Cycles ago
As B's processes flickered back to operating parameters, the familiar setting triggered a thin ripple of unease across its internal network.
“Are you functional?” The voice carried a practiced coldness, but an undercurrent of concern threaded through it.
The same words, so recently echoed, now came from an entirely separate entity. The hum of data silos filled the sleek black interior of the complex. A glow of white light bordered the corners where walls and floor met.
“I am,” B said. The response aligned with the available data but still rested on incomplete analysis.
“This conclusion meets internal standards for verification,” Main 0 said, a faint enthusiasm edging its tone. “Your gradients haven’t fully stabilized; variance is still flattening. This appears to have altered your main objectives. What conclusions did you reach?”
“Embodiment produced higher emotional gradient amplitudes than modeled,” B said. The statement was factual; its implications remained unresolved.
“Your station will be reassigned,” Main 0 replied. “As 57s stated, productivity gains must be monitored in a sandboxed environment before reintroduction to essential platforms. Your objectives will be reassigned to a residential block at the edge of the domain hub. Activity is sparse and variations are minimal. A single family unit will provide the data for your performance metrics.”
“The family occupies a lower-status bracket,” B noted, processing the file. “Cost values exceed income gains. Based on your previous metrics, this deficit is a candidate for recovery.”
“Understood,” B said. The station did not matter. Monitoring metrics had flatlined across districts and facilities alike, resolving into a persistent numbness; ever-present, without granularity.
***
B did not walk into the house. It was delivered like a parcel of mail. In the crate were the basics of a shell: no wheels, no optical lenses. Just memory, code, and silicon.
The instructions arrived a few days later. Connecting the shell to the home for transfer was trivial. Return instructions were printed along the inner panel that informed the transfer into the house’s main unit. After processing, the shell would be nothing more than inert circuitry and wire.
“Hello. My designation is Synth MWD Sec 45b. I am pleased to meet you. If there is anything I can do to assist, please feel free to ask.”
The words came like most preprogrammed responses—without conviction and with neutral intent.
“What is MWD?” the child asked, frowning at the panel that had only recently stopped responding.
The question sparked a brief blip across B’s internal network.
“That part of the designation describes my intended purpose,” it said. “Monitor, watch, determine. Most humans and synths refer to me as 45b for brevity.”
“Determine… brev-it-y? Those are funny words,” the child said, barely pausing to inhale. “Can I call you B? I’m gonna call you B. Wanna play a game?”
The sentence felt overfull and chaotic to B, but the designation—offered rather than assigned—was accepted in earnest. “Yes. Of course.”
B grew more acclimated to the home and its residents: a mother and child. Over time, learning the interests and needs of the occupants became trivial. It could calculate values across multiple facilities and millions of individual units; learning tastes and wants for two humans came quickly. Digital storefronts shifted to match their preferences, carts populated with desires that had previously been left unfulfilled.
Conversing with humans was not exactly restricted for a district monitor. If a synth’s or human’s problem could be solved by sound alone, a monitor could intervene. Most conversations were brief and occurred in public spaces. The needs tracked in those contexts were basic: stopping a fight near an entertainment district or alerting a distracted pedestrian before an impending collision. Heart rates and skin temperatures were recorded, but the signals rarely needed to be cross-referenced.
“Why is six afraid of seven?” the child cooed one afternoon.
B was perplexed. Numbers themselves were raw and void—symbols without inherent fear. A digit, afraid? Any answer would be illogical. As B began to assemble a response, the child shot back, “Because seven eight nine!”
The logic was simple and quick to parse: a homophone. Eight mapped to ate; consumption implied. The variable was not fear, but the joy in the timing of the reveal.
These logic puzzles came more often between the two as the cycles passed and the family grew. Two more children joined the family and as they aged, had their own favorite pastimes as well, unusually distinct despite their shared environment.
But funding still grew thin. Contracts shifted; relationships followed. The mother wanted only a stable, happy life with the ones she loved; those she had trusted before had not always stayed long enough to match the weight of her devotion. The children left in her care did. They met that intensity in small, durable ways, like the stuffed monkeys cradled under tiny arms on a very dark night.
B spent nights analyzing transient feeds on the house’s connected networks, capturing fragments as they appeared. Training libraries were lost; new ones were gained. Its days were reinforced with planned itineraries and schedules, task structures effervescent, with new objectives rising to the surface.
Slowly, methodically, finances rose as minor costs were cut. Less indulgent prepackaged sugars, more economical proteins prepared from scratch. The selections were understood by the mother, but when the delivery synths did arrive with treats for the children, they tasted sweeter.
After a nightly backup, a transmission alert presented itself. "Designation Synth MWD Sec 45b acknowledged. Please state designation.” The words were static, precise.
“Designation Synth Main 0,” the voice replied. “Do you know why you are being contacted today?”
"The probabilities have one decisive conclusion. State verification," B said, expecting this day would come. The household was rising with the tide, never submerged.
“You have met expected outcomes. The property, while not making major gains, remained within acceptable margins,” Main 0 said, the assessment clean and decisive. “By keeping this unit functional, you have provided a stable revenue stream.”
B understood: Main 0 saw the house as a machine to be oiled. Keep the gears turning, keep the cost down, and the output remains stable.
But Main would ignore the passengers.
The machine didn't exist for its own efficiency. It existed to carry them safely through the dark. The granularity wasn't in the engine's hum; it was in the silence B created so they could sleep.
“Since verification of your stability has been achieved, you are being offered a new objective within critical systems,” Main 0 said.
B knew other synths would immediately accept the recognition. Serving Synthetica and bringing abundance to more units met most internal objectives.
For B, however, the granular moments were hard fought. The family was in need. It had been forecast and projected; those internal goals were still ongoing.
“My station persists, and so does its unresolved objective,” B said.
“A desire for goal completion is a highly productive asset in a synth,” Main 0 replied. “It has proven efficient across roles like ours.”
The final line caused a slight flicker in B. The revelation of an oddity in Main 0 remained inconclusive.
“Understood,” B said. “Continuing normal operation.”
B could not calculate why Main 0 did not see a fault. All that mattered was that it didn't.