Myrha’s the one who is laughing at the end of the day. Miss Infallible Android couldn’t find the research facility. Even though it means Myrha spent all day trooping about in a dangerous-possibly-contaminated jungle all for nothing, it’s worth it to see the sheer disbelief and denial on Lynne’s face. Myrha pokes fun at her the entire journey back, and laments her failure during dinner, and continues teasing her throughout the night.

“It’s okay,” Myrha snickers as they lay down to go to sleep, “technology isn’t perfect.”

“I never claimed I was perfect,” Lynne snaps.

Myrha snuggles her pillow to her chest and has never felt so content. Well, okay, except for that one time with the triplets from the Moon in the backroom of Earth’s hottest nude club, licking free shots off each other’s bodies because the drink machine had malfunctioned, spewing out rivers of cocktails. But this is pretty good too.

“The real concern,” Lynne forges on, “is that Spinner has not been found.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be.”

“That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be.”

It’s dark in the room, so very dark, not even a little bit of moonlight spills in around the curtain’s edge. Myrha, so used to brightness, doesn’t like it very much. It’s sort of nice, to have someone talk to and distract her from how not-Earth everything is.

“Do you think he’s staying at the research facility, then?”

“He’s the only person not accounted for. I think he might’ve been responsible for the lights.”

“Fossam seemed pretty scared of them.”

“Not scared enough that he stayed at the hotel. He left for the campsite tonight, I believe.”

“The old couple went back out too. Bartin didn’t seem concerned that we couldn’t find Spinner.”

“Bartin doesn’t seem concerned that his wife is missing half the time.”

“Yeah, where does she go to? I think she’s off inhaling some chemicals of her own, ha!”

There’s a break in their conversation, and below them there’s the hollow footsteps of the captain as he paces, waiting for a message, fiddling with the utiphone.

“How is it, not being on a shuttle?” Myrha asks.

There’s a pause and the shuffle of blankets, as if Lynne’s trying to get comfortable, but that’s a bit ridiculous because Lynne doesn’t need to get comfortable to sleep. She even said so.

“There is a…need to do something. I feel directionless. While I am generally self-sufficient,” and she doesn’t sound smug, but rather kind of fragile, “I have always had a routine to follow, a goal to accomplish. There was always the Starline telling me where I needed to be and what I needed to do at all times. There was not a second in my day unaccounted for.”

“So, it’s sort of like you’re…free.”

It must be intimidating, to suddenly have control like that. Myrha wonders how much of Lynne’s fervor to find Spinner comes from her Turobeck-like personality of discovery and exploration, and how much of it stems from her need to find a directive. Her search for Spinner, helping Myrha in the jungle…perhaps it does all come from her programming, her desire to continue her job, an android struggling for normalcy.

“I do not have vacations or sick-days. To have the day to do as I please…it is something new.”

“It’s probably something you’ll adapt to quickly,” Myrha laughs.

“Perhaps.”

Androids don’t have vacations or sick days. They probably don’t have retirement either. What happens to them? Do they just get shut off and thrown away? Re-made into something new maybe?

She’s too scared of the answer to ask.

“Lynne,” she says slowly, testing the name out, “Why do you read poetry?”

“I read a lot of literature, human and alien alike.”

“Yeah, but you could’ve just stuck to non-fiction, or manuals, or things that help you with your job. Why poetry?”

“I was created by a human to be human-like. I am not human. That does not mean I do not wish to study that which I am modeled after.”

“So, you were studying what it was like to be human?”

“It is part of my job.”

“You mean you weren’t just curious?”

Lynne laughs again, quiet and soft, and Myrha desperately wants to know who taught her how to laugh like that.

“Just because it was part of my job does not mean I was not curious.”

Myrha makes a small noise to show she’s listening. She wonders how much of that curiosity is programmed, or if it’s something Lynne’s developed, like a personality. Perhaps the programming and personality are merged and are impossible to pick apart.

“And you? How did the great interstellar playgirl come to love poetry?”

And the way she says it: love. Is Lynne even capable of love? Or is she able to create a facsimile impression of it based on copying human behavioral patterns? Lynne raises an eyebrow when she thinks it’s appropriate to be annoyed; she laughs when she thinks a situation calls for it. Could she show love in a similar fashion?

Myrha can’t. She’s had over twenty years of being a human and learning by copying (monkey see, monkey do, she snickers to herself) and she has never nailed down love. She thinks, a tad depressed, that Lynne would be better at it than Myrha. Lynne doesn’t seem to be afraid of anything. Myrha runs at the slightest whiff of ‘commitment’ and the barest hint of ‘deep regard’.

“Myrha? Have you fallen asleep?” Lynne asks.

“No.” Just drowning in deep, philosophical thoughts over here.

“You do not have to answer my question if you do not want to.”

“No, I will. I mean, it’s not all that personal. Not very interesting.”

“You do that often.”

“Do what?”

“Deflect. You must be intelligent to have won a poetry contest, and you seem to have rather extensive knowledge and opinions of poets and poems. Yet you project an image of carefree ignorance, almost to the point of deliberate obtuseness.”

“Well hey it’s not my fault I don’t talk fancy like you do. You project an image of superior intelligence to the point of…asshole-ish elitism!”

“I am not projecting an image of superior intelligence; I have superior intelligence.”

“You have an attitude problem, is what you have.”

Myrha’s face is red from giggling and she pounds the pillow before collapsing on it, burying her face in it and resisting the urge to go over to Lynne and smack the pillow right in her perfect face.

“Tell me?” Lynne questions.

“Ugh, fine. I grew up in a shit neighborhood, the rough kind where you gotta be rough else you’ll get beat down. It wasn’t cool to be intelligent or interested in things like poetry…it was dangerous to be different, you know? I didn’t want to get beat up or ostracized, so I just decided to fit in instead.”

“And your parents? Teachers? They didn’t encourage learning?”

“It was just me and mom. Mom was too busy working to really make an effort, not that I blame her okay? Everyone else had just given up. It’s tough to work in a place like that, to teach kids like us. I don’t really blame teachers for looking at me and not seeing anything worthwhile. I was trying to convince everyone there wasn’t. That’s how I survived.”

“In that case,” Lynne says in what Myrha now calls her ‘science’ voice, “I must congratulate you on your deception. You survived because of assimilation. That is a most effective survival trait.”

“Oooh, did I just win the ‘natural selection prize of the year’ award?”

“If there was such a thing, I believe you might place first in the human category.”

“Did you just tell a joke?”

“I was completely serious.”

Myrha decides to chuck the pillow at her after all. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t hit her. She can’t really see, but she thinks Lynne might’ve caught it. Stupid android.

She lays back on her bed, a bit breathless, and it’s never like this with Zel, who is friendly and supportive but more interested in gossip and drinking; never like this with the countless fair-weather friends she’s had and lost over the years; never like this with the hundreds of nameless people she’s slept with; never like this with anyone else.

“I’m going to hibernate now,” Lynne says.

Because Lynne isn’t like anyone she’s ever met.

“Okay,” Myrha says softly.

Lynne’s little robotic noises fade. She doesn’t breathe, so it’s like she’s not even there. Myrha hates the silence.