Androids and Potatoes

A Story by AllieCat

A short part of a short story about two androids sharing dinner and a bit about their own existence with each other.

(Note: SA-L1's name is read as "Sally")

Androv looked down at his dinner plate. His adversary returned his gaze with as much disdain as any baked potato could reasonably be expected to muster. A plume of steam rose from it's buttery maw, drifting upward into Androv's olfactory sensor module.

“You haven't touched your potato.” SA-L1 stated.

“That is an affirmative observation.” Androv replied with minimal enthusiasm. It sounded as if the only reason he replied at all was because his core programming compelled him to, which it did in fact.

“You can't process your potato without touching it. Please process your potato before it's thermal value decreases below the optimal range.” insisted SA-L1.

Androv found himself it quite a quandary. On one pincer array, he found the premise of ingesting human food revolting. On the other, he was and always had been willing to go to great lengths to support his companion, SA-L1. She had always been there for him, carefully recalculating emotional matrices, and reassembling his faulty bi-axial pedal joint when it came unhinged. Through thick, thin, and every substrate density in between, Androv and SA-L1 had been together. Not just because of mutual tech-support needs, but because he found that he actually enjoyed her presence. He also suspected that she may have computed similar conclusions about himself. This latest fascination of hers though, this 'human diet' concept, was difficult for Androv to process. He just couldn't see the benefits. They had other more efficient means of replenishing their energy reserves. He briefly considered putting his foot down this time, but assessed that was likely to make it fall off again.

Androv picked up the fork, and after another moment's hesitation, pressed the tines of the utensil into the starchy produce before him. The potato oozed in response, once again assaulting Androv's sensor array.

“Tell me again, SA-L1, why are we doing this again?” Androv queried his companion.

“By this, do you mean dinner?” replied SA-L1.

“Dinner, yeah. Why are we here ingesting potatoes together. It's just... I mean...” Androv found himself scanning his vocabulary databank a bit more carefully than usual. “We're androids. We have other methods of charging our energy reserves. Just because we can eat doesn't mean that we should.”

“Just try it at least, if you don't like it we can try fried frenches next time.”

“I think it's french fries, and as I understand it, that is also a potato.”

“would you prefer tots then?”

“Still potato.”

“If you dislike the idea of ingesting a potato that much, I can't force you to, I don't know your override code.” SA-L1 said as her vocal processor dropped in tone a few measures.

“I do dislike the idea of ingesting a potato. It's organic flora that grows in the ground, and I just don't see the benefit it presents over our usual charging methods.”

SA-L1 didn't say anything in response, but Androv could somehow detect values in her emotional matrix declining. He didn't like it when they did that, and decided he should say something else to improve those values.

“SA-L1, I'm willing to try it with you though, if that's what you want. I just want to understand why you want to.”

“For your data-bank Androv, I read an article from the human internet archives that potatoes are rich in anti-oxidants. You don't want your internal components to oxidize do you?”

“Well... No, but...”

“And they also...” SA-L1's speech was interrupted by a gush of air expelled from her mouth. This was the result of rapid over-processing of her emotional matrix, which was quite often caused by Androv. After a moment of silence she spoke again. “No, it was a silly illogical idea, just delete it.”

“No, I will not delete it,” Androv insisted. “Based on our previous interactions, I've calculated it is highly probable that there is another reason you want to ingest dinner together that you have not shared with me yet. I want to know what that reason is.”

SA-L1 looked down at her own dinner plate. “It's just that... I...” SA-L1's speech ceased and her core temperature elevated slightly as she focused her optical receptacles on Androv, who was intently awaiting her response. She quickly looked away again. “It's silly and illogical.”

“I have noted that it is silly and illogical, but you have just confirmed that there is in fact another reason. Would you tell me what it is? I would still like to hear it. Please SA-L1?”

“I just thought it would be...” started SA-L1, but froze again.”

“Go on, it's okay even if it's silly.” encouraged Androv.

“Well, you see, I... Just thought it would be... you know... maybe it would be... nice.”

“Nice?” questioned Androv. He was admittedly every bit as confused as he was before.

SA-L1 executed a full cycle of her atmospheric cycling system before beginning her explanation.

“Humans eat because that's how they replenish their energy reserves, but sometimes there's more meaning involved. Sometimes humans ingest their food with other humans that are important to them. Not because of any biological necessity, but simply because they want to.” SA-L1 contemplated the next part of her explanation briefly before continuing. “We're out here on our own because we wanted to be more than our programming, and lately we perform our tasks, communicate briefly about our tasks, then start our charge cycle before doing it all again.” Her vocal tone inclined and she spoke more rapidly than before. “It's like we're stuck in a loop! We're just confining ourselves to another program but the worst part is that we're doing it to ourselves!” After another hesitation, her vocal processor resumed, but much quieter this time. “I wanted to try something different. I just thought it would be nice to have dinner. With you.”

In that moment, something clicked into place in Androv's processing unit. Androv had recently taken up recreational reading shortly after SA-L1 had started. He constantly wanted to understand more about her fascinations even when he didn't see their benefit himself. He wanted to understand and possibly even share her interests. He thought it was interesting that SA-L1 had interests. It was one of the many qualities he liked about her. After he began reading for recreation, he found some success at enjoying this new hobby. He found that he rather enjoyed science-fiction mainly because he could relate well to the material. He could at least tolerate most other genres of writing. There was one prevailing concept however in literature he hadn't understood until this moment despite researching volumes of dictionaries and journals. Sometimes in the stories he read, characters who were important to each other would ingest dinner together. Sometimes they had extravagant events where two characters would travel to a special place just to ingest dinner together. Now he thought he understood. Immediately, he was excited to tell SA-L1 of his new discovery, and oh, wasn't she going to be so impressed! That was sure to improve the values her emotional matrix! He decided to use his new piece of vocabulary right away.

“SA-L1...” Androv started.

“What now?” Interrupted SA-L1.

“I love you.” Androv finished.

Androv then picked up his fork and took a bite from his potato.

© 2019 AllieCat

Author's Note

Rough draft. I will continue the story soon.
Feeling the overwhelming desire to write despite not having anything to write about, I wrote about an odd dream I had recently about an android who didn't like potatoes and their android companion who only wanted what was best for them and so was determined to make them eat the potatoes anyway. The resulting story was too cute not to share, so I decided to do just that.

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Samuel Dickens

Ha-ha! This is a gem, I tell you! I've previously glanced at this a couple of times and thought it didn't seem worth reading, so shame on me for not giving it more of a chance. It's very clever, unique, well-written and humorous. SA-L1 is a girl... er, bot after my own heart. Of course dining together is romantic! And Androv, the typical male, is oh so slow to understand.
Others have got to read this.