Weekend Special Short Tales California 2.2 Chapter 4

 

4.

I stepped to the assigned charging spot and inserted the power cord to the power inlet. It was my routine to power up regardless of my power level. My routines had me my full power unit to run for a week without the need to restore. While I was charging, I was observing my master. I liked my Master; he gave me a name.

Quasimodo.

My Master told me of the Notre Dame tale. Quasimodo was in the same role as me with an organic frame and minus the invulnerability of my frame. I could move fast on the roller beneath the bottom soles of the lower limbs. I could levitate to a height of over a hundred feet before the safety switch will override my ascent. I was able to do it with the anti-grav disc on my knee joint. I can punch with a force of fifty pounds on the force with my front limbs. I have no vocal speakers but I communicate with the dialogue screen on the vid. I do have other routines built inside me.

I have also the database of mechanical, electrical, and electronic and programming languages to write new routines as long as it does not compromise my core programs of service and servitude with the protectorate of the Masters. That was my standard routines.

I knew I was different.

The strange routines were inside me and it was well camouflaged that my basic programs cannot be traced during the regular checks. It had not made me do things differently. It was just there before I was added in my program.

If I was organic, I would have gone crazy.

“Quasimodo, download the maintenance list.” My Master told me. I turned on my wireless connector to gain access to the server and download the data. It also recorded that unit E02 had failed. It was part of my series, and in the last three calendar months, three units have been shelved, and one was written off. It fell from thirty feet when the anti-grav discs failed. I was the last three units on duty.

Since I was on the wireless connection and the database was given access to me, I took the extra liberty to access the vids. I saw the latest clip of the Gypsy female. I don’t why I accessed the vid but it was my hidden routine that made me do it. I downloaded the clip into the hidden storage. It was hidden in the discarded files.

“Quasimodo, do you know why I call you that?” It was the Master mode of relaxing to talk to me and his subject was me.

“I had lost my last son. I had three but they were all rascals. Two of them died in the City and then the last joined me as apprentice. He was good but careless. His carelessness caused him to fall a hundred feet and broke his head. I was … sad and then your series arrived. All seven of you but only you were felt differently. I had the premonition that you were my son reincarnated.”

“I had to have you. I had to name you like I did with my sons.”

“Quasimodo….yes that will be your name. Do you know why that name?”

“Quasimodo was the assistant in the Notre Dame tale. He was to do the needed maintenance and was agile He could do the climbs and jumps or the swings on the ropes he had hung on the beams and ridges to get him around. He was … like a monkey. Do you know what a monkey is?”

I did access the library and found the name belonged to a primate which dwell on the branches and moved by swinging on the branches. Its diet was organic meatless but there are some species who eat the meat.

“Quasimodo was a good apprentice but he had decided to assist in the affair of the flesh. He was caught by the enforcers and sentenced to death. The person whom he was to die for was the Gypsy lady and she saved him from the gallows. He escaped but he returned to save her when she in turn caught and framed for murder. It was a ding dong of I help you and you helped me back.”

“An inherent features of the human; we try to repay back.” Quasimodo was told. “It made us alive.”

“Quasimodo took refuge at the Notre Dame Cathedral and he protected her from the enforcers and also from her own people. In the end, the lady was captured and then hung. Quasimodo turned into vengeance and killed the killers. He was said to have escaped but some said he died later at her grave. He only worked at the Cathedral.”

“I am telling you this because…”

I know the next words as it was programmed into my routines.

“My sons…. All my sons left me to avoid the serving here. My last son did serve and died serving. I had my regrets but the works must be done. It was our family calling. You are family. You are my last surviving son.”

“Now let me rest. I have another day to do the works tomorrow.”

It was always the same. If I remain as E-05, I will be decommissioned one day as a derelict. If I am Quasimodo I may have another purpose to my routine. I re-run the routines. It was my hidden ones that gave me the new logic.

“I want to be free.” I called out in my silent tone.