Chapter one
Nora
They were programmed to be obedient. At least, that was what was written on the manual Nora held in her hands. She would settle for help with the dishes.
Nora sat with the parts of the android, Simon, strewn around her. Her hair was pulled back and she sweated in the hot desert night, the solar air conditioning having failed yet again. If Simon knew how to fix it, that would be another perk.
“Mama, why isn’t the robot working?” Came a soft voice to her side.
Nora looked up to see her daughter’s face flushed in the heat as she stood at the doorway to the kitchen. “I don’t know, Tilly. I put everything together according to the manual. There might be a bit of rust on the connectors.”
Tilly leaned forward, blond hair wild around her face. “He gonna turn on?”
Wish I knew.Nora put down her screwdriver in a pile of tools and looked back over to Tilly watching her, snagging on her tired blue eyes. “Why aren’t you in bed sleeping?”
“It’s too hot,” Tilly said softly, her young voice lisping.
Yeah it is.Nora sighed as she leaned back on her knees, crouched by Simon on the floor. “I hear you there. Go on in my room tonight. I’ll run the generator and try to cool that area off at least a little for us both.”
“Okay!” Tilly’s face brightened as she raced from the doorway.
Nora turned back to the android, tapping on his chest. “Simon, why are you not turning on? Don’t you go anywhere. We’re going to figure you out.” The android lay silent and splayed on the floor as Nora walked out.
After Tilly was settled, the generator running in the background eating up syntho-gas they couldn’t afford, Nora sat with Simon again on the chipped tile floor. She checked the manual in frustration, holding it closer to the lantern light as if brightness alone could help her read it better.It should not be this hard. Something must have short-circuited on him.The pictures helped. Nora examined them closer.Colors all match.Thankfully, the ancient paper was preserved enough for her to see the connections clearly.
After every connector was scraped free of rust and the wiring checked again, Nora reinserted the battery pack. She pulled Simon’s jumpsuit up over his chest, back all closed up.Doesn’t feel right leaving you undressed like that.
Nora held her breath as she pushed the power button on his back, right behind his shoulder.Alright, here we go.She let her breath out a second later as a faint red light came on, then flickered off. Her heart pounded. “Oh! You almost had life there, didn’t you?”
She touched the android, patting his brown hair like she would the cat. Hope bloomed inside.He might actually work.Her fingers reopened the battery pack on his side, underneath his silicone skin, and she double-checked the connectors once more.Okay. Again.
After an extra push on the power button, a red light lit up on his broad chest, making her jump back, startled. The light was bright in the room that was otherwise only lit by her solar-powered lanterns. “It’s working?”
The light didn’t turn off.Still on. A grin slid across Nora’s tired features. “Yeah, I think you’re working.”
That is progress. Nora’s hands shook. “He lit up . . . I figured it out.” A second later, her laugh echoed in the empty kitchen. “That’s right, I figured it out!”
Humming loudly, she checked the manual again, excitedly turning the pages as fast as she could despite the aged parchment. “Yes, Simon! It says here that your internal battery is drained, that’s why you just started and stopped a second ago. I gotta let you charge for a bit and then we can see. Says it will take a long while. At least a day.”
Nora stared at him a moment before she got up and stretched, rolling her head on her neck, her limbs tight and sore. Her eyes were tired, but her body felt wired after seeing that bright red light. Her shoulders shook.I did it.
Tatertot, an orange and white tabby cat, wound around her legs, purring. The cat rubbed his head along Simon’s silicone booted foot. Nora idly bent back down to scratch behind the cat’s ears. “You see that, Tater? Got him working.”
Reluctantly, Nora picked up the manual again, hunting for more clues about what to do now that she was at this step in the“Restart”section. She sounded the words out the best she could, but there were some that she still couldn’t quite get.He turned on though. Good enough.Again, she discarded the booklet, putting it to the side. “Can’t get any more from that than I already have.”
Nora gazed at Simon’s handsome face before bending closer and turning his head this way and that.It’s all stiff.“You need some oil here. Everywhere, actually.” She took a finger and tapped his nose. “Well, the first step is done. Now you need to wake up. It must have been so long since you last were awake.”
The manual didn’t have any dates on it, but she knew it must have been since before the big war. “You’ll just have to tell me when you’re from when you wake up, can’t find it in here.” She paused, finger on her lip. “If you wake up, that is.”
That red light promised he would.
Nora tapped on it with her hand, in time with the flashing.I bet you will.
She had been working on Simon for nearly three weeks now, ever since she found him abandoned at the old strip mall when she went scavenging for scrap metal. It took her a solid week to work up the courage to decide to fix him, and she’d been debating that decision every step of the way.
The records were fuzzy but the one thing that was stressed was that the androids were not violent. That was the deciding factor for Nora to repair Simon. They were easily turned off when they refused to assist in humanity's violence, in fact. Back when all advanced technology became banned due to humanity's nonstop warfare.
Everything Nora had learned about the past said the androids were helpful- up until they all got dismantled. She had repaired almost everything in her life. From the radio to the hovercraft. An android, especially now that she saw how he was put together, was not particularly worrisome.
