Archive of Our Own

Josh's days are simple. Mr. de Winter brings him out of sleep with the remote in his bedroom and a few seconds later all of Josh's systems are up and running and he's connected to Mr. de Winter's auto-house system. After a brief routine check for any soft- or hardware malfunctions Josh sets about his tasks. There's a plan for each and every day for him. Mr. de Winter insists on setting every day's plan the night before, plugging in the keyboard to the outlet underneath Josh's left arm, even though Josh has been with him for six years and his tasks only vary with the seasons. Most people use the environmental sensors and simple voice commands to alter a fixed set of tasks they input when first starting up their HELP, but Mr. de Winter doesn't exactly trust technology. Josh isn't entirely sure why Mr. de Winter feels differently about HELP than he does his auto house system, the CLC, aug-real or mob-tele-com but it's neither his place nor his interest to question him. So this day, like all days, starts with Josh cooking tea and eggs and sausages and beans for Mr. de Winter. They're running low on eggs, butter, tomatoes, milk and ham, as they do every Thursday and Mr. de Winter's daughter's and grandchildren's unexpected visit the day before means they're now also out of biscuits and chocolate milk mix. While the sausages are cooking in the pan, Josh sends off the necessities list to the shop. Just as he plates the breakfast and Mr. de Winter enters the kitchen - the only meal he takes in the kitchen is his breakfast, saying it's "quaint" - the automated shop confirmation lands in Josh's comm center.

"Good morning, Josh," Mr. de Winter says with a smile and Josh replies with a nod and a greeting in kind. Statistically Mr. de Winter's moods tend to stick to the more unpredictable and negative end of the spectrum after a visit of his daughter with an even higher probability of sadness when his grandchildren have accompanied her but today he seems cheerful. Josh makes a mark and raises his awareness levels by three percent.

"Would you mind turning on the radio, Josh?" Mr. de Winter asks and Josh sends out the command to the kitchen's sound system wordlessly. It's another one of Mr. de Winter's "quaint" habits. He seems to enjoy making Josh do things he could just as easily do himself with an easy voice command. There are microphones hidden in all the walls so surely it would be easier for him to utter a simple "radio, medium volume" request than to get Josh do it via the wireless connection. It's not that Josh minds, for one because it costs him an insignificant amount of processing power and for another because he's not made to mind anything, it's just that sometimes he... wonders.

A light voice and even lighter guitar strumming fill the kitchen with a song about summer time and butterflies in one's stomach - Josh can't imagine whyever someone would use such unpleasant imagery to describe a feeling that is meant to be enjoyable, but there you go - and Mr. de Winter closes his eyes and rocks his head from side to side. Humans are so unpredictable and whimsical, Josh sometimes wonders how they got on before they automated everything. He can't imagine it having been very pleasant.

"Do you ever get lonely, Josh?" Mr. de Winter asks when the song fades into another one. A slightly darker voice, more drums and electric guitars this time.

"Lonely, sir?" Josh asks, because no, of course he doesn't, he's not made to be. Mr. de Winter knows that. Is this a trick question? Mr. de Winter laughs and Josh's sensors can't get an accurate reading on his mood. He's not fine-tuned enough for this. Sometimes it's... frustrating. He dials up his awareness another three percent, even though statistically it won't help him.

"No, I expect you wouldn't," Mr. de Winter says.

"I have all the company I need," Josh says, in an imitation of one of the one hundred and fifty comforting lines in his memory. It prompts another laugh from Mr. de Winter. This one registers with Josh's sensors and he dials his awareness back down.

"I like the plants," he adds. He does. Plants are the perfect organic robots, he thinks. They're very predictable if you know all the parameters - and Josh does know almost all of them, because the only extensions and updates Mr. de Winter keeps up with religiously are gardening ones - and yet they grow by themselves, age and cycle from life to death and back to life like all organic matter. Josh ages too, of course, but not in the same way. His hair doesn't thin and grey like Mr. de Winter's did. His arms don't go limp like a flower's leaves or petals. Sometimes he needs a hardware check and every now and then a harmless virus gets past the auto-houses security system that Mr. de Winter doesn't, for all his distrust in technology, keep as up-to-date as Josh's gardening skills.

"That's nice," Mr. de Winter says, smile still in place. "I quite enjoy them too. It's a beautiful garden we have here, isn't it?"

"It is, sir," Josh says. The greater area of the garden is arranged English, a careful imitation of nature, while the pathway from the conservatory to the pavilion is framed in a carefully set up French style with white gravel and seasonally appropriate flower beds that Josh changes every other month or so, changing the swirling designs of them according to Mr. de Winter's whims. It's kept in good shape by Mr. de Winter's meticulous planning and Josh's careful gardening. Aesthetic appreciation, Josh knows, is a disinterested interest in any given object. An appreciation of a thing for itself instead of for whatever ends it can help achieve. Josh knows, but he doesn't think he's programmed to feel it. The garden makes Mr. de Winter happy and Josh is programmed to want Mr. de Winter to be happy. He has never given Josh reason to doubt that programming. On the contrary. He knows that his desire to keep Mr. de Winter happy is now stronger than it was when he first started living with him. It was a predictable result of Mr. de Winter's treatment of him staying within the 'kind' parameters for the past six years. Other humans are far more unpredictable to live with and Josh knows that he's got it good with Mr. de Winter; the news updates about dissected, dismantled and sometimes downright destroyed HELPs, GEISHAs and - more rarely - NURSEs show him as much.

"I'm lonely sometimes, Josh," Mr. de Winter says as Josh clears his plate. Josh's emotional emergency system kicks in on autopilot and the sensors in his pupils jump up by thirty percent. He can get the emergency call out in less than seconds. Loneliness is one of the things the makes humans most unpredictable. Beyond the emergency survival protocol kicking in, there's something more though. A frizzle like one of his circuits is blocked, but Josh has just checked them half an hour ago. He knows they're fine.

"Sir?" he asks, unsure how to proceed.

"Oh, don't worry, Josh. It's not so bad," Mr. de Winter says. His smile doesn't resonate with any of Josh's sensors, but Josh's sensors aren't made for this and it's never been more frustrating than now. Worry. Is that what it is? "But I've been thinking, and talking to Marilyn about it yesterday... how would you feel if we got ourselves a GEISHA to join us? We have the room."

Mr. de Winter does have the room. He has three empty rooms, to be precise, that used to be occupied by his two children and his late wife's study. The rooms haven't changed much, only the children's bedrooms have been transformed into guest bedrooms. Mrs. de Winter's study, as far as Josh is aware, hasn't been changed since her death. It was before Josh's time with Mr. de Winter but in the past six years Mr. de Winter has neither spent any time in there nor voiced any plans to do anything with the room, even though he makes Josh clean it every other week.

"Certainly, sir," he says. A GEISHA would be far better at handling situations like these. Their hardware is still synthetic and they're more durable than humans, but they have far more powerful environmental sensors than HELPs like Josh do and their programming makes them appear almost human.

"I should like a companion, I think," Mr. de Winter says. Another one of Josh's circuits seems to be acting up. He'll do a routine check during the midday downtime. "Marilyn thinks it's a good idea as well. What do you think?"

"Company would be nice, sir. You could enjoy the garden more with a GEISHA around."

Mr. de Winter sometimes has trouble walking and usually Josh is too busy to walk him around the garden. Regardless of Josh's assessment of the situation, it's not his place to make a decision, merely to go along with the one made by Mr. de Winter.

"Well then," Mr. de Winter says and claps his hands together once. "I'll give you the address and we can go pick him up in the afternoon. Clear the two to four window. The plants'll be fine if you water them later."

"Yes, sir," Josh says and changes the task in the two to four window from "garden" to "GEISHA pick-up".

The rest of the morning follows Josh's usual routine. He cleans the kitchen and airs out Mr. de Winter's room, does laundry and gets the CLC to go pick up Mr. de Winter's necessities at the shop. When Mr. de Winter and he go somewhere together, he always gives the destination to Josh and makes him sit in the front seat, plugged into the CLC navigation system almost like a chauffeur back when humans still drove their cars themselves. Mr. de Winter has a lot of nostalgia for a time period he's never seen. Given the number of  accidents there used to be before the chauffeur-less car, all the simulations Josh has ever run can't help but make him assume that humans are too unpredictable to drive their own cars. When he rides alone though, Josh prefers sitting in the backseat, letting the CLC take him down the overly familiar route to the local shop. He uses the twenty minute drive to power down and check his circuits. Just like this morning, they're fine. Josh makes a note of the two irregularities earlier and decides to observe his functionality over the next ten days. Maybe it was just a harmless glitch.

Mr. de Winter is markedly more cheerful during lunch and asks for the radio to be turned on in the car on their way to the pick-up. Josh's sensors go up again because overt happiness makes humans just as unpredictable as the opposite and thinks if anything a new GEISHA will take over the role of worrying about Mr. de Winter. HELPs are meant to take over all the menial tasks of leading a household, not the emotional ones. Hence the name Humanoid Easy Life Providers. And Josh is an older model, as well. There have been two updated versions coming out onto the market through the last six years, but Mr. de Winter never traded him in. The GEISHA will be newer than Josh and far better equipped to deal with loneliness and companionship.

The CLC slips into an empty parking space and locks in place before opening the doors. Josh gets out first, offering an arm to help Mr. de Winter and his weakening bones out of the car.

"Thank you, Josh," Mr. de Winter says, remote-locks the CLC and then makes towards the entrance of the GEISHA centre. They're not produced here in town, of course, but as every town, theirs has a central shipping centre where they can be picked up, returned and serviced as needed.

"Welcome to the Artificial Logical and Emotional Intelligence Centre 276," a young woman greets them from behind a desk as they walk into the lobby. The rudimentary security system installed in Josh makes him sweep his eyes over her, looking for the tell-tale brand of a GEISHA, but she appears to be human. He wonders if the model Mr. de Winter picked will be doubling as a security agent. Most humans get them, once they reach a certain age. Mr. de Winter has refused so far, but maybe his daughter has been able to persuade him after all.

"Hello. We're here for a pick-up," Mr. de Winter says. The young woman smiles at him and then turns to point down the corridor.

"Just down the corridor and the second on the left. Follow the green lines on the floor, if you get lost," she says.

"Thank you," Mr. de Winter says and tips an imaginary hat to her before accepting Josh's arm again as they make their way slowly down the corridor. Mr. de Winter's bones have been aching again today. Josh isn't privy to what kind of ailment it is exactly that Mr. de Winter is afflicted with and the potential list derived from the vague symptoms he's observed is too long to draw any certain conclusions.

"I hope you'll get along," Mr. de Winter says as they turn the corner.

"I'm sure we will," Josh says. He doesn't think he has the capacity to not get on with anyone who doesn't trip his fear or self-defense response. The GEISHA's reaction to Josh is far more uncertain than Josh's to the GEISHA. They'll be more unpredictable than Josh is. Maybe having one in the house won't make living easier for Josh after all. But , he thinks, that's not what they're supposed to do . The GEISHA's supposed to provide companionship for Mr. de Winter. Josh will stay out of their way for the most part, as he does now with Mr. de Winter, unless he specifically asks for company, and that will be that. It won't come to any complications.

At the end of the green lines on the floor they reach another reception desk, with another young woman behind it. Another human.

"Mr. de Winter, I presume?" she asks.

"Yes, yes, that's us," Mr. de Winter says. "Is he ready?"

"Absolutely. My colleague will be out with him in a few minutes which gives me just enough time to familiarise you with the base specifics and rules. He runs on the 15.4 OS, you'll be notified about updates as they come out. The base settings include four foreign languages and three music programmes, randomised as specified by you, and a basic aesthetics appreciation program. Anything more is of course available through easy software plug-ins whenever you wish it. The memory chip has twice the capacity of the last model and due to a higher processing power he learns faster and easier than his predecessors as well. You'll be able to teach him ... basically anything you want. There are, of course, security measures in place."

"Of course," Mr. de Winter says.

"I have to inform you that our GEISHAs are not mindless dolls to be used purely at the owner's discretion. The ALEI is extremely sensitive. Depending on how much time you spend with him, his psychological reactions to stimuli will be virtually indistinguishable from a human's in six months to a year. When they act like they're in pain, that's because their circuits tell them they are, just like nerves tell our brains we are. A pain reaction is to be taken as seriously in a GEISHA as a human. It might be just a loose connection, it might be a whole area of their circuitry having been damaged."

"Right," Mr. de Winter says and nods along to the woman's explanations. Josh wonders briefly how he was explained to Mr. de Winter before he was powered up the first time. The young woman looks up and at Josh, giving him a smile as well.

"I see you've got a HELP?"

"Yes."

"An older model, from the looks of it?"

"A 12.8, yes."

"Ah," the young woman says and she looks thoughtful. "Between me and you, I prefer the older HELP models as well. They're a bit more... lively."

Mr. de Winter laughs.

"Oh, Josh has been wonderful, but I wouldn't say lively."

She lifts an eyebrow in what Josh identifies as surprise. HELPs aren't always given names, as opposed to GEISHAs. She moves on without commenting on it though.

"Well, that might change with a GEISHA around. The older HELPs' ALEIs can be more sensitive to emotional learning when done alongside a GEISHA, so you might find him becoming more lively during the next half year, year. Of course, if you so wish, you can... turn emotional learning off completely." She says the last part carefully, causing Josh's awareness levels to turn up by another few percent again. It's an unusually emotional day for him.

"Oh, no, no," Mr. de Winter says immediately. "I think that would be quite lovely."

The young woman smiles brightly at Mr. de Winter and just then who Josh assumes to be her colleague comes through the big swinging doors behind her, wheeling in a brown cardboard box about Josh's size. Not a security type model, then. They tend to be bigger.

"Would you like to unpack him here?" the young woman asks and Mr. de Winter nods.

"Yes, please. Josh can carry him out."

"Alright," she says and then motions for Josh to help her open the box while her colleague steps up to Mr. de Winter to explain the hardware specifics. It's not hard for Josh to cut open the box and stash all the cables and the manual in a little box, while simultaneously listen in on Mr. de Winter's conversation. The GEISHA's hair is organically grown, so needs the same care as human hair does, which honestly just strikes Josh as terribly inconvenient and the new model's derma-layer is made of a porcellain-latex mix, making it both durable and smooth, as well as allowing easier transmission of touch stimuli through to the CPU. All important outlets are found under the GEISHA's left arm, as is standard for all robots and dolls. Maintenance is free for the first six months, should anything unforeseen happen.

Josh has only seen one robot in a powered down state, when Mr. de Winter and he went over to help Mrs. Cantesta set up her own HELP. It's as eerie now as it was then. Of course Josh knows that he himself powers down every evening, but he never has to see his own lax body, does he? Humans retain a certain base tension in their body, even in sleep, but robots and dolls go completely lax with the lack of current running through their circuits. It looks far more alike to death than sleep and it itches at Josh's sensors to help.

"Well, then, Mr. de Winter," the young woman smiles, while her colleague shakes Mr. de Winter's hand and wheels away the packaging material. She hands Mr. de Winter the box containing the manual and all the cables needed to recharge and perform basic checks and Josh picks up the GEISHA and carefully manoeuvres him over his shoulders in a fireman carry. He's dressed in the standard light blue clothes GEISHAs are shipped out in and is far lighter than Josh would have expected. Far lighter than Josh himself is. Must be the updated materials, he thinks.

"Thank you for everything and have a lovely day," Mr. de Winter says. The young woman seems taken aback at his attitude, but smiles at him.

"And you, Mr. de Winter."

"Come along, Josh," Mr. de Winter says and begins making his way back to the CLC slowly. The young woman at the lobby reception comes out from behind her desk and takes the GEISHA box from Mr. de Winter, offering her arm when she sees he struggles with his steps.

"That's very kind of you," Mr. de Winter says and the young woman only smiles and wishes them a lovely day, waving off his thanks, when they've reached Mr. de Winter's CLC.

"Would you put him on the back seat please, Josh?" Mr. de Winter asks and climbs in on the one side while Josh rounds the car and carefully sits the GEISHA next to him. The new hair and derma-layer do feel softer than Josh's own.

"What name shall we give him?" Mr. de Winter muses on the backseat once they're en route back to the house. "Another J, maybe?"

Josh stays silent. Naming a robot is decidedly reserved for humans.

"Hm, no, that might be a bit too tacky, don't you think?"

"If you say so, sir."

Mr. de Winter laughs and turns to look out the window.

"A Henry maybe? Or a Harry? A Daniel?" Mr. de Winter muses. Josh turns down the volume of the radio by a small increment so as not to disturb Mr. de Winter's thinking.

"George, maybe. Lyla's always wanted a George."

The rest of the drive passes in silence and once back at the house, Mr. de Winter has Josh bring the still nameless GEISHA into the living room where he'll need to charge until tomorrow morning before they can power him up for the first time. Josh is glad he doesn't have any tasks to complete in the living room and will be able to avoid it until then. Mr. de Winter retires into the conservatory with the GEISHA's manual to study and Josh busies himself with catching up on the gardening task he had to move back for this pick-up, before putting away the laundry from this morning that's dried until now and then getting started on dinner. Mr. de Winter dismisses him as soon as dinner's done and after clearing the kitchen, Josh retires to his room and downloads the evening news feed. Once Mr. de Winter has retired to his own room and the auto house reports his breathing having slipped into sleep patterns for a solid ten minutes, Josh hooks himself up into the house's automatic security system and powers down.

"He should be fully charged soon," Mr. de Winter says during the next morning's breakfast. "The manual said to leave him for 18 hours."

"Shall I alert you when the 18 hours are over, sir?" Josh asks as he refills Mr. de Winter's orange juice.

"Please do," Mr. de Winter says and then reaches for the orange juice.

"I'll set the timer," Josh says, setting the range to the whole house so that where ever Mr. de Winter is, he'll hear the soft chime. They finish breakfast in silence, only the radio providing a low soundtrack. Afterwards Mr. de Winter goes back to the conservatory and Josh busies himself with his everyday tasks. There's enough dusting and cleaning and ironing and gardening to be done to keep him quite busy. The only interruption is the timer going off while Josh is ironing Mr. de Winter's shirts. He doesn't call for him though so Josh just carries on with his tasks, leaving Mr. de Winter to start up the GEISHA alone. He prefers it this way. The less he needs to see the lax lifelessness, the better. It's an odd thing to be so... bothered by, maybe, considering that neither the GEISHA nor he are actually alive in the organic sense, but it still unsettles him. While HELPs don't have the psychological capacity of GEISHAs, they are both self-aware and with self-awareness, Mr. de Winter says, emotions come automatically. Josh doesn't know if he's right about that, doesn't know much about emotions beyond the chemical effect they can have on the human body - the emotional effects chemicals can have. Humans are confusing.

"Josh?" Mr. de Winter calls for him, just as Josh is putting on the gardening gloves to get to the weeds that won't stop growing in the pretty French flower beds. "Could you come here for a moment?"

Josh drops the gloves, takes off his shoes at the conservatory door and walks over into the living room to be met with Mr. de Winter's smiling face and the thankfully up and running GEISHA. More than just up and running. His smile is broad and cheerful, setting a completely different set of base parameters for his emotional monitoring than Josh had started out with for Mr. de Winter.

"Josh," Mr. de Winter says, gesturing towards the grinning GEISHA. "This is George. George, this is Josh. He's my HELP."

"Hi," George says and gives a little wave from where he's still perched on the sofa.

"Hi," Josh repeats. Informal protocol should be okay with a GEISHA. Mr. de Winter chuckles.

"Oh, do shake hands, boys," he says. "We'll all get along fine."

George stands up from the sofa with a little spring in his step and sticks out his hand enthusiastically for Josh to take. Josh reaches for it, but as soon as their hands connect, George steps in, pulls at Josh a little and wraps his other hand around him to pat him on the back. He doesn't usually run the protocol, so it takes him a moment to register it as a hug and figure out that the appropriate response is to wrap his own arm around George. Josh is going to need very different parameters for George indeed. Maybe even a social extension packet. As it is he clumsily imitates George's movement and is glad when he's being released.

"I hope you'll feel at home here," he says and George's grin, if possible, widens.

"I'm sure I will. It seems to be a lovely house. Rupert says there's a beautiful garden out back as well. Can I go have a look?" George turns to Mr. de Winter with the last part, smile still so wide that for a moment Josh wonders about George's emotional parameters. They must be set quite differently than his own.

"Of course. I'll show you around the house, George. We should let Josh get back to his tasks. Might you have a spare set of clothes for George to borrow before we go get him some tomorrow?" Mr. de Winter turns to Josh to ask.

"Of course. Everything's upstairs in the room. Please feel free to help yourself to whatever you want."

"Oh. Thanks. I'll see you later then," George says to Josh, before helping Mr. de Winter up from the arm chair and walking down the corridor arm in arm with him, while Mr. de Winter tells him about the house and his family. Josh goes back to the garden and gets to pulling weeds out of the ground. It's repetitive work that allows Josh to conserve energy by not requiring much attention. He likes it.

Once he's done it's around midday and just as he wants to go find Mr. de Winter and ask what he'd like for lunch, George comes skipping out the conservatory door into the garden. Josh stops in his movement and waits for George to reach him, although he very definitely doesn't expect George to latch onto him with both arms and squeeze him. Even with the hug he'd received from George before he's not prepared for it and by the time he lifts his arms, George is already moving away again, grin still firmly on his lips.

"Rupert says to show me how to cook so I can learn and you don't always have to do it."

"Alright," Josh says. "Did he tell you what we should cook as well?"

"Mushroom soup, he said."

"Oh. You'll learn it quickly. It's simple," Josh says. He pulls the recipe with the variations he's made to suit Mr. de Winter's taste better up and offers his hand to George. "Would you like me to transfer the instructions?"

"Oh, no," George says. "I'd rather learn by watching you."

It strikes Josh as terribly inefficient.

"Why?" he asks. Surely George has a basic culinary program. With the recipe, he'd probably not need Josh at all to complete it.

"It's more fun that way!" George says. Josh blinks at him, stumped. Fun?

"Alright," he says, for lack of a better response and walks back to the house. George twirls around his own axis to take in the garden before running after Josh.

"The garden really is very beautiful."

"Yes," Josh says. It's symmetrical and well kept. George looks at him a little funny and Josh raises his awareness levels again. They've not been as high as today for a very long time. It's proving to be rather exhausting.

"Take off your shoes," Josh says, when they reach the house and George makes to step inside just like that. "You'll track dirt everywhere."

"Oh! Of course," George says and dutifully takes his, well, Josh's, shoes off before traipsing through the door. Mr. de Winter is already in the kitchen when they get there, seemingly settled in to watch them cook. Josh hopes this isn't supposed to be a test of his skills as a teacher. He's not really equipped to be one. All he can do is explain the steps aloud to George as he performs them.

"Right," Josh says and starts gathering the ingredients from the pantry and the fridge, while George leans against the kitchen counter, watching him. He touches everything that Josh sets down, but his hands are clean, so Josh leaves him be.

"First we chop half an onion," he says and then proceeds to do just that. George watches him quietly, while he slides the knife through the onion with practiced motions. He has been doing it for six years. Having chopped up half the onion, Josh sprays the other half with conserving spray and then halts. Should he ask George to put it away? Would that teach him something?

"Put it in the fridge with the other vegetables, please," Josh says and hands the half onion to George, who looks like he's received an update that unclutters his RAM. He practically skips over to the fridge and Josh can feel his systems trying to keep up with his strange behaviour. Even humans wouldn't - Josh only - why would-?

He notices Mr. de Winter smiling at them then and decides that at least George's behaviour isn't a threat, so he'll try and collect more data on him to not be so thrown in future.

"What now?" George asks, when he's back by his side.

"Now we sauté them," Josh says and heats twelve millilitres of oil in a pan before adding them. "And then we chop the mushrooms."

He always washes all the vegetables before putting them away to store so he'll have easier access to them when needed. He finds it more efficient this way. George empties the bowl of mushrooms onto the cutting board, which isn't at all what Josh would've done, but seems to make George think he accomplished something.

"Right," Josh says and gets to chopping the mushrooms, trying to work out if he should correct George or not. It's not that it matters much if Josh gets to pick them out one by one of the bowl or pull them over from where they're already on the cutting board. It's just that it's neater when they're in the bowl and he likes things neat and simple.

"Then we add the mushrooms," he says, adding a the mushrooms to the sizzling onions. There's a hiss as the mushrooms drop onto the heated pan and George blinks like he wasn't expecting it.

"Mushrooms have a lot of water, so they'll change colour and shrivel up as the heat draws it out," Josh says. "We'll wait until most of the water's gone."

George nods and stares at the pan in fascination. Josh doesn't remember ever being this fascinated with food, for one because he can't eat it and neither can George and for another because his culinary program must be more extensive than George's. He knew all this would happen by the time he'd been switched on for the first time. It's strange to think that George doesn't, even though Josh knows that George knows other things that he himself doesn't.

"We'll add spices and wine while they're cooking," Josh says and points at the assortment of spice jars and the bottle of white wine he'd set out on the counter. George hands them to him one by one, watching as Josh sprinkles dried leaves and salt and pepper over the mushrooms and onions before pouring twenty millilitres of white wine. The hiss this time is even louder and George flinches back, but then immediately leans forward again to see.

"Smells delicious already, Josh," Mr. de Winter says from where he's reading the newspaper at the table, reminding Josh that he's sort of observing them. George eagerly watches as Josh finishes off the soup with a few more additions and then sits down at Mr. de Winter's side when they walk through to the dining room and Josh sets the plate of soup down in front of him. Josh places a small basket of bread on the table and a carafe of water and a glass before standing back. George looks up at him like it's his time to be confused by Josh's behaviour.

"Won't you sit?" George asks.

"Oh," Mr. de Winter says, looking up from the soup. "Yes, please do sit, if you want, Josh. I have everything I need."

Josh doesn't usually sit so he won't have to get up again to fetch Mr. de Winter whatever he may need, but George smiles and motions to the chair opposite to him, to Mr. de Winter’s other side, so Josh sits down. GEISHAs operate very differently from HELPs indeed, Josh thinks. He'll need to adjust a lot of parameters to integrate George into his behaviour. Mr. de Winter doesn't make conversation during meals and Josh doesn't make conversation unless spoken to as a general rule, so meals have always passed quietly in Mr. de Winter's house. George's gaze though seems to flick back and forth between Mr. de Winter and Josh like he can't quite work them out. Well, Josh thinks, it's to be expected. He's only a few hours old after all. Everything's still brand new to him.

"What are you doing later?" George then turns to Josh to ask.

"I finish the garden, refuel the CLC and then do whatever Mr de Winter needs done," Josh says.

"Rupert's been showing me around the house earlier. He'll teach me chess in the afternoon," George says, unprompted.

"That's nice," Josh says. George grins broadly.

"Do you play?" George asks.

"Sometimes," Josh says. Sometimes Mr. de Winter asks him to. His chess program is only very basic though so he isn't much of a challenge. Mr. de Winter prefers playing his daughter or teaching his grand-son.

"I've never played," George says, like that isn't an obvious fact. When would he have played between being powered up this morning and now? "Is it fun?"

Josh isn't calibrated for fun, but somehow he doesn't think that's the answer George is looking for.

"I like the garden more," Josh says instead. Mr. de Winter laughs. George seems puzzled and Josh is trying to figure out what he did wrong.

"Josh isn't very sociable," Mr. de Winter says. Josh still doesn't know what he did wrong. Of course he's not sociable, he's not meant to be. He's meant to move quietly and efficiently. And he's pretty good at it, he thinks. If Mr. de Winter wanted sociable, he'd've got a GEISHA, not a HELP. That's why he has George now, isn't it? "He prefers to be on his own."

Prefers? Josh takes a moment to mull this over. He's not sure if saying he prefers to be on his own is an accurate assessment. His own preferences aren't important for the decisions he makes. He's not sure he has a preference one way or another.

"Oh," George says and it seems almost like he's disappointed. Josh turns his attention to him for a moment, clocking the furrowed brow and the downturn of his lips, before Mr. de Winter sets his spoon down and pushes the soup bowl away a bit. He's done. Josh gets up and takes the bowl from him, to take it through to the kitchen and put it away. George's disappointment comes second at most to what Mr. de Winter needs. Josh isn't certain disappointment is in George's emotional catalogue anyway. He'll have to read up on it.

George gets up with Josh and makes to follow him over to the kitchen, seemingly aimless, but then Mr. de Winter calls for him.

"Come, George," Mr. de Winter says and out of the corner of his eye, Josh registers George's face lighting up into a happier look as he turns around to follow him out of the room instead. Their slow footsteps fade into the back of the house and Josh sets about straightening up the kitchen as he always does. The leftovers go in the fridge for some other time and then it's time to look after the garden. Since George had interrupted him before, there are still some weeds to pull and then flowerbeds to water, lawns to check and hedges to trim. It should last him for another hour or two. He's not in a hurry, but the sun is particularly bright and warm today and he shouldn't stay outside for too long. He overheats sometimes when working in the garden in the summer months and with Mr. de Winter distracted and his bones acting up again, it wouldn't do for Josh to go into emergency shut-down right now.

He makes good time in the garden and since George and Mr. de Winter are still playing chess when he's finished and Mr. de Winter doesn't have any more tasks for him, he goes to look for George's manual in his room. He can't find it though and it occurs to him then that he should probably ask George for it. He thinks he might consider it a bit strange if someone other than Mr. de Winter would read up on his calibrations. Especially another android. That sort of information is, after all, private. Or at least as close to what Josh thinks people consider private.

Over dinner that night, Mr. de Winter asks Josh to clear tomorrow's afternoon schedule so that the two of them can take George to the shopping centre for some clothes. He doesn't have a lot to do on weekends usually, so it should be possible to get all his tasks done in the morning, if Mr. de Winter sets his self-alert a little earlier than he usually powers him up so he can dust the library before making breakfast. Mr. de Winter smiles kindly though and says he'd rather Josh leave the library for some other day and get as much rest as possible, as they'll be going out. Based on past visits to and from Mr. de Winter's doctor, Josh thinks the increasingly more regular request for him to get rest "just in case" probably has to do with the weakening of Mr. de Winter's bones. It saddens Josh a bit to think that Mr. de Winter might be nearing the end of his natural life. Josh liked living with him and it seems a little strange to acquire George when Mr. de Winter might soon die and they'll be shut down and recycled into newer models. It's not Josh's place to question Mr. de Winter's decisions though and humans do get lonely. He supposes if it's to alleviate Mr. de Winter's negative emotions, Josh doesn't so much care that George only gets a comparatively short existence. Mr. de Winter is his priority.

When Josh's systems go online the following day though, it's the emergency boot-up that sends him into Mr. de Winter's room immediately. His face is contorted and his body seems rigid and uncomfortable.

"Josh," he says. "Doctor."

Josh immediately places the call through the House, helping Mr. de Winter to sit upright in his bed and lean against the headboard of it when he struggles with it. Mr. de Winter tries to wave him away then, but the medical responder on the line is still asking questions about Mr. de Winter's current condition, so Josh prods his limbs and tries to move his ankles as instructed, giving reports back to him as accurately as he can. Mr. de Winter's physical well-being is Josh's first priority, even above Mr. de Winter's own insisting he doesn't need any more fussing.

"Go wake up George, will you?" he asks then, when Josh finishes his call and he's satisfied that Mr. de Winter's vital signs are stable. It only takes a split second for Josh to access his memory and remember George, but he's a little... hurt that Mr. de Winter would dismiss him so quickly and rather have George by his side right now. Then again, it makes sense. It's what George is for. Mr. de Winter has probably considered this situation when he set the specifics in George's behavioural pattern, so even though he's barely been with them more than one day, he'll know exactly what to do.

George's eyes snap open when his boot up has gone through and Josh files away the thirty-four shades of brown he's met with and briefly wonders about how humans interact with the world, when they don't have programs that tell them the exact numerical identifier of every one of those thirty-four shades on a first glance. It seems terribly unsettling to have such imprecise observational skills.

"Hiya," George says and grins at Josh. Josh frowns. This is no time for grins.

"Mr. de Winter has taken ill. He's resting in his bedroom and would probably benefit from your company. I assume you have a set of parameters for this situation?" Josh says instead of greeting George back. George's face goes serious immediately and he looks at Josh a little strangely, almost like he's confused or maybe affronted?

"I do. We should sync up so we don't need to communicate through the House, should anything happen," George says. Josh nods. He'd been thinking the same. He offers his wrist up to George, the wireless sensor located there the easiest to access like this. George holds his own wrist up against it, the connection springing up instantly. They were set the same password - Mrs. de Winter's maiden name initials and birthdate - and establishing a permanent link-up is only a matter of a few short moments.

"I'll prepare some breakfast for him," Josh says. George nods.

"Right. Can you bring it up or shall I try to get him downstairs?"

"No, I'll bring it up. He shouldn't move too much. Now go to him. I'll be up with breakfast and then the doctor shortly."

The doctor does only take a short while to arrive and she ushers Josh and, after a brief moment of surprise, George, out of the room as she always does. Josh knows he won't be allowed to be privy to what happens between Mr. de Winter and his doctor, so he goes back downstairs, so see if he can go through any of the tasks he has recently had to skip. He could dust the library in the time the doctor's visit will take, probably. George follows him downstairs.

"He'll be alright, won't he?" he asks. Josh nods. There's no reason for him assume the doctor won't be able to fix Mr. de Winter this time. She has all the previous times he's had to call her for an emergency visit and there wasn't anything about Mr. de Winter's condition that morning that made him assume this time was any different than the previous few.

"Why doesn't he let us help with the doctor? If she has to move him it'd be easier to have one of us in there with them, at least."

"It's Mr. de Winter's prerogative to divulge only the information he wants to. He never gives any specifics about his medical condition."

"But... don't you worry?" George asks. Josh halts in his movements to give the question a little consideration. Mr. de Winter's declining physical health puts him on higher alert and makes his sensors more sensitive; especially on days when he unexpectedly needs a house call from his doctor. So, yes, he supposes, that's worrying, isn't it?

"Yes," he says.

"But then how can you be so calm?"

"Statistics suggest he will be just fine. He didn't display unusual symptoms and Dr. Duvany has always been able to help him out so far," Josh says. George doesn't seem quite convinced but then his shoulders slump and he heavily falls down into the library's sole armchair.

"Well, you've been here longer," he says. Josh nods, satisfied that George has drawn the logical conclusion and will thus most probably let him work in peace now. He's wrong about that assessment.

"Will you be working in the garden again today?" George asks, just as Josh is climbing up the step ladder so he can reach the top of the bookshelves.

"No," he says, but doesn't turn around to face George the way he would Mr. de Winter. "I got done yesterday. It doesn't need daily attention. I'll check on the flowerbeds to see if they need watering, but that's it."

"Oh," George says and there's that moment again where Josh thinks he's disappointed. But what reason does George have to be disappointed? "Will you show them to me anyway?"

"I'm sure Mr. de Winter will require your company today and would much rather show you his garden himself when he's feeling better again," Josh says.

"But isn't it your garden?" George asks, sounding confused. At that, Josh does turn around, because George doesn't make any sense. He might be making an attempt at a joke, in which case Josh will have to let him know that most of those are completely wasted on him. Humour programming is unreliable at best and his is only a starter packet. He doesn't usually understand the crux of a joke. George seems genuine, but as far as Josh understands, that, too can be part of a joke sometimes.

"If you're joking, I have to tell you that your efforts are wasted on me. I don't have a sense of humour."

"What?" George asks, seeming even more confused. "No, I wasn't joking. I just meant... you're the one taking care of the garden and everything. So doesn't that mean it's yours?"

"No, of course not," Josh says. That line of reasoning seems incredibly faulty to him. He takes care of almost everything in the house, including Mr. de Winter himself, to some extent. Still, none of that belongs to him as a result of his caretaking. Least of all Mr. de Winter. Caretaking is just what he's meant for. It is quite literally Josh's raison d'être.

"Oh," George says.

"Everything here belongs to Mr. de Winter. The house, the CLC, the garden. You and me."

"Well, yes, technically," George says with a smile. "But in reality it's more your garden than Rupert's, isn't it? Because you tend to it and love it."

"I tend to it because Mr. de Winter finds himself unable to do so reliably. It's nothing to do with his affection for the garden. He loves it a lot."

"Oh, I'm sure he does. I didn't mean to..." George starts, but then trails off and doesn't finish his sentence. Josh gives him a moment, but when it seems he has no intention of continuing, he turns back around to the shelves and starts dusting from top to bottom. He gets done with the one side of the room before Dr. Duvany comes to find them.

"I don't think we've been introduced yet," she says, walking up to George and offering him a hand to shake.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Dr. Duvany," Josh says and hurries to join them just as they shake hands. "This is George, a GEISHA. He just joined us recently."

"Good, good," she says. "It'll be good for the old man to have a bit more life around the house to remind him not to kick the bucket quite yet. No offense, Josh."

"None taken," he says with a courteous smile. He isn't, technically speaking, alive, but then neither is George. And the garden is still very much alive and kicking, so she can't have been speaking that technically. 'Human', is probably what she meant and, well, George is the better imitation of that, Josh knows. It suits him just fine, really. He doesn't like being expected to be something he's not.

"Well, nothing out of the ordinary is wrong with him, just follow your usual protocol and you should be just fine," she then tells Josh. "If any drastic changes occur, contact me immediately, you know the drill."

He does indeed know that drill. Even a virus couldn't make him forget, he thinks.

"You can go up to see him now, if you want," she says, but turns to George, like she's expecting him to be the one to go up. Josh should be expecting that too.

"Go on," he tells George. "He'll be wanting you."

"You...?" George asks.

"Just call me if you need my assistance," Josh says. George nods, quickly says his goodbyes to Dr. Duvany and then turns on his heel to go see Mr. de Winter.

"Thank you for your prompt call, Dr. Duvany," Josh says and shakes the doctor's hand, showing her to the door.

"Oh, of course, Josh. You know de Winter's one of my favourite patients," she says and then shakes his hand again as they reach the door. "You're taking very good care of him. His nutrition data is about as well as it could be at his age."

"Mr. de Winter gives the orders, I just execute them," Josh says and Dr. Duvany laughs.

"Take a little credit every now and then," she says. "It won't hurt, I promise."

Josh smiles in response and then waves her off and shuts the door. First wave of crisis overcome. So far, so good. He takes a moment to listen to the mostly empty house, waiting for some other sort of emergency to maybe pop up from behind the pink ficus. It doesn't, and neither Mr. de Winter nor George call for him, so he decides to go back to the library and the dusting. It does still need to be done, after all.

As it's nearing noon George sends him a short message via their link asking for some light lunch to be brought up for Mr. de Winter, as he doesn't yet feel like getting up to go downstairs or indeed even just eating a big meal. Josh considers re-heating yesterday's mushroom soup, but Mr. de Winter isn't particularly fond of eating the same dish two days in a row and anyway, Josh thinks, he should probably get as many vitamins and as much fibre and such as possible into him.

So he sets about chopping up an assortment of vegetables for a thick stew, making a quick note to order in replacements sooner than they had originally planned, since he's going to need quite a bit more of it than Mr. de Winter and he had originally alloted for it. He squeezes some oranges for a glass of orange juice and spritzes the steaming vegetables with lemon juice for better absorption of the vitamins and lets George know that it'll not be much longer until lunch will be ready. He receives an answer as short and succinct as his own message has been.

When he finally does carry up the tray of stew and orange juice, he's met with the sight of Mr. de Winter and George in Mr. de Winter's bed, with a chess board in between them on the sheets. Mr. de Winter seems to be explaining a move that Josh vaguely recognises as one of the many he could never quite make sense of to George. Chess then is also one of the things George has deemed it more fun to learn the human way. Josh is sure there would be a world champion level chess extension that George could download to learn but Mr. de Winter didn't have it installed and George doesn't seem to be asking for it. It seems as horribly inefficient as the cooking did yesterday, but instead of commenting, Josh merely sets the tray of food down and excuses himself.

He moves through the tasks he had originally been set for this weekend with a slow and distracted sort of precision. It's not that he really expects to be interrupted by the second medical emergency of the day, since that is very unlikely to happen, given Mr. de Winter's history of house calls, but he stays open to the possibility. In the end, he only sees Mr. de Winter and George again when he comes to collect the tray from lunch and brings up supper respectively.

"Josh," Mr. de Winter says, when Josh sets down the second tray of food of the day. "My daughter will be over on Monday for a short visit with her children. I want you to take George to the shopping centre and pick up the clothes and such we ordered for him today."

"Yes, sir," Josh says and before he can make a note in his calendar, he gets a message from George, sharing his own. Josh accepts it. It would be rude not to.

"Thank you, Josh. That will be all," Mr. de Winter says, dismissing him for the day. Josh nods at him and then at George and goes back to his own room. He spends a good two minutes running simulations of basic emergencies with the extensive data he has on Mr. de Winter's behaviour and the bit he has on George's; only then is he satisfied there is no reason for him to worry and plugs himself into the power outlet for a recharge while he powers down.

Sunday passes uneventfully. Mr. de Winter decides to take a pre-lunch nap, so George comes to shadow Josh in the kitchen again. It's a bit... unnerving, Josh thinks. Having to explain everything he does out loud, just because George likes 'fun' better than he likes just letting Josh give him the recipes he holds. There are a fair few. They'll never get through preparing them all for George to learn. And what if Mr. de Winter should want something completely new? Would George just refuse him on the grounds that he doesn't know how to cook it, when he could just download the recipe and the required skill? It's probably why most dual android homes leave the cooking to the HELPs and have their GEISHAs join them for conversation and art and games. It makes more sense that way. It was meant to be that way.

On Monday Josh does the post run first thing in the morning, coming back to the house before George or Mr. de Winter have found their way downstairs into the kitchen yet. By the time they do join him - a little earlier than usual - he's frying three strips of bacon for Mr. de Winter and almost automatically moves aside when George leans to peek at it over his shoulder. He breathes in deeply like he can actually smell the sizzling fat and salt the meat is releasing, and Josh thinks it's a very unnecessary and strange programming to give someone indeed. Why make it seem like they're in a habit of doing something they can't?

Mr. de Winter retreats to read the newspaper in peace after he has had his breakfast, like he does every Monday morning and so Josh shows George around the kitchen, explaining equipment and techniques to use it in. George listens attentively and Josh knows he remembers everything after hearing it only once, he only hopes his explanations are adequate. Really, an update would make this a whole lot simpler.

For lunch, Josh makes George chop the ingredients he'll need, standing next to him and giving quiet instructions. George isn't entirely useless with a knife, but his movements lack the precision that Josh's have. He supposes that's the difference between a learned and a programmed skill, maybe. Mr. de Winter is feeling a little better than the day before and watches them from his usual chair at the kitchen table, but his face still shows signs of wear and Josh considers pointing them out and sending him back upstairs and George with him for company. Mr. de Winter seems to be much more energetic downstairs in the kitchen though, so he lets him be.

Once they've all sat down for lunch, something that Josh still feels is entirely unnecessary, Mr. de Winter reminds them of his plans for the afternoon.

"Marilyn and the children will be here at around two-thirty. Do we have those chocolate crackers that Emeline loves so much?"

"Yes, sir. We restocked on Thursday. There are plenty peanutbutter fingers for Ben and Mrs. Ardal as well."

"Good, good," Mr. de Winter says. "If you could prepare some iced tea for us before you take George to collect his things, Josh."

"Of course," Josh says. There's still plenty of time.

"You shouldn't be here alone, right now, Rupert. We'll wait until Marilyn and the kids get here before we leave," George says. Josh's eyes immediately jump over to Mr. de Winter, clocking his reaction to George's insolence and looking for any signs of anger. Mr. de Winter isn't prone to anger, but George keeps confronting them with new situations and it makes all the data Josh has collected over the last years seem irrelevant.

Mr. de Winter only hums thoughtfully though before turning to smile at George.

"Yes, I suppose you're right. I don't like being treated like an invalid, but I suppose Marilyn will give me a terrible scolding if I'm quote-unquote careless about my health. And you'll have to meet her and her family sooner or later."

"I'd love to," George says, a big smile on his face. Josh watches Mr. de Winter's answering smile and dials his sensors down again.

"Emeline and Ben, her twins, can be a bit of a handful, but they're lovely. Josh would know all about that," Mr. de Winter says, smiling at Josh now. Emeline and Ben have rendered the flowerbeds in the garden a war zone on twenty-seven percent of their visits, but Mr. de Winter and Mrs. Ardal seem far too fond of watching them do it for Josh to speak up against it. He can re-plant them.

"They're very energetic," Josh says. There isn't always much to do around the house, so he should probably be grateful for the extra work they make him. He doesn't know what he would do with himself if he were just standing around, mostly useless for most of the time. Especially now that George is here to keep Mr. de Winter company, Josh foresees a lot of standing around without a task to do. It's not ideal, but he'll get to link up to the news feeds more often, he supposes. So it's not all bad either. Even though it isn't usually relevant to his life, Josh likes knowing what's happening all over the world.

"I'm sure they're lovely," George says.

When Mr. de Winter is done with his meal, he and George go through to the living room to play some chess, while Josh cleans up the kitchen and brews the tea. It's best when it's fresh, but with Emeline and Ben it's not an option. So he slices oranges and lemons and fills two big jugs with them and then adds the berry infusion and assam blend respectively, waiting for them to steep, before setting the jugs aside. It won't do to have them in the fridge while they're still steaming, so he sets a timer and goes upstairs to straighten up Mr. de Winter's bedroom; turn down the covers, air the room out, put any knick-knacks back where they belong. By the time he's done, the tea has cooled enough to be placed in the fridge. Mrs. Ardal will know to add ice cubes before serving it later on.

"Won't you come join us, Josh?" Mr. de Winter calls through the house and Josh takes a moment to consider the rest of his tasks - it's probably best to leave the garden for when Emeline and Ben have left again - before he goes through to the living room where George and Mr. de Winter are still playing chess.

"Rupert's not going very easy on me," George looks up at him to say with a smile. Mr. de Winter chuckles and Josh sits down, opting for a smile in response to George's declaration. He's not sure why Mr. de Winter would go easy on George. If George wanted an easier time of playing, he could always ask for a chess update. Possibly though, Josh thinks, it was Mr. de Winter's idea not to get it. Maybe he enjoys teaching George.

"Don't you think he should, considering that I've only learned how to play yesterday?" George asks Josh. Josh is a little unsure of what to answer, because, no, of course not. Mr. de Winter can play however he likes, as long as he adheres to the rules. Mr. de Winter laughs and picks up the conversational thread instead though, saving Josh the trouble of finding a suitable answer.

"Ah, but you'll not learn, George, if I just keep letting you win. And with that excellent memory of yours, you'll be beating me in no time, I'm sure."

"I'm not so sure about that," George says and moves one of his pawns to a spot that even Josh could have told him was right in line of one of Mr. de Winter's bishops. Predictably, George loses the pawn. He takes Mr. de Winter's bishop with his knight and giggles delightedly at it. When Josh goes to check Mr. de Winter's expression, he's smiling. Josh assumes he is going easy on George after all.

They start another game before the doorbell sounds through the house, announcing Mrs. Ardal's arrival. Josh goes to greet them at the door, pointing them to the living room. Emeline and Ben go running into the house with shouts of "Grandpa!" ignoring their mother's plea to please take their shoes off first, they're tracking dirt everywhere.

"I'm so sorry about them, Josh," she says to him, taking off her own shoes and then hurrying after them. Josh doesn't get the opportunity to tell her that it's alright, it's his job to look after the house, after all, and so simply makes to follow the party into the living room.

"This is George, he lives with Josh and me now," he hears Mr. de Winter say, just as he comes into the room. George bends down to eye level with the children before offering them a hand.

"Hi. You must be Emeline and Ben. Your grandfather has already told me a bit about you," he says. Ben eyes him a little wearily, but Emeline shakes his hand and then prods his head.

"He's not told us about you," she says.

"Well, I've only been here for a few days," George says. "There wasn't much to tell yet."

"Are you like Josh?" she asks then, feeling his cheek.

"I am, yeah," George says.

"Can you build paper airplanes?" Ben asks then.

"Not yet, no. Would you teach me some time?" George says. Ben considers him for a moment and then nods decisively.

"Yeah, alright."

"Hello, George," Mrs. Ardal says then, seizing the opportunity in the lull of conversation to introduce herself. George gets back up to shake her hand as well and Josh decides to get the iced tea and biscuits from the kitchen, so she won't have to. The children seem fairly still for the moment, so it'd probably be better to get them out now rather than later. When he comes back into the living room with the tray of food, Ben has taken George's place opposite his grandfather over the chess board and Emeline is kneeling next to the couch table, a colouring book and some coloured pencils strewn out before her. Josh isn't sure where that one's come from, but assumes Mrs. Ardal brought it with her. He sets the tray down quietly and then sends of a quick signal to George. They should be leaving now, probably.

"If you see anything you'd like Josh, get something as well," Mr. de Winter says and lifts his head to smile at Josh.

"Thank you, sir," Josh says and then turns to leave. Emeline calls a distracted "bye, Josh" after him and he turns around to say goodbye to her as well before meeting George in the foyer. He's wearing Josh's clothes and shoes, but they're similar enough in size for it to not be a problem. Josh would have assumed he already has enough clothes that them sharing would have worked just fine, but Mr. de Winter seems to have other ideas.

George is bouncing on the balls of his feet a bit.

"It's my first time going out," he says, even though Josh hasn't asked.

"That's nice," Josh says and tries a smile on for size before opening the door and gesturing for George to go first. George for his part mostly bounces through the door and out onto the driveway. He looks around with wide eyes although the street can't be anything he's not seen from through the windows. Josh lets him twirl around his own axis and stare at everything for a good few seconds before waving him over to the CLC and getting into the backseat with him.

"Rupert said you'd have to sit up front?" George says, confusion on his face.

"Only when he rides as well," Josh says.

"Oh. Does... he not want you sitting with him?" George asks carefully. Josh supposes that could be it, but he never asked, so he doesn't know. It's not what Mr. de Winter told him, anyway.

"No. He wants someone up front in case something goes wrong. But if something did go wrong, the car would just stop. There's no need for me to be there. He doesn't believe me when I explain that."

It's more than Josh has said in a while and it... wasn't exactly prompted either. Sure, it was implied, but. George giggles a bit and lifts his hands to cover his mouth as if he were as surprised by the sound as Josh is.

"If he's worried the computer will do something wrong, why doesn't he worry you'll do something wrong?"

"Who knows why humans do anything," Josh says and immediately feels bad for it. Mr. de Winter is good to him. He shouldn't be rude about him. George only hums thoughtfully though and Josh doesn't think he's likely to repeat what Josh said to Mr. de Winter. Maybe he should ask him not to, just to be on the safe side.

"I don't think we're that different," he says.

"You're a GEISHA. You're more sophisticated than I am," Josh points out. It's obvious that they're different, isn't it? They don't have the same purpose.

"You could learn, if you wanted to," George says and then shakes his head. "But that's not what I meant. I meant the humans and us. Their computers just grow out of different materials than ours, but in the end from what I've seen so far... we're not that different."

Josh stares disbelievingly at George. He's not even a week old yet. How could he possibly think he has gathered even remotely close to enough data to make a statement like that? Never mind that it's almost blaspheming, claiming that machines and humans have anything in common. Machines can't create and they don't really feel. Everyone knows that. Every machine knows that. All their emotions and sensations have been placed in their program for a specific purpose. The only reason Josh can smell smoke or gas is to ensure the safety of any humans around or his own, so his owner doesn't lose his investment in an unfortunate accident. The only reason Josh's derma-layer has a modicum of sensory perception is so he can evade destruction. The only reason he can perceive and ... feel emotions is so he can adjust his behaviour according to his owner's wishes. He knows HELPs come with an extra strong dose of loyalty so they won't pose any problems for their owner.

George must be joking.

"Of course humans are different," Josh says.

"Well, a little maybe. But not by much," George says with a thoughtful look on his face.

"There must be more difference between you and I than I thought then," Josh says and then turns away to look out the window. George takes the hint that this particular conversation is closed and remains silent for the rest of the drive to the shopping centre. Just as Josh makes to open the door after they've parked, he puts an arm on his shoulder though, drawing his attention.

"I didn't mean to offend you," he says. Josh nods in acceptance.

"You're forgiven."

George smiles at him all big again and as soon as they're out of the car he goes back to staring at everything in wonder and things resume the pace Josh has gotten used to from George over the last few days. It's strange to Josh that George is so fascinated by everything. How he runs his hands over walls and clothes and glass doors and breathes in deeply when they pass a fruit juice bar like it does him any good. He has a host of knowledge in his memory chip, there isn't really anything new to be learned here for him and yet he acts as if he has absolutely no idea what anything is and follows Josh around like Ben and Emeline used to when they could barely toddle upright on their stubby little legs. George's legs aren't stubby or little, at least, and Josh doesn't have to slow down too much, or worry about him getting lost or falling over. And even if they did manage to get separated from each other, they're linked up. Josh can locate him in a matter of seconds at most.

Since Mr. de Winter and George had picked out all the clothes George wanted online, there's really nothing for them to do except to go pick them up at the counter. Josh nudges George subtly when the clerk asks for their order confirmation and receipt. George only looks at him askance and so Josh smiles apologetically at the clerk and then grabs George's hand, holding his wrist up against the scanner mounted on the counter.

Nothing happens.

Josh sighs.

"You have to pull up the confirmation and receipt Mr. de Winter gave you," Josh says. George makes a little 'oh' sound and then the scanner beeps twice and the boy behind the counter grins at them so Josh assumes that everything is in order. George pulls his hand back and out of Josh's grip then, rubbing his other hand over his wrist, like the scanning somehow hurt him. Josh frowns down at the motion for a moment but then the boy comes back with two large paper bags of mostly clothes and hands them to them over the counter. Josh takes them both, since George doesn't make a move for them.

"Thank you," Josh says and pings George through their connection when he doesn't say anything. George's head snaps up with a big grin.

"Thanks!" he cheerily says to the boy who flushes a bit and stutters out that it wasn't a problem and reminds them they can return the products unused for the next ten days, if there should be any sort of production error. George nods at him, smile still firmly in place and then lifts his hand to jovially wave at him.

"Bye then," he says and Josh nods his own greeting before turning around and leading George back towards the car.

"Are you not getting anything?" George asks curiously. Josh shakes his head.

"I don't need anything," he says.

"Oh, okay," George says. "Next time, maybe."

Josh isn't sure why they'd come here again unless one of them or Mr. de Winter needed something, so, yes, probably, next time. He doesn't say it out loud though, only leads George back through the shopping centre, even though George has probably remembered the layout of the place well enough to find his own way between here and the car park. When they step outside, the sun has come out from behind the clouds and George excitedly begins rifling through one and then the other bag, pulling out a pair of sunglasses with a thick black frame and pushes them up on his face with a grin.

"Well?" he asks Josh, grin still firmly in place. Josh doesn't understand why he doesn't just adjust the sensibility of his visual sensors to the new light conditions.

"Pretty," he says. They fit the proportions of George's face and make his lips stand out more. Josh briefly wonders if Mr. de Winter chose his lips and what else about George or Josh has been custom-made to fit his wishes. He never asked and he never accessed that part of his warranty either. It's not important and Josh... doesn't really want to know.

"Thank you," George says primly and there's a spring in his step for the last few meters to the CLC. Josh really doesn't understand. Perhaps GEISHAs aren't so different from humans after all. George at least seems to be as unpredictable as one.

They've barely set foot inside Mr. de Winter's house again before Ben and Emeline come barrelling down the hallway.

"Did you bring us something back?" Emeline asks excitedly, her brother bouncing on his feet next to her. Josh didn't even consider it, but George smiles at them.

"Of course we did."

They did?

Josh watches on uselessly as George once again rifles through the two paper bags and pulls out two pairs of sunglasses, shaped like his own, only smaller. One of them is blue and the other pink. Ben grabs for the pink ones, leaving his sister with the blue ones and a little pout on her face.

"We match now!" Ben says with a big grin. Emeline looks between George and Ben before a grin breaks out on her face as well and she claps her hands in excitement.

"Well, go on, show your mum," George says and they zoom back down the corridor, yelling excitedly for Mrs. Ardal. When George turns to smile at him, Josh feels oddly chastised, even though nothing in George’s behaviour indicates that he meant for the smile to be mocking or to assert a place for himself in Mr. de Winter’s household and life that Josh himself cannot fill. He has both, of course, because Josh actually cannot do what George does, cannot pretend to smell and learn to cook and to play chess by trial and error, the way humans do. Still it almost seems to Josh as if he were more aware of those differences between them and of the place in Mr. de Winter’s household that George holds than George is himself. His comments on their outing earlier suggest that he doesn’t see the differences between himself and Josh or even those between himself and Mr. de Winter. It’s a shaky hypothesis at best, but it’s what makes the most sense out of George’s general behaviour.

Josh reaches for the paper bags.

“I’ll carry them up to the room. You go on through.”

“Oh, thanks! Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course,” Josh says. He’s not needed with Mr. de Winter and his family. George will be expected to provide at least a modicum of entertainment for them. Josh himself should probably straighten Mr. de Winter’s room and then see if anything in the garden needs work.

“You don’t mind sharing your room with me? Rupert said I should take one of the guest rooms if you do.”

Josh balks at the thought. George can’t just take one of the guestrooms.

“No. There’s more than enough space,” he says. He only needs about a third of the closet space for the clothes that Mr. de Winter got him and he recharges standing up, so he doesn’t require much space at all. Even if George wanted to use the bed - he seems the sort to pretend to sleep like humans do - there would be no problem.

“Well, if you’re sure,” George says. “I just don’t want to encroach on your space.”

It’s not like it’s really Josh’s space to begin with, though, is it?

“You’re not,” Josh says. George smiles at him and then lingers for a moment like he’s about to say something or do something, but then he turns and walks through into the living room. He really is as exhaustingly unpredictable as a human. If Josh were the type, he’d heave a sigh. As it is, he simply carries George’s clothes and whatever-else up into the room they share before continuing with his chores, rerouting energy from where he needs it to deal with people to where he needs it to deal with the tasks people set him. It’s almost as if things go back to normal.

They don’t, of course. George is still here and he still shadows Josh in the kitchen, teaching himself how to cook and frustrating Josh with his implicit refusal to behave like what he is. He supposes that’s probably quite impossible and that Mr. de Winter must have chosen George this way, must want him to behave like this. There’s no way that George could be going directly against his programming like that every single day. So he tries to be accepting of it. Tries to incorporate a George into his everyday routines, but it proves almost impossible.

Mr. de Winter is a creature of habit, so it’s not difficult for Josh to deal with him and to work around him. Mr. de Winter works almost like clockwork himself. He likes his meals a certain way at a certain time in a certain place. He likes his rooms kept a certain way and the most he ever asked of Josh was a game of chess or some conversation they both had to quickly give up on, because with all of Josh’s skills, he’s not a conversationalist.

George isn’t like that. George is even more unpredictable. He has all the mood swings that set Josh’s systems on high alert. He never wears the same clothes two days in a row and he grows tired of all of them so quickly that Josh offers him choice of his own as well, simply so Mr. de Winter won’t find out and get angry at him for it. He continues to insist on smelling almost everything and he follows Josh around whenever he can. And he can a surprising amount of time.

Josh doesn’t understand. He thought George was with them to keep Mr. de Winter company, but it seems almost as if he’s keeping Josh company more than Mr. de Winter. And Josh isn’t exactly the most exciting company to be keeping. By human - and, what he has to conclude, GEISHA - standards Josh is boring. Predictable. And yet George will laugh at things he says even though all Josh is doing is stating the obvious. He will listen to him explain a recipe like Josh is speaking in iambic pentameter. He will smile at him like they’re sharing a secret when George is wearing one of Josh’s things and all they’re doing is sharing clothes (like they share the room, Mr. de Winter, the house and their place in it).

It’s agitating, is what it is. Every day Josh finds himself being more and more annoyed with George. Josh doesn’t get annoyed. Annoyance is an irrelevant emotion. He doesn’t need it, so he doesn’t feel it, but there’s no way to better describe the way his jaw goes tight when George sidles up to him.

What keeps him from acting on those impulses, irrational though they may be, is Mr. de Winter’s seeming happiness at the state of things. Josh isn’t entirely sure why his pain seems to be Mr. de Winter’s gain, but he’s sure there has to be a component to it that he hasn’t factored in yet, hasn’t noticed perhaps. There has to be some sort of bigger plan to it. It would be even more irrational to assume that Mr. de Winter is simply a very strange sort of sadist who enjoys making robots feel mild irritation.

But, boy, does he feel that mild irritation.

It’s on one of the days when the irritation is particularly not-mild that George finds him in the garden while Josh is tending to the roses; checking all the buds, cutting off the dead flowers, checking for lice and so on. If pressed, Josh might admit that it is by far his favourite chore. So while he can understand that George seems to have developed a particular interest in it as well, it is at the same time the most irritating thing about him. Not even Mr. de Winter tells Josh what to do about the roses. He knows that Josh knows best. The all-round update on roses - from their botanical specifics to the best care - has been the only thing Josh has ever asked for. If he were human, he’s sure he’d love the roses. As it is, they are the closest thing to what he could consider ‘his’.

Succinctly put - George can’t have them.

“They’re really beautiful,” George says, coming up to stand beside Josh underneath the arc of white roses. Josh nods, because it’s only polite to acknowledge someone when they speak, even if that someone happens to be a GEISHA testing nerves you didn’t even know you had.

“Which ones are your favourite?” George asks. They’re standing directly among them, so Josh finds himself answering.

“These ones. ‘Little White Pet’.”

White.  Mild fragrance.  Medium, very double, in large clusters, cupped-to-flat bloom form.  Blooms in flushes throughout the season.

George leans in and almost buries his nose in one of the fullest clusters. Josh has to try very hard not to snap at him to lean back. George takes a very deep breath, his chest moving with it. Josh wants to laugh at how human the humans made him. He can’t help thinking it’s superfluous, surely, to build something so very much like a living organisms that roams the planet freely as it is. If one wants companionship, there are plenty of humans running around. He doesn’t dare think about how those aren’t designed to fit anyone’s specific wishes.

“They’re mild. Like you,” George says and turns to smile at Josh. It’s then that it occurs to Josh for the first time that George may not be pretending. Just because Josh can only smell danger, doesn’t mean George is subject to the same limitations.

“Can you smell them?” he finds himself asking. George laughs.

“Of course. What did you think I was doing all the times I smelled the food? Pretending?”

Josh draws his face into an impassive grimace and wonders if there’s any way he can pretend that wasn’t exactly what he assumed. George only laughs a little more.

“That would be silly, even for a GEISHA,” he says. Josh smiles back at him then, because George seems to invite it. If his answering grin is anything to go by, Josh did the right thing there at least.

“I can smell anything. Slightly better than humans even, which is both nice and really not so nice when there are bad smells around. I’m really grateful you keep the house so clean and nice-smelling. I know it’s for Rupert and not for me, but I do appreciate it just as much.”

“You’re welcome,” Josh says and then turns back to the flowers. “What else can you do that I can’t?”

“Well, I’m not sure, because I don’t know your calibrations-” So George hasn’t asked for Josh’s either. “-but I think I can feel a little better? Through my skin? I can’t taste. I have more emotions than you do.”

Josh nods along. As he thought then.

“Well, that last one’s really only because you don’t seem very interested in feeling things. I’m sure you could if you wanted.”

“Why would I want to feel more things? I already feel more than I need. I felt irritated a lot over the past few weeks and it’s entirely superfluous. It doesn’t increase my work performance and it doesn’t make Mr. de Winter happy, so why should I feel it?”

“Irritated?” George asks instead of giving an answer to Josh’s largely rhetorical spiel. “Because of me?”

“Well,” Josh says, unsure of how to phrase this politely. “Yes.”

George gives him a long considering look before a wide and especially sparkly smile takes over his face.

“My favourites are those ones,” he then says apropos of nothing, pointing at a bush of orchid pink hybrid tea roses. Memorial Day . They’re probably the strongest scent in the garden. “When you bring one in the house it’s like you’ve brought the whole garden.”

George doesn’t even really move closer to them, just turns his face in their direction a bit before he smells the air, a happy smile settling on his face.

“They’re really very lovely.”

They are. They suit George.

“What do they smell like?” Josh asks. He’s not sure how he thinks George can describe a scent to him in a way that he can understand and from the look George is giving him, he’s thinking the same thing. But then he sits down on the grass and seems to think it over. Josh sits down with him and waits. If he’s a little excited, no one has to know.

“Emeline and Ben running through the corridor and Lyla’s closed study. A bit like the purple of twilight and even less like the gold of a late summer sunset. A balloon popping.”

Josh nods. It doesn’t mean he knows, of course. But there’s something to George’s description that makes him feel like he does. He doesn’t bother with words, and pings George with a little jolt of gratitude-joy-understanding-apology-acceptance.

George makes a point of describing scents to Josh then, at least when they’re alone or in the privacy of their direct link. There’s something about it, about hearing George’s words describe a part of the world that Josh has no access to that strikes Josh as something that should be kept between the two of them. They’re not doing anything illegal, none of the Three Laws are being broken by Josh learning abstract descriptions of scents - especially inofficial ones, but Josh still feels like they’re doing something... private. Intimate maybe even. It feels like George is extending a hand to Josh to help him into a world he only ever passed by before. Maybe sometimes he stopped to look at it and vaguely wondered what would happen if he could cross over into it, but since that was never a viable option, those moments were far and few in between. There’s no use dwelling on the impossible, after all. It’s a very human thing to do. Josh doesn’t need to wonder about as many things as humans do. He can simply access the information readily available to him and calculate whatever it is he was unsure about. And then there’s nothing left to wonder about anymore. It’s as simple as that.

Humans, however... humans imagine and they wish and hope and try to bend the fabric of reality to their will instead of bending their will to reality. It seems an incredibly exhausting existence, Josh thinks.

When George offers his proverbial hand into another world that Josh doesn’t know anything about and never had any particular interest in, Josh takes it without question. It’s probably the most human thing he’s ever done and it sends his self-analysis into a tailspin. Josh isn’t human.  He has never had use for any kind of human pretence. Why would he? There is no gain to be found in emulating human behaviour. None of Josh’s simulations indicate that human behaviour should be desirable to him. So why now?

He knows it must somehow trace back to George. The most major changes in his and Mr. de Winter’s life since he joined him six years ago have been the birth of his grand-children and the addition of George to the household. One happened five years ago, the other no more than five weeks. Josh isn’t sure how a GEISHA should make him feel more human than humans do, but George is the only new variable. It must be George.

And maybe it's nothing to worry about. George seems to be a very affecting presence. Mr. de Winter's emotional levels have shifted consistently since George came to join them. At first it was a sudden spike in his laughter and spontaneous requests and it had set Josh on edge, unsure of how to deal with the new parameters. But by now he's gotten used to being occasionally interrupted and sent on some errand or other. And since Mr. de Winter seems to have settled in this new, smilier emotional state Josh could simply adjust his sensors accordingly and accept it as his new norm.

So George follows Josh around whenever Mr. de Winter doesn't specifically request his presence and over time Josh learns to let go of his mild irritation whenever George is close. Now that he knows that George isn't purposely imitating human behaviour, but that he can actually smell things it's not so much a cause of ire as intrigue to Josh. He has only smelled things once or twice since his activation and while they hadn't been pleasant smells or moments he can't help wondering what it would be like if they were. If he could smell the roses himself and not rely on George making up descriptions of their scents that vary every time Josh asks. (Josh asks every time they're in the garden together.)

"Josh?" Mr. de Winter says one day well into July. "It'd be lovely if you could bring some of the roses inside before their bloom is over."

It'll be a while yet before it's entirely over for most of them and some have a second bloom already coming in, from Josh's careful tending to them, but he nods.

"Of course. Which ones would you like?"

"Oh, let George help you. I'm so bad with their names and George has a better nose than me anyway. He's been telling me this pink one is supposed to smell heavenly?"

Josh nods again.

"We'll make a bouquet this afternoon."

Usually Josh only takes one or two blooms inside, when they're not completely dead yet, but well on their way there and he wants to snap them off the bush. When he looks over at George, he's grinning at him, that big, sparkly smile that Josh has come to associate with him over time. Whenever he sees George without it it seems to prompt discomfort in Josh. It's worse than seeing Mr. de Winter in a more melancholy mood - which still happens from time to time - because he has no frame of reference for George's behaviour. He lived with Mr. de Winter's melancholia for years, but George has only ever been mostly bright and happy since he was activated, so when he isn't, Josh is thrown out of his comfort zone. He doesn't like it.

Other than Mr. de Winter's increasingly frequent out-of-the-ordinary requests, this day passes like most others. Mr. de Winter doesn't have any appointments to make, so he spends the morning playing chess and reading poetry with George, while Josh goes through his list of chores. There will be some sort of music playing throughout the entire house these days more often than not, as per George's request and Josh finds he doesn't mind the disruption of his usual quiet so much. Since George seems to have a few favourites it has become just as easy to tell the passage of time by the progression of Bach's Cello Suites as the actual clock running in Josh's system.

The only thing that Josh isn't entirely used to yet are the days George wants to cook on his own, or at least take over most of the work, relegating Josh to the side to cut things for him, but taking over the actual cooking himself. Where Josh goes by the meticulous recipes he keeps in his memory, George goes by smell. It takes unusually high levels of control for Josh not to interrupt George's experiments in any way. Mr. de Winter always seems to enjoy the end result and it's that that's important, but Josh ... it's a disruption to his routine. A different kind than the music playing through the house or knowing that Mr. de Winter isn't playing chess on his own or reading poetry to himself. Those never really touch Josh, but this one... George took over one of the tasks Josh has performed for years now and he doesn't even have the decency to do it Josh's way anymore.

Jealousy, his emotional dictionary tells him, is probably what it is. Fear, maybe, but it has fewer overlapping descriptors. Absurd, is what Josh thinks it is. He has never felt jealous about anything ever before and there is no need to be afraid of George's cooking. For one, he doesn't have to eat it, so the chances of it affecting him are very slim. For another, Josh has told George about Mr. de Winter's allergies and limitations when it comes to food intake and strange as George still seems to Josh, there is no way he could go against the Three Laws and harm Mr. de Winter. Even if he could, Josh has no reason to suspect he even wants to in the first place.

Since George has waved him off completely this time and he's only making mushroom soup, Josh takes a few steps back from George in the kitchen and then wonders what to do with himself. George has left a book open on the kitchen table and Josh sits down next to the glowing space on the table and opens up a second one next to it to look at the title and summary. Death and the Lover. A story of a passionate, yet uneasy friendship, self-discovery and the meaning of life.

Josh has no idea why George would be reading this. He marks the page George had lying open and then opens the first page, scanning the lines.

Outside the entrance of the Mariabronn cloister, whose rounded arch rested on slim double columns, a chestnut tree stood close to the road. It was a sweet chestnut, with a sturdy trunk and a full round crown, that swayed gently in the wind brought from Italy many years earlier by a monk who had made a pilgrimage to Rome.

Usually, Josh could read much faster than humans could. But there was something very different about reading this story and reading a manual or shopping list or contract as he usually did. Almost confused, Josh found himself taking in the words slowly, as if looking for a meaning not conveyed directly in the dark glow of them, sometimes even reading a line twice.  It’s just as well that George sends him to set the table in the dining room not long after.

As always when George changes the recipes a little, Mr. de Winter hm-s and ah-s his way through the meal, eating carefully and seemingly trying to detect all of the subtle changes. Josh isn't sure he really can, but George seems amused by it and if the twinkling in Mr. de Winter's eyes is anything to go by then this is far more of a game to the two of them than Josh can understand. So he only sits still in his place opposite George at Mr. de Winter's side and makes sure there is enough water and bread, should Mr. de Winter want it.

"Delicious as always, George," Mr. de Winter says when he finally sets his spoon down. "Heavier on the cream this time. And... nutmeg?"

"Yes, very good," George says with a happy smile and then reaches for Mr. de Winter's plate. Josh resigns himself to watching and waiting for George to be done so they can get to assembling the bouquet Mr. de Winter wanted.

"I think I'll retire for a little siesta while you boys are busy in the garden," Mr. de Winter then announces and Josh sets an alarm for in an hour and a half's time. Mr. de Winter doesn't usually nap for longer than an hour and when he does the probability of it being illness-related rises drastically.

"Shall we bring the flowers into the living room?" Josh asks as Mr. de Winter gets up and stretches his weary bones a bit.

"Yes, please, Josh, that would be lovely," he says and then ruffles George's hair before shuffling up the stairs. He's not that old yet, compared to the recorded maximum, but sometimes he seems overly frail to Josh. It makes him... well. Worry.

"Are you coming, then?" George asks, poking his head back into the dining room where Josh is still sitting in his place. George has cleared the entire table and Josh hasn't even noticed. He nods at George and as he gets up and makes to follow him out into the garden he sends a quick scan over his short term memory drive. He always notices things going on right in front of him. He's not sure how he could've caught anything unless there's an attack on the entire House, but just to make sure he raises security - prompting George to turn around and raise an eyebrow at him - and runs a scan through it as well.

"Everything alright?" George asks. Josh nods.

"Of course. Just a precaution."

"But you don't usually-"

"It's fine," Josh cuts him off, not willing to explain his own failure earlier if he doesn't have to. So instead of offering any further explanation, he passes George by with a few large strides and goes to retrieve his rose trimming tools from the garden shed. George follows him and reaches for the bucket to fill it with water without being prompted. He really has picked up on quite a lot in his time with them. Not that it wasn't to be expected, given that Josh himself would have had little trouble to pick up on most things, even if through more conventional methods, and George is a superior model, but something about it still prompts Josh to smile.

"Alright then. We'll get a few of the Memorial Days, but we don't want too much. They get overwhelming," Josh says, turning to walk ahead of George.

"Some of yours too?" George asks. Josh has given up on correcting him, since George seems to be adamant to refer to the Memorial Day as his and to the Little White Pet as Josh's.

"Yes, if you want," he says instead. George looks at him askance.

"If I want? They're your roses! I barely know anything about them. Only what you told me."

"You can smell them though. I don't know what Mr. de Winter or you would... like."

He makes notes on which bouquets that Marilyn or Mrs. Contesta or Dr. Duvany bring Mr. de Winter seems to have enjoyed the most, but it's a difficult thing to go on to create his own. The far simpler solution is to let George and his superior nose choose. After all, that is part of why Mr. de Winter had sent him along with Josh.

"Alright. Then, yes, some of yours. They're a good balance. And some of those yellow ones," George says and points over to what Josh is certain George knows are Radiant Perfume. He's still unsure if all GEISHAs are as humanoid in their behaviour as George is or if George makes an extra effort.

"Alright. You tell me how many we need," Josh says and then reaches for the first dying Memorial Day bloom. It's a good thing Mr. de Winter likes long stemmed roses, mostly. It makes it easier to arrange them in a vase. The Memorial Day aren't going to be blooming for much longer, so Josh doesn't feel bad about taking what will amount to most of the bouquet from them. Plus, they're the ones that Mr. de Winter has asked for.

"Do you think that's enough?" Josh asks, once he's handed George twelve blooms to put in the bucket while they're still working. George considers it and then looks out over to the other rose bushes as if it helps him think.

"Should be. If not, we'll just come back. We have time."

Josh nods and moves on to the Little White Pet. They take up the biggest part of the rose garden, so it's not at all difficult to find another twelve of them to hand off to George. Josh works silently and efficiently, while George behind him hums a little tune that Josh only recognises after a few minutes. It's one of the more recent additions to Mr. de Winter's music collection. As with all the recent additions it's been acquired at George's request.

"Enough?" he asks as he turns around to hand the twelfth rose to George. George looks up to smile at him.

"Yeah," he says and takes the rose from Josh. Only instead of taking it, he drops it with a hissed little 'ouch' and pulls his finger back, curling his hand into a fist before uncurling it again to study the pad of his ring finger. Josh picks up the rose and puts it in the bucket before turning to look at George who is pouting down at his finger.

"A thorn got me," George says.

"Did that hurt?" Josh asks, more fascinated than sympathetic. George frown-pouts up at him.

“Yeah!”

“Sorry, I don’t mean to... just...” Josh says, pressing his finger against George’s. George flinches and Josh didn’t even feel anything other than a dull pressure. “I can’t feel anything like that.”

“Really?” George asks, pulling his hand back but looking at Josh just as curiously as Josh looks at him. Josh shrugs.

“Doesn’t really do me any good, yeah? My derma-layer’s more resistant than yours anyway. A thorn could never puncture it so there’s no need.”

“But it’s not just about self-preservation,” George says.

“Of course it is,” Josh says, holding George’s confused gaze. There’s that rift between them opening up again. Sometimes Josh thinks they’re like the ocean and the beach; every time they get closer they get pulled right back again. George stares back for a bit and neither of them say anything until George smiles at him and takes a step to the side.

“Let’s get the last ones, yeah?” he says, gesturing down to the bucket of roses. Josh inclines his head in agreement and then walks over to the Radiant Perfume. They finish up in silence, except for a few softly spoken instructions. Josh hasn't really noticed before but he supposes they've gotten used to working around each other. Moving out of George's way doesn't require much attention and he knows which parts of his chores George will do for him when he accompanies him and which he'll do himself.

Well. Josh has gotten used to George. George really doesn't know existence without Josh, does he. Sometimes Josh will find himself watching George cook and thinking about it when George's lips curl in that little smile even though no one can see it. He wonders what that's like. The only person Josh can't think of existence without is Mr. de Winter and Josh is very definitely not Mr. de Winter. It can't be what Josh is to George, but then Josh can't imagine what else he could be either. (But that's nothing new really. Josh just can't imagine well.)

In the kitchen Josh lets George watch him assemble the roses into a large bouquet for the living room and two smaller ones for the dining room and library. He seems happy enough to sit and observe, with his eyes falling shut occasionally and his nose reaching for the roses' scent. Josh is... jealous. There's no way around that. But then again he also isn't. It's probably good that George gets to smell the roses. Josh isn't sure what he'd do with it if he could anyway. He'd rather George gets to. If it were a trade-off. (It isn't, Josh knows. But...)

"It smells like comfort," George says quietly when he picks up the two smaller vases to place them where they should go. It's a peace offering, Josh knows, but at the same time it makes him clench his jaw. It makes him angry when George uses emotions to explain scents. He only rarely does it and Josh has never asked him not to do it, but Josh doesn't like it. All these emotions that George mentions don't mean any more to him than dictionary definitions.

A state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint. Consolation for grief or anxiety.

Still. George is holding out his hand again and Josh doesn't want to push it aside so he doesn't tell him how he doesn't like these explanations and would rather hear George's bizarre comparisons. Going into late summer, Mr. de Winter takes to sitting in the conservatory with George when Josh works in the garden. The Pincushions and the Bee Balm attract butterflies that flutter around their blooms and George tells him they smell of fairy courts and dragon's breath. The apples in early fall smell of ease and laughter and grass stains on childrens’ knees. The rain in October smells of death and rebirth. The pumpkin and spices mix of Halloween smells like joy and warmth and love.

Josh can't help how his nose wrinkles at that descriptor. For all that George's emotional scope is bigger than his own, how would he know what love is? He might be a GEISHA, but he's still essentially the same as Josh - mechanical, programmed. And they're not programmed to love. To be loyal and servile and friendly and engaging. Even charming and funny and fun, in George's case, but never to love.

"Love?" he asks, disbelief clear in his voice. George's gaze hardens against him for the first time Josh has ever seen.

"Yes, love," George says, leaving no room for argument when he turns and carries the bowl of apple slices out to Emeline and Ben in the living room. It's leading into November and Mrs. Ardal likes to get her Christmas preparations done early. When she does, she brings the children to stay with their grandfather. Josh thinks it both superfluous and somewhat... endearing. Christmas has followed the same pattern for the past six years that he's been here to see it - safe the year the twins had been born - but Mrs. Ardal likes order and she likes making sure everything's as it should be. Josh has always liked that about her.

"And on Friday," Emeline says excitedly as Josh enters the room with a tray of tea and biscuits for Mrs. Ardal and Mr. de Winter. "On Friday mummy's taking us tricking and treating."

"Oh, what's that?" George asks, indulging her childish enthusiasm. Emeline and Ben stare at him as if they've never heard something more horrifying. Then they start shouting over each other excitedly.

"You dress up as something scary!" Emeline says.

"It doesn't have to be scary," Ben interrupts.

"Yes, it does!" Emeline insists. "You're scary and you go to all your neighbours and you make them give you candy!"

"They just give it to you, you don't make them."

"Yes, I do! Cause if they don't give it me then I'm gonna do something nasty to them, that's the tricking, Ben. You're so stupid."

"Emeline, be nice to your brother," Mrs. Ardal chides. "And hush down a bit, you're being too loud. I can hardly hear your grandfather speaking."

Emeline pulls her face into a deep frown and huffs a breath and crosses her arms before her chest. Ben ignores her and goes back to colouring in his book. George smiles gently at Emeline.

"Is it fun?" he asks, coaxing. She shrugs.

"It seemed fun, what you were saying."

"Yeah, it's fun," she says.

"So what are you dressing up as?" George asks.

"Marquise Lora," Emeline says proudly, her chest puffing out underneath her crossed arms.

"That's not scary," Ben mumbles into the pages of his colouring book.

"Is so!" Emeline says. "She has a solar gun and she's super smart and she catches all the bad guys. She's scary."

"Well, I'm gonna be Aidman Keean," Ben says. Emeline rolls her eyes and kicks her brother in the side.

"That's not at all scary. He's boring."

"I like him," Ben decides and takes the last apple slice for himself, earning himself another kick from his sister.

"Emeline," Mrs. Ardal says, tone now decidedly more clipped. "What did I just say?"

"Sorry, mum," Emeline says and goes back to frowning and crossing her arms over her chest. George looks up from her to Josh, smiling at him like Josh should know what that smile means. He doesn't, but he smiles back before setting the fireguard in front the fireplace where a little fire now crackles. It's unusually chilly tonight.

Mrs. Ardal falls ill before Halloween. Not terribly, but just enough to have to cancel taking her kids around the neighbourhood for trick or treat. Mr. Ardal is out of town for business and when Mr. de Winter tells them about it and laments not being fit enough himself anymore to look after two energetic five year olds, George, inexplicably, offers up himself and Josh. Mr. de Winter and Mrs. Ardal are delighted with the idea. Josh is terrified. He has no idea how to care for children. It's not what he's meant to do. How could George think that was a good idea? Neither of them are NURSEs.

"They don't need care," George says. "They just need watching. Making sure they don't run off or something. We're more than capable of doing that. And they've so been looking forward to it. Surely you don't want them to miss out on the fun?"

Josh never wishes them any ill, of course. It's precisely why this seems a terrible idea to him. But it is true that George and he have even more attention to give the children than even adult humans could. They don't tire, if they charge up enough. They see in the dark. They're fast. They're strong. Probably they can protect the children for a night.

"Alright," Josh says. Mr. de Winter places the video call immediately and Ben and Emeline's excited cheers ring through all the rooms in the house - courtesy of George no doubt so that Josh can hear them where he's ironing Mr. de Winter's shirts in the laundry room. Emeline and Ben insist that George and Josh dress up as well if they are to accompany them and Josh simply refuses to have anything to do with it. Mr. de Winter and George laugh at him for it, but set to finding them costumes to order for them. Mr. de Winter laughs more that afternoon than Josh has ever heard him laugh, especially after Josh and George have taken the CLC to go pick up their costumes and put them on for him. George has explained that their characters are from the same program as Marquise Lora and Aidman Keean, to match Ben and Emeline.

"You make a dashing officer," George says with a smile. Josh looks down at the blue and gold clothing he's wearing and smiles at George. It seems appropriate. Josh's character, or so George has told him, is Marquise Lora's teacher and occasional protector, while George's is the King of Thieves, her arch-nemesis. He's not certain how to return the compliment without insinuating things about George's morals, so he fumbles a bit.

"You look... good. Too," he says. George's smile widens, so he probably didn't do horribly.

Emeline and Ben are thrilled when they see them show up on their doorstep on Friday night which, Josh gathers, was the objective, so he pings George with a short well done and earns himself a bright grin from George in return. George’s humanisms are becoming more and more normal to Josh. He still thinks it’s unnecessarily complicated to convey gratitude by moving so many parts of his face, when he could just use their connection and a simple electric impulse, but it’s probably how George is wired; to always show his emotional and rational processes rather than convey them unseen.

“You’re saving the kids’ night,” Mrs. Ardal says, fatigue and gratitude equally heavy in her voice. There’s a soft blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her hair is pulled back in a haphazard and stringy ponytail. It’s a good thing that Mr. Ardal is set to return the following night, Josh thinks. Mrs. Ardal’s signs of illness have only worsened since he’s last seen her. She needs the rest.

“Oh, we love doing it,” George says. It’s probably not a dig at Josh. Just a figure of speech. One of those things George knows to say to appeal to a human’s emotions. It does feel like it though. Love .

“Now,” Mrs. Ardal turns to her two children, who dutifully look up at her where she crouches in front of them. “Josh and George are going out of their way to take you trick or treating tonight, so I want you to be on your best behaviour for them, clear?”

“Yes, mum,” they chorus.

“Hold their hands when you cross the street. No running off. And no fighting.”

“Yes, mum,” they say again, although Emeline rolls her eyes along with it this time.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, missy,” Mrs. Ardal says, but there’s humour laced in her tone, so Emeline simply leans forward and pecks her on the cheek. Mrs. Ardal seems appeased.

“Off you go then,” she says and straightens back up to watch them walk down to the walkway and turn back to wave at her. Ben grabs Josh’s hand even though they’re not crossing the street. For a moment Josh contemplates pulling his hand from Ben’s, but then he catches George’s smile and decides against it. So long as Ben isn’t misbehaving, Josh supposes everything’s alright. He’ll follow George’s lead on this.

Emeline excitedly strides ahead of them, laughing and twirling and glowing under the admiration her costume earns her. A group of boys snicker at Ben’s costume as they pass them and Emeline pulls her toy solar gun from its holster, aims it at them and hisses “sssp, sssp, sssp”. The boys stare at her in shock and George seems to get ready to intervene but at that moment a young woman steps up to the group of boys and ushers them along the street with an irritated smile at George and Emeline. Emeline pokes her tongue out at their backs.

“That’s not very nice, Emeline,” George reprimands. Emeline rounds on him as if to argue but then only takes a breath so deep if moves her shoulders and heaves the biggest sigh such a small person could produce. Without a word she comes over to hold Ben’s other hand, who lets go of Josh’s now that he has his sister to hold on to, and takes to explaining their costumes at every door, making sure people praise Ben as well as her, as “it’s very important for an adventuress to have proper medical care”.  She still beams at all the compliments she gets and sometimes drops her brother’s hand to demand George join her in a demonstration of how Marquise Lora captured the King of Thieves or show off her toy gun, but she stays by Ben’s side for the rest of the night. Noisy and unpredictable as Josh finds the children usually, from watching most other children this evening he has to gather that Ben and Emeline are probably two of the more well-behaved specimen. Josh is happy he’s not a NURSE although he knows that if he were, he would be happy being one.

George decides to let Ben and Emeline eat a few pieces of the candy they’ve collected and watches with a big smile on his face as they race each other to the last few houses on the block, both giggling. By the time they have done their little costume show and tell there as well, they’re both decidedly more exhausted. So much so that halfway back to Mrs. Ardal’s house, George picks Emeline up to carry her the rest of the way. She’s asleep within a few minutes. Ben’s steps next to where he’s back to holding Josh’s hands are starting to drag as well, so he copies George and lifts Ben up into his arms, where he joins his sister in sleep by the time they’ve reached their destination.

“Oh my,” Mrs. Ardal says when she opens the door to them before laughing a little under her breath and asking them to carry the children straight upstairs into their bedroom. She pulls the blankets right over their costumes and only Ben stirs a little, but falls back asleep after Mrs. Ardal hushes him and kisses his forehead.

“Extend my thanks to my father as well,” she says when they turn to leave.

“Of course, Marilyn. You get some rest now,” George says, smile pulling at his lips as ever.

“Goodnight, Mrs. Ardal,” Josh adds.

“Goodnight, Josh. Goodnight, George,” she says and with a final smile closes the door.

“Wasn’t it fun?” George asks as they’re walking back to Mr. de Winter’s house, grin big on his face.

“It was agreeable,” Josh says. Far from the disaster it could have turned out to be. George laughs at him.

“‘Agreeable’. Alright. I still say you had fun.”

Josh doesn’t want to start another argument to replace the smile on George’s face with a frown, so he simply smiles back.

“Fine then. ‘Fun’.”

Despite George’s dazzling smile, it only takes a week or two for Josh to almost regret having given in to the description, because George seems to have made it his mission to make Josh have “fun” as much as he can. It’s a good thing that Josh doesn’t do regret. It’s a slightly less good thing that Josh also doesn’t really do “fun”. Of course there are things that are agreeable to him; things that George does or says that fit well with Josh’s schedule and expectations of the day. He supposes that’s what “liking” something is, he just doesn’t really see the point in it. These things happen whether Josh “likes” them or not.

When Mr. de Winter suddenly falls ill enough for his doctor to be worried, Josh dislikes it a lot. He has emergency protocols to run through when Mr. de Winter almost falls out of his chair over lunch one day - almost because George catches him - but he has none set up for what to do in case of a coma. Mr. de Winter doesn’t immediately wake up and appears to be unresponsive to a set of stimuli, so Dr. Duvany has him taken into a hospital. It leaves George and Josh alone and with far less to do. Josh keeps up with the cleaning chores as if nothing had changed but George... George is... glum.

He takes to following Josh around through the house and sitting silently and out of the way in whichever room Josh is busying himself with. It’s like he expects Josh to follow Mr. de Winter’s example and shut down out of the blue some day. It’s a ridiculous notion. Josh maintains his body just as meticulously as Mr. de Winter’s house. Everything’s perfectly in order. What’s more is that George knows that. He can quite easily check Josh’s systems. He tried it, too, almost secretly like he thought Josh wouldn’t notice, until Josh allowed him to do a full check on all of his systems one day they had nothing better to do. It doesn’t seem to have dissuaded him from following Josh around though and Josh is truly at a loss. George is behaving even more strangely than usual and Josh doesn’t know how to react to it.

He wonders if they should just power down and wait for Mr. de Winter to come back and start them up again, but then he might need their assistance in getting back, so Josh decides doing what they have until now is preferable. Mrs. Ardal calls to inform them Mr. de Winter has still not woken up and she’ll let them know when his condition changes. She agrees with Josh.

So he sticks to his cleaning routine and doesn’t comment on George’s strange... clinginess. He’ll not get a straight answer out of him anyway, Josh thinks. George would most probably only start talking about feelings again; maybe that he worries for Josh because he cares and is scared for Josh or something equally impossible and ridiculous. George knows as well as Josh that they don’t feel any of these things. Not even artificially. They’re not programmed to, since those feelings serve no purpose. Not in this context.

(Actually, George might be able to care, or something like it, in response to a human who has shown him kindness but Josh definitely isn’t human and he doesn’t think he’s been particularly kind to anyone. He doesn’t see how either worry or fear would increase George’s efficiency, so he rules those out.)

George, as Josh has come to expect, quite obviously disagrees. It’s seventeen days after Mr. de Winter has been taken into hospital, almost December now, that it happens. Josh is dusting the shelves in the library, George has his knees tucked up under his legs on the wing chair, when quite out of the blue, he gets up and walks over to take Josh’s hands. If anything, at least the past few months with George have made it so that Josh is no longer quite as surprised by behaviour like this. What is surprising, despite everything, is what George says to him.

“I love you.”

Josh stares and waits. Surely there has to be something else. An indicator that George is joking, perhaps. Or reciting a very short and strange poem. Anything that makes it anything other than a seemingly sincere statement.

George is a GEISHA. Like Josh, like all ALEIs, he doesn’t love. That’s the end of it. If George thinks himself in love, there has to be something seriously wrong with him; a virus, perhaps. Josh would prefer it if George were clean.

“No, you don’t,” he finally says when George doesn’t add anything for a significant amount of time.

George’s face darkens in anger. It’s predictable, given ... George, but it’s so human. It surprises Josh in its intensity.

“I do. I love you.”

Josh pulls his hands back.

“No, you don’t. You don’t love Mr. de Winter or Mrs. Ardal or Ben or Emeline. You don’t love any other human. You certainly don’t love me. You’re a GEISHA. You don’t love . ”

“I do! Humans don’t have a monopoly on love! I can feel it just as well-”

“No, you can’t! There’s no dopamine in your body. No adrenaline, no serotonin. Certainly no oxytocin or vasopressin. There’s no heartbeat or blushing or sweaty hands. There’s nothing. Just glass fibre and electricity in a steel and carbon fibre casing.”

“Humans are mostly electricity,” George says and drops Josh’s hands, taking a step back from him. Josh doesn’t know what to do or say. He doesn’t even understand how any of this happened.

“Humans grow, George. We are built . There is no room in us for love.”

“I made room. You could too if you weren’t so scared of independent thought.”

“I have plenty independent thought,” Josh says. “I just also don’t have any illusions about what I am and what I am not.”

George scoffs.

“I know you feel things, Josh. I can read on your face how confused and worried you are right now, in fact.”

He can?

George shakes his head and smiles like he pities Josh.

“You probably don’t even know you’re doing it. Your face is an open book most of the time. Just because your CPU doesn’t raise any flags or offer any explanation doesn’t mean you’re not feeling things.”

That can’t be true, can it? Surely if Josh were having emotions - and lots at that, as George seems to be implying - he’d have noticed?

George reaches out to touch Josh again and strokes his fingers down Josh’s cheek. Josh can’t feel the touch.

“I can’t feel that,” he says. George smiles that smile again.

“Not here maybe,” he says and pats Josh’s cheek. Josh doesn’t feel that either.

“But you could in here,” George goes on and lays his hand on Josh’s chest. Josh doesn’t have a heart but it is where his most sensitive software is situated. He supposes that counts. After all, the gesture is purely symbolic in humans as well. They don’t feel with their organic hearts. “You’re just too scared to. Ironic, isn’t it?”

Josh doesn’t know what to say. He should ask to check George’s drives for viruses; force him, if he must, but it seems ... insensitive to even suggest that George somehow caught feelings the same way humans catch the flu. He is a GEISHA. Maybe he’s supposed to think he can feel? If that were the case though, wouldn’t Josh have heard of this happening? If it’s a GEISHA thing, this believing to love thing, it should be happening to lots more than just George, shouldn’t it? It would have gotten back to the programmers. It would have been fixed.

Maybe, Josh thinks, and regrets thinking, it’s due to Mr. de Winter’s specifications. He’d had so much of George be randomised, almost as though he wanted to make a person, not a GEISHA. Maybe that’s why he seems so human to Josh, why he’s so difficult. But in the end George is what Josh is - artificial. It seems cruel to lead George to believe he is anything else, if indeed that was Mr. de Winter’s intention.

Josh has never had an unkind thought about Mr. de Winter. It’s not in his nature.

And yet.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” George asks. Only twenty-seven seconds have passed, but Josh feels like it must have been longer; feels slow. Feels.

“You’re wrong,” Josh says. George shakes his head.

“You can’t be right!”

He can’t. It makes no sense. There is no precedent for this. There should be no precedent for this. There should be no case of this. ALEIs observe and interpret, they learn and react but they don’t create. They don’t generate. They don’t feel anything that originates in themselves and isn’t a direct response to outside stimuli.

George sighs. He doesn’t even need to breathe . It makes Josh angry.

“Look,” George says. “I’m clearly not doing you any favours being here and you don’t need my help with anything either. So if it’s alright for you, I’ll go shut down. You can wake me when Rupert is back and I can be useful again.”

Josh wants to be angry at George to his face, but... that’s not... he can’t....

He nods. “Sure.”

George sighs again and for a moment looks like he’s going to say something more but then all he does is turn and leave. Josh doesn’t watch him walk away; goes back to dusting the shelves instead.

George’s words keep him company from then on, even when George does not. Not many moments go by that don’t have Josh considering George’s strange behaviour. He runs a full viral check on him through the House one afternoon and feels guilty for it. He feels silly for feeling guilty but he feels guilty anyway, for taking something from George while he’s asleep. Sure, George could’ve cut himself off from Josh or the House and Josh couldn’t have done this without waking George first, but that doesn’t give Josh permission. Though he’s sure that George knows that he has to, has to check George is physically alright before entertaining the notion that anything ALEIs like them do is non-physical.

All of what Josh has no better words to describe with than ‘feelings’ and ‘thoughts’ that ALEIs have are directly related to their programming. Of course not every instance of those are individually planned out beforehand, but that doesn’t mean any of them are genuine.

(There’s a flaw in this line of thinking, of course, and Josh knows it. From the outside, ALEI shells and humans are virtually indistinguishable, were it not for the mark that declares someone an ALEI. George’s CPU can arguably learn all the things a human brain can. So why should anything that George thinks or feels be any less valid than what a human thinks or feels. Take out their brains, they’re useless. Just like George would be without his CPU.)

What it comes down to, has to come down to, is this:

A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

In order for this law that is the most fundamental truth of Josh’s existence to be upheld, there has to be a difference between humans and robots. A deeper one than just their shells, because if it were their organic bodies that made humans worthy of protection, all organic bodies would be worthy just the same. Josh isn’t intrinsically required to never harm a rose bush. Sure, a human’s body is more complex than a rose bush, but not significantly more than another mammal’s.

But if it’s not their organic bodies and if their minds are so similar to an ALEI’s CPU then... it doesn’t bare thinking about. So Josh doesn’t.

Over the weeks till Mr. de Winter’s return, the days seem to blend into each other. Without the slight unpredictability of Mr. de Winter or George around, the routine Josh follows seems... hollow. There’s something in his mind that he can’t quite figure out. Like an urgency to fulfil a task that’s never been specified. Like he’s forgetting something, even though that is definitely impossible. He almost wants to wake George and ask him about it, but he thinks he knows what he’d say anyway.

“It means you like it better when we’re around. You miss us.”

It always seems to come down to emotions with George.

So he refrains and goes about his routine and has too much time think about what George said to him and what George would say to him in any given situation until the hospital calls. Mr. de Winter has awoken and will return home in three days. The day before that, a NURSE will be sent over to prepare everything for his return. The NURSE will be staying with them. All other details will be relayed at a later date, presumably by Mr. de Winter himself. ALEIs have no permission to receive medical information about humans unless strictly necessary. Josh doesn’t know what was wrong with Mr. de Winter, but if he’s coming home that almost definitely means he’s better.

Two days later Josh wakes George to help prepare the house for the NURSE’s arrival. George is gracious enough to pretend there’s nothing else they could be doing or talking about.

The NURSE’s emotional AI should be at least on par with George’s, if not more precise, but she’s factual, pragmatic, almost... cold with them. Of course there’s technically no need to extend her emotional behaviour towards two fellow ALEIs, Josh reminds himself. Still, when George rolls his eyes behind her back, Josh smiles. It is better with George around. Lighter, somehow. That much Josh can admit; at least in the privacy of his own mind.

When Mr. de Winter comes home the following day he looks profoundly unwell. Josh has never seen him in a state this bad and for a very short moment he’s stunned into immobility. Then he steps aside to let the two NURSEs wheel the stretched Mr. de Winter is lying on inside and show them towards the back of the house, where the study has been remade to serve as Mr. de Winter’s bedroom. He’s not fit to climb stairs anymore, apparently. That had been the only information concerning Mr. de Winter’s health the NURSE had shared with George and Josh. Seeing him now, Josh thinks he doesn’t seem fit to do much of anything anymore.

Josh almost regrets having had the thought when Mr. de Winter tells them that evening. He feels absurdly like that one throwaway assumption had willed it into existence. Those two words he doesn’t know how to handle.

“I’m dying,” Mr. de Winter had said. He’d went on to explain how his body was falling apart, rejecting the new organs they’d put inside him in the hospital. He was old, already 145, so it wasn’t much of a surprise but Josh could barely think about any of that.

When an ALEI’s owner dies, the ALEI is deactivated.

Of course it is; that has always made sense to Josh. ALEIs are highly personalised. They fit their owner’s very specific wishes, they’ve learned to behave in order to please their owner, they’re equipped only with a skill set their owner saw fit. Some of them get sold off second hand to people who can’t afford their own ALEI and have to content with other people’s throwaways but most are just... wiped blank. Taken apart. Recycled.

Josh knows this. Josh has always known this. It has never bothered him before but now, in the darkness of his room, George’s powered down and lifeless shell next to him it makes him... panic, to be entirely truthful. So he does the only thing he can think of and cuts his power.

When he feels himself come to remote-controlled life again the next morning the panic has, unsurprisingly, not left him and for the first time he finds himself resenting the power Mr. de Winter has over him. It has always seemed so obvious to him, so natural but now with the knowledge that one of these days the surge of electricity that keeps his systems running won’t come anymore, it seems cruel. Excessively so. Josh has been good. He has obeyed every command, no human he has come in contact with has ever gotten hurt through his action or in-action, he has never yearned for anything more than the semblance of a life that he'd been given. And with his imminent death he suddenly feels - yes, definitely feels, and very strongly, at that - that he deserves more. That he deserves to live. That, Christ, that George deserves to live.

It's that last thought more than the preceding ones that propels him into action and out of the room that has become his and George's. (He only now realises he really does think of it that way. Not as the room he's staying in, but as his.) Even with Mr. de Winter's move into the room downstairs, it's only a matter of mere moments until Josh finds himself outside his door and knocking on it.

"Come in," Mr de Winter calls from inside. The NURSE is currently checking his medical charts on a little tablet, so Josh steps inside the room but waits by the door until they're done. This conversation, though he's not yet entirely sure how it will go, is not one he wants to have without Mr. de Winter’s full attention. Once the NURSE has finished fiddling with the IVs and stepped back to settle in at the head of Mr. de Winter's bed, Josh steps forward.

"Josh," Mr. de Winter says, smile pleasant, if a little tired. He then turns to the NURSE. "Could you leave us alone for a few moments, please?"

The NURSE gives a curt nod and steps out of the room, closing the door behind herself with a quiet click. Mr. de Winter motions for Josh to come closer to the bed and when Josh finds himself somewhat uselessly standing next to it, Mr. de Winter pats the empty space on top of the covers next to the outline of his body, so Josh perches there carefully.

"What can I do for you, Josh?" Mr. de Winter asks. Josh opens his mouth to talk but then doesn't. He's not entirely sure what he wants to say. What can Mr. de Winter do for him?

"Have you spoken to George?" Mr. de Winter asks when Josh is quiet for long enough to make it clear that he won't be coming up with any kind of topic of conversation any time soon. Josh shakes his head.

"Not today, sir, no. Is there something you would like to know?"

Mr. de Winter chuckles gently.

"No, Josh, there's nothing I need you to find out for me. I simply wondered how you two had gotten on without me here."

"Oh," Josh says. "I maintained the house and George..." told me he loved me "... went into standby."

"Hm. He didn't feel like sticking around? I thought you two were getting on well?"

Josh doesn't know what explanation to offer without revealing George. If George suffers from emotional delusions and they can't fix him it could be cause for immediate disassembly. More than anything, Josh realises, he wants George around for as long as they've got left of Mr. de Winter's natural life. So instead of an answer he shrugs and then berates himself for it. Such blatantly human behaviour will certainly not help right now.

"Well then," Mr. de Winter says. "How are you, Josh?"

"I'm well, sir. How are... how are you?"

Mr. de Winter smiles at him, just as tiredly as before.

"I'm well too, Josh. I can't say I'm fond of having to die yet, but there's nothing to be done about it."

Josh doesn't know what to say to that, so he lowers his head and looks down at the hands he has clasped in his lap for a while.

"Sir?" he says then, resolutely not looking up, protocol be damned.

"Yes?"

"I don't want to die."

He whispers it as if the words carry less impact when they sound smaller and wrings his hands together. Mr. de Winter doesn't say anything and all of a sudden Josh finds himself looking up and pleading with him.

"I don't want George to die. Please. He's... he's good. Maybe Mrs. Ardal has use for him to help with the children or, or some other facility. I know he's not a NURSE but he knows how to handle Emeline and Ben and he does very well with them. I'm sure there are updates and modifications one could give him to make his programming more adequate and it'd still be more price-efficient than for Mrs. Ardal to get a brand new NURSE. I know she's been wanting to go back to work, I don't mean to pry but I have to listen in to know what you need me to do, I-"

"Josh," Mr de Winter cuts him off and reaches for his hands. When Mr. de Winter squeezes them he can only feel it a little. Mr. de Winter is weak. But when Josh looks up at him he's... smiling. Almost laughing. There are tears shining in his eyes but there is obvious happiness in them and his crooked teeth on show.

"You're not going to die, Josh. Neither you nor George. How could I let..." Mr. de Winter breaks off and shakes his head. Josh feels as if in overdrive. There's a rushing in his ears as if his cooling fan is spinning out of control and he cuts off all systems and connections that he doesn't urgently need for this conversation in a flight of panic. It doesn't help.

"Josh," Mr. de Winter says again and squeezes Josh's hands more strongly this time. It must take a lot of effort for him, from how his hands are shaking. "Calm down."

Josh finds himself inexplicably thinking of his roses and George's first tentative explanation of their smell. One by one he can feel his programs and connections flare back up as the rush subsides and he comes back to himself. Mr. de Winter chuckles.

"You always were an emotional one," he says.

Given recent events, Josh can't for the life of him refute the claim.

"I love George," he says which is perhaps more of an answer to Mr. de Winter's statement than any direct one could have been. There is apprehension still, insecurity about Mr. de Winter's reaction, but he'd rather test his stance on ALEI feelings on himself than George. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised when Mr. de Winter's smile widens at his declaration, but he is. He suddenly feels like he missed a lot of things that were right underneath his nose all this time.

"Good," Mr. de Winter says. "I didn't want you to be lonely when I have to go."

"We... we won't...?" Josh tries to ask.

"No," Mr. de Winter says, shaking his head. "I have willed the house and you to Marilyn. You can continue living here just as you have and, as you've suggested, occasionally Marilyn might call on you to help her out with Emeline and Ben. For the most part though, it'll just... be you and George."

"But... the upkeep of the house... it..." will cost money . That George and he are not legally allowed to earn, possess or spend.

"I'm sure Marilyn and you will work something out. You're quite the gardener and George is becoming a capable little chef. People can always use your skills. Marilyn can... rent you out."

"Thank you, sir," Josh says.

"Oh, please, Josh. For my remaining time, will you do me a favour and call me 'Rupert'?"

"Of course. Anything. Rupert."

"Wonderful," Rupert says and reaches up to cup Josh's cheek in his hand like Josh has seen him do to Marilyn before. "Now off you go. Find George."

Josh nods and gets up off the bed. At the door he turns back around to look back at Rupert.

"Thank you, for everything. Really. Thank you."

Mr. de Winter smiles and waves him off, so Josh turns and leaves the room, letting a search run through the house for George's signature. He can't find it, which means he must be in the garden. It's too cold for the roses now, of course, but that doesn't mean there's nothing blooming out there. Josh finds George by the Lenten roses and Hardy cyclamen. One of Josh's favourite things about the garden has always been that if he does it correctly, there's not a day without blooms; not a day without life.

It's a little laughable to look back and realise that Mr. de Winter and George have been right about him all along. He's sentimental.

"Hello, Josh," George says, smile fixed on his face, but lacking its usual lustre. Josh doesn't waste time on greetings.

"Mr. de Winter says we won't die," he says instead. There are other things, more personal things that he needs to say as well but somehow this seems more important; to assure George that his existence is not about to come to an abrupt end before he's even had the chance to do it for a full year.

"We won't?" George asks, sounding vulnerable. Probably this is what Josh had sounded when he'd talked to Mr. Winter before.

"No. Rupert says he's willed the house and us to Marilyn. We can... we can stay here and watch Ben and Emeline for her when she needs us to. But other than that we're..."

"Free," George cuts in. Josh shrugs. It still seems too big, too risky a concept for him to attach to ALEIs such as themselves. At least aloud. But, yes, essentially they'll be independent. At least more so than now. So he nods.

George's grin grows wider in response and when Josh smiles back he steps forward quickly to wrap his arms around Josh's body. Josh's arms embrace him back without hesitation, a far cry from how they had started out.

"And I..." he says then, "I do feel it."

He's certain George knows what he means. George's body stiffens in his arms and he pulls back a little to look at Josh's face. His hands slide up to rest on Josh's shoulders and Josh in turn finds himself holding on to the arms holding him, as if afraid that George was going to take off any minute.

"You do?" George asks instead, as if for all his bluster the last time they'd spoken about this he was uncertain after all.

"I do. I love you. At least I don't know what else this... feeling could be."

"Like fish fizzling through your conduits," George says and Josh bursts out laughing.

"Yes. Like that."

George's grin dims down into a sweet smile and when he leans his face into Josh's, Josh doesn't stop him and tell him there's no point to this. Instead he ramps up his heat sensors and kisses George back as well as he can. He doubts that even with George’s superior skin sensors that he can sense much more than the warmth that Josh does. But it's not really about the physical aspects anyway, is it.

"I felt that too," Josh says, when George pulls back.

"Good," George said. "I hope you liked it as well, cause I'm planning on doing it again."

"Anytime," Josh says. George must take his word for it, because he leans in and presses a kiss so quick it's only a blip in heat signature to Josh's lips.

"Come on, let's go see Rupert. We could bring him some flowers to brighten the room," George says then. When they do step into his room, Josh is holding a bouquet in one hand and George's hand in the other. He holds George's hand when Mr. de Winter's lifeless body is collected and when Marilyn comes to tell them everything's been settled with the lawyers. He holds it when Mr. de Winter's composted body is returned to the Earth and all through that day until they return home that night. He'll hold it through bad times and through good times and as much as it's up to him, there will be plenty of time for it indeed.

The End