Nathan crouches down so our eyes are on the same level. He puts a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not that, Cog. Of course Gina wants to be with you. It’s just . . . after you were injured, she was reassigned to another uniMIND location. One far away, where they do . . . other kinds of work. But, listen, buddy, don’t worry about her. She’s a great engineer. She’ll be fine. And believe me, she didn’t want to leave you. She’s heartbroken.”

I ask Nathan to discontinue our tour of my new home and take me back to my room. Though, of course, it is not my room. My room is in the house with Gina.

Gina is damaged.

Her heart is broken.

When one is broken, one must be returned to headquarters for repair.

One must be taken home.

If Gina’s heart is broken, she will attempt to go home.

I will find her there.

Chapter 5

I REMAIN BAD AT SLEEPING. Gina said sleep is difficult is for me because my brain is always working, thinking, learning, and she didn’t want to “go monkeying around” in my brain before she fully understood what was going on inside my head.

I know about monkeys. Monkeys are nonhuman primate mammals. They are intelligent. But “monkeying around” means to go about things in a way that is not intelligent.

It does not make sense.

Being awake wasn’t so bad when I was home. I could lie in my bed and process all the things I learned during the day and look forward to the things I would learn tomorrow. And when I no longer wished to lie awake I could go downstairs and find Gina. Gina is not very good at sleeping, either. Even though she is not a robot, we have some of the same bugs.

On one such night, I prepared two mugs of hot cocoa in the microwave oven, which is a machine that is not capable of learning but is very good at making hot cocoa. Gina was in the laboratory, sitting at her computer. I put her mug on the desk.

Usually she would say “thank you,” which is standard behavior. And then I would say “you’re welcome” or “no problem” or “think nothing of it,” all of which are standard responses. But this time she didn’t say anything. She didn’t even seem to notice I was there. She just stared at her computer screen with abnormally hydrated eyes. A drop of fluid fell down her cheek.

A face stared out from the screen. Eyes, brown like mine. Nose, a similar shape, narrow in the bridge with a rounded tip. Skin the same shade of brown as my syntha-derm sheath. Hair like mine, only longer, tied into a ponytail that hugged the left side of the neck.

At the bottom of the picture were three letters: ADA.

“Who is that?”