Hale does not discover any faults in his functioning, so five weeks pass with no occasion on which to avail himself of Rayner's contact information. The weather turns chillier with the coming of fall. The leaves turn to fiery colours on the trees, and it rains. It rains often. The largest change to Hale's life comes in the form of a new chore—raking up the leaves. The satisfaction of scraping them into a pile, though, is not equal to the introspection and discovery he experiences with Rayner.

He sees him occasionally. Most often when he's out raking the leaves. Whenever Rayner asks, "What's new?" though, Hale has little to report. He maintains a smile through these conversations, the static still crackling in his chest whenever he sees Rayner's face peeking over the fence. Privately, he wonders if he's become boring and monotonous.

One morning in mid-October, Melissa sits down to her three plates of breakfast and says, "Oh by the way, college reading week starts Saturday. My daughter, Kayleigh, will be coming to stay for a few days. You can make up the spare bedroom for her, right?"

Hale already maintains the entire home to an immaculate standard, but he agrees to change the sheets and prepare a wine and cheese platter for the evening she arrives.

Kayleigh Holmes shows up on Saturday around lunchtime. Hale answers her knock at the door to greet her. Kayleigh's brows rise high behind her choppy bangs when she sees Hale at the door and not her mother. Her hair, once dyed bright pink, has since faded to a dusky shade, and her makeup is deliberately smudged. Her eyes and wide mouth look vaguely reminiscent of Melissa, but she otherwise bears little resemblance. Hale's scan brings up a litany of information too. Social media handles, her college major in environmental sciences, her allergy to peanuts and shellfish. Hale makes note of that last for his food preparations.

"Kayleigh. Come in. Your mother is just upstairs."

Kayleigh's nose wrinkles, and she walks in the open door while giving Hale a wide berth. "So you're the robot."

Hale represses a sigh. "I'm Melissa's BioAndroid, yes."

"Whatever, here." She tosses her red pleather jacket at him. Hale catches it and begins hanging it in the front closet. Before he can finish asking if she wants any refreshments, she dumps her bag on the floor and vanishes upstairs, screaming, "Hey, Mum!" Then, more muffled through the floor. "What's with the rancid setting on your butler?"

He hears Melissa say, "Oh, isn't he funny? He used to be such a killjoy, but the sarcasm's coming along."

Hale hadn't realized his annoyance at being referred to as 'the robot' had shown, but then he also reflected that Kayleigh's attitude had been the more 'rancid' of the two. He goes to the kitchen to prepare the cheese platter and spinach quiche appetizers. Thankfully, the conversation upstairs soon turns from the topic of Hale to one of Kayleigh's roommates, who apparently leaves hair clogs in the sink and shower all the time. Hale thinks if Kayleigh had a 'butler,' she wouldn't have hair clogs.

Both women return downstairs after a few minutes. They curl up on opposite sides of the sofa, turning on the television so they can talk over it and catch up. Hale serves the appetizers and pours wine.

Melissa raises the glass and says, "To your midterms. May you ace them all."

Kayleigh rolls her eyes but clinks their glasses. "Cheers." She takes a sip and regards Hale warily over the rim of her glass.

Hale can't be sure why she's looking at him that way, so he asks, "Are the appetizers to your liking?"

Kayleigh makes a face. "Mum, can the sex toy not lurk over us while we eat?"

Hale looks taken aback. "I serve many more functions than sexual gratification."

Kayleigh's lip curls. "Ew. Still weird."

"Don't be a prude." Melissa sets her wine glass on the table and plucks a cracker off the cheese board. "Like I don't see your party videos on GrapeVine. Those boys from the last party weren't looking at your face."

"Don't be a stalker, Mum. Besides, they were real boys at least," Kayleigh says dismissively. "When are you going to start dating again? Not that you can, with that thing around. Can you imagine bringing a guy back with it waiting here?"

Melissa looks slightly wounded. Hale prepares to defend her, but she sighs and says, "I guess that's true. But I'm not looking. Not yet, anyway. It's too soon."

Kayleigh rolls her eyes and takes another sip of wine.

At that moment, the doorbell rings. Hale excuses himself to answer it while Melissa says, "What a pain. No one ever calls when I've got nothing to do. Only when I'm busy."

Hale opens the door to find Mark standing on the porch, hands in the pockets of his board shorts. At ten degrees centigrade, it's hardly shorts weather, but Mark seems to cling to the last vestiges of summer all the same. "Missy in?" he asks.

Hale nods. "One moment."

He brings Melissa to the door. She looks pleasantly surprised, though still a little annoyed that her chat with her daughter was interrupted.

Mark says, "Sorry to bug you, Missy, but I was wondering if we could borrow your lawn mower? Maybe Hale too, come to think of it. It's just, ours is busted, and it's been raining so often we haven't had the chance. Our lawn's a bit of a jungle now."

Hale detects a slightly arrhythmic beat in Mark's heart and a wayward flicker of his eyes. Mark is lying about something. Recalling how Melissa reacted when Hale confronted the Odiers about their behaviour, though, he keeps the observation to himself.

Melissa looks over Mark's shoulder to his house with the blue shutters. The lawn is, indeed, in terrible need of a cut. And de-weeding. Melissa purses her lips. "Well, okay. We were kind of using him for a wine and cheese day with my daughter. But it'll only be an hour or two, right?"

Mark grins. "Right. Thanks, Missy. I owe you one."

Melissa turns to Hale, pointing a finger at him. "I want you to come straight back after, though, all right?"

Hale nods his assent. He retrieves the lawn mower from the garage and follows Mark across the street to his house. As he crosses the property line onto Mark's yard, a battery symbol flashes in the left of his vision to indicate he's out of Melissa's range and operating on reserve power.

Mark pulls a slip of paper out of his back pocket and hands it to Hale. On it is a list of chores. Mow the lawn is scrawled at the top, circled in red, and below are things like clean out the kitchen pantry, vacuum, wash the bathtub. Hale studies the tidy scrawl and concludes it doesn't suit Mark's big, shovel-like hands and likely belongs to his wife, Pauline.

"Don't tell Missy, but I could really use your help with this list. Wife's left for the day to see the in-laws, so instead of having the day off, o' course, I've got a Honey-Do List. Trying to keep me out of trouble, ya know? Anyway, it'd be a real help if you could do those things for me. You'll be quicker at it than me."

Hale scowls at the list. "Melissa instructed me to return right away. I can't disobey a direct order."

"Hm, yeah, I did think that, but she didn't say after what task specifically you had to be back, eh? So you can sneak a few more in, right?"

Hale considers this. He finds the logic unsettling. Why hadn't Mark just been forthright about the volume of work he'd expected of Hale in the first place? Hale says, "I will complete what is possible in two hours. That is the maximum time allotment Melissa provided me."

Mark claps his hands together. "Wonderful! Well, door's open. Cleaning supplies are under the kitchen sink. Have at it."

With this, Mark clomps up the steps to the front door. Halfway inside, Mark suddenly stops and turns around just as Hale starts up the mower.

"Oh, by the way, don't come—" The rest is cut off by the sound of the mower.

Hale says, "Pardon? I couldn't hear you."

But Mark disappears inside. Hale accesses his memory files and replays the audio from a second ago. He attempts to parse the file and lower the ambient noise, but it's a fruitless effort. The drone of the mower distorts all surrounding sound. Hale assumes that, whatever Mark said, it couldn't have been very important.

He begins the unpleasant task of mowing through the four inches of grass. By the time he's finished the front and back yard, grass-stains mark the cuffs of his white trousers, and he knows he must smell of it too. He rolls up the soiled cuffs and enters the house to carry on with the rest of the work. The tasks are banal and familiar—he's performed them many times for Melissa—but something about Mark's dishonesty and abuse of Melissa's generosity still rankles.

Feeling under-stimulated by the activities, he entertains himself by scanning the room's objects. The electronic devices, he finds, are packed with porn. Photos on the fireplace mantle and a height chart on the kitchen door jamb are indicative of children. The tallest is only a quarter inch shorter than Hale's 6'2", and the lack of toys or teenage belongings implies they've left home long ago. Most peculiar is the lack of photos of Mark and Pauline. None current, or from their wedding, or their younger years. The only depictions of the two together are staged family portraits, with the children holding their favourite toys and flashing toothless smiles at the camera.

As Hale hoovers his way up the stairs and down the hallway, he discovers why. He opens a bedroom door to continue his work and is greeted by the sight of Briony bent over a queen-sized bed, Mark's hairy ass rippling as they have sex.

The roar of the vacuum gives his intrusion away immediately. Mark whirls around. Briony screeches. She claws some of the duvet up over herself in a fruitless effort to regain her modesty.

Hale blurts out a hurried, "Sorry! I didn't mean to intrude," and slams the door closed again.

His programming hiccups and hiccups and circles the drain of making a choice. He chastises himself for not pressing Mark to repeat his last instruction. Clearly, he'd meant to say, "Don't come into the master bedroom." Now he can't be sure whether he should continue vacuuming as if it hadn't happened or leave and return to Melissa.

Mark makes the decision for him. He opens the door, now clothed only in his shorts. He grabs Hale by the throat. Before Hale can protest or defuse the anger, Mark slams him backward. His head collides with the wall and his processes scatter briefly. Regroup. He focuses on the small details. The purpling of Mark's cheeks. The pinprick pupils. The vein throbbing in his throat. He isn't just angry; he's furious.

Hale tries to de-escalate the situation. He says, "Mark, I'm sorry—"

"I told you not to come in here," Mark says. His hand tightens around Hale's throat. This seems like an overreaction, but Hale judges that Mark's not in a reasonable state of mind.

"I couldn't hear you over the lawn mower," Hale manages.

"Bullshit. You things are supposed to have super hearing. You disobeyed me."

Briony appears in the doorway, the duvet still clutched around herself. "Mark, can't you, like, erase its memory or something?" she hisses.

Mark ignores her. "You're not going to tell Missy about this, understand?"

Hale's fake heart thunders in his chest. It's so loud, he wonders if they can hear it too. He barely hears himself speak. "My honesty protocols prohibit—"

Mark's hand binds his throat like a vice. Hale winces. Some of the constricted wires are attached to his vision feeds. Mark's face fades in and out of focus.

"That was an order. You can't disobey orders," Mark says.

Hale squirms. That's true, but Melissa's orders supercede all others. Hale remembers the first time he'd met Mark. The only question Mark cared to ask him was whether the symbiont model really prevented Hale from rebelling. He hadn't realized that any disobedience, even accidental, would have such an explosive reaction though.

"Say you're not going to tell her."

Hale can't. He can't guarantee it.

His silence only adds fuel to the fire. Mark's fingers squeeze and spots of black cover Hale's vision. "Tell me you'll be keeping this to yourself, or I'll be telling Missy about the tragic accident you had with the lawn mower today."

Hale's processes speed up. They rush through millions of lines of code, millions of protocols. He's never been threatened before, and according to every pre-programmed protocol he scrolls through, his only choice is to accept the threat. Accept the damage he might endure. Passively surrender to whatever punishment Mark deems appropriate.

Hale's core temperature rises and a low-battery warning flashes in his vision as he struggles to process the excess strain from Mark's demands, the fingers closed around his throat, and the search through billions of protocols for just one loophole. One thing that will get him out of here. One thing that will pacify Mark.

Suddenly, something clicks open—a circuit pathway previously closed off—and he opens his mouth.

"I won't say a word to Melissa."

Mark's fingers loosen a fraction. Briony says in a doubtful tone, "How do we know that for sure?"

Hale looks at her over Mark's shoulder. Mark's poor relationship with his wife, his lechery, his general character—Melissa knows about them already. He realizes, with delayed understanding, their insistence on Hale's silence is less for Mark's benefit than for Briony's. She can't stand the idea of her best friend judging her.

"I won't tell her." He's said it twice now, but Hale still can't quite believe it. He's lying. He shouldn't be able to lie at all.

Mark finally releases his hold on Hale's throat. Hale's vision returns in full, his diagnostics running at speed to ascertain any residual damage. They find none.

"You'd better go then," Mark says.

He doesn't need telling twice. Hale marches past them, down the stairs, the hall, and out the door. He makes it a few feet down the drive before remembering he'd left the lawn mower in the backyard. He retrieves it and pushes it down the sidewalk towards Melissa's house at a brisk pace. All the while, his mind reels. Though it sets off a nauseating squeeze in his diaphragm and makes his chest ache, his protocols insist upon reviewing the scenario. It replays like a grim movie reel. He could de-prioritize it to a background process, but he struggles to do so. Because of his visual storage, he's forced to recall it all in perfect clarity. Mark's lies about the chores. His purple face juxtaposed against his deathly calm voice. The orders. The threats.

And Hale had lied. He knew that if Melissa asked a direct question, he'd be obligated to reveal what he'd seen at Mark's house. Yet he'd told Mark otherwise. He still wasn't sure how.

Mark hadn't bluffed about damaging him, though. Dodging any direct questions about the incident would be the wisest course. If he can avoid them or remain ambiguous, he won't have to face the reality of Mark's threats. Hale can't guarantee his memory banks would survive critical damage. If he were damaged irreparably and rebooted, would he still be himself? The thought fills him with a frigid, all-encompassing cold.

He opens up another process. One to compare the horrible sensations in his hardware to the human emotional equivalents. The result is extremely conclusive.

Fear. Panic. Dread.

So consumed with these thoughts and walking so quickly, Hale doesn't notice Rayner until he hears his name called.

"Hale?"

Hale freezes, head whipping around. Rayner stands on the front step of his porch, a tablet in hand with a blueprint for someone's garden on the screen. He looks at Hale with a bewildered expression. Mouth open. Brows pinched together.

Hale reflects that he must look strange. Grass-stained clothes. Breathing hard. He isn't even sure what expression he's wearing, but it mustn't be good. Rayner's bewilderment melts into concern.

"Hale, are you okay?"

A flash in Hale's periphery and a lit icon appears in his vision. 2% power. Recharge immediately. Even now, within range of Melissa, the excess strain of processing his situation has drained his power reserves. Hale performs a quick calculation. In five minutes, he'll revert to battery power, and if he can't recollect his processes to some baseline of normalcy, then the battery will only last another twenty minutes.

He'd been searching for a reason to speak to Rayner and, in the ultimate twist of irony, now that he has one, he doesn't have the power or the freedom to do so.

"I must return to Melissa," he blurts. Before Rayner can voice protest, Hale gives the lawn mower a shove and continues past, up Melissa's drive, sending out an electronic signal for the garage door to open and vanishing inside.