Home sweet home.
The place is a Little Mermaid’s grotto of electronic equipment and tools, including the precious soldering iron I’d used to fix Petal upstairs. I have drawers filled with silver wire and screws of all different sizes, PCBs stolen from broken equipment or rummaged from yard sales (we still call them that, even though none of us have yards – it’s mostly peopleselling unwanted junk on the advertising boards of our building). I have large sheets of thin metal for when I make repairs, rolls of different filaments for my 3D printer, an old TV so I can watch my favourite K-dramas as I work, some computer monitors for Zora to look at code on, and a bookshelf filled with old manuals and scavenged university textbooks.
In the far corner is a camp bed. Momdoesn’t like it when I sleep down here, but sometimes I work until my eyes droop and there’s no way I can make it to the elevator without nodding off. As long as I’m prepared to grovel in the morning, I can get away with it.
Above the bed is the cheesy vision board Zora made me put up. It was a school assignment that we took to another level – we’d been tasked with creating a collage of imagesto define our specific goals for the future. We kept our school ones quite generic and boring, but made special versions for ourselves that were much more precise.
Mine had pictures of Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul – the dream trip I wanted to take after graduating. I had researched train routes, ferries, accommodation, everything.
It had a photo of a spaniel baku, my dream companion.
It had picturesof Profectus Academy, of students walking through the huge two-storey height doors, into the hallowed hallways and then graduating as new Moncha employees.
It had a picture of the research and innovation lab at Moncha, where I dreamed of working as a companioneer.
And it had a picture of Monica Chan herself, standing, arms folded and looking powerful, signature fringe on point, in front of thenext generation of bakus.
I kneel forward on the squeaky camp bed to take the pictures down – even the ones of the trip. I’d never be able to afford to go now, on a beetle baku owner’s salary. I blink back tears. It’s hard to look at the gaping hole left on the corkboard.
Taking a deep breath to pull myself together, I dump the clippings in the garbage can and get settled at my scratched-upglass-top desk. I place Linus down on my workstation and pull up the typical schematics for a dormouse baku on the nearest screen. You can find anything on the Moncha-cloud, but most people don’t mess with their bakus as Moncha-approved vets will only work on bakus that haven’t had any unauthorized repairs. Zora, however, trusts me.
The work takes my mind off Profectus, and it takes me a goodhour to get Linus’s tail straightened out, manipulating the metal back into shape with the help of a heated clamp and the soldering iron. He looks almost as good as new. I can’t check the movement or camera until he’s charged, so I leash him to the mains using an old cable of Petal’s. It’s not nearly as fast as leashing it to his owner, but it will work.
I rub my eyes, the impact of the crazyday finally hitting me. I can’t believe I started the day in the Moncha Store, getting my leash and picking my beetle baku. Feels like a lifetime ago.
I suppose I should leash my scarab beetle and give him a name so he can start learning my behaviours and downloading my feed from the Moncha-cloud.
Ringo? Too retro.
Herbie? Too eccentric.
Dune? Too geeky.
I’m stalling, and I know it. I liftthe backpack up, groaning at how heavy it is. When it lands on the desk with a resounding thud, I remember the hunk of twisted metal I carried home with me. That’s what’s weighing the pack down. With a lot more excitement than before, I tear into the already ruined backpack, tossing the beetle up on to a shelf, still in his box. I’ll leash and name him later.
I tip out the crumpled metal, pullingaway bits of dirt and leaves that cling to the surface. It has no distinguishable form, but my instinct was good: there is something really valuable here. The metal that isn’t covered in either my blood or scorched by some sort of burn mark is dark as onyx, a deep, rich black that I can almost see my reflection in it. I stare at it without touching it, trying to figure out where to begin.
Thehole has almost torn the thing in two. I can’t figure out what would have caused a ‘wound’ like that. Certainly not being run over by a train, or a falling from a height.
Finally, I realize that the metal is curled in on itself around the hole – I’m going to have to unravel it to see if there are any parts to salvage. Unfortunately the burn means the beautiful black metal itself is pretty uselessand will just end up in the garbage.
Junk. I wasted all that time and energy carrying home junk.
No point being delicate with it now. I take the metal in my hands and wrench it apart. It refuses to budge at first and I think about getting a hammer from the toolbox, but then finally it gives.
I gasp.
There, tucked into the burnt space, is a face.
NO QUESTION ABOUT IT: IT’S DEFINITELY a face. The eyes are open, one lid dented, the nose is squashed and pointing off to one side, but its little triangular ears are in almost perfect condition.
It’s the ears that get me. The rest I might have written off. But those ears are perfect. They’re a level up in design I haven’t seen before, with tiny filaments spun out into simulation fur, soft but strong, and most likely vital sense receptors just like they are in real cats.
That’s what this hunk of metal is. A cat baku.
A very expensive cat baku, if the quality of the materials are any indication.
I run my fingertips over the ears, half-expecting them to twitch in response. But they’re lifeless.
