At night Park had dreams that her apartment-module would detach from the rest of the city while she slept, that it would somehow simply float away. When she was a child this fear could be alleviated by having Sally or Glenn sit with her; it was a comfort to know that they were standing guard, that they could hold onto her. But now she was too old to have Glenn stay in her room. She often woke up in the dark with a deep sense of loss. Sometimes she even found herself holding her own body in a death-grip, afraid to open her eyes and find that she was alone, her bed bobbing on dark and alien waves. There would be nothing to anchor her.

She would be lost and adrift at sea.

—

Glenn woke Park the next morning, shaking her lightly. She woke with a start, drawing a gasping breath as if he’d dunked her in an ice bath.

“What?” she said, staring up at him. “What is it?”

“You can’t go to school,” Glenn said, towering over her. “It’s unsafe.”

Park sat up. “What are you talking about? What’s unsafe?”

“The rioters,” he said. His face contorted, running through a gamut of interface expressions so that his features looked blurry. “Dataran has been destroyed.”

For a moment Park didn’t speak; then she swung her legs off the bed and heaved herself upright. Glenn caught her elbow, and Park said again, “What are you talking about?”

“The rioters,” Glenn repeated tonelessly. “They destroyed him. It’s on the newsfeeds now.”

“He’s—dead?”

“In the strictest sense of the word, yes.”

What did that mean? Park wanted to shout. But she forced herself to slow down, to analyze his words, as she so often had to do with Glenn. Rioters had killed Dataran? But why? Had he gotten involved with them in some way? The idiot must have provoked a crowd, maybe stated some unpopular opinions about androids; there’d been a significance to their exchange about them the other day, to the way he so easily corralled Ms. Allison. Or maybe Glenn was wrong.

Her temples were pounding. “They’ve never killed a human before,” Park said, trying to work it out. “The rioters—they’ve been arrested? Who were they?”

“No,” Glenn said. “They didn’t kill a human.”

“But Dataran—”

“They didn’t kill a human,” Glenn said again. The look he gave her splashed cold throughout Park’s body, like contact with a dentist’s drill.

She faltered. “So—Dataran is—”

All right, she meant to say. So he’s not dead. He’s all right. But she couldn’t get the words out.

Glenn just looked at her.

“I don’t understand,” Park said.

“You should,” Glenn said simply. Calmly. “Anti-robot rioters have no reason to harm humans. They only target androids.”