Things Done

“Étienne Arbaud, if you do not get your lazy butt out of that bed and clean up your side, I will kill you! I swear I will!”

The sleeper sighed, then rolled in his bed to face his angry roommate. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “I’m up,” he said weakly.

“Then GET UP! I’m tired of you leaving your half of the room in disarray! You buy in bulk from stores like Costco but it’s just the two of us here, so it rots! You always, and I mean always eat my snacks, and sometimes you even take the things I put my name on! That is so not cool. Dude! Wake up!” The angry roommate slapped the sleeper harshly as his eyes closed once more. “Don’t think I don’t know that it’s you who leaves the TV in the common room on all night and doesn’t flush the toilet! You better clean up your act, Arbaud, or I’ll get you kicked out of this dormitory!”

“Geez, Charles,” Étienne moaned, pulling himself out of bed. “I love you, too.”

“Love? I’d like you, Arbaud, even just a little bit, if you spent less time with your robots and more time doing your part!”

“Chill,” Étienne murmured, “just…chill for a second, okay? I have a headache.”

The remark seemed like it was going to set Charles off again, but he quickly found he was sick and tired of admonishment. He opened his mouth, closed it, then turned and quickly left the room. His departure almost made Étienne deflate a little, since it was evident that he was giving up on him, but Étienne found he cared more about Sarah than his roommate right about now. He jumped out of bed right onto a semiconductor and winced, making a mental note to listen to Charles and clean up before he returned from his classes. He carefully made his way to his desk and started up his laptop.

Sarah was the interface system that he was constructing for his Computer Science class. She was a final semester project and he liked to believe that she was a masterpiece. She was voice-activated and recognized all kinds of speech patterns. He’d made sure she couldn’t be confused by accents by asking a myriad of students to come in one day and speak paragraphs out loud, so he was now confident in her ability to make sense of voices. She wasn’t simply voice recognition software, though—if she were, he would get an F for sure because everyone knew he could do better.

Sarah was the prototype of a new operating system for a special type of computer he had built. She, and the entire machine she came with, took up the space of a tiny chip embedded in Bud, the helper robot Étienne had built when he was eleven. For now, Sarah would use Bud’s microphone and speakers to interact. He hadn’t yet figured out a way to put all the features he wanted into the block, which was about three square millimeters in size. Sarah, when activated, would project an interactive holographic screen before Bud so that users could have a hands-free, mobile computer. No mouse or keyboard was required because Sarah’s learning software allowed her to efficiently transcribe whatever came her way.

Étienne had planned for many more system updates, but this late in the game he would have to settle for less. The project was due on Friday, only two days away, and he had been procrastinating for ages. He took one dubious look at the floor. His side of the room was, in fact, riddled with all sorts of odds and ends, but it could wait. Sarah was more important.

After an hour or so of adjusting the programming, Étienne booted up Bud to test her out. Bud was slightly out-of-date, but he was as important to his creator as stuffed animals were to most little kids. The robot was getting a slower, and he could, Étienne often noticed, use a little trim here and there to slim down the bulkiness of the early years, but he was a part of Étienne’s life. All this was coursing through his creator’s mind as Bud powered on.

“Ready for instruction,” came the robot’s automatic drone.

“Alright, Bud,” Étienne grinned. “Here’s Sarah.” He stuck the chip onto the space between Bud’s eyes like usual and waited for his new OS to connect. As soon as it was ready he called up the interactive screen and tried out some of the new features. Everything was going as planned until the screen went black.

“Hey!” Étienne cried out, alarmed. He knew Bud had been charged overnight, so the battery was full. Had some sort of virus been attached to Sarah? He instantly began worrying for Bud. Sarah was an important project, but Bud was a lifetime pal. He was ready to start hyperventilating when he saw the screen suddenly change to white and a figure seem to be floating closer through the empty space.
The figure turned out to be a man. A very handsome one. The confused student could only watch as the man came closer and closer to the screen, smiling all the while. Once his face took up the entire space, he did something with his eyebrows and suddenly the screen was gone, to be replaced by a full holographic image of the well-dressed man. Life-sized.

“Q-Qui êtes vous?” Étienne cried, falling down onto the messy floor, lucky to not land on anything painful. He reverted to his native language, as he always did when he was utterly discombobulated. “Wh-Who are you?” he repeated.

“My, my, dear Étienne,” the man said, warmly smiling down at him. “You don’t need to be so frightened. I simply wanted to inform you of a meeting I would very much like you to attend. I have, you see, invited some people I believe it would be useful for you to be introduced to.”

Étienne stared up at the stranger, his unease slowly dissipating under the heat of the thousand-watt smile. “Why me? Who do you want me to meet?” he asked. The stranger’s smile became even more powerful.

“Étienne, you must already know that you’re gifted. I hardly need to tell you; that would be redundant. Now, as for those who you will be seeing, that’s a secret. I wouldn’t want to expose all my secrets before the time comes,” he replied, winking. Étienne was about to ask another question, but the stranger pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to him.

“I can’t take that,” Étienne informed him, completely calm now. “You’re only a hologram.” The man’s eyes twinkled, but he said nothing more. Étienne tentatively reached out a hand to take the message, fully expecting his words to be validated. The shock of actually feeling a tangible object caused him to gasp, and slide back further on the floor. The hologram disappeared, the paper dropped, and Étienne once more found himself alone. After a while, he reached out for the paper. Before he could unfold it, Sarah spoke up.

“Salutations, Monsieur. Would you like to access your last saved webpage?”

Étienne looked from the note, to the robot, to back again. Placing the folded paper into his pocket, he responded “Yes, Sarah, that would be much appreciated.” And he continued his work.