01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01101110 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 [Maintenance]

His eyes are the first thing I ever see.

I open mine and blink into them, red as rubies. And…for some reason, they're upside down. After a second, I realize he's upside down, perched on top of the pod – not the kind of pod I'll get used to later, with the glass door and recharge ports. The kind of pod a 'com uses only once. A launch pod, but I don't know that at first; all I know is this strange face, peering in at me.

He becomes my first memory. His ponytail, swinging like a pendulum. His spray of black bangs above one eye. The curve of his jaw, the slope of his nose, his face cut sharp in fluorescent light—his ears pearlescent on either side of it. But most of all, his eyes. Coy, clever eyes that seem to break out in a smile, even before it reaches his mouth.

"Hey," he says to me.

"Hi."

"It's about time you woke up." Effortlessly, he dismounts from the pod, landing right-side up. It's then that I see he towers over me; I have to tilt my head to meet his gaze. "I've been waiting for you."

"For me?" I consider that a moment, looking up at him. "Why?"

"Because I," he tells me, "am the national data bank. And you're going to be my bodyguard."

I've been activated less than a minute. I'm not even fully booted up yet. So I frown, and bite my lip, and try to process that – but it means nothing to me. "What?"

His grin widens. "I know a lot of things. And a lot of people want to know what I know, even ones who aren't supposed to know it – so it's your job to keep them out." He sort of shrugs, making a vague gesture with one hand. Like there's an invisible fly in the room, and he's trying to brush it away. "There's other stuff, too, but that's the gist of it. Sounds fun, right?"

Out of the blue, I feel my first impulse to be contrary. It's not that I don't like him – somehow, I'm already sure I do – but I can't help but narrow my eyes. "Who says I want to be your bodyguard?"

He cocks his head. "Don't you?"

I don't answer that. I just sniff, and flick my eyes away, and above me he chuckles softly; the next thing I know, he's holding out his hand. For a second I stare at it, his open palm. Then I reach out and take it, my skin white against his leather glove, my hand impossibly small clasped in his. He helps me step out of the pod, and as I do, a forest of cables recede into their ports – a glass panel slides over the pod, sealing it shut, and for the first time I stand on my own. The tile of the launch lab is cold against my bare feet. I'm wearing only a leotard, snug like a second skin, and when I notice that I also notice what he's wearing: his long black coat, split into wings that brush the floor. Its straps and buckles catching the light. And his shades, pushed up onto his head, so he can look at me with those smiling eyes.

"I almost forgot," he says suddenly, fishing in a pocket of his coat. "I have something for you." He hands me a matching pair of shades. "These are yours."

Maybe I should've taken it as a victory, since it was just a memory. It wasn't like the first time, when I was somewhere I'd never been—this time it was just a memory, spontaneously replayed, when I should've been shut down. It was a glitch, but it wasn't as bad as the first one. Maybe I should've been relieved.

But I wasn't. When I opened my eyes next, it hit me like a speeding truck. Something is wrong with me. And it's not going away.

Like before, it wasn't logged. My records said that as long as I'd been in the pod, I'd been shut down. The memory in question hadn't been opened in months. I ran another diagnostic, but it did me no good; my system was happy to report that nothing at all was wrong, and so I spent the day reeling with something like human nausea.

That day, and the day after, and the day after. I became a spectacular example of loose ends. For the most part, I kept to the cellar, haunting its halls like a dour, black-clad ghost. I figured it was safest for me there; other 'coms stayed upstairs until nighttime, when I retreated to my pod, and I hadn't seen a human down there in years. To my way of thinking, if I made myself scarce around the upper floors, I might avoid getting caught in my lie. My lie meaning it's probably just a fluke. I knew that eventually, if I didn't report on my troubleshooting, Aiko would report it to Ms. Yamane. I knew that eventually, I'd get called in, and I'd have to make a choice – I'd have to own up or dig myself deeper, buy a little more time.

It wasn't a choice I looked forward to. But I knew that, unlike persocoms, humans would forget. No matter what, after some preset length of time, my sanction would run out and Aiko would message my supervisors – but how long before they read that message, or decided to act upon it? Humans let things fall by the wayside. Out of sight, out of mind. If Ms. Yamane didn't happen to see me, passing her in the hall, she'd take longer to remember to ask me if I'd solved the problem. And I'd have longer to decide if I should lie.

Still, there was only so long I could spend underground. I'd gotten used to sunlight, to the wind tousling my hair; I missed the open sky. I suppose I should've counted myself lucky, seeing as most government 'coms never left headquarters – Aiko and May had probably never seen sunlight, let alone had the chance to miss it. But after three days, I was going stir-crazy. The walls were closing in. I was desperate for something other than fluorescent light, for a view beyond grey paneling and white tile. Most of all, I was jonesing for a dose of solar energy, so much sweeter than sucking power from a cord.

So I slunk up to the roof. If I stepped outside a main door without being listed as dispatched, it would set off my GPS, and the aforementioned shitstorm would ensue; the building's rooftop, however, didn't count. I knew that much from experience. I'd been there with Zima before, on those few days we'd had time to spare – he'd shown me the back stairways, how to jimmy the hatch. When to go so that no one would notice, and we could be alone.

I pushed open the hatch and blinked in the sunlight, flooding over me. Scrambling up onto the roof, I got my footing, cast a quick glance around. The building that housed our headquarters was huge, and its rooftop like a little city all its own; grates, railings and vents made of it a maze, so I couldn't see everything at once. But what I did see, almost right away, was a silhouette near one edge.

At first, it just pissed me off. If somebody was up here, that meant I couldn't be up here, because they'd report me for sure; it didn't set off the GPS, but persocoms weren't supposed to be on the roof. After all, if we were up here, we couldn't possibly be doing anything useful. So that was why I was mystified, when I took a step closer, and caught the flash of sun on low-set kitten-ears – kitten-ears meaning the model a lot of other 'coms had, that made them look like insipid robo-catgirls. This pair was cotton-candy pink, standing out against waist-length dark hair. Unmistakable, and yet—impossible.

Impossible. What does impossible even mean? I thought a lot of things were impossible, until yesterday. I tried to ping her with a signal, just to be sure. If she was a 'com, she would respond to a signal, and sure enough—

"Dita!" She whirled around and gasped my name, like I'd about stopped her nonexistent heart. When the shock faded, she sent me a sheepish smile, pushing a hand through her hair. "Goodness. You surprised me. How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long." After a second, I recognized this particular 'com as Yui, the receptionist for the maintenance bay. Isn't she programmed not to leave her post? "What are you doing up here?"

"Oh, nothing. Just getting a little fresh air." Yui turned to rest her hands on the railing, gaze shifting back towards the cityscape. I followed her lead and watched the sun wink on the skyline, windows and warning lights catching its rays. "It's only for a moment," she said, slightly shamefaced, as though she thought I'd turn her in. "The system will alert me if I'm needed. It's just—no one's come to the desk all day, and—"

"Whatever." I shrugged. It was weird, seeing her up here – it should have been impossible – but I wasn't interested in her explanations. Whatever was going on, she wouldn't understand it any better than I did.

For awhile, we stood in silence, looking out at the sky. It was cloudless that day, near-perfect turquoise, and the sun was brilliant; it took only a minute before I felt the difference. It seeped into my skin and revived me, breathed new life into suffocated circuits. I felt a breeze break over my face. "You must be at awful loose ends," Yui said eventually, her small-talk software apparently kicking in. "Without Zima."

"No kidding."

"What have you been doing with yourself?"

Her tone wasn't suspicious. If anything, it was sympathetic. I stiffened nonetheless. "What's it to you?"

Wisely enough, she didn't answer. I glanced at her, porcelain-doll pretty, in her white blouse and pink pleated skirt. The few times I'd met her before, Yui had always been smiling – stationed faithfully in the lobby of the maintenance bay, plugged into her power supply, pert and perky around the clock. The technicians tended to keep odd hours, so she was there for them twenty-four seven. Always smiling.

That day, I saw that smile falter, if only for a moment. If only when she thought I wasn't looking. But then she turned to me, and the smile was back, and—for all I knew, it'd been a trick of the light. Maybe my vision is glitching, too. "You know, I only just thought of this," she said, "but would you like to see him?"

"What?" I furrowed my brow. "See who?"

"Zima, silly. I can let you in to see him if you want. I mean, it probably wouldn't help much," she added, tucking a lock of hair behind one kitten-ear, "since it's not like he can talk to you or anything. But—it might be comforting all the same, right?"

"Well—well yeah, but—" I shook my head, not quite able to process this latest impossibility in the string. It wasn't that I didn't want to – she had no idea how much I wanted to – but not just anyone was allowed into the maintenance bay. "I don't have clearance. You told me so yourself, last time I asked."

Yui waved her hand just like Zima had that day in the launch lab, as if to say it doesn't matter. "Oh, it's no big deal. Like I said, no one's down there right now, so it's not as if you'd get caught." She stepped back from the railing and rocked on her heels, hands in an expectant clasp. "Well?" she said hopefully, regarding me with eager eyes. "What do you say?"

What could I say? "I—yes. Of course."

Yui wasn't supposed to make exceptions. To her program, this should've counted as compromising national security, and she shouldn't have been able to so much as offer the chance – but she had, and what else was I to do? Say no? Just on principle? It was Yui's job to stick to principle, not mine. And if her ignoring her directive helped me satisfy mine – if her breaking protocol meant I could be near Zima, even just for a few minutes, even if he was shut down – I wasn't going to question it.

So she took me downstairs to the maintenance bay, a cavernous complex on the first floor. Empty and silent as death. Yui slipped behind her desk and punched in a code, and one of many doors slid soundlessly open; peering into it, I saw a long, narrow hall. Bare lightbulbs hung from its high ceilings, their drone ringing in my head. The doors on this hall were numbered backwards, by little steel plates on the wall – the first read Maintenance Lab 30, the second Maintenance Lab 29. Yui led me all the way down to the last one, labeled Maintenance Lab 01.

This time, when she entered her code, a tiny panel opened on the door. When she leaned in close and blinked into it, I realized it was a retinal scan. I didn't know they recognized 'com eyes.

"Here we are," she said brightly, as the door slid back into the wall. "You go ahead in. I'll wait out here."

I'd seen Zima shut down before. And—like he'd said, I'd seen other 'coms broken, or in this stage or that of disrepair. I'd seen them crawling with cables, cracked open and spewing sparks. I'd seen them with faceplates peeled off and limbs detached. I'd seen some that didn't even look human anymore.

But none of that had prepared me for this.

The lab gleamed silver on every surface, sterile and freezing cold. As was most of the building, it was bathed in fluorescent light. The only sound was the sporadic beep and buzz of computers, soft and yet somehow deafening; everywhere I looked, tiny lights flickered on and off, signifying nothing I understood. In the middle of the room, a platform stood at waist height. It was there that he lay, motionless, hooked up to more cables than I could count – what seemed like thousands of them, lashed together in bundles, snaking across the floor. I picked my way through them towards the platform, all the while aware of that strange numb feeling coming back.

Zima…. I felt something like a lump in my throat. I guessed this was what Aiko had meant, by expand your drive; his chestplate was split straight down the center, exposing a cavity of wires and discs. From hip to collarbone, he was a glimmering pit of machinery. Otherwise he was undressed, of course, but that didn't mean much to me – as government 'coms, we were built like dolls, or department-store mannequins. He had nothing for me to see.

Even so, it struck me that he didn't look right, without his costume on. Since the first day, I'd thought of his color as black. When I looked for him, I looked for a tall, dark silhouette, not this—this waxy white thing, this china shell splayed out on the platform. I rarely saw even an inch of the skin beneath his collar, but I realized that day that I didn't like it. Stripped down, he was entirely too pale, too vulnerable. As if he were glass, and I could shatter him with a stone. Or worse, with a single drop of water, should it fall into that mechanical minefield.

Which only made me want to protect him even more. And seeing as that was the only thing I wanted to do, ever—the need nearly brought me to my knees.

From the chin up, he could've been in sleep mode, if you didn't count the cables. I knew I shouldn't – knew it wouldn't help anything – but I found myself reaching down to touch him, to run my fingers along his cheek. I'd become used to being close to him, physically close – used to his arms around me, his hands in my hair, his back against mine. Used to him kissing me anywhere he could reach. It felt strange to go so long without that, but as I'd known it wouldn't, touching him didn't help; on the contrary, it almost scared me. His skin was ice-cold. I couldn't feel his hum beneath my hand.

But I couldn't pull away. Like a plane on autopilot, I stayed the course despite myself; suddenly, it seemed that the only thing worse than to touch him would be not to touch him, to stand there so close yet worlds apart. My fingers slid along his hairline, to the place where the cables spilled from his ears. I traced his panels – the ivory hatches usually clicked shut over his connection terminals, now cracked to let in those lines. It was stupid, I knew it was stupid, but something inside of me resented that. Something inside of me said I'm the only one who's supposed to touch these ports.

Soon enough, my hand had found its way down to his, where it lay limp on the platform. I'd never seen Zima's hands without his gloves. They looked…disquietingly human, but at same time not human at all; I opened one and it was like a work of art. There were whorls etched into his fingertips, veins painted onto his skin. I tried to imagine a technician with a stylus, carving the creases into his palms.

I heard the click of Yui's heels as she approached. "He's going to be fine, you know," she said softly. "It's just routine maintenance. All part and parcel of his job."

"I know." I didn't expect her to understand. No one, human or persocom, understood how badly I needed him; no one knew how they had crippled me, when they wrote the code that made him my everything. "I know. It's just—"

"—hard," she finished for me, catching me by surprise. For that, I managed to tear my gaze from Zima, and turn my head to blink at her. "It's still hard," she said again, with the faintest flicker of a smile. "It must be."