Maid to Serve 2

Part Two

It had been exactly a year since I began working for George Fournier and his extremely wealthy family as a live-in Maid-bot. George and his wife Veronica always made me feel welcome and wanted even if it was just through acknowledging my hard work. 

My days mostly consisted of helping Veronica with her daily chores and being a guinea pig for her latest fashion ideas. It was a fun job and it was made even easier when they began adding more robots to the system. 

George expanded the house to encompass another full house in size so they thought I could use some help. Now there are two other bots roaming around. One busty blonde named Carrie and a skinny Asian woman named Wu. 

The three of us shared a living quarters, meaning we each had a separate storage pod in the room designated as our home. It was cozy and I rarely left the estate other than on the odd weekend I feel like relaxing as a human or visiting the few friends I kept in contact with. 

All-in-all it was a fun and enjoyable job, especially after their son left for college. I was no longer tormented by his stupid attempts to get me in bed. 

This day started out just like any other simple work day. I woke up around 8 a.m. and exited my pod. The other two bots were hard at work in the kitchen making our lovely owners breakfast. It was my job to go and wake them up.

I quietly enter the room and approach the sleeping couple. I gently shake Veronica with my hands. 

“Mistress Veronica, it is time to wake up. Carrie and Wu have been making breakfast for you two and I will make your bed before starting the laundry you have assigned me to do,” I say as I head back out towards the closet to grab the second set of sheets. 

“Thanks Mari. You are a life saver.” She says groggily and before too long both she and George are out of their room and enjoying breakfast. 

I finish making their bed and drag the laundry down to the washer. It takes a while but I finish the three loads and hang all their clothes up by the end of the afternoon. When I am done, I notice that there is a message for me on their nightstand that I must have missed when they left for work. 

“Hey Mari. We have a worker coming to inspect the other bots today. You can just say you are our daughter and act normal when he is here. After he leaves just make sure the other girls are working and you are free to go ~ Veronica”

Right after I finished reading the sheet I heard the front door open and decided to check what was going on. 

I arrived in the foyer and saw a weird looking robot with a single eye and with a wheel instead of leg. I assumed it was the “worker” and approached the bot. 

“Hey there. My name is Mari Fournier; my parents aren’t home right now but they told me you were coming. I can show you to the models we have here and you can assess them.” I said while turning to walk towards the robot room. 

I heard some beeps and a simple “Agreed” from my visitor before he started to trail me and I walked into the room I had learned to call home. 

The worker bot began to scan the room and inspect all the maintenance machines with his glowing red eye. He makes a few adjustments along the way before reaching the three containers, two of which contained Carrie and Wu, the other being my “bed”. 

He briefly flashed over them all before turning and scanning me. 

“This home unit has designated that two Model-87Ks and one older Models-63G in use at all times. There are only the two Model-87Ks present. Where is the other unit?” he asks with a passive voice. 

“Uh… our other model is not present because she is being used by my younger brother for moving purposes. Is it necessary for her to be here?” I ask hoping he bought my excuse even though he is looking unconvinced, at least from what his one eye tells me. 

“It will not be necessary, only because I have found her data and analyzed that you match her description. It is odd for a family that has children of their own to program a personality such as yourself into a bot, but it is not unheard of. Please comply and enter your stasis container.” 

I gasp and try to leave the room. He thinks I am just an oddly programmed robot and I am not going to let him run whatever tests he does normally on me. 

I make it to the door before I feel one of his cuff like hands clamp around my thigh and trip me up. I hit the floor and am dragged towards him. He says nothing but pushes me forcefully into my pod and activates the charging feature, causing my muscles to relax and stop responding to my commands. 

He nods after he sees I am successfully subdued and moves to the furthest pod, Wu’s, and begins his work. It seems he spends quite a lot of time working on Wu before moving to Carrie. He spends even less time on Carrie and then rolls his way over to face my pod. 

He pushes his arms against the pod’s control console and I feel something lower down over my head. I look up slightly and see what appears to be a metal helmet secure itself to my skull and wires extend out of it and attach to my temples and forehead. I try to scream but I see him activate a glowing green button and my consciousness fades away. 

- 3rd Person View – 

To any normal person you would see a standard worker droid scrolling through the memory files of a purchased female robot. The worker was looking for standard protocols and procedures, making sure nothing was corrupted. 

“No wonder she thought she was real. They really implanted all of these individual memories in separate folders. Stupid organics don’t know that it is causing her to be less efficient. Time to get to work.” 

He begins by dragging all of the memory files into a single file labeled “M.A.R.I” and begins to go through the bigger files. 

“It seems she has lost her files talking about her mother and father. I will remedy this.” The worker says before adding information about George and Veronica being her parents and how much she loves them. 

With the backstory information stored away he begins downloading and formatting her with the basic protocols and information that the humans deleted after buying her. She now had a file labeled “Settings and Protocols”. 

Lastly he made sure all her normal settings and functions were not malfunctioning. Once finished with that he saved his changes and packed up his tools. With one last flick, he activated the three robots and wheeled back to his transport outside to be taken back to the factory, not even realizing what he had done. 

- Mari POV – 

I was acutely aware of what that robot did to me after shutting my personality down. I could now easily remember information I had forgotten years ago with ease. I even had memories of George and Veronica raising me and things of the like. I knew they were false, but didn’t know how to get rid of them without damaging my other memories. 

I stepped out of my pod and felt how much easier it was to walk now. My reprogramming had made sure I would waste no excess energy when moving. I walked easily to the kitchen and made a snack to calm myself down. 

Just as I finish my snack I hear the door open and hear both Victoria and George enter. They see me in the kitchen and say hello. 

“Hey Mari. I thought you would be gone before we got back. How did the inspection go?” Veronica asked me as she also sat down and George went to go shower. 

“The inspection went well Mother. The worker robot did not allow me to get out of it and he updated my firmware and reloaded many of the software I was missing since he thought I was a purchased robot.” I said thinking nothing of calling her mother or describing what the stupid robot did to me. 

Her face portrayed surprise and shock at what I told her. Her eyebrows knitted together briefly in worry and she grabbed my hand and held it tightly. 

“Mother? Mari did that worker-bot do something to your head?” she asked with a worried voice. 

“He placed memories of you and father into my head. I can now picture you holding me as a small child, father and I watching movies together and having you help me put on my prom dress. It seems he replaced my original parents with the two of you, which is fine by me considering they were both rather awful. I do not know how to feel about all of this though.” 

Veronica just pulled me into a firm hug and I felt dampness seep into my shirt. She was crying over my being safe. 

“Although I am disappointed in the worker for doing this to you, I am just glad you are safe and still here. Now what does this new programming or memories or whatever tell you to do?”

I thought about it for a minute. What did it tell me?

“He didn’t make me think I am a robot, but I do feel the need to be a beautiful and wonderful daughter for you. On top of my duties as your maid. It conflicts a little but…” I wasn’t against what my “programming” was telling me. 

I think Veronica got what I was saying and smiled brightly. 

“Well why would I ever say no to gaining a beautiful daughter like you? Go finish your maid duties and leave everything to me, you have had a long and stressful day. George will be thrilled!” she gave me a long hug and ran off happily. 

“Mom huh? This might be fun…” I trail off as I head into the foyer and begin dusting it.

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21.03.18