Category: Story

Dancing with Zirself

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Unlike the chameleon body’s relatively simple goal of moving and matching colors, programming the Van Dyke’s kernel was more complex.”

Rariel 77 had entire closets of different bodies zhe’d built for zirself, and zhe liked switching between them.  Sometimes, you want a classic robot body — boxy, straight lines, gleaming metal.  You know, that whole deal.  But sometimes, an AI simply needs to be able to go incognito and blend in with all the biological sentients around.  The most common species on Crossroads Station were the Heffen (a sort of canine alien, kind of like anthro red wolves) and after that humans.  Rariel 77 had very nice android bodies in both of those flavors.  Zhe also had some much more abstract choices for when zhe was feeling whimsical or wanted to go on a spacewalk or do some other more exotic activity. Continue reading “Dancing with Zirself”

Goin’ Turtle

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Why waste time on this weird turtle shell thing when you could be revolutionizing racing?”

Cobalt Starstrong charged right in, grabbed a stool at the bar, and then looked back to see Delvin balking in the doorway.  There was a strange look on the younger man’s face.  Cobalt gestured to the empty barstool beside him; it was a plain, simple stool, suitable to all kinds of physiologies.  That was important.  For they were in the All Alien Cafe.

Reluctantly, Delvin darted into the bar and took the empty seat beside Cobalt.  “Why did you bring me here?” he asked. Continue reading “Goin’ Turtle”

Eschewing the Upgrade Path

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“The one that looks like a forest from one angle but a nebula from another angle, and either way it’s goddamned beautiful and somehow full of teardrops? That takes more than mere hardwiring.”

KL-2 was designed to paint murals.  That was all.  The clunky little robot rolled through the corridors of Crossroads Station on treads that could have been more efficient, scanning walls with sensors that could have been more precise, looking for blank wall spaces that could use embellishment, and then it filled them with artistic scenes, designed to appeal to the multitudinous alien species who lived on the station.   KL-2 was an expert at knowing what kinds of colors and designs would look most pleasing to various species’ eyes. Continue reading “Eschewing the Upgrade Path”

Echoes of an Accelerated Life

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“But Pernal 60 had lived too fast. When it ran out of art to absorb, it had made its own… until it ran out of things to say about the world as it currently existed.”

This is the tragic story of the smartest, fastest, most beautiful AI that Maradia ever programmed.

Maradia had programmed many successful AIs before, and her robotic children populated the halls of Crossroads Space Station, living alongside the human and alien inhabitants, forming subcultures of their own.

Tailoring the seed code from previous successful AIs into new personalities designed to animate particular robots was generally easy.  However, Maradia had recently constructed a compression algorithm that would allow the next AI she designed to think much, much faster than any of the AIs she’d programmed before. Continue reading “Echoes of an Accelerated Life”

A Robot Joins Robotics Club

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Fix the hateful robot by bleaching zir brain, rewriting zir algorithms, they’d say. They’d never think to fix the hate inside themselves.”

Rariel 77 surveyed the digital catalogue of zir bodies.  Zhe had built dozens of them, ranging from tiny insect-like drones to fully humanoid figures.  Zir creator, Maradia, insisted that none of the other AIs she’d programmed had ever developed a fascination for building, collecting, and swapping bodies like they were clothes before.  Most of them chose one body they liked best and settled into it, melding AI brain to mechanical body, becoming a single being.  (Though, apparently, a couple of them went through a dinosaur-obsession phase first, much like human children.) Continue reading “A Robot Joins Robotics Club”

Shipshape Relationship

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025

“Her whole life had changed that day, and she didn’t want to go back to what her life had been like before a spaceship had fallen in love with her.”

Addie stood in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, staring at the wall of mechanical parts and trying to look like she was shopping.  She wasn’t.  The Seabreeze Sinewave didn’t need any repairs — at least, not the kind you could fix with spare parts.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Maradia asked, “Or just pretend to be fascinated by servo-motors all afternoon?”

Addie turned to find the roboticist watching her.  Maradia had looked so absorbed in her work when Addie came in, she hadn’t realized the roboticist had noticed her at all. Continue reading “Shipshape Relationship”

Build-a-Pet

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Hexagon, Issue 9, June 2022

“…she’d seen an older kid playing it earlier, and that kid had left with a brand new purple and green cuddle dragon nestled on her shoulder!”

Leslie yanked the toggle on the Build-a-Pet arcade machine with one hand and mashed the big round buttons with the other.  On the screen looming above her head, a colorful, twisted ladder bent and spun around, and large friendly letters spelled out words she couldn’t read yet.  Though she did recognize the letter L.  She knew that one from her own name. Continue reading “Build-a-Pet”

Ginger Tea for the Dragon

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Hot Chocolate for the Unicorn and Other Flights of Fancy

“They keep walking beside the ocean, too far away to see through a darkened window. But I can hear them.”

Ever since my fortieth birthday, I’ve been thinking a lot about mortality.  What happens when we die?  Is there anything waiting for us on the other side of the veil, or is this life all we have?  The thoughts catch me when I’m alone; when it’s late at night; or even sometimes right in the middle of a chaotic day, rushing around with my kids on errands. Continue reading “Ginger Tea for the Dragon”

The Dragon in My Toe

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Hot Chocolate for the Unicorn and Other Flights of Fancy

“I can’t see the dragon, but I keep thinking about how pretty it looked in the X-ray in black and white.”

A tiny dragon burrowed into the big toe on my right foot, curled up around the joint, and lives in there now.  Well, sleeps there.  It seems to sleep all day long, like a cat in a sunbeam.  Except, a dragon.  In my toe.

Most of the time, I don’t notice it at all.  But sometimes, the dragon shifts in its sleep, writhing and rearranging, and I feel all the spines along its back and long, coiling tail scrape and screech against my bones, brightening my foot with pain like lightning forks across the sky. Continue reading “The Dragon in My Toe”

Sister Ghost

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Hot Chocolate for the Unicorn and Other Flights of Fancy, December 2024

“There’s a vagueness in her eyes like maybe the rest of the world looks as shimmery and translucent to her as she looks to me.”

They say that Hot Lake Hotel is haunted, but the shimmer of bluish light in the corner of my room wasn’t waiting for me when I arrived.  She came with me.  She’s been following me all of my life.  Almost all of my life.

I close the door to my room — lucky number 113 — behind me and gratefully pull off the face mask I still wear everywhere.  I know that most people have moved on from the pandemic, but between my rattly joints and asthmatic breathing, the last thing I need is to roll the dice on long Covid.  So, I still mask up when I go out. Continue reading “Sister Ghost”