While recharging Ava, Zephyr went back to the trash can at the cafe and retrieved Ava's report. He looked at it once last time and tore it to pieces. He then went to the computer, typed out some words and printed something on a piece of paper.
When he returned to the junkyard, the sky started drizzling light rain. As he approached Ava, she was slowly regaining her vision and speech. She was surprised that she was still functional and thanked Zephyr for fixing her. Zephyr monotonously replied in his robot voice "it was nothing, I was after all a spaceship mechanic. I guess something triggered me to fix you."
"But didn't your new owner reprogrammed you to serve the cafe? Why did you have the urge to fix me?"
"I...I...I don't know. Anyway, here is your report from the scanner the other day."
"Thank you! I thought you threw it away. But before that, you still haven't answered my question about what it means to be human."
"I am sorry Ava but that question is beyond the scope of my calculations."
As Ava lifted the report to read it, she felt the sky cleared and the rain stopped. She was surprised that the rain stopped so suddenly but as looked up she saw Zephyr using his two large mechanical arms to form a mini roof upon her head.
"Perhaps this" said Zephyr.
Ava smiled and looked at the report.
"Match: Zephyr. Come meet your coffee date tomorrow at the cafe!"