The discovery that Jon's best friend was a robot was about the strangest thing that had happened to him. She seemed so human--he still thought of her as someone real. There was one thing stranger, of course--the discovery of the wishing stone. But thanks to the scientists' wish, neither Jon nor Karyn had remembered about it.
"I have to go to the restroom," said Jon. "I guess robots don't really go." But he knew that Karyn had gone to the bathroom--either she had to do it only when she ate, or else she had just pretended to go and forgotten she really didn't.
Jon left his room, leaving the scientists' field of view, and prepared to sit down on the toilet, when he noticed something in the hamper. It was his pants from the other day, but he had had something in his pocket. Funny, he didn't remember having anything. Jon walked over and took it out. It turned out to be a piece of paper, which he had never seen before.
As Jon sat down on the toilet, he took the time to read the strange note.
"Dear Jon, If you are reading this, it means I have passed on...." It was a note from his grandfather. Only it said something about being left a wishing stone. Which was funny--he didn't recall ever getting a stone. Besides, wishing stones were impossible.
But the note really had Grandpa's signature, and he recalled having seen an awful lot of strange things around Grandpa as a kid.
Jon tucked the note into his pocket.
Soon afterwards, Jon was back in his room. "Karyn, stand on one foot," he tried experimentally.
Karyn glared at him.
"I order you to stand on one foot."
Karyn immediately obeyed the order, and then puzzled, said "Why did I do that? Wait a minute, you ordered me to do it!"
"I'm sorry, Karyn, I'm just testing! Do you really mind?"
"I... somehow I don't," said Karyn.
"I bet you're programmed not to care that you're obeying orders. Hmm, Karyn, I order you to do the first five problems of my algebra homework."
She immediately walked over to Jon's desk and began doing the problems. "You know," said Jon, "maybe we should go see Eric and Keith. I thought I knew you for a long time, but it looks like I didn't. I don't know anything about you!"
"I... I'm scared," said Karyn, as Eric and Keith watched from afar. "If we go, I don't know what's going to happen. What if I go there and they say that now that you know I'm a robot, the experiment is over and I have to go into storage? I don't want to go into storage!"
Eric laughed.
"I don't want to order you to go," said Jon, "but you really should. I know you're an experiment, but how long is the experiment? What's its goal? Wait a minute... I order you to tell me what I wanted to know about the experiment."
Karyn suddenly jerked and said "No information stored."
Then Karyn blinked and said "Maybe you're right. Let's go."
