Hound55 — Roleplayer Guild

T H E   A B O D E   O F   T E D   K O R D
Present Day   |   Boston, Massachusetts

“Shower, set to default.”

“Default setting selected.  Shower to… one… hundred and… six… degrees Fahrenheit.  Enjoy.”

Ted Kord leant against the wall and let the hot water pelt down on the back of his head,  wash down his neck and back and spiral the drain.  He noted, with some surprise, that there was no real pain.  Some tightness from using muscles he hadn’t used since he took high school gymnastics, but no real harsh pain.  There was also no blood circling the drains, or guilt.

He felt fine.

Nothing like the movies.  In the movies there’d be blood circling the drain, his mind would be swimming with guilt and the hero would be some sullen, brooding badass.

Ted felt none of these things.  In fact, the adrenaline left him feeling pretty full of pep.  Like he could go do karaoke or free-run across the whole city.

It was remarkable just how easily he’d taken down the group the media was dubbing ‘The Squid Gang’.  The ten men were well armed, but were all wearing night vision goggles.  He used their equipment against them and burst in, fired off a burst of bright light from his B.B. gun and then proceeded to beat all hell out of ten blinded men staggering around in the dark, subduing them before letting police know the floor was cleared, where he exited the same way he came in – the skywire of the Bug, which he kept well above cloud cover.

He almost felt guilty about how easy it had been.

As for his equipment, everything went off without a hitch.  No issues with the B.B. gun or the Bug.  His uniform hadn’t really been stress tested either.  Which, whilst good for Ted’s confidence, didn’t really give him much in the way of information he could use to get better if he was going to be doing this a lot.

Ted cupped his genitalia before prompting the shower once more.

“Shower, air dry.”

“Air drying mode, active.” 

The exhaust fan switched direction and jets of warm air blew… everything.  Ted winced as a jet near his face blew hot air a little too hard for his liking.

“Shower, jet 7, decrease power 50 percent.”

“Manual override, decreasing power to jet 7.”

Ted opened his eyes and checked that everything was ok. 

“That’s better.  Shower, set current preferences as air dry mode default setting.”

“Setting new air dry default mode.”

Ted turned and cautiously removed his hands, letting the air dry off the previously protected parts and sighed in relief that it seemed to be working. 

“Ok, that seems about enough.  Shower, set default air dry run time to 30 seconds.”  Ted said.  “Anything more than that and they’re probably just looking for a good time…”

“Air dry, default settings changed.  Creating new preference profile: ‘Just looking for a good time’.” 

“Whoa!  No-no-no-no-no-no… Don’t want to do-- wait… do I?”  Ted thought for a beat.  “No.  Lucrative as that side of robotics may well be… let’s leave that to more… driven men.  Shower, delete preference profile ‘looking for a good time’.”

“Preference profile: ‘Looking for a good time’.  Not found.  Do you wish to create?”

“No, come on now!  You just made the damn thing...  Shower, delete preference profile ‘good time’.”  Ted raised his voice in a somewhat exasperated manner.

“Preference profile: ‘Good time’.  Not found.  Do you wish to create?”

Ted got increasingly frustrated. 

“Come on, dammit, Shower!  You just made the thing!  Search databank for all preference profiles with ‘Good time’ in their name!”

“You seem to be distressed with my current state of operation, do you wish to have this request expedited through K.O.R.D’s IT department?”

“Sweet Jesus No!  God!  Do not--!  Do not do that!  Shower, cancel previous request!  Escape!  Exit to menu!  Do not…  Do not involve Murray Takamoto!”

Ted had been ironing out the kinks for K.O.R.D’s proposed new voice-recognition Smart Home support system ‘Butler X-cel’.  He’d programmed about 500 words with his own voice into the system and for the most part was fine tuning some of the more specific functions, before returning the tested system with his own preferences for the next stage, objective field/customer testing.

After discussing the potential product with Melody Case and Murray Takamoto, it seemed the biggest concern with the Butler X was that the average customer would not show the same interest and focus on programming their own preferences into the system.

Ted couldn’t understand why.  He generally enjoyed the process of customizing the primitive AI unit with his own preferences.  People furnished their homes the way they like them, surely it would be a point of pride for people to have things their way with only a few words.  He was then informed by Randall Truman that whilst everyone is indeed different and likes different things in different ways, a lot of the time people just want to be told what to like whilst being given something close enough.  It seemed absurd to Ted at the time.

That said, Ted was not having fun right now.

He stepped out of the shower and threw some clothes on.  He walked through his kitchen and, checking the time, he remembered his earlier discussion with his father.  He decided it was still early enough to do what needed to be done.

“Phone, call Abner Jenkins.”

The tv turned on and a green phone icon appeared at the bottom of the screen, with Abner Jenkins name and phone number flashing across the screen.  A panel also appeared showing off Ted’s lounge room and kitchen, with Kord leaning against the kitchen counter in the background.

“Ah, should have specified.  Phone, disable video chat.  Call only.”

The video panel of his own house disappeared from the top corner, and the call continued.  The home sound system filling with the dial tone from the call.

“Hello,” the cadence of the greeting indicating that the call had just dropped to Jenkins’ voicemail.  Causing Ted’s mind to immediately kick in to overdrive, running through what he was going to say. “You’ve reached the telephone of K.O.R.D Chief Financial Officer Abner Jenkins.  I am presently unable to take your call.  Please leave a message after the tone.”

BEEP.

“Hi Abe, it’s Ted.  Just thinking about today’s meeting and wasn’t really happy with where we left off.  You were just looking out for what you saw as the company’s best interests and I kind of went a little harder than necessary at the end there.  Aaaanyway, I do think there’s directions we could take the B.E.E.T.L.E, and when you first mentioned it at the meeting, I honestly figured you were talking about outfitting the suit for work out on oil rigs and in harsh situations rather than defense.  I just think we can do better than seeing the thing you worked so hard on, become nothing more than responsible for a monumental death toll.  The suit’s a great design, Abner.  It’s 9:15 now… which you probably know, since it’ll tell you that when you open the voicemail, but I’m still up and about if you’re up to call me back.  If not, I guess ‘Good night, buddy’?  And I’ll see you in the morning..?  Yeah.  Talk to you… whenever.”

Ted hit the ‘End call’ button on the the AI’s central console on the wall.  He thought back over how the call went and winced to himself.  He hated leaving voicemail messages.  With no back and forth he couldn’t get any bead on conversation.  It was like making a speech for one.  Except worse, because even in a speech you can read the other person’s facial responses to what you’re saying.

He opened the fridge and considered his options, before pulling out a soder and chinese takeout leftovers which he stuffend in the microwave.

“Television, on, and bring up my TiVo queue…”

******

The older man’s hand tapped on his phone and played through the voicemail message again.

Abner Jenkins listened back again with a furrowed brow.

“--to you… whenever.”  The tone hung on the call, denoting the end of the message.  Jenkins held his phone to his chin in deep thought for a few seconds.  Pondering the meaning of the message and the correct course.

He brought up the keypad, dialled in a phone number and touched the green call button.  He scratched his brow whilst the phone rang on the other end.  When the phone was picked up there were no greetings and no pleasantries.  Just a single word.

“Well..?”

“I’m in.”  Abner Jenkins said.  “You’ve got what you want.  I’m scheduled there for a site audit in a few weeks though, so you’re going to have to have it off-site by then as agreed upon.  I need to maintain deniability if I’m going to be able to help you at all with this.  You can still come through on this?”

“It will be handled.”

“Good.  Then there’ll be a chance we both leave this happy.”

There was no response.  Only the tone indicating the call was over.
Hound55 Member

Create-A-Hero RPG GM, Blue Bringer of BWAHAHA!

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