Category: Story

In Practice

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

“Once again, Melody stood very still, not wanting to be distracted by her own physicality as she sifted through the information stored in her brain, slicing through it at the right angle to think specifically about the ideas her parent had just highlighted for her.”

The android arctic fox, Fact, drew back the privacy screen zhe’d placed around zir portion of the engineering laboratory where zhe had been diligently working away for months on a secret project.  Inside the cubicle-sized space, a second, slightly smaller android stood, looking markedly similar to Fact with its snowy white silicon fur, dressed in a simple yet tastefully neutral outfit.  However, this android had longer ears, a more rounded muzzle, and larger back legs with longer feet than Fact.  Instead of a fox, this smaller android was a rabbit.  An arctic hare to match the arctic fox.

Fact looked immensely proud of the long-eared android which stood with its head tilted at a slightly awkward angle.  It hadn’t been activated yet. Continue reading “In Practice”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 3

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“The tools I would need to move the other end of the wormhole back to our own time would be available on the starship Initiative,” Fact said, “and the knowledge I need would require — at least — several decades of processing power for me to calculate.”

For all that the wormhole had looked impressive, Fact’s experience of stepping through it felt like nothing more than stepping through an open doorway.  One moment, zhe was in a dimly lit cave with stale, musty air; the next moment, golden sunlight constricted zir pupils and fresh, green-smelling air tousled zir silicon fur with playful zephyrs.

Fact looked around in surprise, having expected to find zirself in another cave, albeit in an entirely different set of time-space coordinates within the universe.  Instead, the fox seemed to have found zirself in a field of wildflowers, beside a copse of deciduous trees.  Birds sang among the trees, and happy children’s voices shouted in the distance. Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 3”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 2

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“I used to tell stories about the… other timeline,” Galen said. “When I was little, my parents praised me for my creativity, and their friends said I made the days of work go by more lightly with my fanciful tales. But as I got older…”

Stealing a shuttlecraft from a Tri-Galactic Union starship isn’t easy under normal circumstances.  It’s a lot harder during wartime in a highly militarized timeline.  However, Fact and Consul Tor had some unusual advantages on their side.  Between the arctic fox android’s ability to think faster than anything else aboard the Initiative — including the ship’s computer itself — and the photosynthetic green otteroid’s ability to sense and even mildly affect the emotions of everyone around her, the two-man team made surprisingly quick work of freeing a small shuttlecraft from the shuttle bay and zipping away from the Initiative as fast as they could, concealed by a burst of cogiton particles to scramble the ship’s sensor readings. Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 2”

Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 1

by Mary E. Lowd

Originally published in Arctic Fox Android, July 2025

[Part 1 2 3]

“It felt to Fact as if zir crewmates wanted zir to be upset by the discovery of zir defunct, disembodied head. Like they were looking for a performance of grief that Fact simply didn’t feel and didn’t want to provide for the benefit of others.”

Gold-flecked yellow eyes stared into gold-flecked yellow eyes.  The gold flakes were real, twenty-four karat.  The yellow eyes, artificial.  Even so, one pair of eyes was animated with a simulation of life so perfect that it raised deep, philosophical questions about the nature of life itself.  For if an arctic fox android with snowy white silicon fur and a protonic brain can narrow zir eyes in concern at the discovery that zhe too will die someday, causing all the uplifted cats and dogs watching zir reaction to fight back tears, what more is required of a simulation before it becomes the thing itself? Continue reading “Time is a Double-Edged Sword – Part 1”

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”