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To the casual observer, Dorian looked offline, possibly charging. Only Rudy would have noticed the occasional blue processing light that skittered across his cheek signalling his “chats” with various computers and devices. Rudy had warned him that John would not be thrilled when he found out his partner had been checking up on him. Dorian insisted that he needed to monitor John’s health and well-being, and that this was the most efficient way to go about it.
From John’s refrigerator, Dorian had learned about incredibly poor eating habits, and a large amount of decayed food languishing in the back. Dorian began to drop hints a work about the benefits of fruits and vegetables and the diseases rotten food carry. Eventually, the refrigerator reported that it had been cleaned out and apples had begun appearing.
John’s security system did not trust Dorian at first. It took several tries before it would stop reporting a hacking attempt. Fortunately, it was reporting these attempts to him. Once the protocol was established, the system informed him of John’s general comings and goings and of the scant number of visitor’s John had. This made it easier for Dorian to calculate how long it would take John to get to work. And how late they would be for their shift.
This time, Dorian was attempting to find out how well John was sleeping. Based on Dorian’s scans, he knew that the answer was not much. However, John’s smart bed would have more information, possibly clues as to why.
As Dorian logged in, he was flooded with too much information. Files from years ago that had never been accessed and the bed was all too happy to share. As he parsed through the deluge of data, he began to find more information that he had hoped. More than he wanted to know. He found that John normally woke up at 7 after going to bed at 1 and fell asleep at 3. John had disabled the Circadian Rhythm monitor after it kept trying to readjust his alarm. With his gun.
The bed had logged everything that had happened and every preference adjustment made to it since John had activated it. Dorian found out that John had liked his bed firm and Anna had liked her side softer. Then John had switched to a softer firmness and began snoring. John had repeatedly ignored warnings that this was the result of his sleeping position and his mattress firmness. Dorian chuckled and filed away that bit of information for future use.
Dorian found an activity report that made no sense, until Dorian connected what activity humans did in bed. He was amused to note that the last logged activity was this morning. A notice flashed in his peripheral vision noting that John would soon be arriving for their shift momentarily. Dorian logged off and stood to gather his things and get ready for his day.
As John drove to the scene of a robbery gone wrong, John suddenly turned to Dorian with a look of annoyance. "Ok, what?"
Dorian maintained his serene countenance. "Is something the matter?"
"You've had that same smirk on your face all morning. So what is it?"
"What is what, John?"
“You're dying to tell me something, You'd think a robot would be better at hiding his emotions." John parked the car and got out.
"I've been meaning to ask-"
"Here we go" John muttered and turned to face Dorian.
"How was your date last night?" Dorian finished.
"What date?" John narrowed his eyes. "Why would you think I had one?"
"There must have been a mix up." Dorian replied. "The captain is waiting."
"Uh-huh." John grunted, then turned and walked into the crime scene.
Later, Dorian reexamined the reports together. According to the security system, John had stayed in all night, alone. The fridge told him that all he had consumed the night before was a beer and leftover noodles. From the bed he found out that this mornings activity was less energetic than earlier activities, and was, lately, becoming more frequent. Dorian put together the results and decided that there were some things, like certain parts of John's anatomy, that did not require monitoring. Dorian closed the link to the bed, and erased most of the data. He kept the snoring report. He needed something to tease John with.