Page 89 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Stars
Harv-E
Thresher glanced at my hand on his shoulder, the lighted orange eyes in his face panel narrowing and upturning to indicate happiness. Relief flooded through my artificial chemical emitters, my systems calming in their calculations to know I had not damaged my relationship with my fellow droid. Of our unit, Thresher and I had spent the most time together and had a noticeable familiarity, though we both deferred to Cy when he was in a waking cycle, for the sake of order.
Our recently-woken unit leader tugged on brown slacks and a dark shirt with a buttoned panel altered for humanoid robotic anatomy, sliding brown suspenders up over each shoulder. In his time with us, User Lawrence had given us many commands I didn’t understand, but clothing was one I didn’t disagree with. Clothing kept the dust out of our fickle silicone joints, and helped regulate the heat of the sun that poured in through the dome as we worked. What the rest of my unit didn’t know was that clothing also brought me closer to something I wanted in ways no machine should: humanity.
Logically, I knew that I could no more become a human than Thresher could clear a doorway without having to stoop, but that didn’t stop my programs from looping the idea. That’s why I was already dressed in coveralls, a simple gray set that had once belonged to User Lawrence. They were, per his description, “tough as nails” - a metal spike humans once relied on to attach large objects to one another. They had in fact, maintained overall integrity for an unexpectedly long time, despite my daily rounds of tasks around the farm. I extended a hand and flexed my digit-joints, frowning behind my face plate at the knobbed, robotic appearance of each finger. Reaching into the drawer before Cy closed it, I grabbed a pair of brown work gloves, shoving them hastily over each hand.
Cy tilted his head curiously at me, but I turned away before he had a chance to ask about the gloves, briskly striding from the room and calling over my shoulder. “Come on, then. If you’re both so determined to meet this woman, we need to go.”
If I’d had a human circulation system, my cheeks would undoubtedly be red. I didn’t often let my human-like affectations show to Cy, even though Thresher was well aware of them by now, albeit sworn to secrecy.
After clearing the hallways of the farmhouse, I pushed open the screen door. The strange combination of wood and metal mesh was a recreated relic from the ancient days, flimsy compared to the heavy port door that stood sentry at the dome’s entrance.
Where the woman now waited.
Not even Thresher knew that User Lawrence and I had attempted a wetware transfer in his final hours. That I’d downloaded glitched, incomplete copies of his emotions: tumultuous databases of chemical mixes that I was only just beginning to untangle and understand. Humans and droids weren’t supposed to interface, but our farm had been a living example of things-that-should-not-be well before the haphazard connection was made. Had User Lawrence been healthier, I doubt there would have been so many issues with the data, but it also might have caused his death all by itself. I at least took solace in the fact our amended connection attempt wasn’t what ended his life; the strange, unidentified chemicals cascading through his postmortem med-data charts had done that.
But it was that borrowed cache of memories that pushed and pulled my programming as I considered our unexpected guest. I grappled with an alien surge of hope from my dead Operator’s copied brain that somehow, impossibly, the infamous Anabelle had survived and made her way here. The hope tasted metallic and unsettling, my programming confusing data and memories, mechanical input with human senses. I paused, straightening out the sensations into tidy rows like seeds at planting-time.
The woman could not be Anabelle, unless the Genship had solved the problem of finite human lifetimes, or extended their range considerably.
Our very unexpected visitor brought disruption, and potentially even an end, to my unit’s stewardship of the farm. Since inheriting whatever part of User Lawrence lived on in my database, I had become fiercely protective of the farm, as well as his vision of what it could one day be. I would not surrender that to an interloper.
Even so, we would need to address her one way or another, and I’d rather it be on our terms than hers. Assuming she had codes at her disposal, a door lock override could upset the delicate dome ecosystem and hurt my crops.
Our crops.
I frowned at the thought, subtly adjusting my gloves to cover the green glow at my wrist joints.