My first day working at DOC'S was insane! No, scratch that, my first WEEK was insane.
It was because of the robot rights bill thing, that's why I could work there. Before, there was a law that any sentient fabricated being, like robots or game grubs or whatever, couldn't function in Human society on EARTH. There weren't any laws like that on ALTERNIA, I don't think, but then, they don't have ANY laws there, I'm pretty sure, and some laws are kinda important, like about murder and stuff. So even though my artificial life could have been a lot cooler among the aliens, I was glad to live on EARTH with my STRI-GUYS, even if DA never seemed to like me very much. I liked him enough for the both of us.
DI brought me to DOC'S one day, and I was REALLY excited. I hadn't been out of the apartment in forever, not counting chilling on the roof. It was super awesome to see cars and stuff up close, and I got to download the sensation of a dog's fur into my memory, even! It was so great, just walking around and being all the way down here instead of way the hell up there.
DI brought me in early Monday morning, before DOC'S had been open very long, and I was stared at plenty when we got in there, but I was flying too high to care much. Not literally, I wasn't literally flying, because DI never gave me like rocket booster feet or anything. It's an expression, 'flying high'. It means you're really super hella kickflipping pumped about something.
In the back of the diner, because DOC'S was a diner, it was called DOC'S Diner, and it was a diner, in the back there were three doors, and the one on the right went to this apartment sort of place, and everything was hella green, green like a St. Patrick's day sale at a supermarket. A supermarket is a place where you can buy a lot of stuff, everything from peanut butter to floor wax. DI told me all about them, they sound truly awesome.
The green place was where the owner lived. I guess. He could have just used it as an office, but what kind of office has candy everywhere? No office I'VE ever been in, even if his was the first office to be in, for me. Still. candy bowls seemed like a home thing. DA always has bowls lying around, but mostly they have chips and sometimes phones and game controllers in, but they were basically the same thing.
The owner was a robot like me. I guess. He had a big round head that was all white, compared to me he was like a whack sort of futuristic thing, like some sort of BACK TO THE FUTURE thing, and I was like JOHNNY 5, but without all the rad stickers. All the green was making my optics a little haywire, or maybe it was my actual wires, I don't know. Something about that place made my pistons crackle with energy and my screws jump with electricity. He said to call him MR. VANILLA MILKSHAKE, for some reason.
DI and talked for a long time, I didn't want to interrupt but I asked if I could take a look around because standing still is just so BORING and it's kinda hard on my motor too and the round-head weirdo said I could have as much candy as I wanted, so I took a whole bunch of little blue equals-equals-lesser-than-greater-then-carrots which I couldn't eat but I took them anyway, stuffed them in my pocket, still a little unused to wearing clothes but DI said it was part of the new law thing so I had to. I could get used to having pockets. Before if I wanted to carry something I had to open up my chassis plates with an actual flathead screwdriver and store it inside and be careful of all the other stuff thats already in there, wires and plating and yo-yos and drawings and stuff for DA? Sometimes DA asks me to carry stuff for him and I always say yes because I like him and I want him to like me but then he never asks for it back or he keeps asking me to hold it then give it back then hold it again, and DI says I shouldn't let DA tease me but I don't really know what teasing is because it sometimes is the same thing as being sincere?
So after DI talked to the white head guy for like, FOREVER! we went back out into the diner and then into the white swinging doors with the little circle windows in and we talked to MISS JANEY, I didn't even know she would be there but she was and that was just about the most awesome thing that could have happened! MISS JANEY was very excited for me too, she got me a whole outfit to wear just like DI's, except the suspenders were red and the bowtie was blue, and she said she was so happy that I could work at DOC'S and she hugged me and her kitchen companion MS. PAINT patted me on the head.
After that DI said I couldn't talk to him too much while we were working but I could say stuff sometimes and he told me to save everything I wanted to say to him in a memo and we could talk about it later and then he gave me a mop and told me to mop things that needed mopping and went away to do his job! I was so excited I could barely keep my fans spinning fast enough, I thought I was going to overheat or something, and there was some beeping sounds happening but very quiet so I don't think anyone was disturbed by them.
I had a cleaning companion just like MISS JANEY had a kitchen companion, and her name was MISS MEENAH and she was not really the nicest Troll I ever knew, even though I didn't know too many Trolls at all. She was very interesting to see, though, and I saved a few snapshots of her on my internal hard drive because she was so strange, she had long long keratin strands, the thing they call hair, and they were all braided up, and she kept them all piled on top of her head like an ice cream cone, and I asked her one time about it and she said /It's called a beehive you Human piece of metal/ and I was very flattered because no one ever called me a Human before.
It was so awesome to work, my optics had never experienced so many Humans or Trolls or flowers or trees or anything, and there was so much food, I really liked food even though I couldn't eat it, I liked looking at it and when people ate it it was just like in the commercials when they make faces like it's SO GOOD! I got to see all the people that DI and DA are always talking about, JAKE and JOHN and KARKAT and TEREZI and so many people! I wanted to talk to everyone but I was also very determined to do awesome at my job so I concentrated on sweeping and bussing tables and stuff and I had tons of fun, even though MISS MEENAH didn't seem to like her job very much, and her job was pretty much mine, but I was having loads of fun, even though all the work was really hard on my pistons and joints and my hard drive was working doubletime to track everything I was seeing and hearing and learning, and I was just so happy to see everyone, see all the colors and hear all the voices with different accents and stuff, and even though my Stri-guys had told me before all about Trolls I kind of never knew they were actually grey? And their horn shapes were way awesome, I wrote in a memo for DIRK that I wanted a pair even though I knew he wouldn't make me any.
There was also a lot of drama that happened at DOC'S, like the kind of stuff that happens on the soap operas DI likes to watch, like I had to clean up after a lady Troll with the prettiest cerulean blood cut her side on her friend's knife, and later a Troll with a stripey sweater around his neck got in a yelling contest with one with long long hair and gills, and after that three Trolls were laughing at a Human's blood color after they made him show it to them from the inside of his face. DI had to throw them all out for fighting, I didn't really realize they were breaking rules I just thought they were having Human fun. DI said I still have a long way to go before I can think about myself as Human but either way there's still always something interesting to record.
The most interesting thing I saw my first week, that was on a Wednesday morning when the diner was barely open, and there was a big commotion happening, all loud as heck upstairs from the diner, which was where there were some apartment type spaces, DI had told me they were rented out to a detective agency. I thought that sounded real awesome, but I kind of thought sleuthing would be a quieter activity, that morning there was a lot of running and shooting and yelling happening over our heads, just like in the movies.
Then the fabled detectives appeared! There were two of them; they ran down the spiral staircase in the back of the diner, yelling and shooting, and they were so different from the image my motherboard had projected that I even stopped sweeping for a minute and took a few snapshots. They were shorter than me and they all had hats on their round heads just like in the movies, and their guns were candy colors like pink and white and orange and yellow, and they were shooting at each other and yelling real loud all kinds of words as they ran through the diner and out into the street! I swept up their bullet casings when they were gone but those were also candy colors and my processers were tricked for a minute they they actually were candy but that would be weird to shoot at someone with.
The real excitement came though when a troupe of musicians came into the diner around lunchtime and they were so tall! And they had the same kind of shell exterior skin stuff as MSP has, but theirs was all black and there was a very tall lady one with them which was all white and they came in for lunch and ordered tons of food and ate every crumb and then they went into DOC'S office/apartment for a long long time and when they came out they started handing out fliers for their band which was called THE EXILES and the fliers said they would be playing live music at the diner on Saturdays! I was so excited my flashlight accidentally turned on and I shined it right in someone's optics, I mean eyes, and they stumbled and bumped into someone who bumped someone else and pretty much the whole diner was a big mess after that but I cleaned it up pretty much without the help of MISS MEENAH, she said it was my fault but my JIMMYCARD said otherwise. A JIMMYCARD, by the way, is a thing I made all by myself, it's a data card that plugs into my palm slot and it's supposed to tell me when someone is lying or if something is a bad idea but DI says it doesn't work right. My JIMMYCARD said otherwise but DI would never lie so I guess he was right. Anyway I cleaned everything up.
Around closing I got to meet a lady Troll waitress that was so pretty I took a billion snapshots, she had curly white hair and curvy orange horns and she was very nice, she said she was sure it would be a pleasure to work with me and I accidentally beeped real loud at her because she was TALKING TO ME and I was crazy embarrassed but she laughed and said I was darling, she said it just like that, /Aren't you darling?/ and I thought my legs were going to give out the pressure in them was so high, I had to excuse myself so I could go let out some steam out back, cracked open the shiny casing of my cheek and turned the dial there, I almost burned the guy waitress, ANDREW, cause he was out back too taking a break, I almost burned him with the steam that came out of me but it was all good, he was fine.
I was kinda not so much in a hurry to go back inside though, cause that lady Troll waitress was still in there and I was still pretty embarrassed that I beeped at her, most of the time I can keep my functions under control. So i stayed out there with ANDREW for a while, he said I should call him HUSSIE instead of ANDREW, and then he asked me why I had so much steam pressure, said when that happens you have to make sure there isn't a buildup or a blockage anywhere in your piping. Then he said no, he wasn't a robot, but he had a lot of experience with bringing creations to life so I told him about the lady Troll, he said her name is CALLIOPE and she's not really a Troll, but he wouldn't say anything more about that and when I asked suddenly everything outside got all smoky and dark and a monster thing started stomping up the street! He said we should probably get back inside all calm-like, and he said he didn't know anything about the monster thing, a huge grey thing with tiny horns and arms and long big legs, he said he didn't know where it had come from but better go back inside until the detective guys from before came back.
So that was my first week, it was pretty much off the chain, but whatever, my artificial life is just really really awesome now, and that's all there is to it.