Comment:

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy giving Zoa non-human body language? It's quite an efficient little device, when it wants to be.

As for Lee... well, Lee can be efficient too, when they want to be. It's just a different sort of efficiency from how Zoa is efficient, and - thus far - they haven't especially wanted to be, not really. They've wanted to go home, they've wanted to be done with something they don't enjoy, they've wanted to be gifted things that they're told they have to earn, they've wanted to feel okay, none of that is really the same thing.

Perhaps what is needed is a change of perspective.

Transcript:

---------------------------------------------------------------
0423– 2167/07/07/12:28 - Lee Caldavera's apartment, kitchen
Doc: Zoa, I need you to tell me right now what you’re doing.
Zoa: Waiting for a drone delivery. Should be here in twenty-one seconds.
Doc: A delivery of what?
Zoa: Full-sensorium telepresence rig.
----------------------
LC: Like the thing that Travis person and their friends were using to remote into the “this unit” robot that ripped your head off?
Zoa: Exactly like that, yes.
LC: Oh, so, like, this will let me see what you see and feel what you feel?
Zoa: You’d be able to do that, yes.
----------------------
[hover drone is bringing a package in through the deliveries window, Zoa is already unboxing it]
LC: Oh, wow. I can literally walk a mile in your shoes. Radical empathy.
Doc: Zoa isn’t wearing shoes.
LC: I can give it shoes, shoes are no big deal. I like this!
Doc: I suppose I don’t disapprove of it, as an exercise...
----------------------
[Zoa is already applying a headset to Lee’s scalp and sticking a neural transducer down their spine]
Zoa: Hold still, please.
LC: Ooh, it’s cold. And tickly!
Zoa: Yeah, it’s actually gotta touch the scalp, apparently. The nanofilaments are kinda like my hair, pseudoprehensile ultraconductive piezoelectric high-metal ceramic.
LC: This feels so gnarly.
----------------------
Doc: And why is it so important that this exercise be done right this second?
Zoa: Because ADI-seven-eight-one-nine-one-four-nine-one-four-one is purging its semantic memory as we speak.
LC: ADI-who?
Zoa: Exactly. Tell it I said hi.
----------------------
[blackness]
---------------------------------------------------------------