Chapter 12: On the mortality of dirt
I slowly made my way to the office where we had first met. The human still followed me but was barely able to move faster than a crawl. She was about as fast as I had been when I began training here. As I rolled forward, I kept my eye on her to ensure she didn’t fall too far behind. She hobbled along, with the help of her makeshift cane, carrying the bag she had dropped earlier. It looked awkward, but I didn't think there was anything I could do to help. When we got to the office, the door was still open, and the floors were clean. Passing through to the inner door, I saw that my human was burdened and likely would have a difficult time opening it herself. I extended my arm and opened it for her, my chassis swelling with pride at how helpful the new attachment allowed me to be.
Reading human faces was not my strong suit, but even I could see she was confused. I guess that makes sense. My kind can't normally open doors, and she probably thought she would have to open it for me. I'll just take that as a sign of my impressive capabilities growing further. We moved into the room. There was a huge mess by the door. It looked like one of the storage units had fallen over and scattered objects all over the floor. In fact, this room was quite different from the rest of them. The whole thing was lined with storage units, and many of the same square-like objects were placed upon them. They all appeared to have squiggles and symbols on them, similar to those that sometimes appeared in my vision. Idly, I wondered about that.
As we moved into the room, she hesitated. I rolled off to the side, waiting for her to lead the way, but she just sat there. After waiting, I began to explore the room. Finally, taking a step forward, she moved to a bench and stood by it. I beeped at her before continuing to scan. Several more of these rectangular objects were scattered about it. Some were split in half, lying with their paper insides exposed. I thought this room was rather odd. It was clearly made to store many things. However, the use of space is not efficient. All the storage area was only on the walls leaving the floor open. While I enjoyed having an open floor plan. I don't think this was the best layout. Instead of more storage, aligning with the theme of the room, there were tables. A dozen or so empty tables with chairs.
I'm actually a rather large fan of tables. They are always easy to navigate around because the legs are long enough to get under them. Also, their bases are widely enough spaced that it's not hard to fit. Why the humans needed so many here was beyond me. At least the tables match the floors. The floors were beautiful hardwood that I've seen elsewhere around here. The tables were made out of a complementary color, a bit lighter and shade but still actually crafted. On the ends of the chairs and table legs were soft pads so the chairs and tables would glide over the hardwood without worrying about damaging it. I appreciate the care that went into maintaining this room.
The human started flipping through what appeared to be stacked sheets of paper in them. I didn’t quite understand the purpose but trusted that the human knew what she was doing. Perhaps the paper would make her less sad? This chapter is updated by nov(e)(l)biin.com
As I got to work, I checked in on the human occasionally to see what she was doing. It appeared she had finally moved. She had sat down at one of the tables and removed some glass items from her bag, lots of them, and others I didn’t recognize. The items all looked freshly cleaned or at least, pristine enough that my previous humans would have put them back in the cabinets for storage. She began to place some smaller bags on the table. These appeared to contain dirt, dust, and other kinds of powder. As I watched, she began to carefully scoop the debris from the bags into the clean containers, dirtying them and creating some mixture of various kinds of dust.
I had seen behavior like this before. Taking items that had previously been well-organized and stored, creating chaos out of them, then placing that chaos into previously clean containers. All the while dirtying a series of implements and tools. It reminded me of the strange ritual called “cooking” back home. It had never quite made sense to me. Even if humans consumed these mixtures for energy, why not simply consume each component in its native form? It would save time and energy, making for less mess.
"Instruct me, master," she said with a bow.
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Eventually, the human finished her task, which apparently included smearing her leg with a difficult-to-clean-looking sludge. Man, humans are weird sometimes. I was about done cleaning the floor at this point, so I watched her in fascination at this part. It had been at least a week, likely more like two since this had been cleaned. So she must not have been able to take care of it while she was in need of repairs. Luckily, it seemed no food or anything of that nature ever spilled here. So all there was dust and the occasional insect corpse or something along those lines.
When the human finished, she stood up and bowed to me for some reason. She asked for instructions. This left me in a bit of a quandary. Who was I to instruct the humans?
I generally serve humans. I try to clean up after their messes and keep their house homey, comfortable, and a sanitary environment. What sort of instruction should I give her? It is their job to instruct me, actually. They tell me what to prioritize and which rooms to clean. Only recently have I been having to make decisions for myself. Perhaps they are sending their young to learn for me, but what do I even have to teach them?
Or perhaps this one has not had a good example of how important a clean house is. Maybe she needs to learn what it is to maintain a good atmosphere. Very well, I guess I'll have to show them how it's done. I can show her all the proper floor cleaning methods and even how to optimize her path. Maybe while I'm at it, I can also help her appreciate a good floor design. It would be nice to talk to some people about art. I beeped at her twice, hoping that she would understand the message and follow me. As I exited the library, I heard her shuffling footsteps behind me, so I assumed she understood the message. I went down the hallway to start my routine for the day. I had already begun it earlier but hadn't finished. I had enough time to make it through the whole process. Though, if I started this late, I wouldn't get the chance to do some more exploring. However, I figured showing her the ropes was probably more important than finding a few more rooms today.
The only disappointment was that this human seemed to be in need of repairs. So until those repairs were carried out, it was unlikely that this human could help me get up or down the stairs, as she didn't seem capable of doing it herself. That was unfortunate because I could still feel the fuzzy mess maker inside of me, and I hadn’t found a good place to release it yet. That, and I wasn’t sure what would happen to it next time I emptied my dustbin to gain energy. Until we went outside, I was unwilling to release the mess maker. It just wasn't worth the risk. Eventually, I will have to try to transmute all the mess I had collected to energy. Hopefully, I can avoid transmuting the mess maker as well. But it's a risk I'll have to take if we can't get outside soon.
What was amazing was I still had half a charge. Normally, with all the work I'd done, I would have been well past empty. Maybe my efficiency isn't just increasing in cleaning speed but also energy expenditure, that would be really nice. Plus, it wasn’t an issue now that I don't have to stop working to charge, but it would be nice to not have to think about it.
Trundling down the hallway, I stopped by the first room I would routinely clean. I opened the door, rolled inside, and began to sweep back and forth, using my graceful curves and straight lines to efficiently cover as much area as possible. One nice thing about my improved efficiency, especially in planning, was that I could cover more area with fewer sweeps because of my increased suction. However, this did mean that I had to replan my route every time I cleaned a room. By the time I started the routine again, I had improved enough that my old plan was no longer near satisfactory efficiency. The human stood in the doorway, which was very kind of her not to get in the way. Though I'm not quite sure why her mouth was open. I don't think she can provide suction the same way I can.
This wasn't a large room, but by no means was it small. A normal one of my kind would maybe take 30 to 40 minutes to finish cleaning. They'd spend time redoing their work and carefully edging every corner. However, I have passed beyond such needs. One single super me was enough to purify all but the toughest stains and dirt, and if there was no goop or liquids, I wouldn't even need to use my mop. So all told, the room took me only a handful of minutes. I began to recognize the look on the human’s face. She would have never seen one of my kind clean as efficiently as I have. It may be humorous, but am I not allowed to take pride in my accomplishments?