It wasn't long before I noticed something was wrong with my daughter. But by then it was already too late. My wife failed to see the signs herself. And we were, well we were helpless, desperate, angry, catatonic, sad and miserable. That was what made us human after all.

It began, as most if not all such things do, in silence. Both of us are working long hours to make ends meet, and our family’s cohesion suffered for it. Our daughter however was willing to put up with it, finding the now antiquated notion of marriage rather quaint. She really liked old fashioned ways, in protest to the modern world which dictated, no, demanded, that everyone be productive, goal-oriented and to discard everything else as a hindrance to the noble path for maximum efficiency. “Attractively peculiar” she used to say, proud to be part of what in her mind might have been an immovable rock, standing defiantly tall against the current of faceless, uncaring, droning mass of teeming bodies on their way to begin their nine-to-oblivion.

We were in our 50s, we could use a little optimism, however unfounded.

She was used to staying alone after school in our house, until we got back. She would lay down on the sofa, listening to an old record play, calming notes filling the empty house. Her feet would dangle at the edge, her fingers curling her hair, her mind racing, probably as far away from here as she could. Or she would create her own music, running the back of her hand along the spines of numerous dusty books, listening to the sound of her fingernails playing on the faux leather. It almost sounded like an instrument. She would use both hands, first almost absent-minded then racing them, building up to a crescendo. Book after book, shelf after shelf, she would go faster and faster, always cracking a smile at the end.

Simon would keep her company when she was home and Simon knew not to disturb her during these moments of bliss. For which I was thankful. I had fronted good money for Simon and expected excellent service, especially in regards to our daughter. Simon of course wasn't about to object anyway.

He would take care of everything that needed doing. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, occasionally he would even help our daughter with some of her homework, especially math. Math was his forte after all — a natural proclivity, so to speak.

Lately the work hours had grown longer. A war could have that effect when every part of our industrious nation was focused on besting the opposition. I would usually arrive at home after sunset and would wait for my wife at the porch, leaning gently back and forth on a rocking chair, too numb to be affected by the creeping nostalgia usually induced by remembering my own father sitting on the same spot.

My wife would arrive shortly after, 10 minutes later to be exact, every time. We open the door as silently as possible, Simon’s metallic voice greeting us in low volume, what passes for a whisper between androids. He would promptly inform us that our daughter was already asleep and everything in the house was in order. He always proceeded to remind us of the cost of restocking house and food supplies and paying the bills, always followed by the current balance in our accounts in the bank. I found that extremely annoying about him and kept saying that I’d code that bit out of his subroutine, eventually. Of course I never got around to actually doing it. We had tuned him out by then, cracking the door open and holding our breaths as to not wake the huddled form, already neatly tucked in.

After a fleeting glance, we closed the door and headed straight to bed, grabbing a bite out of whatever Simon had prepared for breakfast, lunch and dinner, from a tray he had thoughtfully placed in the small hall before the bedroom. Brushing our teeth in a rush our eyelids would already be heavy. We barely talked, hell we barely lived! Like that old way of catching up, you know the one, which used pigment and pulp from dead trees, “newspaper” it was called. Yeah, like that. We would talk in the morning and catch up then— on yesterday’s events. With our knotted stomach we would skip breakfast and head of to work, sparing again a parting glance at our still sleeping daughter. It pained us not to actually communicate with her, but not working to exhaustion during wartime in this regime wasn’t really an option.

Yesterday however was different. I had got up before my wife and after showering I noticed a faint smell coming from her room. Simon of course assured me that nothing was out of the ordinary. The android was programmed to attend to my every need, to take care of problems, any problems. He, no it, was also equipped with sensors far more advanced than my meagre senses. We humans were widely known for that tendency — building tools that far surpassed ourselves. Most of our alien neighbors chose instead to enhance their own abilities.

This continued for a day more but the smell seemed to disappear afterwards. Well, covered to be truthful, but I didn't notice the difference until I was billed for an air freshener. It wasn't the cost that gave it away but the unfamiliar name of the company. Rather thoughtful of Simon, I thought as I fell asleep.

Next day I called in sick. It wasn't a lie anyway. I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, composed entirely out of anger, guilt and bile. My gag reflex kicked in every now and then for no apparent reason, beyond grief that is. My wife couldn't stay at the house, she needed to get out. Mumbling to herself, probably half-mad already, she went off to work. She would never return, but I didn't know that then. She would end up in an asylum but I wouldn't find out that either. I wouldn't find out much more anyway.

I sat on my daughter’s favorite bench. Her school bus would come over, the door smoothly sliding open, an ashen face with bloodshot eyes and black circles underneath would stare back at me. They belonged to the vaguely feminine form of the overworked driver. She seemed to behave like that creature my grandfather used to own for a pet. “Goldfish” he called it. “Goldfish, Agamemnon. I know they’re extinct now, but I think I have a cinepic over here somewhere… Those stupid things used to open and close their mouths repeatedly when they weren't oxygenated. Funny as hell but they should have the water changed by then. Ah, I found the disk! Now where was that drive to insert the damn thing…”.

The driver was doing the same thing. It took me a while to register the pressure waves coming my way. Eventually my ears forced a signal to my brain and I was aware of the woman speaking. “… your daughter coming?” My daughter… “No… No she can’t make it today.” She nodded and slouched back on her chair. She was dead on her feet but thankfully driving today was largely an automated process, unless you headed out to the irradiated zones designated to heavy industry. Which was where everyone headed for at least one shift. The nation was entangled in an economic all out war and child labor wasn't beyond our glorious leaders.

The bus raced off and I was alone once again. I recalled the crimson sheets and shuddered. The fragrant but fake perfume of equally fake hyacinths from the nearby garden reached my nostrils. I hadn't really noticed it before, having dismissed them, a 3rd-tier manager at the complex producing them was a friend and he had told me all about them. Everything was carefully constructed and everything seemed beautiful. Of course I could mentally instruct my implanted left eye to switch to infrared and notice the abnormal spread of temperature, the bright lines of copper, hidden in the structure of the plants emitting more heat as electricity was coursing through them. You could trace the lines back to the power grid itself.

But I didn't. For once I decided to let myself believe the lie. Everything seemed hollow and bleak and I needed something, anything, that claimed to be beautiful. Gardenias followed the hyacinths tracing a perfect golden spiral, the ratio of which was ingeniously implemented in the pleasing aesthetics of the building itself. I released my feet from both shoes and socks and let them rest on the perfectly heated pavement. I basked in the island of sunlamps embedded to -and surround by- the overhead blue screen, color balanced at precisely 5,500 Kelvin, occasionally slipping following a perfect gradient of 2,700 to promote relaxation before sliding back up. My fingers of both hands traced the intricate skin of press forged wood substitute covering the plastic core bench. At first almost absent-minded, then I raced them, as if they were following their own dance and melody, building up to a crescendo that never came. Instead they suddenly found themselves over the edge of the bench, apparently without purpose.

The colors were still bleak and I was still hollow. The dull grays of her prefabricated room contrasted with a flash of red. I mentally overrode the safety limits of my heart and forced a restart. One intended to take place when the client had already received another one and the current specimen was undergoing repairs and diagnostics. I would be long dead by then of course. I should know, I helped develop the prototype before the war. I drifted away painlessly, in the physiological sense of course, because mentally I anguished and still hated myself for not finding out sooner.

Simon had covered it up. Of course it had, since it had diagnosed my daughter’s suicide as a distressful variable in my life, and took action to prevent it from detrimentally affecting me as long as it could. That was its job: to attend to my every need, to take care of problems, any problems.