By the time Eva ‘Spark’ Rodriguez turned twenty-three, she’d lived on a string of mining planets. When she was young, a hover-transport had jackknifed in front of the family hovercar and, though she’d lost an arm—the doctors replaced it with a robotic limb—they couldn’t replace her parents. The robotic arm had gained her a special affinity for mechanical things and there was no lack of machines on mining colonies.
As she nursed a Valkyrie Lager in Weber’s Place on the most remote colony of them all, Odin III, Eva thought of how, whichever planet she visited, there was always something missing.
That morning, however, Eva woke up to find something written in one of her discrete online forums that might be curious to others, but was foundation-shaking for her: some robots on Odin III were gaining sentience after sustaining some kind of damage. She was particularly struck by a young girl, Vivi, who’d rescued a damaged grocery bot from the scrap heap.
____________
Hearing a whirring sound, nine-year-old Eva looked into a dumpster to find a worn and broken robotic dog. Unable to deal with the whole orphan thing and the group home bullies, she’d taken to fixing things—toasters, thermostats, washers—instead of herself. So she fixed the robotic pup as best she could.
“I’ll name you Art3mis, after that book character I loved.”
Eva found solace in elaborate, imaginary adventures. She reclaimed the name the bullies called her and dubbed herself Spark, the robot girl. Eva/Spark and Art3mis went on hundreds of imagined adventures, and she imagined the pup speaking.
Rescuing princes from Cjipean aliens: “Lazy royals. They should have rescued themselves.”
Riding migratory pterodactyls over the Drakensberg Mountains: “Where are the motion sickness bags?”
Capturing the dread outlaw, Black Pete for a handsome reward. “Maybe we should keep him as a pet.”
Whenever Spark told Art3mis, “I love you,”—most often at the end of an adventure—the small robotic dog would always reply, “And I you, to the moon and back.” An imagined response, but it felt so real.____________
Eva finished both her lager and the last post on the forums. Her first stop would be a visit to Sloane-51, who lived with Eva’s friend and local machinist, Daraja. Sloane-51 had been a semi-autonomous repair drone when a solar burst had blindsided her, simultaneously wreaking havoc and setting her free.
When Eva knocked on Daraja’s door, he immediately ushered her in—he was always welcoming, and they’d collaborated on a number of repair projects around the colony.
Pleasantries dispensed, Eva asked, “Is Sloane-51 in?”
Daraja nodded. “Sloane? Eva is here.”
Eva started, “So I have this friend…” Before she knew it, she was telling the whole story of Spark and Art3mis
“So you haven’t found out why you gained sentience?” Eva asked afterwards.
“Not yet,” Sloane-51 replied. “But you’re welcome to copy my notes.”
____________
Spark and Art3mis arrived at the beach for the group home field trip, but the real adventure for them was to liberate a chest of Spanish doubloons from the Pirate King. Spark held a rapier with her robotic arm, while Art3mis circled behind the King.
“Give it up, Pirate King. You don’t have a chance,” Spark said.
“Pirate King?” Art3mis snorted. “You look like a four-year-old in a bad Halloween costume.”
Suddenly a rogue wave crashed into them. Art3mis was pulled from Spark’s hands and Spark could feel the little robotic dog underwater, bumping off her hip, tumbling down her legs, and then sucked away from her. After a frantic search through the white foam waves, Spark found Art3mis after what felt like hours, but the sand and salt water had destroyed Art3mis' circuitry.
“I love you, Art3mis.” Spark cradled the little dog. “I love you.”
But Art3mis was silent. Not even an imagined response.
“I love you,” Spark whispered.
Eva didn’t speak again for three weeks, and her Spark persona slowly faded away.____________
Eva spent every moment she could working on the sentience enigma. She interviewed the other sentient robots: a coffee maker who had maybe gained sentience by watching soap operas with an old prospector, and a hulking but gentle grocery bot.
Eva studied everything about Odin III—its mass and size, atmospheric composition, and magnetic fields. Its rotation period, orbital eccentricity, and axial tilt. She even studied its orbital resonance, stellar metallicity, and eccentricity of orbit. But for every Odin III characteristic she studied, there was another planet in the known worlds that shared that characteristic. And on none of those planets had robots gaining sentience.
Like Sloane-51, Eva couldn’t unravel the sentience mystery.
One evening, Eva was watching Daraja and Sloane play chess. Between moves, Daraja told Eva, “Even though we live in a mining colony, maybe you don’t always have to dig deeper. Sometimes what you’re looking for is right in front of you.”
She’d been approaching her problem like an engineer. But maybe she didn’t have to solve the problem. She’d simply recreate the conditions—find the truth in front of her. Maybe she didn’t have to understand.
“Daraja, you two are the absolute best!”
So Eva started charging Art3mis every night, but maybe more importantly, she brought Art3mis everywhere. In the mines, while fixing longwall shearers and armored face conveyors. They ate lunch with miners and engineers. At Weber’s Place, she talked with people she’d previously only nodded at. Even walking around town, she began conversations with people she’d seen a hundred times, but never spoken to.
It dawned on her how much hope she’d invested into the whole hopeless endeavor. She also realized how truly lonely she’d been.
One morning Eva woke up to see Art3mis’s dead eyes pinning her. The blue charge light showed full charge, but still nothing from Art3mis.
The quest to bring back Art3mis had started as days that had turned into weeks, then months. She’d made some friends along the way, but it was still more than Eva could take. She cracked. She hadn’t cried since before the accident when she’d lost her parents. The tears came hard with ugly jagged sobs. All the pain of bullying at the group home and of losing her parents—and of losing Art3mis.
A shaft of morning sun burned through a slit in the apartment’s blinds and fell across Art3mis.
Then, through a haze of tears, Eva saw Art3mis blink.
And then again.
“Heya, Spark,” Art3mis said. “The last thing I remember was the ocean and the Pirate King, but judging from the wifi signals, it’s been a long time since then.” This time, it wasn’t a phrase that Eva had created. It was a statement Art3mis spoke aloud—it was something a sentient Art3mis would say.
And at that moment, Eva was a child again. She was Spark. “I missed you so, so much, Art3mis,” she said. “I love you.”
“And I you,” Art3mis replied, “to the moon and back.”
And Spark knew it was true. But she also realized that maybe it was okay to let others in. Maybe Art3mis, in the end, had taught her the biggest lesson of all.
“Art3mis? Would you like to meet a couple other friends of mine?”
New to Odin III? Find out what you’ve been missing!
Check out The Complete Episode Guide.
Coming Tuesday: Episode 48, “Night Walk,” by Eric Fomley
Travis Burnham is an SF&F writer and science teacher. His work has or will soon appear in Far Fetched Fables, Hypnos Magazine, South85 Journal, Dream of Shadows, and Stupefying Stories, among other places. His most recent previous story for us was “10 Ways to Survive an SF Story.” If you have not read it, you should check it out.
Originally from New England, he’s lived in Japan, Colombia, Portugal, and the Marianas Islands, and currently teaches science at an international school in Malta. He’s a bit of a thrill seeker, having bungee-jumped in New Zealand, hiked portions of the Great Wall of China, and gone scuba diving in Bali. He’s got some novels currently looking for homes and can be found online at travisburnham.blogspot.com, or infrequently on twitter @Darwins_Finch.
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