Chapter 7 · Continued
Chris
The clerk said very little.
He scanned an item.
Watched Cam.
Scanned another.
Jane paid, and they returned to the parking lot.
Loading the truck was easier.
Familiar.
Contained.
Cam arranged each item carefully in the truck bed, adjusting its position as though solving a puzzle no one else could see.
Most of the crowd had drifted away.
Their curiosity satisfied.
The show was over.
Except for one person.
Jane noticed the man as she closed the tailgate.
He wasn’t smiling or laughing.
He was simply watching Cam.
It was a different kind of attention.
The man stepped closer. “Hi. I couldn’t help noticing your robot.”
Jane straightened slightly. “Yeah?”
“Is that one of the RCAM beta units?”
That caught her by surprise.
“Yes,” she said. “He is.”
The man nodded as though her answer had confirmed something. “Yeah… I thought so.”
His eyes shifted toward Cam.
He wasn’t curious.
He was evaluating.
“He’s impressive,” the man said. “I did some contract work for RCAM on the beta-testing side.”
Jane didn’t immediately respond. She simply watched him.
“How do you like him?” he asked.
Jane glanced at Cam and then back at the man. Her smile was measured now, no longer casual.
“He’s different than he was.”
The man’s expression didn’t change, but recognition appeared in his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I figured.”
“Different how?” he asked. “Oh—I’m Chris.”
“I’m Jane.”
She hesitated for half a second before deciding to tell him.
Not everything.
Enough.
Jane explained how RCAM had retrieved Cam, reprogrammed him, and returned him with a new face and a different personality. She described the freezes, the missing memories, and the way his old behavior occasionally pushed through. She mentioned his former habit of criticizing her driving and correcting the way she performed household tasks.
“…And now,” she finished with a small, almost apologetic smile, “he’s just not the same. I wish he were still the way he was.”
Chris didn’t answer immediately.
He looked at Cam—not casually, and not the way everyone else had.
It was as though he were reading something.
“Yeah,” Chris finally said. “They tightened him.”
Jane blinked. “Tightened him?”
Chris nodded. “They probably added a higher-priority constraint layer over his behavioral model.”
Jane stared at him.
He gave a small shrug. “Basically, he’s still running the same core, but something is sitting on top of it now, deciding what he’s allowed to express.”
Jane crossed her arms. “That’s exactly what it feels like.”
The corner of Chris’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. That’s because it’s probably what they did.”