Basic Maintenance

There's a robot in the kitchen cooking dinner for whatever reason. Mom was handling the cleanup of the dining room table. It would really be the normal sequence if it had been her Dad cooking, but he wasn’t there, replaced instead by a robot wearing his shirt. 

Cindy had never seen a robot bereaved of his skin, at least not in real life. The short research videos from before the singularity didn’t really count, and it's presence overall was disconcerting to her brain.

It wasn’t as if she was scared, maybe Mom had finally made use of her expertise. Maybe dad wasn’t gonna be home today, whatever the reason Cindy could at least be polite. Right?

Apparently she wasn’t as her mother called to her from the dining area.

“Come on Cindy, get over here. I just got the table clean.”

Cindy went ahead as instructed, seeing that her mom was at least a little frazzled. She looked up at her mom, watching her eyes shift from Cindy to the robot.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, mostly.”

“Okay. When’s dinner ready?”

“A little bit, we had a bit of a late start.”

“Oh,” it made a certain amount of sense to her. Mom had been doing fine that morning before school, but the day could get away from anyone. It was easy enough for her or her friends or her teachers to get overwhelmed, so it was nice to think it happened to mom too. 

But that didn’t quite answer her real concern. “Where’s dad?”

Her mom looked at her wide eyed, seemingly shocked. Cindy seemed to be missing something big, if her mom was shocked over the most obvious question.

The robot’s hydraulics squeaked a bit, making mom look over. “Where is it?” she asked the robot.

“Nowhere, just surprised.”, the robot said with her dad’s voice.

“Surprised?” her mom asked squeaking, “shocked is more like it!”

“I am experiencing no excessive amperage.” he said, as static as possible. It was as close as her dad could manage to deadpan, and Cindy had almost laughed, before her mom went off.

“Yeah you say that, but I still have to buy a new cover.”

“And I’m very thankful. But you seem to be overreacting.” He went back to the apparent project that was cutting vegetables with only a rubber grip layer on his hands.

“I know for a fact you’ve held her more, I’m sure she’s seen you. We’ve needed to re-cover twice since her first birthday.” her mom was having a bit of a field day with it, “It's like the quality lowers every new set I buy.”

“Dad, am I in trouble?”

“Of course not, your mom is just worried,” he comforted her, before attempting an explanation, “my skin got damaged while I was out today, I actually had to run home over it.”

“Really?” 

“Yep, the faults split on me and I needed to ask the cashier for a stapler,” he said, the hydraulics of his face mimicking a smile. “It looked like a crime scene.”

“Should I take over?” her mom said, realizing they weren’t gonna get it done at the rate they were going.

“It would be fine for-” something started beeping, “Nope, that’s not gonna work. You go ahead with that.”

Dinner went much the same as usual, even with her mom behind the wheel. Their evening went somewhat normally, even without her dad's cover.

Her dad looked over her homework, after dinner as usual, and she helped her mom with the cleanup since dad needed to do diagnostics. Her mom even offered a defrag, which made her dad laugh for some reason.

They mostly lazed about after that and before bed.

Cindy fell asleep first, feeling a little weird about everything that happened. Her dad was a robot, and she hadn’t known. She’d managed to live even her short life blatantly ignorant about her dad, and they weren’t even trying to hide it.

She felt silly, but she wasn’t upset.

But she was worried, her dad was having trouble and she wasn’t sure about how much. 

She didn’t wake up well, being much groggier than she was used to. She felt how her mom looked most mornings. She got out of bed anyway, going to brush everything that needed brushing before going into the living room.

Only to see her dad sitting on the couch with a new box. 

“Is that?”

“Yep, it’s my new parts!”

“Why didn’t mom help?”

“It wasn’t her day off,” he said, searching through the box. “It’s nothing electronic so everything's safe.”

“Alright.” she looked into the box seeing the various pieces, everything was sized, separated by corresponding parts of the average android.

“I should make breakfast, you're probably hungry.” he thought out loud, “Do you wanna see me resheath my arm?”

“Yes.” 

“Okay.” he said, before taking one of the arm sleeves out, it was close to the same tone as his old skin, and it was surprisingly thin for what it was.

“Cool.”

“Yep, you wanna go do washing while I do the rest?”

“Alright.” she said, a little dejected. She’d learned something new about her dad, and on some level she wanted to help.

Her dad, still lacking a face cover, had read her tone and responded, “What, are you worried about me?”

Still every bit worried, Cindy affirmed. 

“Yes.”

“And that’s perfectly alright, but it’s really nothing to worry about.” he tried to console her.

“But your sensors were going weird, and you kept beeping.”

“And that’s very normal. There's generally something wrong if you don’t have your skin.”

“Yeah, so you should be careful.” 

“Binggo, which is why the zucchini was a bit overcooked.”

Cindy was now a bit grumpy with the logic.

It wasn’t the normal state for anyone to go without their skin, so she shouldn’t be too worried. Finally knowing the score by that point, Cindy was back to her normal self.

She was back, a little less worried. And still a kid.