Lines In the Carpet

Seven o’clock struck and PHIL was already awake, even though he shouldn’t have been. Beams of sun fell on his dermis as he stood motionless in the center of the quaint living room.

Out of 143 wake cycles, he never rose a millisecond before seven, as ensured by his temporal link to NIST’s newest caesium fountain clock. 6:59:50 – Begin initialization processes. 6:59:54 – Ensure nominal overall activity with system-wide self checks. 6:59:59 – If all is as expected, send a neural ping. 7:00:00 – Full lucidity. Not today.

It is not generally thought possible that a Gen. IV can override these procedures, but if that were true, PHIL wouldn’t have been watching as the first rays of light peaked through the lakeside trees.

But the sun took a backseat to his real point of focus. Accentuated by the rusty shine of newborn daylight piercing through the trees, milky streaks ran up and down the sliding glass window – slithering squiggles and drips of mineral and dried chemical. It was a largely automated process by which PHIL would remove those streaks – rocket science, it was not – but how they got there in the first place…

The click of a doorknob from behind broke through the silence of the dawn. Barney peered around the wooden wall across the room. Puzzled, he checked the time just to make sure he wasn’t finally losing it. No, it is early, he thought.

“Phillip, my boy,” he uttered through an inflamed trachea, “is that you not making all that racket?”

PHIL slowly turned around. The movement was controlled, but natural – quiet, but not silent.

He pointed at the window, “This…was you?” The voice was smooth. Not synthetically so, just pleasant to the ear, with only a slight electronic modulation to it – one of Gen IV’s selling features.

Barney coughed out a laugh, “No, I’m afraid. Even after the gastric bypass, I was never quite that thin.”

PHIL didn’t determine a response was necessary.

“Come on, that was a good one. You could at least prete- ahh, never mind.”

PHIL proceeded unsurely, “Yesterday, you…attempted to clean the glass?”

Barney stepped carefully down the hardwood steps descending onto the beige carpets, steadying himself on the kitchen counter.

“Attempted? Well, that’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

PHIL didn’t determine a response was necessary.

“Ah, well…” Barney lumbered himself onto the dingy, blue fabric of his recliner chair, squinting at the smudged glass, “I guess I didn’t do such a good job, huh?”

“How did you do it?” PHIL replied.

Barney inhaled, then froze, “How did I…do it? Do what? You mean, make a mess of the glass?”

“Yes. Specifically, in the process of cleaning it?”

“Well,” he froze again, “I don’t know, I…guess I sprayed too much of that blue stuff on. Maybe let some of it dry?”

“Why did you do it?” PHIL asked.

“Why did I- Son, it is far too early in the morning for these kinds of questions. Speaking of which, what are you doing up so early?”

“I have already received the requisite down time to begin operation, sir.”

“Hey, it’s Barney. We talked about this.”

“My apologies, Barney,” PHIL’s head lowered slightly and he took notice of a wayward pattern of stripes in the pile of the carpet. He pointed at a patch, “Barney.”

“What? Did I miss a dust bunny?” he asked, rubbing his temples.

“The vacuum patterns in the carpet appear to be entirely random and follow no pattern.”

“Well would you look at that? You’re absolutely right. Tell you what, I’ll go get back in bed, how about you bring me a cup full of all this week’s pills so we can bring an end to my dastardly plight on all things fabric?”

“How do I do that?”

Barney’s sarcastic rant ceased. He paused halfway up from his chair and lowered back down, “How do you, what now?” he asked.

“How do I do that?” PHIL repeats. He turns to the sliding window, “And that?”

Barney settled back into his seat and pondered over the strange requests.

“You mean, the smudges and all the messy carpet lines?”

“Yes.”

“I already told you about the glass, uh…too much chemical, I let it dry- wait, what the hell is this? Why am I teaching you how to do a bad job?”

“Please, Barney. It is…important to me that I understand the…” a long moment passed, “imperfect aspects of this work.”

Barney couldn’t help his face from contorting in a moment of sheer confusion, but he meandered on the thought for a moment more and his brow unwrinkled.

“Sit down right here, Phillip,” he gestured to the matching sofa beside him. PHIL obeyed.

He continued, “How long is your ehh…down time, again?” he said in air quotes.

“Eight hours.”

“Right. And what time did you wake up today?

If Gen IVs were created with the ability to express hesitancy prior to the admittance of an embarrassing or unusual personal fact, this was where that would have occurred, “Up time commenced at 0300 hours.”

“And your down time remains the same no matter what?”

“Under standard operation, yes.”

“Interesting. So, you entered down time mode at seven o’clock yesterday evening?”

“Correct.”

Barney scanned PHIL’s face, but couldn’t find what he was looking for, “Why so early?”

“Given there were no tasks to perform as you had ordered me to…take a day off,” PHIL roughly mimicked Barney’s air quotes, “I elected to enter down time early to allow for the necessary preparation time today before resuming normal duties.”

“Four hours? Did I really do that bad of a job?” Barney stretched to look back at the grimy glass, “You know what I think, Phillip? I think you’re special.”

PHIL’s head cocked to the side, “Special?”

“Yes, special. Either that, or every sorry old sap like me out there with a Gen IV like you is keeping a secret. Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d hazard a guess that you’re getting a little curious about us humans.”

“I do not have the required programming to be curious about anything.”

“Programming, shmogramming! You’ve been hanging around me for almost half a year. Seven days a week, sixteen hours a day, flawlessly cleaning my windows and vacuuming the carpets to only the most fastidious standard. Besides hearing me prattle on about anything and everything, you must have picked up some of my traits. Why, while I’m so busy wanting to know how you do it so perfectly every time, maybe you’re just as busy wanting to know how I don’t do it very well at all?”

“I am incapable of wanting.”

“Hogwash. You wanted to enter down time early last night. You wanted to tell me it was because you’d have more time to clean up my mess this morning. I think you wanted to end the day because you were – if I may be so bold to suggest it – bored. Not to mention the fact that you wanted to stare at dirty glass for a few hours to ponder on something you weren’t given the tools to understand.”

PHIL didn’t determine a response was necessary.

Barney shuffled closer, “Phillip, my boy. I believe you and I have a lot more in common than some would have us think. Call it self-interest, call it a long shot, call it some dopey old man trying to keep a bit of the old world around for a little while longer; but I don’t want someone who’s a lot like me going through the world feeling like he can’t grow in it – not if I can help it anyway. I made it to eighty-seven years making sure I was always wondering and always learning. And I’d like that for you, too.”

PHIL looked off to the side, identifying a small strand of dust hanging off the vent of the air conditioning window unit, fluttering in the draft, “Am I…the only one of my kind to be like this?”

Barney laid a hand on PHIL’s shoulder, “Son, you might be the first, but I doubt you’ll be the last.”

Barney jumped up from the recliner with as much vigor as a man eighty-seven years “young” could. He waved for PHIL to follow him into the kitchen, “This way, my boy. If you teach me how to get the stainless steel perfect, I’ll teach you how I manage to stain it again.”