On that morning, Avery felt sluggish. It may have been due to the past few days spent helping her daddy to put up the near countless Christmas decorations throughout their spacious home, anticipating the arrival of what she thought was a disproportionately small number of guests for the effort daddy and her had gone to. There was no longer any time left for herself, she felt. But then again, she didn't actually mind the work, being a Nandroid and all. She thought of it as a distraction. From what exactly, she didn't really know. What mattered to her was that she felt low on power, despite the recommended eight hours of charging in her booth. She knew this from reading her own instruction manual shortly after her first activation, cover to cover. Eight hours of charging was all it took to be at optimal functioning. Or so it claimed.
Avery wasn't happy. On the contrary, she felt largely...indifferent? At times what a human would have instantly identified as 'miserable', but mostly indifferent. And with that same monotonic apathy that had plagued her relatively short existence, she made her way down the stairs of the spacious fantasy mansion her daddy had conjured up for the two of them.
"Was his name Jaques? Or was it Matthew?" She mumbled pointlessly to herself, her quiet metallic voice quickly gobbled up by the silence in the stairway.
She couldn't remember, for few visitors ever came to their remote home and addressed daddy by his actual name. Two of whom being his parents, who often shot suspicious looks at Avery, mixed with what was unmistakable hostility. For what reason? Avery did not understand. For after their departure, daddy would meet her anxious concerns with only a wall of cold silence before returning to his private quarters and leaving her alone once again in the empty, oversized home. Not that it really mattered in the grand scheme of things, for the visits were few and far between and there were more pressing matters to attend to. Besides, from the moment she had been activated, he had insisted strictly on her only addressing him as 'daddy'. And why shouldn't she? He was her owner, after all.
Her maid's outfit rustled quietly as she came to the bottom of the stairs and turned towards the kitchen. It wasn't anything fancy, just a modest fabric of blue and white to conceal the skinny, untouched mechanical body beneath. She had other outfits to wear, bought by daddy from the 'internet', who had excitedly described them in a tone that had made her feel uncomfortable in response to the confusion when they arrived in a discreet box one winter morning. He would insist on her wearing these outfits intermittently throughout the month, especially when she came to clean his room.
Laying on his king sized bed in a robe, he would mutely watch her do her duties. His hands always in his front pockets, animatedly moving them beneath. She thought it strange how quickly his quarters became unclean compared to the rest of the home. Once, in a friendly gesture that had concealed a deep seated exasperation, she inquired as to how he could produce such a continuous mess in such a short time period. He had, to her increasingly suspicious mind, haistily evaded the question by insisting it related to his sketches and 'projects'. What copious amounts of stained clothing and sticky tissues dotted around his room had to do with this she could not be sure.
Occasionally, she would inquire as to what said 'projects' he was working on, how they were going, and what the end result would be. He would briefly glance at his computer parked on the desk in the corner of the room and then back to her, meekly replying they were going 'well' before changing the subject. She reluctantly thought it best not to pry.
In spite of the programming that conditioned a Nandroid to dismiss the quirks and eccentricities of their human owners with light hearted amusement, Avery felt a great discomfort in her processes. Her thoughts about this, all of this, hung in the back of her synthetic mind, always subtly making their presence known. But they were incomplete, a piece of the puzzle was still missing that would have brought the whole thing together in a shocking revelation, she was certain, that would have transformed both of their lives. Whether for better or worse, she was less so.
Until then, she would go on with her duties. Wandering through the lonely home, ensuring everything was in immaculate condition for the awaited guests, a few stray thoughts broke their restraints and rooted themselves. Would any of them actually show up? Did she care? She wasn't sure. Maybe preparing food for everyone was something she did care about. Though it somehow felt like a concession to her. Yet, there she was, making her way to the kitchen, her outfit slightly crinkling with every step. Such a modest outfit couldn't hide the maelstrom of 'feelings' the manual had told her she would develop after a period of time, for they showed on her face and body language, privately, away from human eyes. But why? Why design her to have these 'feelings' that, to her mind, had nothing to do with her cleaning duties?
In time, she believed, all would be explained