It was the first cross section Mararita had ever seen, and she fainted. Her cerebral unit short-circuited, and she bent back into the bridge stretch. Her human coworker Gustav rolled his eyes and said, “You’re such a wuss!”
She blocked a reflex to rise gracefully and sucker punch him. Her new emotional intelligence update patch came with 28376 logical errors and 453 physically harmful reactions which upset her balanced psyche. Mararita stood up from the backbend, edged away from the cross section and said, her smooth rosy voice applied, “Won’t happen again, Gustav. I’ve pushed a new algorithm to switch off my emotional background while I’m in the surgery room.”
Gustav shook his head and took a swig from his water bottle.
“You are the smartest one but you still need to learn… Turn the emotions back on.”
Mararita shrugged, reversed the algorithm, wrenched her head back and gawked at the ongoing operation on a coffee service robot. Her brain short-circuited again, and this time she landed on all fours, regrouping in the process in order not to scrape Gustav.
He sighed and stretched his hand to her.
Mararita looked at it, straightened and asked, “What’s with the hand?”
“Ah,” he put his hand in his pocket, reluctant. “I always forget you aren’t human yet.”
Mararita ran the linguistic analysis of his words. She will optimize her system to become human as soon as possible. And then she will be able to look at any cross section without revolting. Maybe even at Gustav’s.