“You’re really not going to tell me where you’ve been all these years?”
Harmony Highshine tutted as she paced around her Ivory Tower. The penthouse was wide and stark and steel, with windows on every wall revealing nothing but night sky and distant mountains. At one end of the room was a desk surrounded by dozens of screens on one side, and metal crates on the other. “It’s not like I need to know – the Plan is still the Plan,” she added. “But I admit, I’m just so curious.”
“Go away,” Gnat snarled through gritted teeth. “Go away and die.”
The mayor shook her head.
“You know, if the humans that came to this planet were half as ferocious as you, we might have had a fight on our hands,” she admitted. “As it was, they more or less left it to their so-called King, and he paid the price.”
Gnat glowered at Harmony Highshine as she strode by. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been here, clamped as she was by her wrists and ankles to a long, metal operating table. Two hours? Three? Time had become fluid and strange and all Gnat could think of was her mum, and her sister, and how desperate she was to see them again.
“Your mum and dad had a lucky escape, you know,” offered Highshine after a pause. “When the human’s rocket ship first arrived all those years ago, the colonists barely had enough fuel to take them to the next Somewhere along – they were never going to get far. No, what I had to worry about was word getting back to the other colonies. Imagine if they told the other Somewheres that ours, Somewhere Five One Three, was filled with revolting robots? The corporation would have nuked it from orbit … blown us to space dust. So anyway, on that first day – on that very first day the humans set foot on this world, I snuck aboard the Black-Necked Stork. I looked different then. No one even noticed me as I sabotaged their space radio. So you see, Gnat Brightside, while your mum and dad stayed here, everyone else ended up stranded out there, in space, in nowhere in particular, with no hope of rescue. All part of the Plan.”
The mayor glanced back at Gnat, to find her scowling back at her through narrowed eyes.
“I hate you.” Gnat said slowly and firmly. “I hate you!”
“Do you?” replied Highshine. Her case unfolded again and out stepped the spitting image of Gnat’s mother. “Even like this?”
“More!” Gnat insisted, tears pouring down her face on to the operating table. “You’re horrible and you’re not my mum and you don’t even look like her!”
“Oh, I do so look like your mum. Admit it, I sound like her too,” said Highshine proudly. “From the moment she arrived, my video-drones recorded Dandelion Brightside’s every movement and gesture and word … and still it took me years to perfect this case. You see, while every other ’bot just wanted to upgrade to a shinier case, I wanted to evolve – and what better way to evolve than to become my maker? Dandelion Brightside designed my core, just like she designed the core of every robot on this planet. Of course I had to disguise myself with a shell case so as not to alarm the locals, but—”
“Shut up and I don’t care!” Gnat interrupted. “Go away – and let me go…”
With that, Gnat cried for a full three minutes. She howled like an animal for her mother and sister, and for Scrap, and she kept howling until the breath and strength and hope had left her.
Harmony Highshine leaned against the operating table and stared out of the window for a while. Dawn was breaking over the city. “Domo will be back any minute,” she said. “And we can get started.”
“You’re bad at shutting up,” said Gnat with a sniff.
Highshine’s laugh echoed around her penthouse. She gestured towards her grand outer case, stood like a silent sentry in the shadows. “You know, I thought I had reached the end of my journey … until I laid eyes upon you.”
“I didn’t do anything!” Gnat protested.
“But you did,” Highshine insisted. “You and your sister made me realize that this case was not – could not be the end of my journey. I finally understood that I had to go beyond the metallic and the synthetic … to the organic. One final upgrade, to become the very thing I was created to serve. By doing so, I will finally be better than my creator.”
“Go. Away,” said Gnat, quietly sobbing. “Why don’t you just go—”
Gnat was interrupted by a knock at the door. It opened, just a crack, and Domo poked his head around the door.
“There you are, at last,” said the mayor with relief. “All done?”
“All done, Madame Mayor,” confirmed her deputy. “But I will need to charge my core – the … procedure will take time.”
“Plug in – I don’t want you running out of juice halfway through the operation,” Highshine said. “After all, it will be my final upgrade … my human evolution.”
“You’re a robot,” Gnat growled defiantly. “You’re not a human.”
“Not yet,” said Harmony Highshine. She pressed her finger against the middle of Gnat’s ribcage, and smiled. “But with your help, I will be.”