Park’s uncle returned to New Diego a month before Park was scheduled to leave for university. She came home from school one day to find him sitting in the kitchen, drinking the last of her synthetic coffee. Glenn, walking in front of her, paused in the doorway at the sight of him, as if to block Park from view.
Park’s uncle hardly looked at him—instead focused his regard on what little he could see of Park’s face, flatly staring at him from over Glenn’s shoulder.
“Grace,” he said. “Welcome home.”
That’s my line, Park thought—though she felt neither welcoming nor like it was his home. It had been two years since she’d seen him last, though he had called diligently on birthdays and holidays. She put her hand on Glenn’s arm to move him aside, but suddenly he was like a granite statue: he wouldn’t budge.
“Glenn, let my niece into the apartment,” Park’s uncle said, sharply, as if addressing a misbehaving dog. Park expected Glenn to bristle, but he merely said coolly, “Of course,” and moved aside. But he still lingered by Park’s side.
She wondered, briefly, what he was so afraid of. Glenn always seemed different around her uncle: stiff, unnatural, diffident. There wasn’t that spark of Glenness when her uncle was home—as if Glenn had retreated into the shell of himself, leaving behind only a basic template to interface with. He acted as if, at any moment, her uncle might take too much notice of him. Might decide to shut him down. Self-preservation protocols, Park decided. The hare lies still when the wolfox is around. Even robots knew that.
“You didn’t give notice that you’d be home,” she said, still by the door.
Her uncle barked out a short laugh. “Gave notice,” he echoed. “Are you the landlord here? Or my boss?”
She said nothing. Glenn said, his voice just above a murmur: “You are not well.”
They both looked at him; for a moment Park thought he was talking to her. Then she looked more closely at her uncle. Did he look a little sick? Was his skin looser, did he always have those dark smudges under his eyes? Or were those simply signs of advancing age? Guilt couldn’t stop a little chill from crawling up her back. Was it contagious?
“Health and biometric analysis should be confidential,” Park’s uncle told Glenn reproachfully. “You should know that.”
Glenn inclined his head. “Of course,” he said. “My apologies.” Then, after a moment: “Since you are blood relatives and she is an emergency contact, I thought—”
“I’m not interested in how your logic algorithms parsed it out,” Park’s uncle said. “You should know that, too.” He scratched his nose. “Anyway, you’re right. I am sick.” Then he looked wryly at Park. “It’s not contagious.”
Years in the field had finally caught up to him, he explained: the ultra-rich oxygen traps formed by the Comeback had slowly bubbled into his blood. He was constantly disoriented now, the same way deep-sea divers were after surfacing too quickly; the buildup of oxygen in his tissue was toxic. He had pains in his chest, he was more short-sighted than he had been before. The optic nerves in his eyes had swelled. When he finished telling them that he was home for good, Park said, coldly, “Why didn’t you return sooner, when you realized your condition was deteriorating?”
“I had to see my work through,” Park’s uncle said. “It was—is—important.”
Important, Park thought, not without a little scorn. As if there weren’t enough researchers in the world studying the plants and wildlife of the Comeback. As if there was anything new to be learned from that field.
“And now you’re done,” she said. “For good.”
“That’s right,” Park’s uncle said, motioning Glenn to step forward. “And I have to say, my timing is excellent: I’m glad I caught you before you left for school.”
Park stood by and watched as he transmitted his medical routines into Glenn’s processor; Glenn took a moment to acclimate to the new data, then said, “I’ll go to the dispensary and pick up your prescription.”
He nearly walked past Park without looking at her. Park put out a hand to stop him and said, “I’ll go with you.”
“No,” Park’s uncle said, waving a hand at the chair across from him. The chair that Glenn usually sat in, so that his eyes were level with Park’s: a squat, sagging thing they’d fished out of a canal. “Stay here. Catch up with me, Grace.”
“Be safe,” Park told Glenn, though the riots of previous years had quieted. There’d been the fiasco of a mob mistaking a human for a human-like android, at the peak of the protests. Then trials. Murder convictions. A reversal of goodwill, as there often was. Glenn smiled faintly at her and said, “I understand.”
Reluctantly, Park walked over to the table and sat down across from her uncle. It had been a long time since she’d seen him last, at least in person; when she was younger he had videoed in once a month, but in the past few years the frequency had diminished. He kept ending the calls with praise of how independent and self-sufficient she was. Not how intelligent she was, or beautiful or mature—just that she displayed an ability to survive adequately without him, Park thought. She was wary of him: having him in her home felt like sheltering a wild animal. Routines were shattered, predictability flew out the window. She never knew what to say.
Neither, it seemed, did he. “Well,” he said. “You’ve grown into a fine young woman. Your grades are excellent.”
So he’d seen them, Park thought, surprised; though of course the school must have been transmitting them to him all this time. “They are,” she admitted.
“You work hard,” her uncle mused. “Where are you going, again?”
“New Boston,” Park said. “Hanson-Skinner University. I earned a scholarship.”
A flicker of surprise crossed her uncle’s face. “Hanson,” he repeated. “The robotics designer—so you’re going for robo-psychology?”
“No,” Park answered coolly. “Just human psychology.”
“Funny,” he said, half to himself. “I wouldn’t think your interests lie there. You have to pass tests, you know. For empathy, amiability. Et cetera.”
“I’m aware.”
“Well,” he said again. He had the air of dusting his hands off, though he didn’t actually move. “Good for you. Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?”
“Neither,” Park said flatly. Despite herself, she could feel her neck reddening; she was glad that Glenn had left.
“Hm,” Park’s uncle said. “Well, that in itself is no cause for concern.”
He leaned back and drummed his hands against the worn, scuffed table; his ankle was resting on his knee in a way that Park found to be over-professorial, as if he ought to be in an armchair smoking a pipe. “Does Glenn cook the meals around here, or do you?” he asked.
“Glenn does, for the most part. Though I’ve learned.”
“You’re self-sufficient,” he said again. “That’s good. Good.”
Park studied him closely for the first time since she’d sat down. She couldn’t see the resemblance in their faces, other than the seriousness of their expressions. Park’s hair and eyes were dark, her features slim and Asiatic; her skin was tanned, and there was a dusting of light freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her uncle, on the other hand, was pale-haired, the locks as soft and curly as a child’s, and he was permanently sun-burnt and flaking. His body was heavy and round. The skin on his hands seemed too papery for the amount of time he spent outside. Not for the first time she wondered if they were even blood-related, if he wasn’t simply a stepbrother to her father or even an adoptive stranger. She found herself wishing that he’d comment that she took after her mother.
“You seem good,” she remarked, trying for courtesy. “Happy.”
“I get by,” he replied. “It’s good to be home.” He looked around, and for the first time Park tried to see her module with a stranger’s eyes. It was as spotless as Glenn could make it, and she herself was a tidy person. But of course there were the obvious signs of living in a biodome like New Diego: the posters and wallpaper curling in the seaside humidity, the slumping furniture fashioned from scrap. Park’s uncle said, “I’m sure you’re glad to be out of this place soon. It’s a long airship ride to New Boston—a few days, if I’m remembering correctly. And you’ve never been in the air. You should prepare yourself.”
“Why were you glad to catch me before I left?” Park asked. “You said that when we came in.”
Her uncle turned back to her and blinked. “Because you would have taken Glenn with you,” he said.
It felt as if her heart had jerked: a tight, vicious little movement. “And why would that be a problem?” Park asked calmly.
“I wouldn’t want to spend the money to bring him back,” her uncle answered, with equal calm. “He’s staying here, of course. I need him.”
After dinner, Park said that she was going on a walk. This was not implausible; the stuffy summer nights were finally cooling down, giving way to a fresher autumnal breeze that trickled through the vents before the hard drafts of winter set in. Glenn rose silently to accompany her, and Park’s uncle, watching the news on his wrist console, made no motion to object. When they had made their way down the street, Park remarked sourly, “I suppose we’ll be taking plenty of these from now on.”
Glenn said, “His sickness is not as severe as he makes it seem. I believe on the current treatment routines he will recover within the year.”
“Then maybe he’ll go off again and leave us alone,” Park thought aloud. She hadn’t told Glenn about her uncle’s plans to keep him in New Diego, not yet; not until she could figure out a way to persuade him to let Glenn go. She didn’t want to worry her bodyguard unnecessarily—and she was also a little afraid of his reaction. But the solution ought to be easy, Park thought. Her uncle only needed someone to administer his medicine, to help him with his daily routines. He didn’t need Glenn for that. Any cheap helper bot would do.
Convenient, she thought bitterly. It was convenient that her uncle only thought it fit to return for good just as she was preparing to leave forever. Convenient that he was suddenly sick, after years in the field. Convenient that he had such a vested interest in keeping Glenn, when for years he hadn’t given him the time of day; had treated him like some kind of houseplant or reluctantly adopted dog.
“You’re worried about something,” Glenn said. She looked at him, in the flickering green dimness of the bioluminescent streetlights. His face had not physically changed much over the years, of course—but there was a hidden depth to his expressions, beyond the flat, serious look. Watching her watching him, he remarked, “Your heart rate is elevated.”
She reached out and touched his hair. The dark, downy thistle at the nape of his neck. “You need a haircut,” she said. They’d given androids that feature, a few years back, to make them even more lifelike; she imagined the developers arguing about the implications of it. ‘Do we want a way to tell them apart?’ ‘Do we want to make them more like us?’ ‘Why have half-measures when you could go all the way?’ In the end they chose to give the androids hair that grew, synthetic but very life-like. That way users could customize their androids’ appearances in more varied and pleasing ways—though the androids themselves seemed to find this more of a burden than a boon.
Glenn looked unfazed by Park touching him. He stayed where he was, without pulling away. “I have exactly twenty-three days before hair maintenance is due,” he told her.
“Are you going to change it, or keep it at your default?”
“What would you prefer?”
“Let’s shave it bald,” Park said, “and paint your head silver.”
Glenn frowned a little. “The paint would chip,” he said.
“I was just joking.”
“I understand,” he said. “So was I.”
They walked together until they hit the edge of the biodome, staring out at the moon-glinting sea beyond the membrane. It was a strange thing, that wall, Park often thought: rubbery and flimsy to the touch, a semi-living transparent skin that filtered air and water and chemicals and molecules in and out of the city in a kind of constant autopoietic exchange. And yet, if you struck it, the membrane turned as hard and impenetrable as a diamond. There was something to be learned there, Park thought.
She said, watching the silvered waves lap up against the curved wall: “We’ll be out of this place in a month, you know. Things will be different.”
“Yes,” Glenn said. She couldn’t see his expression in the dark. “Some things will be different. Other things will not change.”
One afternoon Park’s classmates approached her at lunch. This was rare; generally the other students preferred to pretend that Park wasn’t there, or else was some kind of exchange student or substitute teacher—an outside presence observing in the background, but whose intrusion was only minimal, temporary. When she was younger she’d thought this was because she was one of the few who weren’t optimized; her mother, of course, was a Dryad, a “feral” who’d vanished before giving her consent to have Park genetically augmented. As a result you could spot Park as a ‘genotypical’ in a heartbeat: her limbs weren’t willowy in that ethereal way, her eyes didn’t have that deep, optimized shine. Academically she managed to keep up, she had that much; but sometimes she showed a capacity for acne and short-sightedness, which was as good as having a hump. It was originally a spacer tradition to have their children genetically tweaked and tailored—their DNA sewed up in neat packages—but the movement had rapidly gained traction on Earth, among those who could afford it. Most people in the biodomes could, though only just. Park’s uncle, perhaps sensing the isolation that awaited his niece, had put the money towards cutting-edge android companions for her instead.
It was for these reasons that Park had initially thought she was ostracized; her optimized classmates didn’t want to associate with a being of inferior genetic makeup. A person on the lower rung. But the other genotypical children—few that there were—had no problems banding together, forming their own little club. Park was left on the outskirts, looking in. “I’m different,” she’d said to Sally once, without tears; even as a child she’d been stony with resignation.
“Not different,” Sally had told her, gently. “Just special.”
Special, different, Park had thought at the time—it was semantics. It was all the same. It still got you ignored. Which was why it came as a surprise when she was approached at lunch, mere weeks before she was due to graduate high school.
The approachers in question were a gaggle of girls that Park had silently labeled the alpha females of the school—a cluster of luscious-haired, chime-voiced beauties who had never so much as glanced in Park’s direction. She was sitting on the school steps, eating a butter sandwich when she heard them chattering nearby; she thought, not for the first time, that this must have been what aviaries sounded like, back in the day. What the jungles of the Comeback sounded like now: not silent and oppressive, as everyone imagined, but teeming with noise and honking, cackling life. Suddenly she caught the name Dataran, and tried not to look up—the group was discussing the topic of androids working as fashion models, now that you could style their hair, and how they never got too fat or old.
“I think it’s creepy,” one girl said. “The way they walk. It’s too smooth. It’s like watching a hologram.”
“I think it’s beautiful,” another said. “So fluid. I heard Paxia Berelle is one. She dances across the stage.”
“No way,” the first girl said. “She blinks too much to be an android. You can always tell.”
“No, you can’t. That Dataran thing was one all along, and no one knew.”
“Someone did.”
At this the little group turned to Park, who kept on eating her butter sandwich and staring at her console screen. A shadow fell across her wrist; reluctantly, she dragged her eyes up. One of the girls was standing over her. In the hard light Park couldn’t see who it was.
“Grace,” the girl said sweetly. Ah, Park thought, refusing to squint; it was Alexia, a willowy, ringleted girl who had been in Park’s classes since the first grade. They had never spoken before. Her name always reminded Park of the medical condition that resulted in the inability to read—usually caused by brain damage.
“Grace,” Alexia said again. “You knew about Dataran, didn’t you?”
Park rose, to assume a position that was not subordinate to Alexia’s. She was still holding her half-eaten sandwich in one hand. Alexia looked at her with interest, and a kind of chilly amusement; her eyebrows were inked on in such a high arch that she seemed both perpetually astonished and bored. Park said, “What makes you say that?”
“Well,” Alexia said, with a toss of her luxurious hair: “You’re so observant. You’re always observing everybody. And you’re very familiar with androids, aren’t you?”
This was said with a tone of innocent admiration, but Park knew that it was a jab about Glenn, whom everyone had seen accompanying her to and from school. The other girls were watching; Park sensed a feeling of anticipation from them, as if they were waiting for the punch line of a good joke. So, she thought. It had to happen sometime. Since she’d been young she had expected some form of schoolyard fight. It was unexpected that it had come so late, in the last few weeks of her final year. She hadn’t done anything to provoke it, as far as she knew.
“I don’t understand your line of questioning,” Park said coolly. Clouds skidded overhead; she could feel their shadows passing over her face.
Alexia sighed a little, as if she was dealing with a sullen child who kept pushing away her food. “There’s no line,” she said, still smiling. “I’m just curious. You’re so smart and all. I’m sure you were able to tell.”
“It was a while ago,” Park said in a flat voice. “A few years. I don’t remember.”
Alexia was watching her, her eyebrows still in perfect arches. Another girl, behind her, said in honeyed tones, “So what about the one you’re always walking around with? That’s your chaperone, right?”
My friend, Park wanted to say, or my family—but of course that would get her nothing but ridicule. So she said nothing, only held onto her dampening sandwich, waiting. Just get it over with, she wanted to say. Say whatever cruel thing you really mean. It was all a performance, a ritual, maneuvers to establish dominance, extinguish threats. Park didn’t have the patience to learn the steps.
“I had a chapbot when I was little,” Alexia said with a breathless little laugh. “My parents got rid of it when I was twelve. I wonder what happened to it.” She smiled at Park. “I should care more. It practically raised me.”
It must have been defective, Park thought. It didn’t do a very good job. But she only said, “It was probably recycled.”
“Probably,” Alexia said with an elegant shrug. “I wonder what’s going to happen to yours, when you leave school?”
Park said nothing. Alexia, perhaps growing impatient with her, plowed onward, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “You know,” she said, “they’re thinking of getting rid of them—the nannybots, anyway. Too many husbands caught fucking them! Isn’t that sick?”
“People are always doing strange things,” Park said woodenly.
Their wrist consoles flashed, then, indicating that it was time to return to class. The girls behind Alexia made disappointed little clucks, as if someone had failed to finish an exciting story and was asking them to wait until later. And there would be later, Park thought, watching their retreating backs as they flowed into the school building. They’d locked on; they wouldn’t be finished with their target until they got their satisfaction. She’d have to be wary, come to battle armed. But why her, why now? She thought, a little hopelessly, about what she was going to go to school for. Maybe she should switch to robo-psychology. She was better at it—and she wouldn’t have to deal with people like these.
After school, she saw Glenn standing impassively by the gate as usual. He looked no different from a distance, but upon coming closer she thought she could read something like concern in the angle of his shoulders, or puzzlement. She approached and saw someone talking to him, or rather at him, since Glenn was neither looking at them nor responding. Sudden fear and rage swept her in a dark acidic wave. It was Alexia, standing there boldly with one of her boyfriends.
“Respond,” she was saying as Park glided up behind them. “Answer. Reply.”
“It’s probably defective,” her boyfriend said. This was Harry Bip, Park realized, with the sculpted jaw and the hands that could crush a melon; his parents had had him optimized for a sports scholarship, before they’d understood that sports were going extinct. Not enough room, in the post-Comeback world—and no use for it if you were bound for the colonies. Now they were trying to pass him off as a future combat specialist. Park couldn’t imagine him specializing in anything other than eating enough junk food to fuel his overgrown body and adjusting himself when he thought no one was looking.
“It’s not defective,” Alexia said. “The freak probably programmed it not to talk to anybody but her.”
Glenn’s eyes flicked to Park, over Alexia’s shoulder. His mouth formed a faint frown. Alexia, sensing the look, began to turn, but before she could see Park properly, Park said, “What are you doing?”
Harry Bip jumped. Alexia squinted; Park had positioned herself so that the sun was at her back, glaring into their eyes if they tried to look at her. It was instinct, she supposed: her reptile brain positioning her on dominant ground. Alexia tried to smile and said, “Oh, Grace. We were just having a talk with your—friend.”
“You don’t need to talk to him. Whatever it is, you can ask me.” She looked at Glenn—bent all of her will into her gaze. Silently, he moved to her side.
“He’s a very advanced model,” Alexia remarked. “We were just admiring his specs.”
“Yeah,” Harry Bip rumbled. “He’s crash. Real lifelike.” A smile twitched on his face; Park looked at him and thought about how jangled and out of place his genes must be. A throwback, she thought; a figure beckoned out of an age that didn’t exist anymore. No wonder he preferred following Alexia’s lead; she knew his place, and told it to him with ease.
“So what do you do?” Alexia said to Glenn. “Now that she’s here, you can answer. Do you just follow Grace around all the time?”
“Leave him alone,” Park said, in clipped tones. She knew this was a tactic, meant to expose her vulnerabilities—but she hated the thought of anyone ridiculing Glenn, who couldn’t defend himself. It felt as if they’d come into her home without her knowing and rearranged the furniture; stolen her diary and passed it around, jeering. She had never known true anger like this before—frustration, yes, but not rage. How dare they? she thought. She felt as if there was a hot, weeping itch in her heart.
“Glenn, let’s go,” she said.
“You don’t have to be so protective,” Alexia said, still with the round-eyed look of innocence. “I was just trying to make conversation. No one’s going to steal your walking vibrator.”
Park turned to her icily and slapped her, open-handed. The force and suddenness of the blow surprised even Park, who felt as if someone had unhinged her own arm and moved it for her. There was a stunned silence, staring; even Glenn looked vaguely surprised. Alexia’s cheek reddened in the afternoon’s golden glow.
Then she said, “You bitch!” and wound her hand back. Harry Bip made a kind of hooting noise. Park tensed, and her mind leapt through several strategies, discarding them before the next instant had even passed. She wasn’t interested in diffusion or escape. More in overpowering Alexia, incapacitating her—teaching her not to do this again. How much could she hurt her, without veering into the domain of the criminal? And would Harry intervene? Park wouldn’t win if it was two against one . . .
She had no more time to think; here came Alexia’s hand blurring through the air. Park rounded her shoulder to fend off the blow and said against her will, “Stop!”
Glenn moved suddenly. His hand clamped down on Alexia’s wrist, catching it in midair. The contact made a hollow clapping sound. Then he looked at Alexia and said quietly, “I’m sorry, but I will not permit this. You will do no harm to Grace Park.”
Alexia gave a kind of scream, a horrible sound, like a train whistle in a movie. “Get off me!” she shouted. “Don’t touch me, you fucking clunker!”
At this, Harry Bip lunged forward and swung his open hand at Glenn’s head, roaring like a bear. How absurd, Park thought blurrily as she watched him stumble forward, pinwheeling his arms to maintain balance. It was like an old cartoon, all of them standing there, trading slaps. Glenn, who had faded backward with the blow, said, “That was dangerous. If I hadn’t moved, you could have damaged your hand.”
“Glenn,” Park said, and he released Alexia’s wrist smoothly.
“I apologize,” he said to the girl, who was clutching her wrist as if it was in danger of falling off. “I am first and foremost Grace Park’s guardian. My protection protocols—”
“Help!” she was shrieking. “Help! It’s attacking us!”
Some passersby had witnessed the altercation: two businessmen and another female student. Park saw that they were hurrying over. Whether they knew Glenn was an android, she didn’t know—perhaps all they’d seen was two young couples squabbling. But no, she thought. If they thought that, they wouldn’t bother interfering. She could see in the whiteness around their lips that they thought they knew what was going on. Rogue android, they were thinking. It’s finally happening. We’ve known it all along.
The riots never really went away, Park thought.
“We need to go,” she said to Glenn. She touched his sleeve.
“Where?” His voice was flat and calm; she could see the sensors in his eyes spinning, analyzing the situation. “They are blocking the only exit from the schoolyard.”
“Into the school,” Park said. “Wait it out. Until things calm down.”
But Glenn was shaking his head. “It would not be strategically sound to trap ourselves in a building,” he said. “Particularly one occupied solely by other synthetics.”
They’d quietly edged back from the center of the commotion by now. Harry Bip was holding the sobbing Alexia as if she might fall to pieces without his embrace to hold her together. The female student was recording the goings-on with her wrist console, smirking in a tight, nervous way. The two businessmen were listening to Alexia’s story, looking over at Glenn and Park suspiciously; one of them was calling someone on their teletooth.
“You,” the one who wasn’t calling said to Glenn. “Come here.”
“Stay,” Park said. Glenn gave no sign that he had heard the businessman address him.
“Is that your bot?” the man asked. He was young, not that much older than she: a recent college grad, she would have guessed. His arms were too thin for his clear vinyl business suit. “She said it just attacked her.”
“She attacked me,” Park answered coldly. “My android just prevented further violence. It’s in his programming.”
“I think it’s going to have to be taken in.”
She felt as if someone had injected lead into her spine. “I’ll see to that,” she said. “Who are you?”
“We run a robot repair firm,” he said, gesturing to himself and the other businessman, who was still on the phone. “We handle problem bots. Malfunctioners.”
“Great,” Park said. She suddenly realized that she couldn’t unclench her fists.
“You should turn it over to us. We’ll take a look at it and repair whatever’s going on in its head. We saw the whole thing. That’s not programming.”
“It is.”
“It’s not. Look—we’ll give you the receipt. You can come pick it up in a day or two.” When Park didn’t answer, the angle of the man’s shoulders sharpened; all she could read was anger and fear in the lines of his body. He swayed, as if preparing to charge. “You really need to turn it over. If not to us, then to somebody. Defective chapdroids can be a real menace if they’re let loose without corrective programming.”
“I am not defective,” Glenn said tonelessly. “My systems are operating at optimal capacity.”
The man didn’t look at him. “It wouldn’t know if it was defective,” he said to Park. “That’s the whole point. The part that should know it’s malfunctioning is malfunctioning itself.”
“He’s fine,” Park snapped. “Leave us alone. Unless you’re the police—”
“Get the police!” This was Alexia, from amidst the storm of her tears. “It hit me!”
God damn you, Park thought, but before she could reply she saw the younger businessman nod to the older one, who was now off the phone. There was a crowd of people in the schoolyard, now: students who hadn’t gone far and who had returned when they’d heard the commotion, excited laborers and office workers on their routes home from work. Someone said, “Turn it off, the switch is in its throat,” and Park could feel her body drifting in front of Glenn’s, stiff, solid, as if she were a glacier. Glenn said quietly, “What is the usual procedure in such a case?”
“I don’t know,” Park said. She couldn’t turn to look at him. People were approaching them, hesitantly, trying to see how to move her neatly out of the way.
“Self-defense is required,” Glenn said, prompting.
“Yes,” Park said. “It always is.”
Glenn stepped out from behind her then. There was suddenly something small and black in his hand; Park couldn’t see it clearly from her periphery. He said calmly, “Please let us exit peacefully. Now.”
That was all he said. But everyone stopped. A kind of hard, frozen silence fell over the crowd. No one moved. Even Alexia stopped crying; she only stared at Glenn, then Park, with that classic round-eyed look, like a startled infant. Glenn put his hand on Park’s back, with infinite gentleness, and said, “Thank you. We will leave now.”
And then they left. The crowd parted for them like water flowing around a rock. Park could feel her shoulders tensing as they passed through, expecting a surprise blow to the face, a hot flash of pain in the back. But there was nothing. No one even turned to watch them go.
“Why?” Park said, when they’d made it a block or two away. She looked behind them, but no one was following; the streets were now empty. She hadn’t realized how fast her blood had been thudding that entire time; she could feel her heartbeat in her fingertips. Glenn’s left hand was still on her back.
“It was this,” he said, and he showed her his right hand briefly. Park felt the blood drain out of her head. Glenn was holding an electrolaser gun.
“Where,” she asked after a moment, through stiff lips, “did you get that?”
“Here,” Glenn said, and dropped it into her hand. Park nearly yelped, not from fear, but from the surprise of feeling how light it was. She turned it over in her hands, felt the rough grooves and fixtures.
“It’s fake,” she said, after a moment.
“A prop,” Glenn said mildly. “Little better than a toy, though convincing enough at a distance. You can order them easily enough online.”
She looked at him with wonder. “When did you get it?”
Glenn gave her an indecipherable look. “A long time ago,” he said. “During the worst of the riots. The day Dataran approached you.”
He’d been late that day, she remembered—she’d run over the sequence of those few days many times in her mind. So that was where he’d gone. To get a fake gun. “To protect yourself,” she said aloud.
Glenn’s eyes flicked to her then, and Park jolted, as if he’d pricked her with a knife. “No,” he said coolly. “To protect you.”
It frightened her a little, to think that Glenn had such foresight—and agency. He had never mentioned or shown her the gun. But in other ways it comforted her deeply. She could trust him; he could take care of himself. She did not have to bear the responsibility of keeping him safe.
She put her hand on his arm, silently. Glenn put the fake gun away and the two of them walked together in a kind of reverie, the streets completely silent, the air drowsy with pollen and salt, the sun falling down on them in waves of delicious warmth. Park said, “There will be trouble.”
“No,” Glenn answered. “I reviewed the protocols. I examined the law. There is nothing that addresses this; it wasn’t illegal. Not for me. I was within my rights.”
His rights, she thought. His laws. Again that feeling of fright, and comfort; she did believe him. Glenn was, if nothing else, thorough in all things.
“There will be no trouble,” he said.
“Still,” Park said. “If not legal trouble—retribution.” She paused, thinking. “Maybe we change your appearance. Or have you hide at home every day—until we leave for college. I’ll tell everyone you were recycled. Then, when it’s time, you’ll come with me. You’ll be out of danger then.”
“This seems like a reasonable course of action,” Glenn said. Then he frowned. “But who will protect you when you go out?”
“I can protect myself, Glenn,” she said. Despite herself, she smiled. “At least for these few weeks.”
He was shaking his head. “My processors must be flawed. I did not anticipate this outcome.”
Neither had she, Park thought—but at least this gave her an excuse to get Glenn out of the city. Her uncle couldn’t refuse her now: not with Glenn in danger of being destroyed. He’d have to let her take him—and let him get an android of his own.
She looked at Glenn sidelong, feeling a swell of gratitude and warmth toward him. He was so unheeding of his own danger—both from people like Alexia and from her uncle, who still hadn’t told Glenn his plans. She squeezed his arm a little, but Glenn didn’t look around; he was concentrating on looking out for other threats, attackers that might charge down a side street to surprise them. Park felt a tremor like a sob move through her chest. His flesh was so hard, so dense. She sometimes felt that he must be the strongest being in the world. That he could lift cars, mountains, if he wanted to. But why would he want to? He’d asked her that when she questioned the limits of his strength.
“Lifting a car would most likely incur property damage,” Glenn had said at the time.
“But you could do it,” Park said. “If you wanted.”
“I can’t predict a scenario where I would want to.”
“What do you want?” Park had asked.
“To guard you,” Glenn had answered, simply.
No wonder she felt so safe with him. She’d thought then that he could stop a bullet. She thought that now, walking with him.
How naïve she was, Park would think later. She had never stopped to consider the dangers that such strength posed. How easily it could destroy as well as protect.
“You’re late,” Park’s uncle said when she arrived back home.
Park didn’t hesitate. “I was busy at school.”
“Busy threatening people with a gun?”
She paused, processing. Glenn had gone somewhere else in the building, presumably to hide his prop gun. “It was fake,” she said eventually. No use questioning how he’d found out so quickly.
“I’m aware,” her uncle said. “And you’re lucky the police arrived at that conclusion just by watching the footage. Still. That’s terrorism. Disorderly conduct, at the least.”
“Not if it’s done by an android.”
Park’s uncle was shaking his head. “Grace. Come on. Even if there were no legal complications—and they’ve told me we still might be facing a fine, if that’s what the legal counsel decides—come on. Even you don’t have to be told what happens when a robot waves a gun around in public. You remember the riots?”
“I was here for them,” Park said coldly. “You weren’t.” She felt the heat of the door at her back; she wondered if he would chase her if she bolted without another word. She said, gritting it out: “You won’t do anything to him.” I won’t let you.
Her uncle paused, watching her—as if he knew her desire to run. Maybe that was the feral side of her, Park thought, looking at her reflection in his glasses—an old-school vanity he still allowed himself. Maybe she got it from her mother.
“You see why I want to keep him?” her uncle asked. He spoke softly, slowly, as if not to spook her; but behind his papery voice Park sensed a thundering rage. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Grace—your dependence on him. It’s unhealthy. Damaging. It wouldn’t be right for him to go with you to school.”
I thought you said I was independent, Park thought. Self-sufficient. I don’t need you.
Her uncle shook his head. “More than that—you can see what’s happened to his wiring after years of being allowed to run wild with you. His algorithms and protocols are all degraded. He’s got too much agency, not enough discipline. There’s problem behavior.”
“He’s not a dog,” Park said. Through the door to their module she could hear Glenn’s steady tread moving up the hallway stairs.
“No,” her uncle answered. “He’s dumber than a dog. He shouldn’t have the freedom to misbehave in the first place. Like I said—his head’s all scrambled, now.”
Park could feel the vibrations of Glenn’s footsteps moving up the soles of her feet. She braced her back against the door, as if to bar him from entering; she could sense him waiting on the other side, pausing, looking at her with his dark patient infrared eyes. Run, she thought at him, almost screaming it. Go somewhere else, somewhere safe. I’ll find you.
Of course, not even he could read minds. But Glenn did wait there, perhaps puzzled, or even afraid; Park could hear, faintly, the smooth whirring of his heart through the door. Park’s uncle said, “I won’t have him reset, if that makes you feel better. But he stays here.”
You can’t keep him safe, Park thought. “You don’t even care about him,” she said.
The reflection in her uncle’s glasses shifted slightly, as if they were full of water. As if there was nothing behind his eyes but cold and empty sea. “No,” he said. “But I care about you.”
But did he really? Park never quite knew, even after he was dead. Did anyone really have the capacity to care—truly care—beyond the instinct to ally, fuck, and raise their young to breeding age? Were there any decisions guided by pure selflessness? Not in humans, she supposed—in androids, yes. It was too bad no one else could see the beauty in that. Even Park forgot it, sometimes. By the time she was an adult, she had to be more aware of her reputation, of how it looked when others saw her interacting with robots. She lost her way a little, there. And by the time she was on the Deucalion, bound for the stars, with no idea of when she would return—there was no one, human or android, left on Earth to care.