He walked out of the living room, ignoring the indignant shrieks of wounded ego from the remote. This had been only the latest episode in a series of almost constant excitements lately, which had begun when his dad broke down after years of resistance and decided to get a full-size entertainment center. It was going to be wonderful when everything was installed and everything worked. But in the meantime, Kit had become resigned to having a lot of learning experiences.

From the back door at the far side of the kitchen came a scratching noise: his dog letting the world know he wanted to come back in. The scratching stopped as the door opened. Kit turned to his pop,who had just come into the dining room again, and handed him the remote.  I think it s fixed now,  he said.  Just do this from now on: Instead of using this button to bring the system up, the one the manual tells you to, press this, and then this.  He showed his pop how to do it.

 Okay.But why 

 They may not remember the little talking-to I just gave them it depends on how the system resets when you turn it off. This should remind them I hardwired it in.

 What was the problem 

 Something cultural.

 Between the remote and the DVD player !But they re both Japanese.

 Looks like it s more complicated than that. There seemed to be no point in suggesting to his pop that the universal remote and the DVD were both unsatisfied with their active or passive modes. Apparently doing what you had been built to do was a prospect no more popular among machines than it was among living things. Everything had its own ideas about what it really should be doing in the world, and the more memory you installed in the hardware, the more ideas it seemed to get.

Kit realized how thirsty all this talking to machinery had made him. He went to the fridge and rummaged around to see if there was some of his mom s iced tea in there. There wasn t, only a can of the lemon soft drink that Nita particularly liked and that his mom kept for her.