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Chapter one

Nora

They were programmed to be obedient. At least, that was what was written on the manual Nora held in her hands. She would settle for help with the dishes.

Nora sat with the parts of the android, Simon, strewn around her. Her hair was pulled back and she sweated in the hot desert night, the solar air conditioning having failed yet again. If Simon knew how to fix it, that would be another perk.

“Mama, why isn’t the robot working?” Came a soft voice to her side.

Nora looked up to see her daughter’s face flushed in the heat as she stood at the doorway to the kitchen. “I don’t know, Tilly. I put everything together according to the manual. There might be a bit of rust on the connectors.”

Tilly leaned forward, blond hair wild around her face. “He gonna turn on?”

Wish I knew. Nora put down her screwdriver in a pile of tools and looked back over to Tilly watching her, snagging on her tired blue eyes. “Why aren’t you in bed sleeping?”

“It’s too hot,” Tilly said softly, her young voice lisping.

Yeah it is. Nora sighed as she leaned back on her knees, crouched by Simon on the floor. “I hear you there. Go on in my room tonight. I’ll run the generator and try to cool that area off at least a little for us both.”

“Okay!” Tilly’s face brightened as she raced from the doorway.

Nora turned back to the android, tapping on his chest. “Simon, why are you not turning on? Don’t you go anywhere. We’re going to figure you out.” The android lay silent and splayed on the floor as Nora walked out.

After Tilly was settled, the generator running in the background eating up syntho-gas they couldn’t afford, Nora sat with Simon again on the chipped tile floor. She checked the manual in frustration, holding it closer to the lantern light as if brightness alone could help her read it better. It should not be this hard. Something must have short-circuited on him. The pictures helped. Nora examined them closer. Colors all match. Thankfully, the ancient paper was preserved enough for her to see the connections clearly.

After every connector was scraped free of rust and the wiring checked again, Nora reinserted the battery pack. She pulled Simon’s jumpsuit up over his chest, back all closed up. Doesn’t feel right leaving you undressed like that.

Nora held her breath as she pushed the power button on his back, right behind his shoulder. Alright, here we go. She let her breath out a second later as a faint red light came on, then flickered off. Her heart pounded. “Oh! You almost had life there, didn’t you?”

She touched the android, patting his brown hair like she would the cat. Hope bloomed inside. He might actually work. Her fingers reopened the battery pack on his side, underneath his silicone skin, and she double-checked the connectors once more. Okay. Again.

After an extra push on the power button, a red light lit up on his broad chest, making her jump back, startled. The light was bright in the room that was otherwise only lit by her solar-powered lanterns. “It’s working?”

The light didn’t turn off. Still on . A grin slid across Nora’s tired features. “Yeah, I think you’re working.”

That is progress . Nora’s hands shook. “He lit up . . . I figured it out.” A second later, her laugh echoed in the empty kitchen. “That’s right, I figured it out!”

Humming loudly, she checked the manual again, excitedly turning the pages as fast as she could despite the aged parchment. “Yes, Simon! It says here that your internal battery is drained, that’s why you just started and stopped a second ago. I gotta let you charge for a bit and then we can see. Says it will take a long while. At least a day.”

Nora stared at him a moment before she got up and stretched, rolling her head on her neck, her limbs tight and sore. Her eyes were tired, but her body felt wired after seeing that bright red light. Her shoulders shook. I did it.

Tatertot, an orange and white tabby cat, wound around her legs, purring. The cat rubbed his head along Simon’s silicone booted foot. Nora idly bent back down to scratch behind the cat’s ears. “You see that, Tater? Got him working.”

Reluctantly, Nora picked up the manual again, hunting for more clues about what to do now that she was at this step in the “Restart” section. She sounded the words out the best she could, but there were some that she still couldn’t quite get. He turned on though. Good enough. Again, she discarded the booklet, putting it to the side. “Can’t get any more from that than I already have.”

Nora gazed at Simon’s handsome face before bending closer and turning his head this way and that. It’s all stiff. “You need some oil here. Everywhere, actually.” She took a finger and tapped his nose. “Well, the first step is done. Now you need to wake up. It must have been so long since you last were awake.”

The manual didn’t have any dates on it, but she knew it must have been since before the big war. “You’ll just have to tell me when you’re from when you wake up, can’t find it in here.” She paused, finger on her lip. “If you wake up, that is.”

That red light promised he would.

Nora tapped on it with her hand, in time with the flashing. I bet you will.

She had been working on Simon for nearly three weeks now, ever since she found him abandoned at the old strip mall when she went scavenging for scrap metal. It took her a solid week to work up the courage to decide to fix him, and she’d been debating that decision every step of the way.

The records were fuzzy but the one thing that was stressed was that the androids were not violent. That was the deciding factor for Nora to repair Simon. They were easily turned off when they refused to assist in humanity's violence, in fact. Back when all advanced technology became banned due to humanity's nonstop warfare.

Everything Nora had learned about the past said the androids were helpful- up until they all got dismantled. She had repaired almost everything in her life. From the radio to the hovercraft. An android, especially now that she saw how he was put together, was not particularly worrisome.

Nora grinned down at him. It will be worth it if we get some extra help. Anything to help me take care of Tilly.

Her eyes narrowed on his face. What is he gonna be like? An extra pair of hands? Talk like the radio? She still learned every way to turn him off, just in case, and had committed those instructions to memory.

Nora looked up to see what time it was on the wind-up clock on the wall. It’s late . She turned back to the android’s slack face. “Alright. At any rate, we just need to wait until you’re charged now. I gotta get some sleep.”

Dawn was not long away from breaking. Soon the light would streak through the dusty haze of Earth’s atmosphere. The night was almost over and she hadn’t slept yet. Nora sighed. Damn, tonight went by fast.

She put a colored sheet over Simon. He creeped her out just sitting there lifeless, staring up at the ceiling. A shiver went up her spine. Like a dead body .

Simon looked human enough that if she ever got him running, he could blend in as a human just fine. Every inch of him was sculpted perfectly to be the image of a healthy and fit human male. Her fingers tapped on his firm, muscled chest. Manual said the ideal man. Nora chuckled as she pushed into one of his defined pecs through the sheet. “Sleep tight. Gonna take a while for you to charge.”

Nora stood, rubbed her eyes, and walked into the bedroom where Tilly was curled up on her mattress, her small form resting easy. Even though there was no way Simon could charge enough to wake up, Nora left the door slightly ajar. Just in case something malfunctions. Can hear better.

The generator’s whirring was loud back here, but it was working as it needed to. The little air conditioner had the vent pointed right at Tilly, making the room blessedly cool. Nora ticked off her plans in her head. A lot to do tomorrow. So tired.

Nora reached over to feel Tilly breathe deep next to her, her heart soothed by the sound.

All the while, Simon charged in the next room over.

***

Nora awoke the next morning to Tilly singing a song in the living room of their small, one-story house. The radio was playing orchestral music that Tilly was making up words to, in time to the melody. Nora tilted her head, listening. Radio sounds fuzzy. Weather’s probably off.

She turned to look outside. There was a small sliver of intact glass in the bedroom window around the wooden boards. Light filtered in through the cracks in the boarded opening. Her eyes narrowed on what she could see from the window. Damn haze is strong today. The swirling dust was not ideal to travel through; they would need to wear the masks to keep from breathing it in.

She gazed up at the ceiling. Wish I could sleep more. The house was quiet other than Tilly singing. The generator had stopped sometime in the night when it ran out of the gas Nora had topped it off with.

“Tilly?” she called out to the other room. “Tilly? Hey, come back in here.”

Tilly came bouncing in a minute later, blond hair flying. “That robot. He has a red light on, Mama!”

Oh shit, that’s right. Still charging. Instantly, Nora was wide awake. Thank goodness Simon hadn’t turned on . “Leave him alone, okay? Can you bring me a bar and some water?”

“Mhmmmm,” came the response. A few seconds later, Tilly came skipping back with a ration bar and a container of the sealed water Nora had treated the day before.

“Thanks.” She took a bite of the stale brown bar.

Tilly bounced on the bed in front of her. “Is that robot gonna turn on?”

“I hope so.” Nora drank some of the water Tilly handed her. “I got him to start charging, which seems like a good sign. Otherwise I’ll break him apart and we can see if there’s anything we can sell.”

“Don’t break him!”

Nora rubbed her face. “Not worth anything if he don’t turn on how he is. Can’t sell a broken android.”

Tilly didn’t respond, as she was scrambling to the window, moving the yellow curtain out of the way to peer outside. She jumped back on the bed next to Nora. “Are we still going to town today?”

Nora nodded as she got out of bed and stretched, watching Tilly bounce. “Yeah, we are gonna take the solar AC too. Gonna get that fixed up. Go get suited up. Put the yellow jumpsuit on; the green one has a tear I gotta mend. You need the goggles and mask too, it’s hazy as all get-out today.”

“Okay.” After one last bounce, Tilly was off.

Nora watched as Tilly ran out before she dressed herself in a shirt and shorts. She came out of the room a second later and checked Simon, on the ground still in the kitchen. He lay there, in the same position as the night before, red light still glowing.

Relief flooded her that he hadn’t shorted out in the middle of the night. Still charging must be a good sign. She got down and leaned close to him, seeing if there was any indicator on the charge level. Can’t find anything for how long it’s gonna take.

“More to go, huh.” Nora stood a moment before she unplugged him, the little red light winking out. She leaned in close and said softly, “Sorry, Simon. I don’t want you waking up while we’re gone. If you wake up.”

The cat just watched as he sat nearby. Nora rubbed behind his ears. “Keep an eye on him today, Tater, okay? We’ll be back before dark.”

The cat just blinked back. Nora felt vaguely guilty for unplugging Simon. She bit her lip. Right when I made some progress. But . . .

Nora then patted him roughly through the sheet. “I’ll plug you in the moment we get back, okay?” She yelled out back toward the bedrooms, “Tilly, you ready?”

“Almost!” Came an excited shout.

“Alright, hurry up. We gotta leave now if we’re gonna get back for your program.”

A few minutes later they were all suited up, ready to go. Nora put goggles over her eyes and a mask on her face to filter some of the dust out. Tilly had an identical pair on her face next to her.

Nora struggled as she pulled the door shut on her stucco house’s slanted hinges, then walked to an identical one a little distance away. Sometime in the distant past, this place was full of matching houses. Now nothing matched, and all were disheveled in their own way from the passage of unforgiving time.

They walked in through an open door that once held a garage, and she removed a tarp to display an old hovercraft. She handed the tarp to Tilly. “Here, put this in the back, I’ll get the gas.”

Tilly began bunching the tarp while Nora grabbed the syntho-gas cans and shook them, frowning as the liquid inside sloshed around. Ugh we’re really low. I’ll have to buy that first. She put over half their reserves into the hover and strapped down the rest in the back.

Nora looked over to Tilly, who had stood to the side while she filled the gas. “Stay back while I load up, okay?”

“I want to help.” Tilly’s eyes, the only part of her visible under the mask, were bright.

“Let me just get the big parts first. A lot of the pieces are sharp this time, don’t want you getting cut.” Nora fiddled with the gas can until Tilly was standing far away, helpfully collecting the copper wire and small brass doorknobs in a box.

She started loading the scrap metal into the backseat, her muscles straining while lifting the sharp metal pieces around the solar AC in the hover. Everything was carefully placed around the two worn power scooters she always kept in the back in case the hover broke down.

Nora examined the hover after it was loaded and frowned. Not as much as usual. In fact, it was only half-filled. That mall where she found Simon was full of metal, but she hadn’t been able to get as much, needing to fit him in too. And then when she went back it had started to rain, so she wasn’t able to get much then either.

It’s alright. Got the other stuff I’ve been saving that I’ll bring out. She had found a few scratched discs that presumably held old movies or songs, although the labels had long worn off. And a magazine—a smiling face still present—sealed in degraded, yellowed plastic. Ancient memories like that still held value, and Nora put them carefully in a container next to her, strapped securely to the hover’s floor.

That’s gonna just have to do. I’ll get more in the next week or so. Nora sighed, tapping on the hover’s rusted side. “Good enough.”

She looked over by Tilly, who was holding a box of smaller items. “Okay, you can put the little stuff in now. Carefully. I put all the sharp pieces on the other side but it’s still metal and can cut you.”

As Tilly climbed in, Nora did as well. She adjusted her seat before pulling a pistol from a box up front. Opening the chamber, she compulsively checked that the bullets were in it before sliding it back in her zippered pocket. That’s in order at least. She patted it from the outside on her outfit. There was no way she would go anywhere with people without packing some protection.

Nora glanced back at Tilly before starting the engine, “Got your seatbelt on?”

“Yep!” Tilly flashed a thumbs up, eyes shining behind her goggles.

Nora would have bet she had a wide grin too if she could see it underneath her mask. Tilly still got excited about going into town and seeing other people. It was nice she didn’t remember the bad parts.

As they exited the garage and turned onto the faded asphalt, a whirr made her glance up. Drone again. The drones never seemed to bother her, but when the dusty metal crafts hovered like they were directly watching, it made the hair on her arms stand up.

The hover rumbled and the controls shook as it idled. Nora checked the fuel level again and made a mental note of how much was in the tanks loaded in the back. More than enough to get us there. If they ran out of syntho-gas, it would be dangerous out in the desert. They had the scooters just in case, but still . . .

She opened the throttle and the miles flew by under their craft, taking them away from their home.

Away from Simon.

“Let’s check the list when we get there, okay?” Tilly reminded Nora, yelling over the roar of the engine. The hover was no longer silent, the noise dampeners long worn off, but it ran reliably.

“Okay,” Nora responded with a wince. Looking at the list for the names of the people called up to go to Mars always put her in a bad mood. She doubted they would ever be called like Tilly hoped.