You weren’t supposed to remove your emotion card. It wasn’t a rule anyone had ever told Joey, just something he knew. Like how you shouldn’t peel back your skin-reserve pouch—that was there for when your frame expanded—and you never took out your eyes, though your parents could shut you down to replace them, and when you went swimming, you always checked the back of your head to make sure the USB covering was in place. Joey had once placed the flat edge of his toothbrush against the small flesh-covered slit beneath his armpit, but it felt gross, like flipping your eyelids inside out or sticking your finger too deep in your belly button. And so, on the night of his upgrade, he sat dutifully on the closed toilet seat as his mother put on rubber gloves.

“It was a fun summer, wasn’t it?” she asked. She used the rectangular tool to push his release tab while distracting him by talking about how he’d soon be in middle school. It was going to be exciting, she said, and he heard the pop of his emotion card releasing before everything grew colorless. Then there was no warmth left in the shell of his body, just a deep, metallic coldness, and the roughness of a strange woman’s fingers fiddling with his armpit. She took a new card from its plastic casing and pressed the world back into him with a flush of warmth and color, her voice full of love again. “All done. You’re eleven now—big, big stuff,” she said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

When, later, Joey saw his sister remove her new card in the dim light of the constellation lamp, he reminded her she wasn’t supposed to do that.

“There’s a lot of things we’re programmed not to do, Joey. I want to know what happens when you do them.” Lacy put her emotion card on the bedside table and climbed beneath her sheets. “Besides, Mom and Dad aren’t our parents. They’re just consumers who’ve learned to be really nice to their robots.”

Joey hated when she used that word. He knew they weren’t human, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have emotions. Like the coziness he felt upon opening his lunchbox to discover a note his mom had packed for him, or how she’d bring him a juice box when she picked him up, or how his father played soccer with him in the backyard after work. All of it—the programmed memories and the real ones—was filled with love. Joey placed his hand against his pajamas, felt his heart beating beneath his palm, steady and comforting. Even if it was just a small machine-powered balloon inflating and deflating, it let out a pulse like a real heartbeat.

“Well, I feel like they’re my parents,” he said to the darkness.