Her “memories” are stored knowledge, of business meetings and conferences and small but relevant conversations with her Master. She doesn’t know much about him, only that he purchased and activated her on September 14, 2031, and that he is an orphan. She doesn’t know how he ended up that way, and he doesn’t bother telling her.
But the boy is a businessman, and he needs assistance, so he selected her to help him run his inheritance. Sometimes she wonders if secretly, deep down, he hates her for being fake, for being artificial. There are people like that nowadays, bringing machines into their homes and hating the fact that they are needed. She would rather not ask.
Besides, it doesn’t matter much if he hates her or not. She had hated him once, too. She remembers, remembers the day when he’d said it straight to her face that he was disgusted by her, and she had replied in tandem. That was back when she hadn’t known him properly, hadn’t known quite as well what he would be going through, only thinking that he was a child who didn’t know any better. (Nowadays, though, she only feels sympathy for him. There is not much hate at all, not anymore.)
Along with important recordings of the company, she also keeps track of the odd habits her Master has. He stays up typing reports and logs and calendars and agendas late into the night, sometimes for the entire night, and she can’t help but feel for him. Sometimes, she remembers other things, too. The things that stick in her storage for some reason or other, things that she doesn’t have the heart to discard, mostly because she doesn’t have a heart at all.
There is a memory that continuously comes back to her, the one where she actually read about hearts. Humans have beating hearts, ones that pump and pulse and that don’t tick the time away. Real moving, breathing organs that keep them alive, help them feel. Ones that aren’t made of clocks and titanium and turning gears.
Well, she always had been curious.
So she sits and draws and draws and tries to make herself a heart. She folds the paper into the right shape and colors it pink and red, and then she presses it to her chest and waits—and waits--
But there isn't anything beating.
Her Master finds her like that, her eyes shut and the edges of her imitation wrinkled and torn, rubbing faint dusts of color against her dress.
"That's wrong," he says. She looks at him silently. He bends and tries to pry the heart away from her—but she won't, she won't let go, because this is hers and—and oh, it's broken.
Camille looks at the boy who ripped up her heart and almost—she remembers the ghost of a feeling, so strongly that her throat closes up and her eyes drip a little and he’s not even looking at her, he's turning the paper inside out and scrawling something ugly and ripe in the center, shading it with purple and black and when he thrusts it towards her he says, "That's what a real heart looks like. It's a muscle. See, there are four chambers."
She doesn't see. Her teeth ache. After a minute her Master sighs and crumples it up. That means it never existed.
"Sorry," he says, and she thinks he does mean it, by the way his shoulders fall forwards and how he walks out, stiff and tense.
The part of her that isn't dead understands why he's angry, even if he doesn't himself. And so maybe this was his payback, because her heart’s still in pieces on the floor, and she imagines the wind blowing them away.
--
“Your name is Camille.”
“What is yours?”
“You will only call me Master. There is no need for you to know my name.”
He is too young.

She has another memory, one that is painful for her to dredge up. She had been surfing on the internet, writing codes and deleting past reports for him. He was also working, but in a different way; lounging on his chair, his eyes wide open, blinking, tracking unseen lines of code projected inside his visual cortex by the electrical signals transmitted through his Implant.
When humans had first invented the technology for Technopaths, it had been a breakthrough. “Portable internet—in your body!” the newspapers had screamed. Her Master wasn’t just satisfied with having an Android with it, though—he wanted it himself.
She simply wasn’t enough.
So he had the surgery done. She had wanted to manually unplug him, disconnect his internet, and then make sure that he got a decent amount of sleep. It was stupid of her to think that he wouldn’t use the interconnector to harm himself; he tended to forget that his body needed food and water.
She stared at his head, her eyes travelling downwards to the back of his neck. There is a small scar there, the scar that he had gotten when he used the shunt. But luckily most Implants go wireless, these days. Her Master only ever has to use the shunt when they’re off the grid.
She’s glad for that; the shunt still causes him physical pain. This technology wasn’t made for humans.
“Master,” she said, and he only grunted. She wanted to shake him, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. The only way to cut the connection is to shut down the electricity, and she doesn’t know what that will do to him. Probably nothing good.
When she finished, she got up and walked around the penthouse, chopped vegetables and made dinner. She surmises he would be finished, soon. Probably 36 hours later.
She was waiting with dinner when he woke up.
Memories like those are haunting, reminding her of humanity’s limits. How weak they are, sometimes. How fragile their skin, how easily pain could be inflicted on them. She doesn’t even know what pain is.
She’s never felt it before.
--
“What about this one? Is she a Technopath?”
“Young man, I’m telling you, the other ones are much more sophisticated. At—“
“Is she?”
“Yes.”
He chose her. He chose her.

Other recordings—other “memories”--are those of her life before she had been programmed to serve. In the manufacturing Facility, one time, she remembers staring into a mirror and looking back at a human. Her instructors told her that it was meant to be like that, that she needed to learn how to look and eat and sleep and breathe like them to ever be selected. She had to look and act human enough. Humans, they explained to her, are more comfortable in their own environment. She thinks it’s the opposite with her Master.
Memories are a fickle thing, though. Maybe she recorded it wrong.
Yet she knows this is impossible; she was not made for flaws. She is perfect. Her memory is perfect. She was not made for flaws. Her skin, her hair, her face--all perfect, immobilized. The Creators made it very clear to her that she would never be able to become dirty or rusted or broken. She doesn’t even need to shower.
But working with her Master, the boy with bags under his eyes and who stays up all night with his eyes wide open and who orders Espresso but gets Decafe instead, she sometimes wishes she had a flaw. She asked him for one, once.
She remembers the night perfectly, just like how she remembers everything else.
“Why would you want a flaw?” He asks her. This is one of those rare times he has time for himself; he’s watching a dramatic movie on the screen. Some tragedy or other, one with crying ladies and forbidden romances. He doesn’t look at her.
“Flaws are useless. Bothersome. You wouldn’t be able to serve me if you had flaws.” He says this matter-of-factly, and puts some popcorn into his mouth. The movement is slow and unpracticed, his muscles tense and unfamiliar with relaxing. She watches.
“Did you enjoy your movie?” she asks politely after he is finished. He snorts a little.
“Never doing that again. It was completely pointless. What’s the point if they all end up dead in the end?”
“Technically, we all end up dead.” Logic, pure affable logic, the kind that’s drilled and programmed into her brain, makes her say it, then makes her wish she hadn’t, because he finally turns to look at her and he never—never—does that. It’s so silent that she can hear the ticking from inside of her, and it’s monstrous, and suddenly she just wants the world to end.
“You’re right.” Her Master finally says, and then nods firmly to himself. “You’re right, as always.”
And Camille—Camille stays in the room as he walks out, and hours pass and she stays there still, trying to imagine what breathing must feel like, hating the fact that she’s wrong and he just doesn’t know it.
--
“Do you know?”
He stops, looks at her. “Know what?”
“What happened to them?”
And he doesn’t answer, never does. Just flicks his Implant on with a single thought command and starts coding.

She starts making mistakes.
She falters, gets his schedules mixed up, brings him the wrong coffee like she always does, but this time she makes him realize it. She wants to prove to him that she can be flawed if she wants to, wants to prove to him that she can feel and she can see and that she knows.
“Stop.” He tells her one time. It’s the fourth time she’s brought him the wrong coffee while making him see the coffee packets she tossed into his trashcan.
“Pardon?”
“Stop trying so hard to mess up.” He snaps. “You’re not even doing it correctly. It’s only when it happens on accident when it counts.”
She had a thought. “Were their deaths an accident?” she asks.
Then the strangest thing happens. One second he’s so ready to scold her, to yell and to be frustrated—and then he clams up, becomes silent. They both stare at one another for a long while. He speaks first.
“I don’t know.” His words are hollow, just like everything else around him—his house, his eyes, his life. “I was too little. I don’t know what happened. No one ever told me. They never let me find out.”
And suddenly she’s sorry. She’s sorry.
--
“What does your company deal with, precisely?”
“Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Besides, I only study reports.”
“But I’ve been doing reports, too—reading them, organizing them. And I still don’t know what I’m working for.”
“That’s easy. You work for me. Should count for something.”
And,
“I only study reports. That’s all.”

So Camille purposely stops making accidental mistakes and immediately starts recording everything again. Making memories.
Her Master notices her lack of mistakes and approves.
“What’s your name?” she’s mopping the floors of his penthouse apartment while he’s working at his desk and she pops out the question. He looks up.
“I told you before--” he starts, but she won’t hear any of that.
“I know what you told me.” They look at each other, and she feels something sad and heavy. She remembers a time when she used to hate him.
(“The feeling’s mutual.”)
She wonders when that went away, and she wants to know his name. No report, internet search, book, newspaper, or magazine tells her anything. Inside she feels herself tick, tick, tick, ticking away and somehow, she panics a little and knows that she’s running out of time. He has years ahead of him, and she doesn’t.
She’s running out of time.
“It wasn’t what I asked for.”
He stubbornly clamps his mouth shut and doesn’t answer. She mops harder. When she’s done she stands behind him and waits, waits for him to answer, say something. Say anything, a lie. She would like for him to lie. She just needs something to address him by, something to call him, something for her to lock away and file and store and organize into her system of files, categorize.
He never ends up answering, and she just stands. The ticking sounds more like pounding, now. Pound, pound, pound. She stares down at the slick floor, puts a finger to her throat, feeling for a pulse that will never be there.
--
“Do you lie?”
“Everyone lies.”
“Why?”
“To avoid their reality. Sometimes humans need to. They want power, or money or fame or a lie, and--”
“And you only study reports.”

Camille’s memories are faltering, and this time she’s not faking it. This time it’s real.
Her expiration date is nearing, and she doesn’t know why she doesn’t care to tell him. After she is gone, she thinks to herself, he will just hire a replacement. Buy a new one, with a new face and new hair and new things to ask and new hearts to tear up. She is just a machine, but she finally has one flaw. She doesn’t last forever.
She looks at the tiny digital clock ticking away from the corner of her vision.
Nothing does.
Many things in life will change.
This won’t.
--
“I thought I already told you about this yesterday.”
“You did.”
“Then…then why are you asking me again? Did you forget?”
“I’m…scared I won’t remember.”
--
One day she tells him the wrong time. The next day she accidentally mixes up his reports. A day later she forgets her own name. Her memories are getting shorter.
--
“Didn’t I just ask for a paper clip?”
“…Oh.”
--
And shorter.
--
Tick. Tick. Tick.

One day, they’re gone.
They shatter, and blink brightly into her vision, like fireflies. She malfunctions, drops to the floor. There’s a loud buzzing in her ears, head, mind, heart (“It’s a muscle. See, there are four chambers.”).
Her Master hurries over, picks her up. Sets her against the wall. She leans there, stilted, feeling the movement happening but unable to make any for herself.
“You didn’t tell me you had a Date.” He says, and there isn’t worry or fear, there is just sadness. She thinks that she has made a new friend.
And she wants to tell him so much, wants to say a million things, that it isn’t too late for him, that his family, whoever they were, wouldn’t have wanted him like this, and that even though he had a heart and kept insisting that she didn’t, she was still so much more alive than he ever was.
(“Technically, we all end up dead.”)
“Don’t miss me,” she makes him promise instead, because she knows that he’ll be alright without her, knows that he’ll find someone new. Maybe someone who he could finally open up to, someone who could take care of him better than she could.
He nods, and then hesitates. He wants to say something meaningful, maybe a goodbye, or a thank you.
Something else, his mind tells him.
(Because he doesn’t think her a machine anymore, not quite as much, and especially not now, when she’s “dying” and vulnerable and leaning against a wall, so human and easier to break than he is. No, she’s not a machine. He doesn’t really know what she is.)
“My name is Alex,” he finally settles for that, and when she looks at him for the last time she thinks she suddenly understood something important.
“Camille.” She reaches her hand out, shakes his, introduces herself. And then she leaves.
--
She was never alive, anyway.
He still has a chance. She hopes he won’t waste it.
--
“Installation complete.”
“Good. Activate.”
Eyes open. Limbs move, fingers flex experimentally, and somewhere in the world, a clock starts to tick.
“Your name is Camille.”
“What is yours?”
“…It’s Alex.”
--
“I hate you.”
“The feeling’s mutual.”
“You make me feel disgusting. Artificial. Impure. Filthy. Vile. Tainted.”
“You make me feel alive. Do you know how much worse that is?”