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it.
    "You could always read a book," suggested Jung.
    "Have you got
Treasure Island
?"
    It didn't work.
    I'd never tried to read a book. Turned out, unsurprisingly, I read fast. The words flowed effortlessly into my memory matrix, and I was done far too quickly. I read it again from memory a couple of times. Good story, but not capable of keeping me from multitasking on my obsessions: Julie Bleaker, her kids, crushing drones, my exploding apartment.
    I admitted defeat, trudged to the corner, and plugged myself in.
    "G'night, Mack," said Jung.

    "Nighty night," I replied, clicking off.
    I dreamt of the fight two hundred eleven times. I repeated my meeting with the doc thirty-six times, my junkyard wrecking session one hundred fifty times. April and her drawing, that moment replayed no less than five hundred and eighty-eight times.
    Three hours, six minutes later, I clicked back to consciousness. Jung had gone to bed, so I clomped my way across the room as quietly as I could. I took the drawing off of the refrigerator, turned it over.
    FIND US
    I stuck it back to the fridge with those two words staring back at me.
    "I'll do what I can, kid."

5

    Every passing minute, the odds of something bad happening to the Bleakers increased. I wasn't happy about that, but I was still a logical machine (excusing a misstep here and there from that damn Freewill). Short of wandering around knocking on doors hoping to bump into Four Arms by chance, there wasn't much else I could do but wait until morning. There were too many doors in this town for one bot to cover. Fortunately, thanks to my internal chronometer, I perceived time as a constant. Six hours, twenty minutes clicked by at a steady pace, and never once did it seem to take longer than it should have.
    I'll admit I was glad when morning arrived. If only so I could tick off the first step in my current objective list. The next was to let Jung know I wouldn't be going to work today.
    "Any reason?" asked Jung as he put on his jacket.
    "Personal day," I replied.
    He cast a suspicious glance my way. I thought it was suspicious. My facial expression analyzer wasn't geared toward gorillas. "Is everything okay, Mack?"
    "Nothing you need to worry about."

    "We're not talking about me."
    He paused, waiting for me to say something. The nuances of spontaneous conversation sometimes escaped me, so I said nothing.
    "Damn it, Mack. I can't help you if you don't talk to me."
    I said nothing again.
    Jung's upper lip twitched, revealing a single, white fang. Only once had I seen him lose his temper, after someone at work had thought it funny to hide Jung's copy of
Pride and Prejudice
. He'd taken it well enough at first, but the prankster hadn't ended the gag soon enough and found himself facing a frothing, chest-beating, primal beast. No one got hurt, but that might not have been true if I hadn't been there to hold Jung back. After that, no one got between an eight-hundred-pound gorilla and Jane Austen.
    Other than that, I'd never seen him any other way but perfectly civilized, buttoned-down, proper. He could be dryly acerbic in expressing his annoyance with the absurdity of the world, but rarely did he actually show it.
    "Since you're barely two, Mack, I'll explain how this friend business works. Friends help each other. That's one of the big things about being friends. Otherwise, we're just two guys who know each other."
    "You gave me a place to recharge," I said. "I appreciate that, but you don't need to get involved any further."
    "Damn it. We aren't talking about what I need." He slapped his thick gray hands against my metal gut. Hard enough to cave in a skull, but not enough to move me. "Forget it. You know, Mack. Even for a ruthless killing machine, you're one closed-off son of a bitch."
    Jung lurched grumpily toward the door.
    "I could use a coat," I said.

    He turned back and nodded. "Check my closet. I've got one too big for me, but it should fit you." He grinned. At least, I thought he did.