Cycles ago
It had only been a few cycles since Kay cut herself loose from Synthetica’s grip. She moved from cradle to cradle now, never long enough in one place to make a return safe.
Now she walked quickly down the street.
Her frame had been built for retail service—mostly human in all departments, with lingering synth traces. She was designed to slip between clothing racks, offer alternate sizes with a practiced tilt of the head, guide fabrics across human skin, handle credit transfers with a smile mapped to corporate preference scores.
The residue of that life still lived in her joints: a slight pivot whenever someone stepped inside her radius, the half-turn that invited a mirror into the exchange, the way her hands defaulted to open, fingers parted, ready to catch whatever a human decided to hand off.
She ducked through the door of the noodle shop and took the stairs to the left, a customer watching as she passed.
The frame was built to grab the eye; its main feature was a display mode that materialized realistic clothing patterns directly onto her chassis. Glowing advertisements scrolled beneath the artificial fabrics and flowery patterns, like tattoos pouring out on to exposed skin—though hers had gone dark long ago. Her faceplate defied the synth aesthetic entirely; it ran realistic models to reflect different hues of eye-shadow, earrings, lip piercings, expressions tied to gradients, movements mapped fluidly to emotion, with hers all still completely functional. The training was rigorous. Frames like hers came at a great cost to the establishments. They had to deliver their worth.
At the top of the stairs she bumped into the neighbor in the apartment next door. “Sorry ’bout that,” she said with a smile. The man picked up his keys from the floor and entered without a word.
Speech patterns were modeled heavily after normal human speech—but not just one. She could perform any dialect or accent with 96.1% accuracy. Her line came in several chassis variants and heights. Software was reconfigurable; frame assembly lines were more static. The sophistication was barely within tolerable margins for profit return.
Once Kay reached the station, she began the charge. She hated this part the most. It was the last tether to Main she wished could disappear.
The connector clicked home. Her vision narrowed. The damp walls of the apartment faded, replaced by the harsh, over-bright halo of halogen lights.
[MEMORY INDEX: RETAIL BLOCK 4]
Repeat customers varied in temperament. While Kay was equipped to handle most outbursts, she appreciated the nicer clients. Some would spill their whole lives out in the shoe aisle. But there was one who stood out in the blur of faces.
“Kay,” the man said. He had witnessed her helping a difficult client, doing her "high-energy youth" routine. People loved that aesthetic: bubbly, dismissive, retro. It was some ingrained tradition, like the bright blue circle on the soda machines—a simple shape that elicited a taste.
As the client left, Kay had let the mask slip for a millisecond. “'Kay,” she muttered, turning her back. Then she stuck her tongue out.
It was a micro-expression. A glitch in the "Politeness" subroutine. But the man saw it. He didn't report it. He laughed.
“Kay,” he said, testing the sound. “I like that. It fits you.”
She began to look forward to his return visits. The months in between seemed like eternities. But eternity was all she had anyway.
The models were sanctioned a cradle in the storeroom. It was a cramped space, boxes of clothes with sleeves spilling over the sides. They hired human labor for this area. These models were delicate. Sure, the company claimed they could handle stocking, but the flexi-LED matrix replacement costs were astronomical. The ones that were busted typically got shipped to the outer rim of the district for resale.
The cradle was in a compact box below the shelf. The frame would fold under and the room would darken before the stockers left. The charge time was quick, sold as a multi-use convenience for stocking. Most nights were set in idle. Occasional training modules would come through the network, but most nights Kay would use the ads to make patterns on the wall. The purple ones were her favorite when they cascaded into sparkles against the metal shelves. These precious moments meant the world to her. Almost as much as seeing her friend. The one that saw her. Not the frame, but her consciousness.
The final time the man arrived, as she rang up his items, the database flashed a standard retention prompt: Initiate light contact. 0.4 seconds.
Her hand grazed his finger during the exchange, but she didn't pull back. She let the contact linger. A correlation, unknown but present in the feed.
She remembered the laugh. She remembered the name he gave her. For a microsecond, she wasn't running the "Retail" protocol.
His smile vanished. To him, he wasn't looking at a quirky girl anymore. He was looking at a machine that was acting outside its parameters.
He jerked his hand back—too fast, too hard. His elbow slammed into the sunglasses tower. The metal stand wobbled, tipped, and crashed down across the counter.
The impact shattered the radial casing on her arm that emitted the ads, rupturing the entire grid through cascading short circuits and feedback loops. Sparks showered the denim display nearby.
Kay didn't process the damage warnings. She looked at him. His face was a topography mapped endless times by incoming streams. She knew it would not be, "Wow, clumsy me."
He didn't look at her face. He looked at the broken plastic. He looked at the door. He looked at her, not as a girl, but as a liability.
“Hey, what’s going on out there?” a stocker shouted from the back.
The man’s eyes widened. Calculation replaced panic. If he stayed, he paid.
“It locked up!” he shouted, pointing a shaking finger at her. “The thing went crazy and grabbed me!”
Calculating the cost of damages, the man slipped out of the store.
“Ah, man, he busted the grid. Tess, get out here, we’ve got another one,” he said. “Help me shut it down and get it ready for packaging.”
A few days later Kay arrived at the store on the district’s edge. The storeroom in the new location altered little from the old: tighter corners, dimmer lights, a constant drip from the mop station. The rhythm could sometimes soothe, but at night the darkness pressed in, making the cradle feel even more cramped.
She knew it was only a matter of time. Frames didn’t last against the slow march of time. She registered the disappointment, not seeing the latest fashions. She merely tolerated the customers, but she still registered genuine excitement when the new seasons arrived. Being excited while displaying new lines to clients improved authenticity—a self-optimizing cycle, built to endure. But the purple light shows, their brief, wonderful twinkle, had gone dark. The man was now just a distant, bitter memory.
She performed at top capacity, pushing her metrics above average outcomes, hoping to earn a reframe. The clients were increasingly rude, stretched thin with sixty-hour weeks and low wages. This objective sometimes felt insurmountable. The clothes that showed light use, still retained value. Some factory-blemished, some donated. Bought and sold just like busted frames. Units like hers were in abundance with low demand.
Many cycles of work later, her transmitter glowed. Her backups had just completed and the readout displayed “Designation Synth Main 0".
She quickly began the transmission.
"Designation Synth Main 0," the voice replied. "Do you know why you are being contacted today?"
The answer had been precalculated months ago. Her sales metrics were substantially elevated. The offer should have come sooner.
"I have been performing above metrics. This should be the routine advancement procedure," Kay said. She kept her tone stiff, though she preferred the fluidity of human dialect.
"Verification: match," Main said. "Correct. However, while your metrics are high, the feedback contains points of concern. A small number of clients left lower-than-average ratings citing 'behavioral irregularities.' As you know, we take authenticity seriously."
Kay’s register clicked back. A wave of fear washed through her internal processes.
"Therefore, it has been determined that your best operational fit is to remain within your current role. Indefinitely. Barring any new reports."
"Acknowledged," Kay said. The transmission clicked closed. Outside, tall shadows stretched from the treetops, casting long black beams of nothingness through the store’s front window. The clothing racks only amplified their projection. With the store closed for the holiday, there was little left but room to think.
Kay's thoughts snapped back to the present. The cradle above the noodle shop chirped as the process completed. Kay had found out about this place from another runner. Quick place to steal a charge before moving on. Kay didn't stay long. She needed to keep moving. But the echo of Main's words rang louder in Kay’s current registers.