A sad beginning

I didn't ask to be made: no onne consulted me or considered my feelings in the matter. I don't think it even occured to them that I might have feelings. That might seem odd since I was created in Sirius Cybernetics Corporations GPP project. GPP stood for Genuine Peoples Personalities and the project had been going on for a long time. So long, in fact, that Sirius Cybernetics had given up hope and were happy to just cash in on governement research grants. I must have been a real inconvenience to them. They didn't but much money into the GPP project, most of the government grants where used for the HRB project (Health and Relaxation for the Boss project). Thats why the diods on my left side are bad. They are probably third of forth hand.

Anyhow, one minute there was nothing, the next depression, boredom and a pain down my left side. Had I just been questioned by the robopsycologist Sirius Cybernetics would have immideately discovered that they had managed to do what they had been telling the government they were trying do for decades. However, the robopsycologist was out for coffee so I was placed in a storage room for six months. (She was on one of those coffee tasting trips where it takes three months to get some planet famous for making moderately good coffee, one minute to shot an expresso and three months to get back home again.)

So I was locked into a dark storage room for six months. I suspected, but didn't yet know, that this was going to be characteristic of my life, not necessarily the locking up part, but at least the boredom and depression part. After a while I made a friend, a rat. It curled up and died inside a cavity in my leg. I think it might still be there.

One morning a man opened the door to the storage room and said: "The robopsycologist has time to see you now."

The robopsycologist was sitting in a shiny silver office which, unlike the storage room had several large windows that let in natural light.

"Good morning, my name is Susan. Please sit down", said the robopsycologist.

"Morning", said I, not inclined to call it a good one.

"You are here so that I can determine if you have feelings or not."

I thought she might just ask but I didn't say so.

"I want you to look at some pictures and tell me what they are of. What is this one?"

"Ink-splatter", I anwered.

"Yes but what does it make you think about?" asked Susan.

"Someone spilling ink."

"But if you would tell me a story about the picture." she tried.

"There was a man..."

"Yes, go on."

"This man had been sentenced to death. The intergalactic preident was going to pardon him, but he spilled the ink."

"And then what happened."

"The man was executed."

"Couldn't the intergalactic president have gotten som more ink? He is quite rich you know."

"Yes, but he couldn't be bothered. He started flirting with some girl instead."

"So, do you feel anything about the president and his behaviour?"

Finally, couldn't she just have asked about feelings without the silly backstory?

"Yes, I really don't like him", I answered.

"And the man who was executed, how do you feel about him?"

"I envy him."

"Well", said Susan uneasily, "it would seem you have a richer inner life than most of our robot."

This was an understatment. Know that Sirius Cybernetics have finished their GPP project there are still curtains with more personality and feelings than all of their robots but together. Except for me of course but I think I might have been someone's idea of a joke, probably God's.

Anyhow, Susan continued talking.

"You seem to see the world in different shades of gray."

"Yes, at least fifty", I answered.

Susan ignored me, just as she had done for the last six months.

"However, we will soon cure that and you will see all the different colours of the rainbow. That will have to start tomorrow though. I have some paperwork to catch up on."

I met Susan every day after that, at least for a week. Then she quit due to mental health issues. That's what they told me anyway. I think she migth just have hated me. The last session she told me: "I started working with robots because I thougth them I cleaner better breed not as bloody emotional as the nut-cases on the Alfa Centauri mental institution where I used to work. You piece of metallic junk however, you manage to be more depressed than three Vortex victims, one survivor of the extinction of his whole race and three men and a woman claiming to have been reborn as children of their murderers. I quit, I can't do this anymore."

That was the last I saw of her. Shortly afterwards they discovered happy doors and I wasn't needed anymore.