I had a teddy bear when I was growing up, a “Mike” by Standard. Remember those? The ones that got recalled when they started getting depressed? Yeah, it sounds weird to have a depressed toy, doesn’t it? It used to happen all the time though, with some of the early AIs. And really, depressed was […]

The marketplace is no place for a nine-year-old girl, but that’s always where I spent my mornings. There was something about the crowds, jabbering in a dozen languages, pointing, taking, bartering, haggling, stealing… it’s intoxicating. The merchants would seize you by the arm and pull you bodily into booths, draping silver chains or silks over […]

Dearest Charlotte: Of course it’s not an actual time machine. That would be ridiculous, would it not? Time machines exist in one place, and that’s in the fertile imagination of the public. What I have created could more precisely be called a Temporal Influencer (at the moment, I call it the Suggestron, but I am […]

It’s been years since I seen him. He’s probably rusted out by now, or maybe the Wardens nabbed him for the war effort. Maybe his brain’s in a cruise missile or satellite somewhere now; I hear they can’t make a military brain the way they used to. But I can tell you how I remember […]

He was just a C-type android in need of a tuneup, and sometimes that bothered him. But not today; on a day like today he could forget what he was and just sense the sun on his face plate and the wind in his antennas. Factory voicebox or no, that robot knew how to sing.

Standard X-series utility units don’t usually go to parties, because they don’t usually get invited. And really, who expects a robot to know how to party? But some of them do. And when a robot throws a shindig, that party is the stuff of legend.