[FFML] [Original: short story]Adam's Inquisitiveness

I felt this was anime inspired enough to send.

Enjoy ^_^

Troy

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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
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Adam's Inquisitiveness
By Troy Thomas

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A young man, one year old, looked outside of a restaurant,
after hearing a loud siren. "What is it?" he asked his
companion, a middle aged woman, who was watching him with a
calculated smile.

"It's an ambulance." the lady replied. "It's driven by men
and women who wish to rescue someone in danger."

The young man looked at the lady, studied the expression on
her face, and then himself smiled.

"Your eyes Son, they also need to smile." the lady said.

"Yes Mother."

A waitress approached the table. "What are you smiling
about?"

The young man looked at the girl, his expression a warm
unwavering light. "There is reason behind a smile?" he asked.

The girl frowned quizzically, since the man's expression
never faltered and his voice had one tone.

She stepped close to the man, peered closely, and then
touched his forehead. "You're a robot, but your skins feels
real..."

"Real, you say my skin feels real. Why?"

Standing up straight, the girl crossed her arms in front of
herself. "Why do you ask why?"

"I'm a robot. I think logically, thus everything real is to
me real."

"No, why do you ask why? I've never encountered a robot that
asked anything before." the girl said, perplexed.

"His name is Adam, Miss." the lady said. "I've uploaded a
program into his Artificial Mind, which assesses his
environment."

"Pardon?" the girl asked, lost.

"Perhaps I'm too technical." the lady said. "But I so badly
want to share Adam with the world that to have anyone to
speak with, I race ahead of myself!" she cackled. "Anyway,
robots we see everywhere do not assess their environment like
Adam. Rather, they are given perimeters, and commands to
carry out within these boundaries. An everyday robot cannot
be told though to bend this spoon into a 90-degree angle. It
must be programmed to hold spoon in fingers, move wrists with
outsides of wrists...It's too complicated to describe. It's a
million lines of code simply for the robot's hands, never
mind holding a spoon!"

The girl nodded. "How is Adam different?"

"He learns, which is assessing his environment." the lady
replied. "He can grab a spoon, because he knows what a spoon
is, knows what a hand is, knows what a grab is. An average
robot doesn't know anything. It is simply a puppet. Its
commands, its lines of code, are simply the puppeteer's
strings."

The expression of wonder had crept over the girl's face as
she listened. "He learns? What does he learn?"

"He learned to speak, because I've always talked to him. He
learned to see, because he opened his eyes after he found he
had a lot of stuff on his face like his mouth." the lady
cackled. "He lied on a table for a whole month listening to
me before saying anything."

"He only lied there?"

"He never knew he had a mouth, which at the time I didn't
know. But then a fly landed on his chin, which shocked him
into moving his jaw, which led to him discovering his
Artificial Voice Box!" Again, the lady cackled. "From that
day on, he wouldn't shut up! And from then on, he found his
eyes, his neck muscles, and then his entire body, since he
looked at it when he flexed his neck."

"How amazing..."

"Anyway, for one whole year, he's learned enough to sit here
in this restaurant quietly, which pleases me to no end."

"Mother, it's the ambulance again, but now it's driving
slowly without its siren." Adam said. "Has it rescued the
person in danger?"

The lady, the girl, and Adam all looked outside to watch the
ambulance drive slowly past, its pace a tear trickling down a
face.

"My god, it's the apple all over again." the lady said, her
voice a whisper.

End

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