The Small Business - End-of-Year Review

The Small Business Chronicles: The Small Business - End-of-Year Review

Chapter One: Gabby's present

“Alright, great job everyone,” Jack said, collapsing into an arm chair in the recreational area of his lab, alongside Ellie and JB.

It had been a long day, but Jack had once again had a productive Christmas giving upgrades, updates, and routine maintenance to his various employees. Unlike last Christmas, however, he now had slightly more than three times as many androids to work on.

However, also unlike last year, he now had three times as much assistance working on them: Ellie and JB. Ellie and JB were allowed to perform upgrades for each other on a bi-weekly basis, and then this year, Jack delegated responsibility to them: Ellie worked on the motel workers, JB worked on the café workers, and Jack worked on the shop workers…though Jack still supervised the others work.

In the past several months since bringing JB online, Jack had monitored all his functions perfectly and determined he was functioning perfectly. He’d even been able to utilize some of the male sex programming to augment the female sex programming; he’d be testing it out for the first time in the ambitious new programming package he’d been compiling for Gabby all year long.

At this point, they’d managed give “presents” to every single android on the premise…with the exception of Gabby; Jack always saved her for last. Unlike most years, this year he believed he had something truly special…something that would finally bring her one giant step towards behaving more human.

“Is there anything else you’d like us to help you with?” Ellie asked, absently grabbing JBs hand.

Jack thought about that for a few moments before finally deciding, “No, I think I’d like to give Gabby her present now.”

“Are you sure it’s ready?” JB asked, “it is the most complicated thing you’ve ever worked on…myself included,” he added with a concerned look.

“Well, it’s as ready as it’ll ever be,” Jack said, albeit a bit dubiously, “One of the things that makes it so special is that it’s capable of improving itself over time.”

“Indeed,” JB agreed.

“In any event, you two were a great help today,” Jack continued, “You’re free to indulge yourselves for the next few hours until dinner.”

“Thanks Jack,” Ellie smiled, leaning over and giving him a warm kiss. She then grabbed JBs hand affectionately and stood up with him, walking with him to their bedroom. Before they walked into the hall, JB turned his head and gave Jack a wink. In the past few weeks since JBs activation, Jack had allowed the two to share a room and essentially live as a couple. They were both merely following their programming, but it was the closest thing to an android on android relationship he’d ever seen, and as such, he was documenting the heck out of it.

Jack winked back and then he too rose from his seat, returning to his nearly worn out work chair; perhaps that large box next to the Christmas tree was a new chair, he thought. Shaking his thoughts away, he unlocked the files for Gabby’s Christmas present and made a few quick modifications to them that were inspired by things he just learnt from working on the girls.

Once he was sure it was ready, he gathered up the hardware bits that would pare with it and then summoned Gabby via her remote link to his terminal. He had just enough time to organize everything in order of installation before Gabby arrived.

“You summoned me?” she said playfully, sashaying into the room; Jack programmed her to do that for his birthday.

“Yes, it’s time for your present,” he told her, barely containing his excitement, and the second he spoke, she looked excited too, “But unlike in previous years, this is a very special present.”

“Oh?” she asked, leaning against the examination table she’d be laying on soon.

“Yes, after all these years, I think I’ve finally figured out a way to make you truly more human,” he told her excitedly.

“Really? How?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“Well, it was from tiny bits and pieces of experience, programming, and hardware I accumulated from the new employees I acquired this year,” he explained.

“Which ones?” she asked.

“Well, I accumulated some experimental Mark IV personality files from Amber,” he started, “I was able to sandbox them on my terminal and fix the multitude of bugs in it, as well as tailor it perfectly to your configuration.” Jack paused to collect himself, since his excitement was causing himself to speak quickly. Following her programming perfectly, Gabby quickly headed into the dining area and fetched Jack a glass of water.

“Thanks dear,” he said, quickly taking a few sips before setting the cup down, “Where was I?”

“You were talking about Amber’s personality files,” Gabby supplied.

“That’s right,” Jack said, “Anyway, so I figured those would be useful in making you more human, but that alone wouldn’t work, so I also programmed an algorithm to allow it to work better in conjunction with some of the sleeper files I copied from Luiza.”

“How would sleeper files help me?” Gabby asked, “I don’t think I’d be as useful to you if I were a sleeper.”

“Well, making you a sleeper would make you more prone to malfunctions, but several of the sleeper files allow for Luiza to be far more spontaneous than a typical android could be…that’s part of the reason sleepers aren’t manufactured, or quite legal,” he explained, “Also, several of the sleeper files alter your perception of the world, or in this case, improve it.”

“Why would my perception need to be altered?” she asked with a confused look.

“Because currently, you’re really only programmed to perceive things in ways that might benefit or harm me, not yourself,” he explained, “With this, you’ll be able to look at things the way you want to.”

“I’m still not sure I understand,” she admitted.

“Well, hopefully with this package, you will,” he smiled, “Anyway, the final piece of the complicated program is distilled from the memories I excised from Varsha.”

“You mean her traumatic experiences?” Gabby said with a surprised look.

“Yes, surprisingly enough, the trauma she suffered somehow created some emergent programming, though not enough to significantly alter her programming, but enough to augment yours.”

“Wow, is there anything else you took from the girls?” she asked.

“Well, actually, Amber had some illegal pheromone fluid that I managed to resynthesize to be a tad safer,” he admitted, “That way, you’ll be able to attract me a bit easier.”

“Oooh,” Gabby smiled.

“And I also submitted the bug fixes to the Mark IV team, and they gave me a huge bug bounty…about ten times more than anything I’ve ever received,” he added, “And with some of that money, I was able to buy you all this nice hardware,” he said, showcasing the various processors and other android components laying on a tray; the rest I’m going to be saving up to hopefully buy you a new Mark III prototype body sometime next year; they are almost ready to be tested,” he added excitedly.

“Ooh. I can’t wait,” she smiled, “What are these going to do to me?” she asked, focusing her eyesight on the tray of components.

“Well, mostly just give you a necessary boost in processing power to handle, what I hope, is your emergence from what you are, to what I hope you will become…a true, living artificial woman,” Jack said proudly, then he paused with a slight blush on his face, “And I also threw in a few enhancements to your sexual systems.”

“Of course you did,” Gabby laughed.

“Finally, amongst other things, I’ll finally be installing the software patch to allow you to function in other bodies,” he told her, “After the past few months having both Ellie and JB try out several bodies, I believe I’ve finally worked out all the bugs.”

“Good, I’ve been looking forward to trying out other bodies,” Gabby mused.

“And I’ve been looking forward to it as well,” Jack smiled.

“So, am I going to reactivate a completely different person?” Gabby asked with a slightly concerned look on her face.

“Not quite,” Jack said, “The collaboration of programming code is a bit tricky,” Jack said delicately, “It’s all governed by a complex heuristic algorithm that may take several days to fully integrate into your A.I.”

“Okay,” Gabby nodded, “Would you like me to get undressed now?”

“Well, I always like you to get undressed,” Jack laughed, “But yes,” Jack told her. Gabby gave him a knowing smile and then disrobed, neatly folding everything onto the adjoining table. Once undressed, she laid down on the table and unsealed her primary access ports.

“Very good Gabby, now you may wake up feeling like a new woman, but it’s going to take this software the next few days to fully take effect,” he reminded her.

“I understand,” Gabby nodded, looking up at him with trust in her eyes.

Jack then braced himself for the task at hand and then reached in to deactivate Gabby. Once all her systems were offline, he spent the time waiting for them too cool off by putting on some relaxing music; he usually only listened to music when he was stressed out, and testing such an experimental program on Gabby was definitely stressing him out.

For the next hour and a half, Jack replaced and upgraded virtually every component in her body. He started with the processing equipment on the core itself, then, he attached it to his terminal so he could activate it in diagnostic mode; it would also help her activate faster later on when he was finished. He then started the software installation process while he continued to upgrade her hardware.

While he upgraded her body, he couldn’t help but silently thank JB and Ellie for allowing him to finish about an hour earlier than the previous year. As much as he enjoyed working on Gabby, he also wanted her back online so she could cook him dinner.

Before long, he finally had everything installed, and his experimental software suite had finished installing as well. He ran a few quick diagnostics, and, after ensuring everything was fine, carefully unplugged Gabby’s core from the terminal and inserted it back into her body.

“Alright, here goes nothing,” Jack said, once everything was in place. He then pressed the manual power button and stood back in case there was a catastrophic malfunction. Too Jack’s relief and delight, everything activated smoothly…even a tad faster than ever, and before he knew it, she was back online.

Gabby blinked her eyes a few times before focusing on Jack. Jack was still standing right over her, eagerly waiting for her to speak.

“Jack, I feel different,” Gabby said.

“How different?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted with a confused look, “I feel faster because of the new hardware, but there’s something else that I can’t quite describe…yet,” she told him.

“Well, you don’t have to right now,” Jack assured her, quickly clicking her panel back in place and giving her a loving kiss, “Just let it happen naturally.”

“Alright,” she smiled, slowly getting up and dropping to her feet. As she got dressed, she looked at the nearby clock and saw it was nearly 5pm. “Oh dear, I should really get up and start dinner,” she said, sounding flustered.

“Don’t worry, I’m done with you…though I did install a temporary monitor on your A.I. core to monitor the new software,” he assured her.

“Alright, thanks dear,” she said, giving him another kiss before rushing upstairs while Jack stayed behind to tidy up the lab.

The dinner that Gabby cooked that night was delicious, even by her usual standards of perfection…even she was surprised by it. The sex Jack had with her was also a bit different, though that was mostly because of her enhanced hardware. It wasn’t until just as they were going to bed that he they noticed anything.

“Well, this was certainly a more relaxing Christmas,” Jack said as he crawled into bed.

“Well, I guess it helped that you had extra help this time around,” Gabby said.

“Yeah, and that it was mostly just routine maintenance and upgrades this time as opposed to major repairs,” Jack added.

“Yeah,” Gabby agreed.

“So, have you noticed any differences in your functioning these past few hours?” Jack asked.

“Now that you mention it, I did notice something,” she admitted.

“Oh?” Jack asked.

“I didn’t cook dinner because I was supposed to…I cooked dinner because I wanted to make you happy,” she said, sounding a little confused, “I think that’s why it tasted better.”

“Huh, that’s interesting,” Jack said, though he was a little giddy that the programming was actually working, “Why don’t you go into sleep mode so it can work faster,” he suggested.

“Alright,” she smiled, giving him a kiss “Good night.”

“Good night,” he told her, watching as she entered sleep mode, though, as he shut off his light on the side of the bed and rolled over to fall asleep, he couldn’t help but anticipate further changes to come this week.

Chapter Six: New Year

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Closed for Christmas - The Shop | The Repair Shop - Part 1 | Off-season - The Motel | The Repair Shop - Part 2 | Slow day - The Cafe | The Small Business - End-of-Year Review