This time, after the memories of his previous life in southern Ohio had been erased from Oliver’s head and thoroughly observed by Dr. Mai and his daughter’s, he was loaded into the back of an unmarked van. For this life, he would spend a month, the longest trial ever attempted, on the dangerous streets of New York City. At least that was Dr. Mai's plan. This, however, was Oliver’s three hundred and fifty second life, one that has still not ended to this very day.
“It’s one of the toughest places to live that we can drive to, Tessa. Brilliant. Brilliant.” Dr. Mai had a habit of constantly affirming his imagined brilliance. In reality, he’d only programmed a very simple association/memory application, the same one that children come pre-installed with as soon as they touch a hot stove. It was no big deal, nor was it the great discovery many of his colleagues were making it out to be, furthering his need to remind himself how absolutely brilliant he was. It had already been discovered by every human being that lived past two years. Dr. Mai pushed that sly, whispering thought out of his head.
“That’s too cruel! I draw the line there!” Tessa folded her arms across her chest. She was unpopular at her college, and it didn’t help her campus life at all when her father eliminated a handsome majority of her leisure time occupying her with analyzing Oliver’s data. Dr. Mai was the director of computer science at his daughter’s college, as well, and their Oliver Brass was the research the college did for money. Nobody on campus knew where the money was coming from except Dr. Mai, and he wasn’t about to tell anyone. It was strictly meant to be fishy.
“There you go again, always drawing your gosh darn lines!” Dr. Mai exclaimed, pounding a rough palm on the steering wheel in frustration over his daughter’s completely ridiculous protests. “Science isn’t about your bloody lines. You can’t gather data if you’ve already got gosh darn lines in the way. It’s not pure! It isn’t science! Can’t you understand that?”
“No! He’ll end up as a horrible person! If he does something wrong and the police finds out he’s a robot you’ll--“
“More power to ‘im,” Dr. Mai chuckled. The idea simply tickled him that Oliver could finally, finally not end up as a pleasant and respected member of society with a stable moral compass. The same idea horrified Tessa. “If he turns out rotten for once maybe I’ll finally break you of your naive optimism. The world is a hard, disgusting place. Oliver’s just been lucky.”
“Three hundred and fifty-one times lucky,” Tessa fumed, equally frustrated over her father’s inflexible and unchanging nature. “You just can’t accept that someone as rotten and gloomy as you could create someone so good.”
“Something, honey,” Dr. Mai corrected her immediately with a false sense of fatherly intimacy. Right off the bat, however, he was back to his standard chastising manner. “And how dare you suggest my robot is biased! He’s as unbiased as a thermometer.” As he said this, his scowl turned into a slightly delirious grin, the likes of which you might see on a mental patient with dissociative disorder’s face as an earthquake brought in the concrete walls around it. Immediately, his foot slammed onto the break.
“What are you doing!?” Tessa panicked, though she was more afraid of the look on her father’s face than the frenzied jerking of the van. “We’re in the Lincoln Tunnel! You can’t stop!”
“Ah, heck. No one else’s driving at this hour!” He accelerated the vehicle again. “I can’t help it. I just tend to brake when I have a brilliant idea.”
“And what was your brilliant idea?”
“It’s a new way to pitch the data Oliver gathers. Tell me how this sounds, Tessa,” Dr. Mai flicked on cruise control, taking both hands off the wheel, as they continued down the straight tunnel. His daughter couldn’t hide how uncomfortable this made her. “Oliver Brass is the thermometer for the morality of humankind.”
“Whatever.”
This was his daughter, his co-worker, and the enemy of science. This “whatever” enveloped the foolish complacency that stifled data, the morals and belief in the goodness of the world, the all’s-well-that-ends-well which crushed progress. With a ‘humph’ encapsulating his unending partnership with progress at any cost, her father returned to the wheel.

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