The same is true for my left knee. The right knee is mine, but it is scratched and scuffed. Fortunately I can still bend it, which is the purpose of a knee.

At least there are no wires poking out of my head.

Glancing around the room, I see my posters. I see my models. I see my books. But where the window should be, there is only a plain, white wall. And when I swing my legs over the side of the bed, instead of my bedroom’s thick, green carpet, my bare feet touch thin rug.

My things are here. I am here. But this is not my room.

After unplugging the cables from my data ports and flipping my fingernails back down, I take a few steps toward the door.

My left knee feels too loose and my right knee feels stiff and clicks when I try to walk, and I topple face-first into my dresser.

I thought I had already learned balance, but I will have to learn it again.

The doorknob at home is shaped like a ball. This one is shaped like an L. Before I can open the door, it opens on me. Standing in the doorway is a trash can with two arms and a boxy head on a telescoping pole, all of it sitting on tank treads.

“Do you have any waste to dispose of?”

I recognize it as a fellow robot.

“Where am I?”

A red light blinks behind a faceplate of black glass.

“Do you have any waste to dispose of?” it asks again.

A man steps behind the robot. “Not right now,” he says. “Thank you, Trashbot.”

The robot’s faceplate blinks green, and it trundles away down the hallway.

The man smiles at me. He does not have a gap between his two front teeth. The frames of his glasses are black, thick plastic. I like them. Glasses are worn by people when their eyes do not function at one hundred percent efficiency. Perhaps I can ask Gina to lower the efficiency of my eyes so that I, too, can wear glasses.

“I am Cog,” I say.

“I know. I’m Nathan, and you should be lying down.”

He places a hand on my elbow and gently guides me back toward my bed.

Correction: not my bed. The bed they have supplied in this room that is not my room.

He flips my fingernails back up and reconnects the cables to my data ports.

“How do you feel?” says Nathan.

“I feel like I was hit by a truck and then went offline and then came back online in a place I have never been before.”

He examines the readouts on the laptop. “Well, you haven’t been in this room, but you’ve been in this building before. In fact, you started out here. This is uniMIND headquarters.”

For a moment I silently process this. “When will I be returning home?”

Nathan displays his gapless smile.