Yulia returned a few days ter. He didn’t ask why she hadn’t shown up the prior day, and she didn’t offer. She just sat ba her stool and started talking like nothing had happened.

  Initially, when the girl first showed up, Alexander didn’t want her around because he assumed she would disrupt his work or injure herself. There was still that ce, but the more she talked, the more he was gd for her pany.

  It didn’t take him long to realize why. He hadn’t had a proper versation with anyone since waking up. The only people he versed with were his ers. And none of them were muterested in sitting and chatting with a robot.

  He wasn’t sure if that was because they didn’t buy his story of being sid having to use the robot as a surrogate, or something else. And he certainly wasn’t going to aliehe few ers he had by asking about it.

  In the lulls between Yulia’s ramblings, Alexander asked her questions while he worked. She always beamed in pride when she was able to ahem, but when she didn’t know, she would just sch her face up before eventually shrugging. “Dunoh,” was her go-to answer for those.

  On her visit, she brought in a beat-up-looking tablet with a worried look on her face.

  “Good m, Yulia.”

  “Umm… m, Alex…” The girl fidgeted as she set the tablet on the desk without taking a seat. Which was impressive because the desk was rather tall since he had built it to suit his much taller frame.

  He had noticed the girl teo get antsy and fidget when something was b her. Usually, it was when she was hungry or bored.

  “I- I dropped my tablet… you fix it… please?” That st word came out with so much pleading that if Alexander was in his old human body, he probably would have bent down and soled the poor child. As it sat, he just sighed and put down the er request he had been w on. He reached over and slid the pte of resin, that passed for tablets, in front of himself.

  There was a faded bel attached to the side that read ‘Property of Petrov Station Orphanage’. He turo the little girl who quickly looked away. “Your tablet?”

  “It- It’s the ohe orphanage makes me use for study time.”

  “And how exactly did it get broken?” he asked as he ied the device. Alexander had seen simir devices around. They were not like the fragile tablets from ba his day. On one occasion, he had seen one of the automated loaders run a simir device over after someone dropped it. The guy simply picked it back up, brushed it off, and gave a rude gesture to the loader befoing back about his work.

  “Dunoh,” she responded without looking at him.

  He sighed again before returning his focus to the eleic device. Surprisingly, he hadn’t dealt with mu the way of futuristic eleics. Oh sure, there were eleics built into most items he worked with. But they weren’t much more advahan ba his day.

  It seemed old methods worked well enough for most things that nobody seemed all that ied in making things even more plicated just for the sake of it.

  Alexander picked up a thin pstic tool he had printed for popping the ptes off of trol boards. He rahin tool around the edge of the tablet until it hooked against something. One hing about the teology of this time, it was built to be fixed. With a slight push, he slid the log stud up and out of the groove, allowing the two halves of the tablet to separate.

  Seeing as there were no physical signs of damage oerior, other than the wear of age, he figured something ihe device had been knocked loose.

  There was a small spark as the back half came free, making Yulia jump. “What was that?” she asked, more out of curiosity than fear.

  Alexander smiled internally. “Dunoh.”

  The girl stared at him for a bit before she realized what he was doing. Then she pouted. “No fair.”

  He allowed his avatar face to ugh at her expression. “Ty that game,” he responded, and the girl relented.

  Truthfully, he had no idea what that was. He set the s part doicked up the back to i it. He found a small set of metallitacts. There was also a bunch of teical information printed on the inside.

  He read it. “It’s the battery.” It was rather ingenious. The entire back of the tablet was a solid-state battery. No need for a cover or anything. Now that he thought about it, he had never seen anyone plug any devices in for charging. A battery of this size could probably power something this small for weeks on end. When he looked over the device, he didn’t see aernal e either. It had to be using some form of ambient or passive charging to keep it charged. Not really anything all that groundbreaking. They had indu charging teology ba his time.

  A few fine fiments broke free from one of his fio touch against the metal es of the battery. As much as he was loath to admit it, Yuri was the one who had discovered this little trick built into this body. And while Alexander couldn’t get the exact reading off the battery, thanks to the damage in his mind-space, he did watch for the flicker that registered the input. It wasn’t hard to see si fshed a color that none of his other data streams ever showed.

  He nodded and pced the battery down on the desk. It was still good. Then he looked at the mess that made up the processor and s side of the devid frowned. He could tell where the power came in, and that it had a s, but everything else was alien to him. He would need a microscope just to see… or did he?

  Alexander bent his focus onto a small se of the device. The image in his mind-space seemed to bend and for a moment before he was soon viewing a small se in much higher detail. Like he was looking through a magnifying gss.

  After all these years, he barely uood a fra of what this body was capable of. He wao ugh at the discovery but he restrained himself. Mostly so he didn’t scare Yulia.

  With so much time spent ihis form, he still didn’t uand how it took in light to produ image, let alone how it even powered itself. Maybe with this new ability to zoom in, he could purchase a mirror and i himself more thhly. A thought for a ter time.

  The little bubble of magnified area zoomed across the device wherever he focused. It was amazing because it didn’t take away from his vision of anything else, it just enhahat portion. He found he could focus even smaller, but after a certain point, he started to feel weird and had to pull bao eleicroscope vision for him it seemed.

  But he had learned what he o learn. He sent instrus to the printer for a very specific set of tools. He really hoped the cheaper device was capable of printing them.

  After less than thirty seds, the printer beeped, letting him know it was plete. He walked over arieved the tiny tool, with an even smaller rod at the end of it. He used that hair-thin rod aly poked it through a hole in the eleics. The titanium flexed slightly uhe pressure before there was a soft click.

  He did this three more times, allowing the separator pte to e free from the eleiderh. It was no wonder he hadn’t reized anything. The pte was some weird piece of tech that seemed to act as a thermal barrier as well as something else. Although he wasn’t sure what that something was.

  It took another half an hour of removing pos aing before he found the issue. The e for the s had simply e loose. Once he pushed it bato pd put everything back, the tablet came to life.

  He hahe w tablet back to the girl. She beamed up at him before hopping off her stool and running around the ter to hug him, smashing the retly repaired tablet into his hard form. Instead of admonishio be more careful ime, he lightly patted her on the bad sent her on her way.

  She happily obliged, humming some unknown tune as she skipped out of his shop swinging the tablet bad forth without care.

  With her gone, he turned his focus ba the paid work he o get done.

  ***

  Yulia hummed a tune from her favorite cartoon as she made her way back to the orphanage. Some of the younger children were required to stay at the orpha now that she was eight, she was allowed outside for certain hours of the day. And like most of the older kids, she jumped at the opportunity to leave the stuffy and b space of the orphao explore the station.

  Most of the adults either ighem or shooed them away. Some even yelled at them or in one instance spped one of the older kids. She heard from Markus that the man who did that got what was ing to him after that i. Whatever that meant. That’s why Alex was so cool. Well, other than the fact he was a robot. He didn’t seem to mind her hanging around and bugging him. She knew she talked a lot, Markus and the other kids all told her that.

  Speaking of Markus, she rounded a er of the corridor and nearly ran into the eleven-year-old boy.

  “Watch where yoing, pipsqueak.”

  “I told you to stop callihat!” she huffed.

  The older boy snorted. “I’ll stop calling you that when you grow a few inches. What’s that in your hand?”

  “Nothing,” She quickly resporying to hide the tablet behind her back. But Markus was too quick.

  He snatched the tablet out of Yulia’s hand before she could hide it.

  Markus put his hands on his hips and tried to look like the headmaster of the orphanage. “Why do you have one of the orphaablets out here?” he asked, waving the tablet in front of her.

  “It’s my tablet,” she responded indignantly.

  “No, it’s the orphanage’s. You know if the headmaster finds out you took this out without permission, yon ing duty for a week.”

  She stiffe that. Yulia didn’t like having to the orphanage, nobody did. But what would be worse is that she wouldn’t be able to visit Alex if she got in trouble. “You won’t tell him, will you?”

  The older boy sighed, dropping his hands. “Look, I’ll help you sneak it ba, but if I get caught, I’m not taking the bme. Are we clear?”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “Why did you take it out anyway?”

  She looked at the ground before mumbling a reply. “I sorta broke it.”

  “You broke a tablet?” He looked at the device, it seemed to be w just fine. “But it's w.”

  “Alex fixed it for me.”

  “I told you that you should stay away from that robot, you have no idea what it could do.”

  “Alex has been nothing but o me,” she stated with child-like vi. “He even fixed the tablet for free.”

  “Fine, don’t e g to me if something happens then. e on, we’re going to be te for the evening meal. I’ll also need you to distract the headmaster so I she tablet bato the drawer.”

  She gave him a sloppy salute like she had seen in movies. “Aye aye, Captain.” Befhing and sprinting away.

  “Why you!” Markus chased the giggling girl as they hurried down the corridor and toward the orphanage.