//------------------------------// // Chapter Three: Different // Story: Alpha One Six // by Misanthropian //------------------------------// Nurse Redheart walked along the morning line-up giving the robots their daily tasks. 'I hope Alphie is all right.' She walked down the line. 'If that jerk damaged her-' Her thought were interrupted as she stepped up to Alphie's spot in line. "Alpha one seven?" She looked in confusion at the unit in front of her. "Alpha one seven, awaiting assignment." The robot replied. "Where's alpha one six?" Redheart asked the robot. "Alpha one six left the maintenance center at 1:45am." "She what?!" Redheart shouted in shock. Another nurse rushed over. "Are you all right?" "I'm fine-", Redheart's voice cracked. She cleared her throat. "I'm fine. Could you please call maintenance for me." ------ The phone in the maintenance office rang. Alan let out a grunt as the sound woke him up. He reached over and grabbed the phone. "Clover, I swear, if this is another paper jam I will come up there and throw that friggin' printer off the roof." "Alan, it's nurse Redheart." Alan jumped up straight in his chair. "Nurse Redheart! What can I do for you." "Have you seen Alphie?" "Who?" "Ugh.", Redheart grunted in frustration, "Caretaker alpha one six." "Wait... It has a name?" Alan pondered. "Alan! Have you seen her!" Redheart demanded. Alan rubbed his forehead, "I don't know. It was in the maintenance line last night.", He thought back, "It was acting kind of strange actually. Kept freezing up and stammering like it was bugging out." "And you didn't think to report that?!" Redheart shouted. Alan rubbed his ear. "Ow... I'm sorry okay. It went back to responding normally, so I assumed it was fine." "Well now she's missing!" "What!?" "Alpha one seven says she left in the middle of the night!" Alan lowered the phone. "Ah heck... I'm in so much trouble..." Alphie walked through the city streets. Cars sped past on the street, and ponies pushed their way past her spouting slurs and various foul language at her disruption of their path. Alphie felt out of place and confused in the crowded morning rush. She pushed her way through the crowd, trying to find a break. Finally she found a street where the crowd thinned out. She wandered down it some ways before stopping to look around. There were a number of small restaurants and shops along the road, but many of the buildings seemed long abandoned. She reached an intersection and waited for a break in traffic. "Hey. Hey! Stay right there!" She turned to see two police officers across the street galloping towards her. She looked at the traffic speeding through the intersection and weighed her options. "You hear me stay there!" One of the officers shouted. Panic. Alphie burst forwards into traffic, dogging vehicles as they sped past. She jumped out of the way as a truck sped towards her. "Holy heck!" One of the officers shouted in surprise. Alphie make it to the other side. She tumbled as she jumped out of the way of the last car. Quickly, she jumped to her feet and ran. "After that robot!" The other officer shouted. Lyra sat at her booth in her favourite coffee shop. Her head bobbed to music as she typed at her laptop. She wrote line after line of code, working carefully to ensure she didn't make any mistakes. She pushed her headphones off. "Hmm... What do you think? Is the initial size check good enough? Or should we check the substrings individually?" A small plastic figure of an alicorn looked up at her from the side of her laptop. "More stability is always better, the last thing you want is to allow for a buffer overflow, just because you're being lazy." Lyra sighed. "You're right. I was just hoping not to have to rewrite all that program flow." The bell over the shop door rang drawing her attention. Lyra looked to see who had come in. "The floopin' heck?", She was surprised to see a robot looking around with urgency, "Does she seem freaked out to you?" The figure looked. "It's a machine. It doesn't get 'freaked out', it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it-" "-It just runs programs. Yeah, yeah, I know." Lyra continued to look. She hesitated before letting out a whistle. The robot looked over at the pony. Lyra gestured for her to come over. The robot hesitated before approaching, but headed over. "Do you need something? You look stressed." Lyra asked. "Need to hide..." The robot responded. Lyra looked at the expression on the robot's face. She hesitated, then let out a cough as she looked around and casually pulled back the table cloth. The robot got down and hid beneath the table. "What are you doing?" The figure asked, looking at Lyra. "Have you ever seen a robot look like that.", Lyra responded, "She needed help." Just then, two police officers burst through the door. "Everypony freeze!" They stopped, and stared about at the empty shop. One of them trotted up to Lyra. "Did you see a robot come through here?" Lyra kept a straight face as she looked to the officer. "No sir. You're the first ponies I've seen in here for at least an hour." The officer scrutinized Lyra for what felt like an eternity. Finally he gave up. "Heck! Search the area, it can't have gotten far!", He shouted to his partner, "You see anything, you call us immediately." "Of course officer." She gave a wave as the officers ran off to search the rest of the building. "Nice poker face." "Thanks." She replied to the plastic figure.