Seppo and I sat in the waiting room of Dr. Esmond, one of the many, many gerontologists at the Senior Clinic, here in Drisk, the best geront community in the Mare Ibrium, the other two cities being Harle and Yillen.

Seppo and I had received our annual examinations and now watched news podcasts as we waited for our results. Seppo is my neighbor and friend of 15 years. After his wife, Tansy, and my husband, Hector, died we grew closer, and supplied each other's lack of family for many purposes. He was a brother to me and considered me his sister. For several years we had scheduled our exams at the same time.

News podcasts flickered over the viewscreens. A talking head from London spoke about the latest successful tests for hyperspace plasma spaceships. A hurricane the size of North America gathered strength in the Great Northern Ocean on Venus. Android Control reported the finding and retrieval of a Class A1 HF Android. HF stood for Humanoid Female. The podcaster said, "This model, nicknamed humandroid, was discontinued in 2334 and private ownership of all models were outlawed and recalled in 2341.

The podcast caught my attention as unlicensed androids carried a penalty, including fines, felony charges, and prison. "Humandroids" were the most wanted decommissioned androids, for their similarity to humans could make it almost impossible to spot one. They were the main reason current android models, even nonhuman models, had visual tags and branding.

"How did they find her?" I asked Seppo, who kept up with android stuff.

"Asteroid miner in the Belt pretended the android was destroyed in a mining accident. Since the miner worked alone, she passed the droid off as her daughter and kept her away from others till enough time had passed for the supposed daughter to be a middle-aged adult. Years passed, and the mining agent spotted the daughter during a delivery and realized she hadn't aged in 20-odd years. He reported it."

"It'll be recycled, and he'll get the bounty."

Seppo blinked. He said, "Yes. Those Class A1 females were built to serve as reproductive surrogates in addition to their main programming. If this one is in good enough shape, she—it'll,  be assigned to a surrogate facility somewhere. It's the male humandroids that are always  decommissioned. Too old to have useful parts anyway."

I was about to ask if there were a lot of humandroids still unretrieved, for Seppo had worked with droid management after he retired to the Moon Colonies, when a nurse droid entered the waiting room.