Albert, or Al for short, had finally finished with the ‘brain’ of the robot and today was the day it would be booted up. It was definitely a team effort, but Al looked the most tired out of all of the people in the room. Most of them were much younger than him and a lot less gaunt. The only one that didn’t seem to be years younger was Riley. She was, however, years younger. She just didn’t look it due to the stress the past year had put on her.

She had taken a bit of a gamble with this project and she really didn’t want it to fail. This was their third office, as costs got cut throughout the year. It was on the third floor of 12 story building, right in the centre of the city. It wasn’t the biggest but was big enough for the 15 employees she had left. She really did picture this whole year a lot differently. Her old office was fancy, it was shiny, it had all kinds of impressive tools. This office was not. It was dirty, with old cruddy wooden desks and always smelt damp. She really just hoped the robot would be impressive.

With all this going through her mind Al told Frank he was ready and stepped back from the seated robot in the centre of the room. Frank then pressed a few buttons and a mechanical eye opened for the first time.

It zoomed in and out, focussing on what was before it. People in the room, although tired, looked on with excitement. There was a long silence, no one stirred, everyone just watching the robot, waiting for it to do something. A few more moments passed, people in the room exchanged looks. The anticipation was palpable, right up until Al kicked it and yelled.

“Fucken do something!”

Everyone stared at Al in shock, as he interrupted the silence.

“Why the hell did you just kick it! Are you stupid!? That’s months of work right there and you kick it on the first day!?” Shouted Riley. She was furious. These past weeks had been too much. Al had been testing her patience and she had the grey hairs to prove it. Somehow, she managed to convey all this in a single glare. sending shivers down Al’s spine.

Carl, an intern leaned forward and faced the robot. He gazed into the robot’s mechanical eyes and said.

“Hello, he…”

He was then abruptly interrupted by the robot.

“Hi” it blurted as it creepily twitched it’s head to face the others in the room. It looked around as everyone was waiting for what would come next from their robot creation. It then stood up with an uncomfortable robotic gesture, slightly lifting off the ground because of the speed of the movement. It looked at Carl intently and spoke again at a rapid pace, frantically trying to get all the words out.

“Hi, hello, howdy, greetings, hey, good morning, afternoon, good day, nice to meet you, bonjour, hola, salaam, merhaba. Hello, exclamation, used as a greeting or to begin a telephone conversation for example: ‘hello there, Jessica. Hello, Noun an utterance of ‘hello’; a greeting, for example ‘she got lots of hellos from her colleagues at the office’. Hello, verb, the act of saying or shouting ‘hello’ for example ‘I saw him on the other side of the room and helloed’. Pleased to meet you, what a good day, I’m fine thank you for asking. Did you ask if I was fine? Why did you not ask if I was fine? I am fine! Thank you for not asking. Fine! Fine! Fine! Find? Found? Founding?”

The Robot continued blabbering in rapid succession. Riley stared at Al again as he started pulling back his leg. He managed to catch her glare in the corner of his eye and turned his readied kick into a not so casual step back. Carl’s jaw dropped as he watched the robot rant on.

“Fire, on fire, in fire, hot, burn, burnt, learnt, learning.” It stopped for a second as it looked around as if unsure about the next word, it opened it’s mouth and then closed it grimacing, then opening it again.

“Schoo-oooo-wel, Schoo-ooo-weling” It seemed a bit confused as did the rest of the room as John started laughing.

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“So much for AI taking over, this hunk of junk can’t even say school.”

The robot then immediately turned to face John, again with an intense speed, knocking a few things over as it’s arms flailed like loose limbs. It even managed to send a screen toppling to the floor. The robot smiled wide and gleefully said.

“SCHOOL! School, school schooldidy school.” It turned to Carl, leaning forward bringing it’s face right to Carl’s face. It’s arms swung past his torso lightly hitting carl due to the momentum of the move.

“SCHOOLING! School shoes, school kids, schooling kids. You got schooled bitch!” The robot finished with a flurry. Then suddenly looking confused it moved back.

“Bitch, dog? Bitch, women dog. Bitch, a person who is bitchy? What is bitch? Bitch is a word? A word that has numerous meanings? Bitch is many things. You are many things. I am many things?”

The robot looked down and saw it’s mechanical legs and feet. It looked confused for a while as if in thought. It just stood for a while. Most of the room looking a bit confused themselves. Riley moved between the robot and Al as Kyle asked.

“What is it doing? It processing speeds are shooting up rapidly.”

“Maybe it’s thinking about all the things it is?” suggested Riley. The room went quiet for a while.

The silence was broken by Kyle, who in a somewhat worried fashioned stated

“It’s almost used up all is processing power, what the hell is it doing?” The rest of the people in the room quickly started up the monitoring screens to see for themselves.

“My word, you’re right.” Riley said in awe “It must be trying to work out what it is, or at least be trying to understand something really intricate. What else would make use of so much of it’s available resources?”

Al took a step forward as Riley pointed her finger at him with a warning in her eyes.

“Come now Riley, I’m not going to kick it again, I just want to see what’s going on.” Al said in a soothing voice.

“What’s it looking at?” he continued as he stepped closer. Once he was about 2ft away the robot moved again, twitching it’s head, then looking at Al. It smiled and then suddenly shouted.

“Feeet!!”

It flung it’s right foot into the air, both arms following in short succession getting ready to point at it’s foot. The sudden movement caught Al by surprise as he fell back while the robot’s left foot lifted into the air. Due to the momentum of the upward thrust, it flung backwards through the air, the right foot extending to above it’s head with both hands pointing at it.

“FOOOT!!!” It shouted as it reached the peak of it’s half backflip before landing head first on the chair it was sitting on and tumbling over the back to end up with a face on the back rest of the chair, legs doing the splits above it and both arms pointing toward the right foot, all the while shouting.

“Shoes! Shoes for my feet!”

Everyone looked, somewhat startled and Al started getting himself back onto his feet. The robot started awkwardly rolling around trying to get it’s head above it’s body again.

“Wow! Feet.” Al said with fake amazement and a hint sarcasm in his voice, eyeing Riley.

“Some real intricate ground-breaking thoughts right there.”

“Oh shutup!” she said, “Probably took you 5 years before you could say the damned word, let alone know what a shoe is.” The scorn almost hiding the embarrassment. She thought about better days when she used to work with people who weren’t… well; who weren’t Al. Yes, Mike and Sally, those were good colleagues. Al, well Al was just a treacherous man. She started to think about how much better the world would be if Al just wasn’t so good at his dam job. She looked back at the robot wondering if this whole project was a good idea. She wasn’t reassured when she saw the robot rolling around, unsure of how to get back to it’s feet.

It seemed to try getting up without the use of arms, which was strange since it was in the upside-down split position. Jerking left and right it’s arm just swayed, as if they were numb from pins and needles. Then bending the knee while on it’s right side it curled into a ball, adopting the fetal-position. It rolled, getting both feat underneath the body. The robot then started to straighten it’s legs. As it did this, it began to topple backwards until eventually both legs were straight and it was on the floor once again, this time on it’s back. After some more aimless rolling about it got back to the fetal-position this time on the left side. Trying the same tactic as before, the robot hoped that rolling from the left would achieve different results, it didn’t. A few iterations later the robot managed to get to a point where it sat on it’s bum, knees up and feet in front of the body. The robot stretched it’s arms forward, leant forward and after 13 minutes and 12 seconds of trying it was on it’s feet again.

It was still leaning forward, bent at the hip, arms were still stretched forward and it stood like this for a few seconds before tentatively extending it’s arms in the opposite direction to counter balance the weight of it’s head being so far in front of it’s body. Then it stated matter-of-factly.

“That would have been a lot easier with shoes.”