She worked all night around the scrapped pieces she had rescued from the trash pit. She didn’t think she would do it, but eventually, she did it. One thing in particular had required most of her energies and creativity: the robot she had salvaged from the trash. She had a long go at reattaching parts, replacing others and cleaning some of the layers of thick rust, but despite of all that it was… a wonderful robot. One of the most humanoid and advanced she’d ever seen. The automaton’s body had a dynamic but solid built, yet thin enough not to appear menacing to a human being; standing less than 2 meters in height, covered in silver sleek – or so it had to be before the rusting time at the pit – armor, its face had delicate patterns, its crystalline blue optics were still dirty with dust, but shiny nonetheless, beautifully shiny.

The door bell rang. Amanda quickly turned and left running to the door. She wore her better mask of seriousness as a self-defence approach, and turned the handle of her house’s main door with a hint of fearfulness. She opened it and found a severe face – a man’s face – staring at her with an intimidating stance. The man was wearing a clean and elegant black suit, so standing out near the casual everyday clothing on Amanda’s body. He seemed to be in his forties, and the red rectangular label with a yellow eagle hanging on his chest betrayed his status of a Municipality delegate.

“Miss Sank?” the man asked, keeping his features completely unaltered.

“Y-yes?” Amanda said, feeling something in her body and head telling her that not so good news was going to be delivered by this stranger.

The man looked down at a paper he was holding and then he handed it to her. She looked at it, puzzled.

“What is this?” she asked.

“A decree from the Municipality of Area-24. From today on, Miss Sank, every piece of junk from the trash pit is to be considered property of the Municipality, and you’re no longer allowed to take anything away without written permission from the Area Mayor.”

Amanda’s shock could be easily read on her pale, thin face. She was taken aback.

“But… but… I need those materials from the pit! I’ve got nowhere else to find them!”

The man smiled of a scornful smile. “See you at the area hall, then.” As cold as they were, he turned his shoulders to her and left. Amanda watched the stranger walk down the marble avenue she had built in the middle of the her grassy garden until he was out of her property and boarded his turbocar, heading back to the Municipality. She watched him leave with a pale white face now, standing weakly against the door frame, the document hanging from her hand.

She just had a piece of her life away taken. She had been kicked out of her world, exiled on this crappy, underdeveloped planet plagued by arrogant, narrow-minded people, and now this… She lifted the paper and glanced at it, letting out a fretful sigh. Even if she had the courage to walk to the Municipality and ask for a meeting, she was pretty sure nobody would have considered her request. Nothing would have changed. Because they hated her, everyone hated her.

Her grip on the document became stronger, until the paper surrendered to her strength and screeched noisily in her hand, now trembling with rage and despair.

Her usual, lonely breakfast. On mornings like that, when the sun shone in the sky – it was mornings like that that made her feel terribly lonesome. Her only company for two years had been a cat, but that had died the month before, and she had no husband or a family to turn to. She was an outcast on that poorly populated colony. She longed for the presence of another human being, a human being who would love her unconditionally, but she knew very well that was impossible to achieve. She had been pushed away from her community; her genius mind wasn’t welcome in a world where a few people owned the power on the whole Colony-67. Thus she had been exiled and sent to the nearby Colony-69; a small planet that humans had colonized just half a century before, whose inhabitants were all but kind to immigrants. Especially to outcasts. Especially to her, the woman who had been proclaimed dangerous on both worlds, whom everybody was afraid of speaking to, or even just to share a glance with because being her friend meant risking a six-months incarceration if they were lucky enough. Even so, six months was too long a time for one’s reputation. So she had been denied everything that would make her happy: the freedom to build relationships, to have a role in the society… and now, to enjoy what made her life Amanda’s life purely and simply: inventing.

Amanda leaned back on her chair, sipping her warm coffee in absolute silence. She had cried enough over her solitude, she decided. She had been living on Colony-69 for two years now, and she was old enough to let go of stupid dreams of a family, a friend, whatsoever. You’re twenty-eight, dear, she told herself, looking at the distorted image of her own face mirrored by the coffee surface in her cup, it’s over. Accept it and go on. She repeated this to herself until she felt her eyes filling with burning tears.

The noon was long past by now. Her wrist watch displayed a 4PM in bright LEDs. Amanda looked around her terrain and thought that she had done enough for the day. Her tomatoes, potatoes, aubergines and many other vegetables were growing beautifully, and she didn’t mind the effort and the sweat of entire days spent under the burning sun: when she stopped to look at the fruits of her labor, she smiled contently at realizing how worthy all of it that had been.

“I could buy three or four animals,” she said out aloud, picking up her tools and returning them to the storeroom next to her house. The small room was made entirely of wood, and it contained all the knick-knacks she had collected from the trash pit nearby. All metal pieces of course; because she loved to bend, and forge, and manipulate to build all the tools she needed. Inventing was something she just couldn’t stop doing. And no matter the situation, and the fact that she had her creativity being limited once more, she knew she had to keep it alive somehow. She would keep experimenting with what she had retrieved from the pit till now.

Amanda put everything in scrupulous order, as it was her habit to do so, and then she walked to the door to leave. But she didn’t leave. Her eyes, and then her whole head, moved to look at the blue light that came from her building corner. The robot she had fixed the night before was now standing nearby the working table, his metallic figure opposing a decisive contrast to the environment made almost exclusively of wood. She glanced at him once more, and noticed that the reader on its left arm was blinking green; the robot had fully recharged and would have been online for at least three days. She was too tired to take care of it now though, so she left and locked the door behind herself.

Amanda returned to the storeroom shortly after her afternoon nap. She opened the door slowly, and stopped there, not walking in. She laid her back against the door frame and simply stood there, watching him. She addressed the robot with a low, slightly detached tone.

“Hi.”

“Hi, Miss.”

The robot’s voice wasn’t monotone or metallic at all; it was very soft indeed, and it sounded like coming from a man in his late twenties. “How may I address you, Miss?”

“Amanda,” she said, “What’s your designation?”

“I’m a Worker Model number 25, Miss Amanda,” the robot replied.

Amanda nodded her head lightly. “Well, I repaired you, last night,” she explained, “I found you at the trash pit. Your were in pieces, and some of your components were no longer functioning, so I rebuilt part of your forearms and legs.”

The robot tilted its head on a side, and then it bent it to look at its own arms and legs, and both of the movements caused a noise of rusty components.

“I see, thank you.” It said. Then it seemed to wonder over something and it spoke again only seconds later. “Is this planet Colony-69?” it asked.

The young woman nodded. “Yeah,” she said, unhappily. “How do you know?”

The robot made a few steps in her direction, but it stopped at about two meters from her. “I was built on Colony-67 to be a robot worker for the space vehicles line. Three years ago the humans who directed the production line chose to demolish me and a few other units working under their supervision, and I heard one of them saying: ‘Scrap them and send them to Colony-69 for recycling’.”

Amanda fell silent. The machine that was talking to her had been thrown away just like her, and though it was indeed just an automaton, she felt an innate sympathy for that robot.

“Why did they scrap you?” she asked, “You seem to be perfectly functional…”

The robot looked down for a moment, its optics brightened, then lifted again. “Reason unknown.”

Though slightly surprised by that answer, Amanda made a step forward, shortening the distance between her and the robot. “I’m sorry,” she said, softly. “I know how that feels…” She touched its hand lightly. “If you have nowhere to go, you can stay here. I wouldn’t mind the company.”

* * *

“We need a name,” she decided, looking up to her mechanical friend as she kept busy at her kitchen sink with soap and dirty dishes to clean.

The Worker robot nodded its head slightly, which caused its neck servos to screech a little. “A name?” it asked.

Amanda lifted a wrist to scratch her running nose, because her hand was too much covered with soap to be of use. “Yeah. I need somethin’ to call you with; I can’t say ‘robot’ or ‘worker-25’ all the time. That’s so… impersonal.”

“I understand.”

She smiled. Amanda had been living with this robot for two weeks now, and her life had surely felt a lot more positive since she had someone – well, something – to talk to. And the night before she had decided that she would stop referring him as ‘the robot’ or ‘it’; this Worker robot would be a male from now on, because its voice and appearance were definitely masculine, she decided. The robot had agreed with her on both reasons, and he said he always thought of himself as a male entity rather than female or neuter one and she hadn’t been able to hold back a laughter when he’d called himself a ‘male entity’.

“Oh my, it’s late!” Amanda cried out after launching a glance at the solar clock on the wall. She rushed to clean the sink from the soap and piled dishes and glasses together on another side. “I need to go. The market’s closing in half an hour. Please wait here, I’ll do it fast.”

“Let me come with you,” the robot said, kindly, “I may be of help.”

“No, you better look after the house ’till I ret-”

“Please,” he insisted, but gently, interrupting her, “Let me come with you.” He took a hold of her hand, now dry but still soaked with the soap scent.

Amanda couldn’t stop her cheeks but flushing on her pale skin. His hold on her hand was gentle but firm, and in some odd way, caring. So strange of a machine…

“Alright… Alright, you come along and help.”

He hinted a smile, something that made part of his silicon-covered face contract in a way and extend in another, which made his expression incredibly sweet and human. “Let’s go then.”

They went to the local market together. People stared at Amanda and at her mechanical guardian. Suspicious, unkind gazes that felt like piercing on Amanda’s skin. Somehow, the robot managed to feel her uneasiness, and grabbed her hand lightly. She startled at the touch, and looked up at him for a second, astonished; then she looked away, feeling her cheeks on fire. That same odd feeling again… But at least, people had stopped looking at her. At them.

Amanda cut her shopping time short. She hated being exposed to other human beings for many hours, and shopping was probably the worst public activity in her view of life. She bought vegetables and flower seeds, meat and eggs, milk and cereals for her meals; and two books. She paid everything as quickly as possible, and asked her robot friend to accompany her back home. He picked up her shopping bags and did as he was asked to, without a word.

On the way back home, he pulled a book out of her bags, and read some pages during the twenty minutes trek to the house, surrounded by colourful fields and a green garden. She didn’t notice that he had taken one of her books; her mind was focused on something else, on keeping her shields up against everyone and everything until she could step home safely.

She finally did, and she let herself fall on her small sofa, letting out a sigh of relief. The robot started putting all the edibles in the fridge, and she let him do so. Only when she saw that he was holding a book in his free hand, she spoke to him again.

“That’s the novel I just bought, isn’t it?” Amanda asked, lifting her hand to point at the book before letting the hand fall on her lap again, tiredly.

The robot closed the fridge door and turned to look at her. “It is. I read some of it during the way back,” he said calmly, lifting the book as he walked to Amanda’s sofa and sat at her side. He handed her the book, which she grabbed and observed jadedly.

“Ah,” she said, “just shut up then. I’m can’t read now, too tired.”

“I won’t,” he reassured her, “but it gave me an idea for the name you were looking for.”

Amanda turned her eyes to look at him, and she suddenly noticed how close his body was to hers. She reacted by looking back down at the book on her lap.

“Ok. What’s that?”

“There’s someone in the book, called ‘Jori’. It seems to be a meaningful name on this planet, something like the one who brings change or novelty. I would need to research more about its meaning, but it sounds like a good name, don’t you think?”

Amanda hinted a smile, a small delighted smile. “Jo-ri… Jori… Mmmh, sounds sweet I guess,” she said, delicately. She returned to look at her robot friend, and gifted him with a brighter, warmer smile.

“Thank you for the last night, Jori. It felt good.”

“My pleasure, Miss Amanda.”

She puffed. “Stop calling me ‘Miss’ already. ‘Amanda’ will do. I don’t need titles.”

“As you wish, Amanda.”

It was her turn to smile. That robot was so odd for being one of his kind. Severe yet gentle; logical and analytical, yet emotional and sweet, so unusual of a robot that had been designed for manual labors.

She thought she knew now why he had been scrapped by his creators.

“So… was it that? The reason why you ended up here?” she asked as she opened a tap outside her house to fill a large can she needed to water her garden.

Jori stopped cutting branches from a flower bed and turned to look at Amanda. “Perhaps. I’m not sure. But it could be. Humans usually don’t appreciate machines who can think and feel too much.”

Amanda felt her sympathetic feelings rise again in her chest. “I’m here for something like that too… I was banished from Colony-67 for working on a space vehicle booster that doesn’t use krysel minerals. See, I always thought that a self-generating energy system would save time and money from the starship companies, and it would help saving Colony-1 from being heavily depredated of such a rare mineral…” She let out a deep sigh as she watered her flowers, and a shade downed on her face, “… but my Province governor came to know about it and he feared my invention would obstacle importations of krysel minerals, leading the refinery industries on Colony-53 to failure, so he had me banished from the planet. Tsk! What will he do next? Abolish school so that nobody can develop a brain anymore?” She felt burning with rage inside, and she had to bite her bottom lip to keep the cool only with the result of having the dark feeling explode through her eyes. Rivers of tears were falling down her cheeks. Oh no! I’m crying again! No… She let go of the can and removed one of her gloves to brush off tears from her cheeks. She tried to turn to hide her current miserable state, but strong robotic arms grabbed her shoulders before she could. Jori was holding her.

“I don’t understand,” he was saying, delicately, “I thought human beings longed for scientific progress, and that they would support every step forward that could be beneficial to human life and environment…”

“Human life! Environment!” Amanda shouted, sobbing, “Not when money and power are involved, Jori…”

Her shoulders and chest were throbbing violently, and he felt so useless in front of her pain. He held her closer in his arms, and she abandoned herself in them, the only ones she was allowed to.

* * *

A week later Amanda was working at the farm. Most of her potatoes and tomatoes were ready to be picked, and she filled two baskets with good scented vegetables she had worked hard on all those months. Jori had been at the market a day before and had bought meat and cheese for the meals, and she was going to cook something delicious for dinner. She was happily whistling when she walked to her house carrying both of the baskets under each arms, and she noticed too late that two intruders had violated her property. Two men, and from their features they seemed to be about her age.

“Hi,” she said, hinting a small smile, “if you didn’t notice, this is private property.”

One of the guys, one with a pale skin and red hair, laughed soundly. “Private property? Oh come on! I’m sure you left the gate open for us to come over. Who wouldn’t like to pay a visit to beautiful Miss Sank?”

Amanda frowned at the sardonic comment, and she put up a stern face at the two. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Please leave this property already or I shall have to call the police.”

The two burst into a loud laughter, and this time it was the second guy, a tall but robust one with black curls all over his head, to speak. “I don’t think the police will believe you, Miss Sanky! You’ve never been welcome here, so I don’t see why anyone would believe you over two legitimate citizens like Peter and I. Ahah! You should be grateful that we came here to pay you a visit! Thank goodness you’re such a nice girl…” He looked her up to down and viceversa, and he smirked mischievously.

Amanda felt a shiver running along her back. Her eyes widened, she turned and started running to her house. They ran after her. The taller guy reached her first and grabbed her by the shoulder, causing her arm to loose the hold on the basket of potatoes. He had blocked her now. The other man approached and kicked the last basket off  Amanda’s arm and grabbed her other shoulder. Both of them tried to drag her down on the ground and then

Amanda screamed a long, high-pitched scream of terror. No one came over to help her. Nobody lived nearby the outcast’s property. Nobody could hear her screams, and probably the two men knew about this when they jumped on her. But they had miscalculated something in their plan.  Something did hear Amanda’s scream. A robot did.

Jori threw himself at the two men and blocked them on the floor with quick movements. “Don’t ever dare touching her again!” he shouted, and he knelt to help Amanda get up. But she was under shock, her body wouldn’t respond to stimuli; thus he picked her up, holding her in his arms. The two ran away terrified, and they were never seen around again.

That night, Amanda didn’t leave her house. She stayed in bed, curled under the blankets. Jori took her dinner in her room. She sat up when he came in.

“Jori! Jori! They won’t ever let me be, right? I’ll never get some peace…” She burst into tears.

Jori placed the tray with food on her bedside table and hugged her. A gentle hug. “I will protect you. I will be at your side always, Amanda.”

His voice sounded like a soft, warm whisper to Amanda’s ears. His fingers stroke her head, slid through her hair, rested on her mid back.

He sat on her bed and she curled in his arms and closed her eyes. “I wish you were a human. Everything would be so perfect if you were…”

He held her closer. “Is that so important? I don’t think it is. Your organic body and my mechanical one are mere shells: what’s inside is what really counts.”

She gave him a quick nod and returned to rest her forehead on his chest. “I just need… a human touch. I so crave for one. Human beings pushed me away, but I still long for their presence.”

Jori bent his head to kiss hers. “You will, one day. A human being will step into your path sooner or later. Until then, please, let me take care of you. It’s what robots like me have been built for.”

She looked up at him and smiled. A grateful smile, a loving smile. She lifted a hand to caress his face.

They kissed. It was timid, light kiss at first, then it became more passionate and desperate, until their mouths and bodies mingled together to form one single shape. And Amanda didn’t care anymore. She just didn’t care that her partner was a machine, she didn’t care about Colony-67 and all its corrupted, hypocrite society. The world could explode under her feet right now and she still wouldn’t care, because she had Jori at her side.

Jori, she thought, Couldn’t pick more perfect a name.