Today was my last day at Jenson Online, for a while and possibly ever, so that I can focus on school and fulfill my potential on assignments like I wasn't able to do last semester. Since I was such a good employee I'm welcome to return whenever I want, so that's a nice safety net to have, but whether I do or not depends on what progress I'm able to make on my actual career goals in the next few months. Like, it might help if I actually get something published. Just a thought. With any luck, I'll soon have a job in the USU English department, but that's contingent on whether I can out-compete people with equal or superior writing skills. My best chance is to focus on what makes me unique, which is that I'm almost the only person in any writing class I've ever had who tries to write funny things (and, if I may flatter myself, usually succeeds).

When I started at Jenson Online nearly two years ago, of course I had just escaped from the call center. After much prayer and debate I decided to quit that job so I would have time to go in for an interview for this one. Even though I had zero ten key experience. I practiced really hard to make sure I could pass the ten key test that accompanied the interview, and then I did so well that I knew I would get the job despite a couple faux pases like forgetting to stand up when the guy shook my hand. And then I realized that my hunt-and-peck method wouldn't work while I was reading the ISBNs out of the books, so I had to learn it the right way within the first few days. I was very blessed to get this job, is what I'm saying. At that time I thoroughly enjoyed it but knew the excitement would someday wear off. I compared it to a marriage, or at least how I imagine a marriage would be, where you start off crazy in love and then slowly the banalities of real life take over and the magic is lost, and you have to remind yourself how blessed you are to be with this person. So I guess this is a divorce over someone younger and more beautiful.

And I learned today that a former coworker I barely knew somehow discovered my blog and told another coworker about it who told another coworker about it, and they like it. I know I'm a great writer, but I feel like my posts all summer have been hastily and poorly written, so that was a nice confidence booster. I was actually just thinking about giving up on it. Since 2018 started my previously satisfactory pageviews have gone through the floor despite doing everything I can think of to search engine optimize the site. I don't know if it's people turning off their cookies or what. As I write this my stats tell me that today I've had 64 visitors and 424 page views, meaning that each visitor viewed an average of 6.625 pages, which is somewhat typical and makes little or no sense to me. If my site is really so compelling that people keep looking at additional pages after they first stumble on it, then it should be rising organically through the search results and getting more and more visitors. It was getting more and more visitors until 2018 started. Now it won't no matter what I do. Any time the stats start going up and I think this stupid slump is over, they plummet again.

One thing I had hoped to do was have a substantial following on my blog so that when I published a book, I could advertise it here and already have loyal fans eager to read it. I don't think that's going to happen now. I've been at this for well over three years and the lack of discernible progress has been quite discouraging. But I feel encouraged now. Even if only a small cluster of local people get enjoyment out of it, that's something and I hope I can continue to please them. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts.

As most people reading this are already aware, Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has started an initiative to stop calling The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints "the LDS Church" or "the Mormon Church" or "Mormonism" and to stop calling Latter-day Saints "Mormons". So I'm going through my website and change most instances of "Mormon" to "Latter-day Saint" even though it will do my search ranking no favors. I'm not going through all my old blog posts because that would take far too long. These new guidelines are, of course, less than convenient, and almost certainly will be very detrimental to the Church's visibility online and in the public consciousness, but I choose to trust that President Nelson knows what he's doing. Who said religion was supposed to be convenient? A prophet who always just reaffirmed one's pre-existing opinions would be useless. President Nelson says this can't be done, but the Lord wants it done so it will be.

I feel sorrier for people in some other languages, though. In Spanish, "Mormon" is "Mormón". "Latter-day Saint" is "Santo de los Últimos Días". Spanish speakers are now expected to say nine syllables instead of two. The full name of the Church, "La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días", is twenty syllables, while "Iglesia SUD" is seven (because the letter S is pronounced "essay"). And they're probably no longer allowed to jokingly call it "La Iglesia de José Smith y Un Dios" (The Church of Joseph Smith and One God - get it, because the words use the same first letters as the actual name. Spanish humor is weird.) And the loss of recognition overseas will be even worse than in the US. Even people I met from India had some idea of what "Mormons" were from watching "South Park", even though "Mormons" in India are literally one in a million (literally), but of course they had never heard of "Latter-day Saints".

Tomorrow: Bear Lake. Monday: College. And that's as far in advance as I know anything. Fingers crossed that this semester will be less stressful than the last one.

I always thought family history was less fun than watching paint dry, but now that I've actually stumbled on a part of my FamilySearch tree where there are people missing that are actually possible to find and put in, it isn't so bad. I'll resist the temptation to go into detail about it because I know nobody cares and I don't blame them. But I'm finding a lot of cool seventeenth-century Dutch names to give my daughters if I ever have daughters. Stijntie Pieters Nicholson, Tryntje Thyssen Nicholson, Giertje Egberts Nicholson. They have nice rings to them, don't they? Of course, the problem with naming daughters is that some man will probably come along and change their last name, ruining your meticulously arranged nomenclature. It's a travesty.

And I do briefly want to share one story I found and really liked. It's about Wiliam Henry Brighton, son of William Stuart Brighton and father of William Stuart Brighton, who was the father of William Henry Brighton. "There is one more thing that I would like to tell about Grandpa Brighton and that is at his funeral one of the speakers, Mr. Bagley, made the remark that Grandpa had lived a good and long life and that now that he had died his troubles were over and that he [Mr. Bagley] had also lived a good and long life and he wished that he too could die and be through with his troubles. Well, that is exactly what he did after giving his talk. He just sat down and died. Of course that shortened the funeral up some but it was quite a thing for him to get his wish."

I don't have much time to write blog posts since I'm chugging away on my memoir. I'm hoping to get it published next year or possibly the year after that. It largely depends on how much I need to revise after learning more about non-fiction writing this coming semester. But I want to get it done and out there so that is provocative title will hopefully kick-start the career I've put off for far too long already.

Adrian is, in my estimation, the best writer in our fiction class, coming in two slots above me. I was disappointed by his absence on the day that my first story was workshopped, but he sent me a message via Canvas, the website that USU uses for various stuff. Because I had not been in school for a year and a half prior to this semester, I forgot all about checking for Canvas messages and didn't notice it until about a week ago. I want to reproduce his message in its entirety here because it made me smile so hard.

"Hello Chris, since I sadly could not make it to class today I am sending my comments on your story over this email. Hopefully they will assist you with revision.

What works well: 

--I honestly love this story. The first sentence is masterful in my opinion, perfectly setting up the amazing setting and interesting characters. The allusions to space-related things throughout (the Jetsons, Ernie's moon song) are just amazing and work really well to create a specific tone and mood for the surface of the moon itself. 

--Jane and Chantelle's characters are examined well through what they enjoy (for Chantelle, pointing out Jane's abnormalities and for Jane, "living the experience," and we get some great interiority from Jane through all her instances similar to "but she saw no reason to tell her" or "she couldn't care less." The image of Chantelle's bright green eyes hidden behind blood-red bangs is just phenomenal. Figurative language works very well when it occurs, especially when it connects us to character, such as the "dead human skull Jane had seen once" and her beautiful meta-descriptions of earth.

--By far the strongest aspect of the story, however, is the dialogue and interaction between the characters. Every single line from each of them chastising the other is just drop-dead funny, and their familiar relationship of bully and victim is made fresh and new through the specific, unique things they say to one another. The LEVELS which each go to to in terms of criticism are just astounding, from inventing "lunar wolves" to snapping directly back at every chastisement each offers the other with a perfect response. And, oh my God, the PUNS--even down to the friggin title! So awesome. Their extended interaction is honestly so interesting that it carries the whole story by itself.

What needs improvement:

--I didn't get that they were on the moon, and not an alien planet, until page four. Mention it immediately to help the audience withhold one specific image of the setting throughout.

--In terms of worldbuilding, some things you use are working very well, like subtle mentions of slang like "stragging," "Philistines," and "space spit," all of which I just adore, and the fact that some channels on the moon's radio waves play music. Other mentions of things such as Jane's birth on Mars or descriptions of the system-wide space travel program that got them out there in the first place, however, work less well since they are mentioned briefly and without connection to the plot. Other descriptive phrases feel much too, er, "on the nose" and expected in terms of the genre, such as "the last person in the galaxy" or "like a disabled ship in a meteor storm." Just watch for moments like these which feel too basic, like something the reader him/herself would think to use given the setting, and focus on your interesting invented phrases and obscure, quirky references.

--Even though the character interaction is strong enough to carry the story in general, I do think that the narrative should be more condensed in terms of plot. While each conversation is golden in its own right, you should probably pick out the best ones and move quicker so that you have room to elaborate on other areas--such as a more lengthy description of the tussle that rips Chantelle's suit. Interaction w/ teachers and the other bullies at the end also felt sudden since we had not seen them before, so maybe switch back and forth from the main action to flashbacks that reveal Jane's relationship with all of them at the start of the trip to better establish tension throughout.

--I find it interesting that BOTH girls are unlikable/not entirely innocent in different ways, instead of just acting as an evil bully and innocent victim, but in Jane's case--as the main character--I think these aspects of her could see further exploration. She seems to feel NO guilt whatsoever to BREAKING Chantelle's space suit, but why? Would it serve the story better for her to find that she does, even though Chantelle remains so cruel to her? Take things a step farther based on what the audience knows about them by the end to expand upon each of their characters.

--The ending is great in terms of subverting expectations at first (I LOVE the fact that Jane makes a bomb instead of just giving her oxygen to Chantelle, as one may expect, but Chantelle's later reaction feels a bit wanting. For Jane to save her life and Chantelle to do NOTHING to change her attitude towards her felt jarring--she doesn't need to run over and hug her as her new best friend, but even a small mention to her cronies of "hey, maybe lets let her off the hook for today" or something like that would work great. Jane ends her character arc in a good place regardless, but for Chantelle to do NOTHING felt disappointing, as if the whole plot of the story did not accomplish anything between them. 

--The mention of the nanobots feels somewhat like a cop-out--as if the characters were never in any real danger if recuperation occurs so quickly and painlessly. 

Like I said, Christopher, AMAZING story, and I am truly saddened by the fact I could not take part in the discussion of the first sci-fi story I've seen in Charles' class during the past three years.

​Adrian

"A space hero. Like a regular hero, but in space."
--Favorite line

Returning home with a bag of laundry last Saturday, I was walking by the church on the boulevard when a vehicle pulled up near me and the passenger tossed a burning cigarette butt at my feet. I stood behind the vehicle and positioned my phone to take a picture of the license plate, but before I could, both of the guys inside got out. One stayed in the shadows while the other walked over to me. He had a shaved head, a tank top, and tattoos all down his muscular arms - in other words, he was yet another example of the fact that most stereotypes exist because they're true. "You got a problem?" he sputtered. "You got something to say?" He threw in a few swear words. I guess I was supposed to be intimidated. But I'm never afraid to die, and this night I was in such a dark place that my normal aversion to most physical pain was gone and I didn't care if he broke all my limbs. I had just spent stake conference hiding from my ex-crush, but this jackass with the maturity of a twelve year old did not instill me with one iota of fear.

"You dropped something," I said, pointing at it. I resumed taking the picture. Realizing that he had failed to intimidate me, he swore a few more times and went back to his buddy. I sent the picture to the police, and I don't know if they can actually do anything about it but it gave me a certain satisfaction.

​I deeply regret that I didn't just pick the thing up and toss it back in at them. Dear smokers: if you want to poison yourself, that's fine with me, Darwin approves, but keep it away from me and dispose of your cigarette butts like an adult.

We had Star Wars day recently. Bracelets referred to it as "such a revered reminder of our fandom" and that was when I knew her conversion was complete. I'm so proud of her. Anyway, this John Williams masterpiece that in 1997 replaced the cute but lackluster "Yub Nub" pretty well encapsulates how I feel about this hellish semester being over, not counting the first 37 seconds because there is absolutely nothing bittersweet about it.

Taxes are over and only cost me seventy dollars to file, and finally there is an end in sight to this semester, which will reduce my stress level considerably and give me more time to write things that are actually enjoyable. Naturally my motivation is in the toilet. Although 2018 has thus far been an almost uninterrupted stream of stress, loss, heartache, frustration, arthritis, and various other kinds of pain, it's only been the second worst year of my life because it's still not as bad as working at a call center and losing my dog.

​I did some stuff with FamilySearch this week. I did a face match thing to see which of my ancestors I most resemble and for that I took a new picture of myself. I think I look moderately attractive in the mirror, but in photographs I usually somehow come out looking like an unsuccessful lobotomy patient. So I limit the photographic evidence of my existence and use a picture of my dead dog on social media. Of course I was really surprised that I managed to get an acceptable picturee and if you haven't seen it yet, here it is. Notice how white I am, thanks to my English, Scottish, Danish, and Portuguese ancestry.

I can't believe all the people who don't know who Felicity Jones is and think I just picked a random name. Maybe I can trick God this way. I'll go in for the interview, and He'll be like "Hmm, so you never married" in a sort of vaguely judgmental tone. I'll be like, "Yes I did, look here, it says right here." And He'll be like "Oh yeah, my bad." Nobody tell Him about this post.

I happened to learn in the process that I'm distantly related to my bishop, my bishop's wife who is distantly related to my bishop, his first counselor, my ex-crush, and some other people. My ex-crush, in case you were wondering, is my ex-crush because someone told me I could do better. I didn't believe him at first. I thought, but didn't say out loud, how so? Is she a serial killer or something? I would actually respect that. Women are ridiculously underrepresented in the serial killing industry, and I admire any woman who manages to break through that glass ceiling. But I figured he was just saying that to be nice. I thought, but didn't say out loud, that if he wants to compliment me I'd be happy to give him a list of my positive traits so he doesn't have to make stuff up. At least if I can find the list. I may have accidentally thrown away the Tootsie roll wrapper it was written on.

This reminds me of a story. A few years ago, when I was about five or six, I had the biggest crush on Natalie Davis, who was about ten or twelve or something. I've been mostly into older women for as long as I can remember thanks to the sister missionaries who put me on their laps and tickled me when I was little, which is another story altogether. Anyway, Natalie had a twin, or maybe just a sister who looked a lot like her, I don't remember, but I could tell them apart and I knew which one I wanted. She had six siblings, if I recall correctly. My family and her family hung out a lot. I was closest to her sister Cheryl in age but sometimes I didn't get along with her and one time I called her a "sarcastic know-it-all", which was the worst insult I could think of. Natalie, or maybe her twin, was all like "How would you feel if someone called you that?" and I was all like "I wouldn't care." One night a bunch of us slept on her family's trampoline and she told us a scary bedtime story and my chest is aching from nostalgia just thinking about all this.

So one day I was at this church activity at some park somewhere and Natalie was sitting on a table talking to a friend, and I don't remember the thought process behind what I did next or even if there was one. I was very young and not entirely familiar with the principle of consent. I climbed up next to Natalie and kissed her on the cheek.

"Gasp!" said her friend.

Natalie, however, was unfazed. She said, "It's okay, we're related."

That was not what I had expected to hear. Yeah, somehow I missed that discussion of when our families met and found that out. But she's only my third cousin or something, I think, so I think that would have been all right anyway. But doing family history reminded me of her and that made me really nostalgic and motivated me to churn out several pages of the memoir that I stopped working on quite a while ago because it turns out that spelunking through my memories is super depressing.

I posted my second story for class a few weeks ago and this week it was critiqued, and while the ratio of constructive criticisms to praise was more even this time, indicating that this story was inferior to my first one just like I thought it was, it did seem to be funnier. Macie said this was the first story all semester to laugh out loud. I think the reason for that is because witty, rude, and/or sarcastic dialogue is inherently ten times funnier coming from a robot than a meatbag. Star Wars and Futurama have discovered this principle. And I think the reason for that is because robots are expected to be emotionless and subservient and logical, and humor lies in subverting expectations. Anyway, Adrian, who also happens to be the best writer in the class (I've ranked us Adrian, Natalie, me, everyone else) liked KC-1138 enough to take the initiative of drawing him for me, and that was the most flattering thing ever.

This is my second favorite Sisters of Mercy song. I don't know what to say about it other than it's awesome. And romantic. Since most of my music is gone for the foreseeable future, I've listened to the "Temple of Love 1992" single about twelve times a day.

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. Tomorrow is also April Fools' Day. Tomorrow is also the second day of LDS General Conference, which I'm watching and as usual due to time constraints will write about next week. Tomorrow is also the beginning of Autism Acceptance Month, and I've already de-converted at least one well-meaning Autism Speaks fan. School is going well, other than my advisor declining to respond to my emails so I can't plan for next semester that I have to register for next week and if I don't get into the right classes I'll have to stay an additional semester and I really can't afford that even if I wanted to. So life is mostly good.

I don't have time to write much of a post so it's fortunate that I have another story for my Advanced Creative Fiction Writing class to post. Like the previous one I posted, this one is also about a character from "Space Girls". It isn't due for a little over a week so this is a rough draft of a rough draft and please take pity on it, but I'm posting it today because I'm busy with General Conference. So here it is. This one turned out a little differently. Jane Padgett is the de facto main character of "Space Girls", so it's mostly from her perspective, so the previous one that focused on her was in the same vein and that was easy. This one is about her robot, so it's a new perspective and it really had a lot of freedom to evolve in ways I couldn't predict. It ended up being weird. But I like it like that.


T


KC-1138 was programmed to fear death as a self-preservation measure, but unlike the meatbags who had created him, he had no facial muscles to project it against his will. “Hello, ugly,” he said in the region's native language to the man pointing a gun at him from the alleyway. “What do you want?”

The man was dressed in rags drawn so tightly over himself that Kaycee had to turn on his night vision to see the unshaven, haggard face. Cloth and skin alike carried a coating of aquamarine dust from the soil that covered this part of the planet. When he spoke, his breath smelled like he hadn't brushed his teeth in, well, ever. “Just the package you're carrying will suffice,” he said.

Kaycee drew himself up to his full height, which barely reached the man's waist. He wasn't built to look intimidating. His body resembled a shiny metal trash can on a set of treads, with six spindly arms – two of which cradled a small package – and a pair of binocular “eyes” mounted on an adjustable neck. He wished he could squint in a contemptuous manner. “This package is for my mistress,” he said. “Are you my mistress? I think not. She has much better fashion sense and less facial hair. Now, if you'll be so kind as to leave me alone –”

“Just give it to me and you can be on your way,” the man said, making a “gimme” motion with the fingers of his free hand. “I'm not gonna hurt you.”

“I think if you weren't gonna hurt me, you'd have left the gun at home,” Kaycee said. He spun his head around for a moment to check the unpaved street behind him. It was falling apart, full of garbage, so that the man looked perfectly at home here. At this time of day no one entered or exited the small businesses that lined it, most of them shuttered anyway, their neon lights dimmed forevermore. The drivers of the few cars that whooshed through didn't give him a single glance. A solitary spaceship passed through the purple sky overhead. The only other sign of life was a few scraggly pink trees next to the road.

His fear level rose slightly.

“I don't want to hurt you,” the man said. “This is nothing personal, is what I mean. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm starving.”

“Starving, eh?” He did look malnourished. Kaycee held the package up closer to him. “Look at the label, numbbolts. This is a polytronic combustion regulator. A spaceship component. I happen to know your variety of meatbag can't digest metal, so –”

“Maybe I'll ransom your mistress for it.”

“She doesn't have the money left to buy it again,” Kaycee lied.

“Then maybe I can resell it in a bigger town,” the man said, putting his gun away and snatching the package with a speed surprising in one so frail, breaking Kaycee's grip like a pair of twigs. “Thank you for your contribution. This will feed me for weeks, if I can find a buyer.” He turned to leave, but paused and marveled for a moment. “You know, I thought sassy robots like you only existed on TV.”

​“That feature came extra,” Kaycee said. “My mistress insisted on it. She finds it charming.”

“It is, in a weird way,” the man said. He turned to leave again. “Pleasure doing business with you. Nothing personal, remember.”

“Neither's this,” Kaycee said. He sent full power to his treads and rammed the man's legs. The man sprawled one way, hitting his head on the pavement, and the package flew another. Kaycee wheeled over and picked it up. “If this is damaged, I'll come back and harvest your organs as compensation,” he said, and left.

He maneuvered around the trees as he wheeled alongside the road. The fear dissipated as he moved away, leaving a void for annoyance to rise. Creating robotic emotions was simply a matter of copying the chemistry of meatbag brains, minus the defects, and laying it down in circuitry. Kaycee's brain housed a labyrinth of electronics, like the home of some mythical beast best left undisturbed. He didn't fully understand how it worked himself. He didn't need to. He was just a beneficiary of it.

On the next block, a young woman who couldn't have been more than twenty stepped forward, dressed as poorly as the man who had just accosted him, holding out a cup. “Please, friend –” she began.

These barbarians still used physical money, but Kaycee hadn't carried any more than he needed to buy the part, and in any case he wasn't in the mood to deal with people. “Sorry, I'm done talking to freeloaders,” he said, not bothering to avoid running over her foot as he passed. She didn't so much as whimper.


***


About two kilometers away, Kaycee found Jane Padgett exactly where he had left her, the only customer sitting on a stool at an outdoor cafe in the nicer part of town – “nicer” being an entirely relative term, of course. There were more trees and a few small domestic animals scampering around, but the buildings were still falling apart and shady characters still lurked in the shadows.

The cafe with its bright colors was like a child's bandage failing to cover an infected wound several times its size. The plate of half-eaten food on the table next to her looked like a month-old pureed corpse, smelled worse than the mugger's breath, and made Kaycee grateful that he only ate electricity. He couldn't tell whether the food was actually rotten or just a local taste.

Kaycee didn't think he would ever understand why she had dragged them both away from the mansion she grew up in for surroundings such as this. Every time he thought they'd seen the armpit of the galaxy, she took him to another planet and proved him wrong. But at least it was better than staying on the ship. Sometimes she made him do that in case they needed to make a quick getaway, which they usually did.

“Hey, glad you made it back,” she said, refreshingly in English, rising as he approached. “You got it?”

“No, I decided to buy a pair of shoes instead,” Kaycee said. “Of course I got it, Jane. The guy said I was his first customer all week. Can we leave now?”

Jane grinned at this display of her favorite personality. “Lillis is still trying to find a thrust coil recompensator that will fit,” she said. She took the package, looked it over, and set it on the table beside her. “I should have made her wait so you could go with her.”

Their pilot, a woman about Jane's age who also competed with him for mechanical duties, ironically had less emotion than him. He liked her just fine, but being alone with her always set his processors on edge. “No thank you. This errand boy nonsense is a complete waste of my skills. Although I did finally get a bit of action, so thanks for having no regard for my safety, I guess.”

“Yeah?” He saw how her face perked up with surprise and a little worry. “What happened?”

He basked in the flattering glow of her concern for a moment. “Just some homeless loser wanting to pawn this for food. I knocked him out cold. I can show you, he's probably still there.”

“Hmm.” Jane looked upset. How could she be dissatisfied with his performance? “That wasn't nice of him to try and steal from you,” she said after a moment, “but he's probably starving, after all.”

“He did mention something about that, yes.”

“We've got food to spare,” Jane said, her eyes brightening again. “Go back and bring him some, would you?”

Kaycee was obedient, but he also had a protocol, meant to protect both himself and his mistress, that required him to make an effort at talking her out of ridiculous ideas. It seldom worked. He facepalmed with one hand while throwing the other five up in the air. “Seriously, Jane? You want me to reward him for trying to screw us over?”

“Where's your compassion?” She frowned. “Are you glitching? I swear I've seen you be compassionate before.”

“I have compassion for you, because you're my mistress,” Kaycee explained, activating a subroutine to prevent him from losing his patience. “And for Lillis, because she's your best friend. I'll do nice things for anyone else if it's in my, your, or her interest. And that's about it.”

“Then just pretend this guy is my best friend too,” Jane said.

“Why?”

“Because he's a person, and he has feelings, and intrinsic worth,” she said, starting to look annoyed. He didn't want her to be annoyed. He had tried, but now he would have to gracefully segue out of this discussion.

“And that concerns us how?”

“I don't have time to explain right now,” she said, forcing a smile. “Come on, let's get some food from the ship and you can bring it to him.” She grabbed the package and motioned the waiter back over to her table. With crude sign language, she indicated that she was ready to pay her bill and adamantly did not want a doggy bag. He acquiesced.

Kaycee would have been unable to suppress a smile if he'd had a mouth. In spite of himself, for all her quirks, he always felt good around Jane. “I'll bring it to him, but I won't like it,” he said, following her. “Are you coming too, or being a hypocrite?”

Jane dismissed the waiter with a curt nod. “I've got to bring this part to Lillis and see if I can help her find the other,” she said. “But I can't wait for you regale me with how good you are at making friends.” She winked.

Though the gesture made a component inside him tingle, he shook his head and said nothing. He wasn't programmed to make friends, but of course he would do as his mistress commanded.


***


Compassion. Why should he give a crap about compassion? If Jane had wanted him to be compassionate toward anybody but her and her close associates, she ought to have specified that when he was put together for her. It obviously hadn't been a huge concern for her at that time. But how had it come to be so now? As far as KC-1138 was aware, humans couldn't rewire their brain chemistry, at least not without extensive surgery. Shouldn't they be stuck with the worldviews and feelings they developed before adulthood?

He certainly couldn't rewire his own circuitry. If Jane wanted to have Lillis do it, well, that was her prerogative. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. He liked himself just the way he was. He was programmed to have perfect self-esteem.

The man still sat in the alley where Kaycee had left him, conscious again, staring off into space as if waiting to die. He looked up at the robot's approach, then stood and swayed for a moment. His face remained so expressionless that Kaycee couldn't even read his emotions, but Kaycee didn't particularly care what they were anyway.

“Hey, you stupid ugly meatbag, eat up,” Kaycee said, throwing the boxes of dehydrated pizza and hamburgers. The man stumbled backwards as he caught two of them and let the third fall at his feet.

The man blinked in surprise. “Seriously?”

“No, I just like throwing things at you. Add water, or spit in them, I don't care. Bye.”

“Wait,” the man said. “I want to talk to you. Thank you, first of all...”

“I don't want to talk to you,” Kaycee said. “I'm not a huge fan of people who point guns at me, believe it or not, but since my mistress has some severe issues – bless her heart – she wanted me to give this to you, and now I have, so I hope you choke on it. Bye.”

The man extended a hand. “My name's Carson.”

“My condolences.” Kaycee didn't touch the proferred hand.

Carson took it back, unperturbed. “What's your name?”

“KC-1138. My friends call me Kaycee. You can call me KC-1138.” Jane wanted to know how good he was at making friends, and this was it.

“Right, look, I know I haven't made a very good impression,” Carson said, beginning to gesticulate wildly, “but it's not my fault, you know? I had a great life, and then I lost it all. The economic crisis... the trade routes shut down... not enough resources to protect them from the Skreel... this colony is imploding and I was just another casualty. I just want to survive... is that so wrong?”

“If you really wanted to, you could have pulled yourself up by your bootstraps,” Kaycee scoffed.

Carson cocked his head. “By my what?”

Kaycee looked down at his feet. “Right, you don't wear boots on this planet. Look, I'm just saying get off your lazy keister and get a job.”

“There are no jobs. That's what I'm trying to tell you.” Carson's eyes glazed over as he looked back into the past. “I had it made, okay? Everything... and then nothing... I lost it all... lost it all... all gone forever... bye...”

Realizing that this man was a few ships short of a convoy, Kaycee started to back away. He then became aware of someone standing behind him in the mouth of the alley. “Jane,” he said, turning around, “get me away from this –” He froze. “You're not Jane.”

“Name's Branson,” the man said. He looked more muscular and stable than Carson, but less pleasant. Now he ignored Kaycee and talked past him. “Carson, you idiot, were you gonna let this robot get away? We can sell him for at least five hundred galactars.”

“You think?” Carson stroked his chin as he scrutinized Kaycee. His momentary craziness gone, Kaycee wondered if it had all been an incredibly convincing act. “I figured he wasn't worth the trouble. He's pretty banged up.”

“Hey, I'm not that banged up!” Kaycee protested. “It adds character! I'm worth at least eight hundred!” Branson stooped, picked him up by the torso, and looked him over. “Hey, hands to yourself, I just met you!”

“His internal components should be fine,” Branson said, ignoring him. “He's probably worth more as individual parts. We'll have to open him up to be sure, of course.”

“You open me up, and my mistress will open you up!” Kaycee said. “You don't want to mess with Jane Padgett. Everyone who does immediately regrets it. Like the time on Engimus Prime when someone tried to assault her, and afterward she reported it and the authorities asked 'Was the assailant male or female?' and she had to say 'Not anymore.'”

“We should get out of here,” Carson said, glancing around. “We can examine his innards later.”

The prospect of merely being taken apart held no fear for Kaycee. As a fixable and upgradeable machine, he was designed to be taken apart. But in the hands of these thieves he might not ever be put back together. His parts not even stay on the same planet. And worst of all, he would never see his mistress again.

“Jane! Lillis! Help! Help! He–” Kaycee's voice became muffled as both men clamped hands over his vocabulator. He wished he had teeth. They twisted his head at a bad angle, and a stream of ones and zeros resolved itself into white-hot pain, signaling the inordinate stress on his chassis. He fell silent. They didn't relax their grips. His fear level reached its maximum to match the danger.

This was what Jane had gotten him into. This was what her nonsense about compassion and intrinsic worth amounted to. He wanted to hate her for it, but he couldn't. That was against his programming. He mentally forgave her and hoped her next robot would do better at talking sense into her.

“Let's go,” Branson said.

Carson nodded, and they moved out into the street. Another pedestrian came their way, finally, and Kaycee started to yell again, but the man didn't even glance at him as he passed by.

“You're just a robot,” Carson said. “If no one cares about us, why should they care about you?”

Before Kaycee could reply, they turned a corner and found their blocked by a third party, one that had immediately registered on Kaycee's sensors as female. Jane?

No, he realized almost as immediately, it was the beggar girl whose foot he had run over after insulting her. Now he noticed her stark green eyes, glowing like emeralds in the sea of excrement that was this planet, showing a calmness and intelligence beyond her years. Well, space spit, as his mistress would say. He was even more screwed now.

“Leave him alone,” she said. “He doesn't belong to you. Someone needs him.”

Kaycee's processors skipped for a thousandth of a second before resuming their normal functions. What the strag? Were his aural sensors malfunctioning? He took another few thousandths of a second to run a diagnostic. No, everything was fine except one redundant chip with a slight flutter. He didn't need to worry about that now.

The men didn't look impressed. “You know,” Carson said, taking one hand off Kaycee to reach for the girl, “you wouldn't fetch half a bad price yourself.”

Before his fingers could reach her, a pistol seemed to materialize in the girl's hand and discharged twice with the slightest of movements. The men dropped to the ground like pebbles in Jupiter's gravity, without so much as a groan. Kaycee slipped from their dead fingers and flopped over onto his back. For a moment he forgot to pick himself up.

As if she could read the surprise in his face, which of course was impossible, she shrugged and said, “I was orphaned and homeless long before the economic collapse. I haven't made it this long by being a pushover.”

Kaycee was starting to wonder how seemingly everyone in this town had managed to procure a gun, but that wasn't the most pressing question by a long shot. “Why did you help me?” he demanded.

“Because you were in trouble,” she said.

He scrutinized her face for signs of deceit or ulterior motive, and found none – just fatigue and hunger. Now a less familiar sensation crept through his electronic mind. Confusion, meant to impel him toward applying his massive brainpower and solving conundrums. But this time he didn't know where to begin.

The girl gave him a nod and turned to leave, limping slightly.

It seemed like minutes, but his internal chronometer told him it was only seconds of hesitation before he followed her. “Are you really going to just leave those bodies out in the open? Are the cops going to come after us?”

She laughed, a soft tinkly sound incongruous with her disheveled appearance. “What cops? For all we know, those guys back there used to be cops. It's every being for itself here.” Yes, that much Kaycee could understand. Why she had deviated from that philosophy was the question she had evaded. Before he could inquire further, however, she froze in mid-step and looked at him. “So you're not from around here,” she said. “I don't suppose you'll be leaving soon?”

“No kidding,” Kaycee said. “We never planned to stop on this craphole in the first place. Mechanical problems.”

“Ah, should have figured.” She hesitated. He saw in her face that she wanted to ask something else but didn't dare. It didn't take much processing power to guess what.

What would Jane say in this situation? What would she want him to say? It wasn't difficult to guess that, either. It would provide them no direct benefits that he could foresee; she had no discernible skills that Jane and Lillis didn't already possess. And yet... he still wasn't feeling it, and he was under no strict obligation to do anything without a command, but the desire to please his mistress was hardwired into his very core.

“Would you...” He couldn't believe what he was saying to this total stranger. “Would you like to come with us?”

The smile that broke across her face denoted her as the first happy person he'd seen on this planet. “That'd be swell,” she said.


***


With the necessary repairs made, the Indomitable Spirit was soon in hyperspace, en route to its true destination. KC-1138 should have been excited, but he couldn't get those circuits charged up for some reason.

He was parked in a corner of the ship's lounge, staring at the blank television on the opposite wall, when Jane found him. “There you are,” she said. “Our guest is settled. I need you to get me in touch with the United Worlds. The situation we just left is far worse than they realized. If we can't get them to organize a relief effort or reopen the trade routes, I'll do something myself. Somehow.”

Hearing that, and still not understanding her motivation, didn't help Kaycee's confusion any. But an order was an order, so he gave her a barely perceptible nod. At least she practiced what she preached.

She squatted down beside him and placed a hand on one of his six shoulders. His sensors picked up the soft, warm touch, but derived little comfort from it. “What's the matter?” she asked.

Kaycee still stared straight ahead. “It doesn't compute,” he mumbled, as much to himself as to her. “It doesn't compute at all.”