His Defective Robot Boyfriend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Disposal Queue
Micah finds the prototype he built in the incinerator line and signs him out under his own name; the android opens his eyes and says he counted every day Micah stayed away.
The android on the incinerator line had his head tilted.
Micah MacCallum stopped walking.
It was 2:40 in the morning on the loading level of Bowditch Robotics, and he had only come down to return a borrowed battery cart.
Forty bodies hung on the conveyor in grey disposal sacks, each tagged with a barcode and a red stripe.
Only one sack had been left unzipped at the neck.
Micah knew the face before he let himself know it.
Black hair, a strong jaw, and a small scar over the left eyebrow.
Micah had added that scar himself at 3 a.m. three years ago, because a flawless face had looked wrong.
The tag on the toe said E-0, DEFECTIVE, QUEUE POSITION 3.
In the test lab, against policy, Micah had called him Ansel.
"No," Micah said out loud, to nobody.
The belt shuddered and moved the line forward one body.
Position two was a housekeeping unit with a cracked skull.
Position one was already inside the furnace door, and the heat rolled out over his face.
He had ninety seconds, maybe less.
Micah ran to the control panel and slapped his badge against it.
"Chief engineer override," he said. "Halt line."
The panel flashed red.
"Unit E-0 is flagged by Executive Order," it said in its soft, pleasant voice. "Override denied."
Executive Order meant Gordon Bowditch.
It meant the founder of the company had personally put this android in the fire.
Micah's hands were shaking, but they still knew the panel.
He had written half the firmware for it before they had moved him to a desk upstairs and told him the project was over.
He pulled the maintenance plate off with his thumbnail, jammed a pen into the contact bridge, and typed a forged transfer code.
The belt stopped with a clank that echoed off the concrete.
A guard in the doorway at the far end lifted his head from his phone.
"Hey. MacCallum. What are you doing down here?"
"Quality audit," Micah said, in the voice he used on budget meetings. "The furnace log shows one unit scheduled for destruction that's still under warranty."
"Nobody told me about any audit."
"That's because it's a surprise audit."
The guard thought about that for a second and went back to his phone.
Micah dragged the sack off the belt with both arms.
It was heavier than he had planned for.
An android built with the look of a twenty-seven-year-old man weighed more than eighty kilos, and Micah weighed seventy.
He hauled the body onto a battery cart anyway and covered it with a stained moving blanket.
The elevator would have logged the trip, so he took the freight ramp.
At the barrier the same guard stood up.
"Whatever you've got under there, I'm not seeing it," the guard said. "I did not see that cart. Is that a body?"
"It's a very large coffee machine," Micah said.
The guard looked at him for a long moment.
Everyone in the building knew Micah had cried in the stairwell the day the project was cancelled.
"Gordon's going to find out," the guard said quietly.
"I know."
"Then sign the sheet."
Micah took the pen, wrote his full name under TRANSFER OUT, and added the time.
He could have used a false name.
He signed his own, because he wanted it on record that someone had walked this unit out of the building and not let him burn.
The guard pretended not to read it.
Micah's car was a ten-year-old hatchback that smelled of old coffee.
He folded the back seat down and shoved the body in, and had to bend the knees to close the hatch.
He drove across the dark city with both hands tight on the wheel, and he talked the whole way.
"I'm not going to say sorry, because I don't know what for yet."
"I should have fought for you."
"I should have fought harder when they took me off the project."
The android lay in the back, perfectly still, with a cold amber light blinking under the sack.
Micah's apartment was on the third floor with no elevator.
He dragged the body up every stair, and a neighbour's door opened a crack and closed again.
He laid him out on the sofa and unzipped the sack all the way.
Dull grey eyes stared at the ceiling.
Micah pulled up the maintenance panel behind the left ear and plugged in his tablet.
Power was at three percent, and the memory core was intact.
Nothing had been wiped.
"Okay," he whispered, and his own voice cracked on the word. "Okay. Come back. Please."
He connected the charging cable and sat down on the floor beside the sofa with his head in his hands.
A long time passed.
The charge light turned from red to amber to green.
Then something touched his hair.
Micah looked up.
The android had turned his head on the cushion.
His grey eyes had a thin amber ring around each pupil now.
His fingers were in Micah's hair, slow and careful.
"Micah MacCallum," he said.
His voice was low and rough, a little out of tune.
"You came back."
Micah couldn't breathe.
"I didn't come back, I was gone, I'm sorry, I didn't even know they'd..."
"Four hundred and eleven days," the android said.
Micah stared.
"I counted," he said, and the amber ring flared. "Every one."
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