Rachel Hawkins - Grim

That hurt. Always, before, I’d wanted people to think I was hard and cool. Now that someone had recognized the real me—since Rowan—that mask didn’t fit any longer.

Rowan saw my downcast face, and he gently brushed his hand against my shoulder as he said, “Blue’s personality is extremely complex.”

Todd’s face fell, and I thought, Oh, damn. Damn.

Rowan touched me. He violated a core protocol, and Todd saw it.

“...I gotta go,” Todd said, and he turned without another word.

As he vanished down the hallway, Rowan said, “I messed up.”

The words were mine—he was copying me—and that would have moved me if I were any less horror-struck. “Yeah, you did.”

“Will he report me?”

“Yes.” Like I said, Todd wasn’t a bad guy, but he played by the rules. Unlike me, he didn’t have anything to gain by turning a blind eye. And unlike me, he didn’t care what happened to Rowan.

Rowan turned to me. “What will happen?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “But I think it’s going to be out of Professor Jafet’s hands.”

He must have been so afraid, and I knew by then that Rowan felt fear as deeply as any human being did. But he said only, “Let’s go home.”

The only home Rowan had was a workshop where he had a charging station. That tore at my heart like claws. “Come on. Let’s go.”

And as long as the damage was already done, I took his hand.

When we arrived at the workshop, though, all the screens were lit up: priority communication. Todd had worked faster than I’d imagined. Rowan stopped short when he saw the red borders around the screens, but he was the one who had the courage to step forward and open the message. That was when we learned the communication didn’t have anything to do with Todd, or with Rowan violating a core protocol.

The message told us Professor Jafet had died.

While I was still breathless with shock, the message continued, “Video from Professor Isadora Jafet, for Millicent Fairchild. Play?”

Rowan frowned. “Who is Millicent Fairchild?”

“Me. That’s me.” I told you my name was stupid. “Blue is just a nickname.”

“I think Millicent is a pretty name,” he said, thus becoming the first person ever to say that since the dawn of time. “But you’ll always be Blue to me.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean—even if they take me away, after this—when I am deactivated—something inside me will remain. Whatever it is that is more than metal.” Rowan’s dark eyes met mine. “It’s the part of me that will always remember you. The part that will remember how gentle you are beneath the hard exterior, and how patient you were when you showed me the world. That part will remember how—how when I looked at you I knew what it would mean to be alive. And will always remember you wanted to be called Blue.”

Tears were welling in my eyes, but I just jabbed at the screen to make the video play.

The image that came to life on-screen was that of Professor Jafet propped up in a bed. “I haven’t much time, Blue,” she rasped. “But you should know that after our last conversation, I added a codicil to my will. From the moment of my death, Rowan legally belongs to you. That means his ultimate fate lies in your hands. I trust you to choose well. You’re a smart girl—maybe smarter than you know. You’ll need that—it’s a hard world. Good luck, Blue.”

Jafet smiled, and then the video ended. The professor had left my life forever, still as much an enigma as when we’d met.

“I belong to you.” Rowan smiled at me like that was the best news in the world. When I didn’t smile back, he hesitated. “It doesn’t matter, does it? Not after I violated a core protocol in front of Todd. I’ll be confiscated no matter what.”

This might be the last time, so what the hell. I took his face in my hands; he covered my fingers with his own. “Rowan,” I whispered, “do you trust me?”

“Completely.”

“I can fix it so they won’t take you away. But I’ll have to modify you.”

He didn’t even ask what I planned to do. “We should act immediately.”

Todd was probably talking to the authorities right now. “Yeah, we should.”

I started to move, but he held me fast. “Wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Just once, I wanted to do this.” And Rowan leaned forward and kissed me.

It was a soft kiss, unsure and gentle, lasting only a moment. But it still made my heart seem to expand within my chest, as though it were unfolding into bloom like a rose. Tears welled in my eyes.

When our lips parted, Rowan said, “Did I do it right?”

I managed to smile for him. “You sure did.”

And that brings us to here, and now. Rowan lies on the workshop table, unconscious. His fate is entirely in my hands.

Do I downgrade his intelligence, make him more like another robot so that the authorities have no reason to take him away? Rowan would still be devoted to me, and I could keep him forever. But he would just be a shell of the Rowan I knew.

My other choice—add more intelligence, make his mind indistinguishable from a human being’s. Give him some legal rights so that he couldn’t be deactivated or taken away...and in the process, take away whatever it was he felt for me.

Like I said, love makes you selfish. I want to keep him with me no matter what it takes. I want to keep seeing the world made beautiful through his eyes. I need that—need him—more than I ever imagined I could.

But love gives you a power that goes beyond anything selfish. I feel it inside me, holding me up, keeping me strong.

This is not about what I need. This is about what Rowan needs. He needs to be free. He needs to be real.

Rowan wakes up after I’m done. He opens his eyes. And once again he says, “Oh,” in that voice of wonder—but the wonder isn’t for me. It’s for the windows I’ve opened up in his mind.

“They can’t touch you now,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. Good job, me. “You belong to yourself.”

“And to you,” Rowan says as he sits up.

“Legally, I guess. For now.” I did some research on this over the past few weeks; now I know that an Emancipated Artificial Intelligence gets pretty much the same rights as a human being—old legal precedent. That’s one reason why businesses try so hard not to make any more of them. “But you belong to yourself, really. Soon, officially.”

“Yes. And to you.”

His hand reaches out for mine. Slowly he lifts it to his lips and presses a soft kiss against my palm.

“But—” I can’t let myself believe this. If I do, and I’m wrong, my heart will shatter into so many tiny pieces that I’ll never be able to put it back together. This is what happens when you break something so hard, so brittle, and find the softness inside; you never get to repair the cracks again. “You’re not like other robots any longer. Your feelings are real now. You’re real.”

So shyly, so gently, Rowan smiles. “This was always real.”

* * * * *

Naked flesh should’ve had more of an appeal.

The girls in the club showed off theirs like trophies, and while Locke understood they were proud of their purchases, he could go the rest of his existence without ever seeing another one of them “dance like no one was watching.”

That was all a bunch of bullshit, anyway.

They wanted everyone to watch.

He stretched out his arms on the back of the booth, the purple vinyl tugging at his bare skin. His bandmates gathered in the VIP area, behind a literal velvet rope, filling up on protein to fuel their energies for the evening. Their set was over, and now they had a purpose.