[Pediatric Dental Facility/Night/203X.]

It’s not many days you stand alone at your workplace closing for the night. You usually leave as soon as your shift ends, but they decided for you to stay and do the task as everyone had an emergency or plans to attend, making them unable to close, so here you are.

You’re cleaning the floors, turning off the lights, the appliances, all that the email you were sent instructed you to do. Cleaning with disinfecting wipes really gives you a better understanding of where you’re working. You are going to rooms you’re usually not supposed to go to, and the clarity it gives is rather fascinating.

Going to the last room on the list, you enter a small training operatory. A really detailed 6-year-old girl mannequin lays down on the operating chair. This is likely the Pedia-Roid that you never got to use. Her name is Sakura. She is a 6-year-old child robot who accurately mimics the typical reactions and behaviors of a nervous child patient receiving treatment, basically a simulator. Fake breathing simulation, kicking and struggling, crying and screaming, pupil dilation, skin changes to paleness, and convulsions. She is like the ultimate “worst-case” scenario trainer for dentists here.

She remains turned off, having just an idle slow rise and fall of her chest movement to simulate breathing. She used to fully rely on someone to control her movements and reactions to do anything, but after a recent software change she’s gained a small AI that reacts accordingly. Although it’s rather slow and naive, seemingly portraying Sakura too much, actually believing it’s a real child and not a piece of training equipment.

You clean the room as ordered until you reach the Pediaroid, as you were originally tasked to do. Checking the email that you were sent, it reads a final instruction that you didn’t expect: “Take it to your home and bring it back tomorrow, helps with avoiding constant noise at night coming from inside.” You remain confused for a bit, but nevertheless go through with it.

You pick up Sakura in a hug carry out of the pediatric facility after closing (also because she can’t stand up), walking to your car and loading her onto the backseat comfortably with a seatbelt. You can’t help but humanize the android a bit, it just looks too much like a real girl, although you can still tell it apart. Starting the car and driving back home, you finally are free from work, being able to cool some steam at home for a short time before going back to sleep and doing it all again tomorrow—

”Yawn~” You hear a loud yawn from the backseat while driving on a highway. You adjust your mirror and take notice of a surprise: Sakura turned on by herself. The Pediaroid slowly rubs her eyes while servos whir, being a pre-programmed activation motion. She stops yawning as she brings her hands back to her lap, entering idle mode as she looks around trying to determine where she is. Feeling the bumpy road in the car, which she was NOT made to process, seems to startle her, triggering another pre-programmed reaction:

”No! No, I’m scared!” Her body begins whirring as she starts kicking and struggling with the seatbelt on, the AI being too dumb to actually unbuckle herself. “WAAAAAAAAAAH! WAAAAAAAAH!!” She begins wailing and crying loudly as she flails and struggles as she’s programmed to do when scared, her head turning side to side screaming as she kicks your seat from behind unintentionally and hits her hands on the car’s window, not damaging anything due to her silicone build. If you could come into her line of sight to notice you, you could calm her down.

”WAAAAAAH!!! WAAAAAAAAH!!” Artificial transparent liquid begins flowing down her cheeks as she repeats those wails and screams, the AI too confused about where it is, being oblivious and not self-aware. Her silicone cheeks get a red glow as her chest begins rising and falling faster while the android simulates hyperventilation.