he turned his head the briefest twitch of his brow . ❝ okay … ❞ now that that threat was over , richard could easily return to his previous calm ; if only because his natural shock wasn’t all that high in the first place . he’d known somewhere in the back of his mind that they wouldn’t be back .
❝ one of the bots malfunctioned at work today . ❞ coming from him , that statement might be parsed as a lie . but he could swear it on his entire career it wasn’t . it was funny , that was what it was . 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 ? his lip twitched , and he took a moment to pause , to try and contain his laughter .
he couldn’t . when he looked at lydia , he just couldn’t . which was , in fact ❝ i’m serious about this , okay ? one of the bots malfunctioned . and they had to take it away . wheeled it right out . in a stretcher , lyds . can you believe that ? pretty sure they could’ve just wheeled one of steve’s chairs in . be a lot faster . ❞ what made calls with her so much better than … the rest of his life .
the way he told the story, in particular the fact that he couldn’t tell it without immediately bursting into laughter made her calm demeanor shift to amusement almost instantly. her smile cracking wider until she was laughing right along with him. since she worked from home, she didn’t have to deal with the bots that also took calls, she had no real opinion on them like he did. but his disdain for all things AI was charming, in a strange way.
by the time he made it to telling her about the gurney, she had her head thrown back and her arms holding her ribs because they hurt so bad. but all the rumbling laughter quickly shook the tickle in her lungs, and she was leaning forward to let a round of cracking coughs loose, one hand covering her mouth, the other bracing herself on the couch to try and stay steady.
“oooof, sorry.” she finally rasped, clearing her throat and reaching to pick up her mug of tea, taking a long drink. god it was awful, but it did help. “I can’t imagine watching them rush a bot off to medicentre. they’re just short of doing CPR on them at this point, I swear.” she added, making sure to quickly return to the topic at hand,
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