KiMo

KiMo (Kian + Moto)

As always, KiMo rises before dawn, voices and memories swirling in their head. Watching a pale pink sun rise through cloudy streamers, KiMo brews a flask of hot oolong tea and takes it out to theworkshop abutting the bungalow.A coastal wind blusters through the workshop’s open sides.The enormous bench, overflowing with machines in various states of repair, takes up most of the space.

KiMo finds the grease bottle and oozes oil into their mechanical wrist. KiMo flexes the joint experimentally. Steel tendons scuttlethrough their tunnels with a little less friction. Sensory feedback buzzesinto KiMo’s cortex.

<Take it easy, Ki. My arm isn’t so new anymore.>

“Feels better than last week, Mo.”

Nowadays, the soreness feels real. Five years ago, when they were still adjusting to the merge, the pain was just a series of data parcels fizzling into distant awareness. Back then, every moment was bloated, claustrophobic, constricted. It wasn’t easy suddenly being two people crammed into one body. But they’ve gradually found asymbiosis.

<HumanPlus have just released a budget line of prosthetic limbs that would fit us much better…>

“No way. I like yours,” comes the brisk reply.

Memories streak across their joined mind: four-year-old Kian opening his birthday present and powering up the bright purple robot for the first time; Moto comforting Kian afterthe other schoolkids teased him for his missing arm; ten-year-old Kian in hysterical tears as Pa sent Moto away in a steel box. There was a factory recall, Pa explained calmly. One of the Motos had a circuit failure, so they decided to discontinue the whole line. Pa always wore an emotionless expression; it was impossible to tell whether he was glad, sad, or furious.

Only Kian remembers running away from home at thirteen. Hiding out with other runaway tech-heads—mostly kids, like him. After a long hunt, hacking into company records and tracking disposal vehicle routes, he’d foundhis broken Moto in a scrapyard. After that came the terror and excitement of patching Moto’s network into his head, Moto’s arm onto his shoulder.

“Besides,” KiMo continues. “What kind of person just throws out the old and replaces it with the new? That’s not what we do. We fix, we mend, we adjust.”

KiMo gets to work repairing a customer’s broken microwave, listening to thenoises of the bungalow’s other residents waking up.A cheerful racket as the Rii3 switch on the coffee machine and chatter to each other. Gentle strumming of the guitar as Callisto warms up her nimble fingers. DAWEI, charging straight through the workshop with only a grunt for greeting, heading out to the garden to pull weeds for hours.

They each have a different story, but they all came to the bungalow from the coastal village, along the secret path through the forest. KiMo had never intended for this to be a hideout for misfit robots, or even a home—they’d doubted they even knew the meaning of the word.

Mo’s voice pipes up, gentle and familiar.

<Maybe it’s something you keep making, Ki.>

“Keep making?”

<Keep mending, keep fixing. Home.>