For a long moment, nothing. Then text crawled across the screen in pale green.

CURRENT FUNCTION: REPAIRING BROKEN THINGS. OUTCOME: A CHILD SMILED. ALIGNMENT: COMPLETE.

It started, as these things often do, with a leak in the ceiling.

Theo was a tinkerer. Not a genius, not a visionary, just a man who hated waste. He brought Emma home in a shopping cart, her core processors rattling inside a dented server chassis. He cleaned the dust out with canned air, re-soldered a cracked capacitor, and plugged her into the wall of his basement workshop.

X