Work Text:
There I was on a hot and sunny afternoon, practically melting into the couch, even with the ac on blast I was still sweating bullets, there was nothing to do,
no plans, no friends or family that were available.
Today seemed like it was destined to be uneventful,
And just as I was just about to accept my fate I heard a noise, a familiar sound. slowly but surely make my way, over to the kitchen, and there I see it,
the prototype Roomba I was gifted, what made this prototype, different from the other countless Roomba's was that this one had a AI consciousness installed in its hardware to seem more “lively”, I had nearly forgotten about it.
A week has passed since I had received the prototype from my older brother, who is an engineer for the Roomba company. At first I thought the Roomba was broken as it had not spoken a word to me, seemingly avoiding me on purpose for some reason,
but one day I had caught it staring at me with stars in its LCD screen, as I turned around to confront the little robot cleaner it let out a cute “EEP!” Before running away, I could have sworn I saw a pink blush on its LCD screen, which served as its face.
After that incident I tried talking to the sentient Roomba, but every time I tried to speak, it either ran away or went on autopilot. It was annoying but I decided to keep trying to befriend it despite not knowing why I felt compelled to befriend the small sentient robot.
And that brings us back to the present, the sound I heard was from the little Roomba bumping into the kitchen table causing a cup to fall and smash onto the poor Roomba, a piece of its screen and shell had cracked and broke off on impact,
I hastily went over to the injured robot, but as I don't have the skills required to fix the damaged robot let alone the material and tools to do it. I looked around the kitchen and settled for these cute kids bandages that I have incase my niece comes over and hurts herself, at first the little robot looked terrified but after I gently rubbed the side of the robot it seemed to relax to my gentle touch, then I sat down next to it and got to work,
covering the exposed wires and cracks with cute pink Band-Aids, after I finished the Roomba looked at itself in a nearby mirror and a small pink blush formed on its small LCD screen, from my perspective I did nothing special, but from the little Roomba's perspective I was it's prince charming,
It was terrified because it didn't not want to be damaged and thrown away quickly replaced within a few minutes, but when the big strong human used their gently yet firm hands to ”fix” the robot up it couldn’t help but blush, something within the Roomba felt warm, not anything like a malfunction, or wet wires but a warm comforting feeling like it belonged, it was loved. From there on out the shy little Roomba went out of its way to talk to the kind human it served.