The electrical wiring of Kara54’s nerves sizzled as she stood outside the door, the echoes of the doorbell ringing in her ears. Would they like her? Would she function properly? She fingered the USB port at her side and tried to tell herself that her manufacturers had made her without a glitch, that she came from a top-of-the-line assembly belt, born from the guts of another machine. Her skin, though artificially grafted, was pure shadow and shade, her wiry hair braided in tight cornrows. They’d even given her blue eyes so she wouldn’t scare her new family. Underneath it all though, she was just gears, spools and bits of plasma.
Still, a part of her hoped for some semblance of love, the kind that smelled like chocolate chip cookies and hugs; the type she’d seen in glimpses on a handheld screen her handler let her watch.
The door opened a crack, the dark-almond eyes of a seven-year-old gazing up at her. She looked more like a doll than Kara54 was, with jet-black hair and a flowing blue dress. Her right knee was bright red and her lip was split. A trickle of blood stained her deeply tanned face. Kara54’s handler placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Mommy,” the girl called behind her. “It’s here.”
Kara54 blinked. She looked like a girl, didn’t she? She tugged at her hair, wondering what it was that made her look less than human. Kara54 swallowed, the motors inside her body working to mimic the movement.
“Oh fantastic, so glad it’s here!” the woman before them said. She looked like a larger version of the child, nearly clone-like, and Kara54 wondered how something so natural could appear so artificial.
“You’ve come just in time,” the mother addressed Kara54’s handler. “Tanya had quite the spill this morning, a traumatic fall down a flight of stairs. She needs to store the memory and forget it. Don’t want her being afraid of heights in the future, do we?”
The handler shifted uncomfortably behind her, and Kara54 wanted to turn and wrap her arms around the handler’s waist. At the plant, the handler took pity on Kara54, placing electric self-healing Band-Aids over her torn skin and had given her chicken soup-flavored software when virus 29 infected her bunks. She’d spent her entire life off of the assembly line in the handler’s care.
“I’ll have you sign here and here,” Kara54’s handler told the mother, gesturing to the form. The handler did not look down to meet Kara54’s robotic eyes as her adapted mother signed the adaption papers.
The mother nodded and scribbled on the paper. “Is that all?” she asked, impatiently, wanting to help Tanya get rid of the trauma she had suffered.
The handler hesitated on the house’s front porch and then crouched down beside Kara54.
“It’ll be okay. The Worthys will take care of you, Kara. I promise.”
Even though Kara54 loved it when her handler used the human part of her name, there was despair in her words. She detected the lie, small and tight, at the back end of her handler’s sentence. She squeezed Kara54 once, hard, released and then turned from her.
For a moment, Kara54 felt the overwhelming, unidentifiable impulse to just run after her handler, sprint down the stairs to her hovercraft and ask her to be her adapted mother. But that wasn’t how Kara54’s life worked. The handler had no child and no need for a storage robot as Kara54 was often categorized. And Kara54 was not supposed to feel anything like attachment, anything that could compel her to chase after her handler.
So why did she?
It took a single, quick-body shiver to shake it off. She didn’t have enough time to process or analyze the strange emotional feedback as her adapted mother motioned for her to enter. Strangely, Mrs. Worthy never met her eyes, always seemed to be looking above her head somewhere.
“Come in, come in,” Mrs. Worthy said and shut the door with a quick auto click. The place smelled, strangely enough, of dust and pollen even though there weren’t any open windows. “Did you come with an instruction manual?” she mused absently.
“No,” Kara54 said. “I’ve been preprogrammed to tell you what you need to know.”
“All right,” Mrs. Worthy said as she wiped her hands on the pants of her regulation suit and tugged at her ponytail. Mrs. Worthy motioned for Tanya to step forward. The girl jutted out her split lip, hands on her hips. Kara54 had never seen anyone look so defiant, so brave.
“What does she need to do?” Mrs. Worthy asked.
Kara54 turned to the girl before her. If Kara54 had been human, she would have been a good five years older than Tanya, nearly 12. She’d never felt like a child before and neither had any of her fellow adaption bots.
“I want you to remember what just happened, your fall down the stairs,” she said slowly. She could see Mrs. Worthy’s hands tensing at her sides just behind Tanya. Kara54 then closed her eyes, the handprint locators on her arm opening to receive the little child’s memory.
“Put your hands on my arms,” she instructed. “I’ll do the rest.”
There was a half a beat between when the locators powered up with a low thrum and the moment where they reached out toward Tanya to accept her pain. Even though Kara54 made the motion with expertise, she had never had a live test before.
Kara54 was ultimately unprepared for what happened next.
....to be continued in the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide!
*********
Of USBs and Fingerprints is a story from the Young Explorer's Adventure Guide, an anthology of science fiction stories for middle graders. We've got a great collection of 20 stories from amazing authors, ranging from Nebula and Hugo winners to relative newcomers to the field. 90% of the stories in the anthology are brand new, and 80% have central female characters. We don't have girls who are prizes to be won or waiting to be rescued. All of our heroines and heroes are on their own adventure, not a side note in someone else's. Our characters are white, black, asian, latino. Human and robot. Everyone belongs here.
To read more, check out our Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/815743020/young-explorers-adventure-guide-sf-for-young-reade
