“take thee, Henry, to be my wedded Husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to cherish, obey and… and… and…” She stuttered as a broken record, then went silent for a second and continued calmly, “…till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”
Henry bit his lip nervously, while his almost-wife stared blankly at the priest.
“Yes.” “Yes.”
Her voice was malfunctioning again, but, maybe, nobody would notice. It was almost over.
“You’d better stay silent,” he whispered to her as they left the register office.
She tried to say something but the program couldn’t find the right sound file, so there was no other way but to restart. She nodded.
Guests hardly knew anything about Gertie, and she wasn’t familiar with any of them either. And the inability to speak to any of them, frankly, upset her as would any wasted learning opportunity. Speech synthesizer restarted, she leaned to her husband but instead of a word she let out short high-frequency noise. Henry frowned.
“I’ll fix it later, just don’t talk to anyone for a few hours, OK?”
She nodded. It seemed like the problem wasn’t about software. What was it then? When Henry was distracted with talking to his friends, she took her chance and opened the panel in her right upper arm, trying to sort things out.
He lost his temper, when he noticed the wires.
“What are you doing?” he croaked, still concerned about publicity.
She stepped back.
“What if anyone sees this? What would they think?”
And then he grabbed her arm, and her cry was sharp and high-pitched cried like a broken theremin. He moved away but for that time everyone noticed.
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