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intolerable.
    So Jun and I decide to play a trick.
    Now, the robots we work with at the factory are big, dumb brutes. Steel-plated arms riddled with joints and tipped with thermal sprayers or welders or pincers. They can sense humans, and the floor marshal says they are safe, but we all know to stay out of their work space.
    The industrial bots are strong and fast. But androids are slow. Weak. All the work that is put into making the android look like a person comes with sacrifices. The android squanders its power pretending to breathe and moving the skin of its face. It has no energy left for useful service, a shameful waste. With such a weak robot, we thought that no harm could come from a little joke.
    It was not hard for Jun to craft a fluke—a computer program embedded on a wireless transceiver. The fluke is about the size of a matchbook, and it transmits the same instructions in a loop but only for a radius of a few feet. At work, we used the company mainframe to look up android diagnostic codes. This way, we knew the android would obey the fluke, thinking its commands came from the robot service provider.
    The next day, Jun and I came to work early. We were brimming with excitement over our prank. Together, we walked to the pavilion across the street from the Lilliput factory and stood behind some plants to wait. The square was already filled with elderly. It probably had been since dawn. We watched them as they sipped their tea. All of them seemed to be in slow motion. Jun-chan and I could not stop cracking jokes. We were excited to see what would happen, I guess.
    After a few minutes, the big glass doors slid apart—Mr. Nomura and his thing came out of the building.
    As usual, Mr. Nomura had his head down and avoided eye contact with everyone in the plaza. Everyone except for his love doll, that is. When he looked at her, his eyes were wide and … certain, in a way that I had never seen before. In any case, Jun and I realized that we could walk right past Mr. Nomura and he would never see us. He refuses to look at real people.
    This was going to be even easier than we’d thought.
    I nudged Jun, and he handed me the fluke. I heard him stifling giggles as I casually walked across the plaza. Mr. Nomura and his love doll were shuffling along together, hand in hand. I crossed behind them and leaned in. With one smooth gesture, I dropped the fluke into a pocket of her dress. I was close enough to smell the flowery perfume he had rubbed on her.
    Gross.
    The fluke works on a timer. In about four hours, it will come online and tell that wrinkled old android to come to the factory . Then, Mr. Nomura will have to explain his strange visitor to everyone! Hah, hah, hah.
    All morning, Jun-chan and I could hardly focus on our jobs. We kept joking around, imagining how embarrassing it would be for Mr. Nomura to find his “beautiful” bride here at work, on display before dozens and dozens of floor workers.
    We knew that he would never live it down. Who knows, we thought. Maybe he will quit his job and finally retire? Leave some work for the rest of the repairmen.
    No such luck.

    It happens at noon.
    Midway through lunch period, most of the workers are eating from bento boxes at their posts. Drinking mugs of hot soup and chatting quietly. Then, the android stumbles in through the bay doors and onto the factory floor. She is walking shakily along, wearing the same loud red dress as this morning.
    Jun and I smile at each other while the floor workers laugh out loud, a little confused. Still eating at his workbench, Mr. Nomura hasn’t yet seen that his love has come to visit him for lunch.
    “You’re a genius, Jun-chan,” I say, as the android shuffles to the middle of the factory floor, exactly as programmed.
    “I can’t believe it worked,” Jun exclaims. “She’s such an old model. I was sure the fluke would overwrite some key functionality.”
    “Watch this,” I say to Jun.
    “Come here, robot slut,” I command