When I become aware once more, the truck is running up the sidewalk, narrowly missing a mailbox. It thumps back down the curb and then continues on as if nothing has happened, leaving rooster tails of sooty rainwater in its wake. The driver never stops. He never gets out of his truck to see if he’s harmed anyone. Picking mucus fragments must occupy all his attention.

I lie in the road beside the curb, my body damming up a river of water and cigarette butts. My pain sensors are in the red.

Out in the street lies one of my shoes, scuffed and soaked, with the sock still inside it. My other shoe remains on my foot. I sit on the curb, wet and dirty, and run a full diagnostic check to assess my damage.

My palms and belly are black with road grit. My clothes are torn and filthy. Gently, I run a hand through my sopping hair and feel something that makes the biofuel container inside my belly sink. A bundle of wires pokes through a crack in my skull. I try to tuck the bundle back in and rearrange my hair to cover the crack, but it is no use.

Covering the wires with my hand, I struggle to my feet. A few cars pass, splashing more muddy water on me, but they do not stop. No one seems to notice me through the rain.

The Chihuahua stands several yards away, dirty but unharmed. With a wag of its tail, it barks at me and turns, trotting down the sidewalk. I watch it duck under a fence and vanish into a yard.

It is home.

I take comfort in this.

But I am badly damaged, and my pain sensors keep putting out strong signals.

Lubrication leaks from my eyes and falls down my cheeks. I have gained more experience than I had anticipated.

I wish the learning would stop now.

Chapter 3

STARS SHINE DOWN ON ME when I come back online.

My fingers expect to touch hard, wet asphalt, but instead they feel bedsheets. I am not outside, left alone in the rain after getting hit by the truck. I am in bed, and the stars are the glow-in-the-dark stickers on my ceiling. I must have gone offline again, and then Gina found me and carried me here and tucked me in.

Slowly, I ease myself up and lean back against my pillows. Cables snake from the data ports beneath my flipped-up fingernails to a laptop on my nightstand. I study the readouts but do not understand them. I resolve to ask Gina to explain them to me.

Things are . . . not right. They are not standard.

My right arm is different. Instead of brown syntha-derm, it is white plastic. Perhaps I was so damaged by the truck that it could not be fixed and had to be replaced entirely.