She turned her sensor toward the ship’s paneling that had only two screws still fastening it to the hull, then glanced at her brethren beside her. They all had at least three panels already taken down.
This was very odd. Not only her strange fascination with the humans, but that it could overpower her need to complete her task. Perhaps something really was wrong with her.
Yes, she would have to check in with maintenance after this shift.
Then, as she was removing her first panel, someone yelled. Mech6.0 turned in time to see one of the enormous cranes tilt beneath a too-heavy load, its outstretched arm swaying dangerously for a moment that stretched out for ages, before it found the tipping point. The enormous metal arm careened toward the suspended platforms, as bolts snapped and cables whipped into the air.
Still on the hanging walkway, Miko screamed.
Dataran pushed her out of the way.
The arm of the crane cracked against his head, the sound reverberating right into Mech6.0’s hard plastic shell. He was unconscious before his body fell into the oil vat below.
Miko screamed again, clinging to the walkway railing. The crane landed hard and one of the cables flew loose from the ceiling. The platform tilted to one side, but the remaining cables held.
Mech6.0 did not take the time to process the situation or calculate the best course of action—she was already rolling toward the containers. Around her, people yelled and machinery screeched and halted, footsteps thundered, and the rickety walkway trembled overhead. Someone called for a ladder or a rope, but Mech6.0 already had her magnets activated to collect the panel screws and with single-minded precision, she found herself climbing the side of the enormous tank, her grippers spread out against its metal sides, heaving her body upward. It was an awkward climb, one her body was not made for. Her treads banged against the tank and her arms flailed for every purchase. Her joints strained under her weight. But then she was hauling herself up onto the ledge that was just barely wide enough for her to stand on.
The vat of oil was black as the night sky without stars. Black and terrifying.
Mech6.0 tipped herself over and went in.
She sank fast, and though she immediately turned her sensor light on to full brightness, it did little to help her. Extending her arms as far as they would go, she searched the bottom of the tank, knowing that he was here somewhere, he was here, he was—
Here.
She tightened her grippers and dragged her body toward him through the thick oil. It was seeping through her paneling now, blocking her input plugs, glugging into the charging inlet. But she had him.
She wrapped her arms around his torso and heaved him upward. He was heavier than she expected and it occurred to her that the bolts connecting her arms to their sockets may not hold, but she kept going. Finding the tank’s wall, she planted her prongs against the side again and started to climb. There was no light anymore, no senses at all but the sound of her grippers and the tread bumping into the wall and the pressure of his body pressing down onto her as she forced both of them up, up, up…
They broke through the surface. Sound crashed into her, more screams and gasps. Then someone was lifting his weight away and Mech6.0 barely managed to collapse sensor-faced down onto the tank’s ledge before her programming recognized self-destructive behavior and killed the power to her limbs.
She laid there, hollow and helpless, as the oil dripped off her sensor. She began to make out human shapes on the platform and her audio picked up on a discussion of towels and air passageways and lungs and blood on his head and it seemed to take so very long, the oil dulling all her senses, but then he was coughing and vomiting and breathing and the humans were rejoicing and when they had finally wiped enough oil from his face that it was safe for him to open his eyes, Dataran looked around at all the humans first. And then, for the very first time, he looked at her.
Chapter 3
Dataran had been taken away to a hospital and Mech6.0 was in the android maintenance office, her limbs being rubbed clean—or as clean as possible—by a man in green coveralls who kept shaking his head.
“These won’t be salvageable either,” he said, clicking his tongue as he inspected her input plugs. He wasn’t doing a particularly good job of cleaning her, Mech6.0 thought, and she was feeling more sluggish and drained by the minute.
It began to occur to her that maybe she couldn’t be fixed. That maybe he wouldn’t even try.
Sighing, the man spun around on his rolling chair so he could enter something into a netscreen on the wall. Mech6.0 glanced down at her body, her joints and the seams of her paneling stained brownish-black from the oil. At least her vision was clear again, and her processor seemed to be working, if slower than usual.
She was surprised to see a collection of screws still clinging to her side from when she’d been removing the panel from the Orion Classic. She reached her grippers toward them, glad to see that her sensor-gripper coordination was functional as she plucked them off one by one and set them onto the mechanic’s table. She reached for the final screw and tugged.
Then paused. Then tugged some more. It was not a screw at all, but the link of a chain that had wrapped around to her back. She gave the chain a yank and whatever had magnetically sealed itself to her came lose. She found herself staring at a locket, which she suspected would have been gold if it hadn’t been blackened by the oil.
Her memory saw Dataran tucking a chain back into his pocket.
This belonged to him.
The mechanic spun back toward her and she hid the locket behind her back. He was eying her suspiciously and shaking his head again when the office door opened and the shipyard’s owner came strolling in.
“Well?”
The mechanic shook his head. “Its body is ruined. I could spend a couple weeks trying to clean it up, but I frankly don’t see the point. Better off just getting a new one.”
Tam frowned as he looked the android up and down. “What about the processor, the wiring … can it be salvaged?”
“There will probably be some parts we can hold onto for later use. I’ll start to dismantle it tomorrow, see what we’ve got. But as for the processor and personality chip… that much must have been fritzing even before the oil.”
“Why do you say that?”
The mechanic brushed his sleeve across his damp forehead. “You saw how all the other androids reacted when Dataran fell in?”
“I don’t think they did anything.”