“Yeah why,” he asks tightly, rolling up his sleeves.
I swear it looks like the man didn't have sex. He looks more pent up than he probably was before.
Glancing over to Fabian's station, Gabby's already gone, having taken her cart.
“I don't know, it just looks like you're vibrating,” I tell him warily.
Lincoln, already strapping on his facial trackers, barely looks at me. “I'm fine. Load the last overnight log. The one where it hesitated on the laundry.”
My fingers tap my tablet, causing the lights to dim further.
Auralis stands motionless in the center of the mock living room set; cluttered floor: scattered clothes, toys, books, a half-folded blanket draped over a chair.
Auralis powers on. Its eyes glow soft cobalt, its voice that calm and soothing lilt that disarms people.
“Good morning, Sarah, Lincoln.”
“Morning,” Lincoln says roughly.
“How was your—” the robot starts but Lincoln quickly skips past.
“Beginning household assistance protocol,” the robot confirms.
Lincoln's voice is clipped as he gives it commands. “Initiate laundry retrieval task. Target: red sweater on floor, left quadrant.”
Auralis steps forward smoothly at first, then its head jerks slightly, scanning the mess. It reaches for the red sweater… but its hand closes around a pair of black leggings instead.
“There it is. Delay spike,” I let Lincoln know.
Lincoln leans closer to the monitor. “Latency hit 2.8 seconds. It’s second-guessing the visual parse again.”
Auralis lifts the leggings, pauses mid-motion, arm frozen at a strange angle, then abruptly swings the garment like it’s trying to fold it mid-air. The motion is too sharp; the fabric whips and knocks a small lamp off the side table. Glass shatters.
“Shit—” I mutter as my heart rate lurches. “Override! Code-7-0!”
I lunge forward as Auralis’s arm keeps moving in a glitchy loop, servos whining.
“Sarah! What the hell are you doing? The kill switch!”
“Sorry,” I fumble like an idiot as I grab the emergency kill switch on the wall.
I hard press the red button, causing Auralis to freeze mid-swing, arm still outstretched, leggings dangling like a surrender flag.
The chamber lights flick back to normal. Silence except for my breathing.
“That was… not good,” I state the obvious.
“Yeah, that's an understatement,” Lincoln says, looking as tired as I feel suddenly.
“What the hell was that?” Tom enters.
“Just working out kinks,” Lincoln says as he stares at the frozen robot. “It miscalculated the fabric weight. Thought the leggings were heavier and tried to compensate with the wrong torque response.”
“Torque response?” Tom asks as he steps in, nudging a glass shard with his shoe. “We tightened the dynamic mass estimation loop three patches ago. Shouldn’t the inertial comp layer have caught that by now? We’re supposed to be sub-2-second on adaptive grip across variable payloads.”
“We tightened the clutter filter last week. It shouldn’t be drifting this hard,” I cut in.
Lincoln rubs his temple. “Run the log. I want to see the exact frame it lost context.”
