Tina was in three places at once. Firstly, her physical body was still in Jack’s house, of course, plugged into the Konishi computer port in Jack’s home office man-cave den. Secondly, her computer consciousness was housed on an internet server in New Jersey near the residence of the Johnson family, the family that “owned” Lucky. Thirdly, her senses were being share-fed information from Lucky’s sensors as the dog bot snuggled Willah Johnson, his human, to sleep. Tina could see and experience everything in the Johnson household as the family pet did.

Tina wondered what the Johnson’s would think if they knew that a sexbot was virtually sleeping next to their little girl. Probably nothing good, she thought. Tina was amazed at how clueless the vast majority of humans were to just how much was happening with computers, internet connections, AI, and other technology while they blithely lived their day-to-day lives. Konishi, as a corporation, knew as much about everyone as any government could, and Konishi was not the only player in the data collection game.

When Tina and Lucky had left the server-based chatroom to come here to the Johnson’s home, Lucky had opened the eyes of his physical form, bringing it out of sleep mode. Willah had been calling for him because she had just experienced a nightmare. The ten-year-old didn’t have a lot of them, but when she did have them, they were bad, very distressing for her.

When Lucky (with Tina in his sensor share-feed) had entered Willah’s bedroom, the lights were one and the little girl’s parents were there, gently trying to calm her and assure her that her nightmare was just that, and not real. Tina could see that Mr. and Mrs. Johnson’s eyes had bags under them and that the couple looked exhausted. Though physically haggard in appearance, Willah’s mother and father didn’t show any of their stress in their behavior toward their child.

Tina couldn’t even imagine the stress that they must be going through. Once, she had asked Lucky how long doctors had said that Willah would live.

“They think maybe another year or two,” the dog bot had answered.

Tina knew that, one day, Jack, being human, would die. She didn’t like to think about that. For the most part, she avoided such thoughts because Jack was so young. Eventually, though, he would get older and she would not. It was sobering.

Because Lucky was sharing his sensor data with her, Tina could feel the little girl desperately hugging her beloved Lucky, and could feel her wracking sobs subside, eventually into calm, regular breathing and then into a deep, relaxed sleep.

Though her parents had turned out the lights when they left the room, Tina had seen through Lucky’s eyes, just how cute the room was, with its pink curtains, flowery wallpaper, and tons of stuffed animal toys. There was a small desk with a computer there for Willah’s schooling on days that she didn’t feel well enough to attend classes in-person. Although Willah had medical reasons to attend school virtually, it seemed all humans were plugging their offspring into the computer world as young as possible.

Before she had gone to sleep, Willah had talked to Lucky, her best friend and confidant, in hushed tones to avoid waking up her parents again. Lucky, for his part, snuggled her and licked her face occasionally. Tina knew the dog bot drank from his water dish regularly to keep his mouth and nose moist. No one would have wanted a dog with paper dry kisses. Willah’s parents placed a few drops of a water treatment chemical in the water dish when they filled it to prevent Lucky’s simulated mucous membranes from harboring mold.

“Lucky, you’re the best dog in the world,” Willah said, hugging him again. “I hope another nice kid gets you when I die.”

Lucky whined slightly and snuggled Willah tightly, burrowing his nose under the covers, pressing into the girl.

“I know you don’t like me to talk about that, but it’s going to happen. If you knew it was going to happen to you, you’d think about it, too. I remember when Grandma died. I think I’m going to be with her when I go and she’ll take care of me. You never met Grandma, but she was great. She would have liked you, too, a lot. I miss her. She used to tell stories of what life was like for her when she was a little girl. Wanna hear some?

Lucky made the softest of dark barks, also being careful to not awaken the parents sleeping down the hall. This made Willah laugh. “Ok.”

As Tina listened to secondhand stories from Willah’s Grandmother, she felt transported to another time, a time that seemed more like a time for humans. At any time, Tina, connected to the internet as she was, could see any of millions of images, including images of times before the Internet Revolution. She had seen large gatherings of many humans on beaches, at parties, at other large events. Everywhere in these old-timey images were faces having eye contact with each other. While not everyone was smiling, there were certainly lots of smiles. In pictures of similar gatherings in similar venues today, nearly everyone was looking at a phone, not each other.

While she had not been there, hadn’t been designed and assembled yet, and had thus not eye-witnessed these time periods, Tina had the impression that humans of previous time periods were more capable than those of today. Certainly their lives had not been easy, but one of their philosophers, Friedrich Nietzsche, had said, “That which doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger.”

Through Lucky’s ears, Tina heard stories of Willah’s grandmother’s struggles, tragedies, and triumphs. As a little girl, she had been playing hide-and-seek on a farm in Georgia and unfortunately had chosen a patch of poison ivy as her hiding place. As a young bride, pregnant with her first child, her husband had died in an accident. Willah’s grandmother had made many sacrifices as a single mom to make sure things turned out ok for her son who would become Willah’s father.

As Willah talked herself to sleep, expounding on the life of her deceased grandmother, Tina thought that Willameena Johson, after whom Willah had been named, was both hard and soft, could be both forgiving and grudge-bearing, had been a pillar of strength to those around her at times, and, at other times, had been desperately in need of help herself.

Tina thought that if she weren’t an android, if she had been a human with a grandmother, she would have liked to have such a grandmother as Willameena Johnson. Tina would never meet Willameena because she was dead. She had, however, had a granddaughter who had “downloaded” vast amounts of her life on Earth. Now, this granddaughter, too, would die.

How fragile humans were.

After Willah was deeply asleep, Lucky silently asked Tina in their minds, “Wanna see the house?”

“Sure”.

Lucky’s physical form carefully jumped off Willah’s bed and headed for the door, carrying a sensor share-feed with Tina in his head. Tina thought he seemed eager to give her a tour and to show off the amenities of the Johnson household.

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