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  My parents' doorbell rings at quite possibly the worst possible time.

  There are times when it is awkward for someo your doorbell: There is the mid-shower ring or the overslept in bed half-naked ring, then there's me with my oily gloved hand deep ihe gaping chest cavity of a naked android. Also you're the only person in the house.

  I pull my hand out of their chest and shout "ing!". The gloves go in the bin and I leave the partially destructed Kimmy to get to the front door. I silently pray the delivery guy and/or family friend doesn't question the oily apron over my front and stench of android gunk ing off me.

  The camera by the log meism shows a beautiful blonde woman who is very familiar to me- I ge very hard at the fact that the first time she will see me in maybe two years is mid me destrug my parents' android. I deactivate the log meism and swing the door open, smiling as warmly as in the hopes it will stave off any s.

  "Hi Amber!"

  Her face goes from excitement to fusion in seds as she looks upon me. "Hi Nat, is this a bad time? I e back if I really have to."

  "No, I'm just in the middle of ara-curricur assig. I pause, it's tough work." I twirl a loose hair to deal with the nerves.

  "Exg! So...." She stares at me expetly with her gold flecked eyes. "...are you gonna invite me in? Or is this really awkward because I inally called Freya when you weren't home and now you're covered in crud."

  I shake my head. "No, she's out on a walk for a few hours and I up. I promise, you e in."

  "Okay Nat, I swear you haven't gained an ounce of social fidence since you were seventeen." She giggles lightly and steps in as I hold the door open. I close it after her and ehe log meism to be openable from the inside only. Amber hangs her coat up on a hangar in the hallway and clutches her handbag tightly to her dress, she stands there waiting for me to say something.

  "Sorry let me just put my apron away and spray some deodorant." I head for the garage and realise I left the door open, any sed now she could ghrough ahe cold eyes of the Kimmy with it's hardware and pting id out all around it. My legs freeze up.

  "You know this is the first time I've been to yours. I didn't expect it to feel so... sad."

  "My Mum's been struggling since I left for uy and our Kimmy stopped w. I kind of miss my room at uni already."

  She nods, her beady eyes looking me up and down. She hasn't mentioned my father but I doubt she would have e round here if she had any inkling he was anywhere in the viity. Some things are better left unspoken.

  "Speaking of the devil herself, why is there a dissected Kimmy in the garage? Unless my eyes deceive me Nat."

  "Oh that's- I was kind of hoping you wouldn't notice to be ho."

  "Well you 't just not show me it while you yourself up. If you're not going to irl a drink you show her the internal ws of something as cool as a Kimmy. I know they're not a new model but..."

  "Do you want a drink?" I ask her with a sigh, all I really want to do is just hang the apron up and stare at the Kimmy's face for an hour while I think about how I could have made this go better.

  "I'm alright for now. I'm more ied in Kimmy now, I've heard so much about her. It's a miracle your parents mao eve a hold of her from what I heard." I nod aantly head into the garage, I put my apron up on a peg and spray myself a few times and try to steer the stream of deodarant from wafting into her nose.

  Amber follows after me excitedly, her face glows with wonder as she runs her hands around the rge table the parts rest on. Truthfully, I'm not sure if she came here to see me or the Kimmy now.

  "So. Is she your "extra-curricur assig"?"

  "Yeah. I'm going to try ahem into some sort of w order and hope it impresses my professor enough to like, not fail me?"

  "You're failing?" s fall over her face.

  "No but I'm not doing amazing and maybe he'll be nicer if I show up with a partially funal Kimmy. Practical applications of knowledge, he talks about it a lot."

  "Makes sense, do you have any idea what o be doo fix her?" I stare at her and try to think of a response. "Or are you just winging it Nat?"

  "I'm just winging it. I've holy just spent the st two days destrug her so I pos, throw them out or attempt to repair as needed and then put her back together and see if I get a w android."

  "That's not winging it, there must be dumber people in your css who would have just given up and recycled her by now."

  "My parents never recycled them, maybe it wasn't for the right reasons but I think they deserve better treatment than that after living in a closet for one and a half years." She nods then turns her grin wicked.

  "Is there a reason you're calling her a them? I get she's an android but she's a woman. Kimmys were partially desigo be sexual partners; she's not like a genderless pieetal." I squint my eyes at her, entirely unsure of why she's bringing it up.

  "It's not senti-"

  "I know she's not se but; would you call a Mal or a Vera a them?"

  "Probably not, but Amber, "she" is a dissambled charcuterie board of muscle aal pos right now. I don't have to call them anything beyond that as of this sed." She shoots me a disapproving look but doesn't press the subjeymore.

  "So you wouldn't fuck a Kimmy?"

  "No I wouldn't, and what does that even have to do with this?" I ot properly express to her in this moment how little I want to fuck this Kimmy.

  "Well I alresumed you were into girls. You know how many times I tried to get you to just ask someo in sedary school?" I nod and try not to think about hoard I was at sixteen.

  She tinues. "So like, you wouldn't?"

  "The idea makes me unfortable, Amber. Androids look almost exactly like real people but they're just a chassis with a bck box inside. I don't want to fuck a high tech sex doll, nor do I want to be cssed as someone who lost his virginity to an unfeeling gynoid. I would never live it down and I haven't even lived down my ck of experieh girls in sedary."

  "She doesn't look like a real person now does she?" Her smirk puts me off bance, I pce my arms behind me on the ter and fiddle with a loose screwdriver head. My eyes steer away from the Kimmy and to the dirt covered floor.

  Amber's heels cli the floor as she approaches me. She puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls my face up to meet her eyes.

  "I'm sorry if I'm making you unfortable, Nat. We don't have to talk about the dissassembled android in the room if you don't want to." Her hand squeezes my shoulder and she offers me a gentle smile.

  "I think I'm just going a bit loopy from spending fourty-eight straight hours taking apart what looks like a human woman. I'm sorry for being snappy." She nods at me. Amber is only one or two inches shorter thahout heels, but her presence has been stantly overp since I met her. I smell her autumnal perfume from being so close to her ahe soft lines on her face: if she was a Kimmy I could take her apart and spy her out like-

  I shudder at that train of thought and stop it.

  "Nat, pay attention to me." She pouts at me.

  "Sorry." She sidles both her arms around my neck, the heels make her almost my height. My father would kill me if he knew what was happening right now.

  " I kiss you?"

  I am keenly aware this is the first time in my life someone has genuinely offered to kiss me. I am een years old, all my peers have probably slept with a girlfriend a few dozen times at this point.

  "Are you going to answer or stare into space because you're a cutely awkward virgin? If I'd known the Kimmy stuff would have been such a bummer to you I wouldn't have tried to create some tension with it." She pys up the pout more.

  At this moment it is clear to me this is my one ce to get id before my twenties, when I maybe meet a cute nerdy girl who bees ied in me because of some robotics work I do. I have to be a man, and kiss my hot best friend. My Mum would probably appreciate the pany at dinner as well.

  "Yes." I've never felt so sure of anything in my life.

  Amber es her soft owards me and pushes herself into me, she clearly doesn't expect me to know what to do so she viciously assaults my mouth with her tongue. I accept the position of surrender and not knowing what to do to aent, I try to copy to maybe keep up.

  As we fall into a daween limbs and faces she presses me further onto the ter. She swipes my screwdriver heads to the side and keeps going for more and more, like I'm the st meal she's ever going to have. Being ed by a beautiful woma seem like that bad of a way to go from this position.

  Despite the sheer luck of what is happening and ever increasing iy of feelings throughout my body, something feels wrong about this. I 't get out of my head a niggling doubt about it. Like I'm doing something awful and unfivable.

  Then my eye catches the facepte of the Kimmy, and even as Amber pulls me into greater throes of ecstasy; I 't get the image of her limp yellow eyes b into me out of my mind's eye.

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