Chapter 8 -- The Tic

 Chapter 8

The Tic

Adam stormed out of the central software room and moved quickly down the corridor. On the screen of the transparent tablet in his hand was an urgent message sent moments ago by one of the engineers. He scrolled through it again, his brows knitting even tighter. Problems were piling up one after another, and Adam Solberg felt himself being pushed further into a corner. Something was wrong—clearly wrong—and it unsettled him deeply.

When he reached the door to the sterile zone, the sensors opened it automatically. The moment he stepped inside, the sharp smell of disinfectant hit his nose. This was the mechanical maintenance area for robots; smooth white walls, bright lights, and metallic surfaces illuminated everything with clinical precision.

In the center of the room stood a large operating table. Lying on it was a naked male robot, its synthetic skin completely stripped away along the right shoulder and arm line. The mechanical skeleton beneath—hydraulic joints, fine cables, and metal tendons—was fully exposed. The remaining synthetic skin still looked eerily human, even emitting a faint warmth. The simulated blood flow was under control.

Three doctors and a technician were working intensely around the table. One monitored data on a screen, another checked the robot’s connection points, while a third carefully lifted sections of the peeled-back skin. This synthetic organic skin design, though entirely artificial, behaved almost like a living metabolism.

The moment Adam entered, he asked sharply:

“What happened? What went on here? Tell me—now.”

One of the doctors looked up.

In his hands was a bundle of thin cables connected to the robot’s shoulder mechanism.

There was hesitation mixed with seriousness on his face.

“We can’t say for sure yet,” he said.

“But something’s off. The system behavior isn’t following normal protocols.”

Adam tightened his grip on the tablet.

His gaze shifted to the exposed shoulder and mechanical frame.

A sense of unease filled him.

Something was wrong here…

and it aligned perfectly with the doubt he had felt back in the control center.

The technicians working on the exposed shoulder stepped back. The man standing at the head of the table adjusted his sterile gloves and took a step toward Adam. It was Eric—Eric Truman, a neurologist in his fifties, an expert in neural systems, and a longtime colleague and friend of Adam’s.

There was a mix of curiosity and anxiety on Eric’s face.

Adam tucked the tablet under his arm and asked:

“Eric… what did you find? What’s happening here?”

Eric leaned over the robot’s shoulder mechanism and pointed at several connection nodes.

“Something interesting,” he said in a low but clear voice.

“A tic.”

Adam raised an eyebrow slightly.

“A tic? What do you mean?”

Eric took a deep breath and looked at Adam.

“In the robot’s central neural processing system, we detected a completely involuntary micro-movement. Something we didn’t program. A kind of tic—like in humans. Every artificial intelligence microchip controlling limb movement is connected to the central system, and those microchips are developing a tic.”

The severity on Adam’s face sharpened.

“What could be causing this movement?” he asked.

Eric slowly shook his head.

“We still don’t know. This isn’t a software bug. It’s not faulty coding. This is a spontaneous activation.”

He gestured toward the robot’s internal wiring.

“All these systems are designed to operate within strict boundaries. Even motor functions are fully protocol-driven. But here… there’s an impulse occurring without a trigger. As if—”

He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. His eyes briefly shifted, as though gauging the reactions of the other doctors nearby.

“As if the movement is emerging on its own. This is not something you should ever see in a robot—and strangely enough, it appears more frequently in robots assigned to combat simulations.”

Adam fell silent.

His eyes were fixed on the robot’s exposed mechanical shoulder. Then he glanced at the younger doctors around him, as if observing their reactions.

That sense of “something strange” he had felt in the control center was now standing before him—tangible and undeniable.

Eric continued:

“A robot developing a tic… it’s deeply unsettling. I still can’t make sense of it.”

The sterile silence in the room grew heavier with those words.

Both men understood one thing clearly:

This wasn’t just a malfunction.

Something they couldn’t explain was growing inside the system.