Answer the door

You groan, dropping your feet off the terminal desk you’ve been reclining on for the past hour, and stand up staggering to the door as you yawn and stretch the early morning out of your muscles. Looking half crazy, hair still bedraggled from sleep, you open the door and are taken aback by a humanoid robot in a uniform.

It’s wears an odd looking hat, blue shorts with a lighter blue short sleeve dress shirt and...suspenders? The robot is humanoid in shape but entirely functional in aesthetics, skin polished chrome, head a perfect cylinder with a perfect hemisphere on top. Although its metallic limbs and digits were stick like, you had no doubt that this machine could break your arm with a flick of it’s wrist. Robots weren’t perfect physical copies of humans yet. For a few hundred years now Robot AI brains were at the level of human intelligence or beyond but their physical mimicry had been stuck in the uncanny valley for decades now. This model however, appeared to be a very early one, before even a semblance of human physical traits could be practically reproduced. Certainly you had robot prototypes of the late 20th century that were “humanoid” but the ones that actually looked human were rubberized mannequin freak shows, nightmare fuel for children.

“Good morning, are you John Doe?,” asked the robot in a nondescript electronic voice.

“Maybe...Who’s asking?,” you reply, poking your head out of the door frame and give the surroundings a quick check for authorities or reporters. You live on the 53rd floor of a middle class mega tower so your only surroundings are a very long hallway with some bland decorations. Thankfully your room is in the strict residential area, away from the shops and entertainment facilities of this section of the tower.

The machine rattled off a greeting “Good morning! I am BX34528 of the United States Postal service. I have a package for John Doe, are you John Doe?”

United States Postal service? United States? Postal Service? It’s like someone bought you a Zeppelin ticket departing from Prussia. This has to be a joke or something, but then your friends aren’t this creative....Suspicion growing you follow up with the next obvious question, “What’s in the package?”

“I am not privy to that information, this package is for John Doe, are you John Doe,” the robot parroted again. “Please place a digit on the package’s identification scanner!”

It’s overly friendly voice and tone were both starting to annoy you and make you feel guilty for being so untrusting. It’s not like you have anything to loose with minimal money in the bank for a scammer to steal, and no debt for anyone to come calling for. You keep your finances pretty tight and, having worked your way though school and taken advantage of as many grants as possible along the way, you are miraculously debt free.