The Space Spoon novel Chapter 91

Jackeye waited in silence as C1313 stared blankly at the shelves of fossil fuel, communicating with the Space Spoon. In a fit of boredom, he leaned his head over the counter to take a breather. There were too many people around, and by "people," he meant robots.

There were so many that Jackeye could no longer differentiate between them. Most of the ones who appeared human wore torn or frayed clothes, but some wore none at all.

“Tejeda says they can’t break through the Rurar’s defenses to land on that moon.” C1313’s report came in. “Can you hack in a console or something to give them an opening?”

A serving robot carried a tray of drinks past them, so they paused for a while.

Jackeye looked around. At the far end of the bar, there was a console. His eyes lit up for a mere second, and he could tell the system was easily breakable.

He had been staring at it for a few seconds when he heard C1313 say, "You're not going to do anything rash, are you?"

She was looking at him, and he asked himself if that was her worried look.

“It’s fine. I can do it.” He sighed and turned to C1313. “But here’s the catch. If I go in there, my body will collapse. You have to cover for me until I come back.”

“I’ll come up with something,” she replied unfazed. “In the worst case scenario, I’ll carry you back to the shuttle.”

“You’ll not do such a thing! What kind of man would I be to let you carry me?”

Having already processed all the possibilities he might be referring to, C1313 examined him.

"What if you’re in mortal danger and you’d die if I didn’t pick you up and carry you somewhere else?"

Jackeye wanted to bash his head into the counter. Finally, he sighed in defeat. “Let me die. Hopefully, my consciousness will remain inside the console where I could reach digital immortality.”

“What if—”

“Let’s end this discussion here, please.” Jackeye interrupted. “I’ll finish this awful drink and connect with the console. Watch my back.”

C1313 turned around to peer behind his back in search of a potential threat.

“I didn’t mean it literally.” Jackeye gave a bottom-up to the peculiar beverage because he couldn’t stand this interaction anymore. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

His head collapsed on the counter as his body slumped on the chair, almost falling between his seat and the bar.

“Is he all right?” the bartender asked without any actual visible concern.

“He appears mostly human, but his brain is completely artificial. If he doesn’t reboot it periodically, it can shut down forever. Oh, and all the system updates mess with him every other month.” C1313 pushed her empty glass. “Fill it up.”

She looked around, her eyes strolling over the holo projections and screens all around the room. Some invited people to attend different conferences or event sales. A meeting about programming philosophy and ways to auto-improve your root code appealed to her greatly. Maybe she would have the time to attend.

The bartender placed a glass full of oily liquid on the counter.

C1313’s circuits fired up in search of an excuse to reject the proposal. She jerked back and placed a hand on Jackeye’s shoulder. "Sorry, but we are in a one-to-one relationship. We used to have a many-to-many one before, but he had a database update, and unfortunately, I installed it too."

“Ha, I completely understand.” The robot finished his drink in one go so he could leave sooner. “Well, humans have BDSM, while we have DBMS.”

After it left, C1313 buried her face in her palms and sighed. It was the first time someone tried a pickup line on her, and she didn’t know if she had what was needed to find a suitable form of rejection.

As she pondered over the previous encounter, Jackeye’s voice startled her.

“You know that my ears were working perfectly fine? I heard all you’ve said about me.”

“I did a great job, right?” C1313 beamed.

Jackeye frowned as he saw her happy smile. He lacked the courage to tell her the truth. The more she tried to act like a normal person, the more awkward she became. He still couldn't figure out why she wanted anything like that. Being human was a pain in the ass.

“Contact the ship and let them know there is a breach in Rurar’s defenses above the North Pole.” Jackeye looked around, making sure no one was close enough to hear his whisper. “Tell them to hurry, or the gap might get discovered and repaired. If they tighten up their security systems, it might not be so easy for me to enter next time.”

C1313 stared blankly forward as she communicated with the Space Spoon. After a while, she turned to Jackeye.

“Tejeda says he has full confidence in your skills if things go wrong. Also, he added that there are few chances he’ll get out of there anyhow.”

They exchanged stares for a few moments until Jackeye smacked his face and collapsed back in his seat.