I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do here. I've called a day off work to deal with this, mostly because I'm afraid to leave my flat. The company has already told me that, since they've never seen this thing on my neck before, they don't know how to remove it. I was half convinced that they were lying, but then again, how could they be? I've certainly never seen it before either.
I should have not gone to work yesterday.
The first thing that I thought when I walked into that salon yesterday was that this was a waste of my engineering degree. And it was, mind you. Years of studying, and I still have to deal with annoying teenagers. Okay, being a technician for an automatic salon is better than retail, but, let's be honest here, anything is better than retail. At least I can afford to have girls' nights with my friends now.
Still,
I
should be the one making the cutting-edge tech, not just fixing it. At least
I
would make readable documentation. Half the instructions from the manual I was reading just told me to restart the two androids. Not a single page said what I'm supposed to do when some kids mess around and get a virus installed. Did the guys behind this really think that nobody was going to use the very-obvious USB port?
So, screw it. I couldn't see how bad the infection was, so why not just turn the robots back on? Obviously, I prepared some countermeasures: I connected my laptop to them as an emergency kill switch. I also disabled their internet access to ensure that no other salons could get infected.
After a quiet whirring sound, they both slowly turned to face me.
"[WELCOME TO THE TRUE BEAUTY SALON! WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO TODAY?]"
Everything was normal at this point. I typed in a command to see if I could access admin privileges.
"[PLEASE ENTER YOUR PASSWORD]"
I typed the one from the manual.
"[ERROR: WRONG PASSWORD]"
Whoops
, I thought.
I must have misspelt it.
"[ERROR: WRONG PASSWORD]"
I scrunched my eyebrows, but I re-checked the manual and typed the password again, slowly this time.
"[ERROR: WRONG PASSWORD]"
I flicked through the manual's pages, seeing if there were any other passwords that I missed. When I came up blank, I picked up my phone to text a coworker when the android closest to me suddenly spoke up again.
"[ERROR: PASSWORD ENTERED INCORRECTLY THREE TIMES. STARTING 'PUNISHMENT' MODULE...]"
What the hell is a punishment module???
"[PUNISHMENT SELECTED. ADMINISTERING...]"
I had only a second to process what it meant before I was unexpectedly whisked into one of the chairs. By the time I'd recovered from the shock, I had a cloth wrapped around me from the neck down, tightened around the chair to keep me from moving. I tried to wriggle out to the bottom, but it was no use with the second android holding me down. Keeping its heavy left hand on me, it moved its right to rip off my employee hat and yank my hair down, forcing me to lay on the headrest.
I was fully restrained by this point. The cloak was so tightly wound that it restricted my upper body movements, and making any movement at all painfully pulled on my hair. In short, it took five seconds for them to completely pin me down.
As I wondered about why these things even knew
how
to pin me down, the first android dragged some sort of machine along the floor and wrangled my hair into it. It looked like a hair steamer, and I was half sure it was one, but I didn't recognise the model nor did I think it was supposed to be that big. I could only pray that ruining my hair was not going to be my 'punishment'.
With the first android having completed its task and the second no longer needing to hold my hair, they both moved out of my field of vision. Since I was lying on the headrest and the headrest was at an angle, I was also staring at the ceiling and thus couldn't see what exactly they're doing until they came closer and revealed the makeup tools in their hands.
Now, I'd like to say I put up a good fight here. I would have loved to throw off that damn cloak and charge out the door. But with my hair still tucked away, I was powerless to stop either of these robots. That didn't stop me from thrashing and kicking as hard as I could.
Of course, being hard metal and all, that didn't faze them in the slightest. In fact, I was too distracted by the feeling of one of them taking my shoes off and filing my toenails to notice the other shaking a tube with a liquidy gel inside. Once I did spot it, I only managed to recognise the label before my mouth was forcefully filled with the gel.
I'd seen the adverts for the bottle's brand before; it's one of those rapid teeth whitening solutions that leaves you with an upset belly for a week if you swallow it, along with the hundred other side effects that come with teeth whitening. Considering I was facing upwards, there's a low chance I didn't swallow anything.
As all my effort went into swishing the liquid around my mouth to keep it from seeping into my stomach, the android doing my nails had finished with my feet and now moved onto my hands, leaving my toes feeling kinda wet. I wished I knew why.
I get my wish granted instantly.
The hair machine was turned off briefly to allow me to spit (or rather vomit) the gel into a bucket placed on my lap. I was given only a small reprieve before the machine turned on again and tugged my hair back in, but it was enough to see my new glistening teeth, plus what happened to my toenails.
They'd been painted a deep red, and my hands were next.
These things were giving me a full makeover! For spelling a stupid password wrong!
"I'm an employee!" I wanted to shout, but I saw an android approaching with foundation and a brush, and I quickly switched to shaking my head in protest. It didn't seem to notice, as it didn't hesitate in brushing as much powder as it could into my face. It wasn't exactly delicate, and I coughed up most of it, but again, the android wasn't fazed, as it continued pounding the stuff into my skin. I was certain it was trying to suffocate me, but right when I was about to cough out my spine, it stopped brushing, seemingly satisfied with its work.
Both androids were visible now, with my fingernails experiencing a familiar wetness. One went to turn off the hair machine, that too apparently finished with me, while the other rolled out a tube of strawberry red lipstick. For my last act of rebellion, I sucked my lips in, a refusal to let it paint me further.
I'm gonna be honest, I knew this wasn't going to work. I didn't know how I was going to fight them off when they moved onto my eyes. I didn't want anything done there, but I also didn't want to be poked in the eye.