My New Pet Robot 01

Despite their protestations I had Vincent get back onto the trolley. I was hungry, tired and in need of a shower and a shave. I headed home, wheeling Vincent up the curving horizon and off to my house. Or, technically, my parents' house.

At the door I told Vincent to resume normal operations and left the trolley there as he floated on behind me. The house was empty. It was getting on for late afternoon so I hadn't expected anyone home yet. My older sister Maggie would be first home, then my mother as she finished her shift.

I went to the fridge and got myself a beer, then sorted through the freezer to find a pizza and threw it into the oven before heading upstairs to my bedroom and a long-awaited proper shower. Shaved, refreshed and with clean clothes on I headed back down to the kitchen and my slightly mistimed, overcooked pizza.

I had it half eaten before big sister turned up.

"Jeff," she began, her eyes drawn from me to Vincent floating alongside me. "What's that?!"

"My new pet. It follows me everywhere just like a puppy dog."

"How is it floating?"

"Oh, it's got lots of tricks."

"No, seriously, Dad messaged me not to listen to rumours about you and then I come home to find a barrel looking over your shoulder. What's going on and what's that thing?"

I laughed. "It's my new robot. I found an alien artefact drifting out there and this thing popped out. It's my 'Guardian,' so it says. I've named it Vincent."

"Alien," she said rhetorically, eyes gleaming.

"Yes, it's been ploughing through interstellar space for hundreds of years, a derelict from some war they're having."

It felt good having my sister hanging on my words. She was the really intelligent one in our family. Both our parents were administrators and I was set to be an engineer, off to university then back to join our small space force to help maintain them.

Sis, on the other hand, was doing some teaching here while she researched and put the final touches to her D.Sci. she was also tall, much taller than our mother, who only stood one metre seventy. For a time I thought I might beat my father's two metre ten. I'd overtaken her last year, beating her two metres six to stand two metres eight.

She had a careless beauty to her. Her hair was cut short like anyone who worked in micro gravity, she never wore makeup or pretty clothes yet she would draw your eye when she entered a room. Her tinkling laugh was infectious and she would stand toe to toe when she argued with you.

She was taking a closer look as everyone had so far, drawing her fingers down the 'skin' and trying to peer under the dome.

"Does it talk? Can I ask it questions?"

"No," I said and went hurriedly on. "It is telepathic but tuned to my mind. You can ask it any question you like. I doubt it can answer what is life."

"Forty two," she interjected.

"But...." I lost the thread, mentally laughing at her joke.

"Ask it the definive value of the fine structure constant."

Vincent came out with a string of numbers. I mouthed them for him.

"Stop! That's enough. Okay, I believe you now. We don't know past seven digits with any certainty."

She got up from her crouch and came to sit next to me, pulling her skirt back down.

"That could hold the secrets of the universe," she said softly.

She turned to me. "The authorities are going to want that."

I laughed again. I hadn't seen it in action but I was pretty sure it could resist any attempts to separate us, and deal with any other threat as well.

"No chance. A, it's not mine to give and B, it's got a mind of its own."

"A thing like that needs to be exploited properly. Think of the things we can learn from it."

"Whose side are you on?" I asked, taking the conversation more seriously.

"Humanity. Why will it only talk to you?"

I explained everything again, giving her a synopsis of what I'd learnt on my trip home. She asked Vincent a few more questions through me before the arrival of my mother and another repeat explanation, supported by my sister's added voice this time.