Lily pursed her lips but reluctantly nodded her assent. With the two of them working together, they had the washing machine fixed in no time, which was good, because soon enough, Elizabeth and Annie were called away to battle and it was now up to Nikodemus and his daughter to keep the inside of the fortress spic-and-span.

***

Yair had been on standby since the night before, listening for any warnings that he might get from scouts or the scouts stationed outside the fortress. If they told him to, he was to fight. Yair felt a sort of buoyancy in his system about the possibility of fighting; it was what he had been programmed to do, after all, and he had not had much success doing other activities. Yair wore an uncanny smile on his face as he waited in Hilargi’s lab for any signal to enter the fray. But after waiting through the night and through much of the morning, he was beginning to get bored. His uncanny smile turned upside-down into a frown. He had been sitting, but now, he stood up. He began pacing, and when he got tired of pacing, he began looking around the room at the machines Hilargi was working on. Currently, the mutant girl was gathering materials in a mad push to get the turret done, as well as adding modifications to the polymer suits that the tribal women wore.

Yair opened up drawers in the desks in the room and eventually found one with dozens of blueprints. Curiously, Yair removed them from the drawer and began looking through them. He found himself smiling at how smart Hilargi was; if she hadn’t labeled all the blueprints, he was certain he wouldn’t even be able to tell what any of them were. He was designed to be a battling genius, and have a working knowledge—not an intensive one—of other sciences.

Yair had difficulties looking at the blueprints due to the fact that he only had one fingered hand. He kept dropping the blueprints, which angered him, but not to the point where he verbally or facially showed it. Eventually, he decided that it was best to sit on the floor so he could look through them easier.

He felt the sensation known as “frustration” Leaving his systems as he sat, and he was glad of it. Although his emotions were far more muted than a human’s, he didn’t like unpleasant feelings anymore than humans did. He muttered to himself, “That made me want to punch a hole in the wall.”

Looking at Hilargi’s proposed inventions was fascinating to him. She wanted to design working toilets so the women would no longer have to relieve themselves in the desert, she wanted to design helmets that were both efficient in protecting the tribe’s heads as well as being technically useful. He found the idea of the women being able to call each other long distance via their helmets in particular was a very good idea.

Not all of the blueprints were Hilargi’s, however. Others belonged to her mutant companions. While Hilargi’s specialty was weaponry, armor, and some appliances, others specialized in plumbing, irrigation, and oddly enough, entertainment.

Perhaps this is just something the mutants have been working on on their own time when they have nothing else to do? Yair’s robotic, unblinking eyes stared at the blueprints for a piano, a television set, and even a treehouse where the tribe could tell each other stories and just hang out.

Why would they spend even a little bit of their free time trying to bring back such relics? Yair wondered. They’re constantly in danger and always need more resources, yet they still dream of having these insignificant things to entertain themselves with?

Yair kept rifling through the blueprints until he came to the very last one, and it brought another frown to his face.

It was another robot, designed by Hilargi, labeled Yair, 2.0.

He felt another unpleasant sensation shooting through his system as his grip tightened on the blueprints. Is she trying to replace me?

Yair didn’t want to explore the feelings that arose from that possibility any further, so he placed the blueprints back in the drawers and found himself returning to the sensation that humans referred to as “boredom.”

He collapsed on his back and stared up at the ceiling, imagining the blue sky hidden behind them. Yair tried to think of anything else but the blueprints he had seen in that drawer, but somehow, he couldn’t let it go. Rather than making me a second fingered hand, she would rather just replace me entirely? The thought was almost too difficult for him to process—especially because he knew it was petty in the grand scheme of things.