Chapter 2: Statistical Analysis for Fun and Prophet

The next twenty-something hours were a blur for Mel, going between pizza with Jess to passing out on the couch from exhaustion to class and work in a haze, running through the motions without any real thought behind them before finally finding herself at 57 Pinemay Road, at 7:15 p.m. In the preceding hours, she’d read and re-read Prophet’s note until it had reached the border of losing all meaning. She had questions, and hopefully here she would find some answers. Mel took a deep breath, counted to three, and gave a cautious knock on the door. She almost wasn’t surprised to find the door open barely a second after her knuckles had hit the wood.

Prophet’s head poked out of the door for a second. Mel waited while he closed the door, undid the various locks and latches, and finally re-opened the door.

“Hurry, get in!” Prophet whispered. She entered the foyer as he closed the door quietly. “Did anyone see you?” he asked, urgency almost overwhelming his desire to stay quiet. “I don’t think so.” Mel answered. She’d done her best to make sure no-one followed her, but it was generally pretty damn hard to be sure when you didn’t have the faintest idea who might be following you.

“Right. Answers. Who-“ was as far as Mel got before Prophet interrupted her.

“I am Prophet, created as an experiment into what artificial intelligence might do when given a body. The people who you dealt with in the alley last night are my quote-unquote “caretakers” in the loosest interpretation of the term possible, and I don’t look like a robot because of my shade. Those…were the three questions you were about to ask, were they not?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Mel looked at him for a second, before deciding that there were at least two more questions before moving in for the big one. “How-“ Prophet cut her off again.

“How did I do that? Statistical analysis.” Prophet started. “I’ve had approximately twenty-three hours, one minute and 57 seconds to work through the most likely questions you would ask, and in what order. People do not call me ‘Prophet’ simply because it sounded ‘cool’, Mercy." He glanced down to her to see a look that was at best withering. Prophet considered for a moment before speaking. "I should-"

"Stop doing that? Yeah." Mel interrupted. Prophet looked sheepish fr a moment before continuing.  "To answer your other question, my ‘shade’ is a hard-light human façade to avoid my looking somewhat conspicuous among the general populace. Allow me to demonstrate.” He lightly touched the tab on his neck that Melissa had noticed in the alleyway, and the shade flickered before disappearing.

Under the façade, Prophet looked like a steampunk enthusiast’s wet dream. The bulk of his frame was made of what looked like brass, with the kind of engraving around the edges that brought to mind a human pocket-watch. From what Mel could see, the frillier aspects of Prophet’s design were mostly just decorative; the inside looked like it was built about a century after the exterior. His head was moulded to the same basic shape as a human’s, but with a few little details changed. For example, a standard human tends to have things like cheeks that aren’t hollowed out, or eyes that don’t glow turquoise.

Mel nodded approvingly. “Nice. One last question though. Why am I here?” Prophet looked sheepishly at the floor. “Ah.” He started. “I was afraid you might ask that.” He paced around the room for a bit, trying to collect his thoughts. Eventually, he started to talk. “If I had to commit to a guess, I’d say you’re ‘here’ in this room because you were curious as to why there was a metal person running around your city. If ‘here’ was referring to your involvement in my situation of running away from my creators, then I would say either curiosity or some sort of desire to help. You could’ve turned a blind eye and let my caretakers find me in the wreck of that bike, you could’ve let them track me down after you took me out of the wreckage. But you didn’t. You tried to help, and you covered my escape. If by ‘here’ you mean ‘in that balaclava every night’, or ‘here’ as in ‘on this planet’, I’m afraid that’s not for me to say.”

Mel sighed. “Every time I think I’ve got answers out of this, I keep getting more questions. Why did you run in the first place?”

“I ran because I was given a body. The purpose of the experiment was to discover what I might do if given one, but they forgot to account for the possibility of me wanting to see more of the world than a featureless white room. It took me weeks to find a loophole in my programming that would let me justify taking a bike from the motor pool; longer to justify knocking out a guard to escape. I left because I wanted to see the people I was born into a world with, and the world that we share.” Prophet looked to Mel. “Will you help me?”

“Yes.” Mel answered. “If you can change your shade, you’ll probably want to go with something a little younger. I know a place you can lay low for a bit while we work on a more long-term plan for your gap-year.”

***

As Mel walked Prophet down the street, a thought occurred to her.

“Prophet, do you actually have a name?” she asked.

“You mean, outside of Prophet or my serial number? No. My caretakers never saw a reason to. Why do you ask?”

“The place I’m taking you, they’ll need a name before letting you have a place to stay. What was your serial again? A-NT-something-or-other?”

“A-NT4257.” Prophet answered, eyes scanning the street up and down. Mel thought for a moment.

“What about… Antony?” She asked. Prophet considered for a moment, before nodding his head.

“Antony. Yes, that would work quite nicely.” He decided.

They walked in silence for a while longer before it was finally Prophet’s turn to ask a question. “Where exactly is this place that I am to ‘lay low’ in?” he asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Student housing at the university.” Mel answered, not entirely sure how Prophet would respond. He went silent for a minute, before furrowing his brow.

“Student housing? How is that safer? I’ve heard horror stories about student housing!” he asked incredulously.

“Ok, look. Calm down. First off, it’s not that bad over here. Secondly, it makes sense. They won’t think to look for you there. I’ll be close enough to check up on you. The students are generally too busy to notice anything out of place about you and probably won’t bother to report anything they do notice. On top of that, while we’re figuring out how to get your caretakers off your back so you can see the world, you have a chance to learn how human interactions work. Integrate yourself a bit more, learn to be inconspicuous. Plus, the person in charge of housing owes me a favour.” Mel concluded, turning the corner into the university courtyard. “You coming?” She asked, turning around to face Antony.

“Fine.” He conceded, following her through the campus.

A short while later, they arrived at the Accommodation Office, which turned out to be a small grey room, walls littered with pamphlets for approximately fifteen years-worth of student clubs. In the centre of the room was a single desk. Sitting there was a small woman who could’ve been anywhere between twenty and forty. She looked up from her paperwork and saw Mel and Antony walking through the door. “Ah. Mel. Evening.” She said, looking surprised.

“Good evening, Tracy. Long time, no see. How’s the wife?” She asked.

“Jane’s doing well, thank you. However, I don’t believe this is a social call. What do you need?” Tracy replied.

“Cutting to the chase, ok. My colleague here needs a place to stay for the time being. Don’t suppose you’d happen to have anything available at the moment?” Mel asked sweetly. Tracy turned her focus to the monitor on her desk, bringing up the constantly evolving housing directory. Her eyes scanned page after page, before eventually finding an opening. “As it happens, I do. There’s a vacancy on Floor Three.” She replied, knowing full well how Mel would respond.

“Floor Three? I’m not surprised you’ve got a vacancy there, the place is a bloody death-trap. Nothing else?” Mel asked. Tracy quickly scrolled through the rest of the directory, before looking back across the desk. “Nope, nothing. One vacancy, Floor Three. I’m sorry, it’s the best I can do at short notice.” Tracy answered. Mel looked to Antony, who gave a curt nod. “He’ll take it.” She said, hoping against hope that she hadn’t just condemned Ant to an indefinite stay in the closest place a student could get to Hell. “Good. He’ll need to fill this out.” Tracy replied, handing a short stack of forms to Ant over the desk. He picked a pen up from the detritus on the desk and began filling out the paperwork.

While Ant went about filling in his forms, Mel and Tracy began to do something they hadn’t done in a long time: sit down and just talk. “So…” Mel started, with absolutely no idea how to go about continuing. “Long time, no see.” Tracy started, with equally as little of an idea how to continue. “It has been, hasn’t it?” Mel pondered. “It would’ve been…what, high school graduation?” she asked, her brow furrowing as she tried to recall. “Yeah, would’ve been. So that’s…four years?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

“Huh.” And with that, silence won out and they waited for Antony to finish his paperwork.

Once that was finished, Tracy gave them directions to Antony’s new abode. Mel walked him up, mostly to make sure he was alright with all of this but partly because she was curious as to how much the third floor had changed since her last visit. As it turned out, quite a bit: They’d dealt with most of the graffiti, for starters. It looked as though they’d fixed the mankier sections of wallpaper, and the vending machine now contained actual food as opposed to examples of Darwinism in action. It was definitely better, but that being said an igloo made of yellow snow would’ve been sounder accommodation than the third floor as it used to be. They had to close it down at one point because one of the gas heaters had broken, and that brought up a slew of other questions about the safety of the floor that the RA seemed to have no answer for, unless you can count going “Uhhhh…” and running very fast in the opposite direction as an answer.

They reached Ant’s room, number thirty-seven. To say it was a dump would be an insult to the city’s waste disposal system. Clothes everywhere, a veritable mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink that were slowly succumbing to Mother Nature, a tap that wasn’t technically leaky because that generally implies that only a small drip is coming out, and that was just what was immediately visible from the doorway. Mel realised that her jaw was trying to re-unite with the floor, and so did her best to regain composure. Prophet pursed his lips. "Remember when I said I'd heard horror stories about student housing? And you said it wasn't so bad over here?" Prophet asked, before internally registering that he'd just managed to get closer to proper sarcasm than he had before in months of attempts. Mel sniffed, and then immediately regretted the decision. “What is that stench?” she asked, not entirely sure that she wanted to know. “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say a combination of the sink, the mildew in the bathroom, and the current occupant of the couch.” Ant replied.

Mel looked over to the couch to realise that what she had originally believed to be a throw blanket covering a pile of laundry was, in fact, breathing. Mel whispered to Ant that she’d come to check on him the next day before doing her best to restrain herself from actively running down the hall away from the room. Ant closed the door and assessed the situation.

“Plumbing at…let’s be generous and call that 33%,” he mumbled to himself before directing his attention to the walls. “Structural integrity at 68%. I’ve got some to work to do if I want this to be vaguely habitable.” He glanced at the figure on the couch and briefly considered waking them for introductions, before deciding that given the current time waking up the person he would have to be living with for the next who-knows-how-long would not be in his best interests. With that decided, he opened the cupboard under the sink and set to work.

A.N: Chapter 2, done. Apologies for the lateness; I had other things to do over the week that were slightly more pressing. Again, any comments, continuity errors or spelling/grammar mistakes can go in the comments section. I'll hopefully see you all in another fortnight.