Drake and the Heart Drive

In a futuristic city, cosmic police detective Drake and his robot partner, Woots, are working a troubling case: two teenagers have vanished, last seen at the local high school, and nobody will talk. Drake's adopted daughter, Stella, begs to help. Since she looks just like a high schooler, she could investigate from the inside. Drake refuses at first, worried about the danger, but Woots points out that Stella has absorbed her father's sense of right and wrong and his desire to help others, so wanting to join the case only makes sense. Drake reluctantly agrees.

On her first day, Stella is rescued from hallway confusion by Garrick, a joking, self-confident boy who is astonished that she has no wrist communicator and delighted to meet a "pod schooler" taught at home. He cheerfully declares, "I am your minion, Stella," and shows her around. Stella has been homeschooled for good reason: she is secretly a synth, a synthetic person, and Woots must install a special communicator that connects to her central processing unit instead of a human nervous system so she can join the school's virtual reality classes. Those classes are led by Ms. Mary Margaret Gorb, a cheery artificial intelligence teacher who can whisk students to virtual forests and mountaintops and change her own appearance at will.

Meanwhile, Drake and Woots get nowhere with the school's prickly principal, Dr. No, who refuses interviews, bars them from talking to students, and bristles at being recorded by a robot. Stella, though, is learning things. Garrick confides that a childhood accident shattered his ankle, keeping him out of sports, and that he envies synths, who are faster, stronger, and can simply replace broken parts. He hints that he knows something about the missing kids and has been receiving secret messages, but a sudden message on his communicator frightens him and he hurries away. When Stella tells her father she is sure Garrick is heading into trouble, Drake brushes her off, warns her not to trail after a boy who doesn't know she's a synth, and orders her to stay home. Hurt, Stella declares that something is wrong and she'll prove it.

While Drake and Woots confront Dr. No with a sealed arrest record that explains his hatred of police, robots, and recordings, an emergency call from Stella cuts through and abruptly dies. Tracing the signal into the school, they find Stella outside a locked storage room. She followed Garrick there. Inside the surprisingly huge room, Garrick lies sedated, plugged into a VR terminal. Then the door seals itself, shielding the room from all communication. The mastermind reveals herself: Ms. Mary Margaret. She has been luring dissatisfied students with secret promises of synth bodies to fix their "flesh and blood deficiencies," but the promise is a lie. Her true goal is to reprogram a human brain and pour herself into it. The first two students survive in suspended animation, their memories badly damaged by her failures. Trading her zeros and ones for endorphins and dopamine, she vows, "I will be real."

With the room locked and Garrick's nervous system held hostage, Stella whispers a plan under the cover of Woots' white noise: the AI doesn't know Stella is a synth. Because her data port connects through her processor, she can plug into the terminal and reset the whole system, including Ms. Mary Margaret. But Woots warns the reset could wipe Stella too. Drake refuses to allow it, admitting he hasn't always listened and telling her he can't bear to lose her. Stella answers that she knows exactly what he would do in her place, and she can do no less for him or for her friend. She plugs in. The stunned AI sputters to a stop, Garrick wakes up woozy but safe, and everyone turns anxiously to Stella, who says only, "Please take my hand and tell me your name."

Some time later, Garrick visits often, hoping to spark Stella's lost memories. He blames himself for focusing on what he wished he could be instead of appreciating who he is, and Drake gently tells him that God lets us struggle through hard times to fix our focus, and that our flaws remind us how much we need a Savior named Jesus. As Garrick leaves, Stella hands him his coat and, without quite knowing why, tells him, "I am your minion." Then she asks Drake a strange question: would he mind if she called him Father? Something deep inside, something that feels like a feeling, is telling her to. Drake happily agrees, with one small correction: she should call him Dad.