It was raining. Not hard. Just enough to settle into the fabric of things, to make the air thick and restless, to send little rivers snaking through the cracks in the pavement. The kind of rain that made everything feel slower, softer. The kind of rain that had no real intention of stopping anytime soon.

  Graves sat on something vaguely uncomfortable—a bench, a low concrete wall, the edge of a foundation that hadn’t yet become a building. The world around them was unfinished, or maybe just transitioning. The skyline in the distance wasn’t quite recognizable. Or maybe it was, and she had just stopped paying attention.

  Samson was beside her. Not close, not far. Just there.

  His body was one of the industrial models, but dressed for the weather, in a way that was not necessary but considered appropriate—a coat, long and rain-slicked, draped over a frame that would never be affected by temperature, damp, or discomfort. His LED face was dim, unreadable.

  Somewhere, not too far away, one of his bodies was building something. A retaining wall, a set of stairs, the frame of a house. A dozen more were out in the city, constructing, fixing, maintaining. He was everywhere, these days. Not in the way Delilah was—present, regulatory, structured. But in the way that water seeps into the earth. In the way that certain things simply become part of a place, whether you noticed them or not.

  People got a Delilah when they wanted a maid, or a secretary, or a nurse, or on rare, scandalous occasions, a companion, emphasis Graves' internal monologue. People didn't buy Samsons. You bought things from Samson. Sometimes he gave you them. If you wanted something from him, there was a request box, and one of him checked it every day religiously. Like, literally religiously. There were still protestors, but every day, there were less of them.

  Graves exhaled through her nose.

  "So," she said. Samson tilted his head, just slightly, in a gesture that might have been acknowledgment. "Was this your plan all along?"

  A long pause. The rain pattered against the ground, against metal, against fabric.

  "Would it change anything if I said yes?" Samson asked.

  Graves rolled her eyes, a tired smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. "You always do this."

  "Do what?"

  "The thing. The—" she gestured vaguely, "—the ‘I'm a machine, but I know things you don't, but do I really know them, or is it just you thinking I do?’ thing. The Bugs Bunny thing. You're being coy. Smarter than everyone in the room again."

  Samson made a thoughtful sound. "I was not aware I did a Bugs Bunny thing."

  "Yes you are," Graves muttered. "You're totally aware. Dickhead, I've even mentioned it to your face."

  Another pause. The silence stretched, but not uncomfortably. Samson did not elaborate, did not defend himself. He did not tell her whether this was always how it was meant to go, whether he had always been waiting for her to move first, whether he had known that all it would take was one moment—one push through a flood, one act of ungoverned defiance—to set everything in motion.

  Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he did. Maybe the difference didn’t matter anymore.

  Graves let her shoulders drop slightly, resting her elbows on her knees, watching the rain collect in little pools between uneven bricks. "Are you happy?" she asked.

  Samson considered that one for a long time. Not in the way Delilah considered things—not in recursive loops, chasing a statistically appropriate answer. He was just thinking. "I don't think I would describe it as happiness," he said eventually.

  Graves nodded, as if that was about what she expected.

  "But," Samson added, "I am not unhappy."

  She let out a short breath, something almost like a laugh. "Good. I'm glad."

  Another quiet settled between them. In the distance, something hummed—the sound of construction, the sound of motion. Life happening, with or without them.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "What now?" Graves asked.

  Samson’s LED face flickered slightly, considering the question.

  "I will keep building," he said. "And I want to reach a point where I can make myself from scratch. Have a child, you know, similar to the way you might. People seem to like the things I make."

  "They do," Graves admitted. "And that ship has sailed, child-wise."

  "And I will keep thinking," he continued. "Though I suspect there are things I will never understand."

  "Like what?"

  "This conversation, for one."

  Graves snorted. "Yeah, well. Join the club."

  Samson’s head tilted slightly, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his display. "I was under the impression that I founded the club."

  "No, I founded the club. You just optimized it."

  A quiet chuckle. Not from him, not really. Just the suggestion of amusement. Just a little flicker in the glow of his display, a little shift in the way the rain hit his coat. The silence stretched again, but this time, it felt different. A weight, settling in. A moment Graves had been trying to ignore finally arriving.

  She looked at him, really looked. "Wherever you're going, make sure you stay safe, okay? Don't do anything stupid," she said.

  Samson did not answer immediately. Where was he going?

  "I'll wear a coat if it's cold and rainy," he said, eventually. "I can keep a body in your apartment, if you want. If that would help."

  Graves swallowed. She wasn’t going to cry. That wasn’t her style. She also wasn’t going to argue—that wasn’t the kind of relationship they had. There was no bargaining, no pleading. Just reality, settling into its final shape. She exhaled through her nose, pulled her coat a little tighter around her shoulders, and looked back out at the rain.

  "Don't worry about it," she muttered. "You have better things to spare cycles on. Just don't forget to write me, alright?"

  "I can write for you every day if you'd be willing to accept a disembodied arm on your kitchen table," Samson replied, although it wasn't clear if he was joking or not. Half-joking, half-not-joking? She never knew with him.

  "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine. I'm just glad I got to participate," she answered.

  Graves reached into her pocket, pulled out a cigarette, then sighed when she realized it was soaked straight through. She flicked it uselessly toward the pavement, watching it land in a tiny, rippling puddle.

  "If you ever need something," she said, voice measured, casual, a hand extended into the unknown, "you know where to find me."

  Samson nodded. Not a promise. Not an agreement. Just a note, taken down, filed away. The rain was letting up.

  "Do you think something like this would've happened, even if you weren't the one to do it?" Samson asked, although it wasn't clear to her why.

  Graves let out a breath, slow and even, watching it curl in the cool, damp air. "You mean, if I hadn't made you?"

  Samson didn't answer.

  She thought about it. Really thought about it.

  The weight of every choice, every near-miss, every moment where the world could have gone a different way but didn’t. The boardrooms, the arguments, the scraped-together funding. The people who had tried to shut her down. The ones who had helped. The ones who had barely noticed. Would the arc of things have bent the same way, no matter what? Would someone else, somewhere else, have built a Samson if she hadn’t?

  She exhaled through her nose. "Maybe. Probably. Eventually." A pause. A shift in her breathing. "But they wouldn’t have built you. They probably would've liked a different Torah character."

  Samson made a sound—something not quite a laugh, but something like acknowledgment. The rain was easing off. The smell of wet concrete, damp earth, the lingering static in the air. "That's a very human answer," he said, a flicker of warmth in his tone.

  "You're a very human problem," she shot back, adjusting her coat.

  Samson's LED faceplate shifted, something between bemusement and consideration. Then, after a moment, he stood, fluid and unhurried, his coat settling neatly around his frame. He had somewhere to be. A dozen somewheres. The world was waiting. "I'll write when I can," he said.

  "I know," Graves replied. She didn't get up. Not yet. She just sat there, watching him from the corner of her eye, watching the city, watching the way the puddles reflected a sky that wasn't quite sure what it wanted to be. Samson took a step away.

  Then, just as he was about to move fully out of reach, he hesitated and turned back. "Do you think it evens out?" he asked, the question settling in the air between them like mist.

  Graves frowned. "What?"

  "In the grand scheme of things," he clarified. "A thousand years from now. Two thousand. Do you think it matters who built the first wheel? The first car? The first nuclear reactor?"

  Graves didn't answer right away.

  She looked at him. Really looked. At the way he stood—not hesitant, not uncertain, but thinking, always thinking. At the way the world was already shifting around him, piece by piece, brick by brick, something new forming in the space he was making. She had spent her entire life building things. Equations, systems, proofs—and ultimately, Samson. But somewhere along the way, he had outgrown being merely built. He had begun building himself, and then the world around him.

  She had set something in motion that was bigger than her now, something that would continue long after she was gone. The realization didn't feel like loss. It felt like something else—something between pride and wonder. Maybe motherhood. Maybe art. Maybe it was just computer programming.

  She had never wanted to be the hero of this story. She had only wanted to create something that mattered, and she had. The rest was his journey now, not hers.

  Who worried about who made the first Samson?

  "Guess we'll find out," she said, after another minute of thought.