ather turned the vid on. Four long hours
later, he switched it off, and went to bed.

Chet's mother finally turned away from the now-dark window. She reached into the
pocket of her grimy bathrobe and withdrew an envelope and handed it to Chet,
then turned and went to the apt's other room to sleep.

My name was on the outside of the envelope, in rough script, written with
awkward exoskeleton manipulators. I broke its seal, and it folded out into a
single flat sheet of paper.

DEAR CHET, it began. At the bottom of it was a complex scrawl that I recognized
from the front of The Amazing Robotron's exoskeleton. It must be some kind of
signature.

DEAR CHET,

I AM SORRY TO HAVE TO LEAVE YOU SO SUDDENLY, AND WITHOUT ANYONE ELSE TO TALK TO.
THERE IS AN EMERGENCY AT MY HOME, BUT I WOULDN'T GO IF I DIDN'T BELIEVE THAT YOU
WERE ABLE TO HANDLE MY ABSENCE. YOU ARE A VERY PERCEPTIVE AND STRONG YOUNG MAN,
AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MANAGE IN MY ABSENCE. I WILL BE BACK, YOU KNOW.

YOU WILL BE ALL RIGHT. I PROMISE.

THIS ISN'T EASY FOR ME TO DO, EITHER. IT MAY BE THAT I AM THE ONLY ONE YOU CAN
TALK TO HERE AT THE CENTER. IT IS LIKEWISE TRUE THAT YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I CAN
TALK TO.

I WILL MISS YOU, MY FRIEND CHET.

The writing was childish, with many line-outs and corrections. Reading it, I
heard it not in The Amazing Robotron's halting mechanical speech, but in my own
voice.

I didn't cry. I held the letter tight in my hand, as tight as I ever held the
apparatus, and leaned into it, like it was a source of strength.

#

They haven't even started work on the bat-house. There are bugout saucers
hovering all around it, with giant foam-solvent tanks mounted under their
bellies. A small crowd has gathered.

I take off my jacket and lay it on the strip of grass by the sidewalk across the
street from the bat-house. I pull off my soaked t-shirt and feel a rare breeze
across my chest, as soothing as a kiss on a fevered forehead. I ball up the
shirt, then lay down on my jacket, using the shirt as a pillow.

The bat-house is empty, its eyes staring blind, vertical to infinity. The grotty
sculpture out front is gone already, and with it, the sign with the polite,
never-used name. It is now just the bat-house.

I check my comm. The dissolving of the bat-house is scheduled for less than an
hour from now.

#

The new counselor was no damn good. It wore a different exoskeleton, a motorized
gurney on wheels with three buzzing antigrav