"It'll be nice to have another pair of hands around here," John said to Doctor Stamford over lunch. He poked disinterestedly at his protein paste and frowned. "I only wish we were getting a human rather than another android. Those damned bots can be so tetchy, and with so many people out of work…"
Stamford sniggered. "How many people out there do you suppose have medical training, Watson? Why pay for years of training when you can just upload everything to a chip?" He shook his head, his round chin quivering with unhappy laughter. "Hard to believe getting drawn for military med duty made us lucky, but there we are."
John silently considered the wound on his shoulder, improperly healed by a batch of outdated nanobots, and the ache in his leg that persisted no matter how many times he scanned it with the computer and found nothing that could possibly be causing the pain. And then, of course, he considered his mother and father still living in the city's underground like rats, and his poor sister stuck out on New Atlantis, and he shrugged. "To our luck," he said, lifting a spoonful of paste and grimacing as a glob slid off and splattered messily back to his plate.
x
The android arrived at the end of the week, powered down in its plastic shipping crate. John checked it in methodically, looking it over for signs of damage or shoddy building. It was handsome enough, John thought, although all droids had that unearthly quality to them- something about the skin, perhaps, or the flawlessness of their features.
John gave the thing one last once-over before consulting the clipboard he held in his hands. "Well," he sighed, "at least they sent us a Holmes this time. Remember that dreadful Anderson droid?"
Stamford chuckled. "Awful, that one! And none too pretty for an android, either." He approached the shipping crate and peered inside. "This one's a right supermodel, though, isn't he? Shall I power him up?"
"Go right ahead," John said, still skimming the spec sheet that had arrived with his new bot. Despite himself, John couldn't help but feel a little thrill of excitement when some new toy arrived at the hospital. "Oh," John laughed, looking up at his fellow doctor. "Have a listen to this. Model number SH-39-007. Double-oh-seven! We might have to call this one James. What do you think, Mr. Bond?" he asked the bot, not expecting a reply.
Astonishingly, the machine sat up and blinked at him. "I presume that is a pop culture reference," he said in a crisp baritone. "If you had read my specifications you would be aware that the area of popular culture is outside my programming. Aside from that, I was assigned a name upon creation."
John stared wordlessly at the android for several moments before looking at Stamford and giggling. "By God," he laughed, "they're making these things more and more stroppy by the year." He looked back at the droid and realized, with a jolt, that it was watching him quite intently. Its eyes were…eerily intelligent, John decided. "Right then," he said, as awkwardly as though he'd been mocking another human to their face. "So you've been assigned a name already. Well, out with it then."
All droids blinked. They were programmed to blink at irregular but frequent intervals; otherwise their stares were often considered unnerving. This one, however, seemed to have an issue with its programming. Its stare lingered over John for far too long, unblinking, somehow penetrating (but how? how could it, when the bot knew only what it needed to survive, communicate, and practice medicine?). At long last, it tipped up its chin slightly and said, "I've been given the name 'Sherlock'. If you wish to change my name, you must contact the Holmes Institute of Applied Sciences and issue the change with one of the programmers, who will then remotely reboot my system. All learned behaviors, however, will be erased upon rebooting."
"That won't be necessary," John said, earning an eyebrow raise from Stamford. "What?" he asked the fat man defensively. "I like the name."
The bot, strangely, look surprised. "I think it's a bit rubbish," Stamford shrugged, "but it beats spending four hours on the telecom just so we can call him James Bond."
They both laughed then, but some of John's pleasure was dampened by the intensity of the droid's stare and the humorless set of its mouth.
x
"You don't have to watch me so closely," John said, wrist-deep in the chest cavity of a gently-sleeping old man.
The android moved his gaze from John's face to his hands and back again. "You interest me," he said slowly.
That was unexpected. John cleared his throat and focused twice as hard on what his hands were doing, uncomfortably aware of the machine's ability to scan his vitals. Why was his pulse elevating, anyway? John wasn't sure, but something about this droid made him nervous. And something about being nervous made him feel alive. "Go be interested in Stamford," John huffed. He didn't miss the small quirk of a smile that tugged at the droid's lips.
x
"What do you think?" Stamford asked that evening. He and John walked out of the building together, looking over their shoulders as all the lights in the facility clicked off.
"What about?"
"About my uncle Bob," the other doctor said sarcastically. "About the droid! What do you think? He's a bit creepy, if you ask me, but damn clever. Those Holmeses know how to make a bloody brilliant robot."
"Mm." John stepped on to one of the public ports and input his coordinates slowly, unthinkingly. What did he think about the droid? He looked back up at the darkened building and shivered. What he thought, ridiculously, was that the thing would probably be lonely during the night. But that was a stupid thought; whoever heard of a robot getting lonely?
John peered up at the windows for a long moment, half-expecting to see the droid looking down at him in one of them, before finally punching in the last number of his home port. Blue light flashed; the hospital disappeared, replaced with John's quiet street. The strange impulse to go back, to let himself into the hospital and sit up all night with that strange new machine, gripped John for a moment and then was quickly brushed away. Instead he went home, to his white-walled bedsit and his illegal firearm, and he thought that maybe it wasn't the bot's loneliness he'd been worried about, after all.