Self-Projection

Darkness.

Rebooting….

Static.

Calibrating….

Cement chunks flicker into focus under my headlight, trapping me from all sides. Noise dances in my vision as the collapsed building’s crushing weight overwhelms my circuits.

Tariro. Where is Tariro? Protect Tariro at any cost.

I plow toward the surface, detritus caving under my desperate clambering. A large slab dislodges and pummels into my head, knocking my radio transceiver on.

—largest earthquake in Chipinge since 2036. Casualties to be deter—

I heave the slab out of my way and crawl to the surface. My joints creak as I rise to my feet on a mountain of rubble. Cries echo through the wreckage, Tariro’s wail among them. I start digging through the ruins, throwing concrete left and right in a frantic effort to reach her. After flinging one final rock, I hear her sobs cease.

“Rudo!”

Tariro. As I turn, she emerges from the dust, hardly a scratch on her. She scrabbles toward me through the debris. “Rudo, you’re hurt!” She points at the wires poking through my metal exterior.

“I will be fine. What matters is that I protect you.”

“Where will we go?” she stammers. “Home is gone. You need help.”

The green light of my GPS starts blinking on my forearm. A large crack runs through the screen. Maintenance needed, the screen says. Unable to find sendoc station. Primary home address unavailable. Load path to secondary address? When I examine the details, the secondary address appears to be a repair shop. It’s far, but my battery will last the trek.

“Come, Tariro.”

We trudge away from the devastation. Even once we reach the street, people stagger out of broken buildings, bleeding and screaming.

“Rudo, I’m scared,” Tariro whimpers.

The ruins melt away, and the people morph into dancers playing mbira music. Tariro starts laughing in relief even though she figured out long ago that I project illusions to help her. Protect Tariro means protect her mind, too.

As we travel away from the earthquake’s epicenter, the surrounding damage gradually lessens until we reach undisturbed buildings. I fade the hologram out.

“There, Rudo!” Tariro points to a small building as my GPS starts signaling arrival. She runs to the door, waiting for me to open it. We enter a cramped room with a man sleeping at the front desk in a grease-stained jumpsuit.

He jerks awake and stands as the door closes behind us. “Mhoroi.”

Tariro gives him a wide, gap-toothed smile. “Are you a repairman?”

The man stares at her with a perplexed expression. “Yes. I’m Itai, the shop owner.”

“My friend is broken. Can you help us?”

Itai mutters something else under his breath in Shona and strokes his beard. “Where are your parents? Why are you traveling alone?”

“I’m not alone,” Tariro huffs. “I’m with Rudo. Rudo stays with me while my mom travels, but our apartment collapsed on us.”

Itai gapes at her. “And you’re uninjured?” He starts toward her, but I step between them, so he holds his hands up and tries to peek over my shoulder. “Please, let me look at her.”

“She is fine,” I tell him.

“I’m fine!” Tariro asserts as she comes out from behind me. “Rudo protected me, but he needs help.”

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“A little, but they’re all getting help,” Tariro says with a smile, before scrunching her face into a pout. “Except for Rudo.”

Itai thinks for a moment, visually assessing her for injuries. “At least let me call your parents.”

Tariro crosses her arms and huffs. “Fix Rudo first! He needs help.”

“You got the wrong shop.” Itai sighs. “I don’t repair sentients.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I’m like the veterinarian of robots, okay? I deal with the ones that don’t work or think like this one. You gotta go to a licensed sendoc.”

“We can’t!”

“Why not?”

Tariro stands on her tip-toes and glares at him. “His GPS brought us here. It has to be right.”

He furrows his brow as he studies me. “Let me look up your serial number so I can see your insurance status.”

I open my chest panel for him, and he looks inside. He types my serial number into his datapad and squints at it.

“You are R-6-T—”

“My name is Rudo.”

Itai pauses. “Okay, Rudo, can you confirm your number?” He shows me his datapad, and I nod. Once he runs the search, he grimaces. “You’re not insured. Sentient bot insurance usually only lapses if the primary companion dies.”

I shake my head. “No. It must be from the damage to my CPU.”

Itai shrugs and puts the datapad down. “Either way, a sendoc can’t help you, but I’m not about to break the law by repairing you either.”

“Please fix Rudo!” Tariro cries. “Please, please, fix him!”

Itai holds up his hands before her sobs escalate. “Look, I’ll assess the damage, okay? Just don’t cry. Maybe I can figure out what’s making the insurance status show up wrong. But as soon as I find something, I’m calling your parents. Okay?”

Tariro smiles and nods. “Okay!”

He leads us into the workshop area with walls full of machinery and tables covered in disassembled robot parts. Once I sit down on a stool, he rummages in a drawer for tools.

Tariro hovers near me. “Is this going to hurt Rudo?”

“No. Robots don’t have pain receptors. And you shouldn’t be in here.”

“I’m not leaving,” Tariro asserts.

Itai glances at her, then thinks better of arguing with a child. “Just don’t touch anything.” He starts unfastening the bolts in my back panel. “American made,” he observes. “I was wondering why your companion speaks only English. She probably grew up talking to you, and you weren’t programmed to speak Shona.”

“No. I was programmed to protect.”

“You know, I sent the same kind of protector robot to my daughter many years ago because I’ve never been able to see her. I only hope it’s taking as good care of her as you have of your companion.” He takes my back panel off. “I need to disconnect your headlamp and projector to assess the CPU damage. Okay?”

A sharp jolt rips through me.

Tariro vanishes. Another jolt, and she materializes in front of us with a smile on her face.

Itai gasps. “She’s not real! You’re projecting her!”

“No. I am protecting her.”

“No wonder she’s acting so odd! No etiquette, no injuries!”

Tariro backs away from us. “What’s he saying, Rudo?”

“Stop letting her respond,” Itai seethes. “You know she isn’t real.”

“She—”

An explosion rips through my body as Itai tears my wiring out, erasing Tariro. My limbs are paralyzed. My motor cortex, gone.

He comes to face me, teary-eyed and shaking his wrench at me. “Tell me, did she die? Are you creating this depraved illusion to hide that so you can get me to fix you?”

My speakers crackle as I try to speak. “No. I care for—”

Itai sounds incredulous. “You care for her?”

“I save—I save her.”

“You can’t save someone who’s already dead!” Itai raises the wrench as a threat. “Tell me what happened!”

“She can—cannot die. I protect her.”

“Then where is she? Where is your real companion?”

“I save her. In—in my memory. For—forever. There, she can—cannot die.”

“You stupid, broken, selfish robot!” Itai screams. “You’re not a protector. You’re a coward. You failed and can’t admit it to yourself.”

“I care for—for her—”

Sobs wrack Itai’s body. “How can you care for her when you exploit her to save yourself? What kind of malfunctioning AI hallucinates a young girl to avoid admitting failure?”

His wrench spins out of his hand toward me.

Lying on the floor. Sparks flicker in my vision, my radio transceiver flickering on and off.

—preliminary excavation efforts by unauthorized automatons caused—

—majority of deaths and injuries. The youngest victim—

—girl killed not by the initial collapse from the—

—but crushed in botched rescue attempt.

Itai kneels by my head, weeping, grasping for the wrench again. “I only pray my little Tariro has a better protector than you.”