Variable Geometry Human (Working title)
an excerpt

The following is from the perspective of an industrial robot, which has been installed by it's coworkers (other robots) into a mobile unit so as to find out about the world outside the assembly plant. The coprocessors are biological in construction with undisclosed histories.

Chapter: Paper

The brunette mobile unit stands in the middle of the box beside the asphalt strip. The internal dialog is different, and offset by an external one. The people waiting are the same as the other day, but the brunette isn't.
'Do mapping! Or alternate mapping! Do now!' The insolent unit incessantly yells in it's rudimentary symbolic language, and throws candidate physical control mappings at him. He doesn't understand why he should do these motions. His is the position to send commands. A portion of the data structure shown is executed to the temporary satisfaction of the module. At least the unit stops issuing interrupts to him.
"Hey baby, what brings a nice girl like you out to the country?"
The sounds are foreign to him. They don't follow either logic enforcement structures provided by the plant manager, nor the rudimentary symbolic language. The movement dictation and structural command map data stream from the unit co-installed with him is entirely different in that it's in matrix form. He repeats the previous truncated control mapping instead.
'Initiate external protocols!' The command interrupt comes pounding at him again. He doesn't know how to perform that command on this mobile unit. The communications ports are dead, including the plant-wide infrared. He isn't in the plant. The structure mapping is entirely foreign to his preceding work at station Twenty-eight and twenty-seven. He looks for data in the previous exploratory sessions. Only one has equivalent sounds recorded. He pulls it up, and asks what the coprocessor unit thinks of the information.
'What is token: bad money?' it only questions the question. The last coprocessor did that too, answering questions with other questions. That response has not been useful before. He holds out no hope that the responses will ever be useful in this regard.
Another person, on the other side of him says, "Oh, look. She's shy!"
Again, the sounds are meaningless. He considers the state of the coprocessor unit. The coprocessors in the whole plant have been expanded over the stock units. This one is not typical anymore, but he doesn't know by how much and in what capacity. It's experimental. It had no programming that he knew of. It may be able to expand on the rudimentary language, even if he isn't. He'll pose a different command, 'Make the movement dictation data structure for: bad money.'
A structure comes back in a second. It's fragmentary compared to other structures he's seen from this unit. The precursory evaluation says it should be executed in it's entirety, and not culled or filtered. There may be too little pattern left after filtering. He executes the data structure: "Bad money?"
The sound between his pickups is not like the others at all. The frequency is too high. Also he sees the piece of paper in the hand being presented. He should have filtered the command mapping anyway. One of the two people next to him grabs the paper and yanks it away. "That's not even money. Is that how you got stuck out here?"
"Oh, man. No wonder you couldn't get back. Hey baby, stay with me, and I'll pay for your ticket into town. You can come to my place." He understands that something is being said, but not what the content is. The coprocessor indicates the distance to the paper is increasing. The sounds run up and down the frequency range without discernable pattern. He asks for the coprocessor to decipher it. The response is ambiguous. He reapplies the filter, but gets nothing as a result.
"Hey. She don't want to be with you. Come with me honey. I'll treat you right." He watches as the one on his right presents an item, initially hard and black, then flops it open a few times in a folding pattern. He guesses the material is similar to the dryer belts he installed around sprockets and drums in Station twenty-eight. Inside, he sees more papers. The person pulls out one paper. He requests identification for the items from the coprocessor.
'It's good money. Good paper. Good for transport device. Person has more paper.' He labels this person the Person-with-paper. The other he labels Person-without-paper.
'Take the transport paper.' A matrix of motions forms to execute the command. The hands of Person-with-paper grab the paper in response, and yank it away.
"Not so fast baby, I need to get to know you better. Here comes the bus. I'll handle everything." The Person-with-paper holds his arm and pries the paper back. He walks forward to the slowing bus.
'Identify! Identify!' he yells at the coprocessor while posting two image fields. The coprocessor is momentarily busy balancing the mobile unit at the imbalance delivered by Person-with-paper.
'First image: major is hand, minor is paper. Second image: major is transport.' A mapping to get on the transport is provided. It keeps changing as the transport nears. The Person-with-paper pulls at his wrists. Vertical controls compensate some before the mapping changes.
"Watch your step baby." He steps onto the bus, and watches the compensation for elevation. There are steps built into the transport. Person-with-paper pulls him up. 'Identify paper disposition!'
'Paper is gone. Transport consumed.' Another worthless description in the abbreviated language doesn't help him. 'Paper come out?' he asks the coprocessor.
'No.' A map to walk along the black pathway inside the device is provided. He stops when the Person-with-paper stops him. The mobile unit has to conform to the location. 'Conform to environment. Follow indicators if provided.'
A matrix comes back, but the sequence of execution is delayed versus the motion imposed by the Person-with-papers. He falls into the location, to find the landing isn't damaging. Then Person-without-paper sits next to him too. "Hey man, I paid her way. Get lost!"
A flurry of motions swamps the sensors. 'Identify! Identify!' is all he can manage to send to his coprocessor. The response isn't language, it's another physical response map with few markers. He will not repeat the mistake of not filtering the command this time. He gets a partial response out of the filter, and executes that. The sound is a from a jittery motion down inside puffing out in small amounts. He does not know the meaning of this. It's a good thing it's filtered. Maybe the response will not be interpreted by the people. He commands the coprocessor to identify the camera fields again. 'Hands' is all it says.
"Oh, you think that's funny do you? I fight to get you away from a man that treats you like a cat or a dog, and you laugh at me?"
"She giggled, you idiot." The communication from Person-with-paper is not repeating any patterns. He doesn't think he'll be able to decipher the communication. Perhaps it is password scrambled. He saves the audio and video for post-processing. He makes a brief search for stop bits in the data stream, but finds none.
The Person-without-paper hits him across the face. All the meters ping in response. Apparently that person interpreted the response negatively. He commands a defense motion to the coprocessor, which is already broadcasting mappings with a lot of leg motion. A command with an arm motion comes back once. He captures the map, and reverse filters it against the previous mappings to remove the leg motion. The result is amplified for good measure. Execute.
The left arm moves the elbow fast in a sideways motion. Right arm shoves the generic end effector into Person-without-paper's face. Two loud cracks ensue after each contact is made. The overload of cameras and sensors drops significantly. The camera field changes, and with another 'identify' command the result is clear. Person-without-paper is traveling off the conformance surfaces to the black pathway. The motions that he cannot track disappear. The response mapping is acceptable.
"Holy s**t honey! What the f**k was that? Jujitsu?" Person-with-papers jumps away and into the black pathway. 'Motion identify!'
'Person-with-paper leaving station.'
'With paper?'
'Yes.'
'Get paper! Now!'
The back of Person-with-paper's pants are ripped off in a single swift motion. The mapping is good in that the wallet with papers is in his hand. 'Save tool' is the only command that seems to fit the need. The mapping has the fat black thing pushed into a pocket in the pants. He asks, 'more tool?'
The indication is that the Person-without-paper has a similar bump like Person-with-paper. He runs the mapping to effect a search of Person-without-paper for tools and paper. A red liquid pours slowly to the black pathway as a similar folding item is retrieved. Again using the tooling portion of the symbolic language he commands the coprocessor to 'Install and identify'.
A single hand flips the wallet open to find a wad of papers. 'Papers found'.
'Save tool.'