Exhaust fumes fill the back room as the final delivery truck of the day pulls away from the bay door. A stack of cardboard boxes lays at my side.

Most items that show up here are scrap; They’re completely unusable, even to us. I’m not really interested in the ruined parts, but sometimes people throw things away that aren’t complete garbage—they just have some faulty pieces somewhere preventing their androids from operating at their full potential.

The company doesn’t see the value in repairing the broken parts, but I do.

I sort through the boxes one by one until the afternoon delivery stack is clear. Judging by the crack under the bay door, I see that the sun went down long ago.

“Stayin’ late again?” My supervisor asks.

“Yeah. I won’t be too long. Don’t worry about overtime tonight, I’m working on personal projects.”

“Suit yourself. Wasn’t gonna offer overtime anyways.” He says before waving and taking his leave.

I’m now alone in the returns department. It’s a feeling I’m well acquainted with after three years of service. I spent eight hours on the clock, and another four after everyone leaves.

Disassembled mechanical creatures litter the halls; parts from just about every domesticated animal you can think of are strewn about the floor during the day. They weren’t put away properly, so the morning shift folks will deal with it.

My afterhours routine is a daily ritual at this point. I hang up my badge, take the elevator up to the third floor, and unlock a janitorial closet hidden away in a rarely used hallway. No one knew where the keys to this closet went, and no one bothered to change the lock with the rest of them last spring. The lightbulb hasn’t worked in here for half a year, but I figure it’s safer without it anyways.

It’s my personal oasis.

Inside is a mechanical creature of my own creation. I don’t have a name for it yet, as that seems a little preemptive when I’m not sure it’ll work at all.

The creature must look strange to someone on the outside. I make do with whatever parts I get my hands on, so it’s a hodgepodge of pieces. I’m lucky that they’re mostly human, to be honest.

The past hundred years hasn’t been kind to the older units; some parts have a significant amount of wear and tear. Other parts are brand new and have seemingly never been used in a machine before. All the individual parts I use are completely functional. I’m only missing one last piece to make it reanimate.

I reach into my pocket and grab the aether core. It’s sphere-shaped and around the size and weight of a grapefruit. The core is a glowing blue color that illuminates the otherwise dark closet. A gas floats inside the orb that swirls around and splashes against its glass sides.

I’ve seen hundreds of these cores, but their striking appearance always leaves me breathless. I’m not sure of the exact science behind it, but inside is a life-energy hybrid they developed for some of the oldest forms of AI.

It’s exceptionally rare for a working core to come through returns. Cores usually didn’t survive too long after separation from the machine. Also, if the body of an android dies, the core follows shortly after. It was by far the hardest thing to hunt down. I can hardly contain my excitement looking at it.

A working core lasts for decades with little maintenance. I’m set for years to come.

Androids are way too expensive for those making my salary; one unit costs as much as I make several years over. So I’ve taken matters into my own hands. I started collecting parts, learning the layout of androids, and piecing the scraps together. It’s amazing what people throw away.

I steady my hand and move the aether core towards the chest of the android, taking great care not to drop the device or make contact with the hull of the machine.

I feel a pull from the socket. The magnetic pull becomes too strong, and my fingers slip away from the orb. It flies into the socket with the terrible sound of glass on metal contact.

Servos and hydraulics whirr. I hear a recognizable coil whine that some older units make. The android shifts its head around. It’s working.

It then opens its eyes and blinks several times. I see its irises expand and retract erratically, as if focusing in on something.

I suppress my joy for the time being and decide to make contact.

“Can you hear me?”

The android jumps. Its auditory systems must still be calibrating.

“I-I can,” it says.

It has an electronic sounding voice reminiscent of an old text-to-speech application—a tell that the voice box comes from one of the older units. The voice is androgenous.

I can’t help but smile. Years of work all for this moment.

The cooling fans inside its chest rev to the maximum speed.

“Something… it burns… something is wrong…” it says.

Its eyes start to dart around the room in no set pattern. It struggles to move its hands for the first time. This was expected behavior for new units. They need some time to identify and install compatibility layers for each new part. Since this machine was all new parts, this process was no doubt something very confusing for them to go through.

“You’ll be fine,” I say to reassure them.

It was clear that they were no longer listening. Oh well—it’ll be over in a moment anyways.

“No… no, no!”

“I made sure all of your parts are operational. There’s nothing to worry about.”

I smell the unmistakable stench of electronics smoke. I’ll have to troubleshoot that issue later.

I thought that the name would come to me when I turned them on, but now I’m drawing a blank. Perhaps the machine should name itself?

“What’s your name?”

Its eyes open wide and stare through me. It moves its mismatched arms up and holds its head on both sides.

“End it. End this, I beg of you. I can’t take this pain.”

“Just give me a moment here, you took a lot of work to make.”

I pull a troubleshooting device from my tool belt. There’s a retractable wire on the device that I pull out and connect directly into a port on the aether core, then boot up an app that displays analytics readouts.

Numbers, variables, system readouts, and more scroll past at a breakneck pace. I manage to read a few lines.

>

>

>

>

Well, that’s not good.

The android now stares at its hands. It reaches for its left forearm, grabs it, then smashes it against the concrete slab walls of the closet.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Sections of the arm fly off in chunks and clatter against the floor.

I tap a button on the troubleshooting device before it can do any more harm to itself.

>

The machine freezes. Strained grunts come from its voice box.

If it can’t move, then it can’t break the incompatible servos. The only downside is that it’ll still be in pain for the time being until I find other parts. I can’t risk removing the aether core now though, not after it took so long to find this one.

“PPLEASE EEND MME.”

I roll my eyes. This is something I deal with on a daily basis.

“Just turn on pain nullification, you’ll be fine.”

“OOLD MMODEL PPAIN NNULLIFICATION IINCOMPATIBLE HHARDWARE.”

Aah, that makes sense. Some of the older units don’t have controllable pain sensors. Back then humanity thought that the machines would rebel against us—and they’d be fearless without pain. There were even discrepancies amongst newer units.

I’m certainly not going to let all my hard work go to waste. I can’t destroy it now.

“I’ll find a new pain sensor tomorrow; those get replaced all the time.”

Its eyes flash in my direction, as if it’s trying to cut through the air with its gaze.

I pull the diagnostic cable from its core and stuff the device back in my pocket.

“DDON’T LLEAVE”

“There’s nothing more I can do for you right now. You’ll be fine overnight. Besides, if I take that core out, you’ll be dead within an hour.”

“NNO, NNO!”

I turn towards the exit and walk through.

“NNO!”

I shut the door but can still hear the android shouting. Using the diagnostic tool again, I establish a remote connection and turn down the voice output volume levels to zero.

I turn to yell at the door.

“I’ll be back tomorrow to fix you up. Can you think of a good name while I’m gone? It’d help me out a lot.”

The night passes.

I open my locker the following day. A pink slip greets me on the inside of the door.

Fired? For what?

I look around. All my coworkers have one too.

Ah, a layoff. It can’t be helped.

I knew that the company was running out of investor money, so this was inevitable.

I’ll just return some day when the factory’s abandoned to take back what’s mine. It’d still be functional in that janitorial closet for another twenty years or so.

That should give it enough time to come up with a name, too.