Upsilon androids were not designed for fishing. Not as a pre-installed start-up application anyway. An upgrade would have been handy as I struggled to hold on to the bluefin writhing in my hands. Kirstjen tried to hide his laughter. His father, Gunnar, with his silver beard, deeply weathered skin, and chalky white complexion, grunted discouragingly and shook his head. Gunnar's disappointment was justified. I may be stronger than a human. I may have rapid reflexes and can analyze a situation at near-light speeds. But I was proving useless for sorting through their morning catch. I let the dying bluefin squirt back into the waves, rocking our boat, which elicited another grunt and an additional explanative eye roll from Gunnar.
"Get those fish into the box and be quick about it, Kirst," he grumbled at his son while staring unwelcomingly at me with side eyes. "Then let the net out," he continued. "We have time for one more round."
I didn't need my quantum computer to figure out Gunnar was not pleased I had joined their morning trawl. Fishing was their family's livelihood and Kirstjen, his only son, was his lone helper. They couldn't afford any distractions, especially not an inexperienced young girl his son had just met. And if Gunner got this upset over a simple girl coming aboard their boat, imagine his reaction had he known his son's new girlfriend wasn't even human. That's right. Kirstjen and his father had no idea I was an android.
I didn't want to lie to Kirstjen about my identity. Our relationship should never have happened. I was instructed not to talk to anyone on the island outside of absolute necessity. And even then, I was never to reveal who I was or what I was. But a human life rarely goes as planned, even for an android.
I started my existence as a highly advanced bio-robotic android booted up with the Host Neural Code (HNC) of a twelve-year-old human named Jenna Finster. I was designed to be a replicant of the deceased child for her father, Ben Finster. (He was an evil man whose life came to a tragic and justified end. I made sure of that.) I would have spent my life locked away in his cellar if not for Professor Bobby Houndstooth (Teacher), head of Anthropomorphism Programming at Nomad Robotics, who, during a service visit to Finster's house to understand why I was malfunctioning, realized I had somehow become a sentient lifeform. Instead of terminating me, she helped me escape. Together we learned that a rouge ex-Nomad scientist named Charlie had given me a gene-editing virus that mutated in my wetware drive brain, gifting me self-awareness. Things sort of went crazy for us after that. The kind of crazy where Charlie and many other people ended up dead. That was how Teacher and I had come to this island, living undercover, on the run from some seriously nasty people, like Nomad Robotics, the world-leading robotics corporation secretly building an army of soldier androids. One of which had run away—that would be me. So yeah, there were a few good reasons I had to lie to Kirstjen about my identity.
Kirstjen worked at his father's fish stall on the island's main harbor docks. Their stand was part of an old outdoor market: a long series of pitched tarps and wood shacks where fishermen, farmers, and craftspeople sold their wares to the villagers from seven in the morning to noon five days a week. It was the sort of place you smelt long before you saw it. The briny scent of sea animals mixed with pungent cheeses and freshly baked pastries. (I've analyzed and logged the chemical makeup of that scent in my database should I want to recreate it for nostalgic reasons.) The old market was a near-perfect representation of the photographs from the early 1800s posted on the visitor's board outside its entrance. The open network of stalls was part of the town's history and was legally protected. The entire little port village, with its picture-perfect wood-clad buildings painted in bright yellow, red, and blue, nestled into the rugged coastline around an ancient stone harbor, was a world heritage Non-Invasive Technology Zone. Low-tech, off-the-grid, old school was not just a way of life on the island; it was like a religion. The very reason it was such a good hiding place for an android. And why this android had to pretend to be human.
The market was about as safe as it would get for me to mix with the villagers. The crowded narrow passages and makeshift stalls stacked one next to the other created a loud, congested, busy scene of daily shoppers, so it was easy for me to blend in. And that the market closed at noon gave it a sense of constant urgency. Stall owners and shoppers didn't have time for idle chit-chat. Again, perfect for someone trying to avoid conversations.
Traveling to the market became a daily chore I had invented for myself while Teacher holed herself up in the cellar of our tiny cottage on the outskirts of town. Down there, she had built a makeshift lab where she spent her days trying to unravel the miracle of the genetic mutations in my organic brain. Going to the market was a chance for me to get out on my own and exercise being alive. Living was something new for me, and I needed a lot of practice at it—a lot. Jenna's memories were still etched into my brain, but that was only a past. I was trying to build a future.
When I first saw Kirstjen, I had planned to make a fish stew. (Cooking was one of my human hobbies I had learned while on the island. It turns out I'm a great chef—if I have a recipe to follow. I have added this skill to the list of human things I'm good at —fighting, killing, lying, and now cooking. Things are moving in the right direction.) My usual pattern was to shop the stalls at the edges of the market if I needed a quick exit. But on this day, I was reluctantly drawn into the market center looking for the right ingredients. Scanning the stalls, I chose the most crowded fish stand I could find and slipped into the queue without raising any attention. We were a line-up of at least six people. I kept my eyes to the ground to avoid contact with others in line. To distract myself, I repeated my order in my head: Cuttlefish, cuttlefish, cuttlefish.
The line moved steadily, but with each person served, at least one or more arrived behind me. I could feel their eyes pushing in on my back and gazing over my shoulder, silently urging everyone ahead to hurry up. It had been a long time since I had been in such a confined space with so many people. I twisted my fingers into pretzel knots. It was a Jenna nervous habit written into my code. Hard to break.
When the woman in front of me placed her order at the fish counter, I glanced up. The boy working behind the stand, whom I hadn't noticed before, had his back to us. He seemed young, about my age. His flaxen hair was thick and wavy and hung down like a mop on his head below his ears. I hadn't given him much consideration. I was busy preparing for a quick exit. Just when I was feeling good about getting out of the market without incident, the boy behind the counter turned around. That was when my life, or the life I was trying to create, changed. A rogue current surged through my body. I think Jenna would call it a crush. Whatever it was, it sent my clock speeds racing and my internal temperature rising. He had ocean blue eyes, illuminated as if backlit. His broad, hypnotizing smile squeezed the current out of my heart-box battery. System alerts rang through my network like a chorus of church bells, and my knees felt weak. (A metaphoric simulated response, of course, as my knees were graphene reinforced hydraulic hinges.) A wave of biochemical signals rushed out of my wetware drive brain and disabled my quantum processor's hyperthreading capabilities, leaving me with a single-thread focus on nothing but the boy behind the counter.
The woman in front of me accepted her package, transferred her credits to his scanner and moved out of line, leaving me face-to-face with ‘Kirstjen,’ as spelled out by his name stitched onto the chest of his white coat.
Confused by my system malfunctions and dumbstruck to speechlessness, I had forgotten what I was about to order. And if my silence wasn't embarrassing enough, I couldn't stop staring at him. I knew I was holding his gaze for far too long without speaking. Things got very awkward quickly. Someone behind me cleared their throat impatiently.
"How can I help you?" Kirstjen asked me.
His voice was young but deep. I imagined it would become huskier later in his life after the human growth phase completed its cycle. I guessed him to be around sixteen years old.
He waited patiently for my response. When he noticed I was struggling, he smiled and said: "How about the sea bream? It's one of my favorites.”
My body was designed to replicate human emotional responses, which would explain why my cheeks were burning red in response to his voice. A feature I would have liked kept hidden at that moment.
"Okay. I'll take two," I said abruptly and smiled shyly. (So much for the cuttlefish recipe.)
My limited experience with flirting (zero experience) left me feeling like I was doing everything wrong. Jenna's memories were proving to be little help. She died long before she had a chance to flirt with boys, much less master it.
To make things worse, he suddenly broke eye contact. It was expected, as he had to turn around and prepare my fish. But somehow, it felt like a personal betrayal and triggered a whole other series of very annoying emotional responses in me like insecurity, fear, and self-doubt. I don't know how humans ever started a relationship when the data coming from the opposite party was so inconclusive and conflicting. And all of this happened in less than five minutes!
Desperate to know if he felt the same attraction, I resorted to my best asset, quantum analysis. I replayed our conversation and reviewed the facts. There was a slight speeding up of his heart rate according to my medical scanner; his cheeks flushed pink when I spoke; and he held direct eye contact for a considerable time. His voice's tenor was pleasant and inviting. There was a lean into the counter, getting closer to me, when he suggested sea bream. Considering everything, I thought the odds he liked me in return were good, but the algorithm I spun up only gave me a sixty-five percent chance he shared my spontaneous crush or, at the least, was interested in me, no matter how many times I recalculated. And I recalculated many times while he had his back to me.
Whatever it was between us, it nearly ended when he handed me my sea bream, took payment in credits, and called on the next person in the queue. I knew I had to move out of the line, but I couldn't. The contents of my recycler started spinning. Air stuck in my lung-box oxygenator like a held breath at the thought of never talking to him again. I waited stupidly, holding my dead fish in a bag, until, in sympathy, he tilted his head, beamed a smile that cut straight through me, and said, "Let me know how you like it."
"Maybe," I giggled.
Kirstjen pinched his face and snapped his head back as if I was speaking a foreign language. He was right. Maybe? And giggling? Oh, God. What kind of response was that? It was one of a hundred possible responses provided by the algorithm I had spun up to help me with my flirting. Clearly, I had picked the wrong one, but it was too late to correct the error. Humiliated, I turned away and quickly disappeared into the crowd, running out of the market in embarrassment, self-loathing, and weirdly an elevated joy that felt like floating. How can all these feelings exist together?
