Re: Diner: Michael/Janis
"It can pick things up," he said, without pausing or considering his answer for more than a nanosecond. "It can grasp. Door handles, etc." He took a sip. God, this coffee was terrible, he was giving up on his cool-guy no mix-ins thing. He snagged a packet of sugar from the bowl by the window and tore it open neatly along one side, tipping it in and then dropping the packet onto the saucer. "The real reason is also very boring," he warned.
"I thought I was going to major in medicine. I had a cool uncle growing up who was a doctor, and I liked science. I didn't like seeing people hurt as a kid, so I thought - doctor. Didn't do a lot of preliminary research, but I was young and had never heard the words 'peer-reviewed.' High school was," his lower lip dropped, a universal yikes, "Kinda rough. By the time I got to college, I just wanted to get a degree and get out, and I never really took any time between being a kid and being an adult going into debt to go to school to think about whether I wanted to do straight medicine. Then I took a class in robotics, fell in love with that. Missed the whole robot wars thing in high school, if you can believe it, like I said, it was a rough time, no time for robots then. But I loved it in college, and not for science-fiction reasons, really. The concept of building something that can do what a human can't, that's innately interesting to me. Then you start doing rounds as a med student at a VA hospital and seeing guys with no arms and legs..." He shrugged. "That's a bingo, as Christoph Waltz as a nazi would say."