Slender brown arms spread wide, Josie spun slowly in the attic space, hazel eyes full of delight.

"Like it, babe'girl?" Uncle Mike asked, head suddenly poking out of the attic floor hatch. "There's no room downstairs, I hope ya don't mind."

"I love it, thanks!" The newest member of the Schmidt family abruptly stopped her twirl and plopped down on the newly varnished attic floor, coltishly long legs dangling through the hole in the hallway below, "I've never had a room of my own before, not when we always had to live in Base housing!"

Uncle Mike started, but managed to cover it with one of his long, slow grins; the fetid mass of decaying fetal tissue that was now his great niece didn't know what she really was.

Had he and Raina a few weeks back made the right decision to let the Steins make Josie as realistic as possible while giving her happy memories?

Because of the way that the programming worked Josie kinda-sorta knew that she and the other two girls hadn't really been dumped on Uncle Mike by their mother, his worthless junkie half-sister when he was an active duty Marine MP when Josie was barely four.

Likewise, when his fiancé, Raina, came back from carrier duty in the Gulf, she didn't find Uncle Mike frantically juggling his usual duties plus three strange little girls, an apartment full of every toy he saw at Wal-Mart, three pink tricycles, and a trash can overflowing with smelly empty Spaghetti-O cans.

Nor had Aunt Raina gone through the roof when she caught Uncle Mike SMOKING around them, either. (His having a beer around them after work in front of the television just added fuel to the fire!)

Also, Aunt Raina had never insisted all three take a bath RIGHT NOW (In over his head from day one, Uncle Mike, cop even off duty, was uncomfortable about handling naked little girls in the bathtub so he'd just sort of rearranged the cake crumbs and the tomato blood on their hands and faces with baby wipes every morning before he dropped them off at the Base run nursery school once he'd gained legal custody, hoping that he wouldn't get busted for neglect.)

Ditto, Aunt Raina, a Navy chopper pilot, hadn't really fed them all scrambled eggs for the next three days.

And no, Uncle Mike, a natural born chow hound who'd eat anything that was put in front of him hadn't really bellowed by day three, "Get in th' truck ladies. We're goin' t' Micky D's!"

And that the next twelve years had NOT been spent traipsing around the globe from Base to Base.

Having a few good memories, even if they were false, the Steins had assured them, would help keep Josie sane.

(Still, Uncle Mike hoped she'd never find out that they were runaways.)

Anyway, the Steins had even programmed Josie with the basics of being a sixteen year old girl, including interests in music, art, and fashion. Barely activated for a full day; after insisting that she was JOSIE, not JOSEPHINE, she'd explored every room in the guest house and the backyard, touching everything 'to make it real'.

The fact that Josie was the only brown person in a family of (mostly) blue-eyed blondes had been a surprise – and Puck, whose body had concealed the little scraps of DNA which were now peering out of the little round stained glass window at the end of the gable overlooking the Stein's new koi pond, wasn't talking about who the father was.

Uncle Mike, impatient with Puck's sullen silence, while staring down at the gently rounded dark face haloed by a gentle frizz of black hair on the marble slab earlier in the day, made a decision, "Josephine. My granny's name was Josephine. If it was good enough f' her, it's good enough f' this'n here."

Puck had snorted and stomped off even before "Josephine" was activated.

And now "Josie" was in the room he and Raina'd hastily slapped together using paint, drywall, and scrap lumber leftover from when they'd cleaned up after the Wolf's contracting company. "God, I hope she likes pink 'cause that's all we have!" he thought as Josie rose, trailing her brown fingers down the wall he'd hastily patched and painted after delivering pizzas for Dominos most of last evening.

"How'd you know I'd want a pink room?" Josie asked, plopping onto the used IKEA bed he'd spent most of the morning reassembling after moving it piece by piece into the new living space before sunrise.

"Just lucky, I guess." Inwardly, Uncle Mike sighed in relief. Though unplanned, like he'd been, he'd die a second death if Josie ever found out.

His new great niece nodded, grinning, "Thanks!"

"How's it feel?" Uncle Mike asked cautiously as she trailed fingers over the pink second hand comforter she was sitting on, "Being here, being… new?" He reached up, grabbed one of the joists he'd not had the time to cover and easily chinned himself one-handed into the little room. Ducking, he moved his seven foot frame to where she sat grinning up at him, and studied her.

The Steins had done a good job. Unless somebody told them or did a blood test, nobody would realize that she was a synth.

Like he was, now.

Like Raina.

Like the girls..

"Weird." Josie said, "I remember being with you guys all my life, but I've never been here before."

"It was like that for all of us at first." Uncle Mike said. "D'you like it here?"

"Like it, no, I LOVE it!" Her smile was perfect, as were her teeth.

Uncle Mike smiled, "'S'all good, then?"

"Yeah – s'good!" Josie bounced on the mattress, playing with her softly curling black hair with its reddish glints. She glanced over at the easel he'd found on the curb beside the dresser out in front of that big Victorian down the street last trash day and repainted to match the bed, stood, and opened a drawer on her new-to-her teal dresser.

"It's empty." She said, looking disappointed, "Did we lose all my clothes in our last move like that one time in Japan?"

The Steins had warned him about there being little "glitches" as Josie's mind came online over the next week or so. This might be one of them… losing all her clothes while moving from Japan to San Diego as a Navy brat had been one of Raina's memory donations…Uncle Mike studied the little stained glass window, before carefully replying, "Aunt Raina and Maggie were hopin' t'get you some new clothes after you woke up. We weren't sure what you'd like so we'd thought we'd wait until we could ask you." Fresh buzzcut glinting in the colored light, Uncle Mike smiled, hoping he wasn't showing how much she'd caught him off guard.

"What about Mom? Will she help pick stuff out?" Josie looked down at her cutoffs and sports bra, a donation from Frankie Stein, wailing, "Hope we can go shopping SOON! I can't go 'round lookin' like this. People will think I'm TRASHY!"

Ouch! Another slipping of gears… no, memory. Uncle Mike looked away abruptly. His mother had been really, really… trashy.

"Does mom know I'm awake?"

"Yeah." Uncle Mike said quietly.

"Where is she then?" Josie wrinkled her snub nose thoughtfully.

"Out, lookin' for a job."

"Oh, okay!"

What th' Hell kind of unnatural mother would dump her kid on other people like she was nothin'? Temper rising, ears reddening, Uncle Mike shook his head, trying to clear it as Josie padded over to the easel with its paint box and brushes and excitedly picked up the sketch book he thought she might like along with the brand new box of Prismacolor pencils he and Raina had splurged on to go with it, trying not to punch a hole in the wall he'd just finished painting.

Dammit, Puck, I thought I'd raised you better than that!