The Fun Begins Darling !

It was a bright Tuesday morning. As the new year was getting closer Rachael was feeling both nervous and excited.

But today was the day Rachael was eagerly waiting for. She felt like it's been ages just having to wait for a day. After her morning rituals she headed to the parlour for the appointment she had booked. After a luxurious pampering for close to 3 hours, she came back home for lunch and napped for a bit before starting to the lodge where her husband and her brother were fixing the Robot.

She told her parents that she had to meet up with few of her friends who had come to visit NY for the Holidays and she may be late to return. One the way to the lodge she called Ray to find the room number which they were in and to see if all of his friends had left.

Once she reached the room, she knocked at the door. When the door opened, she was greeted by Ethan as Ray was in the washroom.

They stared at each other for sometime and the stare was finally broken when Rachael said a blank "Hi" which lacked emotions. Ethan finally gave her way and Rachael entered the room.

Ethan had missed his wife for a day and felt happy seeing her. But he avoided hugging her as he knew that she was no longer comfortable when he tried getting close. He did not want to force himself on her. He had to win back her confidence and love but until then he decided to step back to avoid ruining the relationship any further. He respected her feelings.

They sat far away from each other and silent prevailed between the two as they waited for Ray. When Ray finally got out of the washroom he was startled to see both of them sitting miles away from each other and they did not come across as a happy couple. It looked like there was a silent war going on between them. There was something serious which was bothering both of them and and it was very evident today.

All these days they were so busy with Christmas festivities, that Ray had ignored in spite of the second hint, which Rachael had given. She had gifted that particular book to Ethan which was off the charts for Christmas. She had managed to come up with a convincing reason for gifting that book to Ethan.

And when she had not wanted Ethan to come down for holidays which was the first hint, Ray had supported his parents for inviting Ethan. No one really asked Rachael if something was troubling her then and she had hidden all her emotions and had concealed them. Ray felt bitter about his actions now. He could not do anything about what's been already done. It was as good as spilt milk. All he could do was to find opportunities to fix the problem.

Ethan was his best pal now but he would never have known Ethan if Rachael had not been teleported to Zon a few years back and if she had not married him.

Rachael was his sister who he adored. In fact he would not have been born if Rachael did not want a sibling. Ray could not see his sister being upset. Although she never discussed about her relationship with Ethan openly with him or their parents, her behaviour from past few days were indicating a possible separation in the near future.

But he could still see the love Ethan had for Rachael. Ethan was putting up with all her behaviour without complaining.

He knew the circumstances under which Rachael had married Ethan. Although everything was destined, Ray felt he had a small part to play in it without his knowledge. That fateful day if he had not insisted on going to the fantasy park, things may have been different today.(1)** And possibly his sister would have been happy today.

Destiny and time are far more powerful than anything. Super powered beings like Ray who are born once is a billon years could not change destiny. And it was never heard of anyone changing destiny or turning back time.

As kids, Rachael and Ray shared everything but this time she had not shared anything with him, possibly because he was spending more time with Ethan.

Ray silently sighed to himself and slowly walked to where both of them were sitting distance apart. He pulled a chair to sit and when he was about to sit, he heard the intra call ringing. He answered the phone and returned back. The receptionist had called to remind them, that they had to check out before 10 pm tonight.

He came back and informed both about the same. He pushed the thought he currently had in his mind about Rachael and planned to talk to her later about it. Both Ethan and Ray got the Robot out of the charging socket to give a demo.

As the Robot was not used for many years the battery was not functioning and charging at its full potential. The charge would drop just within an hours time of charging. The battery was the only thing they had to replace.As the major part of the adding new features was completed they could easily test the robot once again at home once after the battery was replaced.

The Robo Assistant was a humanoid Robot which measured around 4 feet tall and was built to to perform domestic house hold chores. Ray had built it for his science project while he was in 8th grade after being inspired by the movie "Passengers - A science fiction movie from 2016"

Until 2020, the humanoid Robots were built for cleaning, delivering and majorly used in hospitals and industries. Also there were robots built in certain universities for face, recognition, object detection, speech detection and generation. Although these Robots which were in built in the universities were in development stage, none were in production until late 2022 (2)**

Rachael received her first surprise as soon as they turned on the Robot and it started speaking in the Robotic tone.

"Good evening, this is your personal assistant Darling. I do not find any tasks assigned to me. How can your Darling help you today? "

Rachael opened her mouth wide shocked and then she looked at Ray before she burst out laughing. Just thinking about the confusion that would be created at home, Rachael couldn't stop laughing. She must have laughed for quite a good few minutes before she finally stopped.

"You did not get any better name Ray? " she questioned her brother. "You better change it or you will have it from Dad. I know you want to tease Dad." she could feel another stream of laughter coming out from her and she controlled herself. She knew she would laugh for days now just thinking about it.

"You see Rach, there is a reason why the Robo was named that way. This is also one of the entertainment plan for mom and dad for new year. I really want to see how they react.

But if Dad gets really annoyed then we will change it just a day before the party." Rachael face palmed herself thinking about how mischievous could her little brother get.

Ethan was silently watching the conversation between the siblings and saw how close they were to each other. He also had realised that Ray had an extremely good sense of humour. He could easily crack a joke and make anyone laugh easily even in a serious situation.

After so many days he was seeing his wife open up and laugh her heart out. He silently thanked Ray for that.

"Okay, jokes apart, let's get on with the Robo as we may be thrown out of the room post 10:00 pm." She hesitated to call the Robo darling with Ethan around.

Ethan was a little disappointed when he did not hear his wife call the Robot with the new name and Ray noticed his reaction. He knew the amount of love Ethan had for his sister.

"Okay Ray, please can you tell me what can this Robot do along with any safety instructions." said Rachael

Ray started narrating the features of the Robot.

"The Robot still has the old features of cleaning and dusting. We have fine tuned this features to make it more efficient.

We also went ahead and added new features like delivering goods based on the instructions fed. Also Darling is now capable of recognising faces to exactly know who gave the instructions along with speech detection and generation like any other Robots in the market today. This will help mom when there are too many guests around to deliver drinks and food. "

The moment the Robot heard the word "Darling" it turned its head towards Ray and went off just like "Alexa"

"Good evening, this is your personal assistant Darling. I do not find any tasks assigned to me. How can your Darling help you today? "

Rachael looked at Ray's face and couldn't hold back her laughter and burst out into splitters of laughter for the second time"

Ray was annoyed at his sister and he knew that it was his own doing that he had named the Robot as "Darling".

He put on a very serious face and continued being extremely careful not to use the Robot's name in the rest of his conversation. He knew he had easily given his sister a way to tease him.

"We went out and brought some touch screen sensors and have installed it in the torso of the Robot which earlier had the basic monitor, which never worked. The touch screen is now enabled to give menu options from where the user can pick and choose what he wants. This is an additional feature we added just in case, the Robot or the user cannot communicate with each other, this will come handy. This will also be useful if we have specially abled guests.

"Wow, that's amazing Ray! You both have done a good job in such less time. Thank you."

"It's been solely Ethan's effort. I was just helping him with describing the features" said Ray.

Rachael just nodded her head in agreement. She knew it was Ethan who would have put in all the effort as Ray was no longer interested in Robots. But she did not want to thank him directly and therefore had thanked both of them instead"

"Are there any more features or is that all? "

"We do have more, now this is something we tried. We had sourced an old tablet as we did not want to use a new tablet and screw it up. We mapped this tablet to work with the Robot. The instructions are put in a simple way for mum and dad to understand and use it.They can feed in the instructions and daily routine tasks to be performed to help her with her daily chores. And for the parties the menu can be fed in for the guests to choose from"

Ray waited to see if he could get any reactions from Rachael but when he saw she was waiting for more to come, he continued

"And then we saved the best feature for the last. Now this feature is something that's not available on this planet so we need to hide it from this world. We did think about it a lot before going ahead and adding it"

"That sounds interesting and mysterious. What's that ?" she questioned

————————

Authors Note:

**(1) - The reference to this statement on how Rachael gets married to Ethan will be part of the first book which is still ongoing - "Finding Ray"

**(2) - This again has been created for the story. If there are already such Robots in market today, it's purely coincidental.