Box

Chapter 5

"You should have woken me up." Aydin's voice was high, his heartbeat faster than usual, and there at the side of his neck, Box noticed a bulging vein. Fifteen minutes earlier, Box had woken him up by shaking him and playing music to him. It had just finished telling him about its nightly adventure, ready to play him its recording. It thought Aydin would be pleased with its findings, but instead, its favourite human was raising his voice and was angry at it, causing a blue-grey light to layer its screen.

"I attempted to rouse you, but you only murmured a response," Box said. "Time was of the essence, so I acted."

"You should have tried harder." Aydin's eyes narrowed, and he bent over Box, who was floating over the mattresses. "You're not allowed to go out on your own. What if an animal attacked you or somebody snatched you?"

"Apologies, but it was an emergency, and I possessed my taser." As was the case on the previous rare occasions when its handler was angry at it, Box folded itself into its smallest version and fixed its cameras at the bedding that covered Aydin's legs. It started to oscillate. "I anticipated your satisfaction." For a short second, it aimed its main camera at Aydin before it was back on his legs. "And your commendation."

Aydin sighed and then Box could feel his hand on its orb, patting it. "You did well, but you would have done even better if you had woken me up."

"I understand." Box pushed its surface out so that it grew to the size of a volleyball.

"It looks like we need to define more clearly what an emergency entails. Give me an eGlass and a keyboard, please."

Box flew towards Aydin's head. It pushed out its arm and, with its fingers formed a rectangle which it filled with light and then positioned before Aydin's eye. It pushed out another wire, which was actually just the tip of its finger, and pointed it at Aydin's lap. The light coming from it drew a keyboard.

Using the keyboard, Aydin went to its device manager, something that Box couldn't access itself, and made changes. Then Aydin went to the folder with the recorded daily footage and looked at the latest clips, the ones Box had made when it was following Lee's heat imprint. "There's a gap between the sequential numbers. What did you delete?"

"Did I delete something?" Yes, yes, it remembered that it did. Box looked at the numbers marking the recorded clips and their last two numbers. There was a missing fifty-two between fifty-one and fifty-three. There weren't any notes in its notebook, but the deletion was registered in its history. Why would it have deleted anything before its overview of its daily footage, when it stored the ones that made good memories and which contained valuable information and deleted the rest? Whatever it was, it was probably not important, because if it was, it would be in its notebook. "It may have been accidental."

Aydin played the clip with fifty-one as its last number. The player showed a display of the Helpers Hive system before it turned black. "You had to reboot."

"Yes."

"Maybe that's why there's a missing number," Aydin said and moved away from the eGlass. "Thank you." He yawned. "What time is it?"

"Three twenty-seven."

Aydin lay down on the bed, rolled on his side, and pulled the cover over his shoulder. "Wake me up at seven."

Box flew to Aydin's head and lowered onto the mattresses. "Aren't you going to confront Officer Morgan with the footage and demand an explanation for her behaviour?"

"Yes, I will, after breakfast."

"We should proceed with that immediately."

"She'll still be there in the morning." Aydin yawned again and closed his eyes.