“Hmm?”
It was a maddeningly humid summer’s day. The discomfort index had been steadily rising in the town... and in a corner of said town, a girl had suddenly stopped with that curious noise.
The girl’s airy white dress swayed around her legs. She was a beautiful girl, almost like a fairy from folk tales, or an angel; she utterly lacked mundanity in her looks.
Her skin was like porcelain, her eyes like sapphires, and her hair like spun thread. With her standing there silently, people might even believe that she was actually a doll; some craftsman’s masterwork.
“What’s wrong, Pamil?” asked Kyouhei Nanbu, standing next to the gorgeous girl.
Officially, she was his sister by the name of Harumi Nanbu, but her true identity was that of an eccentric that called themselves a body double android of some country’s princess by the name of Pamil Terrill Karl Bergmann.
“What’s that?” she murmured.
Following her gaze, Kyouhei couldn’t see what exactly she was referring to; the scenery before them was that of a completely normal town.
“What?”
“That,” she repeated, pointing with one of her pale fingers.
He once more looked in that direction, only to furrow his brow. “It’s a garbage dump,” he answered.
Indeed, an everyday garbage dump. This one was mainly filled with oversized trash, things like old appliances and furniture, but there was also a chaotic pile of smaller objects.
It wasn’t exactly a rare sight.
However...
“That’s awful,” came the voice from his side, followed by a curtain of gold hair passing next to him. Pamil had run off for some reason.
“Hey, Pamil?!” Kyouhei called after her in surprise, but she heedlessly charged towards the mound of trash.
This wasn’t the first time she’d acted strangely, but she rarely ran off alone like that. After a moment of staring gobsmacked at her running figure, Kyouhei let out a sigh and followed after her.
“It’s awful, Kyouhei,” Pamil condemned again next to the pile. “Someone’s abandoned a dog here.”
“What...?” he asked, looking over her shoulder. What he saw had the tension leave his shoulders all at once. “...Pamil, that’s not a dog,” he told her.
He—or rather, it—was in a gap in the pile of trash. It was a dull silver, almost as if it was complaining about being stuffed in there, or claiming it wasn’t trash. On closer inspection, though, it was evident that it was neither silver nor steel; it was just painted to look that way.
Its body was plastic painted silver; the multiple locations where the paint had worn away made that clear. It was about the size of a box of tissues, and was in fact attached by its limbs into a box of that size.
Broadly speaking, you could call it a dog, but more specifically, it should also have the word ‘fake’ attached to it. While it was indeed a dog, it was an artificial one.
“It’s a robot; they were pretty popular a while back,” clarified Kyouhei.
It was something an electronics company had brought to the market. It used the latest robotic technology, so it was exceedingly expensive—half a month’s wages for a new office worker—but the robot had essentially no practical use; it was just something to cherish.
It became explosively popular a few years ago, but people got tired of it surprisingly quickly. It was a rather unavoidable result really.
Pet-shaped robots like that were made to be a substitute for an actual pet. Their sales points were the fact that they didn’t create a mess like real pets, didn’t get ill, and you could always reset them. They weren’t real pets, so when people got tired of them, they either sold them or threw them away guilt-free.
“I guess they threw it away when the boom passed,” Kyouhei remarked.
It was motionless, which clearly showed its inorganic nature. Maybe it had no charge, or was just broken.
Well, Kyouhei was rather relieved; it was far better than finding a real abandoned dog, either alive or dead.
However, Pamil reached out to the fake dog.
“Hmm... How sad.”
“Hey, what are you doing, Pamil?” he asked, but even as he did so, he could see what she was thinking. “Just so you know, you can’t take it home. Even if it was thrown away, taking it is still illegal.”
He was sure that such an action would be called something like “Fraudulent appropriation of privately owned goods.” Well, it wasn’t strictly enforced, and there probably wouldn’t be a punishment, but...
“You mean we should leave this poor dog here?” Pamil asked, turning around to look up at Kyouhei.
Kyouhei panicked slightly at the rare hint of criticism in her gaze and voice. “I mean, it’s not a dog. Well, it is, but it’s an artificial—”
“Artificial or not, a dog is a dog,” Pamil spoke bluntly over Kyouhei’s justification. “It’s not a good sign for you as a person that you changed your attitude so quickly when you found out it was a robot.”
“...I mean... you know...” Kyouhei wasn’t quite happy about being lectured on humanity by a (self-proclaimed) android.
“Am I not a person as far as you’re concerned then? In your book, if something isn’t natural, is it removed from morality and ethics?”
Pamil applied the same sense of values—those of morality and ethics—to both mechanical and biological entities. Well, it was a natural attitude for a girl that proclaimed herself an android.
But still...
“I’m sure he’s just collapsed from starvation!” she cried.
Kyouhei let out a sigh. Food for robots would be electricity, and if that ran out, then it wouldn’t be able to move. Using that interpretation, Pamil’s diagnosis wasn’t completely wrong.
She held the robot dog close to her chest, blatantly obstinate; she wouldn’t listen to anything he said.
Is it ’cause it’s a robot that she feels close to it?
Currently, he still didn’t know whether she was an actual android or a loopy girl with said delusions listening to sixth-dimensional signals.
It was true, though, that she had never once swayed from her origin as “an android made to act as the body double of the Bergmann Kingdom’s princess.” Seemingly, that formed the core of her belief system. Plus, Kyouhei knew that regardless of how absurd or ridiculous it sounded, he couldn’t just flatly deny her.
So...
“Ah, forget it, fine,” he grumbled. “Let’s take it for an examination, so we can see if it can move or not.”
If the robot dog was completely broken, then even Pamil would have to admit that it was ‘dead’ and give up on it.
That was Kyouhei’s plan, at least.
● ● ●
“Oh, this takes me back,” said Kaoruko when she first saw the robot dog on her counter. “It’s a Fred.”
Her full name was Kaoruko Houwa, the manager of the Corvette café. She looked to be in her mid-twenties, but Kyouhei didn’t know her exact age.
It was always the case, but there was a worrying lack of customers in the café. Kyouhei, however, thought that the all-wood furnishings and design of the place made time itself feel slower, so he liked it quite a bit. Coupled with the owner’s calm demeanor, it made for a relaxing and healing space. Although, thanks to that lack of customers, he could just turn up like this for some odd discussions.
“Fred? So that’s his name?” Pamil asked, stroking the robot dog’s back. Her jacket was spread out beneath it.
“It’s a pet robot with basic AI and learning algorithms. It was popular with tech enthusiasts, and so they made it a full product line. This is an ERS-12, the oldest model,” Kaoruko explained calmly.
“Oh yeah, there were different types as well,” Kyouhei added.
“There really were. There were round ones that looked like plushies, and even ones that transformed into fighter jets. They were really popular for a while, so they sold like hotcakes considering the price.”
“It was cheaper to get a real dog,” Kyouhei remarked.
You could get a real, live puppy from a pet shop for a few thousand yen. It would be much cuter too, so Kyouhei didn’t really understand why people would spend several times more money on a fake.
That being said...
“There were people that bought them because they like robots, rather than real dogs,” Kaoruko added, resting her cheek on her hand.
“Because they were robots?”
“It was like having cutting-edge tech in your house. There’s a certain appeal at least. They’re even selling those robot kits for bipeds now... At the time, it was close to making things you’d only see in manga and anime, though.”
“Right...”
“And there are apartments that don’t let you have pets. They also wanted to give people allergic to dogs the same ‘soothing.’”
“...I see, there are people who want a pet but can’t actually have one,” Kyouhei said with a nod.
“Where’d this one come from, though?” Kaoruko asked.
“It had been thrown away at the dumpsite,” he told her with a reluctant smile. “Pamil was oddly interested in it. I couldn’t tell if it was broken, though, and there aren’t any instructions, so we came to talk to you. I couldn’t think of anyone else good with machines...”
“Hmmm...?” Kaoruko let out as she surveyed the Fred. “This kind of robot often has a lot of black-boxed components, so you can’t just open it up.”
“Really?”
“They probably exchanged the whole thing when they were serviced... They stopped production a few years ago now, though, so I don’t know if we’d even be able to find the parts.” Well, that was often the case for the latest technology. “There’s nothing that looks particularly bad on the surface, so we’ll need to charge it before we can see if anything’s wrong with it,” she added.
She flipped the Fred’s chassis over and checked the serial number on its stomach. “The charger was proprietary, so I doubt we can just plug it straight into the mains,” Kaoruko pointed out.
“Damn, maybe they threw out the charger with it,” Kyouhei said.
Then...
“He needs charging? Leave it to me,” Pamil nodded, immediately reaching for it.
Electricity, Pamil, hand. Those three words passed through Kyouhei’s mind, instantly giving him a bad feeling.
“Wait a mi—”
“Royal Thunder!” A pale surge of lightning from her hand accompanied the familiar cry.
A normal person might freeze in shock or back away at the bizarre sight, but Kyouhei was long-familiar with this, and almost reflexively smacked her around the back of the head.
“Are you a moron?!” he demanded.
“Hm?” she frowned at the hit. “Is there a problem, Kyouhei?”
“Damn right there is! You’re lucky there aren’t any other customers! ...Anyway, using high voltage like a lightning bolt will break it even if it works!”
“Don’t worry, I made sure to reduce its power so Fred’s circuits wouldn’t burn out,” she declared proudly. And then... “Look!”
At the end of Pamil’s pointing finger, Fred seemed to be vibrating. Although it did look like it was going through death throes...
With a whine and creaks from the motors, Fred began to move, the noises driving home its robotic nature. Fred’s body clumsily shook back and forth as it stretched out its legs and stood up.
“Oh! He’s alive!” Pamil cried out in happiness.