Reprogrammed

The woman spent some time getting all the sheep settled, and the robot could hear her doing something unusual but pleasant with her voice. The bleating of the sheep quietened down after a while, and the woman returned to sit beside the robot. The creature pulling the cart continued again, with Moses trotting along beside it. They passed by another barn, inside of which were several other creatures of different shapes and sizes. One of them looked a bit like the creature pulling the cart, only it was much smaller and shaggier. One of them was stocky, and black and white, while another was squat and hairlessly pink. There were others that looked like sheep, but they weren't fluffy like them. The woman stopped the cart, got off, and began to unhook the large creature from its reigns. "Hey, robot? You wanna help?" she asked over her shoulder. "Take the hay and put it in the silo." She motioned her head to a tall, narrow brick building between the two barns.

By the time the woman had gotten the large creature unhooked and led it inside the barn by gently patting its backside, the robot was already finished unloading the hay. "Whoa, you're fast," she said with a grin. "Thank you... Hey, come and meet these guys." She gestured for him to come over, as the assortment of different animals watched the robot cautiously. She pointed first to one of the ones who looked a bit like a sheep. "Those ones are called goats," she said. "Be careful, they're playful. That one's call a pig." She pointed to the hairless one, and then the black and white one. "And that's a cow. And that's a donkey." She pointed to the miniature cart animal. The larger version of it nuzzled the woman's back and she laughed when she nearly fell over. "Oho, and of course, this is Ferrari. He's a horse. I'll tell you everyone else's names when... Um, later." She had almost said when it got 'settled in'.

The woman looked up at the robot and blinked. "Oh... Guess I didn't tell you, huh?" she said. "I'm... My name is Brigitte." She didn't know if she had to tell it that she was human, so she didn't. "Do you have a name? If not... Do you want me to give you one?"

Brigitte blew a raspberry and giggled. "Hey, that's actually kind of nice," she said. "Robert the robot. I like it. C'mon Robert, lemme show you around the rest of the farm." So far it had only seen the outer meadows, the cornfields, and the outer barns. There was much more to see! She led it out of the barn and closed the door behind them.

With Moses in tow, Brigitte walked Robert through to the inner part of the farm, which was separated from the barns by a basic wooden fence. The whole topography of the farm was circular, with the corn field surrounding everything. On the inside there were a series of gardens and greenhouses and something that Brigitte said she would show Robert last. Brigitte showed Robert the vegetable garden, the orchard, the botanical garden, the pond where Robert learned what fish and ducks were, and the 'danger zone'. The danger zone was full of little wooden huts, in and out of which flew things called bees. Robert learned that even though they were tiny and fluffy, they had a nasty sting and so they had to be treated very delicately. Finally they came back to where they had entered through the barn, and Brigitte showed Robert the 'baby barn'. There was a small lawn surrounded by wooden hutches, inside of which were a selection of small fluffy animals. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, and lots of noisy chickens! "I have to feed them all," Brigitte said. "Do you wanna help me?"

Brigitte looked at Robert for a moment. "I'm sorry," she said. "'Want' probably isn't a program you were built with, huh? How about, instead of asking you what you want to do, I can give you two options to pick from in future?" They went to a little shed and began to fill little bags with various different types of food. The food was in bins with drawings of the different animals so Robert would know what to give to whom. The sound of the shed opening had riled all of the animals up.

"They key is not to give them too much," Brigitte said, monitoring Robert as he fed each of the animals. "They'll all get fat and that'll make them ill. Most of these animals will stop eating when they're full but the more they eat over time, the bigger they'll get. But these chickens-" she gestured to the feathered friends who were practically salivating while they waited for their food "-are so stupid that they won't stop eating until all the food is gone. So if you give them too much, they'll eat until they die if they could." Brigitte shook her head but she was smiling. Robert didn't get to pet any of the fluffy animals, it was just feeding them through their hutches, but then Brigitte ushered it into the chicken coop. "Don't be frightened," she said, closing the door behind them both as the chickens swarmed all over Robert who had its hands full of feed. They were squawking and flapping and pecking all over him, but it wasn't too rough.

"They're stupid," Brigitte said again, sitting down on the ground and inviting some of the chickens to peck at her lap where the food fell. "Actually, that's not fair to say. They have small, simple brains that are just focused on surviving. So when they see food, they only know that they have to eat it. They don't stop to think that they've had enough or even realise that they feel sick. It's a simple life, isn't that right, Hawk?" She scratched the head of a little ginger chicken sitting in her lap, pecking at a blotch on her dungarees that it thought was a seed.

Brigitte regretted using the word 'stupid'. "It would be simple," she said, thinking carefully about how she phrased this. "And there's nothing wrong with simple. These chickens here are happy and living their best life because they only have to worry about eating and making babies. And happiness is all anyone could hope for. Haha!" She laughed as one of the larger chickens hopped onto Robert's head and pecked on its eye. "You were programmed the way you were programmed," she continued. "I don't know if you can 'feel' happiness, or whatever, or if your only goal is to survive. But you're here now and everything happens for a reason."

"Search and rescue?" Brigitte looked intrigued. She hadn't heard Robert mention this function before, and if it had then she hadn't heard it. So that was what it was built for - rescue missions? Depending on who was being rescued from what, those could be pretty violent. If Robert was out here, that probably meant the cartel were involved, so Robert must have been outfitted with some pretty intense stuff... "Maybe?" she said in response to the question about happiness. "But happiness isn't a flaw. Ah, we should leave these guys to eat." The chickens were getting all up on Robert where they didn't need to be. Brigitte gently shooed them off, and then pulled Robert back out through the hutch door.

Brigitte sighed and flung her hands up in the air. “I don’t know,” she said, sounding a tiny bit exasperated. “I’m not a programmer and I only know basic robotics, I’m sorry... But you know, not knowing is part of what makes life special,” she added, trying to make herself sound wise. “If you don’t know something, you can either seek out the answer or accept that you will never know. Either way it’s good. And life is good. Right?” She and Robert were strolling more slowly now, through the pretty flower orchards towards a place Brigitte had not shown him yet.

Brigitte chuckled, a warm sound that made her nose crinkle. “Of course you may,” she said. “But you know, I was wondering if you had any more memories now of where you cane form? You look like an expen... Um, important robot. Your creators might want you back?”

Brigitte shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “I do some broadcasting from here and you might appear in them so they might find you is all. Ah, home sweet home.” They had walked to a white picket fence, behind which they could see a neatly manicured lawn boarded by flowered bushes. The house at the centre was squat and white, an old converted mill with a thatched roof and a stream alongside it that made the old wheel turn. In amongst the thatching were solar panels and a big satellite dish. Brigitte pushed open the gate and gestured for Robert to go inside.