The Window

by Grace Bridges -

Ave crept along a Level 14 service corridor, and hoped she wouldn’t meet a cyborg. Unregistered persons were not allowed in service areas, and she didn’t like being chased any more than the chip-controlled humans liked chasing her.

Ave came alone, slipping away from the small children who liked to cling to her, so she could move quietly above all else. Perhaps this time, too, she would reach her goal, a curiously-built gangway that led nowhere except to a true anomaly—a window.

It was the only place Ave had ever looked Outside. She’d pestered the wizards to tell her what was out there. Now she could recognise the various objects visible depending on the station’s spin: Eclectia, sometimes close and ominous, or distantly seething; Sheba and Quatermain, with their shifting seas of molten rock; the great Whale Star, and its distant Twin.

She reached the final junction and looked left and right—no one was about—so she scooted across into the niche, only to scramble to a halt before a towering man-shaped silhouette. Gulp.

“I won’t hurt you,” said the giant.

Ave calmed her breathing and moved around to the left so the light from Outside fell on him. “Who are you?”

He spread his hands as if it pained him, and Ave caught sight of the power mop leaning against the wall behind him.

She drew in a sharp gasp. “You’re franked!”

“I am a servant.” He turned his face to her. In the Whale’s light reflecting from the ring section, she could see the battle in his eyes as with all cyborgs—he hated his programming. But this one was different. He hadn’t chased her off, for starters. That small rebellion alone would be earning him a splitting headache right now.

Ave wrinkled her brow. “How...?”

“My wife.” He forced the words out, wincing, defying the silence stricture. “Also a servant. Must...must care for her.”

Ave nodded. “You must love her very much to be so strong. What’s her name?”

“Enya.” A light came into his eyes as he gazed out the window, and it wasn’t just from the Whale Star. “My Enya.”

Enya’s Smile

by Frank Creed -

Motors hummed and chugged in the dim bowels of Avenir station where they kept the cyborgs. Our taskmaster had just programmed the last unit for sleep, walked down the rows of steel double bunks, and closed the door behind him.

Must sleep. I grabbed the jar from beneath my pillow and slid down from my bunk. I knelt on the cold metal floor next to Enya’s bed where I worked the smelly white grease into her knee, hip, elbow and shoulder.

Her dead eyes fixed on the underside of my bunk above her.

“Enya? Wife, why don’t you look at me?” I brushed grey hair from her forehead with my clean hand.

Her eyeballs flicked toward me, and her lips barely parted as she breathed my name, “Robear…” She smiled—a rare smile that reached all the way to her eyes. In that moment, she knew me. This is why I kept killing time with my power mop and cleansing cloths day after day. Smiling eyes.

I smiled back, and shuffled around to the other side of her bunk to attack the arthritis in her joints with more of the white grease. Must sleep.

Her eyes returned to my bunk above her, a wan smile still playing on her lips. Implanting chips and wires in our brains affected her far more than it did me. As long as we remained useful we would be kept in service. What law we had broken to receive such a fate, I no longer remembered. I could only recall my programming and Enya. My programming told me we deserved this and it was just.

“Your knees are bruised. You hand-polished floors all day, didn’t you?”

No response. The smile had faded. She was gone again.

Must sleep. I spun the lid back on the jar and climbed back up into my bunk. Wiping my greasy hand on my chest, I closed my eyes and thought of Enya’s smile.