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Panic was an understatement when Lavinia came to a stop in the driveway. She found a giant bag of junk in the yard, slumped over and partially open. A crow was on top of it, desperately flapping its wings in an attempt to steal a metal skull from within. Lavinia burst through the door before her bike hit the ground. Then almost immediately tripped over the excess garage junk she’d barricaded the rest of the house with. She yelped and staggered forward on unsteady feet.

There was no question that Mira girl came back when she was gone. Why did she have the dumb idea to go visit the Builder when that was still a serious risk?

Clambering up the stairs, she burst into the living room. Arlo was on the couch. Mira was standing over him, the boy’s severed arm in her hand. The girl turned to the surprise entrance, as Lavinia ran at her with a large wrench—the nearest, heaviest object she could find—in her hand like a club.

“Ms. Lavinia, stop!” Arlo said, bolting up and catching the wrench.

“A-Arlo?” She dropped her weapon and hugged him, “I’m so sorry, I thought she was—are you okay?”

Mira, meanwhile, blinked in confusion at the series of events. “Did she just try to hit me with a wrench…?”

“Sorry, I thought you were hurting Arlo,” Lavinia said. “What the heck is goin’ on here? And where’s your shirt?”

Arlo grabbed his shirt from the back of the couch, covering his exposed torso and missing shoulder with it.

“I had to look at his shoulder if I’m gonna stick his arm back on,” Mira said.

“And… Can you?” Lavinia asked.

The girl only shrugged. Lavinia stared at her for a few moments before turning back to Arlo, visibly desperate for any kind of explanation. He shook his head.

“I found her while you were gone, and we were able to come to an understanding,” the boy explained. “And it starts with Mira fixing the damage she caused. The, erm… literal damage.”

“Hey, was it hard putting your new eye in?” Mira asked out of nowhere.

Arlo turned to her. “No. It just went in and clicked into place.”

“Did it hurt?”

“… Why?”

The girl grabbed the shoulder of his severed arm and slammed it into the exposed slot on his body. Metal bone collided with metal joint, and Arlo’s whole body tensed up with a shriek as Lavinia gaped in shock. In reality, it lasted only a second. But for the two of them—especially Lavinia, who was still trying to affirm her capability to be the boy’s guardian—it seemed an eternity.

Arlo sat lurched forward and panting, his hair hanging over his eyes. Some of the scraps of artificial skin from his shoulder sat in the interlocking gaps left over his clavicle and back, while some still flayed loose. Mira stood by, watching the boy.

“So did it work?” she asked.

He didn’t reply, but Lavinia glared down at her. “Listen here, you’ve already put him through enough without—”

“Lavinia? Arlo?” Mae’s voice came upstairs before her, but with only enough time for everyone in the room to turn as she ran up. “The front door was open and I heard screaming, what’s…”

She paused at the scene there, of Lavinia, Arlo, and an unknown girl staring at her. A heavy, awkward silence fell over them, with nobody knowing what to say.

Then Arlo’s arm fell off again.

***

Mae sat on the balcony in silence with her head in her hands. Lavinia sat in the chair beside her, fiddling with her small screwdriver. They’d been out there for the last fifteen minutes since Arlo’s arm fell to the couch and exposed the wiring and metal bones in his body.

“So… He’s a mecha,” Mae finally said.

“Y-Yeah…” Lavinia replied. “That girl Mira is too. She’s here because… well, it’s complicated.”

“I guess that explains why you blew up at Brant when we were at Vic’s the other day.”

“I dunno where that came from, and then I was too embarrassed to stay…” Lavinia admitted, blushing some.

Mae turned to her. “Are you a mecha too?”

“Huh? No, no, I’m—me,” she said. “Flesh and blood and all that. I found Arlo out in the old ruins about ten months ago, brought him back, and fixed him up.”

“Why keep it a secret, though?” Mae asked.

“I guess I didn’t want anybody treating him different because of it,” Lavinia said. She looked back through the balcony door, at Arlo on the couch having his shoulder examined again by Mira. “He’s just a little boy.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Well, I’ll keep your secret,” Mae said, taking Lavinia’s hand.

She smiled but glanced back into the living room. Mira already hurt Arlo once that morning, and for nothing.

“I should—”

“It’s fine, go help him out.” Mae looked back out at the distance and took a deep breath. “I’m just gonna stay out here for a little while. Medical stuff… isn’t my thing.”

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A Guest at the Garden

The Builder didn’t dare take its visual receivers off the glass pyramid until it was halfway across town. Its internal map of the surrounding area made avoiding other buildings a simple matter, but the former botanical garden had proven… tricky. If its programming didn’t force it to repair every structure in the designated reconstruction zone, it would have left that thing a half-collapsed pile of glass shards the second time it broke.

Even after backing an acceptable distance away without incident, the Builder continued to watch it. Then there came a tapping against its foot. It looked down and found an aging woman standing there in the street, smacking it with her cane.

“You’re in my way,” the woman said.

The Builder scanned her. “Georgette Morris.”

“I know you?” she asked, looking up at the giant.

“There is a section all about you in the Builders database. You were rather notorious to us, in days past.”

“Mm. What you mean ‘were’ notorious?”

The Builder simulated a laugh. “Where are you going?”

“My flower garden,” she said.

“Your garden?” It stalled, thinking. “You are Lavinia’s mother.”

“How you know Vini?”

“I’ve spoken with her several times, the first time being when she also visited your garden.” The Builder moved its foot out of the street, and Georgette’s way. “Would you like me to join you, as I did her?”

“No.”

Georgette slowly made her way up the street with her cane as the Builder watched, her greying hair bobbing along. It took her almost five minutes to reach the next intersection, with another mile to go until she reached the garden. The Builder kept watching her the entire time. Before turning to continue on her way, she stopped and sighed.

“Oh, alright, come on,” she relented.

***

It was a long walk for Georgette, and an awkward one for the Builder. It could only take a single step about every ten minutes to keep pace with the woman. From an outside look, it might have appeared the Builder’s feet kept getting stuck in the ground and it had to pull itself out. But eventually they did reach the garden, and Georgette sat down on a stone bench under the old statue.

“Your daughter did well to maintain the flowers,” the Builder noted as it loomed over her and the entire garden.

“Vini’s a real special girl, but she never did get my green thumb,” Georgette said. “This here’s all to nature taking control.”

She closed her eyes and sat there for a time. The Builder continued to watch her, as warily as the glass pyramid. It was hard to reconcile the frail form below with the database entry on the woman.

“Walk's longer than it used to be, and I ain’t got too many left in me,” she finally said, her eyes still closed. “Figure this’ll be my last one.”

“All things must end, in time,” the Builder replied.

“Mm. That include you too, robot?”

The Builder didn’t reply. Georgette let out an unsurprised snort.

“Are you concerned about what will happen to your daughter once you pass on?” it asked instead.

“Vini’s a big girl, though a bit naive still. Girl still thinks her daddy went out west just to help folk.” She shook her head, “But she’s got folk to look after her, and for her to look after. Time comes in everybody’s life that they don’t need their mama no more.”

“You would know better than we Builders. We, unfortunately, did not have a mother.”

“That never bothered your kind before.”

“No,” the Builder admitted, “but we were created to simulate empathy.”

“Did that simulated empathy make you follow me out here?” Georgette asked.

“This was how I met your daughter the first time. The conversation we had here was… illuminating,” it said. “I’d never before questioned my purpose.”

“Careful now, robot. You almost sounding sentimental talking like that.” Georgette glanced up at the Builder, “That weren’t simulated too, was it?”

The Builder laughed again, this time genuinely.

“I can see the true resemblance between you and your daughter, now. And why the Builder database warned about you.”

“You’re not afraid of an old woman now, are you?” she asked.

“No. We've never been afraid.”

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Kid Stuff

“Oh, I guess that’s why your arm keeps falling off…” Mira muttered to herself, as if it weren’t pertinent information to the boy whose shoulder that she was probing around in.

Arlo turned to her. “Can you tell me why?”

“The socket’s all messed up. Probably from when I… y’know, tore your arm off and all…”

Why didn’t you check for that before trying to shove my arm back into place then…? is what he wanted to say.

“Lavinia can fix that,” he said instead. “What about my memory problems, though?”

Mira shrugged. “I dunno, open your faceplate and let me see if your brain’s messed up.”

“Open my… What?”

“Your faceplate.”

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“Here, like this.”

Mira closed her eyes and Arlo watched, eyes wide in horror, as her jaw split in half at her chin. The two halves spread open and the front of her skull, detached, lifted up to expose the inside of her head. Arlo held up a hand in front of his face to block the brightness of a central pulsating sphere within. That central core was bolstered by the countless tiny blue chips that lined every internal surface. A few of the chips here and there were dark, likely burned out long ago.

“This is what I mean,” she said, despite the lack of a mouth or tongue.

“What is all that…?” Arlo asked.

“Well, the part in the middle is where the thinking stuff happens. And, um…” she pointed to a patch of blue chips near the central left of her head, “I think those are the memory parts. No, no, wait, those are over here.”

She pointed to the other side, before all parts of her face set back into place. In less than half a second, Mira returned to looking like a young girl instead of an abyssal horror. Is that what I look like inside too…?

“Okay, now you do it.”

“M-Me?” he stammered. “I don’t… I don’t know how to do that, even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t have to ‘know’ how to do it. You just… do it,” she said, tilting her head to the side.

Arlo closed his eyes and tried to—to picture his own face opening like hers did. Nothing happened.

“… Are you doing it?” Mira said.

“I’m trying.”

“You don’t need to try, you need to—Here, let me help,” Mira said, reaching out.

“H-Hey, stop it!”

Lavinia came upstairs from the garage workshop to the sound of their arguing. When there was just Arlo living in her house it was usually quiet, but now… She was still getting used to being a parent to one child, now there were two. Was Mira really going to live with them from now on?

“What are you two—”

She got to the living room—for the second time that day—just in time to see Mira pulling on Arlo’s cheeks while the boy tried pushing her away. They both went tumbling to the floor in the effort, and Lavinia hurried over.

“Are you two okay?” she asked. “What were you doing?”

Mira sat up and looked at Arlo. He looked at her. Then she started laughing, a light giggle that sounded like glasses clinking together. It spread to Arlo who laughed with her—one of the few times Lavinia actually heard that from him. She smiled and went off to her room as they stayed together on the rug; they were doing just fine on their own.