From the Spring Hill series of short stories:

The Pet Lover

Meow, squawk, cheep, growl, thump-thump. Maddie looked at the gathering in the kitchen, and exclaimed, “Everyone wants to be fed at once! I should replace all of you with AIs, like Barino, thenI could turn you off !”  Of course, she didn’t mean it. She loved taking care of them, all of them.

Over the years, she had hundreds of pets. Many were AIs, starting with “Lulu the FurReal Cat” when she was a kid. Lulu was probably still around, packed away in the garage in a box marked “Memories”.

Barino was one of her favorites. He was quiet right now. He had plugged his mouth into the electrical outlet, to get his charge for the day. He heard her say his name. His auditory processors did the recognizing, and passed that information on to the cluster of computer chips in that made up his upper brain. His upper brain fired an alertness command to the processors in his head musculature. The upper brain had not yet analyzed the situation. That would take another 300 milliseconds. Meanwhile, Barino’s head bi-metal muscles were warming up and rotating his eyes 60 degrees to the right, so that he could see Maddie directly. His head motor tried to rotate his head to face her, but it was limited because his mouth was in the socket.

Maddie looked at him and registered a quick smile. She liked it when her pets responded to her speaking their name. She felt their presence. It was comforting.

Maddie’s smile was noted by Barino’s visual processor which passed that chunk of information to the upper part of his little brain, which folded the information into the entire situation being evaluated.The upper brain decided that Maddie was happy, so the mention of his name did not match a scenario requiring action or further investigation. During the next 100 milliseconds his upper brain cancelled its previous alert commands, and followed up with a “resume previous” command.

Maddie saw that Barino had resumed his feeding position.  She was fine with that. She did not bother her pets when they were feeding. It was just being respectful, especially to the pets that seemed to appreciate her consideration. Barino’s presence and simple responses, evoked good memories in Maddie:

Barino is cute, a cub bear, but with a dog-like personality. That was probably why I got him so cheap. He reminds me of my very first “mechanical” bear, “Teddy”.  Teddy would "read" to me  at bedtime. I would set him on my lap, then hold the book up for him. I squeezed his nose and then he would tell his story. There was only one story, the Daniel Boone story. The bear did an imitation of Daniel Boone’s Kentucky accent. He called bears “Bars”. Barino was made in Italy, so his name naturally became Bar-ino.

Meanwhile, Barino recalled nothing. His long-term memory was filled with learning Maddie’s habits and interpreting her desires. That last interpretation of her look at him had earned a positive incremental weighting, since no contradictory interpretation had occurred within the subsequent 4 seconds. This was a preset design parameter. Barino felt a slight increase in his total bonding with Maddie. Since the bonding was within the “Good range, he was content, and continued feeding in relaxed mode.

With less than a full second of delay, Maddie resumed addressing the group of creatures gathered around her, “Sorry folks but Maddie did not make it to the Pet store on Friday, so there is nothing to eat for most of you. I know that many of you are hungry. I will be back just as soon as I can.“ They all calmed down, with a muted meow, squawk, cheep, growl, and a barely audible thump-thump.

TO BE CONTINUED