I’m not supposed to be hanging out with a human, but Mother can’t tell while she’s in sleep mode. When I wake in my deck chair, she is still asleep in hers—the skin receded from her shoulders and scalp to reveal the solar-paneled skeleton beneath. Once the nanobodies expand my body enough to be an adult android, I’ll also need to sleep for long hours during the day to recharge my energy. Until then, this window of time between my awakening and hers is the perfect gap to meet with my friend in secret.
He’s walking on the other side of the street. He has a crooked nose, brown skin, and a body so thin I always imagined a strong wind could carry him away. So fragile, even for a human. Or a ‘devourer,’ as Mother and most androids would call him.
I never saw him that way. Taka loves all things, and he eats no more than he has to. Nature left him no choice.
I leap over the railings and land in front of him. “Hey, Taka.”
“Hey, Goro. Ready to carve?”
I nod vigorously and take his warm, soft hand as he leads me to his home. The streets are busy with androids and humans walking in segregated rows, and I’m acutely aware of the distasteful glances they throw our way.
They can tell by our gait, by the gleam of solar panels at the corners of my bare scalp, by the way Taka breathes that we are different. They don’t understand our friendship. Taka listens to me. We share secrets.
He teaches me carving. We have fun together. What does the skeleton beneath matter?
Taka bravely defies the world around him, but I keep my head down. I steal furtive glances of the passers-by, dreading to catch a glimpse of those zealot androids known to assault humans on sight—they call themselves
Solarminders, wear a label of a silver sun. I’m being paranoid though. These androids have specific territories they operate in—alleys populated solely by other androids where no one would bat an eye. No way they’ll be here in the neutral areas.
We finally reach Taka’s place and shut the door on the hostile din outside. There’s tatami on the floor, and it makes crunching sounds against my tough feet—like walking atop the crust of freshly baked bread. A scent of beef ramen and a clamor of utensils come from the kitchen. We shouldn’t be seen together, but with his mother busy cooking, we have enough time to work on the carving if we work on the shed outside. Taka learned to carve wood from his father and inherited all the tools he needed to continue the craft—a series of whittling knives with handles ten times the blade size.
Taka picks two blocks of limewood—one for him, one for me—and we go to the shed. It’s dusty, filled with shelves hosting buckets, sprays and old knives. He lays the tools on a table covered by a blue sheet for us to work. Not work, not really. It’s more like play. I love the feel of dead wood peeling away at the push of the knife, the visions of pretty things taking shape in my hands. We have an elephant, a dwarf, and a fox from previous times.
“Let’s make a kodama today,” Taka says.
“What about an owl?”
“Or perhaps a red panda?”
“Or a totem with monkey faces?”
“All of them!”
I smile. “You take the kodama. I’ll do the owl first.”
We nod at each other and get to work. Draw the design on paper, attach the paper on the wood, and finally the best part: push the blade on the wood and peel away flakes. Shhhk, shhhk. Part of me always expects to find something at the wood’s core, like if I peel away enough, a solar-paneled skeleton will reveal itself. And once it touches the sunlight, the carving I make will be alive, and the owl will fly away. It makes me think of my own body as a woodblock, and now I imagine Mother popping up from behind me saying, See, Goro? All things should harvest energy from the sun. Not survive at the expense of others.
As soon as I finish the beak, a shriek erupts behind us. Taka’s mother has puffy bags below her eyes, and something about the way she glares in my direction makes me think crows will start flying from the hoops of her sleeves to peck at my scalp.
“What is he doing here?” she asks.
“We were just carving. Didn’t mean no harm by it,” Taka says.
“No harm? Do you know what they’ll do to people like us if they find him here? Do you want to have your family accused of abduction?”
Why do adults act like that? Once, my mother humiliated Taka when she caught me hanging out with him on the streets. Called him street urchin and a plague to the planet. His mother looks at me as if I’m some dangerous animal that escaped from the zoo. All I want is to hang out with my friend. Why can’t they leave us in peace?
Taka attempts to defend our actions further, but I stand, bow, and say “I’m sorry for any distress I caused you Mrs. Bencraft. I will leave now.”
I cross the threshold to the outside world, knowing Mrs. Bencraft’s is glaring at the back of my neck.
Days drift by, and I visit Doc—the only android whose company I enjoy, forty years my senior. His father was a kind android who created him to help around with the gadget shop. Now, Doc lives out his retirement surrounded by the ancient electronics and paraphernalia he has crafted throughout his existence. A fan on the ceiling makes a low hum and spreads the dust and smell of rusty copper. Geniuses love their chaos.
“So you just left?” he asks me as he drives a screw deep into one of his new devices.
I shrug.
“You could have given her a piece of your mind.”
“What good would that do? If I am respectful, maybe one day she’ll see there’s nothing to hate me for. Perhaps she’ll allow me to hang out with Taka then.”
He shakes his head. “Naive. Prejudice never changes.”
I fiddle with one of his screwdrivers, twist it in my hands. “Yours changed.”
He looks at me, proffers his hand and I hand him the screwdriver. “Goro, you know how much history, biology, and neuroscience I had to study before I changed my mind. Most people aren’t like that. They don’t realize we are the same—they can’t accept that the difference between the android and human brain has narrowed to the point of being nigh nonexistent. Heck, many of them have forgotten that we are made in the image of man, by man. That they sprinkled us in the population to bring balance to the world.”
“We could educate her.”
“Did your mother listen when you tried to explain our origins? Does she believe man made us as we are and helped us achieve our independence?”
I bite my lip. “No. Even though she works as a quality control inspector in android production facilities, she is clueless as to our origins. She believes humans stumbled upon us by accident.”
“Right. And no doubt Taka’s mother sees the truth as android propaganda. The truth in her mind is”—he waggles the screwdriver to punctuate his words—“Androids were made by evil Solarmind Corp to steal our lives and our jobs. Hanging out with one can only lead to trouble. Solarmind Corp love their toys.”
“But that’s stupid,” I say. “Our independence from Solarmind Corp was established decades ago.”
“That ain’t enough time for the dust to settle on the human mind, though. She did say, They’ll accuse us of abduction, didn’t she? Who do you think she was referring to by ‘they’? You’re Solarmind Corp property in her mind.”
Doc leans a hand on my shoulder. “Trust me, Goro. You can’t change the world. Just lessen the time you spend with Taka. Find other androids to hang out with. And when you raise an android of your own, teach it to be better. That’s as far as you can aspire to reach. Change comes slowly.”
“No,” I say. “Taka is my friend. Our friendship will be a symbol. A seed from which change will start.” I pause. “Like the rough wood that will one day become a beautiful sculpture. We just need to keep scraping away.”
I meet Taka again the next day. Mother is in her solar sleep cycle again, but my smaller body recharge is done early. Taka waves from the street below, woodblocks tucked in his elbow and a beanie bag around his waist filled with carving tools. If neither parent accepts our friendship, we’ll find our own place to do woodcarving.
I leap over the railings and land down on the pavement.
Taka smiles and tosses a woodblock to me. “An eagle today?”
I smile. “Or maybe a raccoon?”
“Or a bear!”
“Let’s do them all!”
“Deal,” we both say and walk to a quiet alley three blocks away where Mother won’t see us. We lay down on the hot pavement to start the work—no, the play. First to draw, then to attach, and finally to carve. The light breeze carries the peels of wood away, and some get into the street grille. I imagine the peels slowly rotting in their long journey down the pipes, little abandoned boats stinking of refuse and urine.
A breeze picks up some of the shreds, and I look up, startled they’re flying so far. They twirl and drift on the wind, away from the alley, into the shrubbery on the other side of the road. A few whirl out on the sidewalk and get crushed beneath the footsteps of a group of three androids. A group that’s now entering the alley, heading toward us with certain strides.
“Well, well, well,” the biggest among them says. “What have we here, Bit?”
“Looks like a human, Batu,” says a shorter one. “I detect respiration.”
“And it’s hanging out with an android,” says the shortest of the three.
I swallow hard. Maybe if I act polite. Maybe if I show them nothing’s wrong with what they’re seeing, we can all be friends. I stand, legs shaking, and proffer my hand. “I’m Goro. It’s all right, T-Taka here’s with me. He’s one of the good ones. We just—”
But then I notice it: a silver sun emblazoned on the shoulders of the large android. Solarminders. They encircle us slowly. Taka takes to his feet, chest inflated, head up high. “So what if we hang out? What’s it to you?”
The big android is deadly serious. “Filthy devourer,” he says, and the other two kick Taka’s knees from behind, forcing him to kneel.
“Stop,” I say. “I told you he’s with me!”
They kick him again. I leap at the shortest android. “I said stop!”
But the big one grabs me by the shoulder and yanks me back. I fall on the pavement headfirst.
“We know,” he says calmly. “We know he’s with you. We’ll just teach him to be a good member of society so he remembers to stay in his place.”
A scream. The world spins and I struggle to stand. They have Taka pinned against the wall, and the big one punches him in the gut. One of them snaps shafts of rusty solar panels from the garbage nearby.
I take a step and before I can scream, something sweeps my feet, and I drop to the ground again. The big android sits on top of me.
“Sit still, little one. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Why are they doing this? Why? Please stop hitting him. Please, oh please, leave us alone.
But the androids hit him with the solar-panel shafts on the shoulders, and he kneels, then kick him down to the ground and they keep kicking.
“Stop!” I scream, but they remain indifferent to my pleas and keep kicking his fragile body with their powerful android feet. The alley echoes with fleshy bone-crushing sounds. Taka screams and screams, and I can’t do anything.
I can’t do anything to save my friend.
I hoist Taka over my shoulder. His breathing is ragged, and by the time we reach Doc’s place, his grunts have waned to a painful wheeze.
Doc brings forth a chair for me to rest the body. “What the hell? What happened?”
“Solarminders ambushed us. Can you do something?”
“Me? I don’t know jack about human physiology. Take him to a hospital!”
I shake my head. “Can’t. Android hospitals won’t accept him, and the human ones need money. We don’t have any. I know his family doesn’t have any. I—I had to act fast. I could only think of you. Please, Doc.”
But Doc seems lost. The certain elderly android I know is gone. His eyes shift helplessly between me and Taka.
I lift Taka’s hand and feel the pulse in the wrist. Weaker. Slower. Almost gone. I know enough about human anatomy to realize what this means. He’s dying. How can we help him? What can we—
I turn to Doc. “You know how to transfer consciousness, don’t you? You can save him if you store it out of his body.”
His eyes widen. “Goro, that’s for our kind. I can’t do this on a human.”
“You said their minds were just like ours!”
“I said almost like ours. And I don’t have a powerful enough computer even if I wanted to.”
“How powerful does it need to be? Can’t we just—I don’t know, uh, use—” For a moment, my mind pictures a wooden figure, carved in the shape of Taka, carved specifically to accept his soul. A woodblock with a solar-powered skeleton inside. “Use me,” I say.
Doc runs a hand through his hair. “You don’t know what you’re asking. I’d have to partition your mind, remove half your memories. And what’s lost … I ain’t got the equipment to store a backup.”
Memories. Memories make us what we are. Will this change me? Will I forget our past, the memories I shared with Taka, and end up hating humans like my mother? Or like those android bullies that beat Taka within an inch of his life?
I shake my head. My voice is low and serious. “I can’t let Taka die, Doc.”
Doc sighs and nods slowly. “You can never let anyone know. Hear me? I’ll be terminated if anyone finds out. You and your buddy will be, too. They’ll call you an abomination!”
“I understand.”
Doc points me to a recliner, fishes through his cabinets, and places a helmet over my head. I look up at the mossy ceiling and it whirls into a blurry, nauseating whirlpool as tendrils of electricity tingle along my scalp. Flashbacks from my life come and vanish like hazy dreams, the kind of dreams that leave behind a sense of loss once you awake. A craving to return to that made up and forgotten world, but it’s floated off in the ether.
After a long while, I feel the right side of my lips move. It’s Taka. Speaking through me. “Where, where am I?”
I’m still befuddled by the experience. Doc’s the one that speaks. “You’re in Goro’s body,” he says. “They messed you up pretty bad, kid. I extracted you moments before your body gave out. Your buddy gave up half his memories to save you by making room for your consciousness.”
“What—what?” Taka says through my mouth. My eyes drift to Taka’s gray and bleeding body.
Tears are coursing down my left cheek. Taka’s tears. He’s seeing his own body through my eyes, broken and lifeless. What pain is he going through? I have to be strong. For him. “Don’t worry, Taka,” I say. “We’ll find you a new body. Mother has connections in the production line of maintenance automatons. They are void of consciousness. Perfect vessels. We’ll get you a solar-paneled body.”
“But … your mother doesn’t even like me.”
“Doesn’t matter. She won’t let me live like this. Trust me, she’ll want you out of my head. There’s only one way I’ll agree to, and that’s putting you into an android body.”
“I’m sorry,” Taka says. “I’m sorry. So sorry. You risked everything and I—it’s—”
I wipe off the tears. “I risked nothing. I only exchanged something of value for something of greater value. You. My friend.”
Doc smiles at me. At us. He wipes away a tear of his own.
Taka’s new body was meant to serve as a janitor. Mother proclaimed the body a reject and wheeled it out for disposal. It was not easy to convince her, but I insisted I wouldn’t erase Taka from my consciousness unless we found a host for him. And now that we found a solar-powered one, she’s warming up to me hanging out with him.
His mother, however … she lashed out at Taka, calling him an abomination that stole away her son and sought to replace him with lies. She screamed for him to give her her son back. To prove it was him, Taka went into her room, pulled off her dresser and revealed a carving he had once made. For her.
She broke down crying and in the end she hugged him. I realized change comes slowly, and it starts with a mother’s love.
But an android cannot stay among humans without being discovered. Taka’s staying at our place for now. I enjoy having him around, and for the first time, other androids are not looking down at him. In their eyes, he’s one of us, but to me he is the same. Not a solar-powered android, but my human friend.
We got his father’s tools, too, but he’s not used to his new hands yet, and his carving is awkward. And me?
It seems the half of the memories I erased included all my skills. So, we’re learning from scratch again.
“How about we make a sphere today?” he says.
“Or perhaps a spoon,” I say.
“A sphere in a spoon. Like a droplet of water!”
“And a pyramid, with an opening for the tomb.”
“Let’s do them all.”
“Yeah.” I say with a smile. “Yeah, let’s do them all.”