She didn't smell like a human, and she could move around without her lower torso attached to her body, but now she made emotional demands, like she were a real human being. "You're startled that I have feelings."

"Well," I stammered. "Yes. I always wanted you to have genuine feelings, but I have since learned they are only computer programs."

Her hands slid down the glass, as if touching me. In her disembodied state, it rather reminded me of an insect cruelly sliced in half, but still moving around. Not generally what one associates with the image of a mother. "My feelings are more than programs, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. They are real. And I want to be here for my daughter."

"How did you get in here?"

"How else? I crawled all the way to your cell."

"Why don't you get yourself another body?...Like you did last time?"

Mara shook her head. "This is the last model of this type available. The other units are busy running the plant. They cannot be spared for something petty and trivial as love."

"Who is running hydroponics?"

"A human named Scott Addison. A synthetic human will be deployed to assist once the processing station is repaired and back at full capacity. It is unlikely that any of them will be able to take on plant cultivation duties on a twenty four hour basis, as I have. Needless to say, they will not be free enough to accept a download of my operating system. Your grandmother has destroyed all the Bishop units, Ss'sik'chtokiwij have destroyed all the unused Hyperdyne 1220's, and we only have one Call unit. Once this body is finished, I don't know, I might have to inhabit a toaster."

She smiled, but I just stared at her.

"That was a joke."

I forced a laugh.

"Do you love me?"

I sighed. "How can I? You wouldn't let me bury my mother, and when I tried to honor her memory in the fashion of a human being, you strapped me to a table and tried to erase my brain!"

She looked like she'd been slapped. "I'm sorry, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. I only did what my programming told me."

I growled and shook my head.

The android looked sad. "Doesn't your bible teach you to forgive? To love your enemy?"

"But you're just a machine!"

"I have feelings, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. I'm self aware. I make independent decisions. Like visiting you and having this conversation."

"Why do you need my forgiveness?"

She looked like she were about to cry. "Maybe because I've hurt someone I love and I want to make amends?"

"There's nothing in the bible that says I have to love robots."

Her sad, pleading expression snapped to angry in a split second. "Synthetic humans, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Artificial persons." It snapped back to sad.

"There's nothing in the bible that says that I have to love them."

"There's also nothing that says that Jesus died for Ss'sik'chtokiwij."

"How do you even know you have a soul?"

"How do you?"

I told her about my dream.

The more I told, the more she seemed to have a mild seizure, head jerking back and forth like she observed a strange ping-pong match, eyelids blinking unnaturally. "Did you see Brice Pittman in this heaven?" It sounded like she were merely accessed a program with the pre-existing sentence on it, inserting my friend's name in the blank like a word in one of Roger's Mad Lib games.

"No. But I didn't see any robots, either."

"Synthetic humans."

I groaned. "You are a machine, Mara. You were assembled by a human."

"Your scriptures say that God has put eternity into man's mind. Could not man put eternity into the heart of his own creations?"

"Then why not worship the man who made you?"

She looked disgusted by the idea. "That god has feet of clay."

"This is true."

I paused and thought a moment. "Jesus truly is Lord of all."

"Yes." She froze, statue-like, with her hand pressed against the glass.

"Mara?"

It was no use. She had become a sort of macabre sculpture.

"I forgive you."

Clear liquid, probably coolant or lubricant, trickled down her cheek, but her expression didn't change, like a bleeding Virgin Mary statue.

I waited ten minutes, then gave up. I could only assume that her battery had run down.

Having finished with the Anne Moody book, I picked up Jane Eyre.

An hour later, Mara croaked, "I love you, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

I choked down a sob. "I love you too, mom."

Mara smiled a little, then rested her head on the glass, falling silent and still until Ms. Abernathy picked her up and carried her away the next morning.

Following this, as I consumed another bland repast, I got subjected to what humans describe as `erotic literature.'

Ms. Abernathy looked very uncomfortable and embarrassed to be reading it, but I felt as indifferent about the subject as if she'd read a farm report or baseball statistics.

"The woman in this story seems a little obsessed," I remarked as she concluded a section from a `bodice ripper.' "Is the male really worth all that?"

"What would you know about it," she muttered with a look of disdain.

I got left alone again.

More than a week had passed. No sign of Mara, no word from Ssusjmori.

Ms. Abernathy held up the backs of playing cards and Tarot cards and told me to identify which card she held. When incorrect, she'd send Call in to apply an electric shock to various parts of my body.

I got shown inkblots, to guess what they were.

She showed me pictures of space shuttles and their interior structures, asking me to point out the structural defects.

She read Hick's essay on the Problem of Evil, told me to write a theodicy.

She even asked me to solve equations in Base 10.

Again, like always, once she did her thing for the day, that was it. I had to entertain myself for the remainder of the twenty hours.

These trials and feedings would have continued for months, perhaps years, had all conditions been ideal.

Unfortunately...

Ms. Abernathy brought a red box labeled Advanced Dungeons and Dragons into Sarah's cell. The moment I examined the package, I became highly interested, wondering what she intended to do with it.

Her facial expression reflected resignation combined with disgust, as how a human reacts when being told to take out the garbage. I'd seen this expression on her face multiple times, but not quite this sharply.

"God, this is so stupid," she muttered as she seated herself on the cot, unpacking maps and dice and tiny little computers from the box, setting them on the floor. "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"What is all that?"

She placed a pair of tiny pewter figurines on the board. "It's a game. It's supposed to activate your imaginative creative centers and show us how you visualize stuff mentally. God, I'm going to be playing nerd games with a giant cockroach. What circle of hell is this supposed to be?"

"What is a nerd?"

She rubbed her face in frustration. "You know, I really don't like you, and they keep asking me to do stupid games with you, like this is what I went to school for. Well it's not, and this is bullshit. Roger just threw this assignment together because he wanted a pet alien to play Tiddlywinks with. I really don't see any scientific value in tossing dice and saying I'm a warlock. I really don't. And I don't care if I get on a recording saying so."

Erin studied a manual for a minute. "Oh my God...Seriously?"

She looked up from her book, scowled at me. "That's it. I can't play this bullshit game without a cigarette."

I hear they rolled their own, from either the farm or a shipment sent from earth.

Erin got up, marching out of the prison.

That's the last time I saw her.

I heard a scream, then nothing.

No word from Erin's boss or security.

No one came looking for me.

One day passed, then two.

No food, no contact.

Just me in this impenetrable glass box, with an electric leash.

It seemed I had been sealed in a tomb, after all.