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“Even my Anabelle,” Ethel added sadly.

Anabelle was Ethel’s older A-model service bot, more primitive but also more common in appearance and abilities than Milo, especially with Milo having Rowan’s surge protector installed.

The surge protector…

“Allthe other bots were fried? It worked…” Rowan muttered breathlessly.

It was also very likely the reason that the power had redistributed throughout the building instead of all into Milo.

Meaning the other bots being fried was entirely Rowan’s fault.

“Milowasplugged in?” Ethel exclaimed, leaning forward to peer into Rowan’s apartment.

Only Milo was no longer standing behind Rowan, leaving him to hold Ethel at bay alone, barely avoiding sloshing coffee all over her arm. “I, uh, don’t have time for this right now, Ethel. I’m sorry. I have an inspection at work today.”

“Oh, yes, and then you can finally tell that director about your surge protector.”

Rowan really regretted telling her that. “Maybe. Now I need to think—”

“Will you look at Anabelle later?” Ethel pleaded, clinging to Rowan’s arm. “That surge protector is clearly what saved Milo. Maybe it can save her too. She is the only constant company this old woman has. Please, Rowan? I don’t want to recycle her.”

Rowan hesitated, moved by Ethel’s desperation. This building was almost exclusively one-bedroom apartments. Small, contained, mostly single retirees, not couples or families. For the people here, their bots were often all they had.

And Ethel always called bots ‘she’ or ‘he’ or ‘they’, rarely ‘it,’ as she considered that too dehumanizing—which was the point. Pronouns were chosen by the owner when a new bot was brought online, but ‘it’ was the default.

Rowan had left Milo's default setting specifically to prevent himself from thinking of Milo as too human, although that had never felt right either, since Rowan knew humans who preferred the pronoun, ‘it,’ somebecauseit separated them from being seen as human. Still, it never felt quite right to Rowan because Milo hadn't chosen the pronoun for itself.

But of course Milo couldn't. Bots couldn't choose anything. So ‘it’ had seemed like the best option, and straying from that was a line Rowan tried to never cross.

He tended to call other bots ‘it’ as well, even Anabelle, who was the only bot Rowan knew of personally whose owner had gendered them differently. Silly though it may be, he couldn't shake being bothered that a bot might not agree with the pronoun chosen for them by their master, so ‘it’ always seemed like the safer catchall.

“It doesn’t work that way, Ethel,” Rowan said softly. “Milo was protected from being damaged in the first place, so the onlything overloaded was his access port. I’m assuming Anabelle was completely fried all throughout its circuits?”

“Yes…” Ethel released him, sagging in defeat.

“I’m sorry. I can look, but it’s unlikely we can salvage Anabelle without a wipe if the damage is already done. If you’ve been backing the bot up to the Cloud—”

“It’s not the same! A whole new body with possibly missing pieces in her memory? It wouldn’t be the same.”

Recycled into a new body, Anabelle’s memory would resume from last night, but it also might reset all the way to square one depending on the damage, as if Ethel had bought it brand new. Most people didn’t care, but Rowan couldn’t imagine what that would be like with Milo. Milo knew him. Starting over would be like having a new bot altogether.

“At least your warranty should cover it,” Rowan said, but that just made Ethel look sadder.

“I don’t want to recycle her without trying, Rowan. Please? Will you take a look at her after work?”

Ethel was known as a bit of a troublemaker in the building, an instigator, always blamed when someone’s mail went missing—especially when one tenant’s sex toys ended up on another’s doorstep, or when someone particularly rude woke up to dogshit smeared over their welcome rug (and no, Ethel did not have a dog)—but she would always bat her eyes obliviously and deny it.

It drove Riley crazy, since she couldn’t evict someone or even issue any warnings if there wasn’t proof to the accusations, and the shenanigans had been happening for as long as Rowan had lived here. Ethel had never been anything but sweet to him, however, which was why it was impossible to say no to her.

“Sure, Ethel,” Rowan caved. “I’ll take a look later.”

“Thank you, dear. Have a nice day at work. And good luck with your inspection. I am really happy for you that Milo is okay.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Ethel smiled again, gave a little wave, and headed for the elevator down the hall.

Every single charging bot above and below Rowan had been fried. It was a terrible loss, but it also proved his surge protector worked. Milo wasn’t a fluke. The partworked, and now Rowan had a case study to prove it, beyond just daily research of better processing power and battery life.