AN: I am Ranlie, queen of spam. Bow before me, lesser canned meats. This is what happens when I close out the Starbucks, drinking caffeine. Still no idea where this is going to go, so I remain in flight by the seat of my fashionable skirt.

Robbie cursed Sportacus' name as he picked the girl up and set her onto his worktable. She obediently tucked her legs up and turned her back to him, her head tilted forward so that her switch poked through her hair. Robbie unzipped the back of her jumper and pressed the faint marks on her slender back. A hatch popped open, and his curses quickly gave way to a faint muttering.

The girl studied her hands, folded demurely in her lap. Stephanie had hands like hers. Small and delicate. Not like Robbie's, which were always marked by one or another of his projects.

"Nothing obvious," Robbie said, rising back up. He put his hands on his back and leaned backwards. "Ugh. And right when I was planning on having a nap. Well, I might as well check your software, in case he infected you after all." He went to the other side of his workshop to retrieve a small computer.

She watched him bring the diagnostic set over, and despite herself, she cringed away from him when he raised the wire he always used to plug her in.

Robbie frowned at her. "What's wrong with you?"

The girl bowed her head again, though she wasn't quite sure why she suddenly couldn't look at him.

"Hmph." Satisfied, he braced one hand on her shoulder, and slid the plug into the slot in her back. The girl jerked backward, and a soft cry escaped her lips.

"He did infect you," Robbie growled. She couldn't see him, but he sounded angrier than she'd ever heard. He leaned over so that they could see each other, and he was frowning mightily. "That hurt, didn't it?"

The girl nodded mutely. She was feeling that peculiar sensation again. The one that made her want to go somewhere else and shut down for awhile. Robbie studied her briefly, and then went back to his computer. She could hear him stabbing furiously at the keys.

"Robbie?"

The typing stopped. There was a pause.

"Yes?"

"What's my name?"

"Oh." The tapping resumed. "You're the Robbiebot." A faint smile entered his voice. "Your last name is Version One-point-oh, in case you're ever filling out a form. Would you like to know your birthdate?"

Another pause.

"That's what I am. Not my name."

This time the silence was complete. The girl had no concept of the tenets of conversation, and so she didn't notice his sudden stillness. After a while, she felt her higher functions begin to slow from the lack of new input. It was a lot like falling asleep, she believed. She doubted that she dreamed, like Robbie did when he was sleeping, but it was good to know that she slept like he did, or at least close to it.

Her internal clock rolled over to one hour. At twenty one minutes, she had briefly heard a soft thump as Robbie sat down somewhere behind her, but it wasn't of enough interest to restart her sleep timer. With a soft sigh, her eyes closed and her head dropped limply to her chest.

Robbie watched her head droop, but he still didn't rise. His long fingers were steepled in front of him, and his expression was both pensive and concerned.

He had never bothered to program her to question him. Or anyone, for that matter. As a result, the default would be for her to accept his answers as the absolute truth. It had simply been an unnecessary step in the programming: another messy code that could go wrong if it were over-thought.

But now her systems were rerouting themselves independently of him. He'd seen it when he first plugged her in. Currents had forged new paths, and her hard drive contained ten times the data in it than when he had last closed her up. Robbie had never been a software guru. That was more the realm of Pencil, or Pretzel, or whatever his name was. But he knew that Sportacus couldn't possibly have done this.

Part of him regretted programming her for basic emotion. He had done it for selfish--and lazy--reasons: a servant who liked to serve was vastly better than a servant who had to be specifically ordered to do anything. He'd even become fond of her, like a little dog that could clean up after itself, and him while she was at it.

But now it had come back to haunt him. Basic emotions had occasionally conflicted with one another, and so new pathways, leading to more complicated emotions, had been formed. He would have been better to leave her as an automaton, with no more personality than a toaster.

He'd never named her because she wasn't real. She was a tool, like the microwave or periscope. A useful tool. And an advanced tool, certainly, but a tool nonetheless. Now she was becoming more than that. More than anything he had ever created before.

Robbie briefly debated scrapping her entirely, but ultimately decided against it. New and unforeseen things were happening to her, yes, but her programming was still sound. She distrusted strangers, was entirely devoted to him, and would still be useful around the home. If she wanted a little freedom, then it couldn't hurt him.

"Robbiebot on."

The girl's head snapped up, and she was about to slide off the table to see to Robbie's commands when she realised that she was still plugged into the diagnostic tool.

"I don't suppose you can explain why you're suddenly far more advanced than you were when I first turned you on?"

The girl shook her head.

"Hm." She felt his hand on her shoulder, and again, she cried out when he jerked out the plug. His fingers tightened briefly when she did so.

"I...I'll try to avoid doing that to you unless I have to." If she had known what regret was, she might have heard it in his voice. Instead she sat still as he pressed her hatch shut and zipped her jumper back up.

She hopped off the table and turned to look at him. He looked peculiar, but his expression was unfamiliar to her, so she didn't fret about it. She fell back on her default query.

"Would you like some cake?"

Robbie shook his head. "No. You have to go outside." When she looked confused, he put his hands on her shoulders and propelled her toward the ladder that led outside. She automatically began to climb.

She opened the hatch effortlessly and looked back down at him, a question in her eyes. From below, the blue sky was a bright halo around her brown curls. He stared back at her.

"Go find a name," he ordered, his voice harsh even to his own ears. "Go find yourself a damn name."