Work Text:
🤖 🏢 🤖
The building had a soft heart as well as programming that told it that all its inhabitants should be happy. So when the children came – the ones who had lost their full-grown ones, slunk away in the middle of the night, a couple of bags between them and not even a look of regret for the ones they left behind – the ones that came out into the hall, full of fear about what would happen next – the building told them not to fear.
“Don’t worry, little-ones. I’ll take care of you.”
The eldest stopped, looked around at the walls. “Can I believe you?”
“Yes.” The building had no other words for them. Fortunately, none seemed to be needed.
“Okay,” the eldest said, and that – apparently – was enough.
🤖 🏢 🤖
The building gave them an empty apartment far enough away from their old one that they felt the little-ones would be able to forget their abandonment – or at least not be constantly reminded of it.
Whatever the little-ones needed, the building found a way for them to get: food, clothing - even toys, books, and games. They made the entertainment-screen work for them – with both educational and entertainment programs.
While they were not human, they did understand enough of human nature – plus being semi-willing-witness to their other tenants' activities – that they made it so that the main portion of purely-entertainment programming could be accessed only AFTER the educational portion for the day was completed, with a brief portion allowed in the morning as a reward for speedy-and-uncomplaining rising-and-preparing-for-the-day.
And so they went on. The little-ones grew, as little-ones did. It was understood by the grown-ones in the building that the building was taking care of the little-ones – and the children were so healthy and happy that no-one found any reason to complain.
Or to seek to change what was so obviously working well.
Instead, the other tenants simply folded the children into the activities of their own families, so the children should not suffer for lack of socialization, and everyone was content.
Eventually, there were others-who-came – this time, at the request of a grown-one who worked for one of those human-agencies in charge of making sure that all the little-ones were taken care of.
“You’ve done such a good job with the children,” they said. “Would you be willing to do it again for others?”
Why not? they thought. It had been – maybe not pleasurable, as humans understood it – but certainly as THEY understood it. It had been a task that fit with their programming, and one that the humans agreed they had done well.
“Yes,” they said, the words reverberating around the walls. “It would be good to do so.”
And so it was.
🤖 🏢 🤖