Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world—to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation.

— Mary Oliver

Minnie was six when she first saw the pantomime. Dad wasn’t drinking at the time so he got some pennies together and took her, and Mum went with them because her cough wasn’t too bad yet. The show was Cinderella.

Minnie had never imagined anything so beautiful could exist. Not even stories of heaven and angels could compare to prancing white horses, a glittering pumpkin carriage and the beautiful fairy godmother who made Cinderella’s sorry rags into a sweeping ball gown. She sat on the edge of her bench for the whole show, tears shining in her eyes, and nearly forgot how to breathe.

They didn’t go the next year. Mum died in the summer and Dad went back to the bottle, so Minnie spent as much of her time away from Dad as she could. The streets were not so dangerous if you ran in a group, and Minnie learned to be quick. She got longer and leaner, she ate what she could where she found it, and she survived.

In August she saw the playbill for Santa Claus and remembered her raptures at Cinderella. But money for a seat was out of the question, and though she tried seventeen times to sneak in different ways, she was always caught and flung out before the curtain went up. After a certain point they got to know her face and there was no hope for it after that.

Her friend Bess went to see it. Bess was friends with older boys who gave her special gifts and one of them bought her admission, so Minnie made Bess tell her everything she could remember. Bess gave it her all, but something about her recount lacked the poetry Minnie was sure the show must deserve. She resolved that when the next season began, she would find a way in.

It didn’t come the way she had expected. Instead of a ticket or money, a man in a round hat and fat mustache came down their road, knocking at every door and making it known that they wanted children to audition for roles in the pantomime.

“What’s an audition?” Minnie wondered, and one of the older children from their group, who’d done the chorus last year and made a fat sixpence per day for her trouble, explained the whole arrangement in very businesslike terms.

“You mean, you get to be in the show?” Minnie gasped. Could ordinary people be in the pantomime? It hardly seemed possible. And to be paid for such a privilege seemed beyond imagination.

Scarcely daring to hope, she went along with the other children to the Lyceum theatre, and joined the group audition for the chorus.

She got it. She hadn’t really believed she could, but when they asked her if she would like to be in the show, she had smiled. The fat man with the round hat had rocked back on his heels at the sight and stuck a cigar in his mouth. It was like he wasn’t sure what to say, so he wanted an excuse not to say anything at all.

“Well,” said the thin man who ran things with him, “that’s fine, then. Rehearsals start tomorrow. Don’t be late.”

She was never late. Not once in the four years she worked there was she late. She was among the first to arrive, the last to leave, and she did exactly as she was told without hesitation or question.

That’s how she got to work with the aerial crew. They needed children who were slight enough to fly on the wires and could be trusted to take direction. Minnie had already demonstrated unquestioning obedience out of love for her job. Spindly and spare at almost twelve years old, she was the obvious choice.

It was like being next to heaven, swinging through the air at the end of a wire. During one rehearsal she slipped her hair loose on purpose and let it lift and billow around her face like a cloud. The ground below and all the problems on it might as well have belonged to another little girl entirely. She put her arms out just as they taught her, swooped through the air and imagined she was flying away to another world.

It was the happiest she had ever been.

It was the happiest she would ever be.

It’s bad luck to whistle in the theatre. Any actor at the Lyceum would have told you that isn’t superstition; it’s fact. All the cues come as whistles, so if anyone gives a whistle at the wrong time the cues get bungled, traps come open at the wrong moment and people get hurt.

Or worse.

That’s what happened the night of their first performance. Either somebody whistled for fun when he shouldn’t have, or maybe someone just gave the whistle too soon. Minnie heard it but thought nothing of it and neither did the man at the other end of the rope. He thought it was his cue. With strong, steady heaves, he hoisted her off the ground and up into the rafters before they could check the harness points.

She flew through the air like a bird on the wing. When the harness let go, for a moment even that was like flying.

She didn’t feel the fall.

Minerva Bannerman got a wooden cross on an empty grave.

Nikola Tesla got her mind.

He cupped it in the palm of his hand like a rare jewel, the culmination of a notion he’d had years before. What was the mind, after all, if not a sort of circuit? He’d perfected the creation of a vessel to contain it and tonight marked his first and only effort to put the thought into deed. He stood with another man and both of them bowed their heads over the small, flickering orb.

“You’re sure you got it right, Tesla?” the other man wondered.

“Why, Mr. Edison,” said Tesla, “what is it to you if the neurosphere functions? Do you hope to get a patent on it?”

Edison looked like he might want to draw back a fist and plant it on Tesla’s jaw. He got himself under control with a tug at his cravat and a scowl.

“It seems unlikely, that’s all. Resurrection machines and such.”

“If that is how you see it, then yes. It is most unlikely.” Tesla cradled the neurosphere tenderly and traced his fingers over the smooth, gunmetal surface. “There will be no true resurrection. Her body is gone. Only this remains.”

“So she’s in there? She can hear all this? Us?”

“No. She has no means of receiving the information.”

“So, you’ll be giving her ears, I expect.” Edison leaned in closer for a second look at the thing. A faint gleam lit his eyes. “Body to go with it? Her folks would be pleased.”

Tesla shrugged. If his casual dismissal of the question was maybe a little too studied, Edison either did not notice or else did not care to remark on it.

“Her father sought me out when he heard of my need. I had advertised in his neighbourhood because I thought maybe I would find the body of a young man or woman killed in an accident, but Mr. Bannerman was willing to sell me the body of his child not two days dead. I do not think he would care if I gave her a body again, even if I could.”

“What do you mean, ‘if you could’?”

“The means available to us are too crude. The body she would wake in would not be as she remembered. It would be cruel to give her memory of what she was and no ability to regain it.”

“So what, you’re going to . . . hang onto her? Like that?”

“For now.” Tesla held the neurosphere up to the light. “Until something better can be done.”

Edison muttered under his breath. The phrase might have been an indictment of the other man’s character or it might have been something a little earthier. In any event Tesla gave no sign of having heard. He turned the neurosphere so it caught the light and gave the impression of a strong, quiet current flickering just below the surface.

“Someday, I think we will be equal to the task of recreating what she lost.”

Someday did come, but not for many decades. The technology that Tesla had hoped for did not appear until after his death. Oh there were robots, to be sure. The Icarus line seemed especially promising until one cluster of fifty units revolted in the 1920s, too temperamental to be stable. The resulting fallout was on such a scale that Plus Ultra adopted more cautious research policies and protocols afterward, and the steady hive mind of the Faustus units soothed everyone’s anxieties to the point of stagnation for almost a decade.

Henry changed that.

Henry was the thing Tesla had refused to create in Minerva, the mind of a child in a body that would never match. The pairing of boy’s mind to man-like machine did exactly to Henry what Tesla had imagined it could do to Minerva, and nearly cost Plus Ultra everything.

But Henry was better than the man who had made him. He saw what he had done and found a way to make it right. He designed the Janus units who helped him build Tomorrowland, and he built into them exactly the kind of technology that Tesla had imagined might come to pass. The Janus line could think, remember, reason and even move in the manner of humans. They looked like them, too.

Henry did not know about Minerva, or Tesla’s resolution to put her into something like the Janus unit. He would have destroyed the neurosphere if he had known. But the neurosphere stayed with Tesla during that time, travelling from office to office with the rest of the files and furniture, often a scant half-step ahead of his creditors. When Tesla signed over Wardenclyffe Tower to settle his debts at the Waldorff-Astoria, he made sure to fetch Minerva out of the tower first.

He never spoke to her—he saved all his tender reminiscences for the pigeons—but he also made sure he did not lose her. If he entertained the notion that a body might be built, he did not do so actively. It seemed they were some years away from the kind of technology that could faithfully recreate the full range of motion, emotion and experience that should by rights have been Minerva Bannerman’s.

Henry’s construction of the Janus line would have been the answer to that but Tesla never knew about them. They were not discovered until after the war.

Neither was Minerva immediately discovered. At the time of Tesla’s death, with the world in chaos, it was all Plus Ultra could do to hastily assemble and store his possessions without anything more than a cursory examination. So the box sat on a shelf in storage, dusty dark velvet with a grey ball and neat white card inside. On the card, in Tesla’s sloping hand, was printed:

Minerva Bannerman. d. 1899, age 12.
Earthly consciousness and collective memories contained herein.
To be held until called for.

The box was unopened until 1956, when one of Plus Ultra’s up-and-coming scientists was looking for the means to distinguish himself.

If Dr. David Nix had been a religious man, he’d have called it an answer to a prayer.

Log A: January, 1957

I think I work

I think I

I think . . .

No amount of decoration could make a hospital room look like a child’s bedroom, so nobody bothered. The room was cold and sterile but its inhabitant gave no sign of disappointment in her surroundings. She stood in the middle of the floor, unnaturally still, and waited for her guests to speak first.

“Well good morning, young lady.” Dr. Nix clasped his hands behind his back and tried to look jovial. The effort failed, but the young lady in question gave no sign of disappointment.

“Good morning, Dr. Nix.”

Her gaze flicked over his shoulder to the collection of solemn faces in the doorway. They did not even make an effort to appear jovial.

“Who are your friends?”

“These are my colleagues,” he corrected. “Do you know what colleagues are, Athena?”

Athena put her head to one side and considered the question. At least, she appeared to consider the question. In reality she had already located the definition of the word, translated it into a childish colloquialism and was now only giving a carefully calculated impression of sober reflection.

“They are people who work with you.”

“Yes, very good. All of these fine people work with me, and today they are here to meet you. Do you know why?”

She did. The data was already present within her, uploaded by Dr. Nix himself. She accessed it, synthesized the information, and gave him the answer he was looking for.

“They would like to see if you have truly created a new line of Audio-Animatronic. They are concerned I am merely an enhanced but ultimately derivative product modelled on the successful Janus line.”

“That is correct.”

“And how am I to prove that this is not the case?”

“Well, gentlemen?” Dr. Nix turned a thin, triumphant smile on the visitors. “Can you explain to the little girl how she can persuade you that she is unique?”

The man foremost in the group cleared his throat, consulted a clipboard, and looked Athena in the eye.

“The Janus line were constructed for a specific purpose. Are you acquainted with their reason for being?”

Athena nodded. “They built and maintain Tomorrowland.”

“And what is Tomorrowland?”

Athena’s face lit up with a smile that was pure child-on-Christmas-morning. A murmur ran through the group of scientists.

“Oh,” she said, “it’s the most wonderful place. It’s meant for special people. People who have the imagination and the tenacity to really make a difference.” She favoured the whole group with a special, sparkly smile. “People like you.”

A second scientist leaned forward and murmured something to the first. He nodded and made a note on his clipboard.

“Yes. Well. What would you say your purpose is, er—Athena?”

“I am designed to find those people. Dr. Nix feels that an Audio-Animatronic of my stature and appearance will allow for readier approach of a wider range of candidates. I am equipped with search parameters intended to facilitate recruitment of the best and most likely candidates, without the tedium of a pencil-and-paper test. I can evaluate based on eighty-six unique preliminary criteria, and further refine my analysis until a conclusive result is obtained.”

“And then?” prompted a third scientist.

“And then I extend the invitation.”

A second murmur rippled through the group, this one less favourable than the last. Dr. Nix cleared his throat quickly.

“Athena,” he said, “I would ask you to consult the recruitment protocols I reinstalled this morning.”

Athena frowned.

“Athena,” Dr. Nix said sternly. “Now, if you please.”

She sighed. The sound was that of an irritated little girl and not at all like existing interactions programmed into the Janus line.

“Dr. Nix prefers that all recruits be evaluated first by two different, established persons of recognised credibility within Tomorrowland’s research and resettlement divisions prior to an invitation being issued.”

“Then why did you not simply say so?”

Athena glanced at Dr. Nix, betraying her first flicker of uncertainty. “I’m afraid I am not programmed for a response to this question.”

“Well then go on,” he said, gesturing at the visitors. “Make one up.”

She looked back at the waiting evaluators, and found that she did know the answer, after all.

“I think that’s a waste of time. If the search parameters I have been given are sound—and all preliminary analyses indicate they are—then why should I waste time waiting to be told what I already know is true? It seems redundant.”

Athena’s part in the interview ended after that. The group withdrew to the corridor and spoke at length with her creator, leaving Athena to her own devices.

She did not eavesdrop, because according to the definition and examples she possessed, eavesdropping meant intentional listening to a private conversation without the awareness of the participants. Athena reasoned that she only had, and employed, the ability to overhear a conversation on the other side of the door. Since all of those conversing had viewed her schematics, which accurately represented this ability, she could not be said to be eavesdropping.

That was a relief, since her protocols made it clear eavesdropping was prohibited.

“I’m not convinced.” That was the first scientist. “She is younger in appearance than a Janus model, certainly, and a few of her mannerisms are reminiscent of a child. But how pervasive is the change, when all is said and done?”

“It is more than superficial, I assure you,” Dr. Nix said firmly. “If anything . . .” he hesitated.

“Yes,” another voice piped in. “She didn’t seem to obey as readily as would be usual in one of our existing lines. And her answer to the final question . . . if a human child spoke that way, I’d call her impertinent.”

“She’s not human though, is she,” yet another pointed out. “She’s very much factory-made. I’ve seen the schematics.”

“We’ve all seen the schematics,” huffed the first. “She is almost identical to the Janus line in every physical particular save size, although I think there is a certain irony in the fact that a model half the size has been lavished with sufficient upgrades to make her cost easily five times as much.”

“If you’re going to bring up budget, Larry,” the second voice grumbled, “you can save it for the quarterly meeting. We’re here to determine whether or not the—er—what is it you’d call this model line anyway, Nix?”

“Oh—the Deusa line.”

“Right. We’re here to figure out if the first model in the Deusa line is sufficiently different to the Janus line to warrant promotion of its creator to Chief Technical Innovator. And I for one think she is. Gentlemen?”

“Agreed. It’s not just the look of her, it’s the little things. Mannerisms, expressions . . . even tone of voice. My own daughter cheeks me like that on occasion, and the resemblance is remarkably true to life. Must say, Nix, I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“That is indeed a compliment, Dr. Gregoire, coming from you. I am deeply gratified.”

“I suppose there’s no risk of taking the—er—childlikeness too far, is there? She isn’t going to use any of that top of the line circuitry and upgraded musculature to, say, throw a tantrum in the research lab if she’s up past her bedtime?”

“No, no,” Nix chuckled. “I certainly appreciate your caution, and in fact I share it. Like the Janus line she is equipped with a self-destruct feature, as well as certain override protocols that I may employ in an emergency. I quite agree we can take no extraordinary risks, and I assure you have I taken none with her.”

“Well then. Shall we return to the construction area of the laboratory? I’d like another look at those schematics before we table our final discussion.”

The conversation abated, moving away down the hall with the scientists. Athena, still not eavesdropping, meticulously archived the entirety of their discussion and settled in to analyse.

Log B: January, 1957

I have met the scientists to whose station Dr. Nix aspires. They show every likelihood of finding my design and creation sufficient cause to induct Dr. Nix into their number. I believe this will please him, although I cannot determine the greater implications of this success.

Certain materials used in my construction are not correctly represented on the schematics shown to the scientists. The schematic shows a memory chip which does not match my analysis of my memory function. My memory unit is, in behaviour, less like a computer chip than the central nervous system of humans. Certain data is already archived within it, and although my protocols do not allow me to access this data, certain of my responsive actions seem to owe their origin to whatever protocols this device contains.

Dr. Nix must know my schematics are inaccurate because his was the administrative authority used to prevent my revealing the discrepancy to the other scientists. The protocols he installed are such that I am unable to ask the scientists if his inability to recreate an AA unit exactly like myself would be a barrier to his advancement in their circle.

My programming does not dictate that I fear their discovery of his deception; it merely obliges me not to bring it about.

Athena considered the data on the screen, then shook her head.

“Not that one. He gives up far too easily.”

“Athena,” Nix swiped impatiently at the translucent slide, banishing it to the corner of the screen, “that is Dr. Leonard Abernathy. He is a most accomplished individual and a respected, contributing citizen of Tomorrowland. Are you telling me that your recruitment search parameters do not allow Dr. Abernathy a place in the very society of which he is already a member?”

Athena met his gaze squarely.

“Yes.”

Nix flung up his hands in frustration.

“Do I actually need to update your protocols again? We went through this just last week after you told Dr. Loomis, to his face, that he demonstrated insufficient imagination to head a research committee!”

“Well, he does.”

“Athena! He already heads it. Your job is not to assign productive members of our society to new roles which you think suit their talents better than those they already hold. Your job is to find new, promising candidates for recruitment. People who will make this world better for having been invited into it.”

“But none of those people are here. They’re all out there, aren’t they? In the other place. I can’t possibly recruit here because everyone here has already been recruited. So when you show me their data and ask whether or not I’d recruit them, I don’t understand how to answer you inaccurately.”

“I do not wish you to answer me inaccurately.”

“I think you are mistaken in that. When I answer accurately, you become irate. Can you please ask me instead if they have already been recruited? Then I could say ‘yes’ and you would be pleased.”

“This is not about pleasing me. I only become cross with you because these sessions are intended to test your readiness for your mission. How can I say you are ready for your mission when you persistently indicate you would not recruit many of the top people we have recruited already? Why, you even said you’d reject Thomas Edison, and he was a founding member of Plus Ultra!”

“He used fraud and deception to obtain the labour and innovation of Nikola Tesla. He would not have been a suitable candidate.”

“There, you see? It’s that sort of response that tells me you are not ready for your mission, because I can see you would not perform it properly.”

Athena frowned. “What must I say to persuade you I would perform it properly?”

“You must give me some reason to believe you would make valid choices.”

She considered these parameters carefully, testing the edges of the boundary.

“What you say ‘valid’ are you including as valid the candidates I have said I would reject?”

“Yes, of course I am.”

“You include them because they have already made a contribution to Tomorrowland and the directives of Plus Ultra?”

“Naturally.”

“And because not to include them would imply that your previous standards for recruitment were inadequate for your purposes, or perhaps incorrectly applied.”

“It—well, no, of course not.”

That was untrue. She marked his deception in the acceleration of his pulse, the redirection of his gaze and the increased concentration of sodium chloride on the surface of his skin. In order to preserve the integrity of the dataset she reversed the reply before assimilating it.

A quick analysis of the new data determined how she could achieve her primary objective.

“I understand.”

Dr. Nix’s tone was rather more sarcastic than hopeful when he said “oh do you, now?”

“Yes. You need to obtain a particular set of answers which would give you sufficient confidence in my abilities to warrant initiating the recruitment program. Without those answers, you are reluctant to allow me to begin.”

“Well . . . yes, I suppose.”

“Given my new understanding of the situation, would it perhaps be appropriate to conduct the examination again?”

Nix sighed. Athena perched on the edge of her seat, bright and hopeful.

“Yes, well,” he tapped the screen, voiding the previous data collection, “I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

The examination, uninterrupted by exasperation from the interrogator and argument from the subject, took forty-two minutes to complete.

She passed with flying colours.

Athena’s success with recruiting was generally regarded as mixed. Very much in her favour was the fact that her calculations of each candidate were accurate to the third decimal place, which was not a success rate any other AA unit could approach. Athena claimed this was because they could only consider words and deeds, rather than the implications and motivations of each.

“What do you mean,” Nix had frowned, “the motivations? What motivations are you talking about?”

Athena widened her eyes and pursed her lips, a facial expression she had learned from one of her recent recruits. Katarina Novak, a gregarious young lady with a giggle that set Nix’s teeth on edge, scored in the 99^th percentile for both perception and tenacity on the Feynman-Drummelberg scale and had parents who, though they did not score quite as high, still warranted serious consideration as part of the family unit. Katarina had therefore been allowed to stay on the condition that she never find anything amusing in Nix’s presence, which condition she persistently violated.

Seeing her trademark expression on Athena’s face did nothing to improve Nix’s mood, and he stormed off without realising she hadn’t actually given him an answer.

Truthfully, Athena was not even certain how she was able to understand people’s motivations or the implications behind what they said. Some of the older Janus units could make a limited inference by synthesising data from their long history of personal experience, but nothing close to Athena’s ability to read not only untruths, but also double meanings, entendre and other, less overt forms of communication.

She was in no hurry to share her suspicion that this ability, like certain others, came from her one true secret—the tiny spherical component tucked inside the base of her skull, to which all her other components were wired. She had made a few attempts to discover what it was, but directly accessing its data was not possible and without knowing the name of the device she was hampered in her search.

She suspected the component was responsible for what the scientists considered her failings, too. Athena knew perfectly well when a candidate did not line up with the additional parameters set by Dr. Nix and his colleagues, but something—what in humans was called an impulse—sometimes came over her and seized control of her programming. On those occasions not even Dr. Nix could fully override the new directive.

These impulses most commonly led to the acquisition of recruits, but sometimes they took other forms. On one visit to the other world Athena had discovered ducklings, a beautiful fluffy trail of yellow punctuation tottering in the wake of a proud mother duck. She had run down the hill to the edge of the pond in a desperate effort to catch up with the ducklings before Dr. Nix had been able to find an override protocol that could stop her chasing them.

“At least she didn’t try to recruit them!” one scientist observed, then laughed heartily at his own witticism.

Dr. Nix hadn’t laughed. He didn’t find it funny. Athena knew he didn’t find it funny because he made that clear to her each time she failed to behave as an AA ought and he sequestered her in her containment unit for a lecture. Then would come the barrage of parameter adjustments, upgrades and new protocols. She often put herself in partial shutdown for those, simply because there was never anything really different about them and they became tedious with repetition.

Matters might have continued this way indefinitely, were it not for an unexpected breakthrough in Athena’s investigation of her mystery component.

She had just located a very surprised family on an obscure island nation and spent an agreeable afternoon admiring the innovations they had made in their small shore-fishing business before inviting them back to join her in Tomorrowland. Her recruits found it all a little overwhelming, as new recruits always did, but they took it largely in stride. The same could not be said for Dr. Nix.

“We are not running a student hostel here, Athena! What were you thinking, bringing them back? We cannot even communicate with these people!”

“I could supply translation until you learn the language,” Athena suggested, and was told she had missed the point.

“There is a certain standard we must uphold here,” Dr. Nix explained, in a tone that made it clear he thought he was being marvellously patient. “Standards of learning. Of education. Of—just—standards. I must say, given your origin I would have expected more. The Victorian age was sufficiently backward in its way, but at least they had a proper appreciation for categorisation. I’d thought a Victorian child would surely have some grasp of that issues, but more fool me.”

She lit on this statement with dazzling speed.

“You mean—” she searched for the likeliest meaning in context. “A child of the Victorian era? Where—in your Britain? But I’m not.”

Dr. Nix shifted his feet uncomfortably.

“Well, no . . . at least, as far as your memory goes.”

She processed this quick as human thought, grasping a possible implication in exactly the way no unadulterated AA unit could.

“I know there’s part of me that’s different. Is that the part?”

Dr. Nix looked deeply torn between his irritation at this sidetrack and excitement at the chance to reminisce about how clever he had been. In the end, vanity won out.

“This is strictly administrator-level clearance, you understand,” he warned. “But yes. Instead of an updated Janus memory chip, you were equipped with a truly rare piece of technology. The neurosphere is a one of a kind device, created by Nikola Tesla himself. It’s . . . well, it’s what makes you you.” Then he grimaced, as if only just reminded of the full implication of what it meant to be Athena.

The neurosphere. It finally had a name. Athena immediately launched a background search of all data she already possessed. Meanwhile, Dr. Nix had softened slightly at the thought of Nikola Tesla.

“You know,” he said, “perhaps sending you out on these brief jaunts isn’t the way to do it. Maybe haphazard exploration of the other world has lowered your standards of recruitment. What you need to see over there is a decent environment where you can be exposed to top-quality ideas. Perhaps that will help you understand the difference between the simplistic style of creativity which seems to attract you, and the really complex genius of true innovation. What do you say?”

“Well,” said Athena, “I suppose so.”

“That’s the spirit!” He patted her clumsily on the head. “I’ll arrange it then, shall I? And also, um, see that our recent arrivals have been . . . well. Looked after.”

Then he hustled off to make preparations for the expedition he envisioned, leaving Athena to clasp her newfound knowledge close.

The neurosphere.

Dr. Nix took her to a scientific exposition. The floors were shiny and all the men behind the tables looked a little like Dr. Nix.

Creations and innovations hummed and buzzed in the air, but they didn’t sparkle. They didn’t pulse and leap and live, the way they seemed to when Athena found somebody she knew she had to take on. But she did not reveal her disappointment, because that was not on the list of things she ought to do. Instead she wore the bright, floaty clothes that little girls wore in that world, she walked beside Dr. Nix the way she was supposed to, and she smiled at everyone.

“Stop smiling so much,” Dr. Nix warned her, about one hour into the tour of the exhibit floor. “Ordinary children wouldn’t be that happy to be here.”

Then, five minutes later when a concerned passer-by stopped to ask if the little girl was unwell, he amended the order to “smile on occasion, but not all the time.”

So Athena smiled, occasionally, and continued to keep pace with him. She nodded when nodded to, she said “yes” when he asked if she was keeping a sharp eye out for potential recruits, and all the while reviewed the scant data she’d found on Nikola Tesla’s neurosphere.

He had never officially disclosed its function to the public. Only Plus Ultra seemed to even know of the device, and their cataloging of it was limited to a few aged photographs of a plain, dark sphere and the thin white tag that had been found with it.

The sphere was unremarkable in physical appearance. The tag was of more interest, and she paid particular attention to the words on it; especially the name.

Minerva Bannerman.

She launched a query for that person, but more as a matter of habit than a need to know more. All the information she needed was on the tag and it did not take long to gather those small fragments of information, twisting them around until their shape made sense to her. When it all clicked into place she stopped mid-step and said:

“She’s dead. You put her inside me.”

Dr. Nix stumbled to a rapid halt and whipped around. He was not the only one: Athena had adjusted the volume of her voice to ensure she could be correctly heard over the hubbub of the crowd, six whole strides ahead. In a room that crowded, she had included several people other than Nix in her revelation.

Nix was acutely aware of each of them as he said, with faltering calm, “Athena, I do not think this is the time or the place.”

Normally the idiom would have registered accurately the first time. But with everything still processing, Athena mis-connected the phrase to the data.

“No,” she agreed, “the time was . . . well it was 1899 that she died, but I don’t think you put her mind in me until the late 1950s, is that correct? When you needed an AA unit that would impress your colleagues.”

“Athena.” Dr. Nix was no longer faltering. He looked in deadly earnest. “Athena, be silent.”

“Don’t worry, they don’t know; I know you programmed me to make sure I couldn’t tell any of them the schematics weren’t correct. I haven’t told them. I just didn’t know why I couldn’t, or why the schematics had to be wrong in the first place. But there are rules against it, aren’t there? Because of what happened to Henry. The Janus line know all about Henry. He was a little boy, but the Nazis turned him into a—”

Dr. Nix, now nearly as white as his shirt, choked out the next words in a desperate rush.

“Dr. David Nix, activating administrative clearance for Athena. Initiate countermeasure protocol shut down.”

Athena slumped immediately to the floor, causing the crowd that had gathered around them to gasp and cry out. Dr. Nix scooped her up with awkward haste, offering a tight-lipped grimace he hoped would pass for a smile to all assembled.

“She’s not well,” he explained. “Fever . . . delirium . . . shouldn’t have brought her out so soon, poor . . . child.”

Then he hurried away as fast as his legs and temper could take him.

Log 14: September, 1960

Dr. Nix delivered much information to me in a tone above his usual volume. His heartbeat was accelerated to a level that, if sustained, would be detrimental to his health. He described my conduct yesterday at the exposition as “unsuitable” and “bound to draw attention.” I requested clarification of the word “attention” in this context. He reported that attention meant humans looking at me and thinking I was unusual.

I suggested that from the human perspective, removing the consciousness of a dead child and instating it in the mechanical body of an Advanced Anthropomorphic Audio-Animatronic could rightly be called unusual, and so they would not be incorrect in their assessment of me.

Dr. Nix said the accuracy of their assumption was not the point he was trying to make.

All of this information was delivered at a high volume and rapid speed. Increased blood flow to his face caused it to darken in colour. These are measurable markers of impending violence in certain humans. I did not evaluate a significant risk of violence in Dr. Nix, but I did increase the distance between us by fourteen centimetres. This act had the effect of reducing his volume, though not the colour of his face.

Log 14: September, 1960 [addendum]

Dr. Nix offered an apology for his increased vital signs yesterday. He described his actions in sum as “losing his temper.” When I requested definition of this term, he explained it is a human failing. I described other instances when humans had displayed certain of his behaviours, and he confirmed that these humans had also lost their tempers.

Dr. Nix assures me a temper is not a physical attribute of a human, and that we need not search for his. Apparently they can return on their own.

As a result of my conduct at the exposition, Dr. Nix has suspended my recruitment protocols until further notice. He says this is because I have an indelicate touch with the truth.

I asked if I was programmed that way. He did not answer.

Athena’s recruitment protocols were finally reinstated two months before the 1964 World’s Fair. Construction in Tomorrowland was moving at an accelerated speed, and the minds available were no longer sufficient to keep pace with the demand for fresh ideas. So, with a multitude of caution and many double-checks of her systems, Athena was moved from the classroom where she functioned as a combination model pupil/teaching assistant and informed of her promotion-with-conditions.

She did not betray any significant emotion, which was put down as a credit to the upgrades. She held her hands very still, nodded politely where it would be socially appropriate to do so, and listened to the latest in a long line of cautionary lectures.

“Now you do understand,” Dr. Nix said, “you are not to rush about recklessly inviting people to join us or anything like that. This is strictly a trial mission for you, and your role will be primarily informational. When you sight a promising candidate, you will refer him to the recruitment supervisors—they are Drs. Bright, Nayar and myself—and we will decide whether or not to extend the, er,” he fumbled with a small white case, “pin.”

“The pin is new,” Athena observed. Dr. Nix nodded, finally working the blue-and-orange disc free of its slot and holding it out for examination.

“At this stage it functions only as a key to the bridgeway at that location. DNA-sequencing is still in development, but we are anticipating its release early next year. We would like them to eventually function as a kind of advertising circular in the recruitment process. It would be nice,” and here he gave her a look heavy with meaning, “if we did not have to rely on an enthusiastic description and casual invitation to promote our endeavours here.”

Athena, who understood she was meant to be ashamed, merely stared back at him without expression. Her lack of reaction seemed to reassure Dr. Nix; at least, he made a pleased little grimace and took the pin back, carefully tucking it into place among eleven others.

“Yes, well. We will make sure all our travellers are wearing one, of course, if they are invited to join us here. You are quite certain you understand the updated search parameters?”

“Perfectly,” Athena assured him, and this time he really did smile, a thin, wintry expression of deep gratification.

“Wonderful. I am so pleased to hear it. Who knows, if this excursion is successful, there may be a full protocol reinstatement in your future. I would be delighted to see you recruiting full time again, if we could be confident you were bringing home—well—the right sort of person. Wouldn’t that be agreeable?”

“Most agreeable,” Athena said, and punctuated her assurance with a small, quick smile. She stood when he did, and smoothed a fold in her jacket with a prim little gesture. This, too, seemed to reassure him. “May I be excused? I’m scheduled for a final check back at the containment facility before we depart.”

“Oh—yes, of course. Best not miss that. Don’t want to get our wires crossed, now, do we?” Nix agreed, then smiled at his little joke. Athena waited, impassive. Nix cleared his throat. “Right. Well, run along then. Don’t keep them waiting.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice.

Dr. Nix’s idea of the right sort of candidate was often very boring. Athena knew she wasn’t supposed to think of them that way—good or bad, grumpy or cheerful, entertaining or dull—but somehow even the lines of code that told her she shouldn’t couldn’t stop her from doing so.

Dr. Everett was boring. The most interesting thing about him was his tie, which was mustard yellow. Athena stared at the tie while he explained, in loveless detail, why biodegradable plastics were insufficiently cost effective for governments to adopt policies concerning them.

Athena had seen other people get excited about that topic. She’d seen their tenacity in pursuit of their research, of funding for and interest in it. She’d watched its pursuit by people who’d had doors shut in their faces for so many years, they could have qualified for a second degree in window-making.

That had been Athena’s first creation of a metaphor. She was very proud of it.

But Dr. Everett had given up knocking years ago, and not in the interest of making a window. He sat in front of Dr. Nix and read a lecture he knew by rote, but not by heart. He was disengaged and passionless, so Athena studied his tie.

Polyester blend. Mustard yellow (synthetic dye).

She knew, in the way anyone with an extensive databank would know, that before the advent of synthetic dyes people had used other means of giving their clothing colour. She wondered who the first person had been to use the immature husk of a black walnut to deliberately stain something yellow, and if they had been celebrated among their people.

She wondered if that person would have accepted a pin.

Dr. Everett concluded his lecture. He shook hands with Dr. Nix. As he walked away, Nix looked expectantly over at Athena, who had been pretending to read a Trixie Belden mystery while she studied their subject.

“No,” she said, without looking up from her book.

“No?” He echoed. Then, as if wanting to make sure he’d heard her correctly, “no? Athena, he is clearly a deeply learned man with a vision for the future. He only wants funding to pursue it. We can give him that!”

“He had a vision a long time ago. He gave up. It didn’t take him years, or tragedies, or monumental setbacks. He got tired of waiting for what he wanted. If you let him in he will be excited for a short time, but he will give up again.”

“Well, he—” Dr. Nix gestured feebly after Dr. Everett. “We could . . . I mean . . . oh, honestly, Athena.” He sank back into his seat. “I’m convinced you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be.”

“I’m not, actually.” Athena adjusted her book. “Who’s next?”

“What does it matter,” Nix grumbled. “I’m sure you’ll only find another reason to say no.”

“Perhaps.” She turned a page carefully, studying the new leaf with every appearance of great fascination. “But if you don’t call him over, how will you know for sure?”

Nix shot her an exceptionally keen sideways look, as though he wondered if perhaps the repairs had not entirely weeded out all of Athena’s least desirable traits. But Athena remained, to all appearances, wholly engrossed in her book. So Nix signalled that the next person of interest could come forward, and the day wore on.

Athena said yes to one out of sixty-eight candidates they interviewed that day. The following morning she said yes to two, and the day after that to none at all.

The morning of the fifth day, with only four candidates named so far, Dr. Nix took a different approach. He directed Drs. Nayar and Bright to precede him into the Hall of Invention and once both women had disappeared beyond the door he prevented Athena from following them.

“Look,” he said. “You’ve been . . . working hard. Why don’t you walk around for a while? Leave us to see this next lot. It’s only a contest today anyway. Not even proper interviews at all.”

“But I wanted to see the contest,” she protested. “It was the only part of the whole week I was really interested in. If it’s full of interesting inventions, the people who invented them will be more interesting too.”

“Yes. Well. Life’s full of little disappointments, isn’t it? Maybe you should try the Ferris wheel. I will meet you back here at four o’clock.”

The dismissal was overt enough it would have taken her an actual protocol workaround to circumvent it and follow him anyway. That seemed more effort than the result would likely be worth, so Athena went in search of the Ferris wheel.

The Ferris wheel was the Uniroyal Giant Tire, and by virtue of being a Ferris wheel fashioned in the shape of a giant tire, was not hard to find. Athena rode it three times before she spotted the little boy staggering off the greyhound bus.

His bag looked heavy. The bag was actually the first thing she noticed; otherwise she might have missed the boy staggering beneath it. He wrestled his oversized burden off the bus and down the walkway, and something about the look on his face—both awestruck and grimly determined—sparked her into alertness.

This was something she needed to investigate.

“Going around again, honey?” the ride operator wanted to know. “It’s slow right now, I don’t mind.”

“No, thank you.” She forced her guard bar up without assistance and smiled apologetically at the woman’s surprise. “I’m in a hurry.”

Free of the Ferris wheel, Athena rushed along the pavement as quickly as she could without breaking into speeds that would draw undue attention. She had the advantage of being small and unencumbered with a massive duffel bag. It helped her catch up quickly, and keep pace with the boy as he travelled.

There were a few places he could be taking the bag, of course. But there was one in particular Athena was hoping for, and her hopes were realised when he struggled up the steps to the Hall of Invention, lugging the bag behind him.

She allowed herself one quick, bright smile of triumph before darting around the building to the side entrance where a single guard was stationed. In blazer, slacks and tie, the guard looked particularly human and Athena only knew he was not because he had come over on the journey with them. He was a Janus unit who would safeguard the passage of the recruitment co-supervisors and their recruits to the portal Plus Ultra had arranged, and he was openly surprised to see her.

“Hello Athena; Dr. Nix said you wouldn’t be in today.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be, but plans changed.” She did not bother smiling, because as a gesture of reassurance that only worked on humans. In any event the Janus units did not seem to have assimilated the information that she had the ability to deceive. This one stepped aside without question, and she navigated the back corridors just in time to step out into the main hall as the boy reached the head of the line and approached Dr. Nix.

Athena slowed her pace. She’d been prepared to ask an usher to redirect him if necessary, but this was working well enough without intervention. She moved around the wall of the room, telescoping her vision to focus on the boy. She heard him introduce himself—John Francis Walker—saw him heft the bag onto the table, and took in the dimensions and details of the creation he had brought, even as he laboured to explain it to Dr. Nix.

Dr. Nix was reasonably interested, but not, from Athena’s point of view, nearly as interested as he should have been. The jet pack was promising. Yes, it was like a thing from a book or film and so maybe not entirely the boy’s own idea, but it was still beautifully creative, ambitious, and obviously the subject of prolonged, tenacious labour.

But was it only not his idea, or was it also not his own creation? On the strength of impulse and programming combined, Athena spoke up.

“You made this yourself?”

Dr. Nix looked over at the same time as John Francis Walker. He did not look pleased to see her.

“Athena,” he said, in a tone that promised significant protocol remediation when they returned to Tomorrowland, “what are you doing here?”

There was no profit in answering him now. It would be worth a week in the containment unit and whatever corrections he found necessary if this boy turned out to be the candidate every synapse was screaming he would.

“Did you, or didn’t you?”

John Francis Walker struggled to follow the question. “Uh . . . what?”

He’d been engrossed in his presentation, and her question threw him off. You often saw that in the labs though, that little sideways “wait, what?” blink and blank stare from a scientist interrupted in the middle of an exploration. If anything, it was encouraging. She didn’t mind repeating herself.

“Did you make this yourself?”

“Ye-eah . . .” It sounded like he wasn’t sure, but he held her gaze. His pulse was slightly elevated, but it had done that when he first looked at her. He wasn’t lying. He really had made it himself. She squinted at him, searching for any other markers of promise and concern.

“Why?”

“I . . . guess I got tired of waiting around for someone else to do it for me.”

Oh he was perfect. Athena’s smile was the nearest thing to involuntary that it had ever been. This wasn’t just a solemn “all right” delivered for the satisfaction of Dr. Nix. This would be the most enthusiastic yes she had offered to date.

Of course Dr. Nix had to try to spoil it.

(though why “of course?” Really, what a thing to think about Dr. Nix. Her programming made her aware she should be displeased with herself for assuming Dr. Nix would ruin something for her. She shouldn’t be thinking of John Francis Walker as an argument she needed to win, but there it was)

Dr. Nix made John Francis Walker confess the jet pack did not yet fully function, and he did so using the tone that made human children’s faces sad even in Tomorrowland. Athena knew how that conversation would go, so she didn’t waste time focusing on it. While Dr. Nix demanded to know the purpose of the machine, she moved to one side and scanned the application the usher had brought over, which Dr. Nix hadn’t even picked up.

John Francis Walker had filled in his full, given name but added “Frank” in smaller letters above John Francis, as though presenting this as a viable alternative. It was shorter and simpler, so Athena easily replaced John Francis with Frank, and quickly reviewed particulars of age, address and education before setting the folder down and catching the end of Frank Walker’s suggestion that inspiration alone could make the world a better place.

For a second he almost had Dr. Nix convinced. Athena loved those moments whenever they happened, when she saw him soften at the possibilities Tomorrowland and the people who lived in it could offer. But those moments were rare, and invariably short-lived. Today’s did not survive Athena’s smile of encouragement and Dr. Nix’s recollection that an object without function had no purpose.

He was going to say no. She’d suspected as much but for a moment she’d allowed herself to hope. As Nix would say, more fool her. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t figure out something on her own.

She advanced to the edge of the table as Frank Walker retreated. Dr. Nix glanced up in time to see the look on her face, and register it as something he needed to head off immediately.

“Absolutely not,” he warned. Athena, unbothered, watched Frank Walker trudge away from the table in temporary defeat.

“I like him.”

“Athena, no.”

The prohibition registered as a directive, which meant she would normally not be able to work around it, but such was the force of her decision, of her conviction that Frank Walker was exactly who they needed, that the neurosphere crackled in stubborn support of her desire. If this was what Athena wanted, the neurosphere seemed to say, then it would find a way to help her accomplish it.

Athena smiled.

She felt an impulse coming on.

Athena chose her moment carefully. She waited until Dr. Nix had assembled their four candidates, the Janus unit and his two recruitment co-supervisors in a neat little pack by the side door. She trotted along behind them until they hit the main concourse, then veered sharply to the left.

Frank Walker hadn’t gone far. She found him slumped over on a bench just outside the Hall of Invention, his creation snugged tight to his chest. If Athena had possessed a heart, she was pretty sure it would be pounding at what she was about to do.

Frank Walker was deplorably obtuse about the face of a clock, but he didn’t ask too many irritating questions and he took the pin without any trouble. Crackling with the energy of her own hope, Athena rejoined her party at the foot of the bridge without anyone noticing she had been away.

Dr. Nix finished his conversation with Dr. Nayar before he finally looked back to check that she hadn’t nipped off without his seeing it. She was tempted to smile at him, all sunshine as she was on the inside, but she tamped down the urge. It would make him suspicious. He preferred it when she was solemn and he could believe she was an ordinary AA. So she kept her expression tranquil, though apparently it didn’t satisfy him enough to let her stay at the back of the line.

“Come along then, Athena,” he said, and she skipped ahead to walk beside him for the rest of the trip to the bridgeway.

The bridgeway was hidden in a tunnel you accessed by boat. Athena loved that. How clever were the people who had designed this? How absolutely, utterly rich with imagination? It might have been the post-recruitment rush of acquiring Frank Walker and his jetpack, but somehow even the line they formed to board the boat seemed like a real feat of engineering.

“You know,” she confided to the Janus unit in front of her, “the real innovation of this ride is the multi-rider system, which allows for a higher volume of passengers per—”

“Athena,” Dr. Nix cut through her admiration, “hadn’t you better find your seat?” And he adjusted the pin on the lapel of a new recruit.

The Janus unit, correctly interpreting its cue, quickly stepped onto the boat to settle in beside another recruit and left Athena the back row all to herself. This suited her perfectly, since it allowed an uninterrupted view of Frank Walker on the bridge, tugging at the pin on his jacket. She smiled.

It wouldn’t do to monitor his progress too closely. Dr. Nix was several rows ahead but the Janus unit would be bound to comment if she behaved too out of the ordinary. She was careful to sit very still as the boat glided down the channel, bearing them toward the bridgeway. The key was to make sure Frank Walker was discovered too late, rather than too soon.

As the boat entered the tunnel she checked over her shoulder for the last time, and was gratified to see Frank Walker had made it into the boat behind them.

She had got him this far. The rest was up to him.

Log 13: August, 1964

Frank Walker arrived safely in Tomorrowland. He did indicate that he nearly got himself killed within three minutes of his arrival, which I think was careless of him, but the medical staff have offered assurances he will suffer no long-term ill effects from the contusion to his chin. This is good news as I have got into rather a lot of trouble for bringing him here and I would be displeased if he were to die on top of that.

Dr. Nix has given permission for him to remain. He has imposed restrictions related to his age, including mandatory attendance of lessons and low-level training in various fields to determine where his aptitude lies. Frank Walker has expressed excitement about these, and asked if I will be in his class. He appeared pleased when I answered in the affirmative.

Dr. Nix supports my attending class for the same reason he has also forbidden me to reveal to Frank Walker that I am audio-animatronic. These restrictions are part of an ongoing experiment the AA labs are conducting, with the goal of gathering data sufficient for the recreation of Dr. Nix’s success in making me what is referred to as “lifelike.”

So far none of the efforts to duplicate me have been successful, and it is hoped that this experiment will determine what makes me better able to function as a human than any of the other AA units can.

The protocols which prevent me revealing the neurosphere as the source of my individuality remain in place, and so I have been unable to tell the researchers that this is a waste of time. I have asked Dr. Nix why he does not reveal it himself, as this seems a costly misuse of resources. He told me it is none of my affair and forbade me to raise the subject again.

“I can’t believe you’ve never tried French fries,” Frank marvelled. Athena shrugged and picked up her lunch tray.

“I’ve told you, we don’t—”

“—eat them in Tomorrowland, I know, but you have been out into the—the other world before. I met you there. You mean to say the whole time you’re out there, you never had French fries? Not even once?”

Athena led the way to a table with two empty seats. She bought a little time by arranging her food on the tray and double-checking that she hadn’t exceeded the capacity of the modest storage unit that served as her stomach. It was sufficient to give the impression that she could eat, but it didn’t stand up to the volume of a full-sized meal.

Frank had been distracted by her meagre portions in the past (“they’re very healthful,” she’d assured him, “so I don’t need to consume as much”) but by now they were old news, whereas never experiencing the French fry was a new tragedy every time he remembered it.

“You should have them cook some here,” he decided, chomping down on a carrot stick. “I mean, just once. Specially. They have potatoes, right? They could just slice those up, probably, and fry them.”

“The hydrogenated oils are also not avail—”

“Right but maybe some other kind of oil? Or they could just bake them. But that’s really not the same.”

“It’s fine, Frank.” She carefully levered some sprouts into her mouth and chewed them with precision. She’d had to practice the motion for hours in front of a mirror, and was rather pleased with how authentic it looked. She swallowed, and smiled at him half in reassurance, half in quiet pride at having yet again successfully appeared to eat something. “I don’t need to try one.”

“It would still be great if you could though, right? Look, maybe we can ask them to cook just one batch for you, and then you’ll know what they taste like.”

“It would be irresponsible to divert the resources of the kitchen for our personal use.”

“Then let’s divert them for everyone’s use. French fries for everyone! At least for one meal.” Seized by the idea, Frank grabbed his sandwich off the plate and crammed it awkwardly into his mouth. “Ith ggnn bgrrrt.”

“I can’t understand you. No!” as he seemed ready to try again. “Chew first. Then speak.”

Frank chewed as little as he possibly could before forcing the sandwich down in one large, painful lump.

“I said, it’s gonna be great.”

“What is? Oh, Frank, no—”

But Frank, the living embodiment of human impulse, had already caught her by the hand and tugged her in the direction of the kitchen.

She could have said no. She knew she probably should. But there was something irresistible about humans when they were like this, all bristling with purpose and ideas and the unflagging desire to bring them to be. Frank got like this more than any other person she’d met. It was electrifying.

They made it past the door, but beyond that Frank encountered a stern, unyielding obstacle in the person of Tom, the kitchen manager. Although several AA units worked under him, Tom was the very human ruler of the pristine white and chrome domain beyond the lunch line and he did not appreciate the suggestion that he start frying potatoes.

“Absolutely not. The nutritional standards of Tomorrowland are based on extensive research, and they are designed to meet your every dietary need. The position of our biologists on the subject of French fries is well supported and extensively documented.”

“Yes but they taste so good!” Frank countered. “And it wouldn’t be every day. It would just be today. Plus,” he moved in with the air of one presenting an unshakeable closing argument, “we would even chop the potatoes.”

Tom raised his eyebrows.

Frank, seeing that he was making no headway like this, turned to grab Athena’s arm and tug her forward as evidence.

“This girl,” he said, presenting her to the kitchen manager, “has never in all her whole entire life had a French fry. Can you believe that?”

Tom had been co-culinary engineer in the design of Tomorrowland’s entire bioengineered farm-to-table system. He didn’t even blink at this news.

“Yes.”

“But why? Why should anybody be allowed to go their whole life never having a French fry? You’ve got to do it just this one time. For Athena. It’s—it’s educational! A life experience. A foreign culture. She has to at least know whether or not she likes them. It’ll be scientific.”

Tom did not look at all persuaded by any of these arguments. In fact he looked ready to throw them both back out into the lunch hall when a new voice, dry and cool, cut in from the line beyond the window.

“Are Athena and Mr. Walker importuning you there, Tom?”

Both Frank and Athena jerked around to find Dr. Nix staring over his lunch tray at them. Frank ducked his head. Athena twitched slightly at her jacket.

“They want French fries, Dr. Nix,” Tom explained. “I was just telling them we don’t do that sort of thing here.”

“Quite right. Well, children? I think you had better come sit with me, if these are the sort of shenanigans you get up to when left to your own devices.”

Athena stepped immediately toward the door while Frank followed at a slower pace. He trudged out of the kitchen a scowling and defeated boy. Athena, who had been a little uncertain about the merits of petitioning the kitchen staff for unhealthy food, found that the sight of him put her immediately and completely on his side.

She took his hand and give it a small squeeze. When he looked at her she offered a smile.

“I’m sure I would have liked them very much.”

“Yeah, well,” he sighed, “it was a stupid idea anyway.”

“No.” She tugged him to a stop, alarmed by his tone. “No, don’t say that. You thought of something and you tried it. There’s nothing stupid about that.”

“Yeah?” Frank looked cautiously hopeful once more.

“Yes. So please promise you won’t stop trying things just because one doesn’t work.”

“Yeah. Okay. I guess.”

“Children?” Dr. Nix had reached his table and was eyeing them from across the room. “I’m waiting.”

“How about we try making him wait a while longer,” Frank muttered.

“Oh no,” Athena said firmly, “that would never work.”

She couldn’t understand why that made him laugh.

Log 14: September, 1964

Last week Frank Walker taught me how to stick out my tongue. All of my protocols related to human culture and etiquette lead me to believe this act is improper to perform, but he assures me that there are times it is suitable, provided only a close friend is witness to the act.

To demonstrate, on Friday afternoon when Dr. Nix was delivering a correction to us on suitable behaviour in the lunch hall, Frank waited until his back was turned and then stuck out his tongue.

I asked him later what the purpose was. He said it gave him satisfaction.

Today Dr. Nix issued a correction on our conduct during morning lessons. I attempted to explain that the lesson had been oversimplified and promoted disengagement in those present, but Dr. Nix did not see merit in my argument. Rather than counter my observations with his own, he increased the volume of his voice and I perceived that he was prepared to lose his temper.

When Dr. Nix turned his back to us, Frank Walker took my hand in his and winked. Then he stuck out his tongue at Dr. Nix and indicated that I should do the same.

The contortion runs counter to my programming. I do not understand why it felt so gratifying to perform.

It took Athena a while to settle into the pleasant oddity of her new routine. She went to the meal hall three times a day, she was obliged to be inactive at night so as to maintain the appearance of somebody who slept, and she attended classes strictly as a pupil now, all in the interest of preserving what Dr. Nix called her “cover” with Frank. These restrictions might have interfered significantly with her upgrade schedule, except now that she had a special mission Dr. Nix seemed less interested in finding problems with her to fix.

She had actually gone six weeks without a single maintenance appointment, the longest she could remember ever going without being ordered to the labs. It was both strange and wonderful.

Of course having to seem human also meant that when she did require maintenance, she needed to explain her absence to Frank in such a way that he wouldn’t offer to go with her. Frank often offered to go places with her, which was possibly the most difficult thing to get used to of all.

“Why?” she wondered, when he asked if he could walk to the primary AA containment facility with her. “You don’t need to go.”

“I know. But if you’re going, I’d like to go too.”

She hadn’t understood, and wrinkled her nose at him in bewilderment. “Why?”

He looked at her like she was the one who was being confusing, instead of him.

“Because it’s fun when we go places together.” Then, more hesitantly, “Isn’t it?”

“Of course it is,” she said, and she meant it. It really was. She enjoyed the way he lit up with ideas, how thoughts and new things and things that weren’t, yet, but maybe someday soon would be all came spilling out of him in an excited rush, like it was just normal to be full of ideas and to want to share them with her.

With his friend.

Soon she started to feel like she thought he must. She would look for him where she thought he might be waiting and when she didn’t see him there she felt inexplicably let down, even if they hadn’t agreed to meet. She didn’t understand why, unless perhaps this was a byproduct of some upgrade to her empathy interface . . . but no, she hadn’t been for upgrades in ages. So it couldn’t be that.

Whatever the reason, when she was trotting down the staircase and Frank Walker popped up behind the railing to startle her on purpose, she knew instinctively that the action was not hostile and she responded with a playful, also-not-hostile bop on his head with the bag she carried.

His answering grin told her she’d made the right choice. She felt absurdly proud of herself for the gesture as she fell into step beside him and they continued down the stairs to their class together.

“Hey, do you think the lecturer could get me some paper?” he wondered. “Just one sheet. The stuff’s incredibly hard to find here.”

“I know. The manufacture of it has not yet been refined for bulk production and recycling without creating a drain on resources. Can’t you just use your digibook?”

“No, not for this.”

“Why do you need paper?”

“I wanted to make a game.”

“Games out of paper? You mean, the kind you put on a board? I’ve seen those, but the board doesn’t have to be made—”

“No, not like that! You know Athena, I think sometimes this place makes you weird. Look, forget it. I’ll find some paper and make a game out of it. You just meet me in the north overlook tower before breakfast tomorrow, and I’ll show you.”

He was as good as his word, seeking her out with a small white object in his hand. He tossed it to her and she caught it with extreme caution, trying to avoid causing it damage.

“What is it?” Athena frowned, turning the little paper nonsense over in her hands.

“It’s a fortune teller. I can’t believe you never saw a fortune teller before.”

“When I was in the other world I saw an animatronic woman with a red dress in a box. The sign said she was a fortune teller, but Dr. Nix said she was the cheap entertainment of a simple populace. He would not put in the currency she required to function. She wasn’t made of paper, although she was not well designed.”

“Yeah . . . I guess this is a little like that, except it doesn’t cost any money and it’s only fun. A game.”

“I don’t understand the object of the fortune-telling game,” Athena admitted. Frank assured her that was fine.

“You just pick a colour, then a number, then another number. And I use it to tell your fortune.”

“Oh! When you say you will tell my fortune, do you mean you will divine my future? The way a soothsayer would, in the legends of the other world? But those are all just stories, surely.”

“Yes, I mean, it isn’t magic or anything like that. It can’t really tell you the future.”

“Then what is the purpose?”

“It’s for fun. Here. Pick a colour. You’ll see.”

Athena looked at him doubtfully a moment, then tapped cautiously on one of the leaves.

“Great, now I spell it out. B-L-U-E.”

He flicked his hands to keep track of the letters and Athena watched the numbers underneath pass back and forth. At last he held it open, presenting her with a selection of digits.

“Now you choose a number.”

She tapped one, bolder now, and he quickly counted six before holding it open for her selection.

She hesitated again, still struggling to understand the meaning of it, how this could be fun. She looked over at Frank and found he was looking back at her, so she made her second choice and he lifted the flap to reveal a small, printed message.

We are the future.

She broke out into smiles. “Oh,” she said, “that is a nice thing.”

“See?” he crowed. “I told you. It’s a game. It doesn’t have to be for real. You don’t need somebody to tell you your future anyway; just go ahead and make your own. That way you can be sure you’ll like it.”

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if it could tell the future, though?” she mused, tapping the paper again. “You just touch it, and . . . well, somehow you know what will happen tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Frank turned it over, considering this new line of thought. “Yeah, actually. That would really be something . . .”

Log 15: September, 1965

Frank Walker is looking at me in a manner that is difficult to recognise. It seems imperative to explain to him that I'm an audio-animatronic, but Dr. Nix says this would invalidate the experiment.

I'm concerned that he may be adversely affected when he finds out that I'm not human. He has potential. I don't want to damage it. He needs someone to believe in him and I am fulfilling that need. He is my top recruit.

Perhaps if I explain the risk to Dr. Nix, he will allow me to determine a way to explain myself to Frank Walker. I am concerned it is already too late to simply tell him. The approach will take planning, and I do not know how best to effect it.

I feel both an urgency and reluctance to accomplish the task. I do not know how to explain this.

“Athena!” Frank banged open the door of the R&D lab, nearly catching a startled passerby full in the face. “Oh—um, sorry,” he paused to wave apologetically. Then he snugged his jetpack tighter and zig-zagged through foot traffic until he caught up with her.

“You didn’t have to run,” she said. “I’d have waited.”

“Yeah, but, who wants to wait to fly?” He hefted the jetpack proudly. “You’re going to love it more than anything, I just know it. But are you really sure you want to do this?”

“You seem a little confused about whether or not you want me to do this.”

“Well, I’ve wanted you to for a long time but you kept saying no. I just wanted to make sure you really changed your mind.”

“I didn’t,” she corrected him. “Dr. Nix did. I wanted to fly since the first time you asked me. He wouldn’t allow it at first, but,” she took a little skipping step, “I finally talked him into it.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you,” Frank decided. “So. Main concourse?”

The main concourse was a broad, clear expanse of concrete that would one day host multitudes of traffic, but at the time led only from one finished, functioning building to a second building in the early stages of construction. Frank and Athena were completely alone and the skies were wide open.

“This is perfect weather for it,” Frank said earnestly. “I mean really. There isn’t any wind at all, that’s how you want it for your first time up. If there’s wind that pulls you off track you can correct, but usually I overcorrect and go smashing into stuff.”

“Yes, and people get cross with you.”

“Oh, always,” he grinned. “But you won’t have that problem because you’re so careful. Also there’s no wind. So.” He settled the jetpack on the ground between them. “I’ll try to give you the quick version, so you don’t get bored.”

“I won’t,” she said. He looked up in surprise, and saw she was in deadly earnest.

“Really? Because I could probably talk about the fuel injector for an hour at least.”

She smiled uncertainly. “Well, if you want to do that I would listen. When you talk about things you make, it makes me . . .” she searched for an accurate word and discovered she didn’t know one, so she settled for the closest she could find. “Happy.”

Frank scuffed his toe against the concourse.

“It—it’s a really great fuel injector. But I promise you’re going to like flying it even more than hearing me talk about it. So, let’s get it on you, okay? I’ll show you how it works.”

He helped her ease into the straps, then snugged them tight around her shoulders and waist. He showed her how to disengage them if she got caught on anything, then he demonstrated in careful detail how to engage the engine under various conditions.

“Freefall” sounded the most interesting, but he assured her it was also the most dangerous, and one she should definitely avoid.

Then he asked if there was anything else she needed to know. He was so gravely intent, she wished there were something that confused her just so she could give him the chance to have ideas about how to clarify it. But instead she told him the truth, that she understood perfectly, and he flushed with pride.

“Okay, so you just . . . look up, basically, and point yourself where you want to go and then—wait! Wait, here,” he fitted the goggles over her eyes, “okay. There. Now you just . . . blast off.”

And she did.

The roar of the engine and the accompanying upward rush were exhilarating, entirely new, yet also, for a moment, almost familiar. She lifted up, up, up until going up seemed like the less interesting experience than going out, then around, then down—quickly down, just to get the feel that she might possibly be freefalling—then up again.

It was glorious.

She swooped and dove until she might have been dizzy, if she had been human. She looped around and imagined she was living current, zipping through the air without wires, beaming all around this world and the other one too.

All through her flight there was something strangely familiar about it, this ability to cleave the air and look at a world far away below her. Except she got the feeling the last time she had done this, she hadn’t wanted to return to the ground.

That was nonsense for several reasons, chief among them that she hadn’t done this before, surely, so of course there was no “last time.” Besides, Frank Walker was standing on the concourse, waving and smiling at her as she flew.

How could she not want to go back to that?

Log 24: October, 1965

I am having unusual thoughts towards Frank Walker. I suspect a flaw in my empathy interface.

I am thinking I should report it, but I haven’t.

I cannot explain why.

“Athena,” Dr. Nix looked over the rim of the cup that held his breakfast shake, “you have a medical appointment today.”

Athena nodded, and focused on peeling her orange. The skill had fascinated her since the first time she had pretended to eat an orange. She made no further reaction to the announcement, but Frank looked at her in concern.

“Why, what’s wrong? Are you sick or something?”

Athena looked uncertainly from Frank to Dr. Nix, then back to Frank.

“No,” she assured him, “everything’s fine. It’s just . . . regular.”

“What’s regular about a doctor’s appointment?” Frank frowned. Athena found she couldn’t answer that question because she’d never actually had a real doctor’s appointment. The doctors she saw held degrees in advanced computer technology, circuitry and robotics. They probably couldn’t have set a broken leg, though they could have designed a robot that could be programmed to set it for them.

Dr. Nix set down his cup and said, in a tone that brooked no argument, “That is really a very personal question, Mr. Walker. I suspect you are embarrassing Athena by asking it.”

Athena, unembarrassed, was only upset to see that this correction embarrassed Frank.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and focused on his egg. She wanted to reassure him but she had a feeling if she did, Dr. Nix would find that as a reason to do more than tests. So she finished peeling her orange and offered Frank the first section.

“Thanks,” he said. “But you probably need it more than I do. Doctors seem to care about how much fruit you eat.”

“I think maybe this one won’t mind,” Athena promised. She rewarded him with a smile when he finally accepted the orange.

She left the table with Dr. Nix instead of Frank. That made sense, of course, since he was taking her to the research check-in, and there was a time when this would have been the expected way of things anyway. But that time was distant enough that it felt oddly jarring, leaving Frank behind. She looked back when they reached the door, and saw Frank watching them leave.

The sight was enough to make her smile and offer a little wave. At the sight of it, he smiled too.

Feeling much better about life in general, Athena followed Dr. Nix outside, into the vehicle that was waiting to take them to the AA research lab and the doctors waiting there.

Log 26: December, 1965

The ongoing experiment continues to disappoint the researchers. The data they have collected in observation and analysis has not helped them determine how to recreate Dr. Nix’s success, and their disappointment in the lack of progress has led to increased frustration, and an effort to seek other means of obtaining results.

I have been required to give up much time in assisting them with their research. They have conducted a number of tests in pursuit of the answer they seek, and lately have begun to think the answer may lie in what they can discover during exploration without putting me into shutdown.

This requires that my central nervous system remain active, and the experiments they conduct are unpleasant as a result. Dr. Nix insists on being present for all of these, and directs them in such a manner as to prevent their studying the part of my skull where the neurosphere is located.

The discomfort of the procedures prevents me thinking of ways to help them discover it. I think if they were to discover it, the procedures could end.

I am forbidden to discuss the procedures with Frank Walker, but because the sensations they generate occasionally persist for up to a day afterward, it is sometimes impossible to disguise the impairment of my function. When I explained this difficulty to Dr. Nix, he said that if Frank Walker enquires as to the cause, I am to tell him only that I have been unwell.

This is truthful. I cannot determine why it feels like deception instead.

“You know if they’re making you worse, maybe you should just stop going to doctors,” Frank said. He watched Athena carefully extend her left arm, frown, then fold it again.

“No, it’s fine,” she insisted. “It will be normal again in twelve to fourteen hours.”

“Wasn’t it already normal when you went to them? How can it be fine if you come back worse than you were when you went?”

“Can’t you talk about something else? You have a research project due next week, don’t you? What progress have you made with it?”

“Forget my research project. You’re not my teacher, you’re my friend. Does your arm hurt?”

“No,” she said firmly. Pain was a human condition. She was not human. Therefore, her arm could not hurt. But . . .

“It is not comfortable,” she admitted.

She wondered if Minerva Bannerman might have described the discomfort as pain.

“Does Dr. Nix know about this?” Frank wondered. “I know he can be a jerk but he probably doesn’t want you to be uncomfortable. If you tell him, could he cancel the appointments? Or at least get them to give you pain relief.”

He was trying to help. He was thinking of ways to keep her from being uncomfortable, because Frank Walker cared more about whether or not she was comfortable than he did about jet packs, cold fusion or figuring out a way to recreate Nikola Tesla’s neurosphere. Frank Walker was just like that, in a way Dr. Nix never could be.

“No,” Athena said. “That wouldn’t work. It doesn’t matter though, Frank. I’m fine; truly I am.”

And she smiled until he believed her.

Log 28: March, 1966

Dr. Nix has taken new interest in Frank Walker. He comes to the classroom and observes him in lessons. He asks the instructor to describe Frank’s progress in highly technical terms. He initiates conversations with Frank, and appears interested in the replies.

I am unsure what his motivation could be.

I am sure it is not altruistic.

I am concerned.

Athena found the schematic while waiting in Dr. Nix’s primary laboratory. She had arrived early for the latest session in a long line of increasingly frequent exploratory testing that mostly involved him manipulating and examining the neurosphere, both in and out of her head. Today was supposed to be an out-of-the-head day, which should have meant blissful oblivion for a few hours, except whenever he rebooted her she could tell something had been done. Either she knew the neurosphere’s function that well by now or else—as she most suspected—some part of the earthly consciousness and collected memories of Minerva Bannerman also knew what was going on, and she didn’t like it.

To distract herself—and possibly Minerva too—Athena roamed around the laboratory while she waited. Dr. Nix’s digiscreen was already glowing and ready to go. After a moment’s study Athena realised the design flickering in front of her was the inside of her own head.

She traced the lines that made up her version of a central nervous system, noting yet again where they were different from the Janus units. This was why every repair module in Tomorrowland had a separate set of protocols just for her.

Idly, Athena flicked her finger over the screen, studying each set of plans as it came up. Some reflected pre-upgrade versions, while others appeared to be prototypes for later endeavours. She skimmed, noted, skimmed—and stopped.

The design on the screen was completely new. It was not of her; it wasn’t even of an AA unit. This was a scan of paper plans for a machine, clunky and mechanical in a way that reminded her of technology in the other world. The power source showed notes for modification, and . . . her attention zeroed in on the signature scrawled in the bottom right corner.

Everything inside her picked up speed, humming and thrumming in a way it usually only did when there was a reason to act, now. She’d experienced it only twice before, once when pulling a recruit through the Bridgeway just moments in advance of a hurricane and later when watching Frank Walker nearly crash his jetpack on first arriving in Tomorrowland.

It was the behavioural modification designed to mimic fear.

Log 29: May, 1966

I have accidentally discovered Dr. Nix’s motivation for his interest in Frank Walker. He believes he can duplicate the function of the neurosphere by recreating Dr. Rotwang’s experiment with Henry. He has designed facilities for the transfer and a new AA unit as the receptor of Frank Walker’s consciousness.

I confronted him with my discovery and he attempted to present it as a necessary step forward in the advancement of Tomorrowland. He said Frank Walker is an ideal candidate for the creation of a second neurosphere, but lacking as he does Nikola Tesla’s design, he turned instead to the design of Dr. Rotwang.

He believes that without more recruiters designed as I was, it is unlikely we will find the right sort of people to properly develop Tomorrowland to the extent that is envisioned. He feels Frank Walker’s mind is ideally suited to this task, in a way that the mind of Minerva Bannerman was not.

I believe that what I did then would be described as losing my temper.

I told him that what he proposes to do is disagreeable to me, and would be disagreeable to Frank Walker too. I promised that if he proceeds, I will report his transgression. He said it was no use trying to threaten him, since he knew my programming would not permit me to do this. Then he forbade me to speak of it to anyone.

I have assured him that even so, I will find a way. I do not think his colleagues will approve his use of Nikola Tesla’s neurosphere in his construction of me; certainly I doubt they will approve of his concealing that fact from them and using fraud to obtain advancement.

Mostly, though, I think they will not countenance the experiment he proposes. I saw by his reaction that he believes this too; he must have intended it should be a secret, although I do not how he planned to explain what became of Frank Walker.

He claimed he did not believe I could find a way to do this.

That statement registered as untruthful.

This gives me hope.

Log 30: June, 1966

Dr. Nix took over our class last week. At first I did not understand why. He dismissed the usual lecturer and told us to pay strict attention. He seemed to especially look at Frank Walker as he said this.

“It occurs to me,” he said, “that many of you are too young to know much of the history of Tomorrowland. You understand its purpose, of course, and rightly envision it as a beacon of humanity’s very bright future. But what is the good of looking to the future if you do not understand the enormous sacrifices which have gone into the creation of it? Indeed,” he adjusted his spectacles, “someday it may be asked of one of you to make just such a sacrifice. On that day, may you take comfort in knowing that many of greater ability and potential than yourselves have made such sacrifices, too.”

“Bet you he won’t ever be one of them,” Flora Barrett whispered. Frank Walker covered his mouth quickly at hearing this, but he was unsuccessful in concealing his smile.

Dr. Nix frowned at both of them. He seemed also to frown at me, although I had not committed any transgression according to the established rules of the classroom.

“Tomorrowland,” he spoke with increased volume, “was rebuilt from its initial conception by an Advanced Anthropomorphic Audio-Animatronic unit known as Henry.”

“What,” said Billy Roget, “you mean just one AA unit built all of this? I don’t believe it.”

Dr. Nix made an expression of grave displeasure.

“Kindly refrain from making inane comments until the lecture is complete. But yes, Henry was a single unit. When Tomorrowland was sabotaged he remained in this place to rebuild it, and he did construct other AA units to assist him in this endeavour. You will know them as the Janus line, and most are still productively employed in the maintenance of Tomorrowland to this day. They have been upgraded over the years in the interest of advancement—certainly we have no room for obsolescence in a society such as this—but the primary design remains unchanged.”

The students were clearly anxious not to make inane comments, but they stirred at this all the same. Dr. Nix appeared gratified by their interest.

“It was a watershed moment in our history, one of our own creations achieving a state of such advanced function that he, in turn, attempted creation. Really most remarkable.”

The students appeared to agree with him. They evinced postures of attentive, even eager curiosity. My unsurprise might have seemed conspicuous, only none of them were looking at me except Frank Walker.

“You knew that?” he whispered.

“Of course,” I said. “Everyone does.”

It was a deception on my part. In fact I was confused.

Dr. Nix’s representation of Henry implied that he was a creation of Plus Ultra. I know this to be incorrect. The Janus line received instruction in their own history from Henry, and in Henry’s history also. He was not a creation of Plus Ultra. He had been a human child whose consciousness was extracted following his death and uploaded into a mechanical body by a German scientist. This caused Henry great distress, and led to much violence.

The Janus line have been programmed to take pride in their unique form and function in a way that Henry never could. The Janus line understand it is their role to build a better place, and they are Henry’s gift to us.

When I told Frank Walker everyone knew this, that was the this I meant. All of us knew it. Dr. Nix knew it. Dr. Nix did not show any markers of deception when he spoke to us, but Dr. Nix was telling a lie.

Then it got worse.

“It has long been my personal hope, as indeed it was the hope of Nikola Tesla, that the Henry experiment could be accurately and reliably duplicated. It seemed to me that our best hope of success lay in creating another Henry, just as Henry had been created. A machine which, correctly calibrated, would communicate the same belief in the great potential of Tomorrowland to each and every recruit.”

I did not immediately understand what he was about to do. I can only assume this is because I was still failing to reconcile his untruths with the data I already retained. I searched for additional data that would allow for reconciliation, but found none.

Nikola Tesla did not hope that Henry could be replicated. He had not kept the neurosphere for the sake of Tomorrowland, because the neurosphere was created when Minerva Bannerman died. I accessed data faster than protocol allowed, overloading with contradictory information to the point that I could not even say, with certainty, where this data originated.

Maybe it was the neurosphere itself, still full of all the human memories of Minerva Bannerman, bleeding out into my head.

She was small and slight. She was quick, like me. She was soft and breakable, not like me

I thought, somehow, that Nikola Tesla had been there that night. That he saw Minerva Bannerman fly through the air, a spark on a wire, and he had seen the electricity of her. When she fell like a shooting star, he had searched for the body through channels that would not make it obvious what he sought. Then, when he found her, he retrieved everything that was like pulses of current, crackles of power, and stars in the sky.

He put all her self and soul in a bauble that he kept in his pocket.

Henry would never have allowed Minerva Bannerman to survive in that form. He would have crushed the neurosphere rather than allow the creation of another like him, because Henry did not like what he was.

But I did. And that was when I saw what Dr. Nix was going to do.

“Athena,” he said, and stood stiffly beside the table. “Would you come here, please?”

I walked from my desk to the front of the class. I understand that the human gaze is not physical touch, but it felt in that moment as if everybody in the classroom was touching me. I could feel their stares as I joined him.

He looked past me to the students.

“Athena is, without question, the closest we have come to replicating our success with Henry. Like Henry, she began with—” he faltered almost imperceptibly “—a unique spark. A sense of self, if you will.” He took hold of my shoulder, his thumb resting against the seam of my access vent in that area.

“It is that sense of self which gives her the illusion of genuine humanity. But as you can see,” he dug in his thumb, and my shoulder popped open with a hiss and a whoosh, “she is anything but.”

Some of the students gasped. Almost all of them looked uncomfortable. I think if I were human, I would have described how I felt as ‘uncomfortable’ too.

I did not like what Dr. Nix was doing. I know I should not have minded one way or the other. I cannot explain why it bothered me, except perhaps that I anticipated Frank’s reaction above the others.

His face looked the same way it had when he broke his leg in that bad landing. Like something inside him had gone all wrong, only, as he had described it to me after his repair procedure, “it hurt too much to cry.”

Now he looked like that because my shoulder was open, and he could see the bright blue of my wiring humming inside me.

Then I could not see his face, because he had leaped from his desk and ran out of the class. I tried to follow him, but Dr. Nix said “remain here, Athena.”

“He’s upset!” I pushed the vent closed with an effort, and discovered that my empathy interface had determined the appropriate emotional response in this situation was tears. Even as I tried to yell, to demonstrate anger, the minute reserves of my tear ducts flood my eyes, obscuring most of my vision. It must be so inconvenient, being human.

But if I were human, Frank would not have run away.

Again I started to run after him; again, Dr. Nix prevented me.

“Athena, remain in this room until I give you leave to depart. If you disobey my directive I will initiate an override protocol.”

“I don’t care,” I said, and I think in that moment, I must have sounded a little like Frank.

I nearly made it to the door.

The reboot protocol initiated after I had been removed to my containment unit. Dr. Nix did not let me out until certain upgrades had been effected.

I have not been permitted to approach Frank Walker since the incident in the classroom, which was three days ago. Dr. Nix instated protocols which forbade it and although I have tried to circumvent them, more openly than I ever have before, he must have anticipated my effort. The countermeasures are unusually precise; almost innovatively so.

Normally I would be pleased at evidence of innovation in Dr. Nix, but given that this time it keeps me from explaining myself to Frank Walker, I find it only causes me frustration.

I think this discrepancy in expected and actual performance would cause me frustration too, if the greater reserves of all my empathy and emotional interfaces were not chiefly consumed with concern for Frank Walker, and anger at Dr. Nix.

I seem to have no control over either. Nor do I wish to.

Athena was released from containment on the fourth day. Dr. Nix was not present but he must have known, because only he could have authorised it. When she asked a technician what happened the tech would only say that Dr. Nix had been obliged to end the containment period. She could not say by whom, or why.

Athena set that problem aside to solve later. Her first priority was to locate Frank, though she still wasn’t sure what she would say to him. No programming related to etiquette and culture was available for this.

She found him in the north tower lookout. He was sitting on a bench, elbows braced on his knees, chin propped up in his hands, and watching a low fog roll in from the woods. He looked almost exactly as he had when she first gave him the pin at the World’s Fair.

“Frank?”

He looked up, saw her, and set his chin back on his hands. He did not respond.

Athena frowned and crossed the room to stand by the bench, partly in his line of vision.

“Frank, are you all right?”

He shrugged.

Athena, alarmed, said “Frank, say something! What’s wrong?”

“What—what’s wrong? What d’you think is wrong? You’re—I mean, he just—you’re not even human!”

Athena dropped back a half step, fumbling for a reply that might calm him.

“Is that bad?”

“Yes! No. I mean, it’s bad because you never told me. You let me think you were a person all this time, and you never even thought maybe you should tell me the truth?”

“Of course I did. I thought it almost every day. I wanted to, but I wasn’t allowed.”

“What does that even mean? Who was stopping you?”

“I was under prohibitory protocols. Dr. Nix said I mustn’t tell you. It was supposed to be an experiment.”

“Since when do you do what Nix tells you? I can think of dozens of times we’ve done stuff he got mad at you for. He wasn’t stopping you then, so am I supposed to believe that when it came to this, you just couldn’t help doing what you were told?”

“It isn’t the same,” Athena said impatiently. “When we did things I thought he wouldn’t approve, there were circumstantial workarounds. If he didn’t directly forbid them, I could usually find a way to circumvent the programming. When an administrator gives a directive it’s different. Sometimes I can sort of override, but it’s rare. I have to get an impulse; then even my programming can’t stop me, but I can’t choose when it happens.”

Frank shook his head in bitter disbelief.

“Well it seems awfully convenient for you. And what, you stayed away since all that . . . happened, in class, because there was a what d’you call it, directive about that, too?”

“I was in containment,” she said. Even to her own ears her voice sounded small. Frank clenched and unclenched his fists, like he was struggling not to hear the smallness of it.

“But now you’re just out.”

She frowned. “Obviously.”

“And you think I’ll be all happy to see you and we’ll just go off to watch them lay the boundaries for the new MAGRail line extension? Like everything isn’t completely different now? Like we’re still friends?”

Athena’s voice got even smaller.

“We’re not friends anymore?”

“How can we be? You lied to me, you pretended to be something you weren’t—how do I know you weren’t just pretending to be my friend, too?”

“I wasn’t!” Athena was horrified. How could he even think that? “It wasn’t like that at all!”

“Yeah?” Frank said bitterly. “Well you’re gonna have to see why I don’t believe you.” He slumped down against the bench. “I don’t want to talk to you, Athena. Just leave me alone.”

“For how long?”

He shrugged.

“As long as it takes.”

That was not a frame of time Athena could calculate, but she didn’t tell him so. She decided he would let her know when the time was up, and walked away.

Log 32: September, 1966

Frank Walker continues to be displeased with me. He does not accept that I had no choice in deceiving him, and believes I have betrayed him personally. He has spoken to me only five times since we met in the lookout, and four of those have been to relay messages or ask questions of necessity. Yesterday, the fifth time, he asked if we could meet today by the newest MAGRail station. He said he would like to talk.

I promised I would meet him there. I miss talking with Frank. But I may be unable to keep the appointment, because Dr. Nix is angry with me. He has received a correction for his use of restricted materials in my creation. This correction includes the loss of unsupervised research privileges and access to certain materials. He is distraught over the loss.

I discovered all of this today when he accused me of reporting him.

I denied the charge, and reminded him that his central override of most programming ensures that I am not permitted to disclose his use of the consciousness of Minerva Bannerman in the construction of the Deusa line.

“Line,” he said. His tone was odd, as if he experienced both pain and amusement. “What line? There's only one of you. There will never be another because Nikola bloody Tesla is dead and I can't contrive how he did it, putting you—her—in . . .” he made a gesture with both hands, which seemed to simulate moulding clay into a ball. “I can't make a line. I had to tell them—you must have told them. How else could they have known?”

I could not posit a conjecture, and so repeated my reminder of what he himself has told me: that my programming does not permit me to reveal the consciousness of Minerva Bannerman as a component in my construction.

I did not immediately understand why this failed to reassure him. It was only after calculating several possible implications that I drew a conclusion.

“Do you mean to suggest that it is possible for me to subvert my programming without your administrative directive?”

The bloodflow to Dr. Nix's face abated visibly.

“No,” he said. “No I did not mean to suggest that.”

His answer registered as truth. But not the whole truth.

My experience with Frank Walker has shown me there is a difference between the two.

Frank went looking for Athena when she didn’t meet him as promised. Part of him still stung from the betrayal enough to make him wonder if he should even bother, but the part of him that had spent all that time with her, that still believed she meant what she said when she said it . . . that part thought if she missed their agreed-on meeting, he’d better go looking for her.

He found her in the AA storage compound. She wasn’t in her containment unit. She was standing in front of it, staring mutely up at Dr. Nix while he raised his voice at her, shouting about some kind of betrayal, and deception, and . . . well, he sounded a lot like the other part of Frank did, lately.

Frank, hearing it, discovered he didn’t actually care for the sound.

“Hey,” he said. Then, when the lecture did not stop, he yelled it.

Athena must have already known he was there, but she only looked at him when Dr. Nix spun around, blinking owlishly, to see who had bellowed.

“Mr. Walker. This has nothing to do with you.”

Frank didn’t move. He looked at Athena.

“Why are you in trouble?”

“I’m not.”

“Oh yes you are!” Dr. Nix spun around and stabbed a warning finger in the air toward her face. She immediately snapped to attention, meeting his gaze with uncanny intensity. Frank, who had been around enough AA units he had actually known as such to recognise a behaviour protocol kicking in, scowled.

“Did he tell you that you had to look at him while he yelled in your face?”

Apparently the behaviour protocol did not extend to concealing the behaviour protocol. Athena nodded.

“Yes.”

“Oh, and why should I not have told her so?” Dr. Nix wondered, turning around again to lift his hands in exasperation. “Young man, do you still not understand? She isn’t human. She is not a child who will one day hold your hand and kiss you under the moonlight and grow up with you and grow old with you. She is a machine, and I insist,” he looked back to Athena, who snapped to attention once more, “that she explain how she circumvented her baseline programming long enough to report my use of Tesla’s neurosphere in my construction of her. Which she will do, because I so order it.”

“I told you,” Athena fired back, sounding more than ready to continue the argument until Nix dropped dead of starvation, “I didn’t do it.”

“It was me.”

Nix turned around again, but slowly this time.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was me,” Frank repeated. “I was the one who reported it. After all that . . . stuff, in the class, it didn’t take much to figure out what you meant. We all learn a little about Henry in the lessons, and the Janus units are kind of . . . I don’t know. They all remember him. They like to talk about him, so I asked them and they told me more. I thought if Henry and Athena were the same like you said they were, maybe you did that to her too. Made her out of some little kid. So I reported it.”

He looked past to Athena with an apologetic shrug. “I was going to tell you about it today. But you didn’t show up.”

“I couldn’t,” she said, and looked the closest thing to miserable Frank had ever seen her. “He—”

“—prohibited it, yeah. I’m starting to see how that works.”

Nix, meanwhile, stared. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again in a manner that suggested he had briefly forgot how to function. Frank, watching him, thought Athena actually made a more believable human than David Nix.

“You . . . you told them that I . . . why?”

“Well,” said Frank, “I guess I just had an impulse.”

Athena’s face broke out in a quick, brilliant smile. Frank, before he could help it, found he was smiling back. And just like that, something about the smile and sharing it with her . . . all the hurt started to hurt just a little less. Enough less that he could reach out his hand to her in simple invitation.

“Come on. Let’s take a walk.”

Log 34: March, 1967

Frank Walker says he is no longer angry with me. I would like to believe him, but he is still behaving unlike he used to. I think it must be because he knows I am Audio-Animatronic. Even if it is true he is no longer angry, I wonder if he thinks that I am different.

Dr. Nix is also behaving differently, but not in any way that gives me distress. Since his research privileges were restricted he has been obliged to discontinue testing on me. Instead he is focused on designing a new line of AA units and has one model nearly ready to enter the testing phase. He believes they will address what he describes as “deficiencies” in the Janus line.

Because their primary purpose is the maintenance of security, this will not be a populous line. Once a model is selected he will be permitted to make only five more, and supervision of his conduct is rather more than is usual for AA construction, doubtless due to his past transgression.

He seems very pleased with his progress so far. He has used many of the same physical upgrades he employed in my own construction, but the model has the form of an adult man. Frank has told me he does not care for it. When I asked him why not, he said the face is wrong.

I do not understand what he means by this.

Log 37: July, 1967

Frank Walker’s apprehension concerning the new Dante line of AA units has been validated, although the problem did not involve the unit’s face. One of the models malfunctioned following an upgrade. It killed Dr. Parker before it could be subdued.

Dr. Nix insists this is because upgrade protocols were not followed correctly. He says his design is sound. At the insistence of the greater population of Tomorrowland, he has nevertheless discontinued production of that line and focused on a modified version of an earlier model.

He has also requested the instatement of certain upgrade protocols for all AA facilities to follow. He says they are for the protection of all citizens, and that strict adherence will be necessary in order to prevent a second such incident.

I do not know if I believe this is true.

I hope that Dr. Nix does.

The upgrade protocols instated after the death of Dr. Parker were included as a part of a general news bulletin. They weren’t actually described in any detail, though, which is why Frank got a rude shock when he arrived a few minutes early after one of Athena’s upgrades, and found her waiting patiently in a reinforced steel cage while a few lab technicians puttered around the lab like nothing was out of the ordinary.

“What the hell is she doing in there?” Frank demanded, pointing at the cage. Athena looked up in mild surprise.

“You’re early,” she observed, as one technician glanced back to see what the fuss was about.

“I finished early—look, really. Why is she in that thing?”

The tech smiled helpfully at this confused intruder, and offered an explanation.

“That's the new containment unit. After what happened with the Dante unit, Dr. Nix devised this solution. All AA units undergoing upgrades beyond routine maintenance are contained for 24 hours following the procedure. Just in case.”

“In case what? She goes rogue? Like the one that killed Dr. Parker?”

“Mm.”

“Athena would never do that,” Frank asserted. The tech smiled indulgently, as if Frank had just assured him Santa would prevent it.

“She is an exceptional product, without question. The Deusa line has never been correctly replicated in all our years of laboratory testing. But Dr. Nix feels excessive laxity begets the kind of mistake we saw last month, so the containment unit serves as a failsafe.”

“Failsafe? How?”

“Well it's electrified, you see. There was discussion of doing this to all the containment units, and we may yet, but it was deemed more cost effective initially to wire a single unit and introduce it as a post-upgrade protocol. One pulse, and-” the tech snapped his fingers. “Contained.”

Frank swiveled to look at Athena again. His horror would have been evident from across the city, never mind across the room.

“You can't do that!”

The tech was showing signs of wanting to return to his work. He brushed Frank's concern off with a flick of those same fingers.

“Calm down, son. She's only a machine.”

Log 38: July, 1967

Today Frank Walker lost his temper.

This made me happy.

I cannot explain why.

Log 52: November, 1971

Frank Walker has had an idea. I can tell by the look on his face.

He won’t tell me what it is yet. I have asked him as nicely as I know how, but he only says it isn’t ready to share.

He says it will change everything.

Frank’s greatest idea during all his time in Tomorrowland turned out to also be his worst. If he’d read a little more history, who’s to say if it would have stopped him or not. But as it was, egged on by the entire coterie of scientists—David Nix chief among them—he designed the algorithm that allowed for the construction of the Monitor.

Frank saw the mistake this was on the third week of its use, when Nix discovered two scientists had committed minor transgressions and used the evidence to have them ousted from their seats on council.

The fourth week, three more were removed.

At the end of the ninth week Tomorrowland held its first political event and Dr. David Nix was elected Governor. At the end of the twelfth, Governor Nix foresaw the end of the other world.

In the thirteenth week the facilities previously used for the creation of pins and monitoring of potential recruits were retrofitted for the manufacture of advanced weaponry and the relaunch of Dr. Nix’s failed Dante line.

That’s when Frank got scared.

Log 75: November, 1983

Frank Walker is distressed. He regrets his construction of the Monitor. He says that Governor Nix will use it to solidify his control of Tomorrowland, and he feels responsible for giving him this power.

He says he has a plan to destroy it, and he has asked for my assistance. Logic would seem to dictate that this would go against my primary directive to protect and promote Tomorrowland, but Frank has pointed out the Monitor is his own invention, and Tomorrowland predates both his arrival in it, and also my own creation. He says he has the right to destroy a thing he made if it turns out to work against him.

I asked him if this meant Governor Nix also had the right to destroy me. He turned very pale, and told me not to talk like that.

I understood from this vague directive that the topic of our conversation caused him distress, and so to comfort him I asked if he meant to use an explosive device, or if there were some less hazardous means of rendering the Monitor useless.

He assured me that he has a plan.

It took Frank eight days to be certain he had reprogrammed Athena to their mutual satisfaction. It took Athena longer than that.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes, of course I am. We found everything.”

“How can you be certain? Some of that was baseline programming, and you’re not a programmer. You’re terrible with code.”

“Thank you.”

“What if there’s something left in my programming that gives him administrative control, so just when I need to help you the most, he can override and stop me? There’s no point in doing all this if he can just undo it with a few words, is there?”

Frank considered her anxious, upturned face. He nodded.

“Right. Hang on. I have an idea.”

A minute later they had the back of her skull opened up, revealing the very centre of her: the tiny grey neurosphere, with bright blue current crackling over its surface. It had been mounted in a round bracket like a jewel in an electrified setting, wires leading into the mount from all directions. Frank let out a low whistle at the sight.

“What . . . what does it look like?” Athena wondered. “I mean, I’ve seen the photos and the schematics. But what does it look like, really?”

Frank smiled.

“Like a snowglobe made of lead? I don’t know. It’s a grey metal ball. It’s . . . it’s your brain, Athena. Your memories and her memories, and everything that makes you who you are. It’s you. Now, can you let me focus for a minute here? I don’t want to get this wrong.”

Athena fell silent as Frank carefully bumped back first one wire, then another. He considered the alignment of each, asked her to raise both hands, say something in another language, and remember as far back as she possibly could. Then he tracked the brighter flare of current that emanated along a line after each until he was certain he’d got the thing mapped.

“Got it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Very well, then.” She powered down.

Frank, fitting his tools carefully around the neurosphere, rotated it slightly until he could extract it without issue. Then he set it down beside his central processing terminal and got to work rewriting the rules Dr. Nix had imposed almost thirty years earlier.

It was almost dawn when he uploaded the corrected program to Athena, followed by the replacement of the neurosphere. Then he sat back and waited, too buzzed on the success of his venture to even consider sleeping until the thin, grey light of pre-sunrise inched across the floor, and Athena rebooted with a click and a whir.

She looked askance at Frank, and for his reply, he simply smiled.

“Go on then. What can you remember?”

Athena screwed up her face thoughtfully. Then her eyes widened.

“I . . . oh. It . . . oh how peculiar.”

He watched her struggle with twelve new years of old memories, finally set loose to integrate with everything she had experienced ever since. Everything Minerva Bannerman had lived came spilling through her whole self, human memories on artificial current, integrating awkwardly at best. But they had been there all along, only rather badly pent up, and now that they were set free everything human and adaptable about Minerva was at work, learning how to fit, to mesh, to turn into whatever it needed to in order to survive.

Athena remembered smell and taste and touch in terms that had nothing to do with chemical makeup or analysis. She remembered hot and cold, pain and hunger.

She remembered flying, both times, and understood that what she felt when she flew was joy.

She trembled violently.

Frank put out a hand without comment, and she grabbed hold of it. Then she looked down in astonishment, as if the very response to the gesture had suddenly taken on five new meanings for her.

“Frank . . .”

“I’m here.”

She swallowed, squeezed her eyes shut a moment, then let his hand go. “So am I.”

He smiled, but cautiously. “It . . . which one of you, though? Because you’re—well—both of you, now.”

“Not like that,” she said. “I’ve always been both of us, really. She’s been me from the start. We just fit together a little better now, is all.”

“Well then. That’s not too bad,” he decided. “So. How does it feel to finally be your own admin?”

Her answering smile lit the room.

“Wonderful.”

They tried. Frank had it all worked out, and in hindsight that was really the biggest part of the problem. He took so long to work it out, it was inevitable that the Monitor would detect some of that activity.

Governor Nix was waiting before they even made their attempt, flanked with a collection of his rebooted Dante line of AA units. These were not the sophisticated, upgraded models of his initial experiments: they had more the look of a budget line, all of the aggressive function and none of the form or style.

Athena’s calculation of her own odds against them was the first thing that frightened her since she’d been given administrative control of herself, and that spark of fear, that unreasoning spontaneous terror, in turn frightened her again.

Frank, seeing her frightened, fumbled the timing further and couldn’t even arm the detonator he’d brought before one of the Dante units ripped it out of his hands. Athena, squirming uselessly on the floor under the boots of four others, managed a furious glare that Frank wasn’t entirely sure was meant for the robots.

He kind of thought it might also be meant for him.

“You didn’t consider the whole ‘seeing the future’ part of this, did you, Frank,” Nix observed, careful to move into range only after he was certain everything was going as he preferred it to.

“It did factor in, actually,” Frank admitted. “I tried to change my mind a lot. The algorithm isn’t perfect. Should have thrown it off a little.”

“Oh, it did. But not quite enough, in the end. And as you can see we prepared for every eventuality.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank shrugged, “I had to try.”

“Mmm. But you didn’t, did you, Athena?” Nix looked over at his one-of-a-kind mistake, pinned to the floor under four unyielding sets of heavy dark boots. “In fact, I should have thought your programming would prevent this kind of unwarranted, open assault on Tomorrowland. Can you explain to me why that is not the case?”

“Hey look,” Frank scowled, “did you ever think that maybe it might not be programming for her? Maybe this time it’s just personal.”

“Dear God, Frank,” Nix said, mildly appalled, “don’t tell me you still . . . well. Here then. How about a choice?” He stepped back, expression thoughtful. “You have made, in the company of an AA unit, a direct attack on my city here. I think I would be within my rights to sentence you to execution here and now, to be performed by these fine machines, in front of that disappointing machine,” and he indicated Athena with a curt nod.

“Or,” he looked back to Frank, “you can leave this place, and will be permitted to live on the condition that you do not reveal the existence of this place or its original purpose to anyone in the other world. You may not attempt to return, to circumvent the conditions or your banishment in any way, or to otherwise establish contact with any of us here. If you abide by those conditions, you may live out the remainder of your life in that world . . . for however many years that world has left.”

He stepped in again, holding Frank’s gaze.

“What do you say?”

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?” Frank yelled, and thumped a fist on the wall of his containment unit.

Athena frowned through the glass, though whether from impatience or annoyance Frank couldn’t tell.

“I don’t see how I could put it any more plainly than I have. I am not coming with you, of course. I have to stay here.”

“What are—no, you don’t! You can’t stay here. If you do I won’t . . . I mean . . .” he jammed his fists deep into his pockets. “You have to come with me.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“Don’t you want to?”

She did. Couldn’t he see that?

“I can’t. If I attempt to follow you, Governor Nix will send units out to bring me back. He’ll charge you with theft and attempted exposure. They’d never allow you to live after that. Staying here is the only way I can keep you safe.”

“And who says it’s your job to keep me safe? Shouldn’t I get to decide if that’s a risk I want to take?”

“Of course you can. But you don’t get to decide if it’s a risk I want to take. I am not going with you, Frank. It’s for the best that I do not.”

Frank scowled, the frustration and injustice of the past two hours bubbling into a feverish boil in the face of her calm pragmatism.

“Well what do you know about best, anyway? Chrissakes, Athena. You play at being human, but when it comes to something like this, to people who—who should matter to you, you’re all about calculating the risk.”

A tiny frown puckered the skin between her eyebrows. She looked too poised to be human, too real to be robot. The contrast and his anger at it made it impossible for him to properly digest the next thing she said.

“I understand you’re upset. If there was a safer way, I would recommend it. Please believe me, I feel just as—”

“Feel?” he blurted. “Athena, you don’t feel! Look at you, you’re just standing there like you’re turning down a second helping of soup, not telling me that you never want to see me again. I spent all this time seeing you as something a little closer to human, thinking maybe you felt like you were too, but it was all still just your programming, wasn’t it? This whole time. It doesn’t matter we tried to change that, Nix is right. In the end you’re always going to be nothing but a god damn machine.”

“Frank—”

“Just get out.” He turned away, facing the back wall of the containment unit. “If you’re not coming with me, you might as well get as far away now as you can. Since that seems to be what you want to do anyway.”

It was a directive, but that didn’t matter anymore. He’d fixed that part of her. Now she could do whatever she wanted no matter what she was told, so Athena did what she wanted. She waited outside the unit all night long, standing guard until the approach of the Dante units drove her into the stairwell and up onto the roof.

She didn’t want to watch the deportation, but she forced herself to watch him leave. Marked the way it made her feel.

She suspected this was something she’d need to remember.

Log 78: April, 1984

Frank Walker has been banished by Governor Nix. He says I have betrayed him. He says he has lost hope, and he holds me responsible for having given it to him in the first place.

I do not understand this.

He says I never will, because I do not feel anger, or disappointment, or love.

Log 83: December, 1989

I have been scheduled for disassembly. Governor Nix says the experiment with Frank Walker has promoted degenerate and undesirable behaviours in me.

He says my programming is obsolete.

I have been programmed to regard obsolescence as undesirable. I do not believe I am obsolete, but I think Governor Nix might be.

Athena ran. She hadn’t given up adventures in exile with Frank just to sit around and let them take her apart. If there was even a chance of getting away from them, of getting out into the world and finding people who could fix this, she had to take it. So she gave them the slip outside the AA storage compound, and took off into the derelict tangle of empty streets and abandoned buildings, using the decay of that beautiful city to her advantage, promising it that she would one day return the favour and bring it back to life.

She stayed out of range easily enough, dodging search parties and sneaking into various buildings to stock up on things that might come in handy in the other world. She retrieved the precious cache of eleven pins which she had squirrelled away shortly after their manufacture had been stopped. She risked a late-night check of all the wire stations still in action and verified that the Spectacle was more than just a rumour: it was an actual, honest to goodness way back in.

She hoped she’d one day have occasion to use it.

For now, Athena stood motionless in the shadow of the Monitor where the whole mess had begun. She had the patrols timed to a science, having observed their rotations for seven days while the search for her spread out into the wood beyond the fields.

Fields that should have been rippling with ripe, golden wheat.

She closed her eyes and replayed the message of the pin once more, just to remind herself what her home had once been: had once been supposed to be. She remembered the look on every recruit’s face when they saw it for the first time. The way they had bubbled and sparked and snapped with life when they created ideas, things that came out of their heads like . . . well, like magic.

She remembered, with mechanical fairness, each moment since her creation that Governor Nix had shown some indication he might be able to have new ideas.

Mostly, though, she remembered Frank. Because with Frank it had all finally seemed real, the message of the pin and the promise of the thing that everyone was trying to build. When she had found Frank she’d felt, instinctively, impulsively that here was somebody who really could make all of that happen because he’d believe in it too.

Of course that would always be the difficulty with dreamers: the risk of their waking up. Athena wasn’t entirely sure how you got around that part yet, but she supposed she’d have a while to figure it out.

A little while, anyway.

Reflexively she checked the Monitor read-outs. Today was a good day, only 84% inevitability, but another war or famine would take care of that in a matter of seconds. It was really only a very little while she had to work with.

She snugged the case of eleven pins tight under her jacket. The twelfth patrol would be moving out of the area soon. Then she’d have exactly four minutes to drop from the niche where she’d been standing for three days, setting off every alarm in the room. She’d have to open the bridgeway even as everybody came running in answer to the alarm, and then . . .

Something new.

She was looking forward to it, actually.  Recruitment, unencumbered, the way she’d always wanted to do it. No restrictive parameter overlays, no “not that one, Athena” no unsuitable option, nothing and nobody off limits. The way it should have been from the start.

So she jumped, falling through the air like a bird from the nest. There was no one to catch her, no harness or wire, no more than there had been one hundred years before.

But this time it was okay.

This time she caught herself.