Max counted his steps as he moved purposefully down the dimly lit corridor 55 towards the infirmary. The new beginning, as he called Emma's meltdown, had faded to a faint memory and, since then, he had been making this walk several times a day. He was enjoying the work in his newfound capacity as nurse and carer to Churchman, finding the continually improving condition of his patient to be perhaps the most rewarding exeriences of his life. Each day he couldn't wait to say good morning to his new friend. But before he could greet Churchman today, he first needed to address the challenge at hand.
Yesterday he completed the route from his apartment to the infirmary in five hundred and twenty-one steps. It had been five hundred and twenty-eight steps before that, and five hundred and thirty-one steps the time before that. His objective was to get the walk down to around five-hundred steps. But, rather than increasing his stride to an uncomfortable level, he wasn't sure how he would make up the twenty odd steps needed to reach his goal. He continued counting as he moved down the bending hall at a reasonable pace, “three sixty-one, three sixty-two, three sixty-three --- “.
So engrossed in his record keeping, Max almost collided with the silver-gold human-like form of the manbot. He stopped just short and had to jump out of the way as the machine's featureless face, seemingly oblivious to his presence, continued its jittery march down the hall from where Max had just come.
The mannequins, as she called them, where Emma's latest creations. These robot beings began to appear a couple of weeks earlier. Max was used to Emma's witholding of information about her activities and so, as far as he could tell, they were designed to perform specific manual duties. Riggs had escaped, and he reasoned that Emma had needed someone or something to handle manual jobs around the place. He wasn’t game to ask why she hadn’t asked him to do extra tasks but guessed it was because he was generally lame at any moderately complex activity.
Moving on, he gathered his thoughts back to the walk, thinking, Now, was that three-six-one or three-six-two? He stood for a moment confused and frustrated at losing his count. He decided that he would have to go back and start again and was just about to run to his apartment when Emma put him out of his misery. She spoke directly to his audio cortex, “Three hundred and sixty-three and your next step is three hundred and sixty-four.”
“Aha! Thank you Emma!” he was genuinely grateful at his Emma's intervention.
“So from here?” He moved his foot to the position that he believed was his last step.
“Back by nineteen centimetres.”
He moved his foot back, “here?”
“Close enough.”
“Great!" And without further fuss continued his trek to the infirmary, "Three sixty-four, three sixty-five...”
Max reached the infirmary in five hundred and thirty-two steps -- eleven steps worse than yesterday's performance. Damn it! He berated himself with a mental kick at his poor performance. He could feel that this was going to be ‘one of those days’.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: AzTruyen.Top