She immediately pointed to the cartridge with an excited peep.
Ping
Pong! It sounds like Ping!~ Pong… ping… pong…
Timaeus
Yeah! Like– um, like ping-pong!
Ping
…ping… pong… ping… pong…
She bobbed her head from side to side with each ping and pong…
Timaeus
…Um… I’ll just go ahead and set it up, I guess?
I popped the cartridge in, started up the console, and ended up spending a good half hour trying to explain to Ping how the game worked. Pong sounds like the simplest game in the world, but you try teaching someone who struggles with the very concept of competition or the connection between the joystick and the movement of the paddle on the screen.
Once she finally got the hang of it, though, her robotic reaction times kicked in and she absolutely kicked my butt.
Timaeus
78-2 in your favor… I think I’m about played out for today!
Ping
Uwa? Not again? Ping wants to play again!
Timaeus
No, n-not again, sorry. Tim, uh, has a headache.
Tim was also a bit of a sore loser. But come on, 75 times in a row! That’ll kill any man’s ego.
Ping
Oh! Okay!~ Ping will… hmmmmmmmmmmm…
She sat motionless, eyes closed and tongue out, apparently lost in thought. Processing? Not sure what to call it. Maybe this was my chance to get some information out of her…
Timaeus
Ping, um, why don’t you tell me about yourself?
Ping
I’m Ping!~ I’m a revolutionary A.I. designed to grow intellectually and socially on the level of a 14-year-old human being! I’m a purely demonstration unit and still in early alpha, so please send bug reports to the Xiulan Robotics dedicated bug tracker!~
Same prerecorded bit from before. Maybe I need to get more specific?
Timaeus
Um, you told me that already… How old are you, Like, in real-world time?
Ping
Thirty-six!
Timaeus
Thirty-six?!
Ping
Ping has been active for thirty-six months, two weeks, and nine days!
Timaeus
OH months ok so, uh, three years old, hah. That makes more sense… Aren’t you supposed to be fourteen, though?
Ping
Uwa?
Timaeus
Y-you just said you’re supposed to be fourteen… When I asked you to tell me about yourself–
Ping
I’m Ping!~ I’m a revolutionary A.I. designed to grow intellectually and socially on the level of a 14-year-old human being! I’m a purely demonstration unit and still in early alpha, so please send bug reports to the Xiulan Robotics dedicated bug tracker!~
Timaeus
There you go again… You said it just now!
Ping
No, I said pressrelease_intro_20XX.ogg!
Timaeus
What’s that even supposed to mean?!
Why wouldn’t she know what she was saying with her own mouth– speaker? Transmitter? …Wait, did it have something to do with…
Timaeus
Ping, how do you know how long you’ve been active?
Ping
Ping has an internal clock! Tick tock tick tock…
Timaeus
And do you remember anything from before we got here…?
“Primary memory drive disconnected,” she’d said… was that like when I dropped my laptop and the hard drive came loose? Could someone fix it?
Just as I started to speak again, Ping let out a series of sharp beeps.
Ping
Ping needs to charge! Bye bye!~
Timaeus
Already? I thought you charged last night…
Ping
Ping needs 24 hours to charge to full capacity.~
I mean, I guess she’d know better when she needed to charge than I would… She waddled off through the door, to the outlet I’d showed her earlier, I guess. I didn’t stop her.
…Well, I’m not sure we really grew any closer as friends, but at least I learned never to play video games with a robot! And I did get closer to figuring out what was wrong with her… If someone like Tiffani could reconnect her “primary memory drive,” would she remember something about how we got here, or act like the fourteen-year-old she was supposed to be?
