A/N: The prompt for this challenge was to write a retelling of a classic story, adding zombies, in under 1500 words, in any genre. From the list, I selected Anne of Green Gables. The genre I selected is fanfic crossover. I'm placing Anne in the universe of the Murderbot series by Martha Wells; if you're not familiar with it, think snarky, jaded noir in space, told from the POV of a bot/human construct.
Intrepid Galactic Explorer
"May I sit here, please?" asked a small human with bright red hair.
I was sitting near the back of the land transit, the best place for monitoring the other passengers and not being stared at by said passengers. I tapped the security feed from the station's waiting room, checking this human's recent behavior. She — I'd checked her public profile: name Ann Shirley, pronouns she/her — had spent half her time there silently staring out a window, and the other half talking nonstop.
At least she didn't seem to require others to respond very often. So I nodded my agreement for her to take the seat beside me.
I'm not good at guessing the ages of humans, and I knew better than to assume this one was a child simply because she was shorter than average. I pinged ART, an artificially intelligent, completely annoying bot pilot who was orbiting the planet and was more familiar with young humans. It confirmed I was dealing with a child.
It also stayed in my feed, because ART likes watching me attempt to interact with humans, almost as much as it likes critiquing my performance. And yes, that has improved my performance. No, I'm not going to admit that to ART.
The point is, I've gotten better at interacting with humans, but children are still a challenge. That's because I'm a bot/human construct. Before the company built me and put me to work as a SecUnit, my cloned human components had matured to a standard adult size. So I can't relate to the concept of childhood.
"My name's Ann," the child said after she sat down, "spelled without an E. I know it's supposed to sound alike either way, but there's an old folktale about a red-headed orphan named Annie, and it gets so tiresome when people compare me to her, and Anne-with-an-E makes people think Annie, and then they say Annie, and it's become a lifelong sorrow for me. So I'm Ann-without-an-E. It has an elegant simplicity, don't you think?"
ART chimed into my feed with the results of a search on the parameters Ann had described — as if I weren't capable of running my own searches — and provided both a plot summary and a set of media regarding a Little Orphan Annie that I filed away for future viewing.
As much as I did not want to engage in conversation with a stranger, ART insisted, so I asked, "Why are you leaving NovaSkosha?"
"Weeellll..." She drew out the word. "The orphan asylum is overcrowded because of all the zombie attacks, and there's a woman who offered to take me on as her assistant. I'm supposed to meet her at Avonly. She didn't provide many details, but Avonly is a spaceport. I like to think that she's a starship captain, because there's so much more scope for imagination on a ship than if you're planet-bound. I'd love to see a nebula! Have you ever seen a nebula? They sound like the most exquisite thing ever. I feel like once I've seen a nebula, I could truly realize my dream of being an intrepid galactic explorer, like the ones on Sanctuary Moon."
Fortunately I'm good at multitasking, because while I was listening to Ann I was also scanning the public data feeds and getting additional information from ART. I read about the zombie attacks, and spent 1.4 seconds being horrified. I learned what a nebula is, confirming I'd never seen one. ART updated its itinerary to include a nebula. But it was the reference to Sanctuary Moon that caused me to pause much of my secondary processes.
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