The Little Android

Her fan slowed—almost stopped.

Releasing the locket, she searched again, and her grippers emerged with the small holographic card instead. She placed it on the table.

Removing the glove from her right hand, Cinder picked up the card and flipped it over, reading the words on the back, before turning it so that the holograph projected from the flat surface.

“A Prince Kai holographic trading card,” she muttered, rubbing her brow with her gloved hand. “Because that’s all I need.” Sighing, she peered at Mech6.0 again. “I’m sorry, but this is only worth about 20 micro-univs. It would barely buy you a screw.” She looked truly sympathetic as she handed the card back. Mech6.0 pinched it gently between her prongs.

“Do you have anything else?”

Her processor pulsed. The locket.

But it was not hers. It belonged to Dataran, and she was going to return it to him. When she had her new body. When she saw him again.

Her power source dropped low again. The colors of the world dimmed beyond her sensor’s eye.

“Nothing… else.”

Linh Cinder frowned sympathetically. “Then, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

Mech6.0 analyzed the situation again, calculating the potential worth of the locket and the importance of a new body. But despite her logical reasoning telling her that the locket might be valued high enough to complete the trade, there was a new factor involved in the calculation. The value of her one possession—something that had been Dataran’s. The value of his smile when she returned it to him.

She knew that the decision was illogical, that she would be returning nothing at all if she didn’t get a new body, and yet she still found herself tucking the holographic card against her torso and turning away. Which is when she realized that she had nowhere to go, and besides, she wouldn’t get very far. She spotted the used-android dealer down the way and a darkness settled in her vision, washing all the color away entirely.

Her treads clattered as she started back through the crowd.

“Wait.”

Pausing, she spun back to face the mechanic, who was rubbing her fingers against her temple again, leaving a dark smudge on her skin.

“My little sister really loves that guy,” she said, gesturing to the holographic card. “So… here, I think I might have something. Hang on.”

Pulling herself from the chair, she headed toward the back of the booth. Mech6.0 waited as Linh Cinder shuffled aside toolboxes and miscellaneous bits of machinery.

“Well, she’s not a huge improvement,” she said, “but I do have this.” She emerged from behind a towering shelf with the body of a girl draped over one arm. Shouldering aside a toolbox, she dropped the girl on the table with a thud. A limp arm splayed out toward Mech6.0 and her scanner picked up on precisely trimmed fingernails, the natural curve of her fingers, the faint blue veining beneath her skin.

And then she spotted the near-invisible imprint across the girl’s wrist. A barcode.

She was an escort-droid.

“She’s almost thirty years old,” said Cinder, “and in pretty bad shape. I was really just keeping her around for spare parts.” She adjusted the head so Mech6.0 could see her face, which was beautiful and convincingly lifelike, with dark irises and sleek black hair. With her empty gaze and a rosy flush to her cheeks, she looked like she was dead, but only recently so.

“If I remember right, something was wrong with her voice box. I think she’d gone mute and the last owner didn’t want to bother replacing it. She was also prone to occasional power surges, so you might want to look into replacing her wiring and getting a new battery as soon as you can.” Cinder brushed some dust off the escort-droid’s brow. “And on top of that, with her being so old, I don’t really know how compatible she’s going to be with your personality chip. You might find that you experience some weird glitches. But… if you want her…”

In response, Mech6.0 held out the holographic card.

Chapter 5

“So… you’re an electrician?” said Tam Sovann, scanning her profile on his portscreen.

Mech6.0 nodded, smiling as she had seen humans do. It had taken her nearly two weeks to set up a net profile and manage to steal some proper work clothes that fit her, even though it went against everything her android code told her. Still, she had done it and she had made her way back to the shipyard and she was here, with a humanoid body, a convincing identity, and Dataran’s locket snapped snugly in her pocket.

“And you specialize in classic podships and cruisers, particularly the luxury lines… impressive.” He glanced up again, as if trying to decide if the profile could be believed.

She kept smiling.

“And you’re… mute.”

She nodded.

He squinted suspiciously for a moment, before going over her profile again. “Well, we certainly do work on a lot of luxury lines like these…”

Which she knew.

“. . . and I have been faced with a high turnover of electricians lately.”

Which she also knew.

“I’d have to start you at a base salary, until you prove you can do the work. You understand that.”

She nodded. Having never received a salary before, she did not even know what she would do with that measly base pay.

“All right. Well. Let’s give it a shot,” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was saying it. Mech6.0 wasn’t sure if it was her muteness that had him unconvinced about her, or the fact that her escort body was startlingly attractive, even in her drab work clothing. “And what was your name again?” he said, before flinching at her patient smile. “Right, sorry, uh—” He scanned through her profile again. “Hoshi… Star.”

Mech6.0—no, Hoshi Star, nodded.

“Well, then. Welcome aboard, Hoshi-mèi. I have a project that I think will be perfect for you. This way.”

She braced herself before rising off the chair. Her personality chip hadn’t synched quite right with the outdated escort body and Linh Cinder was right—it had caused a peculiar glitch that manifested itself whenever she walked. The effort caused pain to shoot through the wires from her legs to her chest, burning into her synapses. The first time it happened, she had gasped and collapsed onto the sidewalk and sat trembling on the ground for close to an hour while blinding light flooded her senses.

Pain.

She had never known pain before—androids should not have been able to experience it at all. But she had no doubt that’s what it was. Just as the human brain used pain to recognize when something was horribly wrong, her processor was warning her that this body was not hers. That this combination could not last.