First Meeting

He was falling. Everything was noise. There was a girl in white. Then it was dark.

…

…

…

CHARGING

POWER CELLS AT 12%

EXTERNAL COMMAND ACCEPTED: SYSTEM REBOOTING

…

…

…

His audio receptors switched on before anything else, and he heard someone talking. A woman, someone he didn’t recognize.

“… guess if it doesn’t work, I could strip him for parts. Hrm… But he still looks like a little boy, I dunno if I could even do that…”

His eye activated next, just in time for a blinding light to shine in it. He recoiled at first, then paused—his eye? Vision input was only at 50%. The unknown woman let out a gasp and stumbled away from him.

“O-Oh! You’re—are you awake?” she asked.

“I think so…” he replied. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lavinia,” the woman said. “Who are you?”

“I’m… I’m Arlo. Are you my owner, Ms. Lavinia?”

“Me? No, I don’t think so. And it’s just Lavinia,” she added.

Arlo looked up at her. By her wide eyes under her goggles, the woman was just as surprised to see him as he was to see her. Glancing around, he realized he was in a garage with tables covered in dirty mugs and plates, tools, and scraps of metal and components. He wrinkled his nose; the place was in serious need of cleaning.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Um. My house?”

“How did I get to your house?”

“I brought you here,” Lavinia said. “You were a pretty banged up, but I fixed you as best I could.”

He looked down at himself for the first time. He was propped up on another of the tables with a cord attached to the exposed power core in his chest. It ran over to the lightly rusted car battery on the table beside him. Then he realized there was only a big, fluffy towel draped over his body to cover him. He blushed and pulled it in more to cover as much of himself as he could. It was only at that first real bodily movement that he realized he was missing an arm too.

“Sorry, you were coated in dust and dirt,” Lavinia said, glancing away. “I had to scrub all that off before I opened you up, or else more of that mess would’ve gotten into you and gunked up your hardware.”

“Where are my clothes?” Arlo demanded. “And where’s my arm…?”

“Your old clothes were completely wrecked from being under those ruins. But I got these for you!” She hurried to a side table and held up a small pair of jean shirts and a t-shirt with a rainbow stitched onto it. "And I dunno about your arm, I found you without that or your other eye.”

Ruins? he thought. Found…?

“I don’t remember anything about ruins…” he said. “How long was I shut down?”

“I’m gonna be honest, I’ve got no idea. But you were under a building so… I’m guessing a long time.”

The boy grew quiet for a time. “Can you show me where you found me?”

***

It took a while to get out to the old city, with Arlo still adapting to having only one arm to hold onto the woman's bike with. But when they got to the crest of the crumbling bridge, all the air was sucked out of the boy. Before them was a landscape of fallen buildings, broken glass, twisted metal, and weeds. Lavinia glanced down at the boy as he stood staring ahead at the destruction.

“I, erm… I found you over there,” she said, pointing out at a single ruin among ruins.

“There’s nothing left…” he muttered. He blinked, and for a fleeting moment the image of the city in its prime flashed in the dark before his present returned in full force.

“It probably looked better Back Before. But things aren’t so bad, at least back in Seventy-Seven.”

“This was my home before, but…” He turned away, “I don’t know what to do now…”

“I’ve got space for a roommate back home,” Lavinia said. Arlo looked up at her. “Since I woke you up again, I can at least give you a place to stay until you figure things out.”

“Thank you, Ms. Lavinia…”

“It’s just—” She stopped and shook her head some, then took the boy’s hand.

He flinched at first, then squeezed it and took one last look out into the ruins before the pair started back home.

Stressed Out

“H-Hey!” Lavinia called up, panting to catch her breath. “I need to talk to you!”

The Builder, who was about to insert the final pane of glass into the former botanical garden, let out a simulated sigh. It turned around to face Lavinia, moving slowly and carefully around the delicate structure.

“Another visit so soon, Lavinia?” it asked. “You were here only three days ago.”

“Yeah, and it’s been a long couple days…” she said.

She leaned her bike against a rusted stop sign, still glistening in morning dew. After a long, tense night huddled up with Arlo, the boy finally had to get some sleep in. She didn’t want to leave him alone, but with everything that was happening, she couldn’t just do nothing. The Builder always seemed to have the answers, and it must have seen more of the world than anybody else she knew. So, after barricading the patio and back door and locking all the windows, she peddled out as fast as she could.

“What did you need to talk about?” the Builder asked.

“I need to know if you saw a little girl pass through here anymore. Or someone who looked like a little girl,” she added. “Wearing a white bow and jacket thingy?”

The Builder nodded. “The individual of indeterminate origin, yes. She stayed for a time and watched my work, then asked me to scan for a specific inorganic material under that building.”

It pointed over to the dingy, cream-colored building that was standing again. Lavinia recognized it immediately.

That’s where I found Arlo…

“Did she say anything else? Anything about why she was having you look for that stuff?”

“She asked the occasional question about our rebuilding procedures.” The Builder paused. “I remember that she also mentioned your roommate. Arlo?”

“They… have a history,” she replied. “A complicated one, sounds like. It’s why I was hoping she said something else to you…”

“Mm. I assume the arm I dug out of the ruins had something to do with that?”

Lavinia paused. “What arm?”

“I located the inorganic material requested, though it was smaller than she originally asked for,” it explained. “It was an arm.”

“Well, that’s—that’s probably something to focus on later,” Lavinia said.

“There is something else, too.”

What now…?

“Yes…?” she asked.

“I’ve determined the individual in question is also a mecha,” it stated. Lavinia stared up at it, hoping the obvious revelation was some kind of Builder humor. After a few silent, awkward moments, she realized it was not.

“Oh. Uhh… Wow!” she said. “I’ll have to think about that for a little while…”

“I’m sure it is. Unfortunately, that is the last relevant bit of information I have for you.”

Lavinia sighed. “Thanks… I don’t know why I even came out here, but I didn’t know what to do back home, either…”

She grabbed her bike and turned to leave, with a new realization about how ridiculous the trip was. The Builder may know more about the rest of the world, but all that registered to it was… well, building. Not that she could hold that against it—it wasn’t a bad thing, just not particularly helpful at that time.

“You seem upset,” the Builder said, leaning down towards her. “Is something wrong?”

“Do you ever feel like have no idea what you’re doing?” Lavinia asked. “Like no matter what happens, it’s not gonna work out right?”

The Builder glanced back at the botanical garden it was close to finishing for the third time, then turned back to her.

“Yes.”

“Me too! Except now there’s actually consequences if I get something wrong!” She dropped her bike and ran a hand through her hair. “I can’t handle being a—a parent to somebody!”

“Why do you have to be?” The Builder asked. Lavinia stopped and looked up at it. “You asked me before why I like to repair the ruins. Why do you like to be a parent to this… Arlo, I’m assuming? Surely you must have a reason.”

Lavinia sat down on the curb, thinking. “I guess it’s because he needs me. And I’m real attached to him too. He’s quiet, and helpful, and just a tiny bit awkward, but he’s such an endearing little boy. At least, he is to me. I feel like he actually cares about me, and I care about him…”

“Then it sounds like you have no rational need to question your qualifications to be his parent.”

“I know… but I’m still gonna,” she said.

“Perhaps that comes natural to being one’s parent,” the Builder said as it turned back to the glass pyramid. “You should return to him. We’ll have time to speak again soon, I’m sure.”

Shaky Resolution

When Arlo woke up to find the house barricaded and Lavinia gone, he thought that Mira somehow came back and took her while he was still sleeping. He ran all through the house looking for any sign of Lavinia, but there was nothing. Then, after more than a few moments of panic that found him out on the front lawn looking around in every direction, he reached the embarrassingly sudden realization her bike was gone. And there was no sign whatsoever the house was broken into—even the front door was locked.

She wasn't taken, she’d just left.

He retreated back inside after making sure nobody was around to see him. Wherever Lavinia was, she was fine; with Mae, or at Vic’s, or both. He got the duster out of the closet and set to work around the living room. It was still his best coping method—not that there was anything he was trying to cope with. Everything was fine. And Mira… She was probably gone. There wasn’t anything to—

A sudden tapping on the patio door made Arlo spin around so fast, his hand smashed through an empty vase on the side table. He looked from the broken shards to the barricaded door, unsure which to take care of first. The tapping came again and made him jump.

Would Mira just knock on the door…?

An extremely hesitant curiosity won out over his compulsion to clean, and the boy stepped over to the barricaded door. He shifted the garage junk enough to peek out onto the balcony. Nobody was there. He glanced all around for a few more seconds when a crow jumped out at him.

The boy fell back onto the couch with a shriek, as the bird tilted its head to the side and pecked against the glass again. Arlo sat up and looked out at the bird again. He recognized it—it wasn’t some common crow, it was Capri.

“Capri…? What are you doing here?”

He stood up and pushed the various crates and chairs out of the way. Capri fluttered in the second Arlo opened the door, landing on the stack of junk beside the boy. Arlo stared up at him for a few moments as if expecting an answer. Instead, the crow only cawed and flew back out of the open door, startling the boy all over again.

“What’s gotten into him?” Arlo muttered to himself as he watched it fly back towards Felix’s house.

Then he paused.

Felix!

He squeezed through the door and jumped off the balcony after the crow; an event he never expected to repeat after last time. As he followed the bird, a cold dread was afflicting him. There was a nagging voice in the back of his mind telling him that Mira was there and that, whatever was happening, it was his fault.

Why didn’t he think to check there? Of course she’d take her anger out on his new friend. She’s probably been watching him long before confronting him.

Arlo reached Felix’s house in seconds. Capri landed on a huge bag full of who-knows-what that was sitting in the yard. Arlo bolted past it and to the door, and as he burst through, he heard Mira. And Felix. But it didn’t sound like he was in trouble, it sounded like they were… talking?

“… and he thinks he’s just so mature now!” said Mira. “Like he’s so much better than me because all he cares about is cleaning.”

“Everyone has their own interests,” Felix replied. “If you tell him how you feel, I’m sure he’d understand.”

When Arlo entered the room, both children turned to him from their spot on the floor; Mira with a piercing glare, Felix with heavy bags under his eyes, and a weary smile. The girl turned away, her arms crossed with her back to Arlo.

“Are you okay?” he asked Felix.

The other boy nodded. “I’m a little sleepy, that’s all. Have you seen Capri? He left a little while ago.”

“He brought me here.” Arlo turned to Mira, “Leave Felix alone. Your issue is with me, not him.”

“Actually, I—”

“I’m not talking to you,” Mira interrupted.

“But—”

“You just did,” Arlo replied.

Mira paused. “Yeah, well I’m not gonna do it again—”

“Arlo, I let her come in!” Felix finally said. “And I think you two really need to talk. I’m just gonna lie down for a few minutes while you do…”

Both Arlo and Mira watched the boy lay down on the carpeted floor and curl up a bit. It took only a few moments for his body to relax and his breathing to soften; Mira must have kept him up from the time she ran away the day before. When she realized he was looking at her, she turned away again. Arlo sighed.

“Will you at least talk to me?”

“There’s nothing I wanna say to you,” she replied.

“If that was true, you wouldn’t have come to vent to Felix,” he said. “Why did you come here?”

“Because he deserves to know how big of a lying, annoying jerk his ‘friend’ is.”

“You don’t have to be mean,” Arlo said, reaching out to her. She flinched and stood up, taking a few steps away from him like a frightened animal. He stopped. “I don’t want to fight you…”

“You don’t wanna fight me, you don’t wanna be my friend—what do you want?” she demanded.

“Mira, just saying you’re someone’s friend doesn’t immediately make it happen!” he said, doing his best to remain quiet. “You said we’re best friends, right? But what do you even know about me?”

“You’re a Mark III Domestic Services unit. You’re made to—”

“I don’t mean me as a mecha,” he interrupted, “I mean me as a person. Do you know what my favorite color is? Or what I like to do in my spare time? My hobbies, what I like to read, my happiest memory?”

“You’re… You’re trying to confuse me,” she said, eyeing him. “Make me think I’m wrong.”

“No, I’m trying to show you that friendship takes time. I told you that I’d be your friend—even if I can’t remember it—and I will. But it doesn’t happen immediately, and it doesn’t happen by trying to get rid of my other friends. Come back home with me,” he said, holding a trembling hand out to her. “We can figure things out together. Maybe you can even help repair my memory.”

Mira looked down at his hand, her own expression softening. Instead of fearful resentment, it looked to Arlo like cautious trepidation. She too was trembling.

“I…” she started, before closing her mouth. Then she reached out and took his hand. “I don’t know if we can… If I can…”

“We can still try.”