Free Perion Synthetics by Daniel Verastiqui

just exactly what she was.
    “I’ve got the situation in hand,” wrote Cam.
    Banks didn’t acknowledge his humor.
    “It’s a beautiful day,” said Roberta,
looking to the sky. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.
    “Do you mind if I ask you some questions,
Roberta?”
    “About me?”
    “Yes, about you.” Cam pulled his press badge
and showed it to her. “I’m with Banks Media out of Los Angeles. I’m here to
find out what life is like in Perion City.”
    “Okay,” said Roberta. She fidgeted under her
black sweater and white blouse; her fingers held the edges of her sleeves
against her palms.
    “Alright, first question,” said Cam, swiping
his sliver. “What’s four plus four?”
    “Eight,” answered Roberta.
    “And the capital of California?”
    “Sacramento.”
    “And the diameter of the earth?”
    Roberta paused. “I thought you wanted to
know about me.”
    “I do. These are just some baseline
questions I ask everyone.”
    “Really?”
    “I promise. Now, diameter of the earth?”
    Roberta smiled and shook her head. “I don’t
know, Mr. Gray. I bet we could look it up though.”
    “Would you?” asked Cam.
    “Alright.” Roberta tapped her empty pockets.
“I seem to have forgotten my phone. Can I use yours?”
    “Can’t you just retrieve the answer
wirelessly?”
    Some art school prodigy had done a damn good
job of programming Roberta to simultaneously lift and push her eyebrows
together. “Yes,” she said, drawing out the word. “I can do it wirelessly, but
I’ll need a phone or a palette or some kind of wireless device .”
She put air quotes around her last two words.
    Cam made a note regarding her sarcasm.
    “When performing CPR, what is the ratio of
chest compressions to breaths?”
    “I heard you weren’t supposed to do the
breaths anymore, just the compressions. But you’d want to do about a hundred
compressions a minute.”
    “How old are you?”
    “I was born in 1990, so I’m twenty-five.”
    “Where do you work?”
    “In the Clerical department on the eleventh
floor of the Spire. I’m currently on vacation though.”
    “Who holds the record for the most rushing
yards in a rookie season, before they allowed augmentations?”
    “I have no clue.”
    “What’s your favorite color, Roberta?”
    She leaned in and smiled. “What’s yours?”
    Cam took the moment to catch his breath. His
sliver was flashing happily, but it was only recording words, not the
expressions on Roberta’s face or the intent of the rapid-fire questioning.
    “It’s gray,” he replied.
    Roberta nodded. “I should have guessed. That’s
my favorite too.”
    In the back of his mind, Cam heard Banks
clucking his tongue.
    “It’s funny you say that,” said Cam. “It
makes me wonder if you’ve been telling the truth or not.”
    “Why would I lie?”
    “Because you can. I know for certain you
have the ability to calculate the fourteenth digit of pi, but if I asked you
to, you’d probably say you can’t. So either your programming is crippled or
you’ve been instructed not to act like a machine and spout off statistics
without consideration for whether the average person would know the answer.
It’s like you’ve been purposefully dumbed down from the super-intelligent
synthetic you are to a slightly above-average human.”
    “You’re being quite rude,” said Roberta, her
eyes narrowing.
    “What if I had said my favorite color was
red, would you have changed your answer?”
    “No, I told you. It’s gray.”
    “But how do I know yours was gray before I
told you mine?”
    Roberta crossed her arms and looked away.
“Believe what you want, Mr. Gray. My feelings aren’t dependent on your trust.”
    “That’s… a good point,” said Cam.
    “I know it is,” said Roberta. She brushed a
section of her hair away from her cheek, reminding Cam of her wrist.
    “What’s your sign?” asked Cam.
    Roberta faked a calming breath.
    “Virgo,” she said softly. “It means