Anna walked carefully, awkwardly stepping so she wouldn’t wake them up. The window in the hallway before the common room was outside their doors. Out the window, the stars and the sun were the brightest thing in the room, even with a darkening film applied.
After a moment of looking outside, she walked the hall to the kitchen. The lights came on as she entered, cameras overhead still lit up and turned on. It was as empty as she expected. No one really seemed to ever bake in here; the food the androids consumed was mostly reheated meals from the facilities back on Mars.
Ten minutes later, she was humming. Her hands were thick in dough and flour was on her cheek. On the wall, she put the feed to Mars and stared at the terraformed surface while she kneadedthe dough. The familiar movements felt good. Her shoulders dropped as she kneaded. She tried to space her experiments in between what she knew the androids liked. There was a particular sugar cookie that went faster than anything when she made it. After the crackers, she would make a batch of that as well.
She sang a nursery rhyme to the dough, “Pat the cake. Pat the cake. Baking my cake.” Then she smiled. “I got my baby girl. Baby girl. Baby girl.”
She had her baby girl and no Paul telling her what to do.
Soon, cookies and crackers lined the counter. Anna smiled. She made enough dough to feed the whole ship for tomorrow.She probably wouldn’t sleep, or attempt to, until the next sleep cycle but . . .she picked one of the cookies up and arranged it artfully on the tray. “This looks great.”
Next she started on some brownies. Her steps tapped on the floor, swaying in place. “Baby girl, baby girl. I’ll make you a . . . oh!”
Anna bumped into a glass bowl, half filled with dough. It slid off the counter, tumbling toward the floor. She lunged, but not before the bowl shattered on the floor. A sharp, slicing pain shot through her as she grasped broken glass. Immediately she started to bleed, hot blood against the cold floor. She turned her palm over and saw a piece of glass embedded deep in inside. “Oh no!”
Immediately nausea rose up. Stars in her vision followed. She was bleeding. A lot.
The room felt woozy staring at the deep cut. She looked away, feeling around the cut with her other hand and pulled the shard out. Blood dripped down her hand and on the floor. It bled everywhere as she grabbed a rag and wrapped it around her palm, dirtying the white countertop.
Anna reached for another towel. She needed to clean this,quickly, before the cameras noticed. But she felt so woozy, and red was already coming through the towel. Then the nausea came on even stronger. She hunched over. “Oh, no. Oh, no.”She tossed down the blood-soaked rag and ran to the sink.
She glanced up at the cameras overhead.Knowing they were there didn’t matter, as a second later, the nausea won and she threw up in the sink, dirtying the kitchen she had tried so hard to keep clean.
Chapter six
Atlas
Atlas tended to his plants.
Earlier, he was distracted by the ultrasound and didn’t finish his chores. Now he was back, eyedropper in hand, ready with their weekly dosing of micronutrients. The colors on the plant’s foliage were healthy. Vibrant. Plants were where all his caring went lately, giving a place for his care to rest. He was built to care, after all, even if he usually had no patients to care for.
He moved to check another, then glanced at the monitor where the medical testing was displayed. Anna’s picture was on the screen, front and center. Atlas’s hand slipped on the foliage looking.
Almost immediately, his processors overheated, calculating in a way that was quickly becoming a standard operating feature.
“Anna.” He leaned closer to the vine. “She was scared of me. Not only was she shaking, her heart was pounding. I could hear it.”
He moved on to his potted spider plant. Anna was so compliant and meek during the testing that it bothered him. She’d sat there with her stained yellow hands making those increasingly awkward jokes that made absolutely no sense.
Atlas didn’t need to breathe, but he sighed anyway.Maybe that’s why I’m bothered?Androids were supposed to fear humans. Not the other way around. It had been a long time since he sensed fear in someone. He put the spider plant to the side. “After all, plants like you don’t fear anything. Maybe I’m out of practice talking to humans.”
That, and Anna had thanked him afterward. When did Clara or any human ever thank him for anything?
He examined himself in a mirror. His dark brown hair and hazel eyes focused back. They were exactly the same shades as when he was first manufactured almost two hundred years ago. “Why is she so afraid?”
The humans before the war always thought his model was the most handsome. He studied himself critically, turning his head this way and that. His face was perfectly symmetrical. In fact, his model-E series was so popular with humans before that more of his model were produced than necessary. Now, only two model-Es were left—him and Sterling back on Mars.
He was mass-produced like Zero and his numbered model-M brothers were. The humans liked their designations, which came in handy when designing their colony on Mars. Every android already had a specialty they were designed for. Every android had a clear way to contribute. And his, model-E, stood for emergency.
His eyebrows tightened.Three humans. Flesh and bone standing before him. Forcing the situation. He missed the days when androids had remained isolated from humanity.
He rubbed his hand down his face, frowning at the medical records. The scan he took of the baby was on the screen.And soon to be four.
“Atlas?” Zero called to him, walking in. “Did everything work alright?”
Atlas clicked through the images. “See for yourself. The ultrasound worked fine.”
“Good to hear.” Zero peered at the screen. “Well? What has time really done to these humans?”
