Reez watched the news as he ate a breakfast of toasts. It was nine o' clock in the morning. Sierra had briefly looked at him as he went to the kitchen, then had resumed looking outside again.
He went to the window for a while, trying to figure out exactly what the android had been looking at the whole time.
"You been there all night?"
"Yes."
"You don't have a sleep mode or somethin'?"
"No, not that I know of."
Reez sighed. "We'll have to get you one installed or else you'll get bored out of your mind."
"I don't know boredom..."
Reez chuckled as he drank his coffee. "That's what you think."
Sierra was giving him a look of cluelessness.
"I'll set you up with an account on my personal computer," Reez continued, "This way you'll be able to browse the net and start learning about how people behave. You're a social android, so for the love of Pete, start acting human for a change."
Sierra scratched her head. "That's easy to say..."
Reez smiles. "You're doing it already, at least. Just keep at it..."
Minutes later, he had readied her account. She took a cable out of her arm and plugged herself in, directly communicating with the machine.
With that, Reez went to his video games.
For the next few days, Sierra would spend her days and nights connected to the net, under the constant supervision of Reez. He had asked her to leave the monitor on, and would glance towards it once in a while, mostly out of curiosity than out of supervision. She'd only stop her exploration to accompany Reez whenever he had to go somewhere. The job was awfully unexciting but he figured that the longer it went, the more his reward piled up. It was like watching money land right into his wallet.
And besides, he now had time to complete all his unfinished save files. This led to a shopping spree at the gaming store in the middle of the week, essentially burning away everything he had made from the job so far.
"Are you a compulsive buyer too?" Sierra asked while making a face. That morning, she had just read an article stating United Mercenaries were incorrigible spendthrifts, which was why they made so much cash from jobs and yet seemed to live like their career consisted of flipping burgers.
Reez just shrugged at her question. Without a word, he went back home, sat on his bed, and started playing one of his new games. Sierra returned to the computer, and the job went back to its uneventful flow.
Everytime Reez made comments about Sierra needing some software updates, she refused. At best, all she did was keep her different parts in working order.
Slowly, she began to focus her interests, mainly on current events. She started watching the news with Reez and subscribed to news feeds from various sites about whatever involved fighting: the Reli war, the United Mercenaries doing jobs, the police arresting criminals here and there. Everything about the Reli war was glorified and exhibited. Everything about gang wars and the black market trade was given but a few paragraphs once in a while. Against the brute and stupid force of the Reli creatures, mankind could do something. But when it came to humans against humans, the voice was very quiet and shy. As if the people wanted to muffle the fact that they too could do mistakes.
She found her answer by browsing some cultural articles: the Iist culture was at majority follower and practitioner of the Orthodox religion, which, among other proclamations and philosophies, put the human race at the center of the world, and the other creatures were to be considered with suspicion, if not hostility. There were different degrees of reaction on the spectrum of course, but the bulk of the Orthodox followers delighted in victories against the Reli creatures, further securing their opinion that man is great and man is smart and strong.
The Sius were close brothers to the Iist in many ways: they too lived a rugged, snowy lifestyle, and praised individual prowess and accomplishment, but they were overall much more refined. To quote an article vulgarizing the differences between the two cultures, "[the Sius] would dig a hole in a frozen lake and patiently wait for fish to arrive. The Iist would run into the forest, armed with guns and spears, and come back with any and all edible creatures they could find and carry back home." This was mostly due to the Sius integrating all three major religions to some degree: the Orthodox mentality of dignity to all men and women, the Pagan balance between living creatures and their environment, and the Reli ideal of victory through healthy struggle.
She later found out the backstory behind the appearance of the Reli creatures: extremists of the religion believed that the only way for mankind to appreciate life was to earn it by the skin of their teeth. Hence, they thought themselves as the "necessary evils" of the world and set out to commit crimes for the sole purpose of making the good stand out, providing it with opportunities to shine and glow.
Then, at a mass convention, the cultists knelt down and prayed, repeating the chief priest's incantation for a purge that would separate the weak from the strong. To their amazement, a horde of creatures supposedly appeared out of thin air and massacred the entire convention. Because there were no survivors to the event, many believed the story to be greater than nature, but even up to this way, it was the most widely accepted version, and the explanation as to why the Reli creatures seemed to defy normal laws of nature: many a person has witnessed a Reli simply fading into existence, and it's been found that the creatures were able to grow, heal and move without having to eat or seek any source of energy.
Each day, more and more news came. Sierra eventually filtered some of them out, gradually learning that most of them were the news from yesterday, only, someone else had written or told them, in a different way.
She didn't think this would ever happen, but she had to face the fact: she had reached the end of the net!
She tried again, and this time broadened her research. She went outside Arimast altogether, checking out news and articles about other countries, like the States of Laradost, the two Actis Empires, Binja, Apania, the Yolan Counties, Ukraland, New Smirland, Siveriast, Wall County, and so on and so forth. She didn't really learn anything useful but it gave her stuff to think about and process, and as far as she knew, her hard disk wasn't anywhere near capacity. So, she absorbed.
Reez came back from groceries one day and found a message in his voice mailbox.
"Hey Reez, it's Mr. Karl. I haven't forgotten you - just been busy with a couple of folders and whatnot; ya know how office work is. I suppose the lil' girl's all right? If you could at least let me know you're alive and stuff, I'd appreciate it. Oh, and I transferred cash for your job time up until yesterday. Talk to ya later, bye!"
He pressed "Call Back". No answer. There goes the voicemail.
"Mr. Karl, Reez Lokk, returning the call. Nothing in particular to report about the girl. She's been busy browsing the net and just sitting there. Call me up as soon as you have something else for me to do. Bye."
He hung up and looked around.
"Hey, where are you?"
"Over here."
She had spoken from the bathroom. She was busy cleaning her simu-skin with a wet rag.
The door was locked.
"You afraid someone's gonna see ya naked?" Reez asked mockingly.
"As a matter of fact, yes!"
Reez smirked. "That'd be the day!" He turned the TV on and began zapping. Halfway through the channels, he realized he had done the exact same thing right before leaving for the store, a half-hour ago.
"This is ridiculous..." he muttered.
He turned around and went to his bedroom. He took a quick look at his wallet, mentally added his bank balance and his amount of cash together, and figured he could afford a treat with Karl's newly arrived payment.
"Sierra!" he called, "Pretty yourself up, I'm gonna go out for dinner tonight and you're comin' along!