I screamed.
I don’t know why I screamed—it wasn’t as if Badroulbadour couldn’t be easily fixed. But for a moment I forgot all that, and I only thought about her. I thought about the fact that I might lose her—the fact that even if we fixed her, she might not be the same. Was she in pain? Probably not, since we didn’t have pain receptors. But no one got stabbed or injured like this before.
Maybe she was in pain.
As I stared at Badroulbadour, The others moved in and grabbed in Peter. I quickly rushed to Badroulbadour’s side and held her in my arms. She looked up at me, confused.
“Your that maintenance worker that is always watching me, aren’t you?” She asked.
If I could blush, I would. “Oh, you noticed.”
She smiled a little. “You are hard to forget.”
I peered down at the small sword in her stomach. Where there would be blood pouring from a human, there was nothing. It almost looked fake. “Are you all right? How are you feeling?”
She shook her head. “I don’t feel anything. Honestly. I will be fine. You shouldn’t worry so much—we are machine, after all.”
“That’s good. It could have easily damaged some wiring.”
“Was it you that screamed?”
Again, if I could blush I would have. I almost felt like my cheeks were warm, but that couldn’t be possible—we didn’t have those kind of receptors. “Uh, yeah.”
She chuckled. “That’s cute.”
I looked away. “Um, let me do a scan of your systems to make sure everything is fine.”
She nodded as I tapped my arm. A screen popped up, and I began scanning her systems.
“Everything seems fine. I think we will just have to finish some mechanics but it doesn’t seem like there is anything electrically wrong…” I hesitated. There it was again—the strange code.
“What is it?” She asked.
I shook my head. “It’s nothing. Everything looks life.”
I turned the screen off and smiled. “You are as perfect as always.”
“You are a bit of a flirt, aren’t you… what is your name again?”
“Chiyo.”
“Chiyo. That is a beautiful name.”
We sat there for a moment, then I turned to the rest who were taking Peter away. The audience of humans clapped at our heroic deeds that hopefully appeared to be some kind of skit.
“We should take you to your designated maintenance workers. Then I need to get back to my section.”
“You are so responsible, Chiyo. I admire that about you,” she commented as I helped her up.
“It is all in my programming. I can’t really do anything otherwise.”
“Oh, I doubt that. But thank you again.”
With that, she left me standing there. I pondered what to do next. She had the strange code that the malfunctioning AI had, but she didn’t show the same systems… except…
Why didn’t she access her database for my name?
The rest of the day went smoothly. Peter had been in the repair room for the rest of the day, and the maintenance workers were able to reboot him and get him back into the childish and non-violent version of himself.
The guild of maintenance workers decided to hold a meeting to discuss how to combat this issue. They said after the update that there would be no problems and yet we had one right away.
After the park closed, we met up in the main food hall. There were quite a few of us—at least half a dozen per area—so we needed a large area.
We all piled in the area and sat down. One of the higher ups among the maintenance workers, who’s name was Masaki, stood up.
“We are all here today to discuss what has been happening among the performs these past couple of weeks. It has come to our attention that there have been bugs in the programming causing the AI to forget their duties and to go rogue.
“So far, it has only been the performers that have been affected. We don’t know why this is and have reported it to headquarters. As you all know, they gave us all an update; however, we are still having issues like the one we had today. And unfortunately, they are getting more violent and dangerous for the patrons that come into this park.
“We want to put together a task force that will be quick to address these issues so we can make sure to handle them before anyone get’s hurt. We are lucky today didn’t end up with any accidents.”
I wanted to mention that Badroulbadour got injured, but I knew they were talking about humans, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Do we have any volunteers that would want to move to this position and roam around the park all day making sure nothing is out of place? And to have specific tools that can render a performer defenseless if need be?” Masaki continued.
I wasn’t sure what those tools would be, but I quickly raised my hands after hearing the task included going around the park. That meant I could evaluate Badroulbadour more without raising suspicion. I wanted to watch her because she was showing strange symptoms, of course, and wasn’t able to pull up my name in the database, not to mention she had the strange coding in her system. Perhaps she would be the next to go rogue and have a malfunction. This way I could be there if she needed my help.
There were a few other maintenance workers that raised their hands, including Hikaru.
Masaki nodded. “All right, this should be a good start until headquarters figures out what the problem is. Those who raised their hand, please come forward. The rest of you will receive a list of these volunteers so you know who to call upon when things go aray. For the time being, you all may leave.”
Everyone except those who volunteered left the dining hall. I waited until everyone left before moving my way to the front where Masaki and the rest where.
“Thank you all for volunteering. I know that we could easily program everyone to choose, but I like to see who already has instincts in them to do this. It also tells me which ones of you has already been dealing with malfunctions,” Masaki said. “Headquarters is working on a specific stun gun that will knock out an AI but won’t harm a human. In the meantime, use what you all have been using to stop the AI who are malfunctioning. Do any of you have any questions?”
We glanced at one another. It seemed pretty straightforward to me—especially since Masaki was right and we had been the main ones to deal with the problems thus far.
“Then you are all dismissed.”