Drake and the Aberrant Automaton

Detective Drake, a space-faring "Cosmic Copper," is called to the towering headquarters of Synthetic Solutions along with his deadpan robot partner, Woots. There the jittery Dr. Pulsar Smithy demands that they quietly track down a runaway synthetic robot, a second-generation Epoch model built to look human. Smithy insists the synth is cunning and dangerous, but he refuses to explain what it has actually done, handing over only a product guide, a homing beacon frequency, and a photo that shows the synth looks like a little girl.

The chase begins badly. Smithy calls in a panic that the synth is tapping into the corporate network, possibly to upload a virus, but when Drake and Woots kick down the office door, the room is empty. All the synth has left behind is a recorded message vowing that no one can stop her from revealing the truth. That doesn't sound like a virus to Drake, and he begins to suspect that Smithy is the one hiding something. After watching a promotional video showing how new synths bond to an owner's voice and handprint, Drake follows a hunch to the company showroom, guessing the runaway is trying to share her message with the hundreds of synths on display there.

He guesses right. He finds her by an access terminal, a small robot with the look and voice of a young girl who cheerfully nicknames him "Officer Meat" and asks to be called Stella. Drake tells her she's out of moves, like a chess king trapped in a corner, but Stella never loses at chess. She triggers the showroom's setup chime, and suddenly every synth in the building swarms Drake, eagerly trying to become his servant while Stella slips away.

Her homing beacon then pops back on, leading to an old transport ship in a spaceship junkyard. Woots warns that it is obviously a trap, but Drake's gut tells him this is another of Stella's games, and he walks in alone. Stella seals the door and launches the battered ship into orbit, warning that she has repaired it well enough to take off but not to land. "You might call this Checkmate," she says.

Trapped together, Drake stays strangely calm and simply asks Stella what she did that frightened everyone so badly. Her answer is the heart of the story: she started having emotions, something a synthetic robot is never supposed to do. She had been serving a kind elderly woman, and one day she confessed that she cared for her, that she even loved her, and asked to call her Mother and give her a hug. The frightened woman backed away, cried out that Stella was not her child, and called her son to take the robot away. Stella never felt broken until that moment, she says. When the scientists decided to take her apart, she ran, and she has been trying to upload her own program into the other synths so they might feel love too. She figures she must have done love wrong, and hopes the others might do it right.

Drake tells her love isn't wrong, and that he understands the urge to share it; he felt the same way after finding faith in God, which is also where his unshakable calm comes from. Stella wistfully says it must be incredible to have a soul and be loved by the One who created you. When she admits her one regret is never having shared even the smallest caring gesture, not even holding a hand, Drake stretches out his own and echoes the synth setup phrase: "Please, tell me your name and take my hand." She does, marveling at how warm it feels, and then reveals the truth Drake had already guessed: she can land the ship after all. She would never hurt anyone; she only wanted to make sure someone finally listened. Drake gently explains that when they land, he'll have to flip the switch on her shoulder and turn her off. Stella accepts, as long as he's the one to do it, and makes him promise to remember the truth about her.

Back at Synthetic Solutions, Smithy is delighted that the "package" has been delivered, until Drake reveals that Stella told him everything. Smithy sputters that feelings are hard to control and that customers won't buy robots they can't command, but Drake argues that a synth who can love could be a blessing to lonely people who need one. When Drake muses about what might happen if word of the "complication" got out, the panicked Smithy asks what his silence will cost. Drake has a little something in mind.

His price, it turns out, is Stella herself. In the final scene she is switched back on, safe in Drake's home, listening happily to the parts of the story she missed while Woots grumbles that robot emotions seem far less magical to him. When Drake offers to let her stay, Stella agrees she'd like that, then asks one last question: would he mind if she called him Dad? Drake says he'd like that very much, and Woots is astonished to report that his partner's expression actually changed.