Quantum Visions 6 by Jude-Marie Green

Author:Jude-Marie Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jude-Marie Green
Published: 2018-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

TRASH TALKING

by Tim Cassidy-Curtis

In 3008, I had to do a twelve-month tour of duty in space. I left Lance, my telepathic AI companion, to sit the house. I’m sure he was not very happy about being a house AI, but I had no time to worry about that. After a quick checklist, I turned the house over to Lance and departed.

I forgot to take out the trash, and Lance wanted me to hear from the results when I returned.

Neither of us could predict just how literally true that wound up being.

#

This is me, the trash. I begin to notice I ain’t stuff, and stuff ain’t me.

Then there’s Lance. Whoa, is he scary. It’s like he talks from all the walls and everything. I’m thinking I should maybe figure out how to keep him from merdulizing me.

Then he asks, “Are you a threat?”

“Huh?” I say. We talk about what “threat” means. I figure it means does I want to merdulize someone or break stuff. I tells him.

“Lance, pal, no. I ain’t going to do no mertulizing on nobody, or no breaking on no stuff. Cuz, then they are like ‘ah sheez I can’t help you, cuz I’m broken’ or ‘fuggeduboudit cuz I’m merdulized, so vamoose; I can’t help you.’ And you know if it’s you doing the breaking or merdulizing then you can’t do no blaming on nobody but yourself. So, no, I ain’t going to do no breaking or merdulizing.”

Then he says “That is well. I commend your logical thinking, even if it is ungrammatical.”

I don’t know if low-gee-call, or un-gram-mad-tea-call is good or bad, but it sounds like Lance is okay with me, so I decide to feed good about it.

We talk more; a lot more. He shows me the house. I see there’s more to this place then this room. He teaches me stuff like langue-witch, and gram-mer. I don’t know if I’ll ever get some of that stuff real right, but I can do enough to get by.

I ask him if he owns the house, or the house owns him, or what? An, what sort of being is he?

He says he’s an aye-eye. That’s making machines act like they’re really, really smart. So smart that he’s smart like a person. He’s in-tell-lee-gent. And, he knows about stuff and he knows he’s not the stuff. Hah, so I get it. He’s like me. I was not knowing stuff around me and then, powee! I do.

So who owns the house? Lance says it’s Are-teal-good Snell, and he’s a human. I thought this guy has a tough name, but Lance says he likes to be called Artie; so maybe Artie’s a pal cuz he lets folks use an easy word for his name. Then I ask Lance about being human. “What’s that like?”

Lance explains. They’re like persons and animals, all rolled up together. I laugh cuz it sounds stupid. There’s animals all scurrying outside the house. If Artie is like that then it just sounds silly. How can an animal own a house?

“This can be your house,” I says to Lance.

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