story scenes

The grandfather clock was ancient. Well over two hundred years old. Its dark wooden case was battered and worn beneath the polish. Lazy afternoon sunlight shone across its face as the pendulum swung slowly back and forward producing a somnambulant tock........tock..........tock..........

Half heard voices echoed down the hallway, spilling out from a sunlit room behind a half closed door. Dust motes hung in the air, illuminated by shafts of golden light from the small window set high in the wall. Porcelain figurines danced silently behind the glass of a wooden display cabinet set against the wall opposite an old fashioned hatstand.

Set between them on a once richly coloured oval rug stood an ornately carved wooden coffee table, with a cream coloured ceramic surface which was cracked with age. Dried ferns decorated a vase which stood upon the table, a faint pattern still visible beneath the chipped glaze. Small stacks of books were piled around the vase and yet more were scattered beneath the table and around the room, along with various odds and ends - flower pots, old newspapers, a mis-shapen shoe here, a frawed straw basket there.

Metallic footfalls softened by the faded rug, the M23 home care droid negotiated the cluttered passage. A low powered UV laser swept back and forward overlaying a grid onto the visual input provided by binocular hi resolution cameras set in what could ostensibly be called its head. The combined data was analyzed and mapped onto a virtual environment in the droids spatial processor, rendering the accumulated crap of a century down to a wireframe model in its digital cortex.

Ponderously graceful, the two metre tall robot picked its way through the room. Audio receptors channeled the the distorted echo of voices from the sunlit room through a suite of filters in its language processor.

"......thing here!...."
"...........legs.............here to help...."

It paused briefly to select a program from its vox module before entering the room. It calulated a voice pattern which was composed of fifty eight percent sympathetic tones to calm the patient, while the remaining forty two percent would convey a firm no nonsense attitude to reassure the relative.

".....filthy metal beast...."
".....grief! ........what........against it?!"

The M23 pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

"I don't like the way it looks at me!" snapped the old lady sitting in high backed chair by the window. Her fingers curled like claws around the ends of the armrests and raised her chin contemptuosly as she looked sideways to see the droid enter the room.

The other woman in the room didnt turn around as she arranged ornaments on a high shelf and dusted around them.

"Don't be so silly nana" she chided.

Voiceprint analyzers identified her immediately as Grace Evelyn, of 46 Chestnut Lane, Ashford. A lecturer in neurology at the nearby University. Security protocols verified the voiceprint against other biological vectors held in encrypted memory. Height, weight, hair colour and even posture were cross referenced before the criteria for positive identification were satisfied, and administrator access granted. The droid loaded a selection of configuration tools into active memory and started a background task to upload reports from medical monitor programs into the comlink in Grace's handbag.