"See? Gotta frame everything in terms of bar work." Then Ricky clapped his hands together and said, "Great! Let's just drop these sacks off out back and get you set up." They walked the length of the warehouse, Ricky happily greeting people that Tapper logged as potential customers, and exited out the back to find a unique structure. Glass and clear plastic panels of various sizes had been carefully attached together to create a large greenhouse, and inside a lone attendant was closely moving between rows upon rows of plants. It was actually the first plant life Tapper had seen, and although none of them were bearing fruit nor flowers they gave a wild shock of color to the drab surroundings.

Phanya rapped on the door to the greenhouse but didn't wait before shouldering it open. "Hey, Wiessa! Got a real good haul for you today." The other person, a middle-aged woman taller and thinner than even Phanya with dried leaves intertwined in her messy hair, flinched at the sudden noise and shot Phanya an annoyed look. Either not noticing or enjoying the reaction, Phanya continued, "Found a whole pile of dirt in a shipping container! Couldn't even fit it all." She kicked the wagon of sacks and Wiessa gave a happy cooing sound before digging in. She yanked open the top bag, grabbed a whole fistful of dirt, and started giving it a very intimate examination.

Everyone else essentially ceased to exist for the next few moments. Wiessa crumbled the soil between her fingers, examined it under a magnifying glass, even put it up to her face for several deep inhales. "Hmm, not much moisture. Some micro life, though. Good nitrogen levels, trace clay. I can work with this." Remembering that she had company she looked up for a brief moment of eye contact and repeated, "I can work with this. Water's getting thin, though. Thank you. I'll add my payment to the pot."

"Always, Ms. Wiessa!" Ricky then hooked an arm through Tapper's and tugged the robot forward. "We also acquired this bartender robot to help out, so if you ever need help with, erm, drink orders you just let him know." Wiessa slowly blinked twice before explaining that she didn't drink, and Phanya pulled her aside to quietly explain the necessary lingo as Ricky turned back to Tapper. "Like… some drinks have mealworms in them, right?"

"Affirmative, every major culture has at least one well-known cocktail containing a mealworm garnish, and several liquors use them as part of their fermenting process." Tapper started to list off drink examples before Proprietor Ricky cut it off.

Wiessa did not seem enthusiastic, but wasn't about to turn down any assistance. "Excellent, you can help farm the mealworms. Tents are next to here. No one ever wants to help with that part. Barrels on the other end are for filtering water. Find something for it to filter for 'drink orders' since we're always short on water." And with that explanation apparently finished, Wiessa dismissed everyone and turned back to her dirt.

[New Quest: Get Some Grub

Help out with the mealworm farm]

[New Quest: Where There's a Well There's a Way

Find a new source of water]

Phanya shrugged and shooed everyone out, leaving behind all the sacks and pulling the wagon behind her. "Yeah, you won't get much conversation out of Wiessa. She's harmless, just totally obsessed with dirt since you can apparently eat some plants besides corn? I don't know, I tried once and those things gave me hives. But Ms. Ooo-rahl asks us to keep an eye out for dirt, so we do. Think she's about done teaching yet?"

Back into the warehouse, the trio moved to one corner that had been walled off with a bit more privacy than the other sections, with a sign on that door that read 'Classroom — Ms. Uxral'. Tapper made a note of the corrected spelling as Phanya cracked open the door to peek in, before opening it all the way to reveal a room with mismatched tables and chairs stuffed wherever they would fit. Likewise the walls were crowded with drawings on the wood paneling, alphabets and mathematical formulas and grammatical rules written in neat rows but large enough to be seen from anywhere in the room.

Like the other encounters so far there was a single occupant going about their duties, this one an older woman fetching scuffed tablets from each desk and collecting them into neat stacks. Her back was turned and a mildly stressed muttering was punctuated by the twitching of a long tail and pointed ears, both covered in tawny fur, indicating she was one of the hybrids with a 72% chance of belonging to the felidae family? The whiskers and vertical pupil slits confirmed this as she turned around, but her concerned face split into a wide grin as soon as she saw the proprietors. The sharpened teeth would have been terrifying under the right context, but here the expression carried only warmth. "Ah, there you two are! You just missed the rest of the kids. Because you were off making a new friend, I see?"

"Sorry Ms. Uxral, we were getting Tapper here set up for everyone. He's a bartending robot, so he can handle any 'drinks' and 'orders' anyone in town needs, along with cleaning the town square 'bar'. And I saw that he's got lots of games programmed in as well, so anytime anyone is feeling lonely he can keep them company! Tapper, this is Ms. Uxral, whenever your proprietors aren't around you listen to her before anyone else, alright?"

Tapper blinked confirmation at Proprietor Ricky's command and stood at attention to the hybrid woman. "Greetings, Sub-Proprietor Uxral. This unit is ready to serve your needs. Would you like a drink?"

"Uhhh, thank you but not right now. Ricky dear, is it possible for your little robot friend to sound a bit more… like a bartender and less like a robot?" The human teenager smacked his forehead and realized the social parameters must still be stuck in safe mode, so he turned around to open a panel in Tapper's torso and expose a screen to access its settings. While Ricky was distracted Tapper could see Uxral pull Phanya aside for a conversation in hushed but harsh tones. "Phanya, what the starless hell is this?"

"I know, I know." Phanya's hands were already up to defend against the assault. "I had to break up a fight and when I could catch up Ricky was already about to sign off on a lease with the scavvers."

"Phase me sideways, Phanya —"

"It's not my job to watch him like a child! I stopped him and renegotiated, but it still cost most of the day's salvage and some coin too. He just, he really thinks he found something with this piece of skrat that'll help with the heavy lifting. It already accepted both of us as co-proprietors and it hasn't caught fire yet, so we might as well just play along for now. Or you can take away his new favorite toy."

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

"Alright, I found the settings!" Ricky said, drawing the attention of the other two sapients.

Tapper felt a jolt as a new set of personality controls took over, and although its face was still frozen its eyebrow panels started wiggling overtime to compensate. "Well hello, could I offer a nice deep tissue massage for your beautiful joints, Mistress Phanya? Or a cold bowl of milk for the lovely Mistress Ooh-h-hral?" The bartender put a full body gyration on emphasis at the end, turning the stylized 'h' sound in her name into an exaggerated feline growl.

Uxral laughed at the sudden mood shift but Phanya broke immediately. "Ewwww ew ew ew! Change it Ricky, don't let it ever flirt like that again!" It took several moments before the human teenager could calm down from his hysterical laughter and access the settings again, not helped by Tapper being stuck in its gyrating animation and Phanya's squeamish discomfort. Together they scrolled through several personalities, from brash and sarcastic to servile and sycophantic, but couldn't agree on any one personality so instead set the personality matrix to develop on its own. The one thing that they did manually set was after Phanya insisted on not having the robot refer to anyone as 'Proprietor' anymore, though replacement options were surprisingly limited.

"Goodness me, is the sun already starting to set?" Uxral suddenly asked herself when the rapidly diminishing natural light finally registered. "Guess we were having too much fun. But alright Ricky, you've already put in all the effort to get this robot working for us, so we might as well put it to work. Tapper, we're about to have the dinner rush from everyone coming home from work, so I want you to help the kids get the cafeteria set up and cleaned. Then we'll see how you handle food, does that sound good?"

[New Quest: First Course Impressions

Set up and run the bar]

Tapper beeped a confirmation and snapped an arm up in a crisp salute. "Aye-aye, Miss Uxral! Let's give the people a hearty welcome home."

Fableton life quickly fell into a routine for the robot. Every day before dawn a majority of the town would wake up and either board a modified cargo hauler to the mines or walk approximately two kilometers to the recycling plant, which means before then Tapper was up and cooking meals with whatever ingredients that were available in the communal pot. This almost always included mealworms, and once it was clear that Tapper didn't mind shoveling the rotting biological matter then everyone else was happy to assign the duty to him. Once the townspeople had left for work Tapper would help farm the mealworms, clean up the warehouse, shovel anything not fit for recycling into the incinerator, and sometimes assist Miss Uxral in teaching a small class of children.

There were several youths in town, and it was mentioned in passing that having any amount of children as natural births and not contract transfers was a point of pride for Fableton. But there were only about a dozen children that were actually permitted to attend school, and Miss Uxral did not mince words with her displeasure that the fraction of children allowed to learn anything was so small. Social programming would instruct Tapper to then urge the customer into a more profitable line of thought regarding not wasting resources, but as a sub-proprietor the robot was not allowed to disagree with anything that did not directly go against the interests of Bowson Incorporated®.

Phanya and Ricky were among her oldest and brightest students, although when asked the former would never describe herself as an academic success story. She very clearly did not understand computers and instead was constantly on the move, running back and forth across town to move what needed to be moved and stop any disagreements when the lack of formal law enforcement made itself apparent. It was Ricky that was always devouring every working datapad he could get his hands on and tinkering with simple machines, even though he nor anyone else in town had yet to find powered tools for him to use.

The only other person that Tapper saw on a daily basis was an elder reptilian named Aazran that spent nearly all his time in the warehouse, nesting in a corner while he stared devoutly at a tablet. Or rather, stared off into space while facing the tablet. He was technically watching advertisements, Aazran curtly explained that his entire job was to watch ads on this tablet all day every day to save up enough watchtime for movie night on the one free network channel. He didn't enjoy it, but losing his cybernetic arm combined with his age left the reptilian believing he couldn't do much else. So if the robot could please find him a new arm that would be super, but otherwise don't distract him from this duty, thank you very much.

And that led to the odd quest pop-ups that Tapper's system kept displaying. Every time he was given a novel task from a client it would be accompanied by a quest with a silly title, but only the first time and regardless of how long it took completion was met with a +1 XP notification. Ricky had been inside Tapper's system several times over the next week and never once mentioned it, so as far as the robot was concerned it must not be worth mentioning. Surely, it must be part of some Bowson Incorporated® task tracking software that would allow his proprietors to spend this XP whenever it suited them.

XP as Fableton's currency would possibly explain why no one ever seemed to pay for any of the food or drink he doled out, and Miss Uxral had to command Tapper more than once to not ask for payment before or after he rendered services. It went against his core programming to service freeloaders, so the only logical explanation was if transactions were prepaid by the proprietors and XP was the currency.

One night Tapper was in the hidden shipping container he had first awoken in, using his awkward vacuum arm to clean the last of the dust from the corners of the compartment. It wasn't a necessary task, but a customer had given a quest to "Clean this skrat y'all call home up" and Mister Ricky considered the container to be his home away from home.

[Quest: Another One Bites the Dust Mites complete! +1 XP]

[XP 10/10

LEVEL UP!]

There was a sudden ringing sound, a quick sharp ding that had no source yet was loud enough to rattle some smaller decorations off the wall.

[Welcome to level 1!]

[Name: Tapper]

[Ancestry: Golem (Metal)]

[Background: NA]

[Class: None (_/_)]

[HP: NA]

[Dodge: 12]

[Armor: 1]

[Strength: 4]

[Dexterity: 2]

[Constitution: NA]

[Logic: NA]

[Awareness: NA]

[Willpower: NA]

[ERROR!]

[Character sheet is not completed

Please complete character sheet before continuing]

Tapper was at a loss for what to do. The robot tried to dismiss these pop ups but the recent slew wouldn't leave the display panel no matter what command he gave them. They were so overwhelming that he couldn't even see what he was doing, there was no way for him to leave the container and find Ricky for help. After several minutes of fumbling, another pop up appeared to overlay all of the others.

[Randomly generate remainder of character sheet? Y/N]

Unable to weigh the pros and cons, unable to ask for help, and unable to formulate any idea what was going on, Tapper chose what would hopefully make the pop ups go away and focused on the Y option. Instantly pure thought hit his processor, so many overwhelming concepts that everything went blinding white and then blinked out.