The Syren I ordered off Marketplace was the first package I'd ever gotten without tracking, which should've been a red flag from the get-go. But I was so caught up in the euphoria of getting a singing android at a tenth of the market value, I skipped asking “Why is a ‘nearly new’ 5th Edition Syren up for sale on Marketplace for the price of a fancy calculator?” and went straight to “Is this still available???” Even though the fancy-calculator price still put a dent in my very limited savings.

And when the seller insisted we switch to Signal after the first conversation, I didn't think too much of it because I usually used Signal for conversations anyway. But when they told me the package would be delivered between 11 pm and midnight on Tuesday and that I had to be ready to grab it from my front door before anyone else could see it, that's when I started worrying.

I mean, no one gets arrested for pirating software, right? Not unless you're, like, really intense about it. But buying a robot that was stolen, or jailbroken or whatever? Now that might be a little dicey.

So when I heard the thump of the package outside my front door on Tuesday at 11:23 P.M, my heart dropped into my stomach. Even though I was still pretty excited to get a droid of my own. A real, artificial Syren! All to myself! I didn’t know anyone else with an actual Syren in their house, not personally. 

I got on my tiptoes to look through the peephole, but whoever had delivered it already left. Angelica, my Kittipet cat-shaped alarm clock/calendar bot, swished around my legs in a preprogrammed rhythm when a real cat might’ve been tempted to dart outside to get a better look. My mom got her for me as a birthday gift a few years ago, a not-so-subtle hint for me to get my shit together.

The beige-painted metal door of the apartment to the left of mine opened, and Mrs. Pastyukovich stuck her head out. She was wearing a robe over her nightgown and a scowl on her face. “Odessa, we’ve talked about you having late-night guests, and the noise you’re always making in your room. It quite disturbs my sleep. I’m sure the other residents would agree.”

I pushed down the spike of irritation her appearance provoked in me. “My music studio’s soundproofed, Mrs. P, so any noise you’re hearing must be coming from another unit! And it’s not a late-night guest!”

Mrs. P narrowed her eyes at the package at my door. The box itself was standard green EcoBoard, only a little dented from the shipping process. Completely unmarked: no stamps saying “FRAGILE” or “THIS SIDE UP”, not even an address label. It came up to a little past my knees.

“Is that… drugs?” Mrs. P hissed, like that was something I could just order a giant box of.

I rolled my eyes. “Mrs. P, maybe worry less about what I’m doing and more about if you’d remembered your medication today.”

“What did you just say?” Mrs. P was a little deaf, which gave me the few seconds I needed to get control of my annoyance.

“That I’m sorry for disturbing you at this late hour, but I promise my purchase is nothing you need to worry about! Have a good night, Mrs. Pastyukovich!” I said, a little louder, and started lugging the green cube through my front door.

The box was smaller than I was expecting, but heavy as hell. I ended up half pulling, half-kicking the thing through, turning the EcoBoard from “a little dented” to “a lot dented” in my attempt. Eventually, though, I had it sitting in my tiny carpeted living room. Just me, the box and Angelica, who continued to wind around my legs and purr mechanically. 

Outside my window were countless other apartment buildings stretching far up into the city sky, the lights still on in few of them. The factories started a few blocks south, the noise and fumes from the manufacturing plants making this area cheaper than most other parts of town. But this late at night, even the factories were quiet. It really did feel like I was the only human person awake in the whole world.

Just me and a heavy, dented box.

I could admit it then, looking at that box: this Syren was sketchy, and probably fucked up in more ways than one. But how else was I going to afford a top of the line singing android, with my part-time salary and monthly student loan payments? 

Everything else in my wannabe producer studio (the surprise walk-in closet in my otherwise dinky one-bedroom which I’d soundproofed with foam squares and duct tape, keeping my clothes on a rack right outside) was second-hand, scrounged from kind friends and strangers off sites like Marketplace and the used musical instruments shop a few blocks away. Even my keyboard I found on a street corner a few months ago.That one was a real stroke of luck. It was only missing a few keys!

I’d borrowed the library’s Syren a few times, just to test the robot out, see what I could do with one, but the vocal parameters and software were locked down hard enough that I could barely customize what came out of her, and the Syren herself was already showing a lot of wear and tear. I couldn’t have shared any track or music video made using a Syren like that. Everyone would see the upload and know @Dess-C was a broke-ass bitch. Which was very true, but I didn’t want that to be my brand!

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Since I got interested in music as a kid, I learned a few things about myself: I had the voice of a chicken and the stage presence of a slug, but my beats were, in fact, pretty fire. And my melodies weren’t bad, thanks to my childhood piano lessons. And my lyrics were decent enough, in my opinion. I just needed a voice to sing them. The artificial golden voice of a Syren would give my rough tracks the professional edge I needed to make a start. 

And then, soon enough, I’d be headlining festivals with thousands of people shouting my producer name: “DESSIE! DESSIE! DESSIE!” (Which was also what people called me generally, unless they were my parents or Mrs.P.) I probably would never look as perfect as a Syren, but maybe if my Syren songs took off, I could take some vocal lessons, some dance classes, and be a star all on my own… someday… If I had the money…

“It is now 11:30,” purred Angelica, hopping onto my shoulders with a slightly painful, heavy pounce that snapped me right out of my daydreaming. “Your alarm for tomorrow morning is set to 9:00 am, so you should start getting ready for bed myeow.”

I winced. “What did I tell you about the puns, Ange?”

But her reminder helped me focus on the task at hand. So what if I lost a little sleep? This was important.

I sliced through the box edges and started unpacking my new singing robot.

The Syren looked brand-new, like a giant doll waiting to be assembled. My breath caught; I felt like a kid opening a present on Christmas Day. I tore through the packaging and started assembling her, screwing her torso and legs together. Luckily the robot design was pretty intuitive. Syrens are designed for people like me, music professionals (or, aspiring professionals I guess, at least in my case) but robotics hobbyists. Her joints snapped together easily, and soon enough I had her hard metal-and-plastic body standing in front of me. 

I untangled her long, violet hair and snapped the scalp into the back of her head. Her eyes were closed, her face painted into a heavy stage makeup look with thick flat eyeliner and layers of false eyelashes glued along the edge of her lids. I'd have to customize her appearance more later, once I figured out how I wanted to use her voice in my tracks. Maybe I’d cut her hair or change the color or something.

The control panel was on her stomach, just under her hard, plastic breastforms. Syrens weren’t made to be touched, like Cupids were. They were made to be looked at, to dance and sing on a stage far away from the heat and sweat of us humans. The Apollo Corp was pretty strict with the image rights for its showcase Syrens, like the superstar Lorelei, but I heard you could get a Cupid modeled after a popular Syren you liked if you knew where to ask about them. And some indie creators traded entirely on their Syren’s potential sex appeal, making song after song about how sensual they were. Which was a little weird, in my opinion. But anyway.

There were some clothes for her at the bottom of the box, mostly sparkly dresses like she was going to be performing at a stadium the week after I start working with her. I’d have to get new clothes for her too, once I came up with a look for her. I pulled a crop top with the Apollo Corp logo stenciled on it and short shorts over her to preserve her modesty while still giving me access to the control panel. Which was silly, she didn't exactly have anything to preserve. But it felt weird, to be messing around with something shaped like a hot naked girl. Even if she wasn't, technically. Syrens had limited sentience: they could learn songs and dances better than most people, but didn’t respond to other’s emotions or pass most sentience tests. Which was just fine by me. 

The buttons on her stomach let me modify parameters of her voice and movements and expressions. There was a slot for me to insert the Vocal Sequence drive with the song data I wanted her to sing, if I didn’t feel like teaching it to her the way I would to a human singer. And another slot for her charging cable, conveniently the same style charger any phone or electronic device made in this decade used. 

“Dessie, you really should go to bed soon!” Angelica dug her blunt plastic claws into my calf.

“Not now, Ange!”

“You’ll be late for work tomorrow!”

“Then set five more alarms! Just let me finish this real quick, okay?”

I lugged the Syren over to the outlet by the wall where my phone charger was plugged in and shoved that cord in there, right above where her belly button would be if she was a person. (There was a fake belly button sculpted onto the panel that covered her controls, actually.) I needed to charge her up to a hundred percent before I could start working with her. But soon… soon! I’d have this Syren singing my songs!

And then my phone charger started smoking and spitting out sparks. My shoebox apartment filled with the smell of burning electronics as every light in my apartment blew out at once, plunging me and my new singing robot into darkness.

“Shit!” I swore, and kicked the connector out of the wall before it melted down on me. I managed to pull the cord back out of the Syren without burning myself. Where was that circuit breaker again…

“Hello.”

I froze. 

“Huh?”

I turned on my phone's flashlight. Pointed it at the Syren.

Her unnaturally blue eyes stared back at me. They were closed before. A sarcastic smile stretched across her lips, like she was playing a joke at my expense.

All that anxiety I felt when the package got delivered came back as my Syren stared back at me with a far-too-human expression on her rubberized plastic face.

But as I looked at her, her expression shifted into something much… friendlier? Almost like she was hitting on me. Was there a mix-up at the ApolloCorp factory? Did I get a Syren with Cupid software in her musical head? 

I was suddenly extremely aware that she was taller than me. And thinner, and better dressed. I mean, it was a Tuesday night, of course I was wearing my pajamas and a hoodie.

I wondered, briefly, if she was actually some kind of military machine undercover and not a Syren at all.

“Oh, aren’t you a cutie,” said the Syren, voice honey-sweet and just as sticky. “I can’t wait to make music with you.”

What in the world did she mean by that?!