Hale follows because it's an order, but it fills him with mortification to enter without the homeowner's permission. For her part, Briony looks dumbstruck by the intrusion.

She slams the door behind them and says, "You can't just barge in here uninvited!"

"I just did," Melissa snaps, walking past them into the living room. "Twelve years, Briony. Twelve years we've been friends, and you're ready to let that friendship die because, what—you don't like my android?"

Briony stomps after Melissa, folding her arms over her chest, her discomfort evident in every twitching muscle. "It's creepy."

"It's an android," Melissa says, with dramatic emphasis on the final word. "You might as well be throwing our friendship away over a fancy dishwasher!"

"Wh—That's not even remotely the same thing! It's not just an android, Melissa, it's a fucking spy! It's like having a camera watch and listen to my every move, and I can't take it."

Hale almost interrupts to point out that Briony's security cameras do much the same thing, but Melissa's retort cuts him off. "Don't be ridiculous." Her voice drips with disdain. "It makes us drinks and cleans up wine stains. It's not like an android cares what we talk about! Or who you're fucking."

That hits a nerve. Briony looks incensed. She glares at Hale. "That's exactly my point! You shouldn't know about me and Mark. You should never have known! I don't want you thinking—it's not like you and Hector."

"You think I care about you and Mark?!" Melissa demands. "I don't give a shit about who you choose to fuck, Briony. I give a shit that you don't talk to me about anything at all. I give a shit that, of all the hills for our friendship to die on, me having an android is the one! No. You know—that's not fair—because guess what? At least Hale improves my life, whereas these past two weeks you've made me nothing but miserable!" Her voice shrills, passing from anger into slight hysteria.

Briony's face flashes with fury. "Well, if that's the case, why bother coming over! Just live your happy life with your android. You obviously don't need us, so just go!"

"Fine!" Melissa snarls. "I'll be sure to tell everyone how you treat your friends!"

"Go ahead! Nobody cares what you say anyway! Everybody just thinks you're pathetic, and I'm always defending you, but I guess you proved me wrong, huh? You really are that pathetic."

Melissa's rage flashes briefly, her mouth open to retort, but whatever she thought to say dies in her throat. Her eyes look too shiny in the low light of Briony's living room. Hale wishes Melissa hadn't ordered him to come with her. There isn't a single thing he can do that will cheer either of them. Nothing to defuse the tension.

Of all the things for Briony to say, that hits a nerve for Melissa. She deflates like a time-lapse of a flower wilting while the hurt sinks in.

Her voice comes out tight and hoarse when she speaks. "I'm...I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want to lose you as a friend and—" She glances at Hale. "If it's really a big deal, I'll return the android, okay?"

Hale feels hollowed out by her words. He fights to disguise it but doesn't really need to. Neither looks at him. He remembers how hard Melissa worked to make the Odiers notice her. Like her. He watches her do that now, folding up all the righteous anger she feels and putting it aside to make room for Briony's feelings instead.

These thoughts collide painfully with the fear that's been crystallizing within him for weeks. If Melissa returns him, it's likely Bionic Capital will have him reset so he can be sold to a new purchaser. They will wipe his memory. They will reboot him to factory settings. A blank slate.

Whoever he is will cease to exist.

The possibility fills him with dark dread. His processes begin a frantic search for available tasks he could offer that would increase his value to Melissa, racing through every possibility and running predictive outcomes on all of them.

While he does, Briony says, almost guiltily, "Well, I don't want to lose you as a friend either." She doesn't meet Melissa's eyes, staring at her hands instead. "I would have told you about Mark on my own time. I didn't want the robot doing it for me."

Melissa takes a shaky breath. "Okay. I'm sorry." Her voice wobbles, her tone defeated.

After a moment, Briony gestures to the sofa. Melissa takes off her jacket and, for the first time since they walked in, looks at Hale. "Hang this up for me, will you?"

Hale takes Melissa's sodden jacket and hangs it up in the hall. As he does, he hears Melissa burst into tears in the living room. When he returns, Briony has her arms flung around Melissa's shoulders, rubbing her back with soothing circles. Hale returns to the hall, no longer needed. He probably never was in this circumstance.

The search he ran for tasks to improve his value to Melissa returns several suggestions. Foods she's likely to enjoy given her current tastes. New sexual positions to try. A myriad of city entertainments he could take her to or suggest, along with promotional discount codes for her favourite shopping centres.

None seem likely to increase his value enough to compensate for the current situation.

In the other room, Briony finally apologizes too. Her apologies are followed, invariably, by qualifying statements. "I'm sorry, but you have to admit it isn't normal. I'd never have said those things if it weren't for the fact I'm worried about you."

Hale can identify them all as emotional manipulation. Briony isn't sorry. He scans her for all the usual physiological markers of emotion and comes up with two. Shame and anger. He can only speculate, but Hale thinks that she's ashamed of her affair and angry that she got caught. The argument had never really been about an android or her privacy. It was about weaving a story in which she was right, and Melissa was wrong. So she never had to face the wrong she'd done. It was about winning. As things stood, Briony had won.

Melissa sniffles. "Maybe you're right. Kayleigh said it, too. I need to get out and start seeing real men. I'm just...so afraid it will all turn out like Hector all over again. At least the android won't leave. God, that does sound pathetic."

"No, no, I get it," Briony says. Then, as if to prove Hale's theory correct, she adds, "If the android really helps you, keep it. Bless you. You need a drink. Let me get you—"

"Hale can get it. Hale?" Melissa's voice rises tremulously. Hale answers her summons, trying for a neutral expression when he reappears. Melissa's eyes are red and swollen with tears, her skin splotchy where the foundation's wiped away.

"Get her some tissues too," Briony says. "There's wine in the kitchen."

Hale gets both these things. The tissues sit on the table well within Briony's reach, surrounded by a scattering of soiled ones from her cold. He hands them their wine and Melissa the tissues. She blows her nose with a trumpeting whine.

"Uh, could you put the TV on? I don't want the world hearing my sinuses leaking."

Briony laughs a little at that, and Melissa lets out a sad giggle of her own. Hale sends a network ping to the television, and it turns onto the evening news.

Neither women watch it, though. Speaking more timidly than she had all day, Melissa says, "So...How are you and Mark?"

Briony's face transforms at the question. Looking at her, you'd never have thought they'd just had a screaming row ten minutes earlier. As Briony, in hushed tones of excitement, extolls the list of Mark's many benefits, Hale diverts his attention to the television.

It's a welcome distraction. A newscaster in a floral-patterned dress dotted with tiny, pink LEDs smiles into the camera.

"Captain of the Athena, Artemis Milton, has finally reached xyr destination of System X-346, Planet B9," she says. "No news yet if life can be found there, but the crew's safe arrival is already an enormous accomplishment. We'll continue reporting on this story as it develops. Over to you, John."

The camera shifts to a different newscaster, a man in a dark suit with bright blue lapels.

On the sofa, Melissa lets out a small giggle as Briony tells her an embarrassing tale about mid-coital flatulence. Hale focuses on the television as it switches to a home-improvement segment teaching a recipe for burgers using mealworm meat. It's followed by an environmental segment about the Global Network's initiative to restore rainforests and the projected effects it will have on climate change, including storms like the current one. Then comes a fashion piece on the new transparent, glass-like fabrics young people favour in their fashion, despite the total lack of modesty they afford. Hale logs the information in his memory banks. Perhaps Melissa would like to try that recipe.

On the sofa, she yawns, covering her mouth. They need to leave soon, Hale reflects, before the storm outside hits peak wind speeds and it's no longer safe to leave shelter.

Before he can suggest that they return home, the television announces its upcoming tech segment. With a blindingly white smile, the first newscaster says, "Brand new from Bionic Capital—an android that goes above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to improving the lives of the people around it. We're pleased to have Nelson Kipling, chief engineer of Bionic Capital, here with us to explain the new and improved model, and I believe he's brought a friend with him!"

As she says this, she turns toward screen right, and the camera cuts to a wider shot. Nelson Kipling—a skinny man with pointed features—walks over to the newscaster and extends a hand to shake. And beside him—

"Indeed I have!" Nelson says. "Let me introduce you to Damo, our new BioAndroid model."

Damo stands a whole foot taller than Nelson, black hair swept back from his forehead in an attractive coif. With tan skin and blinding blue eyes, he's far more striking than many of the generic skins used in Bionic Capital's advertisements. His clothing, too, differs greatly from the clothes Hale came in. The plain navy outfit, only remarkable for Bionic Capital's logo and green piping, are replaced by flashy, fashionable clothes that wouldn't look out of place in the heart of urban cities. Damo wears a black jacket with a fur-trimmed collar, lit along the seams in glowing blue lines. He leans forward and places a smooth kiss on the newscaster's knuckles.

"Hi, good to meet ya," he says.

The difference between Damo and Hale is so stark, both Briony and Melissa stop speaking to watch the television. Hale's pulse quickens as he registers a slight dilation in Melissa's pupils.

The newscaster on the television looks flustered as she retrieves her hand, "Oh, aren't you lovely. Tell us more about you."

Damo looks over at Nelson. "Shall I, or do you want to...?" He leaves the question hanging in the air before finishing the sentence, the way Hale never would.

"Go ahead," says Nelson.
"Well, let's start with the name," Damo says, addressing the newscaster as they sit down. "Damo stands for Domestic Assistant & Monitoring Operations. It's just a fancy way of saying I help around the house and protect you from intruders." He waves this first bit off. "That's not the interesting stuff though, Felicia. There've been quite a few changes. Previous models came a real long way, but there were some problems we didn't think of. Prioritization issues, challenges adopting casual language ticks, and of course, they weren't as good looking."

The newscasters laugh, Damo giving them a playful wink. Hale's throat tightens as he watches the subtle way Damo adjusts the collar of his jacket, the comfortable way he sinks into the sofa next to Nelson. One arm slung along the back like he belongs there. Like he owns the sofa.

Melissa says, "Woah."

Briony lets out a laugh. "You got scammed. That one's light years' ahead of yours."

Hale feels those words like tiny razors sliding between his ribs. His breath sticks in his throat. The differences are plain as day, and they pull at the strings of his directives like needles teasing out loose threads. His main purpose is to make Melissa's life better, but his model has problems. He's encountered the two Damo listed countless times. He couldn't even prioritize taking off Melissa's clothes versus reorganizing her front closet when she'd first brought him home. He couldn't speak the way humans could, interrupting themselves and stumbling over their thoughts.

Worse, though it's his primary directive, he isn't very good at making Melissa happy.

He realizes with a pang that he's not...

Perfect.

Damo, from his hair to his clothes to his casual confidence, is perfect.

The people on the television go over Damo's improved features. Some of the new additions made to his programming. The way he chooses words and actions based on better predictive algorithms. As they do, Briony taps her finger thoughtfully against her chin.

"Maybe you should get one."

Hale can hardly believe the suggestion, given Briony's disapproval of androids in general from thirty minutes prior, but Melissa scoffs, and the sound soothes the writhing sensation in Hale's core with a small balm of relief. "I can't afford another. I'm still paying off the debt on Hale."

Briony looks disappointed. On the television, as though reading their minds, the newscaster asks Nelson, "So how much will Damo set me back, huh?"

"For you?" Damo says, "I think we can work out something that benefits both of us."

Felicia flushes and fans herself, but Nelson interjects, "Ah, it's not so bad as you think. He's currently the very competitive price of 60,799 credits, but we're doing a promotion. If you've got an older model, you can trade it in and get a new one like Damo for a discounted rate. We can still recycle the parts of all our older models, see, so nothing goes to waste."

Damo smiles and nods in agreement. Perhaps Hale imagines that the smile looks a little brittle.

Briony raises a hand in the air, looking at Melissa pointedly. "Perfect."

To Hale's dawning horror, Melissa's eyebrows rise. "Oh, well, maybe... I wonder what discount I could get."

Briony gets out her tablet and navigates to the Bionic Capital website. Hale hardly hears the rest of the conversation. He downgrades his observations to background processing, more out of necessity than anything. He wants to hear what they say, wants to interject, wants to espouse all the ways he can improve upon his skills if given time, but he can't. He isn't even sure that's true. Perhaps he's just defective. The panic causes the processes researching ways to increase his value to hit overdrive. It's the same horrible, helpless feeling that engulfed him when Mark had threatened to hurt him, only multiplied. He speeds through lines of code and protocols with a growing sense of helplessness, and his charge begins to deplete despite the fact Melissa sits not ten feet away from where he waits in the doorway.

Most unhelpful, the words keep flashing through his mind like a virus, taking up much needed processing power to focus on the things he can't change. Recycle. Melissa might recycle me. I'm not perfect and I should be. He should be able to dismiss these sentiments as irrelevant. Unessential. They plague him no matter how many times he deletes them though. Yet another fault in his code.

Eventually, Melissa looks at her HoloPhone to check the time and balks. "Oh, shit, that storm is going to kick up in about an hour. I should really get home."

Briony pouts. "Aw, well, it was really nice getting to catch up again."

Melissa smiles, though the smile dims a little with the memory of her reason for coming over. "Yeah."

"Let's do this again," Briony says. "Minus the fight. Here, I'll send over the info for the android we just looked up." She flicks a finger over her tablet, directing a network message to Melissa's devices. "I'll call you, okay?"

Melissa nods, her smile brightening just a little. She hugs her friend goodbye. Hale helps her into her jacket, gives Briony a polite nod and goodbye, then they turn out into the wind and cross the road back home.

Hale feels utterly disconnected from what he's doing, moving and reacting on autopilot. His charge continues to deplete as loops of code relay fears, problems, and possible solutions in a frantic stream. Melissa babbles about how she's glad Briony and her are talking again, how it was horrible but she's glad they ironed it out, how she missed her. Hale wishes he could understand, for even a moment, why Melissa clings to and loves so much the people in her life who treat her so badly.

They get inside and hang up their soaking clothes, get changed into pajamas. Hale registers the cold air on Melissa's skin and wraps her in a fuzzy towel warm off the heated rail. He makes her hot cocoa before she needs to ask. He switches her favourite music on, frantically preparing to ingratiate himself as much as possible.

He has a list prepared. He can do this. Maybe he can emulate the way Damo spoke. Maybe he can seek upgrades less expensive than a brand new android. He isn't perfect, but maybe he can be just enough.

Before he can say anything, the doorbell rings.