AU

1. Robot!

"Your circuits are pretty fried back here, Caleb. Did'ya know that?"

"No, I didn't. Do you know what might have caused it?" The robot with fried circuits in question asked back. 'Caleb' was a Mark XI American Cleaning and Maintenance robot, sent for repairs after a recent breakdown. 

"Well, I can't say for sure. Has anything big happened recently?" The mechanic asked again. She looked up from his open back-plate to wipe some grease from her face. 

"Nothing much."

"Oh, is that right? Odd, usually these kind of burns are caused by something big. I must be wrong. Well, I'll fix you right up either way. Might take a while though, you've done a nice number here. I'll be back in a sec," she said, stalking out of the room in her heels. Caleb never knew what to do when he had to hold a conversation. Unfortunately for him, C&M robots were never fitted with great social chips.

"Okay, I'm back. Are you okay? You look pale for a robot," she joked as she carried in a box of miscellaneous parts. Caleb had no clue how any of the parts worked. 

"I'm fine, thank you, Miss..."

"Oh, call me Alyssa. Are you sure you're fine?" She re-positioned herself in her seat behind Caleb again.

"Certain."

"Not the talker, huh? That's fine," she said, before a moment later following up with, "So why'd you break down?"

"I don't know," Caleb replied.

"Judging by your state, I would say something based on interaction. Does that sound about right?" Caleb didn't have an answer for that, so there was a long and rather uncomfortable silence before Alyssa broke in again. "So, cleaning and maintenance. Do you meet many feminine droids that way?"

"Not many..." Replied Caleb, shifting around a bit.

"Stay still! You don't want me to mess something up, do you?" 

"Is there any way you could shut me down for this?"

"No way. Otherwise, I could completely terminate you accidentally and we wouldn't know until too late." Caleb huffed and folded his metal arms as Alyssa tickled his insides.

"So you're absolutely certain there was no one at all?" She asked again, ever hopeful.

"Yes. Very." Alyssa removed her hands from Caleb's back. 

"Honey, listen. I can chat all night if I have to. Who is she? Or he?"

Caleb sighed. "She was called Mandy." 

Alyssa squealed and grinned in delight. "Brilliant! Tell me everything!"

"Everything?" Caleb asked incredulously.

"Everything."

"Start from the beginning?"

"The very beginning."

"Um, okay. It was two months, one week and four days ago today. I was, uh, working late at the City Convention Centre, where I clean after exhibitions."

And so he had been. Caleb always stayed back to make sure the floors were explicitly clean and the walls with not a hand print on them, and that day exactly two months, one week and four days ago had been no different to start with. A well-respected company all the way from Australia had hired out the area to showcase new sports models on that particular night. Caleb was busy cleaning a juice stain from the carpet when a whirring buzzed through the halls and a feline contraption leapt passed him. A resounding "Tallahassee!" bounced off the walls. Caleb didn't look up, as people were always yelling about patriotism and he really did have to clean that stain from the floor. People usually didn't run into him though.