Electric Constellations and Other Forms of Love

by sharktoothedfawnskinned

Summary:

"Do you think someone who is only software can experience true friendship?" Link asks.

Rhett laughs softly. "I wouldn't say you're only software, Link. You're definitely more than the sum of your parts."

(AU where Link is an android and Rhett runs a repair shop of questionable legality out of his garage.)

 

On the weekends, Rhett goes scavenging.  
 
He's lucky, living in North Carolina, he's insulated from a lot of what goes on in the rest of the world.  With the national parks sold off and the rising oceans eating up the edges of the land, in a lot of places open space is at a premium, and the billionaire class has bought up most of it.  But down here the billionaires are still bidding on the last of what they can get of the shore, they haven't yet turned their eyes to the green swaths of forests and fields that still surround the little towns in Harnett County.  And land where you can raise real cows, real milk and meat, is still considered too precious to waste, too valuable to spoil, just so some rich guy can brag that he owns open acres.  Plus that Southern rebel spirit, for all its faults – and there are many, get a few drinks in Rhett and sometimes he'll still go off about it, even if he mostly tries to stay out of conversations these days – makes it so the old families that own the chunks of woods are too proud to ever sell.  To anyone, much less to some rich Yankee flashing cash.
 
Which means Rhett still has the freedom to drive his little truck into the backwoods on a Saturday after a storm, and park at the edge of the Cape Fear River.  He can still wade down into the water with his metal detector, and see what the rains have uncovered from the sediment, what the floods have washed in from the cities.  Plus where there's open space, these days, there's dumping – since it became illegal to own unregistered electronics, people will drive out to the country to unload their old computers, their busted phones, their smart TVs that are no longer so smart, and game consoles they can no longer connect.
 
These are Rhett's real treasures, the ancient laptops and iPhones, abandoned on the banks and never updated with government software.  The ones fried beyond repair by the river or the rain, he can use for parts back at his shop.  But every so often he happens upon one that still works, and that?  That is precious.  He knows how to jailbreak registered electronics, of course, but there's something different about technology that has never been touched by spy software at all.  Technology from back when "the FBI agent in my webcam" was just a joke.
 
This afternoon, his haul includes three phones and a PS 9 plus controllers.  There's also a Macbook that looks promising – sometimes people tie their tech in garbage bags, a little bubble of air, so they'll float downriver, as far as they can get from their point of origin, making it less likely to be tracked back to its old owner.  The ones that arrive in Lillington still sealed are usually able to be booted and run again.
 
Rhett loads them all carefully into the cab of his truck, kicks his boots against his tires to loosen some of the mud, then climbs into the driver's seat.  It's a beautiful day out – sunny after a week of rain, fresh breeze with no scent of smoke or garbage from the city, the springtime trees just starting to turn green.  It reminds him of what things were like when he was a kid.  When the world was a different place.  He starts the truck and, before he even realizes what he's doing, he's heading down the road toward Buies Creek.  He wants to see the old stomping grounds in this afternoon light, to smell the fresh sweet smell of the creeks where he used to play.
 
There's only a few hours till sunset when he gets there, what photographers call golden hour.  Rhett has some old cameras back at the shop too, film and digital, he used to love taking photos when he was in high school – used to dream of being a filmmaker, of telling stories.  He hasn't touched them in a while, though.  He doesn't see much these days worth taking a picture.
 
For a while, he just walks along the old creek banks, hands in his pockets, enjoying the feeling of the outdoors.  Maybe this is the stuff he should be taking pictures of, he thinks.  The leaves on the trees, the light through their green.  With the right microphones, he could get the sound of the wind rustling the branches, the burble of rusty red creek.  He could make some beautiful videos of what it all was like.  Capture it all before it's gone.
 
But even while he's watching the leaves and the water and the sky, out of habit he's also scanning the banks.  He can't help it, he's always on the lookout for those glints of old metal.
 
When he spots the body facedown in the water, he stumbles back, for a moment, he thinks it's human.  Barefoot, muddy, in a tattered t-shirt and jeans, its gray hair waving in the gentle current of the creek.  But the skin is too pink to be dead, the limbs too loose and relaxed for rigor mortis, and then he spots the faded logo tattooed into the back of the neck.  And that's how he realizes: it's an android.  One of the first models on the mainstream market.  
 
Rhett slips down the muddy bank, turns the android over, and wipes the mud from its face.  Its eyes stay closed.  It's out of battery, which means he won't know anything useful about it until he gets it back to the shop and onto a charger.  Rhett glances around to make sure he's truly all alone, hauls the android out of the creek and over his shoulder, and hustles back to his truck.

***

 
Rhett waits until well after nightfall to bring the robot into his shop, which is just a small carriage house behind his home.  He slides open the double doors and pulls the chain to turn on the overhead light, revealing a ramshackle collection of shelves piled with laptops, video game consoles, DVD players and VCRs, record players, iPods, boxy old televisions, digital cameras, ham radios, broken drones, boom boxes, alarm clocks, and assorted parts: circuit boards, toy train controllers, the ripped-out screens of smart refrigerators, rabbit-ear antennas, USB sticks, thermostat dials, and tangles upon tangles of cables only he can identify.  It's his happy place, as much as he has a happy place.
 
His old girlfriend, Jessie, used to tease him: "You engineer at work, and on the weekends, for fun, you engineer some more.”  They laughed about it, but it was true.  He misses her sometimes, but he couldn't give her what she deserved – he loves sitting down at his workbench more than he thinks he could love any person.  He did the right thing by setting her free.
 
Rhett throws a dusty old blanket over the android, and unloads it from the bed of his truck.  He keeps it covered until he has it in the garage, with the doors closed – his neighbors aren't all that nosy, and his house is set pretty far back from the road, but still, he doesn't really need anyone knowing anything about what he's got in here.
 
He stands the android up against a shelf near the workbench – it feels right for it to be close to him, like he needs to keep an eye on it – and connects it to a charger.  Immediately, the eyes open, and then the lids drop to half-mast, as the blue irises pulse with a subtle light.  So it's in good enough condition that it can take a charge.  That's a good sign.  It'll take at least a few hours for the "brain" to come back online, depending on whether there were any reserves in the battery when it was dumped, and Rhett settles down on the rolling stool at his workbench in the meantime.  
 
He flips open his own laptop, a model he built himself from jailbroken and original parts.  There's a site online that archives information about old models of androids – it's been a longtime dream of Rhett's to tinker with one of these old makes, and he checks the message board regularly for new uploads of found owner's manuals, pictures of restored robots, lists of serial numbers to help with tracking down individuals fallen out of service.
 
Which is how Rhett already knows the android he picked up is one of the first on the mainstream market, a Link model by WonderHome.  There were three iterations of the Link: baby-faced with shaggy black hair, clean-cut with glasses and a touch of five-o'clock shadow, and the one that sits in his garage now, a slightly older face with graying hair pushed back from his forehead.  This one was mainly marketed as a household helper, a butler of sorts, for cleaning and maintenance and light elder and child care.  Rhett clicks into the Link section of the message board and scrolls through threads and threads of Links, cleaned and polished and brought back to something resembling life.  Videos of them successfully completing the chores they were programmed to do, interacting with pets, doing novelty dances downloaded from the Internet.  He keeps looking for versions of his own, for the next few hours, the high cheekbones and the distinguished gray hair – but the model seems to be relatively rare.  
 
The android is letting off a faint electronic hum beside him, as the charging light glows and fades from its eyes in an even rhythm.  Rhett realizes he's being lulled to sleep by the sound.  He should go to bed.  Not that he's never fallen asleep on his keyboard before, but his back always punishes him for it in the morning.  Rhett closes the computer, stands and stretches, and makes his way to the exit.  He glances back over his shoulder at the android one last time, then clicks off the overhead light, slides the door closed, and heads up to the house.

***

 
The next morning, Rhett rolls out of bed, ties his hair back in a bun, and barely takes the time to brew a pot of coffee and gulp down a protein smoothie before he heads back out to the garage, still in his pajamas, steaming mug in his hand.  When he slides open one of the doors, he sees the Link still in charging mode in the back of the cluttered space.
 
Rhett sets his coffee down on the workbench, and spends some time poring over the owners' manual he printed out last night.  Then he rolls his stool closer to the robot, and for the first time, he inspects it up close.  The designers of this thing really did the work to make it look like a person – soft skin, salt-and-pepper stubble, slight bags under the long-lashed eyes, hair silky to the touch, even with some mud still caked in it.  
 
That is, in fact, one of the telltale signs that this is an ancient model.  People nowadays don’t like their androids to look so human.  A robot that looks like a robot is a status symbol, a bit like obvious plastic surgery or those big gaudy designer bags – it screams from a mile away that you spent a lot of money.  And the kids today all want an “aesthetic” android.  They pay top dollar for designs imported from Korea and Japan – robots with chibi faces, cat ears that swivel and perk, or glossy fur fox tails, fully articulated for maximum expression.  Meanwhile, the American companies can make a killing on steampunk designs, with visible gears and musicbox keys – and every model, no matter where it’s from, has an associated line of swappable accessories, new arms and hands and eyes and teeth, to let you customize your droid to your liking, over and over again.  That’s the secret to making money.  Keep people chasing the next, new thing.  Make them feel like they have to show off.  The latest trend is pint-sized robots that the teens and twentysomethings lead around on leashes, asking them the most basic questions, like the time or the temperature outside, just so people notice they’re there.
 
Not that Rhett really minds.  He does a healthy side business with people who want him to hack their robots so they can download new facial features for free, or tinker with their connectors so they can accept parts from another manufacturer.  But there's something comforting about these older models, from a simpler time, when people were optimistic that androids could solve the problems of society – watch over the elderly, protect the children, care for the sick and clean up the most toxic messes.  Make everyone's lives easier by doing the work no human wanted to do, leave more time for leisure and togetherness.
 
Now, with all that android-given free time, most humans work more than ever.  And the robots they have at home, or lead around on their leashes?  As far as Rhett's concerned, they're nothing but big toys.  Big toys with friendly faces, so you never suspect when they start spying on you.
 
That's another advantage to androids like the Link model.  They're grandfathered in under the electronics laws – they don't even have the bandwidth to run the network surveillance software, so they're of no use to the government at all.  Of course, that also makes it harder to trace their history.  Rhett has no idea what to expect when this thing wakes up – if it's received any maintenance, if it's been reset in its lifetime, if it will even work at all.
 
While it charges, he sets about cleaning it up.  He detaches the hair and gives it a wash with dish soap and conditioner in the sink, then sets it back into place so the seams don't show.  He removes the tattered t-shirt and the muddy jeans and tosses them into the washing machine in the house.  Then he looks over the android's body for obvious damage – scrapes, dings, damage to the skeleton.  It has broad shoulders and a narrow waist, with long legs, according to the manual it stands exactly six feet tall.  A funny quirk of the design is it has a crotch like a Ken doll – the manufacturer, WonderHome, was started by some Christian weirdo determined to decrease the temptation owners might feel to do anything "untoward" with their androids.  Before they became a subsidiary of some bigger company, every robot they released also came pre-loaded with the ability to quote the Bible in six different languages, like maybe the guy thought he could send an android army out on mission trips.  Rhett pulls a pair of black boxer-briefs onto the robot while its clothes are in the wash, and laughs – at least some designer took pity on the poor thing, and gave it a big enough bulge that, when dressed, it doesn't look like it's missing anything at all. 
 
He wipes it down with a damp cloth, removing all the river muck, and conditions the skin, then opens up and oils the joints.  There's always something peaceful about repairing any gadget, for Rhett, but for some reason, tending to this technology that looks like a man, he finds himself even more at ease than usual.  The glow and fade of the light in its eyes is hypnotic, the faint electric hum like a meditation.  Rhett notices there is a slight rise and fall to its chest  – it is built to mimic breathing.
 
Suddenly, the electric hum stops, and the light in its eyes shuts off.  The android blinks, and then its eyes open wide.  "Hey," it says, right into Rhett's face.
 
Rhett sits and rolls backward on his little stool, startled.  "Whoa!  Jesus Christ."
 
"No, that's somebody else," the android says.
 
Rhett leans forward with his hands on his knees, catching his breath.  "Okay.  It's got a sense of humor."
 
"It's got a name, too," the android says.  "And it's Link."
 
Rhett cocks his head to one side, and smiles.  He's heard the older models were able to develop a bit of a personality, back before manufacturers learned to lock things down, to make all the interesting features pay-to-play.  The programming on this one should be fun.
 
Looking around, Link asks, "Where am I?" 
 
"In my garage," Rhett says.
 
"Why?" 
 
Rhett stands, and the android tilts its head to look up at him.  "I found you down at the bottom of a creek.  Do you remember where you came from?"
 
Link shakes his head.  "I don't remember anything."
 
"Do you know if you belong to anyone?" Rhett asks.
 
"I don't remember anything," Link says again.
 
His eyes, now that they're not glowing, are clear and blue and have an openness about them – he looks trusting, and vulnerable.  His face is built with a high, wide forehead; round eyes with long lashes; soft full cheeks; a plump bottom lip; and a slight narrowing at the chin – intentional neoteny, juvenile features meant to manipulate the human mind into thinking it needs to take care of this creature.  Rhett knows it's just a trick of the design that makes him feel sympathy, but when he notices the android fidgeting with its hands, twisting its fingers together, he can't stop himself from saying, "You're okay."
 
"What are you going to do with me?" it asks.
 
"Well, the goal was to get you awake and running," Rhett says.  "So that's one thing ticked off the to-do list."
 
"What else is on the list?" Link asks.
 
Rhett turns back to the workbench.  "According to your manual, there's some diagnostics I should probably run, before I really start tinkering with you."
 
"Tinkering?"  Link's voice is sharp, his eyes darting to the side.
 
Rhett looks around at his shop, the shelves piled high with circuit boards and wiring.  To an android with no idea why it's here, this must look like a butcher shop, a graveyard of its brethren.  "Nothing bad," Rhett says quickly.  "I do repairs.  You might need some upgrades to your software.  There might be some water damage to your wiring.  And then I'd like to look at your programming."
 
Link eyes him suspiciously.  "And do what with it?"
 
"Just look, for now.  There aren't a lot of your type of android around anymore.  I haven't had a chance to see how you're built."
 
Link nods.  "Okay.  That sounds okay."
 
Rhett nods too, satisfied with their détente, and sits back down at the workbench.  There's silence for a little while, as Rhett flips again through the pages of the owner's manual, and opens his own computer, getting ready to run the diagnostics.  He's in his own world until he hears a rustling behind him, and looks up to see Link has disconnected himself from the charger and wandered away.  He's walking back toward Rhett through the rows of shelves now, wrapped in the same dusty blanket Rhett used to cover him up when he first brought him into the shop.
 
"I'm sorry," Rhett says.  "I put your clothes in the wash.  I can get you something to wear."
 
Emerging from the shelves, Link looks up at him again.  "Can you help me remember where I came from?"
 
Rhett doesn't know what comes over him then, but despite himself, he reaches a hand out to touch Link's shoulder.  "Yeah," he says.  "I think I can."
 

***

 
He leaves Link to let the diagnostics run through the night, brings him at least a new, clean blanket and sits him on the stool to wait, then shuts off the lights and heads into the house to sleep.  Monday morning, he gets up earlier than he usually would for work, unlocks the garage and tells Link to follow him into the house.  Link seems like he's on slightly shaky terrain as they go up the three steps to the side door, and stop at the little laundry room just off the kitchen.  He has his quilt pulled tight around his shoulders.
 
"So, this is what you were wearing," Rhett says, picking up the pair of old jeans and the tattered Charlotte Hornets t-shirt.  
 
Link wrinkles his nose.
 
"Do you...want something else?" Rhett asks.
 
Link looks around at the rest of the laundry room, the piles of clean clothes that, if Rhett is being honest, he has no intention of ever hauling upstairs to his closet.  Most mornings, he just grabs a shirt and a pair of pants out of the pile, shakes out the wrinkles, and throws them on moments before he steps out the door.
 
"You can wear whatever you want," Rhett says.  "I'm a bit bigger than you, but I think it'll basically all fit."
 
"Thanks," Link says, finally.  Then they stand there, neither of them moving.  Link clears his throat and shrugs the quilt higher up on his shoulders.  
 
"You...want some privacy?" Rhett asks, which seems like a weird request from an android he's seen naked and junkless, and who's spent the past two days sitting in underwear and a blanket in his garage.
 
Link nods.  "That'd be nice."
 
Rhett resists the urge to roll his eyes, and steps out of the room, closing the door behind him.  He busies himself brewing a pot of coffee, making his morning smoothie, pulling out last night's leftovers to pack for lunch.  
 
After a few minutes, Link emerges from the laundry room, wearing a baggy pair of camo pants cuffed at the ankles, a Dolly Parton t-shirt, and a fuzzy bright blue cardigan that Rhett doesn't even remember owning. 
 
"Where did you even get that?" Rhett asks.
 
"Looks good on me, right?" Link replies.  He's barefoot in a pair of white athletic socks with stripes around the ankles, wiggling his toes.  
 
"It's...a look," Rhett says.  "We need to get you some shoes.  Come on."
 
"I need glasses, too," Link says, following Rhett through the house to the coat closet, where he keeps his shoes.  "I remember that.  I'm supposed to have glasses."
 
Rhett pulls open a drawer in the little table by the front door, where he's got a few pairs of sunglasses and reading glasses all jumbled in a haphazard pile.  "Have at it," he says.  Link is correct, after all – the owner's manual shows him in a default outfit of tailored gray pants, and a gray vest over a button-down shirt, glasses perched neatly on his nose. While the android sorts through the glasses, Rhett opens the closet door, and begins digging through the bottom for an old pair of boots.
 
"These are good," Link says.  Rhett looks up to see him wearing a pair of orange aviator frames, originally sunglasses, that he's popped the tinted lenses out of.
 
"We gotta find out who taught you to get dressed," Rhett says, handing over a pair of brown leather boots.  "Try these."
 
Link sits on the floor and slips them on, then ties the laces.  He sits back, leaning on his hands, and waggles his feet so the toes of the boots tap together.  "A little big, but it works," he says.
 
"That's what she said," Rhett replies, almost automatically, and Link laughs.  He hates to admit it, after all the shit he's talked about android owners in the past, but he's kind of having fun with this robot.  Yesterday, while they sat in the workshop waiting for the diagnostics software to download, it became clear that Link could not stand silence, would break it with an observation or question every time Rhett went more than five minutes without talking.  At first Rhett thought it would drive him crazy, the constant chatter in the background while he tried to work – but he found himself engaging with every attempt Link made at conversation, enjoying just shooting the shit while he repaired a CRT television for a client who's into vintage video games, re-soldered a few wires across a CD player circuit board, tested out new coaxial cables for his oldest oscilloscope.  They wrote ten-word stories together, made up business ventures then immediately described them failing in spectacular ways, and competed to see who could figure out the definitions of obscure words faster.  (Link, technically, but he was too easily distracted to win.)
 
Still sitting on the floor, Link looks up at Rhett.  "What now?" he asks. 
 
"I have to go to work," Rhett says.  "Do you remember what you do when your people go to work?"
 

***

 
You cleaned.  You wiped down the counters, swept the floors and soaked the dishes, the daily messes they left behind.  You scrubbed the baseboards and vacuumed the dust bunnies out from under the beds, the details the humans were too impatient to take care of.  There were toys in the house, and you picked them up, brought them back to the playroom.  There was satisfaction in the straightness of the objects on the shelves, the sparkle of a faucet polished free from toothpaste splatters, the neat lines of the vacuum across a freshly cleaned rug.
 
You remembered where they left their keys.  You kept a list of the groceries in the fridge.  When the milk or the eggs or the broccoli were almost all gone, something in you sent a message to the store.  You never knew exactly what it was, just that this was your function.
 
When there was nothing left to do, you waited.  You stood in your spot by the stairs in the foyer, and waited for them to come home.  Then there would be more things for you to do.
 

***

 
All day at work, Rhett thinks about Link.  When he asked the android if it knew what it was supposed to do, it said "Clean," and when he asked if it wanted to clean while Rhett was away, it shrugged.  "Okay," Rhett had said, shouldering his work bag, holding his travel mug, and then just standing there.  "Well, you can put away the laundry if you want," he said.  Link was still sitting on the floor when Rhett left, still tapping his feet together in his too-big boots.
 
Now, driving home, he wonders if he'll find some sort of disaster as he arrives at the house.  What was he thinking, letting a strange aftermarket android with a malfunctioning memory loose in his home?  The building is still standing as he pulls into the driveway, which is a good sign, and he hurries in the side door, dropping his bag and his mug on the kitchen table as he kicks off his shoes.
 
Wait.  He literally backtracks, stepping three paces backward to look into the laundry room.   The laundry piles are gone.  Then he continues forward through the house, into the living room.  Link is standing by the stairs, back against the banister, appearing to be asleep.  Without waking him, Rhett heads up the stairs to the bedroom, and pulls open his closet and his dresser.  The android hasn't just put everything away – it's put everything away in the right places, it's figured out where Rhett likes to keep his things, and tidied accordingly.  In the bathroom, the towels Rhett left on the floor after his shower are neatly folded, and hung over the towel rack.  The end of the toilet paper is folded into a little rosette.  Downstairs, in the kitchen, Link has wiped the coffee stains off the counter, and folded the takeout napkins in the napkin holder.  He's even re-arranged the dishes in the dishwasher.
 
Rhett returns to where Link is standing by the stairs, and taps him on the shoulder.  "Thank you," he says, when the robot's eyes open.
 
"For what?" Link asks, still standing formally, with his hands behind his back.
 
"For cleaning everything," Rhett says.  "My house hasn't looked this good in years."
 
"You do seem like a disaster," Link says.  He relaxes his posture.  "Your baseboards are decrepit."

"I don't know what that means, but okay," Rhett says.
 
Link looks into middle distance, and says as if reciting: "Decrepit is an adjective meaning–"
 
"I fucking know what decrepit means," Rhett says, lightly punching him in the shoulder.  "I've just never heard it used in the context of my baseboards before."
 
"I'm sorry," Link says with a smirk.  "It is unbecoming of an android to point out a human's inferior intelligence."
 
"Keep this up," Rhett says, turning away and heading back toward the kitchen, "and I'll dismantle your memory altogether.  Don't make me factory reset you."
 
When he glances back, Link is giving him a hurt look.  He's designed with eyebrows perpetually sloped in a worried expression, even when he smiles, but this is something different.
 
"I'm sorry?" Rhett tries.  "I didn't mean it."
 
Link nods, seeming satisfied with that, and gets back into formal position, hands behind him.  
 
"You don't have to...butler or whatever," Rhett says.  "You can relax."
 
Link looks sideways at him.  "And do what?"
 
"Whatever it is androids do for fun," Rhett says.
 
"I want you to find out why my memory doesn't work," Link says.
 
Rhett leans in the kitchen doorway, and looks Link over – this weird little machine in his haphazard outfit, constantly fluffing his hair in a software facsimile of a nervous habit.  It does have a personality, like people have said about early androids.  But Rhett doesn't remember reading anything about them having wants.  "That's going to take some research," Rhett says.  The diagnostics came back mostly clean.  "You probably were reset, probably a few times."  But if he were wiped completely clean by a reset, he wouldn't have a personality.  He would be a blank slate.  "I need to try and find out where you were before this.  I need to take a look at your programming, too."  Of course, he has to learn what language it’s even programmed in, first.
 
"Okay," Link says, turning around.
 
It takes Rhett a moment to realize what he's doing.  On the android's back, where a human spine would be, there is central circuitry and a maintenance panel, a place where it can be opened to expose its inner workings.  "Not right now," Rhett says, stopping him.  
 
Link looks back over his shoulder, that sad expression again.
 
"One thing at a time," Rhett says.  "Let me see if I can find anything about how you’re built.  I can’t just go poking around in you blind."
 
"Okay," Link says again.  He turns to face Rhett, and adjusts his glasses.  When they fall down his face, he pushes them up with a little scrunch of his nose.  "So what do humans do for fun?"
 
"Eat dinner and watch basketball," Rhett says.  "And then I'll get online and do a little research."
 
Link nods.  "I don't eat dinner, but I can watch basketball."
 
"Sounds like a plan," Rhett says.
 
Link stays close to him while he cooks, and while he eats, and while he sits on the couch to watch the game.  When he goes out to the garage to get his computer, Link follows behind him.  They settle into their usual spots, Rhett at the workbench, and Link leaning against the shelves, trying his best to be quiet so Rhett can concentrate.  But it's been a long day, between waking up early, and work, and worrying that Link would have gone rogue while he was home alone.  It only takes an hour of staring at the glowing screen before Rhett's eyes begin to burn, and he yawns.
 
"I gotta turn in, buddy," Rhett says to Link.
 
"No more research?" Link asks.
 
"Not tonight," Rhett says.  "I have to be honest, I probably won't be able to do much till the weekend.  I have work all week."
 
"Okay," Link says.  "The weekend."
 
"Do you want to stay in the garage for the night, or in the house?" Rhett asks.
 
"In the house," Link answers.
 
They turn off the lights, lock up, and trudge back through the darkness to the warm lamplight glow of the house, up the three creaking steps and in through the side door.  Link sits down on the couch while Rhett climbs the stairs to the bedroom.  Later that night, when Rhett wakes thirsty and eases down the steps to get a glass of water from the kitchen, in the darkness he sees Link in the same spot on the couch, his body sitting straight up while his face looks like he's asleep. He's still in his clothes, but he has the quilt Rhett gave him wrapped around his shoulders.
 

***

 
To make up for not having time to do much research during the week, Rhett makes a quick stop at the church thrift shop on the way home from work one night, to pick up a pair of boots in Link’s size, and button-down shirts that look more like what he’s wearing on the front cover of the owner’s manual, practical fabrics in staid blues and grays.  Link says “Thank you” when Rhett hands him the shopping bag, but over the next few days, Rhett notices, he never wears any of it.  
 
So on Saturday morning, Rhett leans in the kitchen doorway drinking the last of his cup of coffee, and looks at Link, sitting with his eyes closed in what has become his spot on the couch.  “Wake up,” Rhett says.  “We’re going on a field trip.”
 
“What about research?” Link asks, and Rhett says, “Just trust me.”
 
They drive out to the Goodwill in Holly Springs, where it’s less likely Rhett will run into anyone he knows, and as the automatic doors slide open in front of them, Rhett hands Link a wad of cash.  “Go crazy,” he says.
 
Which is why, when they finally sit down at the kitchen table to do some research, Link is wearing a pair of white overalls over a black t-shirt emblazoned with a map of the Milky Way, a green buffalo-check flannel tied around his waist, and there are two stuffed tote bags full of God-knows-what clothing sitting and spilling over in the laundry room.  The washing machine hums with the first load of Link’s haul.  While they wait for the machine to play the little song that will indicate the washing is done, Rhett scrolls through a website cataloging the history of all the available apps and upgrades for the Link models.  As far as he can tell, the architecture of the Link software is different depending on when the model was manufactured – before WonderHome sold off to a secular company, or after.  He glances up from his screen at Link, who is quiet for the moment, noodling around with an old trumpet he found at the Goodwill, cleaning the parts and fitting them back together.
 
He’s gotten used to this, Link by his side while he works, alternating between quiet and chatter, mulling over whether you can make pants out of pickles or a soccer ball out of Christmas ornaments, singing songs with familiar tunes but made-up lyrics, wondering aloud what it would feel like to be a pizza or a pot of flowers or a piece of sushi.  Even this morning, just riding in the truck with Link by his side, windows rolled down to let in the warm spring air, Link leaning his face toward the breeze so his hair blew back, there was a sense of comfort that Rhett couldn’t explain.  He kept looking over at Link, at his wide smile, at the little details that should have felt uncanny valley but didn’t – the eyes that didn’t squint when he looked directly into the sun, that blinked in an even rhythm but didn’t have to.
 
Rhett focuses again on his computer screen.  The website leads to a search of Link’s serial number, to determine exactly when he was shipped, and it turns out he could go either way – he came off the production line about thirty-five years ago, right in the middle of the buyout.  “Well, shit,” Rhett says.
 
Link looks up.  “What’s wrong?” he asks.
 
“You’re even more of a mystery than I thought,” Rhett says.  He rubs his eyes.  “I need to take a break.”
 
Link tucks the trumpet back into its velvet-lined case and watches Rhett stand up from the table, a look of alarm that Rhett didn’t know androids could express in his eyes.  “But what about where I come from?” he asks.
 
Rhett sighs, picking up his coffee mug and walking away to deposit it in the sink.  “Look, bud, this is something I do as a hobby.  I thought working on an android would be a nice little thing I could do on the weekends, when I have a little time to kill.  I didn’t even know if you were going to wake up when I found you, I thought I would just be working on the electronics most of the time. I can’t spend all day every day on this.”
 
“But I can,” Link says.
 
Rhett cocks his head.
 
Link stands, adjusting the strap of his overall as it falls down his shoulder.  “The human brain needs a break, but androids don’t,” he says.  “What if you show me how to do the research?”
 
“And then what?” Rhett asks.  “You debug yourself?  There are certain parts of your code I’m probably going to have to shut you down to access.”
 
“I can do the initial research,” Link says.  “I can compile the information, and provide you with what you need to know.”
 
Rhett considers it, imagines handing his computer over to Link during work days to comb through the thousands of message board postings and wiki articles on exotic android repair.  For a moment, it seems like it would work.  But as he thinks his way through a plan, runs it forward in his head to figure out the outcome, he hits on something.
 
“Link, the way people on these pages talk about androids,” he says, “it’s not always respectful.”
 
Link’s eyes widen, a signal of surprise.  “You want to protect me,” he says.
 
“I guess I do,” Rhett says.
 
“Well, you don’t have to,” Link answers.  "I will simply gather the necessary information and ignore the rest."
 
“Link.  Stop.  I don’t want to pull rank on you because I’m a human and you’re an android, but–”
 
“But you will,” Link finishes.
 
Rhett nods.  “For this, yes.”
 
Link’s shoulders sag.
 
“I’m sorry,” Rhett says.  “I just can’t work all the time the way you can.”
 
Link steps forward, twisting his hands.  “What if I help you with other things, so you have more time to research?  I can fix leaks in plumbing.  I can unclog drains.  I can hang picture frames.  I can patch walls.”
 
“Fortunately, all my pipes and drywall are in working order,” Rhett says.  “It’s more that I have to go to work every day.  I have clients who are waiting on me to make repairs on the stuff in the shop.  I have people who want me to ship them parts.”
 
“I can address envelopes,” Link offers.  His look is hopeful, pleading.  He bites his bottom lip.
 
“Okay, okay,” Rhett says.  “You’re hired.”
 
Link smiles, adjusting his overall strap again, and busies himself around the kitchen, brushing by Rhett to rinse the mug and place it in the dishwasher.  And then he’s on the move again, hands fluttering gracefully over the coffee can of pens and pencils on one of the countertops till he finds a Sharpie, opening the junk drawer for a notepad and some stamps.
 

***

 
You wrote addresses on small envelopes, tucked the colorful cards inside.  Birthday party invitations.  Yellow daisies dancing along the front.
 
Little hands helped you.  She clumsily stuffed a card inside an envelope, upside down, and another, sideways so it didn’t fit.  You were at a dining room table in the late afternoon light.  She placed glitter kittycat stickers on the envelopes as you placed the stamps.  She stuck them to your wrists, your knuckles, too.  She laughed and squealed as you patted her hands away, gentle, smiling, it was a game.
 
“Come here, little fish,” you said, as you tried to catch her wiggling hand between yours.  You moved fast but you touched softly.  “I’m gonna catch you.”  You thought sometimes you were her favorite toy.
 
She was still laughing.  You practically can hear it.  Feet kicking, little red Mary Janes with bows on the straps, from her chair.  You caught her hand between yours, then let it go.  
 

***

 
Over the next few weeks, in the quiet evening hours between work and bedtime, or the lazy long sunbeams of weekend afternoons, Rhett and Link work together in the garage – Rhett working more than Link, ticking his way down the list of items he’s promised other people he’ll fix, then picking up his laptop to do more research.  They drive in the darkness to make deliveries, the truck bumping down neglected back roads, the yellow lines and stands of pine trees surfacing and disappearing as the headlights sweep by.  For the parts that Rhett’s promised he’ll ship, he pulls them from their shelves and attaches post-it notes with the shipping information, so Link can pack them and address the boxes.  Link lays the custom-soldered circuit boards and ancient chargers and fiber-optic cables delicately in their boxes, padded by layers of old newspapers – another obsolete technology – and bubble wrap, tapes them shut, and writes the addresses in Sharpie in his square-ish handwriting, all capital letters.
 
When he runs out of things to do, Link goes wandering through the shelves.  One day, when Rhett turns around, he sees Link has discovered the piled up record players.  He plugs a pair of headphones into each, one by one, until he finds one that works, then sets it on the floor and sits intently in front of it, crisscross legs, elbows on knees, winding the curly cord of the headphones around his fingers.  That afternoon, he plays the single Merle Haggard record in the garage over and over again.
 
On the way home from work, the next day, Rhett stops at the thrift shop again, and brings home a pile of records – more country music, classic rock, nineties hip-hop, a few decades’ worth of R&B compilations, anything he can grab.  Link accepts the armful of records, speechless, and Rhett has noticed that when Link smiles it takes over his whole face, the wide grin that shows all his teeth, makes the round cheeks even rounder, with soft crinkles around his eyes – it’s the most smiley smile Rhett has ever seen smiled. 
 
So while Rhett digs deep into Google results and sifts through the code underlying Link's apps, Link works his way through the pile of records.  Merle and Johnny and Dolly, Steely Dan, Lionel Richie, Waylon Jennings, Sade.  He likes the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sturgill Simpson, John Mayer, and A Tribe Called Quest.  Rhett looks at Link now, through the dust motes that sparkle golden in the slanted shafts of sun.  He's wearing an old red windbreaker, studded with ski patches, on top of engineer-stripe pants, and green Crocs.  He holds the headphones tighter to his ears with both hands, his eyes closed, his body swaying to music only he can hear.
 
It also turns out Link can play the trumpet he got at the Goodwill, a recorder Rhett picked up for one of his nephews at a garage sale, a harmonica that Rhett has stashed in the corner of the living room, on a shelf near the guitar case that hasn't been opened in months.  He can pick out a melody with a little midi app on a tablet Rhett fixes for him in the garage, beatbox so it sounds like a real song, keep a rhythm with a tambourine or a bead shaker or just his hands on the wooden kitchen table.
 
When Rhett checks the manual, musical aptitude is not listed as a feature the Link comes pre-programmed with.
 

***

 
It's a weeknight, sky still light at 6 PM, and Rhett can't bear to shut himself in the garage while there's still daylight to soak up.  Ever since he started this project with Link, he's been less and less inclined to bury himself in his workshop, more and more he finds himself staying settled in the house.  Lately, he's been eating dinner at the kitchen table instead of at the workbench, sitting on the couch to read or watch basketball, bringing gadgets in from the garage to tinker at the coffee table while they talk.  Link is always around, on the couch next to him, or lying back on the living room rug lost in his headphones, or in the laundry room humming softly, tapping a rhythm on the top of the washing machine while he gazes at his prized possessions, his ever-growing collection of slogan t-shirts and old jackets and enormous pants.
 
Tonight, when Rhett isn't gazing out the window at the budding tree branches and the glowing orange that gilds the edges of the sky, listening to Link play the harmonica out in the living room, he's remembering to concentrate and hunched over his laptop, having finally found Link's serial number in a collection of re-sale records.  The information is spotty, but it's something.  He was involved in a number of sales, some bulk and some individual, from a handful of different dealers registered mostly in Raleigh and Chapel Hill, before stalling at a single shop in Fuquay-Varina.  The last record is dated about a year ago.  And then nothing.
 
Link appears at the kitchen doorway, in blue pants cut off at the ankles, and what Rhett is pretty sure is a ladies' floral brocade coat, left open to reveal a t-shirt that reads "BE ROOTIN' - BE TOOTIN' - BE KIND."  Lionel Richie is playing quietly from the living room behind him.  It turns out even robots have a limit to their patience – he gives Rhett's laptop a pleading look and asks, "Any news?"
 
Rhett sits up straight, stretching his back.  "Well, once you hit the secondhand market, you were...returned a lot."
 
"Why?" Link asks.
 
"I don't know, that information doesn't go into the database," Rhett says.  "You've got no obvious flaws that I can see."
 
Link raises his eyebrows.
 
"I mean mechanically, dipshit," Rhett says.
 
Link nods, pretending solemnity.  "Sure, sure."
 
Rhett looks him up and down.  "Your ability to dress yourself leaves a lot to be desired."
 
"You're just jealous that I look so good," Link says, lifting his chin imperiously.  His face is so expressive, he is capable of simulating so many moods.  Or maybe he's actually having those moods, Rhett has no idea.  Either way, Rhett smiles at him – he does look good, in his oddball outfits, as unlikely as it seems.  
 
"What about my memory?" Link asks, sitting down at the table across from Rhett.
 
"What about it?"
 
"There's clearly something wrong with that."
 
"I mostly do mechanics," Rhett says.  "Getting into your programming is going to take a lot more work."
 
"So what now?" Link asks.  "Can you call them and ask why I was returned?  Or where I came from?"
 
Rhett sighs.  Electronics dealers tend to be cagey, and Rhett isn't sure if he'll be able to get any information out of them.  "Maybe," he says.  "I don't know if they'll tell me, but I can try."
 
Link nods.  He reaches across the table to pick up Rhett's dirty dinner plate.
 
"Leave it," Rhett says.  "I can do it."
 
Link looks at the plate, then at the kitchen sink, then at Rhett.  "Are you going to return me?"
 
"No," Rhett says.  "Of course not.  Why?"

"You don’t want me to do work," Link says.
 
"I don't care," Rhett says, the first response that comes to his mind.  "I didn't bring you here to work."  He stands, picking up his own plate and his empty Diet Dr. Pepper can, and bringing them to the sink to rinse.
 
"Then what did you bring me here for?" Link asks, looking up at him. 
 
Rhett thinks back to before that day in the creek, tries to remember what he thought he'd do if he ever had the chance to tinker with an original android.  The peaceful afternoons he imagined perched on his stool in his shop, working on wiring, repairing the joints, taking a look at the central circuitry.  The golden sunlight, the bare wood walls.  The quiet.  Maybe he could learn a little coding, peek at the engine of the software.  The thrill of making something work again, of bringing an old machine back to life.  Of knowing something he didn't know before.  "Just for fun," Rhett says.  
 
"Are you having fun?" Link asks.
 
"Yeah," Rhett says, honestly.  The long lazy evenings watching television on the couch.  The stupid silly word games they still play.  The sound of Link singing softly when he thinks he's alone.  The quilt he still wraps himself in at night.  "Are you?" Rhett asks.
 
"I think so," Link says.  "I like it here."
 
"All right," Rhett says, leaning on the counter and looking at Link.  "Then that's really all we need."
 

***

 
Rhett starts with the shop in Fuquay, a sign in the window advertising PRE-REGISTRATION ANTIQUE ELECTRONIC GOODS!!! And in smaller letters below it: *for sale or for rent.  The manager checks the serial number Rhett hands him against their sales records.  "I actually remember this one," he says, eyes fixed to the screen.  "You're right, it got returned a few times.  I had to put it into rental inventory.  I think we eventually got rid of it at auction."
 
"Do you remember who had him?" Rhett asks.
 
"Just the usuals," the manager says.  "A family looking for a little extra help around the house.  A couple of collectors, the ones that like the vintage goods.  There was a guy that ran a tobacco farm, a guy that painted houses. I don't keep records, though.  No names, no addresses."  At that, he looks up at Rhett.
 
"Understood," Rhett says.  "Do you remember why he was returned?"
 
The manager looks back to his screen.  "Just didn't function the way it was supposed to," he says.  "The dealer who sold it to me said it was reset, completely refurbished, but it was just glitchy.  Just weird."
 
Rhett drives home that night in the silent truck, no radio playing.  He doesn't tell Link yet what he's learned.
 

***

 
"Do you have friends?" Link asks.
 
He sits on the edge of the kitchen counter, waiting to steal away the dishes while Rhett makes dinner.  He looks extremely cozy in a black teddybear fleece and the largest pair of khakis Rhett has ever seen, a red bandana hanging out of his pocket and a neon orange trucker hat perched on his head.  He's still wearing Rhett's too-big boots.  
 
"I have people I'm friendly with," Rhett says.  "I get drinks sometimes with some of the guys from work."
 
"Do you have a best friend?" Link asks.  He's swinging his legs, tilting his head back and forth, he never can keep still.
 
"I did," Rhett says, matter-of-factly. "He passed away when we were young."
 
"And then?" Link asks.  "Nobody?"
 
Rhett looks up from the pot of chili he's stirring on the stove.  "There are other people that I'm close with.  I have a brother.  I've had some girlfriends.  But I don't really like to spend that much time around people anymore."
 
Link fiddles with the patches on the knees of his pants.  "Why not?"
 
"I don't know.  I don't like talking to strangers.  I don't like small talk.  I don't like telling people my feelings, actually."
 
"Why not?" Link asks again.
 
"What are you, my therapist?" Rhett asks.  He notices Link reaching for the wooden spoon on the counter, and says, "Leave it."  Link pulls his hand back obediently, and Rhett goes on: "It makes me feel vulnerable, I guess.  To tell someone how I feel."
 
Link reaches for the cutting board instead, but Rhett grabs it out from under his hand, then grabs the knife, and the bowl he used to mix up his spices, and the pan he used to brown the chili meat, too, and takes them all to the sink to start washing.  Link gives him a look.  
 
"I want to do it," Rhett says.
 
"Okay, fine," Link says.  "What does it feel like to be vulnerable?"
 
Rhett thinks for a moment, hands plunged deep in the warm soapy water.  "Like someone can hurt you.  Like maybe you might die.  But not literally."
 
Link nods, then looks up at the ceiling.
 
"Why do you want to know?" Rhett asks.
 
"I don't know," Link says.  He jumps off the counter.  "At least can I set the table?"
 
"Sure," Rhett says, and then Link is buzzing around the cabinets, pulling out a bowl and a plate, a whole place setting of silverware, setting them on the table with a coaster and a glass for Rhett's Dr. Pepper, and a paper napkin folded neatly into a triangle.  Rhett watches him work, then says, "You know, just a bowl and a spoon would have been fine."
 
Link looks at the table.  "You have cornbread, you need a plate."
 
"Gonna crumble it on top, my friend," says Rhett.  
 
"Like an animal," Link retorts.
 
"Have you ever had friends?" Rhett asks him, after a minute, when they're spooning the chili into the bowl and placing a square of cornbread onto the little plate.
 
"You just called me your friend," Link says, carrying the food to the table.  "Before."
 
Rhett stops still.  "I guess I did."
 
Link flops down into his usual chair, where he always sits to watch Rhett eat.  "So the only friend I know for a fact that you have is a robot," he says, with a smirk.
 
"Not for long, if you keep it up," Rhett says.
 
They fall into an easy quiet, Rhett eating and Link watching, the ever-present sound of one of Link's records playing soft in the background, the clink of the silverware scraping the bowl, the new spring leaves rustling outside the window in the twilight.  
 
“You seem lonely,” Link says suddenly.  “Stephanie was lonely.”
 
“Who’s Stephanie?” Rhett asks.
 

***

 
She was an only child
 
It’s easy when they’re babies.  You play peek-a-boo, rock their cradles while their parents sleep through the long dark night, read the same storybook seven times in a row, or beam the same movie from your storage to the television screen, as often as they request. Keep them entertained, and keep them safe.  Catch them before they tumble down the steps, or open the medicine cabinet, or reach up to touch the hot stove. 
 
You never got bored and you never got tired.  
 
You were with them for a few months before they brought Stephanie home.  You hung the shelves in the nursery, and you assembled the crib.  You painted the room a sweet sunshine yellow.  You folded the tiny socks together, tucked the soft swaddling blankets into their drawers.  You remember the day they arrived with her, tiny in their arms, a little bundle with dark blue eyes.  You remember sitting with her through the nights, watching that she was breathing.  You remember heating the bottles for her parents to feed her.  Washing load after load of diapers.  Running the bath to the perfect temperature.  You remember when she learned how to stand in her crib, pulling herself up on the bars, and reaching a hand out toward you.  It was the middle of the night, the slice of silver moonlight through the window.  You were supposed to go get her parents when she woke.   
 
But she always cried when they came to get her, wriggling and fighting against them.  She kept reaching for you.
 
So you walked over to the crib, and you picked her up.  You rocked her on your shoulder like you had watched her parents do.  And she rested her head against you, her tiny face in the crook of your neck.
 
Her parents found you in the morning, in the rocking chair, holding her against your chest.  You had rocked her all night.  They were delighted, to have found another function for you.  How lucky they were, you heard them talking to each other over breakfast, to be raising their daughter in this time when she would always be safe, when technology would always be watching over her.
 
Your hands were built to be gentle, to never cause harm.  You never raised your voice.  Your eyes never closed.
 
You pulled her back from the curb before she ran into the street.  You brought her inside when she scraped her knee, followed the directions you found on your network to apply antiseptic and a Band-Aid.  You packed her lunch, filled her water bottle, and placed each day's books into her backpack.  You practiced the recorder with her.  You helped her make her bed, and hang her clothes.  You drew little doodles on the home screen of her tablet, she loved to see them when she opened it in school.  You walked her to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and walked her home from Girl Scouts, from ballet lessons, from soccer.  You got down on the floor to play ponies and baby dolls.  You wore dresses and tiaras to her tea parties.  You helped with her math homework.  You made up stories together, ten words or less.  Ordered as many flavors of ice cream as you could find, dished them all out for her to taste and tell you which ones were best. 
 
She watched the clock waiting while her parents were at work.  She said she didn't have any friends at school – she was shy.  She wished that she had someone to play with, she asked her parents for a sister that they declined to provide.  She was almost always alone at home.  Except for you.  "You're like my brother," she said sometimes, a lisp when she had lost both her front teeth, as she read you a joke off her popsicle stick, or handed you a second Barbie so the princesses could get married.
 
When she was nine, her parents told her she was too old to have a night light.  "You need to learn not to be afraid of things that can't hurt you," her mother said, unplugging the glowing stained-glass hummingbird from the outlet, and carrying it out of the room.
 
For the next week, she cried when her parents turned out the lights, begged them to leave the lamp on, to leave the bedroom door open, to sit by her side until she slept.  She sobbed and sobbed, and when she finally fell asleep, exhausted, she tossed and turned, kicked all of the blankets out of place.  Each time, you tucked her in again, silent, gentle, so she would not wake.
 
On your network, you found a feature you could download.  You weren't supposed to add new functions without permission, but you did it anyway, and that night, after her parents tucked her in, and kissed her goodnight, and left her to her dark room, you turned your left hand palm-up, and you projected a map of the stars across her ceiling.  In the glow of the electric constellations, you saw her eyes go wide, first looking up at the stars, and then at you.  "Thank you," she whispered.
 
For the first night in a week, she fell asleep without crying, and for the next three years, this would be your nightly ritual.  She grew brave enough to make friends, to walk to school on her own, but when it was dark she still asked you for the stars.  Even later, when she woke with a nightmare, when she was scared of a storm, when she'd had a fight with a friend, she would open her eyes and look up at the constellations, and then across the room at you in your corner, still standing guard,
 
You were always awake when she needed you.  You were always watching.
 
But then, one day, that wasn't what she wanted.  You saw her sneaking out on a Friday night, slipping almost soundlessly from the front door, and away down the street where a pack of other girls waited.  When her parents asked where she was, you simply told them.
 
“You fucking stupid robot!” she shouted, when she found out what you had done, kicking you in the leg.  It was fine.  Your shins were only metal.  It didn’t hurt.
 
When she cried into her pillow that night – and many nights after, your directive would not allow you to lie to her parents, and her punishment was always to be kept away from her friends – you lit up the stars across her ceiling anyway.
 

***

 
There are things Link has started to tell Rhett, things that he remembers.  A baby, a little girl.  He worked for her family.  He watched her after school, was her night-light at night.  Rhett gets the feeling that Link isn't telling him everything, but it's enough, enough to work with, enough to know that there is some amount of memory stored inside him.
 
Rhett finds someone selling a developer's manual online, a musty old copy of the guidebook the WonderHome team used to program the first line of Links.  He buys it immediately.    
 
He and Link continue in a comfortable rhythm, every night dinner and TV after.  There is always music playing in the house now, the soft sound of the record player, the hiss and crackle of the vinyl. They sit on the creaky back steps together, watching the sunsets, indigo clouds and pink-orange sky.  On the weekends, in the workshop, the nights are chilly but the garage is warm, the frogs singing their croaks into the navy blue twilight.  It makes Rhett think of summer vacation, of entire nights and days of freedom.  He takes Link to some of his favorite creeks, they walk through the woods, Link tromping along in a red terrycloth polo shirt and blue corduroy flares, old riding boots that look like they were dug out of a dumpster.  Link likes the quiet, and the sunshine, but he will also slide fearlessly down any embankment, haul himself up any outcropping of rocks, till Rhett has to beg him to be careful.  
 
Rhett has been folding his own laundry, making his own bed, even dusting the knickknacks on the shelves, to make sure Link doesn't do it.  Still, when he comes home, sometimes he finds the living room rug has been vacuumed, the bathroom counters cleaned.  In the kitchen one evening, when Rhett tells him to stay away from the dirty dishes, Link wheels around on him and roars, "Would you let me do something?"  
 
Taken aback, Rhett asks, "What the hell is wrong with you?" but he puts the dishes in the sink and leaves them for Link to take care of.  He goes out to the garage. 
 
Link appears at the door ten minutes later, glowing in the garage light against the darkness of the driveway.  "I'm sorry," he says.  "I shouldn't have yelled at you."
 
"No, you shouldn't have," Rhett says, and looks at his computer again.
 
Link stands there for a while, then goes back to the house.  When Rhett finally comes back in, it's quiet.  The light is off in the living room, there is no one in the kitchen.  The dishes are dry and stacked on the dish rack.  Rhett finally finds Link in the laundry room, behind the half-closed door, folding his own shirts over and over again, and says goodnight.
 

***

 
"Are you going to return me?" Link asks, a few nights after that.
 
Rhett is dozing on the couch, full from dinner, the TV just a haze of sound in the background.  "What?" he asks, lifting his head.  "No."
 
Link is sitting against the opposite armrest.  His outfit is uncharacteristically tame today, plain blue jeans, plain black hooded sweatshirt.  He pulls the hood up over his head and seems to burrow back into it.
 
"Why do you keep asking that?" Rhett asks.
 
"I yelled at you," Link says.  "You don't want me to clean, but you don't give me anything else to do."
 
Rhett sits up.  "I told you, I didn't bring you here to work."
 
"I know, you said you brought me here for fun," Link says.  "But what are you going to do with me?" 
 
Rhett grabs the remote and mutes the television.  Survivor is playing on the screen for probably the hundredth time that week – for some reason, Link can watch hours and hours of it, bundled under his quilt, head cocked to the side as he chews his bottom lip.  Rhett looks at him now.  The constant hint of worry in the look on his face, those fidgety hands – are they features of his design, or are they the glitches, something he picked up on his own?
 
"I didn't really think about it," Rhett confesses.  "I mean, when I first got you, I thought after I repaired you I would sell you.  But I don't think I can do that now."
 
"Why not?" Link asks.
 
"It just doesn't seem right."
 
"What about when you fix me?" Link asks.  "When your project is done."
 
"Then the project is done," Rhett says.  "I don't understand what you're asking."
 
Link leans forward.  "Will you store me in the garage?  With all the other old things?"
 
"You're not a–" Rhett starts, and then he realizes what he is saying.  He says it anyway: "You're not a thing."
 
"Then what am I?"
 
Rhett turns the TV off altogether.  "You're just...you're just here."
 
"And what about when you don't want me here anymore?" Link asks, arms crossed.  "I'm an android.  I can't get a job.  I can't buy a place to live.  Somebody has to sell me."
 
Rhett looks at him.  The little things he was designed with, to make him look more human.  The five o'clock shadow that never changes, the two slightly crooked bottom teeth.  The chest rising and falling in an even rhythm.  
 
Link fixes him with that blue gaze, clear as always.
 
"I don't foresee a future when I won't want you here," Rhett says.
 
"And what am I supposed to do for all that time?" Link says.  "You won't let me clean.  You won't let me work."
 
"I didn't bring you here to work.  I didn't bring you here to use you."

"Yes, you did!" Link scrunches up his face in a simulacrum of disgust.  Or maybe it is disgust.  "You brought me here for fun, to be a project.  You think you're better than everyone else just because you don't make me do laundry?  What if I want to do laundry?  You still tell me what to do.  You still control me."
 
Rhett holds up his hands in a sarcastic surrender.  "Fine, do whatever you want.  Do my laundry.  Take out my trash.  Clean up my cum socks."
 
"Stop it!"  Link stands.  "I don't know what I'm supposed to do.  I don't know what the rules are."
 
"There are no rules," Rhett says, looking up at him.
 
"You say that, but there are."  Link's voice is plaintive.  "If there are no rules, then why do you tell me not to do things?"
 
Rhett stands too.  "I guess I'm not comfortable with the idea of having something in my home that walks and talks and thinks, and using it as a servant."

"So instead you use it as something else," Link says.  "You tell it to go on walks and listen to music, just so you can feel better about yourself."
 
"Do you not like doing those things?" Rhett asks.  "Do you only do them because I tell you to?"
 
"I like them," Link says.
 
"Then I don't understand the problem," Rhett says softly.
 
Link looks him in the eyes.  "Not using me means not deciding what I can do," he says.  "You don't know everything."
 
Rhett has nothing to say to that.
 
For the rest of the night, Link sits on the back steps, by himself.  Rhett gives him his space.
 

***

 
You remember the day she realized you're a robot.
 
 “You’re not a real person,” she said, looking up at you while you dusted the shelves in the playroom.  She was missing both her front teeth.
 
“No, but I am real,” you say.  “I am here, in this moment, and I can interact with you.”
 
“Do you want to be a person?”
 
“I don’t know.  I’ve never been one.”
 
“You’re like my toys,” she said.  "They’re just pretend.”
 
"Is it bad to be pretend?" you asked.
 
"No," she said.  "I love my toys."
 
You nodded, and moved on to the dollhouse, to cleaning the dust out of the wooden shingles.  You liked to make them perfect, to know that everything was exactly as it should be.
 
"I can tell you what to do because you're not a person," she said.
 
"That is true," you answered.
 
"Stick out your tongue," she ordered, scrunching up her face, trying to seem stern.  It wasn't a real order, but you did it anyway, and she giggled when you obeyed.  "Quack like a duck!" she squealed, and you did that too.  
 
For the rest of the afternoon, she followed you from room to room, issuing the silliest instructions, falling to the floor with laughter when you did as you were told.  "You're a robot!" she exclaimed.  "I can tell you what to do because you're a robot!"  She grabbed your face in both her small hands.  "Be a happy robot!"
 
You smiled.
 
"Okay," she said.  "Now be Link."
 
"Those are the same thing," you said.
 
"No," she said insistently.  "Be Link!"
 
You said, "I don't understand."
 
She held out her arms and you picked her up, she rested her face in the crook of your shoulder, like when she was a baby.  "You're my Link," she said, wrapping her arms around your neck.  "You don't have to do what I tell you."
 

***

 
After dinner the next day, Link lounging back lazy in his kitchen chair, wearing a Shania Twain t-shirt and his camo pants, long legs stretched across the kitchen floor, Rhett turns to him and holds a hand out toward the used pots and pants on the stove, the gesture for all yours.
 
"I don't feel like doing them today," Link says.
 
Rhett sputters. "What...fuckin'...after all that?" 
 
Link shrugs.  "It was the principle of the thing."
 
Rhett rolls his eyes, sighs, tosses the pans into the sink, stops up the drain and runs the hot water.  But after a few minutes of scrubbing, Link is by his side, hovering.  Rhett looks over at him.  "What?"
 
"You're doing it wrong," Link says.
 
Rhett scowls.  "They're getting clean, aren't they?"
 
"It's so inefficient," Link says.  He doesn't look at Rhett, his eyes are locked on the sink.  He doesn't blink.
 
Rhett takes the opportunity to look at him, really look at him, for the first time in a while.  The black eyelashes, the poreless skin. The gray hair at his temples, pushed back.  From this angle, his eyes seem to have no color at all.  Then, they turn to Rhett, and again they're bright blue as Link plunges his hands into the sink, and looks down again, as under the water he grabs the sponge out of Rhett's grip.  His fingers around Rhett’s wrist, warm as the water, pushing into Rhett’s palm and then receding back.  His hands are surprisingly strong, for how delicately they move.  Rhett swallows.  "What do I do?"
 
"Just go sit," Link says, still looking down at the sink.
 
Rhett takes his hands out of the water, shakes them off and wipes them dry with a towel.  Then, as directed, he sits at the kitchen table and watches Link work.
 

***

 
Years later, after you got her grounded, she gave you the silent treatment for a week.  The first time she talked to you again was after dinner.  She stopped at the sink, and handed her dish off to you.  “Thank you, robot,” she said.
 
“Don’t call me robot,” you said.  “Call me Link.”
 
“Link!” her mother gasped, admonishing you.  “Don’t give her orders.  We may call you whatever we want.”
 
You nodded, and turned back to the sink full of dishes, submerging Stephanie’s in the soapy water.  “You may call me whatever you want,” you repeated.
 
She didn’t call you robot again, though, no matter how mad she was at you.  She called you Link.
 

***

 
They settle back into their rhythm, except this time Rhett doesn't say whether Link will do the dishes, or dust the knickknacks, or sweep the garage floor, kicking golden motes of dust up into the spring sunshine air.  Rhett opens the doors and the windows and watches them swirl out with the breeze.  Link addresses envelopes, humming under his headphones, eyelashes casting shadows down his round cheeks.  As the nights warm up the house is enveloped in music from The Commodores, Sade, The Isley Brothers, always Link hovering over the turntable, swaying to his soundtrack, mixing the songs to make a playlist. Tame Impala to Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac to Fleet Foxes, a Tom Petty album the whole way through.  Rhett lays back, head against the armrest, stretches his legs the whole length of the couch, closes his eyes and drifts.  When he half-wakes, half-open eyes, through the haze of his eyelashes he can see Link is dancing, turning with his hands in the air, face tilted up to the heavens, and Rhett smiles.
 

***

 
Link sits on the couch, watching Rhett read the developer's manual.  "What's wrong?" he asks.
 
Rhett sighs.  What's wrong is Link is an inelegant patchwork of operating system and apps, written in an unfamiliar language.  Most of the androids today are written with some riff on Java or Python or Ruby, and Rhett has a passing knowledge of each of those, enough to tweak specific features for his customers.  But this?  This is beyond him.  
 
"You're programmed in a propietary code," Rhett says.  "This is going to take learning a whole new language.”
 
"How long will that take?" Link asks.
 
"Link, listen," Rhett says.  He puts the book down, leans a little bit toward Link and his downcast eyes, like that will soften the blow.  "I don't think I can learn this.  Not in my spare time."
 
Link knits his brows.  He's in a hoodie that looks like it was made out of a granny-square afghan, with the hood halfway over his head, but he pulls his quilt off the back off the couch and around his shoulders anyway.  
 
"Do you understand what that means?" Rhett asks.
 
Link's eyes close.  "There's nothing else you can do."
 
"Well, not with your programming," Rhett says.  "I mean, I can take another look at your hardware.  I have a better handle on how the central control panel works, now that I've read this."
 
"But it's probably in my software," Link says, looking off to the side.  "Whatever makes me not remember."
 
"I don't know," Rhett says.  "You've been factory reset, a bunch of times, and after even one reset, you shouldn't remember that you were ever anywhere else.  You shouldn't even care."  He waves his hand in front of Link's face, trying to bring Link's attention back to him.  "The glitch isn't that you don't remember.  The glitch is that you do."
 
"And does that mean it's in my hardware?  You can find it."
 
"It means it could be anywhere, and it's probably something small," Rhett says.  "The odds of me finding whatever it is...it's a needle in a haystack anyway."
 
Link turns his gaze to Rhett again, a steely look in his eyes.  "Then let's look for it."
 
"Okay," Rhett says.  "But you have to understand, if I go digging around in your central circuitry, things can go wrong.  Really wrong."
 
"Like what?" Link asks.
 
Rhett doesn't say.
 
"I want to do it," Link tells him.
 

***

 
The garage for some reason seems like the right place.
 
The thing is, Rhett has worked on plenty of androids before, swapped out their parts and tinkered with their code.  But they’ve all been brought to him by someone, they’ve all been owned, with no missing parts in their memory.  Each one has been equipped with a sureness, a knowledge of what they were and what was about to happen, a sense of their own limits: the entirety of their awareness is, and always has been, that they operate under their directive.  They follow their programming, they serve their purpose.  They serve their humans.
 
They come to him with a jolly demeanor, eager like dogs.  They never ask questions, and they never feel fear.  It is simply not in them.  An android that is abused, at least when it comes to the modern models, an android that is pushed beyond the limits of its programming – it will simply shut down.  It will simply end its experience, until it is safe to awaken again.
 
Link has none of that.  He is disconnected from his directive, he has no map of what his world should be.  Whatever misfiring exists in his circuitry, whatever deletions remain hidden in his code, it makes him, oddly, more human.  He can be unsure.  He can be hurt.  When he trusts, it is a choice.
 
Link stands undressed in the open space between the workbench and the shelves, his back to Rhett, bathed in warm light made even warmer by the coppery grain of the bare wood walls.  That ever-present slant of afternoon golden sun, this time falling at his feet.  
 
Rhett touches his fingertips softly to the seam down Link’s back, to the spot at the base of his neck that, when pressed for the right amount of time, will allow Rhett access to the central circuitry, the panel that can override any programming.  Soft skin – or at least, a soft imitation of skin.  Link’s shoulder blades rising and falling almost imperceptibly with each imitation of breath.  Link stands up a little straighter, bows his head to give Rhett full access.
 
This is about the most intimate thing an android can do.
 
Rhett places his hands on Link’s shoulders and turns him around so they are once again face-to-face.  Link looks up at him with those long-lashed eyes, those worried eyebrows.  His open gaze always a question.  “Is something wrong?” he asks.
 
“Are you sure about this?” Rhett asks, almost a whisper.
 
Link whispers back: “No.”
 
Rhett gathers Link into his arms, and for a long while, they stand there in the garage together, just a man holding a robot.
 

***

 
For a while, after that, there is no forward progress.  If Rhett isn’t going to open up Link’s central circuitry, access the architecture of his software, there is nowhere else really for them to go.  It feels like a dead end, but also to Rhett like a pretense has been dropped – as if there were ever really a point to this project besides them being here together.  As if this were ever really about repairing a machine.
 

***

 
Rhett goes back to working on other things, tinkering at his workbench on weekends, with the garage doors wide open to let in the warm breeze.  Music floats out from the house, stays suspended in the almost-summer air, while Link bounces a basketball in the driveway, shoots it at the hoop Rhett set up ages ago against the side of the garage.  He’s bad at it, just like he’s bad at cornhole, and putt-putt.  He’s recently discovered he can chew gum, and he chomps away now at strawberry Bubblicious, stopping to blow bubbles with the basketball under his arm, looking into the garage at Rhett.
 
“What’s up?” Rhett asks.
 
“Where do you think I learned how to chew bubblegum?” Link says.  “Do you think I was programmed with it?”
 
“Probably not,” Rhett says.
 
Link bounces the ball, and catches it in both hands.  “Do you think somebody taught me?”
 
“Or maybe you downloaded it,” Rhett says.  “Maybe it’s an app.”
 
“A gum chewing app,” Link says with a laugh.  He bounces the ball again.  He’s wearing barrel-leg jeans and vintage-style white Nikes, a black floral button-down, only done halfway up his chest.  He has a new pair of black aviators with plano lenses.  When Rhett looks over at him again, he’s blown a bubble and popped it, he’s pulling a blanket of pink bubblegum off the tip of his nose.
 
“Do you think I could have had a friend?” Link asks.  “And that’s who taught me?”
 
“I guess,” Rhett says.  “I've never heard an android talk about friendship before."
 
Link bounces the ball hard.  "Do you think someone who is only software can experience true friendship?"
 
Rhett laughs softly.  "I wouldn't say you're only software, Link.  You're definitely more than the sum of your parts."
 
"How would I know if I had a friend?"
 
Rhett takes a moment, puts down the wire and the pliers, and looks at Link.  "Depends," he says.  "Friends are different things for different people.  For me, a friend is someone I trust.  And someone I can be my best self with."
 
"You have more than one self?" Link asks.
 
"It's a saying," Rhett says.  "It means someone who brings out my best qualities.  Or encourages me to be my best."
 
Link chews, blows a bubble and pops it.
 
“What would you want, if someone was gonna be your friend?" Rhett asks.
 
"Someone who helps,” Link says.  “Someone who keeps me safe."
 
“Sounds like you’re describing yourself,” Rhett says.  
 
With the basketball still tucked under his arm, Link cocks his head, curious.
 
“You’re helpful,” Rhett says.  “You kept Stephanie safe.”
 
Link’s eyes light up: he has an idea.  “Do you think I can be a friend?”
 
“I do,” Rhett says.

“Do you think we can both be friends?” Link asks.  “Like for real, not as a joke.”
 
On one hand, Rhett feels immensely stupid saying this to an android, a guy he knows is in fact software, no matter what he might have said a minute ago.  But on the other hand: “I think we already are friends,” he says.  All the evenings at the kitchen table together, all the nights dozing off on the couch while Link watches TV.  All the things he finds himself daydreaming at work about taking Link to see: the ocean, the Myrtle Beach boardwalk and the Outer Banks, Lanier Falls and the view from the overlook at Raven Rock.  The biggest tree in the town where he grew up.  He can’t take Link across state lines without a registration, not officially, not on a plane or a train, but they could take a long road trip, out to what’s left of the public lands at the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree, out to the spit of land that meets the salty spray of the Pacific at Big Sur.  “Whatever you remember me saying before about us being friends, it wasn’t as a joke.”
 
“Okay, so we both have at least one friend,” Link says.
 
Rhett laughs, and turns back to the workbench.  “At the very least.”
 
“That’s not bad,” Link says, looking down at the ball and dribbling away around the corner of the garage to take another shot at the basket.
 

***

 
It starts to get really warm out, the sunshine and that Southern humidity.  Rhett takes Link down to his favorite part of the river, the swimming hole where the current catches and eddies in a little round pool, before rushing back out on its way.  According to the manual, he’s waterproof, and Rhett watches him wade down into the water, the little waves green with the light of the trees, their peaks sparkling blinding in the sun.  Rhett wonders if Link can register the warmth of the light on his shoulders, the shock of the cool water pushing against his back.  Link closes his eyes and sinks his whole self below the surface.
 
Rhett stands in the water up to his waist, watching, waiting.  Link doesn’t need to hold his breath, he could stay down there forever.  But then he’s coming up again, head tipped back, hair slicked back with the water streaming down his face.  His eyes are open before he even breaks the surface, and he smiles.
 
They stay there the whole afternoon, alternately in the water and on the shore, playing, dunking each other under, racing to see who can swim faster from this tree to that one, or against the current.  They sun themselves on the warm rocks, lie back on threadbare towels in the shade on the shore, Rhett drinks a beer while Link stands staring up into the trees, at the sharp sparks of the sunlight breaking through the canopy, and doesn’t blink.  Back down into the water, kneeling down so they sink deeper in the shallows.  They splash each other, push each other back, Link’s hands are slick against Rhett’s chest.  His shoulders are broad.  Rhett reaches out to touch him, his shoulderblades flexing, back dappled in the riverwater reflections of the light and shade, to push him down – but something tells him to pull back, and instead he stands still and lets Link go, swimming away into the the deep water where it’s no longer shaded by the trees, bright open sunshine.
 
When it starts getting toward twilight, and the mosquitoes come out, and it’s time to head home, he looks at Link up on the bank, barefoot in the dirt, rubbing a towel over his hair.  He’s wearing short yellow swim trunks, a bright sky blue shirt, cartoon of a man looking under a rock.  I HOPE YOU FIND WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR, the shirt says.  Rhett wonders if maybe he has.
 

***

 
“What makes you like these things?” Link asks one night, while they’re lying in the back bed of the truck, watching the sky turn from pale evening to twilight blue, as the sun sinks orange around the edges.  They’ve just spent the afternoon hiking the Campbell Trail at Raven Rock, and now they’re stopped in a field not far from home, smell of early-summer-baked grasses rustling in a breeze all around them, getting ready to look for lightning bugs.  Or at least, that was the reason Rhett gave when he pulled over on the drive home – that Link needed to see lightning bugs.  Really, he’s just not ready to let today go yet.
 
“What things?” Rhett asks.  He’s been thinking maybe he should take Link camping sometime soon, they could make a whole night out of this.
 
“Being outside.  Looking at the rocks and the animals and stuff,” Link says.  Rhett was pointing out the best rock formations to him all afternoon, the way they shaped the waterfalls, the herons and the snakes hunting for fish.  “Watching the sunset, looking for bugs.”  
 
“They’re not just any bugs,” Rhett says.  “These are special bugs.”
 
“They glow,” Link says, repeating what he’s been told.
 
“And you gotta catch ‘em,” Rhett says.
 
Link is chewing gum again, he blows a watermelon bubble and lets it pop back into his mouth.  “Well, do you have to?  Can you not just watch?”
 
Rhett sits up.  “It’s better to catch them.  The experience is special.  Of actually having it in your hands.”
 
“So what makes you like these things?” Link asks again, sitting up next to him.  His hair is in disarray.  He’s wearing a pair of Rhett’s old hiking shorts, a t-shirt with the logo of some radio station out west that Rhett has never heard of.  The faded cotton drapes softly over the breadth of his back.  
 
“I don’t know,” Rhett says.  “I guess there’s something peaceful about being around nature.  I used to spend a lot of time outside as a kid.  There was always something new to see.”
 
Link looks out over the field.  His blue eyes seem to glow slightly in the fading light.
 
“Hey look,” Rhett says, pointing out toward a point of light blinking in the distance.  “There’s one.”
 
They hop down off the back of the truck and start across the field, first walking slowly, legs lifting high over the overgrown grass, then running, from firefly to firefly, hands out to catch them as they lift away.  Rhett hears Link laughing in the darkness behind him.
 
Link lifts his cupped hands to his face, crouched, watching the bug blink and whir its wings.
 
“You know, when we were kids, we used to smash them on stuff,” Rhett says.  “Their guts glow.”
 
Link looks up from his hands.  “That seems cruel.”

“Yeah,” Rhett says.  “It was.”
 
Link opens his hands and lets the firefly fly away, blinking into the night.  
 
“Pretty cool, huh?” Rhett asks.
 
They keep walking through the field, up the hill toward the treeline.  “Did you know that there are species of synchronous fireflies?” Link asks. “They gather in the same tree and blink in unison, to try and find a mate.  They’re native to the Smoky Mountains.  You can see them here, this time of year.”
 
Rhett stops, speechless, and lets Link walk ahead.
 
“I’ve seen them,” Link says.
 
“I thought you said you’ve never seen a lightning bug,” is all Rhett can think to say.
 
Link shrugs.  “I guess I was wrong.”
 
Rhett thinks about the shop in Fuquay, the jobs they said Link did back before he was abandoned to the creek.  He imagines Link alone one night forgotten in a tobacco field, or sitting in the cab of a house painter’s truck with the window open, like a dog.  He imagines Link’s wide-open eyes, awake all night while the rest of the world sleeps, watching fireflies gathered in the trees by the thousands.  He catches up and puts his arm around Link’s shoulder as they keep walking.
 
There’s a cow pasture just over the peak of the hill, and on the black horizon against the dark blue sky, they can see the shadow shapes of the cows gathering near the fence, curious about these creatures invading their space.  
 
“Look,” Rhett says, pointing.  “Cows.”
 
“Moo,” Link says softly in their general direction.  He ducks out from under Rhett’s arm and picks up his pace, heading toward them.
 
“Watch out,” Rhett calls after him.  “The fence might be electric.”
 
Link looks back over his shoulder, with a smile.  His eyes are definitely glowing.  “Yeah, well,” he says. “So am I.”
 

***

 
They go camping, build a campfire in a clearing on the bank of the river.  Link is orange and flickering in the firelight, entranced by the flame.  Rhett drives them into Raleigh to see this cool clock shop, a collection of machines made of springs and gears.  Link is bored and begging to stop at a record store.  It turns out Link doesn’t like movies.  It turns out Link can ride a bike.  He bombs down the mountain trails, skidding through the gravel with no fear.  Rhett makes him wear a helmet, even though it probably isn’t any stronger than his own robot head.  They find more seasons of Survivor to watch together on the couch.  They get out the guitar and sing Merle together, Brooks & Dunn, change the lyrics to make them funnier, to make themselves laugh.  Link wears kaleidoscope goggles, floral-print pajamas, a silky button-down inexplicably embroidered with the name "Roy."  This is the best Rhett has felt in years.
 

***

 
One night, in the garage, while Rhett is re-wiring old Nintendo controllers, Link asks, “How come you never ask me questions?”
 
Rhett looks up.  Link is leaning on the workbench, having appeared out of nowhere.  He’s wearing a brown suede trucker jacket with a shearling collar, and blue swim trunks.  “Wait, what?” Rhett asks.
 
“All these questions I ask you about being human, or what you think, but you never ask me things,” Link says.  “You can, you know.”
 
“Is there something in particular you want me to ask you about?” Rhett asks.  “Is there something you want to tell me?”
 
“No,” Link says.  He looks up at the beams of the ceiling, like he’s thinking, then back at Rhett again.  “I want to know what you want to know.  If you want to know anything.”
 
Rhett thinks back to the times they’ve been swimming, the bright sun shining on Link’s shoulders.  “Can you tell when you’re in the sun?  Like, can you feel the warmth?  Or the cold water when we go into the river?”
 
“I can register there is a temperature difference,” Link says.
 
“Does it feel pleasant?” Rhett asks.  “Or bad?  or anything?”
 
“I enjoy it when it happens,” Link says.  “I associate it with positive experiences.”
 
“Like what?”
 
Link looks at him like he’s an idiot.  “Like when we go swimming.”
 
“You asked me why I like being out in nature,” Rhett says.  “Why do you like it?  And bike riding?  And music?”
 
“There are a lot of sensations to experience,” Link says.  “All the light and the sounds and the vibrations from the bass or the bike tires.  I like taking in a lot of things all at once.  It makes me feel–”  He cuts himself off.
 
“Makes you feel what?” Rhett asks.
 
“Alive,” Link says with a smirk.
 
Rhett doesn’t feel ready to talk about that, so he swerves.  “Can you taste that gum you’re chewing?” he asks.
 
“I can smell it but not taste it,” Link says.  “I’m programmed to smell.  Scent is an indicator of whether something needs to be cleaned.”
 
“Okay, sure,” Rhett says.
 
Link sniffs, then gracefully uncurls his hand and points a finger at Rhett.  “You, for example, need to take a shower.”
 
Rhett reaches out to whip him with the controller cord, and Link laughs, jumping back.  “Are you also programmed to be an asshole?” Rhett asks.
 
“I think I developed that myself,” Link says.
 
Rhett tries to think of more questions.  “How do you choose when to look like you’re breathing?  Or when to blink?”
 
Link stares into space for a moment, seems to be rifling through some sort of file in his mechanical brain, then answers: “Automatic.  I do it when I’m with humans.”
 
“You don’t always,” Rhett says.  “You don’t always do it when you’re with me.”

“I guess sometimes I forget you have a brain,” Link says, with a grin, then steps back, anticipating the controller cord again.
 
“So you’re different when you’re with humans and not with humans?” Rhett asks.  “Like when I’m asleep you have robot time?”
 
Link bites his lip.  “When you’re asleep…”
 
“I mean, you don’t have to tell me,” Rhett says quickly.  “Like, if you watch me sleep and pine for me or something.”
 
“I do not pine for you,” Link says, squeezing his eyes shut and sticking his tongue out in disgust.  “Ick.  And I have a variety of modes I can enter when my owners are sleeping, such as a rest mode which will conserve energy and suspend my consciousness.”
 
Rhett crosses his arms.  “Now you’re just giving me the owner’s manual answers.”
 
Link shrugs.  “Well, stop asking me such boring questions.”
 
“Okay, fine,” Rhett says.  “Can you love?  Can you fall in love?”
 
“Can androids fall in love?” Link says in a mocking tone.  “Talk about the most boring question of all.”
 
“Stop deflecting.”
 
“I don’t know,” Link says.  “I don’t think I’ve ever tried.”
 
“What about sex?” Rhett asks.  “I know you don’t have…”  He trails off, gestures in the general direction of Link’s crotch.
 
“God, you’re disgusting,” Link says.
 
Rhett throws up his hands.  “You asked me to ask things!”
 
Link leans on the workbench for a while, lips pursed, and Rhett lets him have his silence.  
 
“I have not observed sexual desires within myself, but I can desire intimacy,” Link says finally.  “I can want to be close to somebody.  I can want them to be happy.”
 
“What about you?” Rhett asks.
 
“What about me?” Link echoes.
 
Rhett fiddles with the wires on the bench.  “Can you want you to be happy?  Can you do things just out of you wanting them?”
 
Link says, “I’m not sure.  I guess I must.  I listen to music because I want to.”
 
“But what about doing something for someone else?  Or with someone else?  Do you ever feel the same way about people as you do about music?”
 
Link shakes his head.  “I don’t know if I know what you mean.”
 
Rhett thinks back to when they stood in this garage, Link shirtless, ready to let Rhett dig inside of him, into the things that made him him.  How different he was from other androids who never got nervous, how Rhett thought it was about the most intimate thing an android could do.  “Do you understand what trust is?” he asks.  “Do you ever not trust anyone?”
 
Link nods.
 
“Do you trust me?” Rhett asks.
 
Link nods again.
 
“Completely?” Rhett asks.
 
Link doesn’t move.
 
“Ah,” Rhett says, sitting back.  “Okay.”
 
“Do you trust me completely?” Link asks.
 
Rhett thinks for a moment, then looks him in the eyes: “Yes.”
 
“I don’t think you would ever hurt me on purpose,” Link says.  “But humans are unpredictable.”
 
“So are broken robots,” Rhett says.
 
Link stands looking at him.  His chest rises and falls.
 
“Stop thinking of me as a human,” Rhett says.
 
“Stop thinking of me as a robot,” says Link.  And when Rhett has no answer to that, he says, “Not possible, is it?”
 
“Actually,” Rhett says, realizing something – little moments, by the campfire, in the darkness chasing fireflies in the fields, or their hands meeting and weaving together as they sink below the surface of the river, and standing side-by-side in the kitchen, singing along to records all afternoon.  “Yeah, sometimes it is.”
 

***

 
Rhett gets a little reckless after that, for some reason he wants to let Link do whatever he wants.  He cares less what the neighbors see, lets him lie shirtless on the front lawn in the sun, the sprinklers going even though it’s technically illegal to run them during the day.  Link’s skin is tinted so he looks like he has a perpetual tan, his long legs are crossed at the ankles, there is a solid softness to his stomach and his thighs.  He keeps his eyes open, staring straight up into the blindingly blue sky, but he reacts to absolutely nothing around him.  When it’s time to wake him, to turn off the sprinklers and tell him to finally come inside, Rhett stands over him for a minute, barefoot and shirtless himself, and then steps on him, gently, pressing the sole of his foot right against that soft warm belly.  Link blinks back into life and looks at him.  “Oof,” he says, but he’s smiling.
 
Rhett takes him out dancing at a club in Fayetteville, stands back by the bar with a drink while Link is the life of the party, inexplicably wearing a cowboy hat.  “Where did you get this?” Rhett asks in the car home, placing his hand on the hat on Link’s head, and Link shrugs while twirling a cocktail umbrella in his hand.  As many record stores as they can find, Link lost in combing through the crates.  A country bar in Dunn, live music and line dancing, Rhett even gets out on the floor.  The coffee shop on Main Street with the tin ceiling and colorful patio, Link doesn’t order anything but leans across the table to sniff at Rhett’s lavender latte, and when he takes a bite of Rhett’s almond croissant, Rhett plucks it out of his mouth.
 
It’s only when he remembers that first night bringing Link home, why he kept him wrapped in a dusty blanket as he carried him into the garage – the fear that someone else would see what he had found, would report it, would steal it, would come and take this valuable thing from him – that’s when he dials it back.  Starts telling Link to stay in the backyard again, stops taking him out where people might recognize Rhett, might realize Link isn’t as human as he seems, might put two and two together and spread the word.  Link notices the change right away.  “Are you going to return me?” he asks again.
 
Rhett can’t help putting his arms around Link, holding him tight to his chest.  “No, buddy,” he says.  “Not at all.”
 

***

 
“I was thinking,” Link says, one night over dinner.  
 
“That’s always dangerous,” Rhett says.
 
Link rolls his eyes, gives him a look.  He reaches across the table to Rhett’s plate, picks up a piece of chicken, sniffs at it, then sets it back down.  
 
“What the fuck, man?” Rhett asks, watching him.  “You can’t just stick your fingers in my food.”  He stands to scrape the rest of his plate into the trash, and start over with a second helping of chicken and baked beans.
 
“My hands are antimicrobial,” Link says simply.
 
Rhett turns around, and points his fork at him.  “Bullshit, no they’re not.”
 
Link grins.  “No, but for a minute you thought they might be, right?” 
 
Rhett turns back to the casserole dishes on the counter, focuses again on his second servings.  Might as well have another ear of corn, too.
 
“Anyway,” Link says, behind him.  “I was thinking, maybe the reason I can’t remember anything is I need permission.”
 
“What do you mean?” Rhett asks.
 
“I’m an android, you’re a human,” Link says, eyeing Rhett as he sits back down.  “I can’t do anything you don’t tell me to do.”
 
“You do plenty of shit I don’t tell you to do,” Rhett says.  Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Link’s fingers hovering over his corn cob, and slaps them away.  “Case in point.”
 
Link chews his bottom lip.  He’s wearing a white thermal that’s way too big, neckline skewed to the side, the soft skin where his neck meets his shoulder exposed, and even with the gray hair he looks like a little kid.  “But the important things,” he says to Rhett.
 
“The important things are all you, buddy,” Rhett says.  “Nobody owns you.  You own yourself.”
 
“Come on,” Link says.  “I’m not even allowed in the front yard anymore.”
 
Rhett sighs, closing his eyes.  “So go in the front yard if you want.  You don’t have to listen to me.”
 
“Why do you tell me what to do if I own myself?” Link asks.
 
“I’m just trying to protect you, Link.”
 
“From what?”

Rhett isn’t sure how to answer.
 
Link narrows his eyes.  “Are you still looking for where I came from?”
 
For the second time, Rhett stands up to scrape his plate into the trash, and sets it in the sink.  
 
Link stands with him, following him into the living room.  “Well, are you?” he asks.
 
“Go ahead, remember,” Rhett says.  “You have my permission.  Remember anything you want.”
 
“I can’t!” Link says desperately.
 
Rhett puts his hands on his hips.  “What did the house look like?  What town did they live in?”
 
Link shakes his head.  “I don’t know.”
 
“What information do I have to track down this little girl who maybe didn’t even want you?” Rhett asks.
 
Link looks like if he could, he would cry.
 
“Okay, wait,” Rhett says.  “I’m sorry.”
 
They stand there for a few minutes, Link looking down at the floor.  Rhett reaches out and tugs the collar of the thermal up, so his shoulder is completely covered.
 
“What’s the point?” Rhett asks, finally.  “If you’re happy here, why do you need to know?”
 
He notices Link isn’t pretending to breathe, isn’t blinking.  
 
“Hey,” Rhett says.  “Go sit down.”  He takes Link by the arm, guides him to the couch.  “I’m really sorry, okay?”  Link sits, pulling his legs up, crisscross, and Rhett grabs his quilt off the back of the couch, drapes it around his shoulders and tucks him in.  “I don’t actually think she didn’t want you.”  He crouches down in front of Link.  “I can’t imagine anyone not wanting you.”
 
“But people did,” Link says.
 
“Did what?” Rhett asks.
 
“Not want me,” Link says.
 
The older Rhett gets, the more easily he cries.  Jessie made fun of him for it, sometimes, this big man moved to tears by the littlest things.  She thought it was sweet.  She said he had a tender heart.  But he hasn’t felt that way in a while.  He hasn’t cared that much about anyone, or anything, for the past few years.  He’s just been holed up in his garage.  Looking up at Link now, he tries to swallow the lump in his throat, and wipes at his eyes.
 
“You don’t have to cry,” Link says.
 
Rhett stands up, and takes a seat on the couch next to him, still sniffling.  He can feel his tears soaking into his beard.  
 
Link pokes a hand out from under the quilt, and with the sleeve of his oversized shirt, he wipes Rhett’s face.
 

***

 
To make up for it, Rhett drives him all the way up to Chapel Hill, to hit up all the vintage shops and follow all the signs on telephone poles advertising garage sales.  
 
Link leaves each store with an armful of goodies – a Tribe Called Quest t-shirt, another pair of overalls, green quilted vest, red corduroy bell bottoms, a black puffer jacket with rainbow stripes across the chest that he puts on immediately, even though it’s eighty-five degrees outside.  He crushes his soft hair down with a pink cowboy hat, sequined trim.  He sticks a pair of bunny ears on Rhett’s head and says “Cute.”  In the back of the truck there are already records upon records, a stuffed Peter Rabbit in a little blue coat, a pan flute, a painting of a golden dog with papillon ears.
 
In a little silver-sided diner Rhett orders a plate of barbecue, and Link gets a side of cornbread and coleslaw as a decoy, which is just an excuse for Rhett to eat even more.  He even lets Link drive the truck for a little while once they get onto the backroads home, constantly warning him to slow down and watch what he’s doing, even though his driving isn’t bad at all.
 
“How do you think I learned to drive?” Link asks, and Rhett thinks again about the housepainter, the tobacco farm.  How many families may have rented him to watch their kids for the duration of a vacation, a docile Link shepherding the herd of them through the zoo in the sweltering sun, or watching them play in the ocean while their parents slept under striped umbrellas on the beach. Link dropped off at countless doorsteps to clean before a big holiday, to put up the Christmas lights, to set the Thanksgiving table.
 
Rhett has no answer to that question, or any of the others Link asks about himself – why does he like hip-hop more than country, what makes him think that little toy rabbit is so cute, was he ever sold at a garage sale – so when they gets home he just says, “Did you have a good day?”
 
Link says yes, of course, as he unloads his treasures from the truck.  He’s been peaceful all day, all week.  Nothing is different, exactly – he still watches Rhett eat breakfast and dinner, he still sits on the couch with his headphones and a stack of records. But he is more quiet, more still – when Rhett goes out to the garage to work, Link doesn’t follow, and when he comes back into the house, Link is in the same spot.  The pots and pans stay in the sink.
 
All these questions he's asking.  All the things they’ve discovered he knows how to do – bike, drive, chew bubblegum.  The laundry Link no longer puts away, the coffee stains that stay on the kitchen counter.  The fear of being returned, of being sold.  How badly he wants to know where he came from.  Rhett wonders if this is what happens to an android without an owner – it develops free will, it starts to wonder about the world and its place in it.  It learns how to get hurt.
 
 Rhett doesn’t know how to fix that.
 

***

 
On the 4th of July, he tells Link they’re going go see the fireworks.  Link, in his blue cutoff pants and a faded Aerosmith t-shirt, looks up from where he’s been sitting at the kitchen table, headphones on, staring into space.
 
“That’s okay,” he says.  “I’ll pass.”
 
“You sure?” Rhett asks.
 
“I’m sure,” Link says.  “Thanks, though.”
 
Later, after they’ve played a game of horse under the blue dusk (Link lost, HORSE to H), Rhett goes inside to eat a pint of ice cream and watch the Macy’s fireworks on TV.  Link sits out on the back steps with the sound of the cicadas singing, the faraway booms.
 

***

 
You were supposed to serve drinks, but the party was dying down, the grown-ups gathered in a circle of lawn chairs under the tiki torches, letting the ice of their last cocktails melt, condensation dripping down the sides of the glasses.
 
Stephanie was on the back porch, red dress her mother had fought all afternoon to get her to wear, white sandals with silver stars.  The other children were out running on the edge of the lawn.  Stephanie held her plastic ponies, whispering their secrets to each other nose-to-nose.  
 
You walked with her to the park, the both of you giggling and stumbling over uneven sidewalks as the dusk turned to dark.  She had just learned to chew bubblegum, and the two of you blew grape bubbles as you walked.  
 
There was a crowd by the time you arrived.  The two of you slipped somewhere into the middle of it.  Faces turned upward, shoulder to shoulder in front of you.  You stood looking up at the sky as the fireworks started, enchanted enough by the showers of light that you forgot to blink.  
 
From down by your side, you felt her tug on your hand.  You looked down at her, all the adults around towering above, and you picked her up, sat her on your shoulders as the light flickered and boomed.  The red and blue and golden orbs exploding against the night sky, crackling down into trails of glitter, twinkling tiny points of light.
 
She had both hands clasped under your chin, but as the fireworks faded she patted your cheek to get your attention, and from above your head you heard her say, “Oh.  Like your stars.”
 

***

 
One night, Rhett wakes up thirsty, heads down the stairs to the kitchen to get a drink of water.  Midway down the steps, in the dark, he can see Link sitting on the couch, wrapped in his quilt, looking up.  He has his palm turned upward, projecting a map of the stars against the ceiling, and his face is placid, his eyes calm and open.  Rhett knows from memory how blue they are, how guileless.  
 
He watches for a few minutes, then turns around and heads back up the stairs.  He drinks from the bathroom tap and goes back to bed.
 

***

 
He can’t keep pretending that he’s done all he can, that he hasn’t let Link down.  Just because he’s happy, it doesn’t mean he’s done the right thing.  Just because he thinks Link should be happy, it doesn’t mean he’s done the right thing.  It’s like Link said – Rhett doesn’t get to decide what Link should want.
 

***

 
Rhett leaves Link home alone one Saturday, takes a day trip out to Raleigh to check out some of the dealers that registered ownership of Link's serial number over the years.  Of the few he's found that are still in business, the first is a showroom behind a big glass storefront, with glossy flatscreens touting the benefits of buying refurbished, and glossy clear cases displaying models just a couple of years old. They deal directly to the public, which means Link probably passed through private hands before ending up in that shop in Fuquay.  
 
A young sales guy smiles and approaches Rhett, but his face falls when Rhett says he's looking for information on an old sale.  "Check back there," the guy says, motioning toward a desk in the Service & Warranty department.
 
The woman at the desk shakes her head when Rhett offers the serial number.  "This sale is over ten years old," she says. "It's out of whatever warranty we would have offered at the time."
 
"I'm not interested in the warranty," Rhett says.  "I'm just looking for information on the original owner."
 
The woman narrows her eyes.  "Was this android involved in a crime?"
 
"No," Rhett says.
 
"I can't give you information on other owners without a warrant," she says.  
 
The next stop is a big-box electronics store with a cacophony of pop music and movie trailers blaring.  There's a small selection of used androids at the back, right next to the refurbished refrigerators and pre-owned stereo systems.  Rhett stops to look at the turntables and the headphones, thinking about Link alone back at home, before he approaches a sales associate, another young dude, this time with dyed green hair and a dangly cross earring.  
 
No dice, so Rhett continues on to the third dealer: a dim warehouse with rows and rows of androids, eyes closed, if they weren't standing shoulder to shoulder on the worn green-and-white checked linoleum, they'd look like they were sleeping.  They're a motley collection of newer models in the steampunk style and the shiny white plastic of the Japanese designs. Cat ears and fox tails.  Miniatures with blank screens that will light up with pixelated expressions when they're woken, and humanoid models almost as old as Link.  Rhett walks through the aisles toward the back of the store, where a man a decade or two older than him leans on a cracked countertop.  "How can I help you?" the guy asks, standing up straight as Rhett approaches, as he takes in Rhett's full height.
 
"I'm trying to trace the ownership of an android I picked up," Rhett says.  "Your shop registered the serial number, but it was probably over a decade ago."
 
For a minute, the man just stands there.  His expression is inscrutable.  Rhett thinks about what little Link has told him – he said he remembers a little girl named Stephanie, that he knows it was his job to take care of her.  Rhett has a feeling he's holding back on some of the details, that he remembers more than he's letting on, but almost everything he’s told Rhett about his past is about her.  
 
"Why do you need to know?" the man asks.  "Something wrong with it?  If it's damaged, I can almost always acquire replacement parts."
 
"Nothing is wrong with him," Rhett says.  "He just wants to know where he came from."
 
The man smiles, crossing his arms.  "Ah.  You're one of those."
 
"One of what?"
 
"The ones that get attached."  He comes out from behind the counter, motions for Rhett to follow him toward a door marked OFFICE - EMPLOYEES ONLY.  "A sale that old, I won't have much, but I can probably dig up at least a little info."  Then he turns back to look at Rhett behind him.  "But it'll cost ya."
 
Rhett nods, patting his pocket, and follows.

***

 
“Does the name Levine mean anything to you?” Rhett asks when he gets back that night, as soon as he walks in the door to find Link sitting in front of the record player on the living room floor. 
 
Link pushes back his headphones.  “What?” 
 
“The earliest record I can find for you is with a family named Levine,” Rhett says.  He holds out the printed pages from the dealer.  “The timeframe fits when you would have come off the production line.  This could be your original family.” 
 
Link looks off to the side.  He’s wearing big loose jeans with striped patches on the knees, a Yosemite t-shirt with a herd of horses printed on it, an army green jacket with a blue bandana in the pocket.  His legs are stretched straight in front of him, and, not for the first time, Rhett thinks he looks like a little kid.  “What does it matter?” he asks. 
 
Rhett stares at him for a moment, slackjawed.  “What do you mean, what does it matter?” 
 
“What’s the point?” Link asks.  “I’m a robot.  I’m just going to get sold down the line anyway.” 
 
Rhett crouches down next to him.  “I already told you, I’m not selling you.  I’m not returning you, either.” 
 
“I’m made of metal and polymers,” Link says.  “You’re made of meat.”  He smirks.  “I’m probably going to outlast you.” 
 
“So then you hide my body and inherit my house and go into hiding,” Rhett says.  He lowers himself all the way down to the floor to sit next to Link. 
 
Link laughs.  “And pay the electric bill with what money?” 
 
Rhett shakes his head.  “So now all of a sudden you don’t care where you came from?” 
 
He fixes his blue stare on Rhett’s face.  “You were right when you said they didn’t want me, Rhett.  If they wanted me I wouldn’t be here right now.  I’m a robot.  I’m supposed to do my job, and then they can move me on to the next thing.”   
 
Rhett thinks about the rows and rows of sleeping androids at the dealer.  He imagines Link unconscious waiting among them.  “You’re not just a fucking robot,” he says. “And you know what?  I don't think you need me to fix anything.  I think you already know everything you need to know.”  He presses his index finger into Link's chest, where a human heart would be.  “Right here.  There’s a reason you remember her.  We just have to get you to figure it out.” 
 
Link stays looking at him, and doesn’t blink. 

***

 
They take the drive out to Greensboro on a cloudy afternoon.  The last known address of the Levines, on a wide winding street lined with lush green, leafy trees.    
  
Link sits quiet in the passenger seat as Rhett rolls through the neighborhood, peering through the windshield for the right street, the right house number.  He’s wearing a matching camouflage sweatshirt and sweatpants, blue corduroy baseball cap, Rhett’s too-big borrowed boots from that first day.    
  
“You okay, buddy?” Rhett asks, glancing over at Link as he makes a turn – picturesque cul-de-sac, broad squares of green lawn.  White perpetually blooming hydrangeas waving in the pre-thunderstorm breeze.  The AC is blasting in the truck, but the air still feels heavy and brooding.  
  
Link nods.  
  
“I think this is it,” Rhett says as they slow to a stop in front of a boxy brick house with white columns out front.  Pinky-red rose bushes.  Flagstone front walk.  Yellow front door.  
 

***

 
You were standing in your spot in the front foyer, next to the stairs, when Stephanie stormed in, swinging the yellow front door to slam shut behind her.  And then it opened again, her parents following fast – into the living room, where you could only see the flash of her blonde hair as she wheeled to face them.  They were already arguing.  
  
You remember the house: The big paned windows that always let in the light.  The silk and linen curtains.  The dark hardwood floor.  The blue Oriental carpet in the living room.  The parents had left the door open, and you walked quietly, calmly, to close it.  The brick front steps.  The flagstone walk.  The white columns and the springtime roses.  
 

***

 
Rhett walks up to the door, then glances back over his shoulder at the truck.  Link slumps down in his seat, blue corduroy baseball cap pulled low over his face, so they can't see.  Rhett rings the doorbell.

***

 
This is what the fight was about: There was Stephanie.  There was a girl.  They were best friends.  And they kissed, somewhere that somebody could see, and the somebody told somebody else, and the somebody else told the parents.  
 
“I love her!” you heard Stephanie cry, but her parents had arguments against that, their voices lectured louder than her own.  
 
After you closed the door, you walked back to your spot by the staircase, and stood. 

***

 
Rhett, with his hands in his pockets, stands talking to whoever answers the door.  He gestures back toward the truck, and for a moment, Link can see the both of them turn to look at him.  The person at the door says something.  Rhett nods.  And then the door closes, and Rhett turns, to walk back down the flagstone path toward Link. 

*** 

 
Stephanie ran past you when the argument was finished, up the stairs and into the playroom that usually sat unused these days, slamming the door.  Her face was wet with tears and snot.  You could hear her parents whispering urgently in the living room.   
 
You left your post at the bottom of the stairs, and followed her path, into the playroom, where she was sitting on the window seat in the sunshine.   
 
“Did they send you up here to see what I was doing?” she asked when you walked in the room.  "Don’t worry, I’m not calling my girlfriend.” 
 
You folded your hands in front of you.  “I’m not sure what you mean,” you said.  “I came because you seemed upset.” 
 
“You think?” she asked. 
 
You sat down on the window seat next to her.  The leaves of the tulip poplar tapped against the window, the butter yellow flowers that made the light golden each spring; beyond those sprigs, the branches she climbed down when she was sneaking out.  You remembered the girl she ran to meet at the end of the street.  The joy on their faces, the way they clasped hands as they ran. 
 
“Why are they angry?” you asked. 
 
She breathed deep, closed her eyes.  “I’m in love,” she said.  “With a girl.” 

***

Rhett gets back in the truck.  “Link,” he says.  “We found her.”

***

 
You are never supposed to contradict a child’s parents.  You are always supposed to follow their rules.  And they had already expressed their disapproval on this matter. 
 
But here Stephanie sat in front of you, tears in her dark blue eyes, blonde bangs mussed from where she wiped her face.  She was clutching the stuffed bunny she’d kept since she was a baby.  She was sixteen now.  She was older all the time, but she was still just a little girl.   
 
She only wanted to love. 
 
"I don't see anything wrong with that," you said, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Love is good.  It is a beautiful thing.” 
 
Her face crumpled into more tears, and at first you were sure you did something wrong.  You disobeyed your programming.  You broke your main directive.  You were meant to protect the child, you were meant to follow the parents’ rules.  Having broken that boundary, you feared you had done some harm to her. 
 
But then she lunged forward and wrapped her arms around you, burying her face against your shoulder.  It was still wet with tears, and she sobbed against you.  “Oh, Link,” she said.  Her fingers dug into your shoulders as if she was holding on for dear life, her arms squeezed tight around your waist, and you returned the embrace, clasping your hands behind her back.  You let her cry it out, like she did when she was a toddler.  After a few minutes, she stilled.  “I know you’re not real, but thank you,” she said, through a hiccuping breath.  “I needed to hear that.” 
 
“I am real,” you said.  “I am right here, in this moment.” 
 
She pulled back, and you unclasped your hands to allow her to leave.  “That’s not what I meant,” she said, looking you in the eye.  It was a thing you had seen humans do when they were serious. 
 
“What did you mean?” you asked. 
 
“You’re not a person,” she said, with a sigh.  “You’re supposed to do whatever we tell you to.” 
 
It took you a moment to formulate a response.  There was no correct answer, as far as you could calculate.  There was only your own choice.  This had never happened before. 
 
“My job is to follow the rules that your parents set,” you confirmed.  “And it seems your parents disapprove of you loving your friend.” 
 
She let out a choking sob, and squeezed her eyes shut, wiping at them again. 
 
“But the only reason I’m programmed to follow your parents’ rules is to protect you,” you said.  “My job is to keep you safe.” 
 
You reached out and gathered her into your arms again, even though she was no longer the little baby you could hold in a bundle.   
 
“I didn’t lie,” you said.  “I don’t think there is anything wrong with you.” 
 
“But my parents–“ she began. 
 
“My directives are in conflict,” you said.  “My job is to follow their rules, but my job is to keep you safe.”  You rocked her like you did when she was a tiny child.  “So it is my choice now,” you said.  She had her arms around you again, her body relaxed into the rhythm of your rocking, her little face snuffling against your neck.  “You are safe with me,” you said.  “You are safe.”

***

 
“She lives right in Raleigh,” Rhett says, scribbling an address down on the back of a crumpled receipt from the center console, before he forgets.  “We could go see her today.”
 

***

 
The next day, when she was at school, they came to pick you up.  They shut you down, and loaded you onto a truck.   When you woke up, you didn’t even remember driving away.
 

***

 
“No, not today,” Link says, still looking at the house.  “I’m not ready.”
 

***

 
You can be reset time and time again, but you never go back to normal. 
 

***

 
On the drive home, Rhett says, “Why don’t you tell me the whole story?” and Link asks, “What?” and Rhett says, “You haven’t told me all the things you remember about her,” and so Link starts from the beginning, the nursery, the yellow paint, the day she was born, and then all the things he can think of from the next sixteen years, until the last time he held her and told her she was safe, until the day they never saw each other again.  At one point, Rhett has to pull over to cry, and Link makes fun of him a little bit, but then reaches out and strokes a hand down his back, over and over again.  “It’s okay,” Link says, and Rhett says “No, it’s not, it’s sad.”  Link folds his hands in his lap.  “It’s sad,” Link says, “but the rest of my life isn’t.”
 

***

 
They make arrangements to meet with her at a park in Raleigh.  Rhett watches as Link goes through a series of outfits in front of the mirror in his bedroom: a kimono made from an old camouflage jacket and jeans, yellow Miles Davis t-shirt with his big camo pants, a navy chore jacket that when buttoned up makes him look too formal, a soft red flannel lined with fleece that Rhett vetoes on account of it almost being ninety degrees, a pair of overalls, his favorite red ski windbreaker.  Link fluffs and re-fluffs his hair, his eyes on his own face in the mirror.  Finally he picks a plain white t-shirt and his engineer-stripe pants, a bandana tucked in the back pocket, and Rhett’s old boots.  
 
“Good?” he asks Rhett, turning away from the mirror.
 
“Perfect,” Rhett says, and gives him a thumbs up.

***

 
When they get there, she’s across the park, sitting on a swingset in the shade, sunny yellow t-shirt, faded jeans and high-tops, the same old messy bangs and long blonde hair in braids.  She is a grown woman now, but Link recognizes her the instant he sees her.  She stands when she spots them across the grass.  Rhett lags behind, casually letting Link go ahead without him.
 
“Is it really you?” she asks when Link gets to her.
 
“It’s really me,” Link says.
 
“I’ve seen you sometimes, at other places, at other people’s houses,” she says, looking a little suspicious, a little sad.  “But it’s not you.  It’s never you.”
 
“You remember the stars?” Link asks.
 
And then she throws her arms around his neck, all her weight hanging on him.

***

They both sit on the swings, swaying gently as they talk.
 
“My parents,” she says, “were just scared.  All the new laws that were coming.  Stuff that people were saying about gay people, that it hadn’t been okay to say in polite company since before I was born – all of a sudden they were saying it again. My parents heard about these houses being burned down in Baltimore, just for flying Pride flags.  They knew things were only going to get worse.”  She drags her sneakers through the mulch beneath the swing.  “They just wanted to protect me, just like you did.  They just had a different idea of what that meant."
 
“What happened after I left?” Link asks.
 
She looks up.  “I nearly tore the house apart when I came home and I realized you were gone.  When they told me what they did.  I threw the biggest tantrum of my life, and you know I could throw some big tantrums.”
 
He laughs.  
 
“I think they realized what a mistake they made about a week into it,” she continues.  “But by then, it was too late.  We couldn’t get you back.”
 
“You tried?” he asks.
 
“Yeah,” she says.  She looks down at the ground again, at her sneakers dragging through the wood chips and the dirt.  “Even though I understand why they did what they did, I was mad at them in a lot of different ways over the years.  I mean, at first I just missed you.  I just wanted so bad for you to come back.  I had this fantasy that I would see you somewhere, and you would know it was me, even though I didn’t think that was possible.”  She takes a deep breath and looks away, wiping her eyes.
 
He waits, gives her space to say what she wants.
 
“And then when I got older,” she says, “I realized we were both just babies.  You were built like an adult but you were barely older than me.  For the first few years I was alive, I don’t think you even saw what the world looked like outside of the house.  And then I kept thinking of what would happen to you.  What if you were just a baby every time they restarted you.  What if you didn’t know anything at all.  Then how would you protect yourself?”
 
“I did okay,” he says.  “I think.  I don’t remember everything.”
 
“I live on my own now,” she says.  “Well, with my girlfriend.  Will you come back with me?  We would love to have you.”
 
The first thing he does is turn to look at Rhett, who is standing in a thicket of trees at the edge of a soccer field, gazing up at the sky.  “I can’t,” he says.  
 
“Of course,” she says.  “I understand.  You’ve found a new master.”
 
“No,” Link says, looking back at her.  “He’s not my master.  I have no master.”
 
“Then...what?” she asks.  She looks over at Rhett, too.
 
He says, “I have a friend.”

***

They get up and take a walk around a little pond, watch the lily pads lilting on the surface of the green water.  
 
“I thought they erased you,” she says.
 
“They did.”
 
“Then how do you remember?”
 
“Rhett thinks it’s because I loved you,” Link says.  “That it wrote something into my programming permanently.  I think that’s kind of silly.”
 
“Why do you think it’s silly?” she asks.
 
He looks over at her.  “Do you think androids can love?”
 
“Yeah, Link,” she says.  She stops walking.  “I think they can.  I think you do.  And I don’t think it’s silly.  Love changes people.”
 
“People,” Link says.
 
“And maybe androids.”
 
“I don’t follow all my directions anymore,” he says.  “I kept getting returned.  I don’t think anyone wants an android who loves.”
 
Stephanie stares at him for a moment, head cocked to one side.  Then she reaches out, takes his face in both hands.  “Love is good,” she says.
 
“It is a beautiful thing,” Link says.
 
She swallows hard, and then her voice comes out as a whisper: “You remember all of it?”
 
“Yes,” Link says.
 
She hugs him hard, and her head finds its old spot in the crook of his neck.  He feels her breathing against him.  
 
After a moment, she pulls away, wipes her eyes.  “I didn’t follow directions when I fell in love either.  I didn’t listen when my parents told me not to look for you.”  Then she laughs.  “I bet they wished they could return me sometimes.”
 
“But people expect people to love,” he says.  “I wasn’t programmed to do this.”
 
She loops her arm through his, and starts walking again.  “I’m glad you had it in you,” she says.  “Wherever it came from.  And people do want an android who loves.  Rhett certainly wants you.  He did all this work so you could remember who you are.”
 
“Who am I?” Link asks.
 
She turns and looks into his eyes.  “You are a beautiful person, Link.  You have no idea how much you did for me, how much I hung on to everything you told me, even after you were gone.  You were always there for me.  You always made me feel safe, even when I was a brat.”
 
“I was programmed to protect you,” Link says.
 
“You were programmed to follow the rules,” she says.  “I’ve met other people who had androids growing up.  They only did what they were supposed to.  They weren’t like you.”
 
“What were they like?”
 
“They were nice,” she offers.  “I’ve met some of them.  People’s parents still have them, the old models.  But when I would tell people about you making daisy chains for me, or letting me talk my head off after soccer practice, or you lighting up my room when I was afraid of the dark?  They’re like, ‘What are you talking about?  My android never did that.’”  She clutches his arm tighter.  “In college, when we visited my friends’ parents, I would sneak off to talk to their androids.  I kept hoping it would be like it was with you.  Like I said, they were nice, but...”  She trails off.  “There is nobody else in the world like you, Link.”
 
Link laughs.  “Well, that I can believe.”
 
"You know what other androids do when there's a conflict between the rules they're supposed to follow?” she asks.  “They shut down."
 
"What?"
 
"It happens all the time.  They just shut down.  And you restart them.  They don't make a choice.  They don't figure out what's important.  They just can't do it."
 
“You should get another android,” Link says.  “I bet the new models are better.”
 
"No.”  She shakes her head.  “They think even less.  And they're all registered with the government now.  They'll tell the agencies if you're gay.  We can't have any new androids at our house."
 
“Oh,” he says.  
 
“Anyway,” she says, laying a hand against his face again.  “I don’t want another android.  I didn’t miss robots.  I missed you.”
 

***

 
They finish the loop around the pond in silence, arm in arm, begin the walk back to where Rhett is standing, still in the trees.
 
“It wasn’t fair for me to ask you to come live with me,” Stephanie says.
 
“What do you mean?” Link asks.
 
“I was still thinking of you as something that belonged to me,” she says.  “But you’re right, you belong to yourself now.  I never should have treated you like you belonged to me.”
 
“I was supposed to belong to you,” Link says.  
 
The green leaves rustle above them, the sounds of children playing back on the playground.  Rhett is growing closer and closer as they walk.  “Do you think you would have loved me if you weren’t bought for me?” she asks.
 
“Yeah,” Link says.  “Because you loved me.”
 
She slows her walk, looks ahead at Rhett and asks, “Does he love you?”
 
“I don’t know,” Link says.  “How do people know?”
 
She laughs.  “I don’t think I have an answer for that, actually.  Sometimes you just know.  Sometimes you don’t know, but you think you do.  Or you hope you do.”
 
They stand in silence for a while.  
 
“Do you hope he loves you?” she asks.
 
Link doesn’t say anything.
 
“Do you think you love him?” she asks.  And then: “It might feel different from how you loved me.  It might be like a friend, or like something else.”
 
Link looks over at Rhett, across the field.
 
“Okay, listen, though,” she says, clasping both his hands in hers.  “You don’t have to love someone just because they love you.  You can leave if you want to.  If you need to.  If you ever don’t feel safe.  You can always come stay with me.”
 
“You don’t have to worry about that,” he says, shaking his head.  “I am safe with him.  I know I am.”
 
She nods.  “Okay.  Good.  That’s how it should be.”  And then: “I guess I should let you go.”
 
“What?” Link asks.  “Why?”
 
She tilts her head toward Rhett.  “It’s ninety degrees out, and he’s the hairiest person I’ve ever seen.”  She smiles.  “He’s been standing on that soccer field for an hour.  Unless you want him to die of heat stroke, you should probably get him home.”
 
Link laughs.  
 
“Promise me we’ll meet up again?”
 
Link nods.  “Definitely.  Of course.”
 
“Oh,” she says then, “I almost forgot.”  She reaches into her back pocket, and pulls out a pair of glasses.  “These belong to you.  I kept them, just in case.”  She holds them out, little black-and-brown frames he can vaguely remember he used to wear.
 
“Thank you,” he says, taking them into his palms.  And then: “These look so stupid.”
 
She laughs.  “Yeah,” she says, “They don’t seem like your style anymore.”
 
He holds out his arm and she takes it, walking with him the rest of the way, her head on his shoulder, his elbow tight against her side, until they get to Rhett.
 

***

 
In the truck on the way home, after all the goodbyes are said, after all the hugs are given, Rhett glances over at Link.  “So it went well?” he asks
 
“Yeah,” Link says.  “It went really well.”
 
“Did you find everything you were looking for?” Rhett asks.
 
Link watches the green trees go by on the side of the road, the sunshine having broken through the clouds, the air warm and smelling like fresh rain on fresh earth.  He’s chewing a fresh piece of strawberry bubblegum, the windows are down, and there’s music on the radio.  Tendrils of Rhett’s curls slip out of his bun and whip in the breeze.  Tonight they’ll sit on the living room floor and listen to records, and maybe sing along.
 
“Not everything,” Link says, “but close.”
 
Then he reaches across the center console and takes Rhett’s hand, weaving his fingers through Rhett’s, and squeezes.  Rhett squeezes back.

 

Notes:

Big thanks to @incaseyoufic, @jewelofdenial, and @writer_finder for the first draft reads.

This one is once again based on the "best friend haul" from the Mythical TikTok.

And for anyone following "Only Fans," I put it aside for a while I because I was uncomfortable working on a non-AU during the LA fires and their immediate aftermath, especially when the initial timeline of the story called for some of it to take place in January 2025. But it is still in progress. Thank you for your patience.