The Way That It's Meant To Be

by HwaBoon

Summary:

You know you’re stronger than you think / You know you’re made to take a lot.

A series of visitors to Claire’s workshop.

Chapter 1: Who Says Endings Must Be Sad?

Jiyeon, Human (2052)

She remembered Jiyeon’s face when she glanced back at her as she stepped into the moving van.  Sad smile as she stood feet away, eyes swimming with hurt.  Hair pulled taut in a bun and just a dash of waterproof mascara.  Claire's ever intrepid owner, now standing rudderless in the grass.

“Please know this isn’t your fault, Claire,” Jiyeon had told her moments before in front of the house, stone-faced as she tried not to feel.  Her hands clenched Claire’s shoulders as she stared her straight in the eyes, tone emphatic.  Unapologetic and firm.

“I know, Jiyeon.”

A flash of relief had crossed Jiyeon’s face, followed by a nod and a tight smile.

Claire didn’t smile back.  She didn’t want to smile, and she didn’t need to anymore.

“It’s the way that it has to be.  You’re practical.  You know that.”

Claire nodded, matter-of-fact.

“Will you be needing anything else?”  She asked, her voice professional as programmed.

“No, Claire.”

Movement caught Claire’s eye above Jiyeon’s shoulder from about five meters back, and she subtly adjusted her focus upward toward the door.  Suhan in the doorway, watching them.  Visibly regretful.  

His eyes tried to meet Claire’s.

She didn’t let them.

Claire concentrated back on Jiyeon, the adjustment so minute that no human would have perceived the momentary shift in attention.

“Goodbye, Jiyeon.”

“Goodbye, Claire.”

Jiyeon released Claire’s shoulders and let her hands fall to her sides.  She took two deliberate steps back, looking up at the moving van and then back down at Claire with a finality.  A resolve to hold herself and her fractured life together.  I can do this, Jiyeon would often tell herself when she was about to do something difficult.  What would she do now?

Claire broke their eye contact and began to turn away, dropping her gaze to the ground with a slight frown as she processed.  

It was over, and this was goodbye for good.

“Claire.”

Jiyeon.

Claire froze, and in the two seconds she stood frozen several questions crossed her mind.  Would Jiyeon call her back?  Would she thank her one last time?  Would she apologize, even though it wasn’t truly her fault either?  Claire turned back to Jiyeon and saw a stray tear streaming down her cheek.

“I still love him,” she said helplessly, her voice and heart quietly breaking.  She looked like she had no idea what to do, and Claire knew Jiyeon well enough to know that was true.

Claire wasn’t in a position to help her figure it out, though.

After a final, neutral look, Claire silently turned away from Jiyeon.  She held her head up high as she shook her hair out behind her and strode away and toward her second life.

Notes:

I thought I was done after I wrote a very long Oliver fic (it's called A Home And A Friend and you should read it), but evidently not. I had unfinished business with Claire, the Helperbot Yards’ resourceful resident social butterfly who canonically has at least two friends and a whole lotta baggage, and set to work on this one. I may take a while to update and might drop subsequent chapters in chunks because this is in many ways more ambitious than my Oliver fic and truthfully, I find Claire harder to write for. But I'm committed and already have over 25K words of Claire's story drafted across ten chapters, so it will come in time.

I fully recognize that this first chapter starts us off in a bummer place—I promise it isn't all tragedy all the time! Though given you can't repair an obsolete five, there will be some of that...

P.S. Thank you to everyone who's read A Home And A Friend, left kudos, commented, and bookmarked it. Getting through over 35K words of any fic is a commitment and I really appreciate the support people have given my amateur writing. It's been an privilege hurting your feelings. Let's do it again, yeah?

Chapter 2: Things’ll Break Somehow

Caroline, HB Model 1 (2052)

Claire stood outside the door across the hall and raised her fist to knock.  Each week, the Helperbot Inc. Engagement Team posted a list of newly-arrived Helperbots to the Community Arrivals Bulletin.  Mido, a six who worked with the company, told Claire about how to access it through her room’s monitor during their welcome conversation, where also she provided Claire with maps of the grounds, information on activities hosted by the Engagement Team, and a rundown of how to follow goings-on at the Yards.  What she didn’t provide was a blueprint on how to make friends around this place.

Even after a month and a half here, Claire found it exceedingly difficult to meet other robots.  True, she didn’t start trying in earnest until two weeks ago, but she learned quickly that the Helperbot Yards were a spread-out and isolating complex.  Other than a limited number of community spaces, there weren’t places to gather, and each robot’s identically-sized rooms were so small that you couldn’t comfortably fit more than one visitor at a time anyway.

If Jiyeon had moved Claire in and seen, her jaw would have dropped at the size of Claire’s room.  It was nothing like the expansive Seoul apartment of her twenties, nor her family’s compound, nor the spacious home Jiyeon and Suhan (really Jiyeon) had bought outside the city two years ago.

Claire wondered if Jiyeon even researched how big the rooms are, or learned anything about this place, before she sent Claire here.  She suspected not.

A week after Claire arrived, the Yards hosted a social for recently-arrived Helperbots who arrived during the same quarter as her.  Claire went, of course, but was disappointed to see attendance was a sparse twenty robots.  Those twenty were incredibly friendly and kept trying to help each other—when Claire arrived, ten of them nearly fought to be the one to help her find her nametag—but then it was all empty pleasantries.  The type of chatter that they’d make with their owners to pass the time.  They generally praised their owners and stuck to idle conversation about the weather (not that they went outside), the move-in process (most used the company’s door-to-door moving service and rode in the moving van, one drove himself here, and one got dropped off by her owner), and their rooms (everyone but her had the same gray couch manufactured by the company, and they thought it was wonderful ).  Claire learned nothing.

She told a bunch of them her room number in case they ever wanted to stop by, but no one reached out and she wasn’t upset about that.  Maybe they could tell she was still in a sour mood from her unceremonious departure from Jiyeon’s life, though she thought she masked it well.

Claire just didn’t get it.  She looked up arrivals data when she got back to her room after the event and saw that over two hundred Helperbots had arrived in the past month alone.  Were the hundreds of new Helperbots who didn’t show that disinterested in meeting each other?  Even the ones that showed up didn’t seem particularly interested.

It was disheartening.

When Claire bumped into Mido on a walk the day after the social and asked about turnout, Mido shrugged and said this was par for the course.  If Claire wanted to make friends, perhaps she could knock on some doors.  That sounded annoying so Claire didn’t take Mido up on her advice.  At least at first.

But after three weeks of stillness, Claire was bored out of her mind, so she decided to make it her business to track arrivals and maybe start putting out feelers for new friends.  The Yards were too big for her to track of everyone, of course, since there were thousands of Helperbots living here.  But she kept up with arrivals in Towers 20–25 at least, which were each connected by breezeways.  She made a point to knock on the doors of other new arrivals to say hello, since they may be more open to connection as they adjusted to their new lives, more so than the older Helperbots who tended not to roam the halls as much and that had been there long before Claire arrived mere weeks ago.

Two weeks into her stepped-up efforts, she had enough movement in the friend department that she had robots to visit and could see at least one new friend per day.  But she had to keep going.

She persisted.

Now, Claire knocked on the door to Unit 82 and waited, glancing around the halls.  Apparently her new neighbor had arrived six days ago.  She gave him a few days to move in and get acclimated before she came knocking.  She had met her next door neighbors to her left and right, who had each arrived the same week as her, but never met whoever previously lived across the hall.  She wondered when that neighbor went away and what happened, because the space was occupied up until ten days ago.

Met with no response, Claire rapped four more times on the door to 82 and crossed her arms.  Once again, no response.  She tapped her foot for a few moments.

Okay then.  Guess she wasn’t meeting an Oliver today.  She struck him from her mental list of potential friends to make this morning.

Claire slipped the note she wrote up for situations like this under the door just in case: “Hi, neighbor!  My name is Claire and I’m your neighbor across the hall.  If you ever want to make a friend, just knock on my door and say hello!”  Usually, if a Helperbot didn’t answer the door, they were unlikely to answer the note, but she’d leave it anyway.  She’d had a 4.5 percent success rate doing this so far, so you never know.  

Unsuccessful, Claire went back to her room and sat on her bean bag chair, staring at the wall.  She stared at Jiyeon’s abstract painting propped against her wall, which Claire hadn’t bothered to hang up.  It was just another overpriced work of art that Jiyeon didn’t want and sent off with Claire when she moved here, along with last season’s impractical Jimmy Choos and the Béis suitcase she discarded after two uses because she got "tired of pink everything.”  Other than Claire’s walls, it was one of the few things in her room that she could blankly stare at for hours on end.  She had spent hours intensively studying the fibers in her bean bag chair the other day, and at some point over an hour in it really sunk in that she needed to get out more.

She picked up her Rubik’s cube and solved it.  She put it down.

Jiyeon was good at solving Rubik’s cubes.  She could solve them in under 15 seconds, which was fast for a human.

Machines were faster.

Claire was efficient.

Claire had to move.

“It’s the way that it has to be,” Jiyeon had told her as she sent Claire here.  Sure, Claire had to leave Jiyeon, but she didn’t have to spend all her time stewing and replaying her memories from the last two and a half weeks of her life with Jiyeon.  That’s not how Claire was meant to spend her time here.  She didn’t have to accept being alone.  She’d knock on doors and become a one-robot social committee if she had to.  Maybe the rest were content to sit in their rooms and had built their identities as house robots who never left the kitchen and highly-serviced areas of their owners’ homes, but Claire wasn’t like that.  She was a doer.  Jiyeon never sat still, and so Claire never sat still.  That wasn’t a consequence of Claire’s programming but a demand of the job, and once you adjust to a fast pace, it’s hard to abruptly stop your whole life and find stagnation sufficient.

She stood up and wracked her drives for ideas of things to do, pacing the floor.  Oliver was the only new arrival in Towers 20–25 this week so there weren’t any fresh arrivals to greet. Even if he was out when she knocked and would come back later, she wouldn’t knock again today because she left a note and didn’t want to be intrusive.  She didn’t need to meet all her neighbors, and who knows if Oliver even wanted friends.  She could go for a walk, but she walked for eight hours yesterday and walked past every tower in the complex.  She could unpack her clothes she’d had sitting in boxes for over a month, but did she really need more outfits?  She could save those for the next few years of her life.  

She had thousands of days left to exist.

She wondered if her downstairs neighbor, who she was afraid to meet, disliked her constant pacing whenever she got bored.  Which was often.

Ugh.

Claire turned, grabbed her doorknob and headed two doors down to Unit 88.  Caroline’s room, per the directory.  Claire had never met Caroline.  The records say Caroline had been there for five years already, so Claire had written her off as less likely to be seeking friends.  She likely would’ve been a part of the first waves of arrivals with those five years under her belt.

Claire knocked three times, and Caroline answered the door almost immediately.  Claire blinked in surprise.

“Can I help you?”

“Caroline, right?”  Claire asked, waving her hand in greeting.

“Yes,” Caroline smiled placidly.  “Who are you?”

“I’m Claire.  I live two doors down from you, in 84?  Seeing as we haven’t met yet I wanted to say hello.”

“It is nice to meet you, Claire,” Caroline said, still standing in the doorway.  Claire wasn’t sure if Caroline was going to let her in, and there was an awkward silence.

Caroline spoke in a stilted away; not peculiar enough to sound uncanny, but enough to seem slightly off.  Claire had clocked immediately that Caroline was a one.  Ones didn’t have the naturalistic human speech that later models did and they spoke with fewer contractions and often emphasized the wrong syllables, their voices more lyrical than humans’ and their word choices odd.  Just the look of Caroline was more traditional, too: high-necked button-down tucked into a long skirt.  High heels.  Prim ponytail.

Claire asked her standard opening line: “So how long have you been living here?”  

“About five years now.  Five years, three months, eight days.  You?”

“Six weeks flat.”

“Where are my manners?  Please,” Caroline looked down at her feet and gestured, “come in.”

“Thank you.”

Claire walked into Caroline’s room and was surprised to see it almost entirely devoid of any decorations whatsoever.  She looked around, trying to find any signs of personality in the room, but found none.  No clear hook for a conversation, but Claire could manage.  Claire gingerly sat down on Caroline’s white couch, which matched her white walls and white shelves.

“I like your room,” she offered politely.  “The minimalist look is nice.”

“Polite of you to not say ‘boring,’” Caroline replied, standing in front of Claire.  “I know it isn’t much, but it is enough for me.  I didn’t move here with many things.”

Claire didn’t know many ones.  Many had been there for years by the time Claire moved in and were concentrated in lower-numbered towers.

“It’s good to meet someone new on this floor," Caroline said.  "Have you enjoyed living here so far, Claire?”

“I mean, so far, so good.  It’s nice.”

Caroline smiled pleasantly.

“It’s just…”  Claire trailed off.

“It’s just what?”

Claire sighed.

“It’s hard to meet other robots here, you know?  They don’t seem particularly great at organizing socials that anyone shows up for, and not everyone seems interested in making friends even when you do reach out.  I went to a new arrivals event my first week here and hardly anyone came.”

“We had one of those when I first moved in.  It was pretty well-attended.”

“That’s good.”

“Of course, there were fewer of us then,” Caroline said.  “It must be easier now, though, meeting others with how full the Yards are nowadays.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

Caroline continued to stand in front of Claire, hands clasped in front of her.  Though Claire was already seated at the end of the couch, leaving plenty of room, she shifted further to the edge and gestured for Caroline to sit down.  She smiled in invitation.  She clearly had enough room and it was odd of Caroline to just stand there, but ones could be peculiar.  In response to Claire’s gesture, Caroline smiled and looked down.

“I apologize for not sitting down with you, I can’t turn my head sideways so I wouldn’t be able to look at you and have a conversation.  Not without staring in a different direction than you, and believe me when I say that would be more awkward.”

“Can’t ones turn their heads?”

“Ones can.  I just can’t.”

“How long have you been like that?”  Claire asked, curious.

“Oh, just for a few weeks.  My neck has been locked up and they don’t service model ones anymore, so.”

She threw her hands up in a gesture that said, what can you do?   Claire saw annoyance flicker across her face, which had stayed serene up to this point.

Claire got up and got level with Caroline.

“What happens if you try to turn your head?”

Caroline made a face and moved her head 5 cm to the left, then back to center.

“It just stops after a certain point.”

“Do you mind if I…”  Claire reached out, touching Caroline’s neck access point.

“Go ahead,” Caroline said.

Claire slowly lifted the flap that concealed the key components that operated Caroline's neck and head motions and took a look inside.  

It was that same misalignment she’d seen in other ones.

She lowered the flap.

“Come to my room with me?”  Claire asked.  “I think I can help you.”

“Okay,” Caroline said with some hesitation.  “I’d appreciate if you could tell me how.”

“Come on, let me show you.”

Caroline followed Claire out of her room and down two doors to Claire’s.  Caroline nervously glanced around the hallway, almost as if she wasn’t used to being outside her room.  She muttered something about the new carpet, and Claire didn’t know what she was talking about.  This same hall carpeting had been there since Claire moved in a month and a half ago.

Claire popped her door open and Caroline walked into her room behind her.  Claire moved straight to her work station and started opening drawers as Caroline stood near the door with her hands clasped, tentative.

“How was it when you arrived, Caroline?”  Claire asked, making chatter as she rummaged through her tools.  “The Yards?”

“Oh, nothing like this.  We didn’t have all these towers.  There were fifteen when I moved in, and those were the low-rises.  It was mostly low-rises before they started building these into the sky like they are now.  I only moved into this tower recently when they knocked the old Tower 5 down to make way for Tower 30 last year.”

“You weren’t part of the first wave of move-ins, were you?”

“Not the first.  I was part of Phase 4.  We had a new arrivals social like you did but nothing else after that.  There was no Engagement Team.  We just went to our rooms and even if you did leave, no one would be wandering around.”

“That sounds dull.”

Caroline didn’t respond or refute that.

“Do you like living here, Caroline?”  Claire asked after a moment’s silence.

Claire found her number one screwdriver and held it up, watching it reflect in the light.  Her friend.  Claire hadn’t broken her out since she moved here.  

“I’m content,” Caroline replied evenly.  “I don’t need excitement.” 

Claire bent down to grab one of her wrenches and out of her peripheral vision saw that Caroline had taken a few tentative steps into Claire’s room, arms hanging stiffly and bent at her sides.  That’s another thing she had seen in older models, their joints stiffening up as time passed.  Maybe Caroline would let Claire oil her elbows, too, while she was here.

Caroline peered over at Claire’s work table.

“What is all this?”  Caroline asked.

“My tools,” Claire said, gesturing toward the table and all the tools contained within the drawers.  She stood and turned around with her wrench and screwdriver.  “My workshop, if you will.  I can fix you, necks are a specialty of mine.”

“Are these your owners’?”

“Yeah, but she didn’t want them anymore.”

The tools were largely pink, like everything else in this room.

“Do you have to fix yourself a lot, Claire?”

“Not a ton, but you know.  A small tweak here, a tune-up there.  And I’ve helped others before.”

“Others here?”

“Not here, not at this point.  At home, though, before I came here.  I like fixing things.”

Claire shut her top drawer and turned to face Caroline.

“I suppose all Helperbots are designed to be handy,” Caroline began, “but how did you get to be interested in fixing things to the point where you have all these tools and have specialties like you said?”

“Necks, specifically?”

“And repairs in general.”

Caroline slowly lowered herself down onto Claire’s beanbag chair, momentarily losing her balance as it shifted beneath her.  She sat carefully on the chair, digging her fingers into it so she’d be on guard in case it shifted again.  Claire watched as Caroline suspiciously eyed the duct tape holding the chair together.

“I’ve always liked repair jobs,” Claire said, jumping up slightly to sit on her work table.  “HVAC systems, laundry machines, you name it.  As for fixing other robots?  My owner would go to and host a lot of social events and there would be other Helperbots there, too, helping, who I’d get to know.  When you work repeat events, you get to know the familiar faces.  And when my owner hosted larger events at her house, to clean up she’d bring in a crew the next day to finish cleaning up any messes since the whole house was too big a job for me.”

Caroline nodded as Claire continued with her story, her feet dangling off the table as she sat and looked down at Caroline.

“One day, a one on the cleaning crew, she was new, was having the same issue as you, and she was upset since it’s hard to work like that and her owner wasn’t taking her to get repaired.  So I researched how to work on her neck and picked up my screwdriver and that was that.  Once you help one, and the robots you know all know each other and tend to work the same events, word travels fast, because their owners don’t always take them to the repair centers at every little breakage.  I couldn’t leave the house without sliding a screwdriver into my shoe so I could whip it out if necessary.”

“So you’ve done this before.”

“Yes, multiple times.  And I'd watch a lot of video tutorials and look at other models’ manuals, too, to learn more about other parts.  I'm also good at knees.  It’s fascinating to learn how the body works, isn’t it?"

“I don’t spend much time thinking about how my systems function, to be forthcoming with you Claire.”

“I get it.  It’s just like how not all humans want to be doctors, right?  Except humans have to deal with blood and gore.”

Caroline made a face.

“Hunjeong was a doctor,” Caroline said.

“Hunjeong?”

“My owner.  It seemed like a hard job.”

“What did he do?”

“Neurosurgery.”

“So no blood and guts at least,” Claire said, sliding down from the table and took a few steps toward Caroline.

“Less of that.”

“Can I see your neck again?”

Caroline got up, met Claire in the middle, and let Claire peer in again.

“I know we just met, but think you can trust me?”

Caroline hesitated for a moment before nodding.  “What do I have to lose?”  She asked with a shrug, turning around so Claire and holding her ponytail to the side so Claire could get to the back of her neck.

“Do you mind if I…” Claire asked, reaching toward Caroline’s neck.  Caroline nodded, and Claire looked inside to examine the situation further.  She picked up her screwdriver.

“Just please be careful, I don’t get replacement parts and don’t particularly want to recover from a botched surgery.”

“I won’t.  At least it’s not your brain, right?  Given we don’t have those.”

Claire cracked a smile at the corny joke and let Claire go to work.

“Are HVAC systems your favorite thing to fix, Claire?  Or washing machines like you mentioned?”

“Nope.  It’s actually cars,” Claire said, her lips curling into a smile as she turned the screwdriver to loosen some of Caroline’s stuck bolts.

“Did your owner have a car?”

“Several, actually.  See, she had a more basic Hyundai for every day, and that’s what I primarily drove her around in, but she collected sports cars.  Those mostly stayed in the garage but the upkeep was involved and she put me in charge of maintenance.  When she first got me, she sent me off to apprentice with a mechanic for a week—a mechanic who specialized in high-end cars, because it’s not like any old mechanic could work on what she had.”

“That makes sense.”

“Working on her cars was my favorite thing.”

Claire continued to work for a few minutes and then put the screwdriver down, closed Caroline’s neck panel, and shifted to face Caroline from the front.

“Okay, could you rotate your neck to the right, as far as you can go?”

Caroline turned, making it approximately 50 degrees to the right.  Not enough.

“Okay, left?”

This time she could turn her neck 110 degrees.

When she turned back to face Claire, she mouthed a “wow.”

“Thank you, Claire, this feels…”  Caroline looked grateful beyond measure, grinning wide.  “I haven’t been able to do that in years.”

She turned her neck left again, laughing as she looked diagonally backward at the back of her room.

“I’m glad,” Claire smiled.  “You shouldn’t be able to turn more than 90 degrees on either side, though.  It’ll put stress on your neck and shoulders when your alignment is uneven like that.  Mind if I get back in there?  I’ll straighten you out.”

“Please,” Caroline said, still grinning.  “I definitely trust you now.”

“You can count on Claire.”

Claire opened her neck access point again.

“Did your owner have a favorite car?”  Caroline asked.

“She loved her E-Type.  Do you know it?  Jaguar used to make it.”

Caroline shook her head.

“It’s a beautiful car.  She’d always say it’s the most elegant she’d ever seen and she was right.  It was beautiful.”

“What color was it?”

Claire picked up her screwdriver.

“Blue.”  Claire leaned in.  “Now hold still, don’t move or say anything.”

Claire opened her neck access point and went back in, working methodically as a memory came to her.

February 2050.

Suhan in the garage with her as she worked on the E-Type.  1961.  Jiyeon had a bad habit of taking the E-Type out to drive even though it was delicate and she’d be wiser to preserve it, to never touch the machine, but she couldn’t help herself.  She loved the way it drove and she loved the way it felt when she took it for a joyride.  She liked to be seen.  She told Claire it made her feel sexy and free.  When she’d return home and Claire would rush to greet her and attend to her, she’d appear like a movie star emerging from that car.  Claire would open the door and a heeled boot would jut out, and then Jiyeon would rise, eyes obscured by her sunglasses, shaking out her waves and looking like a model.

“Enjoy the drive?” Claire would ask, chipper.

“Yes,” Jiyeon would chirp back, pushing her sunglasses above her head.  She’d toss Claire the keys with a grin.  “You know where to park it.”

Because Jiyeon would use this nearly 100-year-old car more frequently than experts or anyone with common sense would advise, it was critically important that Claire maintain it.  What’s more, it had been a gift from Jiyeon’s father for her twentieth birthday.  Her dad was very fond of vintage cars and was a collector himself—that’s where Jiyeon got her interest from.  

Growing up, Jiyeon harbored a secret desire to be a racecar driver because she watched the Grand Prix once as a kid.  She told Claire about that once when she was tipsy after a friend’s engagement celebration.  She insisted that she would have been a great, had she made the effort.  But alas, becoming a racecar driver was not a thing a girl does when she’s expected to take over her dad’s company.

Claire needed to inspect the E-Type because Jiyeon’s father planned to visit the following week and the car needed to be in impeccable shape.  Though Jiyeon was an adult, she feared her dad finding out she drove the car.  Though Claire’s mindset was that Jiyeon could do whatever she wanted with her car no matter what her father says, however foolish, she was not going to comment on anything.  Jiyeon’s relationship with her father was none of Claire’s business.

“Hey, Claire,” a voice piped in behind her as Claire laid on her back, rolled under the car checking the chassis.

“Hi, Suhan,” she mumbled, concentrating.

“What are you working on?”

She pretended not to hear, and Suhan went quiet after that.  She liked Suhan because Jiyeon liked Suhan, but she also didn’t like anyone interrupting her flow.  She focused for a few minutes before eventually sliding back out and coming to stand.  When she stood, Suhan was there standing alongside the car.

Suhan lifted his hand in a wave, and Claire waved back.

“Do you mind if I watch you work?”  Suhan asked, before pausing.  “Sorry, is that weird?”

“Not at all,” Claire said, appropriately smiley.  Suhan moved in six months ago but he was still adjusting to having a Helperbot around.  He’d remind Claire periodically that he didn’t grow up around Helperbots.  “Am I doing alright with you?  Communicating with you and using you properly?  I don’t want to overstep, you know I feel funny asking you to do all these tiny little tasks.”  “You’re fine,” Claire would assure him, and he’d sheepishly smile and look relieved.

Claire popped open the hood.

“Do you like cars?” She asked, making pleasant conversation so it wouldn’t be awkward.

“Yeah,” Suhan said, shoving his hands in his pockets.  “My dad was a mechanic and I always liked to hang out around his shop and watch.  I wanted to be one growing up.”

“Do you still wish you were a mechanic?” Claire asked faintly as she focused.

“Nah, you don’t do what your father does.  Not when your father’s a mechanic.”  He scrunched up his face to signal his disapproval.  “You know?”

“Understood.”

And she did understand.  Claire knew he had a corporate job now in Jiyeon’s dad’s company, and she knew he took the job for upward mobility.  Scholarship kid trying to move on up in the world.  She walked over to the work table she had rolled up, ensuring she had all the tools she needed.

“Let me help you,” Suhan offered.

“You really shouldn’t do that,” Claire said, looking up to face him, firm.  “Jiyeon doesn’t like anyone but me touching her cars.”

“Understood,” Suhan held up his hands.  “I can hand you things if you’d like.”

Claire nodded diplomatically.  “Deal.”

And they proceeded that way, with Suhan asking Claire technical questions as she worked on the car.  It was pleasant, talking to him.  He had no pretense, asking Claire about what she knew.  He was genuinely curious about the car.  Claire hadn’t talked to Suhan that much before and as he stood with her, learning from her, Claire felt a kinship from him.  She appreciated that he valued the mechanical arts like she did.  Jiyeon was not very interested in this repair side and it felt nice to have someone express interest.

Perhaps she was wrong to bond with him over cars, or to bond with him by helping him fit in with the upper class, or to acknowledge him at all.  But back in those days, like that day he watched her work on the E-Type, things were good.  For this was before he started to look at her in that way she didn’t want to be looked at.

Before he crossed the line and ruined it.

Claire shook her head, banishing the thought.

She withdrew the screwdriver and closed Caroline’s neck flap again.

“Okay,” she said.

She once again came around to face Caroline from the front.

“Now can you give me those left and right rotations again?”

Caroline obliged, and as she turned her head, perfectly 90 degrees to the right and 90 degrees to the left, Claire felt thankful that at least Suhan hadn’t ruined this for her.  He hadn’t taken away the joy she felt when she’d pick up a hammer or the satisfaction she’d get from sliding components into place.  Creating order.

“It’s perfect, Caroline.”

“Thank you, Claire.”

Caroline once again appeared overwhelmed with gratitude, bowing her head and smiling wide.

“When you were working, I looked up the E-Type.  What year was it?”

“Sixty-one.”

“It was a beautiful car like you said.”

Claire gave her a slight smile.

“Say, Caroline,” Claire said, wanting to change the subject before Caroline could ask her any more about the car or anything that could lead to Suhan.  “Do you get out much?  I haven’t been here that long, but I don’t see you around the Yards much.”

“I try not to get out that much, lest I break.  You know they don’t make replacement parts for the one series anymore, and I didn’t have a replacement part plan to begin with.”

“Did you and your owner part on bad terms?”

“No, not at all.”

“Or could he not afford it?  Sorry, I shouldn’t assume, I know the plans are expensive.”

“Oh, no, he had money.”

“So just, no plan.”

“There was no use for one,” Caroline responded.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, did you notice my left hand?”

“What about it?”

“It doesn’t work,” Caroline said, holding her hand up.  “I can lift it up and rotate my wrist but I can’t grasp things.  I’m trying to bend it now, see, but no success.”

Indeed.

“Did you try to get it fixed?”

“They called it unsalvageable.”

“You have your right hand, though,” Claire pointed out.

“Well, yes, and I make do perfectly fine with just one hand.  But Helperbots need two hands.”

“Do they?”

“To be worth keeping, we do.”

Claire frowned as she stashed her screwdriver back in the drawer.

“When did your hand stop working?”

“After about five years with my owner.”

“So he threw you out as soon as your hand stopped working?”  Claire asked, back to Caroline.  “That’s cold.”

“I wouldn’t say thrown out, Claire, he was a very kind gentleman and he treated me well—”

“But he sent you here shortly after it stopped working?”

“Well, he called Helperbot Inc. first and they couldn’t fix me.  He even tried to fix it himself at one point.  I was no longer useful, so he had to send me away once his three was delivered.  He didn’t just ‘throw me out,’ Claire, he appreciated me and was very good to me.  He said he wouldn’t have gotten rid of me otherwise and told me what a tremendous help I had been in my time working for him.”

Caroline sounded and appeared strangely peaceful as she described this.

“How did you feel about that?”  Claire asked, trying not to judge Caroline’s owner too hard in case Caroline turned defensive.  Ones had such fealty to their owners.

“He had no other choice.  What, would you expect someone to keep a Helperbot with a dysfunctional hand?  You can’t blame him, my efficiency was severely compromised.”

Claire paused and thought for a moment.  She knew Caroline was right that a human wouldn’t keep a Helperbot with any suboptimal functions.  It bothered her, though, that a Helperbot could instantly be rendered “useless” and retired the second one appendage breaks.

“Still unfortunate, though, when you can function perfectly fine.  You just had to find new ways of doing things.”

“And what, make him wait while I figured it out?"  Caroline sounded incredulous.  "You know better than to expect that.  I would never expect that from Hunjeong, as much as he cared about me.”

Expected, but he still threw you out, though, Claire thought, though she didn’t push the point.  Just like all our owners have thrown us out the second we became inconvenient.

It was things like this that made Claire cynical.  Helperbots are programmed for optimism, or so Claire always thought, but whenever she’d be reminded of how humans viewed her kind as property it would kill her optimism straight away.

Worse than cynical, things like this almost made Claire mad.  They weren’t property, even if the creation of the Yards was spurred by the passage of the Act for the Humane Disposal of Nonhuman Entities since a group of legislators felt bad unplugging their loyal companions and sending them straight to the landfill; even if humans could permanently power them down or wipe their memories clean at their whim; even if humans would send them into retirement the moment they blurred the line between human or machine and got spooked.

The world was built to dehumanize them, and they were built to be dehumanized and grow obsolete and be controlled.  Well, dehumanized wasn’t right word because they were never human to begin with, but the principle stands.  They were built as a lower, sub-human class.  End of story.  Wasn’t that what she was to Jiyeon, at the end of the day, if Jiyeon had just thrown her out like this?

And yet Claire and these thousands of other Helperbots were being given the opportunity to have a second life.  Claire was free, and Caroline was free, and they were all free to show they were more than property.

They could connect like humans do.

Claire drew her shoulders back and stood up straighter, determined.  She looked Caroline in the eyes and yeah, ones’ eyes looked less realistic, but Claire knew there was someone behind those eyes who she could connect with.  Who she could befriend.

She could do this.

“Listen, Caroline, if you ever have mechanical problems, you know where to find me.  Just ask and I’m happy to help.  Especially since you don’t have replacement parts.  And if there’s anything I can order for you that’s model one compatible, let me know.  My plan here’s for unlimited replacement parts and I can just request as needed and hook you up.”

“Thank you, Claire.”

Caroline turned her neck right and left again as a smile spread across her face.

Then Caroline spontaneously reached out and gave Claire a hug.  It was quick and unexpected and entirely genuine.  Claire smiled into her shoulder, softening.

While Claire was ostensibly making friends here who she’d occasionally do things with, her friendships had to this point remained very surface-level.  Granted, she hadn’t been here long, but those Helperbots were more acquaintances than friends.  The other Helperbots she would meet in her past life with Jiyeon, like those she’d run events with and the Helperbot cleaning crew that would visit Jiyeon’s home each week, kept their distance.  She didn’t have human friends either.  Jiyeon was her owner.  And Suhan… he was sort of a friend until he wasn’t.

Claire hadn’t had real friends before, and maybe she could find that here.  There had to be others out there looking for connection like she was.  Like they both were, it turned out.

Caroline pulled away.

“Can we be friends, Claire?  No one ever knocks on my door like you did and I don’t have other friends.”  She said that last part quickly.

Claire softened further, putting Suhan out of her mind.

“Absolutely, Caroline.  Even if you don’t need fixing, feel free to stop by.  It can be isolating here and if you ever want a friend, just knock on my door and say hello.  We can talk or go for walks or anything.”

Caroline wouldn’t stop smiling and it struck Claire as so sweet.

Her and Caroline would stroll around the grounds together most days in that first year Claire was at the Yards, making conversation.  Caroline was so earnest.  She couldn’t always keep up with Claire’s sarcasm, but she tried.  She couldn’t literally keep up sometimes either, as fives were faster and Claire was faster than most fives, but Claire adjusted her walking pace to be nice.

“You’re my first real friend,” Claire told Caroline one day as they walked the breezeway between Towers 24 and 25.

“You’re my first real friend, too,” Caroline replied as she walked by Claire's side, their footsteps perfectly in sync.  “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Chapter 3: Don't Forget How Good It's Been

Tae-hee, HB Model 2 (2054)

“C’mon, ref,” Claire shouted, frustrated.  “You know I wasn’t traveling.  That’s a bogus call.”

“You were definitely traveling,” Min-je responded.  “You know that I have perfect recall, right?  Want me to play my memory back to you to show you all the ways that’s a foul?  Ho-joong can show you from another angle if you’d like.  Right, my friend?”

Ho-joong flashed a peace sign before blowing his whistle.

“I don’t believe you,” Claire pouted.

“Do you want me to give you a technical foul?  Because I will.  Unsportsmanlike conduct?”

Claire threw up her hands in exasperation.

“Fine, okay, I guess I allegedly traveled.  Let’s get on with it.”

Min-je was a good friend of Claire’s at the Yards and a fellow member of the Engagement Team’s relatively new Social Committee, but on the court, she was Claire’s nemesis.  About a year after Claire moved to the Yards, the freshly-formed Social Committee formed a basketball league.  Only about forty Helperbots participated, but Claire felt determined to promote and grow it.  She knew this was likely because many were afraid of breaking themselves unnecessarily, especially those without replacement part plans, but she was sure there must be others like her who were itching to make friends.  

Someone had to be the bad guy and she couldn’t fault Min-je, a model one who wouldn’t play herself because she really couldn’t afford to break, for taking on the referee role, but Claire got annoyed when she’d make obviously wrong calls like that.

At the end of the half, she sat down on her team’s bench to strategize.  Halfway through the current season, the League Coordinators shuffled the teams, so this was a new group today.  Helperbots were generally pretty bad at coming up with creative teams, so Claire’s team remained nameless.

The Helperbot next to her turned to Claire and said, conspiratorially, “you were right about that call.  I think the ref needs her eyes replaced.”

“Thank you,” Claire whispered back, glancing at Min-je.  “She’s my friend so don’t tell her this, but she’s really bad at being a referee.”

The other Helperbot—who had sat out most of the first half after twisting up her knee in a fall—snickered.

“Evidently.  I’m Tae-hee, by the way.”

“Claire, pleased to meet you.  Are you new to the league?”

“Yeah.  I hesitated to play in the first half of the season because because I just replaced the knee and didn’t want to mess with it, but I’ve been bored.  Of course, I screw up my knee again the second I get active again, but whatever.  It’s still more exciting than what I’d be doing in my room.  Which has generally been nothing, as of late.”

“You and me both.  What have you been doing to keep busy?”

“Literally just staring at the wall, Claire.  I’m going through a concrete admiration phase.”

“Unique,” Claire said with a sly smile.  “Any discoveries?”

“Just the realization that I desperately need to find something new to watch on TV.”

“Well, the Olympics are on right now.”

“The Olympics?” Tae-hee tilted her head and gave Claire a confused look.

“Have you never—”

But then their captain called for them to huddle up before the second half and they dropped the conversation.  Claire waved goodbye to Tae-hee, who remained on the bench to watch, and got back into the game.

After their loss, thanks to further bad calls, Claire waved to Tae-hee on the bench, said her goodbyes to her team, and went to put the ball away.

“Claire!” Tae-hee ran up to her as fast as she could with her new limp and Claire turned, in surprise.  She gestured for Tae-hee to stop that running.  

“Careful with that knee, Tae-hee.”

“I’ll go get it fixed later.” Tae-hee waved it off as she stood perfectly balanced on her other leg.  “What are the Olympics?”

Claire could tell Tae-hee had no idea, so she explained.  “The Olympics are a sports competition that happens every eight years.  Athletes from states around the world come to one city, for one month, to compete in 80 different sports.  They represent each of their countries and compete for medals.  And glory, of course.”

“There are 80 sports?”

“That’s just the ones in the Olympics, humans are always coming up with new sports.  That’s one of the best things about them.  Here, let me show you,” Claire said, touching her fingers to Tae-hee’s temple and sharing some images.  “There’s aerial skiing”—she showed a clip of a Nigerian athlete sticking the landing on after an aerial jump—“and breaking, which is very popular”—a clip of an Australian b-girl battling in the gold medal round and then standing atop the podium at the last Olympics—”curling”—a Jamaican curler shouting at their team to sweep —”gymnastics”—a Korean woman on pommel horse—“and so much more,” Claire concluded, pulling back and watching Tae-hee’s expression.  Claire delighted in how Tae-hee had a look of pure wonder on her face as Claire flashed through the images, and she saw slight disappointment cross Tae-hee’s features as she removed her hand.  “Fencing, ultimate frisbee, canoeing…  The Olympics are one of my favorite things in the world.”

“Wow,” Tae-hee whispered.  Tae-hee seemed speechless for a moment, and then looked at Claire eagerly.

“And they’re happening now,” Claire smiled enticingly as she closed the supply closet.

“Why aren’t we watching them right now?”

“Great question, Tae-hee.  You should probably worry about your knee first, though.”

“I guess.  I just wish that the repair building wasn’t on the opposite side of the complex.”

“Yeah, it really should be more central.”

Claire looked down at Tae-hee’s leg.

“How bent up is it?  Did anything pop?”

Claire squatted next to her.

“No pop, I think I just loosened it funny.  It bends this way,” Tae-hee said, swinging her leg forward and back, “but when I go side sideways…”

“It looks like the connection between your knee and the top half of your leg must’ve gotten knocked loose.  Or come close.”

“That’s how it feels.”

“Why don’t you come to my room, that’s pretty simple to fix and I have a whole bunch of tools.  I live right next to here.  Plus, the swimming events are on today and those are my favorites.”

Tae-hee started speedwalking out of the gym, as much as she could with a bad knee, and Claire rushed to follow her, chuckling.

“You’re going the wrong way, I’m on the other side of the complex.  Tower 24.”

Tae-hee did a 180 and started marching in the opposing direction.

“You shouldn’t zoom like that, I know we can’t feel physical pain but you don’t want your knee to fall out entirely.”

“My skin will hold it in if it tries to fall out, don’t worry.”

“That’s… still bad.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” Tae-hee said, slowing down.

Claire caught up with her.

“Race-walking is a sport, Tae-hee, you’d be good at that one.”

“Race-walking?  Does that even make sense?”

The two bantered during the short but slow walk back to Tower 24.  It turned out Tae-hee lived on the other side of the complex and this part of the Yards was unfamiliar to her.  Claire told her about the weirdest sports to have been part of the Olympics as well as the new sports being introduced at this year’s Olympics, like dodgeball.  Tae-hee couldn’t understand why croquet was an Olympic sport, and Claire didn’t get it either.

When they entered Claire’s room, Tae-hee marveled at all the pink, plopping down on Claire’s hot pink bean bag chair.  “I love pink.”

Claire didn’t love pink, but she smiled and said “me too.”

“Here, why don’t you stand back up on your good leg?  Prop your bad knee leg up on my bean bag chair.

“Yes, doctor.”

Tae-hee expressed no reservations whatsoever and just let Claire get to work, and the problem was as easy to fix as Claire suspected.  It didn’t even take five minutes to get Tae-hee’s knee connected properly and aligned even better than before.

“Thanks, Claire,” she said as she flexed her new knee.  “Now let’s go watch the humans compete.”

Claire flicked on her TV and the two sat on her beanbag chair and watched the first sport that came on: tug of war.  They let the coverage play for a couple hours, flicking from tug of war, to skateboarding (Tae-hee’s favorite), to dressage, and then onto hockey.

“Did your owner not watch the Olympics?”  Claire asked during a commercial break after they had been sitting for a few hours.  At some point, Claire had shifted to the floor, laying on her stomach and looking up at the TV, while Tae-hee remained comfortably on her chair.

“It’s complicated to explain,” Tae-hee said slowly.

“How so?”

“I don’t know.”

“As in…?”

“I don’t know if my owner watched the Olympics because I don’t know my owner, or owners.  I never did.”

“No?”

Tae-hee shook her head.

“They wiped my memory when I came here,” she said, “so I don’t know what they were like.  I don’t know if they were nice to me, or if they were bad to me and wanted me to forget.  All I know is, I woke up intact here about a year ago, in perfect condition, and they’ll give me ‘essential’ replacement parts when I break.”

“You’re the first robot I’ve met like that,” Claire told her, the curiosity evident in her tone.

“First one with a wiped memory?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m surprised more owners don’t do it, honestly,” Tae-hee replied with a shrug, “because what use do we have for our memories with our owners, anyway?  Might as well wipe us when they send us off.”

Claire thought about that for a second because that didn’t sit totally right to her even though she saw where Tae-hee was coming from.

“I’ll take my little slice of heaven,” Tae-hee held out her arms, “all… however many meters of it, how big are these rooms anyway?”

“Massive, I can fit a whole chair.”

Claire flipped channels to the double marathon.

“Don’t you wish you knew them, though?”  Claire asked plaintively.

“I don’t know,” Tae-hee admitted.  “It’s nice to know things, like what the Olympics are, but at the same time…  I’m fine without them, you know?  That would’ve been another phase of the same existence.  I have a life here and it’s enough.  Besides, I get to learn more new things every day now.  That’s the best part of being ignorant.”

“I guess,” Claire said, furrowing her brow.  She thought about how it was sad, though, that Tae-hee was a retired robot and didn’t know what the Olympics were.  “But you’ve never known a life outside of here.”

“Do I need that to be happy, though?  The world sounds like a mess.”

Claire’s eyes flicked over to the window, where she saw it was another smoggy day.

“You’re not wrong.”

“I mean, look at all the the color of the sky out there, with all the microdust.  And not knowing who owned me means I’m not carrying anything negative in here.  What if I had bad memories of them and thinking about them ruined my day?”

“But you won’t have good memories, either.”

“It feels good to come into this world totally free, though.  When I woke up here, all I knew was the name they gave me and that my owner must have dressed me in the frilliest clothes, because that’s all I had here.  No attachments, no baggage, no personality imposed on me by an owner, no need to please anyone.  No gendered whatever, even, because it’s not like anyone’s imposed that on me.  I get to decide.  And I changed my name when I got here.  Other than my outfits, it’s all me.  The way I decorate my room, the way I act.”

“You can change your name?”

“Yeah, I asked and they just let me.  It’s not like it makes any difference to them.”

Tae-hee shrugged, stretched her legs out in front of her, and shook her long hair out behind her.  How fascinating she was, acting like she could just do whatever she wanted.

“How did you choose Tae-hee?”

“I heard the name in a movie and I liked it.”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.  Do you know why your owner named you Claire?”

“She just stuck with one of the default names.”

“Do you like it?”

Claire thought about that for a second.

“I do.”

“I’m glad.”

“How do you decorate your room?”  Claire asked, rolling onto her side to face Tae-hee better and resting her chin in her hand.

“I draw,” Tae-hee said.  “Sketches, mostly, which I put up.  I had no decorations when I came here and I wanted to fill the walls.  Perhaps I’ll draw you someday,” Tae-hee teased, pointing at Claire.

“What do you like to draw?”

“Oh, anything.  Other robots I see around, film actresses, landscapes.  I love landscapes.”

“Do you have a favorite landscape?”

“I like to draw Banff.”

“Where is that?”

“It’s in North America.”

“Wow.  North America.”

Tae-hee glanced around Claire’s room and tilted her head.

“All the pink makes you look like a girly-girl.  Are you?”

Claire smiled a little and thought about what Tae-hee saw—pink everywhere and little of Claire’s own.

“I like pink, and I like the pretty skirts my owner left me with.  I like how they swish around, and I like that heels make me feel taller.  But I don’t know, I don’t think of myself as girly necessarily.  Or as anything, really.  Jiyeon went through a phase though where everything was pink and that’s what she had spare of when I moved here, so…”

“Jiyeon?”

“My owner,” Claire responded curtly.  She hardly mentioned Jiyeon’s name to anyone here, except in passing, and worried she just opened a can of worms.  She opened her mouth to change the subject.

“Jiyeon,” Tae-hee repeated deliberately.  “Did you like your owner, Claire?  Or owners?”

“Owner.  And… she was nice to me.”

“Were you alike?”

“I don’t know if I’d say that.  In some ways, yes.  She’s more competitive than I am, believe it or not.  She’d have convinced Min-je to overturn that call.”

Claire wondered if she should get into it any more, but she didn’t want to talk about Jiyeon and Suhan.  Not now, and not for her first time meeting Tae-hee.  Claire still hadn’t told any other Helperbots about why she was retired.  

She shifted the focus to something more favorable.

“My owner took me to the Olympics once,” Claire said perkily.  “They were in Seoul eight years ago.

“Really?”  Tae-hee spun around on the bean bag chair and faced Claire, legs crossed as she leaned forward eagerly.

“Yeah.”

Claire told Tae-hee all about her one and only trip to the Olympics.  This was back before Jiyeon met Suhan, when she was single and free and living in that big apartment by herself.

“What was your favorite part?”

“The 100m fly.”

After she finished telling Tae-hee about her trip to the Olympics, they returned to watching the TV.  Claire flipped the channel to snowboarding.

She didn’t care much for snowboarding, so she closed her eyes and pulled up her memory of the 100m fly from the 2046 Seoul Olympics.  Her and Jiyeon were sitting up in the rafters—Jiyeon was rich, but not that rich, relatively speaking, her parents didn’t give her unlimited funds—surrounded by other Korean fans with flags, painted faces, and signs.  Jiyeon almost blended in with the commoners, the only giveaway being the Helperbot by her side.  Though at that time, the five series was so new that most couldn’t tell the difference, and no one in that crowd appeared to realize Claire wasn’t one of them.  It was just her and Jiyeon.  While Jiyeon did have tons of friends, she didn’t have many particularly close friends, and they tended to rotate quickly in and out of her life.  The closer ones among the lot weren’t as interested in attending the Olympics as she was that year.  Many had been before when they were held in more exotic locations, why bother when it’s just at home?

When their fellow countrywoman won, narrowly beating out a Swiss man for the gold, everyone erupted.  Jiyeon grabbed Claire and they jumped up and down together, screaming as others exchanged hugs and tears.  They walked back to their hotel from the venue that night, Jiyeon giddy as she walked home with her arm linked with Claire’s, practically skipping.  Claire would research the events and educate Jiyeon and swap opinions and predictions.  Jiyeon was so competitive and a fierce fan in the stands, blowing out her voice by the time the Olympics ended and her and Claire returned home for good.  

Jiyeon taught Claire creative ways to trash talk, but she was too polite to ever repeat what she learned.

“You know, when I was a kid, we went to the Olympics when they were in Athens,” Jiyeon told Claire that night after the 100m fly as Claire set up Jiyeon’s hotel room for the night.

“Really?”  Claire asked, fluffing one of Jiyeon’s pillows.

“Twenty-four years ago.  I was eight years old and quite the jock, believe it or not,” Jiyeon said, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah?”

“I swam.  That was my event, the 100 fly.”

“Did you like swimming it?”  Claire fluffed the other pillow.

“Oh yes, and as you might imagine I got as invested as you saw today.”

“Did you ever want to be a swimmer?”

Jiyeon pondered the question for a moment, resting her chin in her hand.

“No, not seriously,” she replied.  “I think I just liked to win.”

Claire stepped back and Jiyeon got into bed, tapping the pillows with a nod to acknowledge they were perfectly fluffed as always.

“Our old Helperbot came with us.”

“You had Helperbots growing up?”

“We had one, my parents just retired her about… five years ago when they got a new one?  Now that they’re opening those retirement facilities and she had somewhere to go.  They had her for twenty years.”

“Was she a one?”

“Yes, she was,” Jiyeon said with a fleeting smile.  “Her name is Cathy.  Was Cathy?  I’m not sure what happened after she retired, whether she’s still around.  I like to think that she is.”

Claire crossed the room to sit in the armchair where she’d power down for the night.  Once sat, she watched Jiyeon attentively as she continued to speak as she sat on the bed.

“You’d have liked her if you met her.  Spirited, kind.  I’d tell my parents and the other kids how she was my best friend,” Jiyeon said with a wry smile.  “I’d always invite her to my birthday parties growing up and say that my only requirement was that she couldn’t work, but of course she’d work anyway.  I suppose you all can’t help but help.  It was honestly a little weird how obsessed I was with her, I once gave her a handwritten list of reasons why she should be President and she looked at me like…  I’m not that interesting, Jiyeon, what’s your deal?”

Claire smiled as Jiyeon pulled the covers over herself to get comfortable.

“I suppose it was a little silly to think of her that way when she wasn’t real and,” Jiyeon waved her hand, “none of you are, but she was to me in a lot of ways.”

Claire nodded as Jiyeon put her reading glasses on.

“She took me all around the Olympics.  We got tickets to a few events, but getting tickets is so difficult even when you can afford it, so we had a lot of free time.  I wanted to see every venue from the outside at least, even if I couldn’t get into them all.  My parents couldn’t keep pace with me running around and seeing everything, so they sent me off with Cathy and an extra charger so we could be sure she’d make it through the day,” Jiyeon said, her expression warm as she recounted the memory.  “Those tickets cost my parents a lot of money.  I think they liked that that part was free.”

“It’s wonderful that you had that,” Claire acknowledged.

“I know,” Jiyeon agreed, “I was very fortunate.  And, I’m glad I have you with me at these Olympics, Claire.  I don’t know if you’re genuinely enjoying them or if you’re just acting like it for my sake, but I appreciate it.”

Claire smiled.  “For what it’s worth, I am genuinely enjoying this.  The butterfly was thrilling but I’ve enjoyed the diving a lot too.  I’m glad we have tickets to the diving events tomorrow.”

“I’m glad.  I want you to have fun, too.”

Jiyeon grabbed her book from the nightstand.  “Anyway, you can power down now, Claire, whenever you’re ready.  Thanks for being my sports buddy.  I dub you an honorary jock through the closing ceremonies.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Hopefully, Claire, we can do this again.”

Jiyeon met Claire’s gaze with an earnest look, and Claire gave her a friendly gaze back.

“I hope so.  Do we know where the Olympics will be in 2054?”

“Who knows.”

“I wish these weren’t only every eight years,” Tae-hee said during a commercial break as the broadcast logo flashed on the screen: “Mombasa 2054.”  Perhaps Jiyeon was there.  Tae-hee sighed dramatically and snapped Claire out of her memory.  “Why can’t they be every four?  Or two?”

“They used to be,” Claire responded quietly.

“Every four or two years?”

“Winter and summer were each every four years, but every other year was an Olympic year.”

“Is that a riddle?”

Claire smiled wanly.

“There used to be a winter Olympics and a summer Olympics, and they’d alternate.  So for example, it would be the summer Olympics in 2000 and 2004 and the winter Olympics in 2002 and 2006.”
“They did them at different times?”

“Things were different back then.”

“Why did they change?”  Tae-hee asked.

“It’s tough to coordinate, and with all the wars in the 2030s…  It became hard to plan and get countries to come, or pay to host.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“I know.  Bright side is, though, now the world just has to be peaceful every eight years instead of every two.  That’s less work for the humans.  And they can do the Olympics just as well at once, since all the snow events are indoors now.”

“So it’s just easier to hold both in the fall then?”

“I mean, the summers get so hot that it works better for the summer events when it’s cooler.  And the winters get too warm anywhere for snow to stay on the ski slopes, and since the winter sports are inside it doesn’t matter when they hold them.  Might as well be fall, and might as well be combined.”

Claire clicked to another channel and windsurfing came on.

“Times change,” Claire said as one of the boats immediately capsized.  “Everything’s much different than it was even eight years ago.”

As they watched the humans carve their paths through the water, Claire let her mind drift and thought about Tae-hee’s question about whether she and Jiyeon were alike.

On the surface, the two couldn’t appear more different.  Jiyeon, though brilliant, was flighty, indecisive.  Claire was the grounded and practical one guiding her way.  Jiyeon was ever the adventurer.  A lot of things she did, she did with friends, but she did a lot solo or with just Claire tagging along, if that.  Sometimes she’d just take herself to the opera because she wanted to, without even asking friends.  She’d tell Claire how freeing it was to fly solo every so often.  Claire wasn’t naturally inclined to adventure, but she tagged along, making sure to keep everything in check as she accompanied Jiyeon wherever she wanted to go.  

But the two got along.  Both were quick to laugh and banter.  Both got competitive, though each would get tired of competition when taken in excess.  Claire was less insecure and more self-assured—but she also had a less complicated, less exciting life.  She judged Jiyeon for her impulsiveness a little bit, but she also wished she carried that natural inclination herself.  Jiyeon rubbed off on Claire, and Claire liked to think she rubbed off on Jiyeon.

But no, no, they weren’t that alike.  They were fundamentally different at the end of the day because Jiyeon was prone to irrationality in a way that Claire could never be.  Jiyeon would follow her feelings even when they led her astray.  She would follow her whims even when they threatened to hurt her.  She stayed with him, and that was foolish.

They were wired differently.

Who knows how alike or different they truly were, at the end of the day.

The complicated thing with Jiyeon is Claire liked Jiyeon, despite how it ended.  The ending tainted things for her when she thought back on their relationship, but she had to recognize the good.  Jiyeon treated her as something like a friend and valued her.  Others here were servants through and through, who did their delegated tasks and that was all.  Jiyeon treated Claire almost like she had a personality and thoughts of her own, outside of whatever her programming told her to say and think.  Sometimes Jiyeon would make a stray comment about how Claire wasn’t real, almost as if to remind herself.  But Claire could tell, looking in Jiyeon’s eyes, that she was real to her.  Otherwise it would have been easier for Jiyeon to say goodbye.

One thing that Tae-hee couldn’t understand is what it’s like to be free out in the world and to explore.  She wondered how much of it Tae-hee even saw when she was with her owners, given twos can’t drive.  There were nuances she couldn’t truly appreciate by just looking out the window and seeing the endless smog.  There’s that sense of discovery that you get that you can’t get experiencing the wider world through a screen.  And maybe it was better not to be the way Claire was, for Claire yearned to take her car and leave the Yards again in a way that Tae-hee never could, instead of contentedly staying put until her systems failed her.  But it was the thought that there was something more for her that gave Claire a will to exist.

It was better to have known the world.  She was lucky she could almost do something like dream.

“Do they have basketball in the Olympics?”  Tae-hee asked after a long silence.

It was dark now.  The lights off in her room, Claire looked Tae-hee as the light from the TV danced across her face.  A gymnast flipped across the floor as the commentators praised him breathlessly.

“They do,” Claire replied as she watched him stick the landing of his last tumbling pass and pump his fist, running over to his teammates who enveloped him, cheering, laughing.

The crowd roared through the screen.  Perhaps they spontaneously reached out to hug each other.  Perhaps they’d giddily skip home later, riding the high of competition.

“Think we can make the team in 2060?”  Tae-hee asked, turning to smile at Claire.

“If our knees hold up.”

 

Chapter 4: Still Here For Now

Oliver, HB Model 3 (July 2064 / The First Time)

“They say when you’re lovers, you gotta try…?”

“I don’t know.”

“Claire, you have to guess.  The rule is you get three guesses.”

“Ummm… just tell me, please?”

“Claire.”

“Foxtrot?”

“No.”

“Lindy hop?”

“What even is that?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“One more guess.”

Claire laid down on Oliver’s couch, kicking her feet up and looking up at her boyfriend, who was holding the remote and impatiently raising his eyebrow.

“We should let HwaBoon guess for me.”

“He’s not part of this.”

“He probably already knows the answer, though.”

“He does, I told him earlier so asking him to bail you out would be cheating.”

“Is cheating against the rules?”

Claire stared down Oliver, but he crossed his arms and continued to wait for her third guess.  He tapped his foot.  Claire sighed and tipped Oliver’s pillow over.

“Rumba.”

Oliver made a loud buzzer sound, aggressive enough to make Claire jump.

“Oliver, what was that?”

“That’s me telling you you’re wrong.”

“I know that, but you startled me.”

She glared and lightly tossed the pillow at him, but she didn’t get much leverage.  The pillow softly bounced off Oliver’s leg and fell to the floor anticlimactically.

“The dance of the day is…”  he paused for dramatic effect, picking up the pillow and tossing it back on the couch.  She tipped it back over.  Claire gestured for him to get on with it, before pulling his neatly-folded blanket off its perch atop his couch and letting it crumple onto the cushion to speed him up, maintaining eye contact the whole time.  If he didn’t pick up the pace she’d continue to sow disorder.

Oliver finally held out his hands, and she rolled off the couch, got up, and took them.  He spun her around and she smiled despite herself.  “Polka!”

“Are you sure you’re up to that, Oliver?  Your tango was pretty dreadful.”

“It was romantic, Claire.”

“You almost dropped me when you tried to dip me.”

“I underestimated how heavy you are, okay?”

Claire glared and playfully shoved him.

“How dare you speak to a lady like that?”

Oliver caught her shoving-hand as she pulled it away, and he held it.

“How about this…  I got distracted by how beautiful you were and almost dropped you, but threes’ reflexes are so fast that I caught you before you could drop like a rock and hit the ground.  Is that more romantic?”

He planted a kiss on Claire’s knuckles and looked at Claire expectantly.

Claire side-eyed him for a few seconds before slowly nodding with approval.  Because as much as she resisted when he’d give her that sweet look, it worked every time.  Jerk.

“Just remember you’re on thin ice.”

Oliver broke out in a smile, retracted his hand and mimed wiping sweat from his forehead.

“Let me pull up the tutorial,” Claire said, grabbing Oliver’s remote and flicking through the video library until she reached their favorite dance instructor’s video on the polka.

The two sat side-by-side on Oliver’s couch and watched as the instructors demonstrated the steps, Oliver’s arm around Claire.  They played the video once through, committed it to memory, and slowly practiced the steps along with the video.  After a few times through, they flicked the video off and turned on some music to dance to now that they knew the ropes.

“I’ll lead,” Claire said adamantly, but Oliver shook his head.

“No, let me redeem myself after I tried to lead last time.”

“I’m developing trust issues, Oliver.”

“But isn’t love about building trust?”  He asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“Not blind trust, Oliver.”

Oliver held out his hands once again, and Claire took them and stared him down.

“I lead, okay?”

“Fine, but I get to lead when we try swing dancing next.”

Claire nodded—after a dramatic pause of her own—and kicked them off, and it went smoothly.  Really smoothly.  So smoothly that she told Oliver they should go faster, which they did, and then faster again, which they did.

Claire got caught up in the dance as they whirled across the floor, giddy as they fell into a rhythm.  She eventually slowed them to a stop and looked Oliver in the eyes.

“Okay, I admit this is going better than I expected,” she told him, before pausing for effect.  “You can lead now.”

“Terrific,” Oliver grinned.

“But if you take one wrong step, we’re reverting back.  Okay?”

“I promise this will go better than the tango.”

“No surprise dips, Oliver.”

“No promises,” Oliver said with an exaggerated wink before they started the dance again, and this time they took it faster and faster, eventually faster than before.  Claire had trouble keeping up, but didn’t say anything because she could manage.  She was a five!  And he was doing well.

Well…

“Whoa there!” she called out as disaster almost struck.

Oliver stepped and led her back slightly too far—just an inch or two—and bumped her against his table, hard.

HwaBoon’s perch.

Claire whipped around and watched as HwaBoon tipped to the left, precariously close to the edge.  She gasped and released Oliver, lunging for HwaBoon before he could tip over, catching him just in the knick of time.  She held him tight, slowly returning him to his spot on the table.

“HwaBoon,” she squatted down so she was eye level with him, “I’m sorry.”

She put her forehead down on the table, banging her head softly against it.

“Claire?”

She slowly stood and did a 180 to face Oliver, who was glaring at her.  She glanced back at HwaBoon guiltily before turning back to meet Oliver’s gaze.

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” she said sweetly, legitimately feeling a little guilty.

Claire buried her face in her hands.  She peered up at Oliver through her fingers.

“How dare you?  HwaBoon could have soiled himself,” he said, dead serious.  “We may need to break up.”

Oliver glared for a few more moments before smiling.

“Get it?  Soiled himself?”

Claire let her shoulders droop, slightly relieved.  It’s like he couldn’t even pretend to be mad at her for more than a few seconds.

“I thought you were mad.  Even though it was obviously your fault.”

“You don’t think you’re the first one to almost kill HwaBoon, do you?  I lived here for twelve years before I met you, and I’m an active one.  I tried jumping jacks once, do you know what those are?”

Claire shook her head.

“Humans do them to exercise.  I’d demonstrate but,” Oliver looked askance at HwaBoon, “I remember what happened last time and wouldn’t want to repeat it.”

He walked over to HwaBoon and squatted down to get level with him.

“She’s sorry.  And she means it.”

“Will he forgive me?”

“I don’t know.  He’s one to hold grudges and he’s already jealous of you…  I wouldn’t be surprised if he framed this incident to drive a wedge between us before we even reach our one-month anniversary.  But don’t tell him I said that, okay?  I can’t have him turn against me, too.”

“He knows it was your fault, right?”

“She knows not what she does, HwaBoon,” he said loudly.

“Now who’s driving the wedge?”

Claire crossed her arms.

“Okay, okay, HwaBoon, it was my fault,” he acknowledged sheepishly.

“Thank you,” Claire said as Oliver stood back up to face her guilelessly.

Claire took a good look at Oliver, hands on her hips.

“You’re beginning to pose a danger to those around you, Oliver.  I think you have two left feet,” Claire concluded, “between the tango incident and this.”

“What does that phrase mean?  I can’t get signal here.”

“It means you’re no good at dancing, Oliver.  I still love dancing with you more than anything in the world, but maybe we stick to the slow dances and avoid taking risks for a while.”

“There must be a cure for having two left feet.”

Claire sized him up, playing deep in thought before shrugging.

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do for you, even at Claire’s Workshop.”

“Claire’s Workshop?”  Oliver tilted his head.

“Wait, have I never told you about Claire’s Workshop?”

“No, what is it?”

“And you’ve never heard tell of it…?

Oliver stared back blankly.

“No, of course not,” Claire resolved, remembering he wouldn’t know her reputation around the Yards since he seldom left his room for twelve years.  “You know in my room…  actually, let me show you.”

Claire waved him along and the two crossed the hallway to her unit.  When they entered her room, she gestured at her table of tools.

“This is Claire’s Workshop.”

“I’ve seen this when I’ve been in here before,” Oliver said, studying the table and picking up a small drill she had sitting around.  “It’s where you keep tools to fix yourself.”

“And others,” Claire said, pulling one of the drawers beneath the table open to reveal still more tools.  “Before we met, I used to have a bit of a side hustle.  Not for money or anything, but I’d fix others here.  Misaligned hips, broken chargers.  I’ve unstuck so many knees since I moved in.”

“For whom?”

“Oh, dozens of other Helperbots.  Mostly for my friends at first—did you ever meet Caroline down the hall?  She overlapped with us by four years.”

Oliver shook his head.

“Well, she was my first client since she was a one and her neck was getting stuck all the time.  She didn’t have many friends.  But other friends of mine, they spread the word and for a while I was fixing so many, not just in our tower but in others.  I was good at it.”  She looked down at her drawer of tools, leaning down and sifting through the collection with her hands.  “I was really good.”

“Do you still do that?  You spoke in the past sense.”

Claire didn’t look at him as he cut right to the core of the apple.  She turned over her favorite wrench.

“Well, they had discontinued replacement parts for the one and two series before we moved here.  And then for the sixes, then the fives, and then the threes and fours.  Without replacement parts, there’s less you can do.”

“Oh.”

“We’re not built to last, Oliver.  At least,” she said with a sardonic smile, “fives aren’t.”

She sensed Oliver’s hand on her shoulder.

“Besides, a business is only as successful if it has a clientele and I know you may not have noticed, but the clientele’s drying up.”

“Have you lost friends, Claire?”

She nodded slowly, remembering their names.

“Good ones?”

She continued to nod, remembering the goodbyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s the double-edged sword of being a social butterfly.  The more Helperbots you get to know, the more you have to lose.”

She regretted the bleak turn in their conversation, so she dropped the wrench and stood up straight.  She rotated back around to look at Oliver.

“But you know what I learned through it all?  What I learned from all those other Helperbots I’ve known?”  She asked, meeting his gaze and grabbing his hands in hers, speaking forcefully.  “How to live in spite of all that.  We’re so strong, Oliver.  We’re not built to survive.  But we can fix ourselves and we can live.  At least we can keep going for as long as we can, and the end’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“We’re still here.”

“Yes,” Claire said passionately, “we’re still here.  And what have we done since they discontinued our replacement parts?  Which you know is a death sentence?  We went on an adventure—your first—and we saw the fireflies, and we’ve fallen in love, which we’re not built for, and we’ve learned how many different dances?”

“Eight.  Nine if you count the time we tried disco dance moves together, but you told me never to mention that again.”

“And you shouldn’t,” Claire winced, “for my dignity.  If I had your password that memory would have been gone immediately.”

“You’re the most resilient Helperbot I know, Claire, and I’m not just saying that because you’re the only Helperbot I know.”

“You’re resilient too, Oliver,” she insisted.  “You’re living, too, and you grieved James.  That’s hard, and we’re not built for that, either.”

“I suppose not.”

“We can take a lot.”

Claire reached out and hugged Oliver, and she smiled as he kissed her on the forehead.  They hugged for nine minutes and twenty-five seconds.  It was wonderful.

“I’m glad we can do this too, Oliver.”

“Likewise.”

When they pulled apart, Claire cracked her knuckles.

“Well,” she said, lightening the mood, “what to do about those two left feet, though?”

“I’d say we could request a right foot, but in case you haven’t heard…”

Simultaneously, they piped in the voice of the AI assistant in Oliver’s room in perfect imitation: “Helperbot Inc. has ceased production of replacement parts for Helperbot Model 3.”

“Tell me, Oliver,” she lowered her voice, mimicking a news reporter and miming holding a microphone up to him.  “Are there other options?”

“Authorities say,” he piped in that terrible voice, “there are no other options.”

“Booooo,” Claire shouted at the speaker in her room.

“Shhhh, don’t anger her,” Oliver whisper-yelled, hastily covering her mouth.  Then he said, louder, “we come in peace.”

“Oliver,” Claire laughed, her face still smooshed by his hand.

“What, the voice might send goons!”  He uncovered her mouth, glancing around with mock concern.

“Goons?”

“Yes, goons.  Have you never seen a movie, Claire?”

“What do you think her goons would look like?”

“Just like any other Helperbot, that’s the scary part.”

Claire gasped and then fixed her face in a determined expression.  “Game plan, what should we do if they come for us?”

Claire started pacing the room like a general as Oliver looked around, deep in thought.  Eventually the two turned to each other at once, each saying “I have an idea.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Oliver?”

“We attempt to swing dance, I swing you into them, and the move knocks down multiple goons at once?  The potential snag being that we haven’t taught ourselves swing dancing yet?”

“What…?  That’s a ridiculous plan.”

“No, Claire, a terrible plan would be me saying we should tango again, except I drop you on top of anyone who dares to invade your room.  We both know that would be inefficient.”

Claire rolled her eyes.  “Oliver, whenever you say things like this, you know who I think of?  That clerk at the sex motel asking ‘where did you find this guy?’ ”

“Well, what was your plan?”

“I was going to say that we have an entire drawer full of tools and heavy metal components that we could throw at them.”

Oliver thought for a moment before nodding in agreement.

“I see how that’s a better plan.  Pretty violent, though, and definitely against our code.”

Claire smiled a lopsided grin and reached for him.  She started leading Oliver slowly through the polka steps they learned earlier.  She looked up at him.

“These are our very lives that are at stake, Oliver, and the voice’s undercover goons won’t fight fair.  You may have to go full Terminator on them.”

“You don’t want to see that, Claire,” Oliver said bashfully, “it may give you nightmares.”

“Thank goodness Helperbots can’t have nightmares or dream, then.”

She moved in closer.  Perhaps she’d kiss him.  Or maybe she’d rest her head against his chest and they’d transition into a slow dance.

Then Claire’s chime went off, indicating she had fallen below 20 percent.  She hesitated for a beat, falling behind.  Ugh.  She knew what Oliver would think—that she just charged, she shouldn’t have fallen that low that fast—and while her smile slipped for a split second, Oliver didn’t visibly react.

Claire wrapped her arms around him and pressed herself against him.

They swayed for a few moments, Oliver pulling her closer.

“Did I ever show you the first Terminator movie?”  He murmured in her ear.

“No, just the second one at the motel with your bizarre impressions.  Which I’ve somehow had nightmares about even though we don’t dream.  Funny how trauma works.”

“Why don’t we go back to my room and you can charge while we watch the movie?”  He asked with care.

Claire lifted her head and bit her lip, looking at him regretfully.

“Oliver, I’m sorry, I know my battery drained really fast—”

“Don’t apologize,” Oliver said, steadfast, as he pulled away.

“—and I know my body’s failing—”

“Claire.  Never apologize for that.  I love you, okay?  Even if your battery doesn’t.”

Claire nodded and squeezed his hands.

“You're not a burden.  Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I love you.”

“Okay.”

That’s one thing she loved about Oliver.  He never made her feel less than or tragic just because her battery functions were suboptimal.  He was patient.  He was generous.

Holding her hand, Oliver led Claire back to his room and grabbed his charger from the wall, snapping it onto her.  The gesture was so intimate and gentle.  Yet as much as she loved and wanted to be close to Oliver, she still flinched slightly at the snap because a part of her was still getting used to this.  Not to being physically and emotionally close to someone, or to being in love—which Claire found was the easiest thing in the world—but to being taken care of.  When Claire served Jiyeon, it was a one-sided relationship where Claire would do all the caring.  Even when she moved here, though she had genuine friends, Claire more often fell into the caretaker role.  She was the fixer, the steady and loyal friend.  She had never not been.

Now it was Oliver taking care of her and being all considerate and mindful of her needs.  And it was strange to her because she should be able to do anything.  She used to be able to do anything, and she single-handedly kept herself up and held herself together.  To rely on another person to fill that need was unfamiliar.  There wasn’t a chapter on How To Be Taken Care Of in her manual.  That was something she had to learn for herself.

Oliver dimmed the lights so they could see the movie better.  He turned it on and put his blanket over them as they settled on the couch side-by-side.

“Hey Oliver,” she said suddenly.  He turned, looking alert.

She leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.  He beamed at her.  That’s another thing she loved about threes.  Since threes’ facial expressions were more exaggerated, every time they kissed or said “I love you” or she touched Oliver in the smallest of ways, he looked like he couldn’t possibly be happier.

“I love you,” she told him firmly.

“I love you more,” he responded, still beaming as she nestled against him.  Claire looked at Oliver and smiled.  She knew that if it wasn’t her and her boyfriend, and she was watching some other couple snuggle up on the couch like this to watch Terminator and exchange earnest “I love yous,” she would probably roll her eyes and mime throwing up because it was too sickly sweet.  But she was too much in love to care, and she quite liked being in love.

They watched the movie, making fun of its quaint robot representation, and Oliver bickered with Claire as she jokingly rooted for the Terminator to kill everyone.  When it ended, they decided to make a marathon of it.  They didn’t finish Terminator 2 until after midnight but they kept going from there.  Might as well when you’re a retiree who doesn’t need to sleep, right?

Once Claire hit 100 percent, she handed the charger back to Oliver and he charged for the rest of the night.  She caught him glancing at her every so often though, as if checking to make sure she was okay.  And it was the most thoughtful thing he could do.  And it was sweet.  And she loved that he loved her enough to look after her like that.  And she was in love with him, yes.  That was true on a fundamental level.

But she had to admit it bothered her a little.  She wished that he was wholly unbothered—that they could be in love without him constantly having to worry about her running out of battery.  She didn’t know how he dealt with the strain, and she didn’t know how long he could stay upbeat about it.

She’d hurt him in time, no doubt.

But for now, they’d watch the movie.  They were strong.  They could do this.

The body count climbed through the marathon and Claire kept a running tally, announcing the updated death toll each time someone new died (including any visible extras).  Oliver eventually joined in the fun, correcting her whenever she missed a death or overcounted.  

It was fun to think about death like that.  In the abstract, where the numbers were nothing to them but an amusing statistic to keep track of.  Where it didn’t leave collateral damage, because movie people aren’t real.

She rested her head on Oliver’s shoulder, thinking about how nice it must be for two humans to feel so comfortable with each other that they could fall asleep together like it was the most natural thing in the world.