GoodBoy3000 | Khaffeine, an audio journey by Khan Academy
[Music] Every morning, your neural chip alarm goes off at 5 a.m. metropolitan standard time. You'd prefer to be woken up by the sun, but nobody in your sector of the city is allowed to venture to the upper levels to experience real sunlight. Oh well, chip-regulated hormones and artificial sunlight work well enough for the likes of us.
Even at this early hour, you hear the hum of Metropolis all around you: the artificial sun lamps warming up their bulbs, the garbage bots circling the city floor to sweep up the trash, the workers trudging to express a later terminals. You roll out of your cot and switch on the tiny sun lamp over the tiny workbench you crammed into the corner of your room. As you approach the table, GB3 whirrs awake. You greet him fondly as you pat his head; the robot nuzzles up next to you. Its metal fur is cold this morning, but you don't really mind.
The Good Boy 3000 is a canine companion robot, the most advanced technology of its kind. Well, except for the fact that they're up to the 7000 series now and this isn't the real deal; those cost hundreds of thousands of credits. You found a good as new Good Boy 3000 neuro coil at the scrap yard a few years back and figured you could learn how to build one. Years of tinkering and experimenting later, you built your best friend.
Speaking of the scrapyard, you glance at the nano clock from the corner of your heads-up display. You have about 45 more minutes left to work on GB3 before you have to head to the espresso laters to get to work on time. Just thinking about your dead circuit of a boss makes you grumble to yourself. If you're even a second late, you're fired. You shiver at the thought; losing your job would mean your parents would be furious, and what little credits you did have would quickly dry up.
You motion for GB3 to sit in front of you on the workbench. You flip on his maintenance switch and start to examine his auxiliary memory backup subsystem. You've been getting up early for months now to spend time on this. It's not a feature that these robots have, but that hasn't stopped you from taking the time and effort to figure out the mechanics on your own. Everything from the hours spent trolling the holodecks to study robot manuals to showing up to your workbench every day to tinker and experiment with parts. If you can solve it, GB3 will be the only dog in Metropolis with this tech.
Your hard work has paid off; your GB3 is as good as the newest 7000 series they keep showing on the telebeam. You shake your head; you can't even imagine owning something that expensive. Who even has that many credits? A solar in the upper levels, you guess. You've been trying to make a memory input for GB3 for weeks now. If something were to happen with GB3, you could initiate a restoration process that would bring him back to life. The thought of losing him, his memory data… well, it's unthinkable.
You have a promise you made to yourself that you take very seriously: some progress, just any little thing, every day while working on GB3. But the last week or so has been rough. You check the clock again; you're running low on time for today, and while everything seems to be connected properly, it just hasn't been working. Still, your promise. You find an empty power connection on one of the components; that component's already connected to the main feed, so you're not quite sure why there's another lead going to it. But hey, it's something.
You wire it up, put a dab of solder on the connection, and start closing the access panels you'd opened. You even use an upgraded replacement panel over your custom enclosure to ensure progress for today in case the power thing was a dead end. You flip the maintenance switch back off and grab your satchel. As GB3 whirs to life behind you, he greets you by rubbing the whole length of his body along your leg, shoulder to tail, his signature move, which you taught him on your own.
You give him a few quick pats on the head and hurry out the door. You check the data pad and immediately see the alerts you'd been missing while tinkering: espresso later is out again. It's not the end of the world; you only take it one stop anyhow, but the alternative is a hyper psychopath you always try to avoid. You hate showing up to work already caked in dirt. You sigh, run to your bike, and head out to the edge of Metropolis. This is probably the closest you've ever cut it. It looks like you'll arrive just a minute or two before the start of your shift, and that's if nothing else goes wrong.
Thankfully, nothing does, and a short while later, you're hopping off your hyper cycle and sprinting to the gate of the Rusty Rodeo, your satchel slapping at the top of your leg. You skid through the door just as the hourly reminder blares across the tele-beam from the Metropolitan Council: "You are in sector 22 of the Metropolis Industrial Reclamation Zone. Travel is prohibited to solar. Thank you." You hate being reminded how stuck you are in this place, but since you just swiped in on time, you've still got a job—and you've got GB3 too.
The scrapbot at the gate chirps, "Dangerous debris detected." That's odd; you usually don't get new scrap until later in your shift. You turn to look at what came into the yard, but for now, all you see is the massive magnet engaged in front of the gate. When it lifts, you drop your wrench as you see GB3 stuck to the underside, his visor dim. A Good Boy 3000 can't survive a magnetic field like that; they're still working on that for the 8000 line, and they're not even out yet.
No, no, no! You must have accidentally enabled guardian mode! As you gave him one last pat on the head out the door, dutifully he followed you, and you took him right to the biggest magnet you've ever seen in your life. You run over to the scrapbot and shove it aside, overriding the controls for the scrap magnet. Gently, you lower it back in front of the gate and disengage the magnetic field. You hear GB3 collapse to the dirt, and you start to choke up a bit.
You hoist the magnet back to its resting position and sprint over to the gate. GB3 is lifeless as you roll him over to flip the maintenance switch and open the access panel. The upgraded panel you used today feels like it weighs 10 times as much as it did when you put it on. Oh wow, a small amber LED glows inside the custom memory enclosure. You glance over and see a symbol on the access panel that you didn't recognize.
It feels like lightning tearing through your brain as you make the connection: that's the symbol for magnetic shielding! You learned about it while studying the parts you needed back when you first built GB3. Excitedly, you run for a volt pack. GB3 is still out, and you need to bring in some outside power to see if this thing's going to work. You slide back next to him on your knee pads and make the connection. The LED flashes green twice and then turns back to solid amber. You hear a click from inside his main access panel.
You jump up, and without even bothering to reattach the panels, you squint your eyes shut and flip the maintenance switch. It worked! GB3 blinks to life, rights himself, and displays a message in block letters across his visor: "I knew you could fix me!" He wags his whole body, then rubs his shoulder down to his tail against your leg. It's really him!
"You knew you could fix him too," you whisper as much as you kneel back down and wrap him in your arms. You think back on everything you learned, everything you did to get to this moment with your dog. Each one of those hours you put in has played their part. You look lovingly into GB3's visor, and you swell with a bit of well-earned pride. GB3 might not have all the features that the newer models come with, but he's got something even better.