Chapter 14:
"What?" Thomas asked blearily. "Why wouldn't I be OK? Did something go wrong? When am I?" The woman snickered at this unusual question. "Are Vera and Doug awake?"
"Yeah?" said Doug in a sleepy tone.
"Hmmmm?" muttered Vera.
This affirmation, though small, gave Thomas quite a bit of relief. At least the two people he thought of as friends were here--whenever here was that is--and doing OK.
"Well you made it!" the woman’s voice said. "You've been frozen for just a little over two-hundred years: it's now August 2208. It’ll take you some time to get adjusted to your surroundings."
Thomas stood there and tried to open his eyes to allow them to adjust to the brightness of the room. The woman that had been talking to them--who now appeared as a blurry pinkish blob instead of a gray one--seemed satisfied with the results. She walked back over towards the controls that Frank had stood at many years before and joined a much bigger, tan colored blob.
"They all seem fine," she said, "they'll just need a bit of time to orient their senses again."
"Good," a man's voice said, "I was kinda worried for a second there, that one line in the instructions was a bit confusing."
"Yeah, it was, but hey, we did it!" The woman's voice said. Thomas looked away from them and towards his right where he had heard Doug and Vera's voices before.
"Are your eyes taking forever to adjust to the light too?" he asked in their direction.
"Sort of," Vera said, "it's much better now."
"I'm good," Doug said simply. "I was the first revived, so I've had more time to adjust. My senses seem to be back to normal again..."
They continued in silence for a time, allowing their brains to absorb everything around them. Thomas wasn't having as much trouble seeing now. The lab remained relatively unchanged, other than a new floor and, he imagined, some new coats of paint. There were many pictures lining the walls now, smiling faces of lab workers from times past. A few other trinkets and items had changed but the lab's surroundings were not particularly outstanding. What was outstanding, however, were the two people that Thomas was now surveying.
The blurry pinkish blob was, in fact, pink--or at least her hair was. Otherwise she had fair colored skin and was of average height. She had that coveted hourglass shape that so many women pined for. This resulted in her possessing the type of hips that would cause Henry VIII to marry her for her perceived baby making prowess, only to behead her later for failing to produce. Her clothing wasn't too unusual compared to what most people of the twenty-first century would be accustomed to, just very brightly colored and sporting the strange slogan "Better than Natural." Thomas would've taken more time to contemplate the possible meaning of this but was more distracted by the previous, tan blob he noticed earlier.
The man running the controls had black hair and a relatively dark colored skin tone. If Thomas had to put a label to it, he would've guessed him to be of Hispanic descent. What was interesting about this particular man was not his skin tone or his hair, but his size. He was more than a foot taller than the pink haired woman who had joined him, and was, for lack of a better phrase, built like a tank. Thomas thought that Doug was a pretty big guy, but this man put him to shame. Thomas looked over towards Doug who appeared to be studying the two as well. The pink haired woman looked over to see the three of them staring.
"Oh, hey, you guys feeling back to normal? You can apparently see us pretty clearly now, judging by how much you're staring." She snickered again. The man just smiled. "Well, we should at least introduce ourselves I guess. I'm Lyla, been working here for about seven years, though I guess there's not much work left to do now." She laughed, then elbowed the guy next to her. "Go on, introduce yourself." The guy looked at her and cracked a funny, awkward smile as if he was not accustomed to smiling. Then he turned and introduced himself.
"Hey, I'm Darin, been working here for only two years but, well, gotta start somewhere. So, you made it! Are you ready to see the world of the future?"
"Yeah, two-hundred years, I can't imagine what it's going to be like for you all!" Lyla said in a hushed tone, as if it was somehow a secret. They stared back at her, puzzled over how she knew so much. They had imagined that they would need to explain everything to the people that woke them up, but they seemed to know it all already. Lyla noticed their expressions and caught on to their train of thought. "Oh, we have files on you three, written by Frank a few months after you were frozen, so we already know some about your history and how you got involved with the lab here."
Thomas, Vera, and Doug looked uncertainly at each other, but were generally relieved that Frank had apparently done such a thorough job of documenting everything. Just then, something flew quickly past their heads and disappeared up the stairwell that led to the foyer.
"What was THAT?" Doug asked.
"What was what?" Lyla asked, clearly not aware of the fact that a small flying object wasn't normal to them.
"That thing that just flew by!"
Lyla looked puzzled for a second, trying to figure out what could have been so strange to make Doug react this way. Suddenly her face lit up.
"Ohhh, you mean Toby! He's my helper." They stared blankly. "Sorry, I forget that I have to explain some of these things to you guys. I'll remember eventually, I promise! It's called a helper, H-E-L-P-R. It stands for Human Essential Life Planning Robot. It's like a little metal personal assistant." Just then, Toby came flying back down the stairs and stopped next to Lyla.
"Found your nail polish, Lyla!" It extended a metal arm towards her with a bottle of bright red nail polish clutched in hands that looked like a small pair of pliers.
"Thank you Toby!" she said and commenced applying a fresh coat.
"You are quite welcome."
"Cooooooollll...." Doug whispered under his breath. "Actual robots....."
The HELPR robot wasn't anything like the androids or mechanical men that were popular in the science fiction movies and books of their time period. Instead it was small and did not have limbs aside from the extending and collapsing arms it used to pick up things. Rather than walking, it hovered over the ground using a method that wasn't entirely clear to any of them. It was about the size of a milk jug, metallic, shaped almost like an upside down bucket, but painted a shiny white color. There was no "face", but there were two circles that appeared to be its "eyes". It was otherwise very sleek and smooth without many crevices or other appendages jutting outward from its body.
"Does everyone have one of those?" Doug marveled.
"Huh?" Lyla asked and looked up from her task. "Oh, no, not everyone has one, I bought it when I graduated eight years ago. This is actually the old model, they released a new one last year, but I can't afford it and this one still works fine." Doug walked over to it and raised a shaky hand towards it, debating about whether or not it was a good idea to feel it. Toby, however, didn't give him the time to make such a decision.
"Hello, sir, how may I help you?" it asked.
"Oh, no... I ... I don't need anything now ... thanks." Doug was about to walk away but suddenly decided to try something. "Do you like being Lyla's assistant?"
"Like?" Toby mimicked, the red eyes blinking. "I do not like or dislike anything, sir, I am programmed to fulfill my owner's commands at all times. There is no other objective to my programming." Doug was surprised by this and turned to Lyla.
"Does it have the ability to think for itself and do things without being told?" he asked.
"What? Of course not, unless it's something he's programmed to do."
"So it's not aware that we're talking about it right now?"
"Well it can hear us, if that's what you mean, but unless you are addressing it specifically with a command it can perform, it won't respond. I could say 'make me a sandwich', but unless I said 'Toby, make me a sandwich', it won't do it."
"What kind of sandwich do you desire?" Toby asked.
"Oh, sorry Toby. Disregard command." Toby we
nt back to idling.
"Interesting... so robots aren't self aware?" Doug asked.
"No, of course not, they're just appliances. They do specific tasks and that's it. I think the people who make them do that on purpose. If they made something that could recognize and do anything and everything you asked of it, then they wouldn't sell nearly as many robots."
Doug pondered about this for a while, then turned to Darin.
"Do you have one?" he asked.
"Nope, I don't have a need for anything like that. I can make my own sandwiches and get my own nail polish--or whatever." Darin looked at Lyla as he said this. She tilted her head sideways and smirked back at him. They had clearly argued about this before, but Lyla didn't take the bait this time around.
"So do they use robots instead of humans for a lot of manual labor now?" Doug asked.
"Well," Lyla explained, "when they were first really capable of being used for such specific tasks so efficiently, a lot of companies bought them up and fired many of their human workers. But then the economy started to go downhill fast since so many people were laid off and didn't have any income to spend. So the government responded by passing the Robot Inequality Act, making it illegal for companies to use robots in positions that were previously handled by humans. That forced the companies that make robots to start focusing on creating them for home and personal use instead."
Doug started to ask for more information, but decided he would see and understand more later when they started exploring the outside world. He walked over to Vera and Thomas, clearly excited already. Vera didn't look particularly thrilled, and Thomas was feeling like just seeing these two and this robot had taken all the energy out of him already.
"So do you guys want to go exploring now or what?" Lyla screwed the lid back onto her nail polish bottle and set it on the table next to her. The three looked at each other, not sure of what to say.
"Well no offense, Lyla," Vera said, "I just don't feel too comfortable yet. Before we head out I'd first like to get a nice shower and change my clothes. I feel really gross thinking about the fact that I've been wearing this for two-hundred years without showering." Vera visibly shuddered at the thought of this. "That's priority number one for me. But the second thing that's bothering me is that we don't even know who you are! I want to at least get to know something about you two before you take us out to see what the future is all about. Does that make sense?" Lyla and Darin looked at each other.
"Yeah, of course," Darin said, "no problem. You guys can get your stuff out of the store room and then come up to the living quarters to get cleaned up and changed and whatever else you need to take care of." Lyla nodded in agreement. Darin got up and walked over to the storage room where they had put their bags two-hundred years before. Lyla and the others walked over and stood waiting for him to figure out which key was the right one. Finally he got the closet open and they retrieved their bags. They made their way up the stairs to the foyer, the gateway to the rest of the building. One thing that Thomas immediately noticed was the lack of a window on the entrance door, which now appeared to be made of a heavy, unwelcoming metal. He was very tempted to simply open the door and take a peak outside, but decided that it would be best to wait for the proper time instead.
The party entered the middle of the three foyer doors and walked up a new set of stairs to the living quarters. This staircase led into a long, narrow hallway where Darin stopped to point out their rooms.
"It's pretty easy, we've labeled the doors, but you three have rooms on the left side of the hallway. Lyla and I have rooms on the right. We'll meet you guys back downstairs in the lab in an hour, OK?"
They all agreed and went their separate ways. Thomas walked down the hall and noticed that the doors were in the same order that they were frozen in: his was the last door on the left. As he reached for the doorknob, he paused, sighed for a minute thinking about what might be behind the door, but came to the conclusion that it couldn't be anything excessively horrible, and entered.