The door to the washroom has already hissed closed, I assume that Hong-er is taking her turn. I hear the unlocking sound of the door in front of me. With a deep breath, I turn the nob and enter our common room to greet the day.
The air smells of circuit glue, hot metal, and nearly burned plastic, the telltale sign that Wuji is tinkering with something. Its, odd how smells can make you feel things. This to me is one of the smells of home. Well until the plastic gets actually burned and the flame extinguishing foam covers everything in a thin white sheet. That is the smell of trouble.
I see Wuji at a table in the corner. He has been working on something he calls his "pet project". We all are fans of pre dome literature which often leads us to try to mimic life before the Plan. Wuji found a play whose characters were all cats. It took us a bit to track down exactly what a cat was, after all people are the only animals in this Dome. But they were a soft, slightly aloof companion to humanity. Wuji wanted one for our common room almost immediately, and the only viable method would have to be born from his machine scrap pile.
"The main door isn't opened yet." Wuji said looking up and flipping up the magnification lenses he used to see the tiny little circuits with which brought forth his creations. He likes to say that manual magnification is the best for tinkering. The virtual zoom on my glasses extrapolates the lines and colors which is awesome for looking across the dome, but had caused the room to "smell like trouble" when used as the primary magnification for tinkering. Somethings are better left un-improved.
"I tweaked some settings and it got our AI ahead of Dome Standard Time. " He smiled as he pushed his glasses to the top of his head. He's cute and about my size but definitely not life partner material in my opinion, but he does have the best smile. It is the perfect greeting to my mornings. "Hey! Did you like the upgrade? I downloaded a list of the most popular 'endearment' terms from the beginning of the Dome? These are things they actually said back when people grew up in real families instead of these.... " He trails off his eyes widening. Suddenly he flips his glasses back down and mutters to himself for a moment. "Ah! I found it." he shouts before he starts muttering to himself again taking one circuit board off of another.
I wait to see if he will remember that we were talking just a second ago. After several second, I can tell he has forgotten me completely. I will tell him what I think of the "terms of endearment" later. Maybe I will wait till he doesn't have his serious tinkering glasses. He will be less distracted without them.
I hear a low rumbling sound from the table that slowly changes into a purring sound like the cats in the play. I think that means its happy. Suddenly it screeches. We both jump a little. Maybe it didn't like that so much. I need to ask him not to make the claws actually sharp. Sometimes things can be made too realistic.
I forgot to tell you how Wuji, got his name. Wuji's nurse had given up all together and started naming kids "no time for this", in Manda-Engren. Her most recent addition to the orphanage is named Bu Hui, meaning cannot. Maybe the next one will just be named Bu Shi, which would mean "nope".
Either way we liked to think of him as Wuji, "without limits" instead. In the sphere of technology, he really does seem to be a child of no limits, constantly updating and reworking his creations. He is the only one of us who can read all the character symbols in Manda-Engren, which just proves how intelligent he is.
The purring starts again and continues for a few more seconds before the screech this time. He must be making progress.