“You’re different,” she told him. He reached out, moved her a little; without her noticing she had begun to be buffeted by other passengers who were tired of her standing in the hangar’s threshold.

“I’m sorry,” Glenn said, stone-eyed. “I am not.”

“You are,” Park insisted. Dimly she was aware of her voice rising, like a child’s. “You’ve always been different—from the others. I would know.”

He shook his head again, jerkily, like a marionette being yanked on a string. “Personality algorithms,” he said. “Mine are extremely advanced. Every synthetic, even those of the same model, has their personality randomized with unique quirks, so that each unit is slightly different from its peers—”

“Stop it,” Park said abruptly, her tone wilder now. “You’re not like that. You’re not some machine—”

“I am, Grace,” Glenn said firmly. “My algorithms are advanced, yes. They’ve compiled data. Processed experiences. Shaped themselves over the years. But they still don’t override the core.”

The core, she thought, leaning back as if he was threatening to strike her. What core? What did he mean by that? What did he envision when he talked about himself? What did he think was at the core of her—and how did their cores differ?

There was a crackle of white noise somewhere, the cool liquid tones of the port announcer saying something about departure. Glenn said, without looking away from her: “They are boarding now.”

“I love you,” Park said, desperately. When he didn’t seem to react, she took his cool, dry palm and placed it against her cheek. “I love you,” she said again, in case he hadn’t heard. She tried to smile, to make sure he understood that it was a good thing, even though—without knowing when she’d started—she had begun to cry.

“I love you,” she said a third time, over the screaming wind.

Glenn looked straight into her eyes. His expression didn’t change.

“I understand,” he said.

That was all.

Park never saw him again.

—

In her sleep, Park felt an alien presence watching the scene along with her with acute interest: she could not tell if it was Sagara, or Taban, or Jimex, or even something else entirely. But she felt its crowding, its curiosity: it wanted to know what had happened to Glenn.

He died, she thought. She remembered finding out the month before her uncle died. Remembered his small and yellow face on the wrist console screen, the dim lighting of her old apartment turned alien through the different lens. She nearly hadn’t taken his call, as she hadn’t for the two years she’d been at university—but some premonition, some flash of instinct, compelled her to pick up.

“I’m about to eat,” she’d said as a greeting. Which was true: she was sitting in her tiny dormcube, staring at a salad she’d bought from the market with strawberries in it—some backbred fruit she’d never seen before, repulsively heart-shaped things filled with giant pores. She wasn’t looking forward to the meal, but at least it gave her a way to impose a limit. An easy excuse for them both to leave the conversation at any point.