[color=662d91][sub]"[b]There's something charming about this city. Almost in spite of the circumstances, people manage to do stupid things.[/b]"[/sub][/color]

Frederick nodded to himself as he waited in line. It was a mutter. Doubtful that any would hear it, but who knows. 

The man was thin and dense. 
He came for rations only once every other week, and he seemed to have one set of clothing. For the most part he kept to the slums, moving with relative freedom. The gang bosses had tried time and again to exploit him, but it was expensive to throw bodies at the self-proclaimed fisherman. No matter how many were sent, they disappeared. 

It was logistically better to let him walk and smile his broad, goatish smile at passerby.

His attention was rarely held for long, and it was easy enough to ask him out of the way or for his spot in line. 
He became a sort of favorite for those who managed to lose track of rations, as he was always more than willing to provide his own. Several weeks back, in fact, he had broken his schedule and stood two weeks in a row. Someone had asked him to, and so he had. It was no skin off his back and any man, woman, or child quaint enough to proposition him over something so readily available as food would receive it. 

Today though, the cyborg had piqued his curiosity. Say it was his gut, urging him to investigate and toy and learn. That was something that he appreciated about life in general. Its ability to be curious was critical.

When the first several computers were released onto the public market, he made a point of collecting them and toying with them. They had eventually lost his interest, but he knew enough to pass as his thirty-something facade in public come the decades. Every five years or so he [i]drove[/i] into Atlanta and bought a phone and a computer. 

That didn't matter quite so much now, though. 

He had a question. [color=662d91][i]Computers don't do things unless they've been fed a command, or have instructions to make them run something on their own.[/i] How different could this thing really be? Even if it was self-aware and had a sense of self, everything has nature, too.[/color]

Something completely and entirely valid that was surely worth answering. No question in the world forged by this ancient, critical mind could be useless. It would be ridiculous. [i]Beyond reason,[/i] even, to suggest that it could ask an unimportant question.

[color=662d91]"[b]Machine. What are you doing?[/b]"[/color]

No. It was certainly feasible for him to steal a little girl's question, though. He moved himself gently towards the front of the encircled little distortion in the line, and repeated himself for clarity.