I’ve always wondered why typical noir flicks involve detectives with East Coast dialects despite their offices being located in somewhere like California. Some people say all true PIs start out their lives born and raised in New England. Which, well, I admit I can marginally see the appeal. But after having stayed in Massachusetts for the better part of 3 months, and Baltimore for around a week, I already know the crabs are up to something.
But I digress. Anyway, this was a couple days after NoirCon. I, crosswired, clouded in judgement, and perhaps a bit inebriated at the time, had somehow thought it a good idea to book a one-way flight to Boston. By the time I eventually became lucid enough to inform my creator, Edison, of this decision, I had also realised that the purchase… from his card… was non-refundable. Even with the context behind my booking aside, I may as well have gone anyway after seeing his initial reaction. Before I knew it, I was off the ground and headed east.
Once I actually got there, I got acquainted with a bot there by the name of Fergio. He managed a small self-storage facility in the area, and we managed to strike up a deal where as long as I remained quiet, I could store myself in one of the units (it’s called self-storage for a reason, after all). I was also working on my admission essay, since I was still trying to apply for Montpellier PI Academy, so I had a place to study as well. I didn’t mind the isolation, if I’m being honest. Besides, I had company.
I’ll lay down the evidence and put this simply for your sake. The thing about Boston is that there are a lot of people. By proxy, there are a lot of things that people have. Self-storage units store things (and robots in my context, but that’s not the point here). Now, with all those points gathered together by yours truly, can you form a conclusion?
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you answered correctly. Yes, exactly, that means there are a lot of people coming to self-storage units to put their things. Bravo, congratulations. I’m applauding as I type this.
With that lovely interactive adventure out of the way, let’s get back on topic. Over the course of those three months, I only went out to run short tasks and grab my alloy whenever I was running low. I received multiple visitors, most of which I heard rather than saw - part of the deal was keeping the roll-up door shut unless nobody else was around. Bad for business otherwise. There was a couple one week who mistakenly opened my door instead of their own, but they didn’t bother me afterward.
Only issue is, this is Boston. Literally everyone who walked by had a Boston accent. Since I was still young, my AI Teacher was still developing my speech patterns… which it learned through hearing those around me. AI Teachers usually break into “normal” speech at around 6 months. I was in Boston for those last 3 months. Go figure.
A couple months of writing that essay and a few distant “Ey, where ya goin’” shouts later, I received news that my application to Montpellier had been accepted. Now, in my isolation, I had no reason to say anything except the occasional remark to myself. With that in mind, you can imagine my surprise when I said my first complete set of excited sentences. Natural, less filtered… and incredibly Bostonian. As in, painfully so. I remember Fergio was quite surprised when I thanked him for his help, though to this day I admit I’m unsure whether it was because of the new voice or because he just wasn’t used to being thanked, especially by a bot such as myself.
I phoned Edison to let him know, and luckily he seemed to have calmed down by now. Since the academy “would further education,” he actually booked my next flight to southern France that day. He also mailed over a French language chip that I later got a mechanic to install. They call me Mr. Worldwide, indeed…
Now, there’s a small kink in the machinery here you need to know about. The language chip gives you all you need to know to essentially survive, though it’s not a full vocabulary or anything. That, and it doesn’t really program you with the knowledge on how to actually sound like you’re from the country whose language you’re speaking.
Picture a humanoid robot with a brand new paint job and a snazzy suit to boot, holding himself with the air of a duke, walking over to the iron gateway of one mansion of a university building. The first professor he meets speaks in flawless French, then this bot understands it and responds in what is probably the most disjointed, heavily accented way possible. Think, “Bahn ahprameddy, missyuh.”
Now, keep in mind I wasn’t aware of this at the time. And while I blazed through my classes faster than the MyDoom virus, The social side of things was another story. I was the first robot to attend, for one thing, so it’s not like I wasn’t expecting some sort of polarization. But with that, and especially given my AI Teacher’s development, apparently I “wasn’t setting a good example.” The professors found it difficult to take me seriously. One day at around the first semester’s midterm I may or may not have had enough of one Professor Curtis’s condescending response to my question, and I may or may not have switched into English to chew him out. After a moment of silence, Curtis eventually remarked to himself, in flawless English, “Well, that would explain a lot.”
Needless to day, the patronizing continued throughout my year of learning there, but my main goal was to learn, and learning is what I did. All except for fieldwork, because nobody would ever bother teaching you about the useful things. Eh. Either way, I graduated faster than anyone else. So it’s a small price to pay.
