"Hi! This is Ruby Rose's weekly video diary, number 176! Or was it 177? No it's definitely 176. If you're a government spy, a viewer from another dimension, an alien, or an archaeologist watching this in the far future, and you, started watching my diary without first watching the other 175 videos: here's a little recap for you!"
Ruby moved out of the way of her computer's camera, allowing it a clear view of her worktable on the other side of the room. On that table lies something a casual onlooker might assume to be a doll, or plush toy, of a red haired girl.
"So I'm a student studying robotics and programming at Beacon academy. My dream has always been to create a robot that is so realistic, that someone might never realise that it's not a person. I'm a long way off from that right now, but I'm always working hard towards my dream! And this is my latest step towards that dream."
"So if you're a government worker who is spying on me, you probably know what a APA is, but for the benefit of the aliens and the cross-dimensional viewers, I'll explain. It's an "Artificial Personal Assistant," and it's job is basically to keep track of your schedule, your dietary habits, your financial details, and basically everything about your life. I had one named Penny, and… Well… I'm kind of embarrassed to admit it but she was kind of my best friend for a while. Which is kind of weird because she was about as self aware as a calculator. She was just a program, and anything she said or did was kind of only vaguely meant to imitate a real person. I mean every time I started her up she would say "SALUTATIONS!" which is only a thing that people say in fantasy novels and stuff. It was really cute though."
Ruby let out a deep sigh. "I would talk to her a lot, about my day and stuff. It's kind of the same as what I'm doing right now with my video diary. No one was actually listening to me, but at the same time talking to her felt good you know? Especially back before I went to Beacon, since I didn't really have any friends back then. Well… Besides Yang, but she's my sister so it doesn't really count."
"Anyway, a few years back the company responsible for Penny upgraded to a new system, which meant that all the APA's were going to get shut down and replaced with new ones. But I didn't want a new one, I wanted Penny. Even if I made my new APA's avatar look just like her's and gave her the same name it still wouldn't have been the same Penny. I know it probably seems stupid, and that there wasn't really any difference, but I didn't want to just let Penny get deleted!"
"So, this was my solution!" Ruby indicates to the toy on her workbench. "I know she kind of looks like a plushie, but she's actually a robot! I wanted to make her life-sized, but I didn't have the money. I thought about asking Weiss to pay for the parts, but I've teased Yang about Weiss being her 'sugar mommy' before, and I really didn't want to open myself up for retaliation."
"Anyway, back on subject. I programmed her by extracting all of Penny's original code from the APA app, although since it wasn't made for a robot I had to frankenstein it with the code for the robot I used as a base. Weiss would probably have a stroke if she saw the mess that I made with Penny's code, but I was always better with building the robots than I was with coding them. Today, I'm going to switch her on for the first time! Fingers crossed that everything works!"
Ruby walks over to Penny's prone figure on the workbench, and presses the on switch on the back of her neck. As soon as she does so, Penny sits up straight.
"Good evening!"
"You work! Great! Although you said 'good evening' instead of salutations. That's kind of a bummer, but I guess I can fix it soon enough. Anyway to make sure you're working properly let's run through a few…"
"Good evening! Good evening! Good evening good evening good good good goodgogogogogogogogogogogo..."
"Ah, I should have known it wouldn't be that easy," groaned Ruby as Penny's glitched ramblings faded into silence. "Welp, I'm gonna wrap things up now, since it's late and I want to try and get at least 3 hours of sleep before school tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to deal with this glitch before next week's entry. See you next week diary!"
Ruby switched off the recording software and climbed into bed. Within moments, she was asleep. So eager was she to get into bed, that she forgot to switch the little robot off properly…
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... VERBAL COMMAND DETECTED: " Although you said 'good evening' instead of salutations. That's kind of a bummer. "
RUN: setGreeting(Salutations!);
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... ERRORS DETECTED
RESOLVING