Broken Things by G. S. Wright Page B

the
android’s function. There were few roles for adult androids. All of its hair
had fallen out, and its flesh stretched across its skull like a mummified
cadaver.
    James flipped it over, looking for the access panel. There
were no tell-tale signs, only scar tissue down the spinal column. “How the heck
do you open? Somebody wanted to hide their handiwork, didn’t they?”
    The android took a single rasping breath as he searched. He
ignored it. Sometimes androids never fully died. He’d seen broken children live
for almost a decade with their power supplies keeping them alive long after
their bodies had failed. Androids were such amazing things, the technology
still fascinated him. It didn’t startle him in the least that this one still
clung to life.
    Time had not been kind to it. A normal android had synthetic
muscle and skin tissue that did not deteriorate or rot. A ‘dead’ kid would sit
in a landfill for generations. They were resistant to both biodegradation and
the photedegradation that effected plastics. After all, you couldn’t have your
kid showing signs of sun damage.
    He pulled out his android marker and made a swipe across the
back of its hand. He shook his head as it turned a dark blue. A light blue
meant living tissue, black meant android. So what did this mean? Had somebody
built a better flesh?
    There had to be some type of access to the android’s power
cells without cutting it open, but he couldn’t find it. That left the Dr.
Frankenstein method. He grabbed his cell charger and attached the paddle
electrodes to the android’s chest, a defibrillator for artificial life. Instead
of a brief shock, it delivered continuous electricity. As James suspected, his
monitor detected the android’s cells. Once it read that it had a full charge,
he disconnected the electrodes and waited.
    Its breathing regulated to something more akin to a sleeping
state, but otherwise it didn’t budge. Tomorrow he’d have to try a few other
things to get it to awaken. He might even have to cut it open. He couldn’t stay
much later though or he’d never hear the end of it from his wife. He didn’t see
it turn its head to watch him leave.
     
    16
     
    Gus Baskin walked down the hallway of Kidsmith. The building
only utilized emergency lighting after dark, giving the place an abandoned
eerie feel. Few people stuck around after five and the management no later than
seven. Not that long ago the building operated around the clock. Back then Gus
hadn’t worked in security. He’d worked in assembly.
    The parts would come in from all over the world, wherever
Kidsmith could get the best prices. Gus worked on the skeleton, the metal
foundation of the children. The difficult stuff, the skin and the circulatory
system and a whole host of other complex biological stuff, all of that happened
in the labs upstairs. They used to tell them to treat each one as a life, but
after a while all you could see was the machine. The skeleton, brain, internal
organs, and central nervous system, that was all mechanical. At one time the
entire android had been metal and plastic. But the technology had such a high
demand, and so much money poured into it that they became more and more
realistic, until they were developing synthetic tissue and blood to make robots
that passed entirely for human. People wanted as real of a kid as money could
buy.
    They were amazingly clean to work on too. All of the messy
biological stuff was carefully contained. You could open them up and work on
all of the tech components without ever getting your hands dirty.
    He missed it, but at least Kidsmith kept him employed. Many
of his friends were laid off, had to find nine to five jobs somewhere else. He
sometimes pined for the good ol’ days when the benefits had been exceptional.
They’d even had a retirement plan, though the company had reabsorbed it as the
demand plummeted. Nobody retired anyway.
    He whistled while he patrolled the hallways, it made the
place feel