"Maybe, wait, no Harley." Annie moaned. "I have to be up to deliver a bot to Mr. Wurther at seven."
She pressed her head against the flat wooden shop door. Standing there felt like it would push back time a little, put it on pause so she could rest her eyes for a new day. Harley was always right, she needed more sleep. The bags under her eyes looked thick and bruised from the days she'd spent awake, working. It was typical of her after all. Annie, the little worker bee of the family. Even her brothers preferred to stay far from the shop when she was inside, fearing she'd drag them into her work.
"And Max is gonna look at my leg again. The knee is sticking again." Annie pulled herself from the door and tapped Harley on the back, her flesh hitting the familiar silicone material of his artificial skin. That was the nice thing about modern androids. They looked so human, a person could almost forget they weren't real people.
Wait, no, he's real, he's just not...not. Not what?
The blood in her veins was similar to the oil which ran through others. Skin and silicone. Eyes and cameras. The smallest details had been compared and reconfigured until they could be matched to an artificial human being. Still, Annie couldn't tell. The line, where did she draw the damn line? Looking at Harley, no one could tell he was a robot at first glance, not really. However, if he moved a certain way, or the light caught in the lenses in his eyes, it was apparent there was more to him than it seemed.
The mechanic stumbled off, limping with her stuck joints in the prosthetic leg. Half a robot herself, some liked to say. Her work followed her everywhere.
"Come on, let's go back inside." She muttered in the dark. "I ordered a new book for you, it won't be terribly interesting, but, they're common childhood stories. Grimm's. I figured maybe it would help you understand a little bit about people."