Outer Space Adventure Saga, Chapter 4

Griffin couldn't believe his luck. The maintenance drone was still powered, but there was definitely something wrong with it. No signs of physical distress, though there was an odd bit of welding on the rear panels, where the memory was stored.  Griff set it spinning slowly before him and surveyed the machine. The body was spherical and yellow, covered with tiny holes for maneuvering jets-this class of drone did most of it's work in zero-gravity. There were two wide black treads running the circumference of the body's cross the top and bottom, with a pair of arms on each side, and a big eye protruded from the center on a long slender neck. The glass eye seemed unmarred, but the shutter inside it was completely closed. All four appendages were intact, two manipulators stuck out like bony arms with long fingers, it was also equipped with a compact but powerful welding laser and a telescoping sensor array. Nothing was apparently wrong with the thing, except that it didn't respond to any of his commands. Its external eye pivoted just once, pointing out into the field of stars, but it seemed random and unrelated to what he was doing.  He lifted the robot up to read the ID plate on it's underside. "Outer-Hull Technician- Class 15. Firene Industries. XFVA OT15-T00833." The letters and numbers in the military supply code reminded him of a game he and his brothers played when they were all young.  They'd try to make the alpha-numeric designations of various buildings and ships into phonetic words.  He chuckled at the memory, and at his prize's obvious name.  Griff wasn't sure how the drone would come in handy, but he might not be able to find it again if he didn't take it along now.

"You're coming with me, Otis."

He was just about to begin folding up the drone and stashing him in the thin cable net he'd been towing the power core with when it suddenly sprang to life.  Tiny white jets flared in waves across the spherical yellow and black body, and it spun with a surprising grace into a position facing Griffin. It was even more surprising when the manipulating arms folded across one another, one set of fingers drumming the opposite elbow in a charade of impatience. The small green indicator light now gleamed brightly in the dark, casting strange shadows among the slowly drifting rubble that surrounded them. Dozens of other, smaller multicolored lights had cropped up across the robotic assemblage and along the appendages. The eye of the drone glinted beneath the protective visor that shielded it, and small but brilliant lights flared up in a circle around the visor. They shone directly into Griffin's face, effectively blinding him. 

"Says you. fleshbag. Why the hell did you call me Otis?" The voice came out of his helmet speakers, and Griffin was nearly startled out of his suit. It was strangely resonant and very emotive, but he knew that it wasn't a true intelligence that had addressed him.  Virtual Intelligences were assigned to any bots that real people had to interact with. A robot with VI was capable of simulating intelligence, but not of thinking for itself. It had asked the question not out of curiosity, but out of need for input.

Griffin put his hands up in front of his face to shelter his tightly closed eyes from the blinding beam, and didn't respond until he could feel the shade on his scorched eyelids.

"Shizz! Otis, kill the lights!" After a moment, he added, "Please?"

Just a fraction of a second later, the lights dimmed to a reasonably low level, though there were still multicolored rings dancing through Griff's vision.

"Your mother is 'Shizz!'" The machine retorted. "I guess I must be Otis then?"

The only thing more eerie than being cornered by a confused, malfunctioning, laser-wielding robot in a debris field is hearing it mock you, and achieve a passing imitation of your voice in the effort.

"Ok...  Yeah, you're Otis. I'm Griffin. Nice to meet you, I hope?"

"There is insufficient data to support that premise. Will you leave me alone now?"
"Actually, I was hoping you could help me with something."
The big green light turned yellow.
"Are you getting in my face, Gree'zk?" Griffin didn't know what a "Gree'zk" was, but the sharp tone of the phrase made him almost as nervous as the slow movement of the drone's welding arm as it came to bear on him. He'd never heard of a robot attacking anybody of its own accord, but something was a little off about this one.
"No, Otis, I am definitely not trying to tell you what to do. At all."

This was quite obviously one of Griffin's little helpers, his way of spreading cheer for the Solstice last year. His rude and crude maintenance bots were a big hit, at least from his perspective. There had been crewman arguing with virtual intelligences for days until they figured out the bots would do their jobs if left alone. Actually, they'd do their jobs with a 30% increase in productivity, thanks to the streamlined programming he'd put in place along with the new attitudes. When the engineers finally killed his virus and reset the entire robotic work force, there had been a marked drop in the speed of general repairs and cleanliness. Apparently this little guy had somehow escaped or been tossed out with the trash before the reset had occurred.  Griffin recalled the basic workings of the personality virus, but the details he'd left to filler programs that could input hundreds of thousands of snarky new response protocols and the filthy words of all recorded languages. He knew that if he pressed the bot too hard, it could fall into a defiant loop in which it would stubbornly refuse to do anything at all. He remembered one key phrase though that he had put in himself in case he had any personal encounters with his surly friends, a phrase he was certain that no one else would say accidentally.

"Otis my man, I do not require your assistance at all."
"Well, in that case... which way are we going, Griffin?"