“You see why I want to keep him?” her uncle asked. He spoke softly, slowly, as if not to spook her; but behind his papery voice Park sensed a thundering rage. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed, Grace—your dependence on him. It’s unhealthy. Damaging. It wouldn’t be right for him to go with you to school.”

I thought you said I was independent, Park thought. Self-sufficient. I don’t need you.

Her uncle shook his head. “More than that—you can see what’s happened to his wiring after years of being allowed to run wild with you. His algorithms and protocols are all degraded. He’s got too much agency, not enough discipline. There’s problem behavior.”

“He’s not a dog,” Park said. Through the door to their module she could hear Glenn’s steady tread moving up the hallway stairs.

“No,” her uncle answered. “He’s dumber than a dog. He shouldn’t have the freedom to misbehave in the first place. Like I said—his head’s all scrambled, now.”

Park could feel the vibrations of Glenn’s footsteps moving up the soles of her feet. She braced her back against the door, as if to bar him from entering; she could sense him waiting on the other side, pausing, looking at her with his dark patient infrared eyes. Run, she thought at him, almost screaming it. Go somewhere else, somewhere safe. I’ll find you.

Of course, not even he could read minds. But Glenn did wait there, perhaps puzzled, or even afraid; Park could hear, faintly, the smooth whirring of his heart through the door. Park’s uncle said, “I won’t have him reset, if that makes you feel better. But he stays here.”

You can’t keep him safe, Park thought. “You don’t even care about him,” she said.

The reflection in her uncle’s glasses shifted slightly, as if they were full of water. As if there was nothing behind his eyes but cold and empty sea. “No,” he said. “But I care about you.”

But did he really? Park never quite knew, even after he was dead. Did anyone really have the capacity to care—truly care—beyond the instinct to ally, fuck, and raise their young to breeding age? Were there any decisions guided by pure selflessness? Not in humans, she supposed—in androids, yes. It was too bad no one else could see the beauty in that. Even Park forgot it, sometimes. By the time she was an adult, she had to be more aware of her reputation, of how it looked when others saw her interacting with robots. She lost her way a little, there. And by the time she was on the Deucalion, bound for the stars, with no idea of when she would return—there was no one, human or android, left on Earth to care.

17.