The kebab place was only a block away—a small fluorescent-lit metal shack with a big neon sign that smelled of grilled meat and burnt onions. Benjam collapsed into a plastic chair while Mina ordered for him.
She got the food for him and an extension cord for herself, and after giving him his, she opened up the small slit in her wrist and pulled out her charging cable.
Then, she sat across from him and, for a while, just watched as he shoved fries and meat into his mouth.
She remembered how those things tasted … but she'd never get to taste them again, she knew. Electricity was what she ate now, and, though it was great, it … wasn't the same.
Neither of them spoke for a while. The sizzle from the grill and the laughter of another couple of drunks getting food filled the silence.
Finally, Mina folded her hands on the table. "Benjam," she said softly.
Benjam kept eating.
"Benjam," she repeated.
He looked up. His fingers were shiny with grease. In her memories, she used to eat all messy, too.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"You said the retreat with Sophie's father is the day after tomorrow, right?" she asked.
Benjam groaned, shaking his head. "Don't remind me. I still don't know what I'm gonna say to the old man. 'Hi, sir, I'm the tutor your daughter definitely isn't fucking! Hope you don't have cancer?' Great first impression."
Mina huffed a laugh. "You've made worse."
He shot her a bleary look.
She shrugged. "You have. I know."
"Yeah," Benjam said. "But those weren't so important to me."
"You really are serious about Sophie, then."
"Yeah."
Mina nodded slowly. "I guess I can't… weigh in on that," she said, trying to keep her voice even. With her finger, she tapped the side of her head. "I don't have that part of you in here."
"Right," Benjam said. "I've been with Sophie for six months. I bought—I mean—you were 'born'…"
He tried for a while, but he didn't manage to finish his sentence.
"Ten months," Mina said.
"Oh," Benjam said. "Already? Right. Ten months, huh? Time flies."
"Yeah, I guess it does." Mina looked down at her hands, flexing them a couple of times. "You've come a long way from lonely and desperate for affection."
"Yeah, I have," Benjam murmured. "It's been … great. Better than I thought possible. You remember how I felt, though—I didn't think it could happen at all."
"Yeah, I remember," she replied. "Quite well." She shook her head and smiled at him encouragingly. "But look at you now! You're doing great! Everything's coming up roses! And now..." Her smile flickered and waned. "You … don't need me anymore."
Benjam froze with a piece of kebab halfway to his mouth. He put it back down, shaking his head. "Mina, that's not—"
"You do," she interrupted, lifting her gaze to his. "Look at you right now, drunk and stumbling, needing someone to drag you out of the Toaster. Just … less."
Benjam blinked, uneasy. His mouth opened, then closed again, as if he wanted to say something but didn't know how.
Mina pulled her charging cable from the extension cord and put it neatly back inside her wrist. Just something to keep her hands busy.
"Well," she said lightly, "you have Sophie, now. You have a life. A direction you want to go in, and people who matter to you. It's no good to have a sex robot standing nearby. Someone might recognize the model."
Benjam winced. "Mina, that's not what I'm thinking."
"It's true, though. And it's bad enough that I'm a sexbot, but hell, I'm a copy of you. You'd be labelled a weirdo pervert in under a second. And then what would Sophie's father think?"
"That's not true."
"Of course it's true." Mina looked down at her fingers, flexing them again. "And it's okay if you don't want to risk it. Really. I'm okay. I'm not mad at you or anything. How could I be? You're doing … exactly what I would do."
He studied her for a moment, his eyes narrowing. "You're not okay."
Mina laughed once—flat and small. "I'm fine."
"No, you're not. It goes both ways, Mina. I know you, too, not just the other way around."
"I'm fine."
"Mina."
She sighed, long, hollow, just for cosmetics, grasping her head in her hands and leaning back in the flimsy chair until the plastic creaked. "It's just lonely, Benjam. That's all. Watching you build something real with someone else. Watching you try so hard not to screw it up. Watching you care." She paused. "I never got that, remember? I don't know what it's like. I was made from you at your lowest."
Benjam's expression shifted, from merely worried, into something that looked remarkably guilty.
"I was made," Mina continued, "because you were desperate after your ex left. Because that bad, cheating version of you didn't want to be alone. And now I'm watching the best version of you walk away."
Benjam stared at her, jaw clenched, throat working.
"It just sucks, you know? And I get errors whenever you're gone, like the human part of my mind—the part that's you—begins to realize that I'm … not."
Benjam still just stared at her.
"So if it's really the only way it can end, then you might as well just turn me off now and return me, and be done with it."
Slowly, Benjam shook his head. "No."
"You might even get a partial refund. Or not. But you can resell me."
"No."
Mina shrugged. "Why not? That's just what happens to outdated bots. You return them. Or you upgrade them. Or if they're sex bots, maybe you just… leave them on the side of a road, somewhere, where your girlfriend won't find them."
"Mina, stop."
"Why?" she asked. "These are your thoughts, Benjam. I know you have them too."
"No, I don't," Benjam said, shaking his head. "I haven't thought those things even once. Yeah, I guess maybe would under different circumstances, but as of yet I haven't."
Mina glared at him.
Suddenly, he got up from his chair—too fast and much too clumsy, as his chair fell to the ground behind him, and walked over to her side of the table. There, he awkwardly grabbed her hand, then held it tightly.
"You're not disposable to me," he said.
She gazed up at him, trembling slightly. "We both know what you think about the humanity of androids."
"No. We both know what I thought about them ten months ago. You're only guessing at what I think about them now. Or what I think about you, specifically."
Mina stared up at him, her hand still caught in his grip. His hand was trembling, likely from the alcohol and drugs still in his system. She wondered if she ought to keep him within walking distance of a hospital for a while longer.
"I'm not guessing," she said, "I'm extrapolating. I know your patterns."
He opened his mouth impossibly wide and let out a yawn. "And you think I'm trying to get rid of you?" he asked.
"Not yet," Mina said, "but you're drifting away. You have been, ever since you met Sophie. And lately, it's more like you've been swimming as fast as you can."
Benjam tightened his grip on her hand and stared at her.
"I know how that comes across, by the way. I'm certainly not going to stop you from finding love. I just don't want to go back to our flat and sit alone for two days, wondering if I'm just a mistake you're looking to throw away."
"You're not."
"But your life going forward would be easier without me in it."
Benjam grimaced in an overly dramatic fashion. "Well, now that is just obviously false. I can barely walk right now—let alone remember how to get home." He took a break from staring at her for a moment so he could look around. He looked confused, as if he'd just noticed the kebab shop for the first time. "Where even are we?" he asked.
"You've never been here before?"
"No."
"Well, don't worry about it. I've got GPS in my head—but that's not the point. What are you going to do then, if you really want to keep me around? Are you going to tell Sophie what I am? I don't think you've reached that level of maturity."
Benjam cringed so hard Mina could almost hear it. "No," he muttered, looking blankly ahead. " I can't … do that. Not yet. Maybe … once we've been together long enough?"
"Then you see the problem."
"Yes, but Mina, Sophie's… different. She's gentle. Kind of shy. Abused as a kid and unable to stand up for herself, or even just voice when she's really not okay with something. I don't want to freak her out, and then watch her … drift away. Thinking I'm a weirdo pervert, as you said."
"Hence the problem," Mina said, irritatedly taking her hand out of his grip.
Benjam stared down at her angrily and gripped her shoulder instead. "Problems have solutions, Mina."
"Not all of them."
"This one does."
"Okay. What is it? Where does it leave me?"
"Right here," he said immediately. "With me."
Mina gazed up at him.
Not a moment of hesitation. That was encouraging.
Still, her mood soured slightly. "But not as me," she said. "As your childhood friend turned cyborg, as you introduced me to her when she found me all those months back. You're still hiding me, just differently."
"I'm… delaying the panic attack we both know she would have," he corrected. "You talked to her that time. You saw what she's like."
Mina gave him a look.
"Okay, fine. Yes. I'm hiding you. But Mina … I'm trying. I'm really trying. I just haven't figured out yet how to make it fit. And we already locked in that lie six months ago, and now I don't know how to come clean."
Mina shook her head. "No, you locked in that lie. I just went along with it because you quietly begged me to."
"Yes, well, I had to. She would have broken up with me if I didn't."
Mina raised her hands. "Well, so much for honesty being a virtue," she replied. After a moment, she shrugged and put on her best idiot voice. "But probably, yeah, with the 'She's me, but in a sex robot,' and all."
Benjam grinned. "And a female one, at that."
"With bigger boobs than her. That you occasionally feel up."
"Yeah. Pretty awkward."
"Yeah," Mina said. She smiled at him lopsidedly for a moment and quietly watched him. Then she shrugged again. "You don't have to tell her yet. I'm not asking for that."
He peeked down at her through his fingers. "You're not?"
"No," she replied. "I know that's too much. I just want you to spend a little more time with me, too, that's all. So I can believe you're not going to turn me off once you get married and have babies with her."
Benjam cringed so visibly it almost counted as full-body recoil. "Way too soon to be worried about that, Mina. But also—I won't."
"You don't know that," she said.
"I do."
"You can see the future?"
He nodded enthusiastically, swaying his head and playing up his blood-alcohol level. "Why, yes, I can, actually. I'm that awesome."
She didn't blink. She didn't have to, in any case. Her eyes were cameras. But she consciously decided not to.
"Alright … I'll prove it to you."
"How?"
Benjam walked back to the side of the table across from her, stumbling slightly. Then, he shook his head and sat down on the rim. "You're worried you're becoming an insignificant part of my life?" he asked. "Alright, then all we have to do is connect you more to the big picture. Then you'll be stuck to it. You want to come to Sophie's dad's retreat with me?"
Mina flinched. "What? No. I don't know those people. I barely met her twice."
"Well, would you rather stay at home alone while I'm gone?"
"No."
"Then come with me."
Mina stared at him like he'd grown a third eye. "It's a private thing, you idiot. The dad probably doesn't want to tell everyone he might have cancer. I'm not invited."
Benjam waved that away drunkenly—then suddenly froze, curling his hand into a fist and began thumping his chest, lost for words. It took him a minute to find his voice again.
"It's not like it's… exclusive-exclusive," he said. "I mean … I'm invited, and I'm just a tutor from university. Apparently. It can't be out of the question that I'd bring a plus one. At least for her dad."
"And for Sophie?"
"Sophie … Well … and I hate to say this, but Sophie … probably isn't going to stand up to me if I say you want to come. Just this one time, I will be a shitty, pushy boyfriend to her. For you."
"Gee, thanks. And if someone who watches a lot of porn recognizes me?"
"Well, according to Sophie, her dad is a hardcore conservative. He probably thinks 'incognito mode' means wearing a hat." Benjam shrugged. "My guess is he won't like you, but he probably won't recognize you either."
"Yippee," Mina said flatly. "I get to spend three days with people who dislike me."
"Amazing, right?" Benjam asked, before burping so loudly that a bunch of passersby turned their heads and stared. "But anyway, come up with a story as to why you have to come. Preferably something sad. Then, if anyone asks, just say it hurts to talk about."
"Perfect," Mina said. "Tragic backstory, I've got just the one. My fuckbuddy died of alcohol poisoning on his way home from the kebab place."
Benjam suddenly lit up, grabbing her hands and smiling. "Oh! I like that one. That's just like me, right now!"
"Yes," Mina said. "And if you collapse on the stairs again on the bridge, the story becomes even more convincing."