Alexia was watching her, her eyebrows still in perfect arches. Another girl, behind her, said in honeyed tones, “So what about the one you’re always walking around with? That’s your chaperone, right?”

My friend, Park wanted to say, or my family—but of course that would get her nothing but ridicule. So she said nothing, only held onto her dampening sandwich, waiting. Just get it over with, she wanted to say. Say whatever cruel thing you really mean. It was all a performance, a ritual, maneuvers to establish dominance, extinguish threats. Park didn’t have the patience to learn the steps.

“I had a chapbot when I was little,” Alexia said with a breathless little laugh. “My parents got rid of it when I was twelve. I wonder what happened to it.” She smiled at Park. “I should care more. It practically raised me.”

It must have been defective, Park thought. It didn’t do a very good job. But she only said, “It was probably recycled.”

“Probably,” Alexia said with an elegant shrug. “I wonder what’s going to happen to yours, when you leave school?”

Park said nothing. Alexia, perhaps growing impatient with her, plowed onward, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “You know,” she said, “they’re thinking of getting rid of them—the nannybots, anyway. Too many husbands caught fucking them! Isn’t that sick?”

“People are always doing strange things,” Park said woodenly.

Their wrist consoles flashed, then, indicating that it was time to return to class. The girls behind Alexia made disappointed little clucks, as if someone had failed to finish an exciting story and was asking them to wait until later. And there would be later, Park thought, watching their retreating backs as they flowed into the school building. They’d locked on; they wouldn’t be finished with their target until they got their satisfaction. She’d have to be wary, come to battle armed. But why her, why now? She thought, a little hopelessly, about what she was going to go to school for. Maybe she should switch to robo-psychology. She was better at it—and she wouldn’t have to deal with people like these.

After school, she saw Glenn standing impassively by the gate as usual. He looked no different from a distance, but upon coming closer she thought she could read something like concern in the angle of his shoulders, or puzzlement. She approached and saw someone talking to him, or rather at him, since Glenn was neither looking at them nor responding. Sudden fear and rage swept her in a dark acidic wave. It was Alexia, standing there boldly with one of her boyfriends.

“Respond,” she was saying as Park glided up behind them. “Answer. Reply.”