Free ASIM_issue_54 by ed. Simon Petrie Page A

acquiesced to his pushing her around in a chair. Like night after sunset, her end was drawing in.
    One night as they lay together in her big bed, her head resting on his chest listening to the wheels and cogs of his heart, she said, “You don’t know how much it pains me to tell you this, HG, but I fear I must leave you soon.”
    And as she spoke the words he heard his mechanical heart break. How could she know? No human he encountered came with an expiry date tattooed on their body. Yet he accepted that somehow she knew more than he did.
    “My love,” he murmured, and he squeezed her bird-like hand in his, felt her flutter beside him.
    “Now you mustn’t worry, HG. You’ll be taken care of. I’ve seen to it. What’s mine is yours and always has been.”
    “And what’s mine is yours, and forever will be.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead as tears formed in his eyes.
    He listened to her through the night as she slept, listened to the silence when her heart stopped beating, overrode the protocol programmed into him to keep her alive no matter what the cost. For a time the nanobots whirred around her, trying to keep her breathing, make her heart beat again, push the blood through her veins. He could almost taste their confusion and sadness when she did not respond. They had failed. In time they too succumbed to silence.
    She had worked hard enough for those who would exploit her. It was time to let her go. And yet he remained motionless, holding her body in his arms through the night, aware this was probably his last chance to hold her.
    When Nona called her down for breakfast, HG carefully disengaged himself from her cold, still, body, tried to gather his courage, his thoughts. He had played through this scene all through his lonely night. He hadn’t anticipated Nona’s scream when he told her, though. While there’d always been distance between them, now she looked at him as if he were a monster.
    She raced up the stairs to see for herself, and her wailing for Eliza filled the house with sorrow. She was inconsolable, so it fell to him to call Robbie and Powell to let them know.
    At least their responses were predictable. Powell flew into a fine range. “Back in your box!” he yelled at HG, no need to even play at civility now that Eliza was gone. “Our contract with you is terminated.”
    HG nodded acquiescence of his situation, and merely held out a sheet of paper for Powell to read.
    Powell naturally expected it to be the contract, but was surprised to find he was looking at a page from a story.
    “Eliza’s work, undoubtedly,” he proclaimed, having read it. “Did she finish a final novel and secret it away from us by any chance?”
    Astute as ever, HG saw the dollar signs illuminate Powell’s eyes. “Eliza’s and my work. Can you tell who wrote which line … ?” His eyebrow arched as if to say, ‘What was that about getting into a box?’
    “But you can’t !” Powell all but exploded. “You’re a machine !” That last word was spat out of his mouth as if it were the vilest of insults.
    HG cocked his head in acknowledgement. “Indeed. But one that’s learned to write fiction in his own voice, as well as to imitate hers.”
    Powell blustered before him. “You’ve experienced a little success, I grant you, but only through your association with her. Your efforts are that of an awkward beginner—”
    “Pinpoint my words on that page then, if they are so crass.”
    Powell read the page again, and couldn’t differentiate. “A trick,” he declared indignantly. “You’ve merely printed out a page of Eliza’s writing and you’re trying to trick me.”
    “And why would I do that, Mr Powell?”
    “So we don’t decommission you.”
    “I think you’ll find it hard to decommission me when you read her will. I am the sole beneficiary of her estate.”
    “But you’re a mechanoid ! You can’t inherit, you aren’t a legal entity.”
    “I was real enough for Eliza. And, of course,