“I am not worried about the converter box,” replied Ceeron. “I am worried about you. Are you sure you are all right?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second. “I suppose I was distracted.”

“By the human?”

I nodded. But it was more than just the human.

It was a probability.

A number that weighed on my mental processing.

1.6 percent

00011010

In that moment, I did what I often do when the world becomes too complicated.

I counted to a million. In my head. In binary.

00000000

00000001

00000010

00000011

00000100

00000101

00000110

00000111

Ones and zeroes arranged themselves in an orderly, single-file line. The logic was comforting. A break from the strangeness/complexity/confusion of my situation.

In 0.5 seconds, I reached a million.

00001111 01000010 01000000

00011011

For the rest of the day, I disabled any thoughts of Emma. I focused entirely on my work. I double-/triple-/quadruple-checked every converter box, making sure there was not another error.

The sun vanished behind the mountains.

Darkness crawled across the sky.

My battery charge dropped to 9 percent.

Once we completed our last installation, I surveyed our work. Nearly three hundred new solar panels. Tomorrow, they would add power to the grid, pumping life into the circuitry of robot civilization.

An image flickered across my memory drive. A small/frail/human child. Fading into the distance. Walking away. Vanishing into a field of solar panels.

I filed the memory in a folder where I would not see it again.

I found Ceeron and SkD waiting for me at the edge of our WorkSite.

Together, we left.

00011100

We traveled in silence. A silence that was like a sound of its own. Filling my audio ports with all the things we were not saying.

To distract myself from the silence, I focused on the tempo of our movements. The heavy whump-whump of Ceeron’s huge metal feet. The steady vrmmmmm of SkD’s motor and rubber treads. The dull skiff-skiff of my footsteps.

Whump-whump.

Vrmmmmm.

Skiff-skiff.

The repetition of our mechanical movements repeated itself again/again/again. Until a new sound broke the pattern. A soft ka-lunk.

It came from Ceeron’s metal backpack.

I stopped. “What was that?”

The large robot shrugged. “I do not know what you are talking about.”

Ka-lunk.

“There it is again,” I said.

“Maybe you are hearing things.”

I approached Ceeron. I was not tall enough to look into its backpack. So instead, I knocked on its side with my fist.

CLANK! CLANK! CLANK!

That is when Emma appeared. Again. Her head emerged from the open top of Ceeron’s backpack.

I updated my files with this new data. I thought I had seen the last human for the last time.

Apparently, I had been wrong.

“Okay, I can explain,” she said.

I crossed my arms. “Go ahead.”

Emma hesitated for 2.0 seconds. Then she turned to Ceeron. “Um, maybe you should explain.”

“Yes.” I looked to the large robot. “Maybe you should.”

Ceeron looked at SkD. “Do you want to handle this, SkD?”

SkD replied with an image.