The Bank Loan
As Series 17 Autotronica Model 10-XR7-- or S17AM10-XR7 to his friends, or Sam, to his stupid friends-- walked into the bank, he tried to keep calm. Like most Series 17s, Sam had problems with his audio-dampening plate (a device used to suppress the terrible sounds used by the mainframe to communicate with the rest of the unit via dial-up). Whenever Sam started to get nervous, as he was now in the bank, his ADP would rattle loose and annoy everybody within earshot. Sam searched through his memory banks and remembered the time it happened at church.
He had been invited by a close friend and arrived 1,226 seconds late. After scanning the room for his friend, he attempted to move his 3,000lb body through a row of church goers. He slid through the aisle as quietly and slowly as possible so as not to disturb the rest of the service. This proved to be worse than going through noisy and fast as he was blocking entire rows of people with his boxy frame. Sam looked around the room and the nervousness glitch started. His ADP came loose and the terrible screams of his internal communications systems rang through the church, whose acoustics made the tension and sound worse. Children began crying. Many covered their ears. One man suffered from a nose bleed-- although it was never confirmed if Sam caused it. The crowd got caught up in a frenzy:
"Turn that thing off!"
"What is that horrible sound?"
"It sounds like a fax machine with an ill-tempered cat lodged in it!"
"Somebody make it stop!"
"It sounds like a dentist drill being used on a chalkboard!"
"It's hurting my ears!"
"It sounds like techno music!"
Sam shook it off. He entered the bank with a sense of purpose--determined to appear
professional and secure a bank loan today. He confidently walked toward the loan officer's desk-- at the same time being careful not to smash his titanium alloy feet through the wooden floors of the bank. He drew some awkward stares from people in the bank. Sam wondered if they were staring at his green optical units-- people always said they looked like cheap Christmas lights. Or maybe they were staring at his arms and legs. To the untrained eye, they might look like chromium or some kind of precious space metal, but they were actually just a mess of wires and steel wrapped in space blankets and electrical tape. A child pointed at Sam's hands and whispered something to his mother. Of course.
Sam's gigantic claw vending machine hands were often the subject of much concern to people. Sam had decided earlier that day to leave his more human-like hand attachments (pink dishwasher gloves) at home because they made him look stupid. Many Series 17 models were recalled due to a ghost programming bug in the hands that made them destroy vending machines and claim the prizes inside for itself. Sam hadn't experienced this bug, but he still felt a little weird walking into a Chuck E. Cheese.
"Have a seat Sam," said the well dressed loan officer. Sam hated people who wore suits-- mostly because he could never fit into one. The loan officer straightened out his "I'm a prick" suit and spoke up: "How are you doing today Sam?" Sam's eyes start to blink green as the annoying sound of a 1970's dot matrix printer fills the room (you know, the ones that take forever and spew out the paper with the perforated edges connected to those little strips of hole-punched paper) and a receipt sized piece of parchment slowly spews out of his mouth. The loan officer, visibly annoyed by the sound, just stood there, unsure of what to do. Sam motioned with his freak claw hand for the loan officer to read the note. The loan officer reached over his desk, tore the paper from Sam's mouth, and read the sheet:
I AM FINE. HOW ARE YOU?
"I'm fine Sam. You're going to have to fill out this paper work. It shouldn't take longer than 15 minutes." Sam scanned the stack of papers. 29 pages, 126 values to fill in, one stain of unknown origin. "I'm going to grab more coffee; let me know when you've finished." Correction. Origin: generic brand coffee with 0.46 grams of sugar. Sam grabbed the stack of paper and fed it into his chest. His green light bulb eyes flared up and the completed forms began to quietly print--The process of printing letter-sized forms is less noisy: it uses a separate, thermal printer instead of the poor-excuse-for-a-vocal-unit dot-matrix printer Series 17s use for speech. The only drawback to the thermal printing was the embarrassing fashion in which the parchment was dispensed.
"Is he...pooping?" A curious boy asked. His mother reprimanded him:
"It's rude to stare!"
Sam had heard from a friend that there was an upgrade available to replace the dot-matrix vocal unit with a similar thermal printer, but the idea both frightened and disgusted him. The loan officer came back. He was surprised to see that Sam had nearly finished "filling out" the forms. He was also surprised that a robot was bent over in front of his desk shooting paper out of his rear. The loan officer glanced at his watch and looked around the room, trying not to draw attention to an already awkward situation. Sam handed the forms to the loan officer and returned to his seat.
"Well everything looks in order here, looks like you will soon be the proud owner of a pizzeria. All that's left is a quick background check."
Sam had dreamt of this moment before. One night, it appeared he had been talking in his sleep as one morning he re-activated to find that he was covered in perforated paper with many exclamation points and the word "PIZZA" jumbled in the middle of thousands of abstract mathematic equations printed on them. It is widely believed that robot's cannot dream. However, an engineer at Autotronica Inc. once postulated that long term tasks that are left incomplete may possibly have some lines of code leaked into the system's off-line maintenance routine. Sam didn't know if he bought into this theory. All he knew was that the last time he had a dream he received a warning from his landlord, citing complaints of strange, awful, unholy noises coming from his apartment.
Something inside of Sam began to rumble. Robot indigestion. He knew he should not have analyzed so many different pizza recipes. He just ran out of time and decided to store the samples in his stomach unit for later analysis. The 15 pizza pies that Sam had shoveled into his mouth had taken up too much room in his and his system was forcing it out, one way or another. Sam realized he had to find a lavatory immediately. The loan officer raised an eyebrow, confused at Sam's stillness. Sam quickly scanned the room and spotted a facility in the southwest corner of the building. He started to plan his path when suddenly--
"EEEEEERRRRRRRRNNGGGGGGGGGAHENNGGGG ENGNNNNNGGGGGGG"
It was the damned ADP acting up again. The sounds of modified performance dial up with no regard for human life echoed throughout the bank, which unfortunately, shared the church's ability to carry acoustics quite easily. Sam put his hands to his head, trying to tighten the ADP. The bank patrons did the same, trying to save their eardrums. Women and children panicked.
"Mom, what's that noise?"
"Cover your ears!"
"It sounds like someone vomiting into a microphone with feedback!"
"This is the worst Earth Day ever!"
Security guards drew their weapons, searching the premises for the mystery noise. A man who Sam remembered from the church suffered a nose bleed. He swore at Sam:
"This is definitely YOUR fault, robot!"
The loan officer grabbed Sam by the head.
"What are doing? Stop this, now! This is completely unprofessional.."
Sam struggled with the loan officer until they both fell to the ground. The loan officer grabbed a heavy telephone from off of his desk and started pounding it against Sam's head. The sounds of a dot-matrix printer added it's part to the symphony of terrible noise. The security guards looked on as the loan officer continued to bash at Sam's head with the phone while small strips of paper with the words "STOP. OUCH. PLEASE STOP DOING THAT" printed from Sam's mouth. Sam's vision began to blur. Massive head trauma from telephone wielding loan officers is widely believed to suck for robots. Sam thought he saw his friend Isaac out of the peripherals of his optics before his system went into emergency stand by.
Hours later, Sam woke up with a deformed head covered in pizza. As the sounds of a dot matrix printer filled the room, Sam realized he was in a jail cell. He looked over and saw his friend Isaac, who looked very displeased. Isaac walked over to Sam and tore the new message from his mouth. He read it, sighed, and narrowed his eyes at Sam, and shook his head in disapproval. Isaac reached behind Sam's head to a hidden keypad and punched in a combination that forced Sam into sleep mode. Isaac discarded the message from Sam and dropped it on the floor as he went back to the bed on the other side of the cell. He looked across the small jail cell at Sam, and then at the piece of paper he left on the ground. On it were the words:
DID I GET THE LOAN?
