The Urimine Effect Read online

money, but she had to be careful. She dropped them back to the bottom of the pockets in her flowery pink dress.

  She crossed the street and entered the robot shop. It was dusty and smelled like old oil but her attention was distracted from the pink robot from the window by a particular specimen across the room. It sat amidst a pile of many other oddly shaped robots in the clearance section of the store, fighting for space in the cramped quarters. A manager came in then and asked her what she would like. He looked down at her and frowned, noticing the fur and the tail.

  "I would like that one right there." She said, pointing directly at the robot she'd seen in the clearance section. The store manager shook his head and hefted the robot from amidst the others. It seemed slightly bent up to Yin when he pulled it out, but when she gave him the full talent, the shop owner said he could fix him up.

  Yin frowned slightly, the tag hanging from the robot's neck said it was only worth three quarters of a talent. She mulled over it for a little while but eventually desperation won out.

  "Make him work like new." She pleaded, "I need him to take care of my father while I'm at work, otherwise he's going to die in some stupid way because he's too drunk to know how to do anything else." Yin clasped her paws tightly in front of her and looked at him with her large, brown eyes. "Please." She knew she sounded like a spoiled child, but the emotion she expressed was real. She wanted him and she wanted him to work well, regardless of how it made her look.

  The shop owner sighed to himself and brought the robot through the door behind the counter to work on while Yin waited anxiously at the counter. I hope he can fix him, she thought. She was so desperate right then to have him, all she could think of now was how important it was to have someone or something else help watch over her father while she earned the living he refused to work for. She felt time go slowly as the shop owner worked on and cringed every time she heard a drill or the sound of clanging metal. She hoped her robot was going to be okay by the end of the shop owner's renovations, but when he finally came back, Yin's heart leapt in her chest; the robot looked so perfect to her just in that moment she couldn't help but feel reassured that she'd chosen the right one out of all in the shop.

  "Well," The shop keeper said, "I'm done. This little guy should be just fine for whatever you need. His internals were already in great condition, I just had to replace a few arms and give him a general clean up."

  Yin's mouth crinkled into a smile and her eyes lit up as she handed him the gold talent.

  "Thank you so much, my father will be so happy to have someone to take care of him."

  The shop keeper just nodded his head and returned to his work room behind the counter.

 

  The robot followed her home with a blank expression. It had large eyes set on top of a thin stock of a neck, under which several arms retracted themselves into the round, green body that ended in a set of wheels. Yin shifted the bag of groceries she had just purchased into a more comfortable position on her back. The wheels were going to be a problem if she or her father ever wanted to bring him off road, but this didn't deter the glow of happiness she felt inside every time she thought about the robot. It hadn't said anything yet, but Yin wasn't surprised, it will take him a few days to get used to being on again and she hadn't been informed of his history so there might be a chance of abuse sometime in the past, his arms shouldn't have been ripped off like that. She stopped suddenly when the sound of mechanical grinding ceased behind her, the robot had stopped to view some synthetic flowers in a small patch of dirt along the roadside.

  Yin was confused, robots don't have the capacity to be curious about things like this, and she needed to get home before dark. She sighed to herself and decided to humour him.

  "What are you looking at?" She asked. The robot just turned to look at her before resuming his roll across the pavement alongside her. Yin sighed again and continued her way home, listening to the whine of motors pick up behind.

  She pulled the latch from across her door and waved her synth card across the alarm panel, releasing the inner locks and verifying her identity.

  "Well," She said to the robot as the door opened behind her, "This is your new home, robot." The robot blinked but stayed silent.

  Yin frowned and ran the back of her paw across a small smudge on the outer casing on one of his arms, wiping it away with her thick hair.

  "Do you have a name?" she asked. The robot looked down at the ground. Yin guessed he was shy. "Has anyone called you anything other than 'robot' before?"

  The robot moved it's gaze up to the house, seemingly ignoring her question.

  Yin hid her frustration and went in, slightly disappointed to see that it hadn't been cleaned since she'd left.

  "Father!" She yelled, "I'm home!" Silence met her and she stood still, listening for the telltale sign of creaking floorboards that would mean her father was just waking up.

  "Father?" She called again, moving toward their small, dirty kitchen. The robot followed behind her, seemingly afraid of doing anything else. Yin spotted a small note on the table, she picked it up. It was written in a mostly illegible script that her father used.

  She felt her heart race as she began reading the letter.

  "Yin,

  I'm leaving you to your own life. I've come to realize that I'm nothing but a burden to you and I don't want it to be that way any longer. I know that you want real parents, and you wish you had a real father, but I can't take care of you and you can't take care of me. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was thinking when I adopted you."

  Yin covered her mouth with her paw, she was overcome with grief. Her whole life had been spent waiting for someone to come find her and call her family, and now that the only person she'd known was gone, she didn't know what to do. Slowly, she slid to the ground next to the refrigerator and cried. Her father had been the only source of comfort she'd ever received in this life. He'd told to her to go to school and she'd obliged willingly, but every day had been a struggle for acceptance. All the human children had laughed and scorned her because of her race and her father had been one of the few humans kind enough to listen, even though he was always half-drunk and never had a kind word to say. Now that he was gone, she couldn't hide behind him anymore.

  She felt a small pat on her shoulder and looked up. The robot seemed to have the look of understanding planted deep within its eyes. "It's okay." The robot said, its soft voice echoing with the sound of deep regret. Yin choked on a sob, she didn't know whether to be angry at him or deeply grateful to have a friend who understood. She rested her head on her paws and let out the grief she held inside, crying from the depths of her heart the pain she felt of having no one in the world to turn to. Eventually she fell into a deep thoughtful stupor.

  The robot had stood by her in silence as she slowly slid into her quiet brooding. He had been reawakened by her deep betrayal and stood tall on the tiled surface of the kitchen floor and he took the liberty of shaking himself into an attitude of work, surveying the dirty counters and the dirty dishes sitting in the sink. He set about cleaning the room, vacuuming the dust and polishing the tile with his round metal body. Yin held herself still in the corner, sobbing whenever she thought about the father she'd lost, hidden behind the sound of running water and the all consuming vacuum.

  Eventually, the robot moved on to another part of the house, leaving Yin to rethink her situation. She'd taken heart once the robot had moved on and now she could see the good behind her father's decision. Without him, she could sell her home and move on to a better part of the city where she can be closer to the shopping centers.

  No, she thought, they wouldn't let a Meregal like me take the home of another human. They would despise me if I lived anywhere near them. She sighed, she might have to move to another city all together if she wanted a better home. Even if she'd wanted to stay, there was too much room here and it would cost too much to take care of by herself. That much she did give c
redit to her father for, he had always hidden a few extra pieces of copper from her work to pay the bills on their small home. But now that he was gone, she realized, there had been no way for him to pay the bills with the meager supply of coinage she'd earned. Had he been working a job while she was away every day? The more she thought about it, the less it made sense.

  So what if he had been working a job? What had he been doing this whole time? No one has ever mentioned it before, and neither had he. Had it been illegal? That would explain why he drank so much. He might have been trying to hide from the guilt he felt of working for some illegal corporation or city gang.

  She looked back at the note. It didn't make any sense, he'd loved her from the bottom of his heart. He'd even told her he'd loved her because she was a Meregal child and her beautiful face had tempted him to adopt. But why hadn't he discussed this with her? Even though he did some stupid things, he must have wanted to talk it out with her before he finally left. Maybe he wouldn't have had the heart to leave if he'd seen her again. Yin was sobered by this, it seemed as though, in the end, he'd cared too much about her to be himself and this caused him to commit to terrible things.

  Yin's heart dropped when she realized all of this had been her fault. It had been her