By Anna James Acosta
Selina dragged over her small wheeled adjustable table closer to the couch where Peter was laid out, chest cavity already open. Digging around she grabbed onto a few loose, disconnected wires and hooked them a black box that fed into her laptop. Immediately, Peter’s interface flashed onto the screen.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, clicking through a few tabs’ eyes moving over the information quickly.
“Very well, thank you. And you?” Peter replied. Selina hummed distantly, vaguely noting that his response was normal.
“Status report?”
This time, Peter’s response was more in-depth, going through each system robotically. When it got to his internal heating systems, he began listing failures. She leaned forward to peer into his chest and dragged her finger around. It wasn’t wet, so he wasn’t leaking cooling fluid, which was at least a positive.
“What’s the expiration date for parts that are showing damages?” Selina interrupted.
“Not for two more years.”
She frowned.
Peter was an older model, so while it wasn’t a surprise that he would have failures faster than expected it was annoying to deal with. Luckily, she had some spare parts, but she liked to have them on-hand in case of emergencies, not for basic maintenance. This would eat into her savings.
“Okay, well there’s nothing to do but swap it all out, I guess. If you’re still having failures, then that would mean a system error.” Which would be bad, she wasn’t a programmer; her wheelhouse was mechanical repairs, not coding. “Can you please email me the parts I end up using so I can buy replacements later?”
“You do not have enough money for all the parts,” Peter pointed out, his voice flat. But she didn’t take it to heart, his voice was always flat.
“That’s fine, I still want the list.”
“You shouldn’t be spending your money on such things,” Peter argued. “Your parents—”
“Our parents,” she interrupted, grabbing a short rubbery translucent tube, only a few inches thick and setting it into her lap before she leaned closer. Gently, she moved away several wires to get at the malfunctioning component.
“Our parents,” Peter dutifully repeated, “think that you should spend your spare money on more important things.”
“Yeah?” she asked. “Like what? Make-up, clothes? What’s more important than getting better at the thing I want to make my career, huh?”
Peter puzzled over that silently, or maybe his programming just stuttered as she pulled out the tube and worked quickly to reattach the replacement.
When it was back in place, she could hear the subtle sound of grinding as his parts recalibrated to the new part.
“I suppose that’s true,” he finally allowed. “Still, it would make your—our parents happy to see you spend time doing something more…” Peter hesitated.
“Normal?” Selina finished for him, a comment her father had made more than once.
“Yes.”
“It’s alright, one day this’ll be my job and that’ll be my normal. And I’ll have spare money for everything else too.” Selina turned back to her laptop and grimaced at the list of parts she still had to replace. “Now, be quiet, I gotta grab the rest.”
Dutifully, Peter fell silent and Selina got to work.
Author Bio
Anna James Acosta
Anna is a current graduate student in the Literature and Writing program at CSUSM. She enjoys writing creative science fiction works, with a specific focus on androids and AI.