Murasakino

Indigo reveals a secret

   "Girls!" Harper called to us from the door to the café. We all turned simultaneously, and she giggled again. "Come in here for lunch!"
   "We need to stay at the checkouts," Honōiro shouted.
   "Why not just let people use the self-service checkouts?" replied Harper.
   "Can we do that?" Ao asked Honōiro, who shrugged.
   "I guess so," she said, taking out the out of order sign for her counter. The other girls did the same and took their lunches to the café.
   To our surprise, there were lots of customers in there that we had scanned shopping for, and I recognised a couple of them. A boy who had bought a new shirt. The noisy woman that was at Tākoizu's counter. Harper guided us to a table by a window with a view of the car park, and some children watched us as we walked, mesmerised. As you'd probably expect, seeing six girls who looked exactly the same was pretty interesting to them.
   "This looks like a nice seat," Aka said, sitting down by the window. Midori and Honōiro tried to squeeze onto the same seat, but Harper pulled an extra chair over for one of them.

   "I've been wondering about something," Harper said when we began to eat. I looked up at her, but the other girls carried on eating. "You all look exactly the same, right?"
   "Yeah," I replied. "Why?"
   "But I mean you look exactly the same," she said, "like, there are literally no differences at all in what you look like."
   "Yeah..." I said, wondering why she was telling us this. Surely she didn't need to explain to us that we looked the same?
   "And there's six of you."
   "Where are you going with this?"
   She looked around briefly. "How?"
   "Umm... how what?"
   "How is it possible for you all to look that similar when there are six of you? Surely even twins..."
   "Well, we are robots," Aka casually said, mouth full of sandwich.
   Harper's smile widened a lot, is if she had recieved an important package (or piece of information) she'd been expecting for a long time, and she looked around again.
   "I knew it!" she shouted, and an elderly man at the table next to us looked at her. "Why didn't I ask you as soon as I saw you?!"
   "I thought you would have been told," I said.
   "No," she said, "but I guessed it!"
  
   She hadn't been told we were robots? Surely Dr Takeda didn't think she'd believe we were six identical sisters or something?
   "Why didn't anyone tell you?" I thought out loud.
   "I don't know," Harper replied. "It's cool, though. I always knew that robots would eventually look this realistic. Do you know how, like, advanced and complicated your... you are?"
   "We have an exabyte of data, I think," Ao said. "That's like the same amount of data as a million mobile phones, or something like that."
   "Then how come you work in a supermarket?" Harper asked.
   "Well, we are supposed to have jobs so we can have a life that is as human-like as possible," Midori suggested.
   "But why scanning barcodes all day? You could have been teachers, doctors, anything that lets you use all of your knowledge! You must know literally everything!"
   "That's a really good point," I said. "I love helping people, but healing an injury would be so much more useful than scanning some food."
   "And there's a self-service checkout, so the store doesn't even need anyone to scan stuff."
   "Hey, you're right," Midori said, looking up from her shortbread.
   "Then why do we work here?" I asked. "I need to ask Dr Takeda!"

*  *  *

   After work, we set off in the car with Cathy, but this time I wasn't bothered about the sunset. I needed to know why we worked in the supermarket when we didn't need to, but even if Cathy didn't know, Dr Takeda must have done.
   "So, girls," Cathy said, turning down her music. "You like Harper?"
   "Yeah, she is really nice!" Honōiro said. "She let us eat lunch with her!"
   "Oh, in the café? Cool!"
   "And she kept giggling, but I think it was because we kept doing stuff at the same time."
   "Yeah. She won't be used to seeing that."
   "She told us that nobody told her we were robots," I said quietly.
   "Huh?" Cathy said, looking at my reflection in the mirror.
   "She didn't know we were robots," I repeated, "but it's something I definitely would have mentioned."
   Cathy was silent for a few seconds. "Maybe Dr Takeda just didn't think to tell her parents. I'm sure he meant to let her know."
   "But how could he forget something like that?" I asked.
   "Well, uh..." Cathy couldn't think what to say next, and stayed quiet for the rest of our journey.
   That doesn't matter, I thought. I can just ask Dr Takeda.
   When we parked outside the lab, Cathy turned round to face us. Well, she meant to look at me, but everyone else was looking her way too.
   "Listen. About Harper not knowing... Dr Takeda told me that he had told Harper's parents, and I can't remember the last time he lied to me. Well, maybe the time when he said we were going shopping, but it turned out... sorry, ignore that. Just don't pester him about it, okay?"

   As we were walking towards the lab, I heard Indigo Gardner's voice from behind a door. At first I took no notice, but then realised she was shouting at someone. She almost sounded like a different person, her voice deafeningly sharp.
   "That was our agreement, wasn't it?" she yelled.
   Agreement, I thought. Now where have I heard that before?
   "But Indigo, they... why can't we just...?" the anxious man she was hollering at said. I had heard his voice before, but not sounding this scared.
   "Dr Takeda, are you even listening to me?!" Indigo shrieked.
   Oh my gosh, that's Dr Takeda!
   "That store needs workers, and I need somebody who can build them! And you know how to build them, don't you?"
   "Yes, but..."
   There was a thump, silencing Dr Takeda's voice, and a chill worked its way up my back.
   "Do you know why I employed you?" Indigo said, this time in a quiet but menacing tone. I heard no verbal answer, but thought Dr Takeda might be nodding his head. "You do? Good! Then stop whining and get back to work!"
   Dr Takeda gasped and stumbled toward where I sat, and I quickly jumped up and ran to our lab's door.