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As if it would be anything but.“Of course.”He tried to smile, but the gesture didn’t come easily to him.“Thank you.”
“I don’t have automatic running water right now,” she said.“None of the houses do.There are manual pumps and drains on all the bathroom fixtures and the kitchen sink.All the water is cold, though.We have no way to heat it up.”
Not for long, if RH103 had anything to say about it.The first thing he would see to was the restoration of New Eden’s power grid.“Where is your hydroelectric station?”he asked.
She blinked in surprise.“You’re going to start on that now?”
“Of course.A reliable power source and hot water are essential for survival.”
“It’s on the westernmost edge of the city, the big brown building.Halfway between the waterfalls and the old solar grid.You can’t miss it.It’s mostly intact.”
RH103 closed his eyes and sent out a short message to his fellow cyborgs.Everyone who hasn’t found a detail to work on will meet me at the power station in thirty minutes.
A chorus of affirmatives flooded his head in response, eight in all.
“Were you talking to your friends?”Hannah asked.
He nodded.“We’re going to start those repairs immediately.”
She looked like she was going to cry again, but when she spoke, her voice was steady.“Wow.Thank you.Some of us tried to repair it after the quake, but everyone who was familiar with the tech had passed away.We stopped trying to fix it, because we were worried about burning everything down or electrocuting ourselves.”
“A wise decision.”
“It’s hydro powered,” Hannah added.“If that helps.”
“I’m certain this is within our capabilities.”
Her face crumpled for a second, and she looked away at the closed door across the small hallway that presumably led to her bedroom.“This seems too good to be true,” she muttered.
She had already said as much, and RH103 wondered how long it would be before she understood that their streak of misfortune and grief might be finally coming to an end.“Hannah.”
Her shoulders raised as she took a deep breath.Without turning around, she said, “Yeah?”
“I promised you that we could return your planet to a state of normalcy.I meant that.Eight of us are going to the power station, and we’ll have a workable plan and timeline of repairs by the end of the day, I promise.”
“Unbelievable.”At last, she faced him.“If you’re settled in and ready to go to the power station, I’m going back to the fields.”
“I will see you this evening, then.”
“I’ll make dinner.Youdoeat regular food, right?”
“Our organics require it.”
“I hope you like eggs.”
Another old memory popped into his head—sitting in an air-conditioned white-walled restaurant, sunlight flooding the space.In front of him was an oversized white plate.Fruit and slices of toast, topped with white blobs, were artfully arranged on it.The scent of hot coffee reached his nostrils.
RH103 hadn’t had the blobs he knew as poached eggs, but he knew what they were.Rhys Hammond had liked them.“I think I do,” RH103 replied.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she said.“I’ll be back here around six-thirty tonight.”Gripping the banister, she descended the stairs.“Don’t fry your circuits while you’re at the power station.Our medical facilities are somewhat lacking for people with cybernetic hearts.”
“My heart is mostly organic.”
“Yeah, we’re missing the personnel to fix those too.Stay safe, okay?”From the bottom of the stairs, she turned beseeching eyes to him.
She cared about his wellbeing, and that of his fellow cyborgs.While RH103 wasn’t great at reading the facial expressions of strictly organic humanoids yet, he could understand Hannah’s well enough to know that it was personal.She wasn’t only concerned about his ability to restore their power.
He liked having someone be concerned about him.“I will,” he promised.
