Page 22 of What Makes an Alien a Dad?

“This is gorgeous,” Maya gushed. “Look at all these plants! It’s like indoor gardens. Do you live here alone?”

“Yes.”

“How do you not get lost? It’s so much space!”

He mostly used only four rooms of the suite—his workroom, the exercise room, a bedroom, and a bathroom. It was easy not to get lost. The sitting room was meant to be used for when he had visitors, which hardly ever happened.

His AI drone whirred their way. “Greetings, Professor. Greetings, visitor.”

Maya perked up at the sight of the silver disk with shiny arms fitted with pincers.

“Hi.” She gave the machine a small wave, then leaned toward Kear, lowering her voice. “What’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“Your house AI’s? They usually have names. I saw it in Voranian movies.”

“Right.” He rubbed his left horn, wondering how he even ended up having this conversation. “Well, I didn’t name mine. It has a factory ID number if I ever need to identify it.”

“You call him by his ID number?” Eyes open wide, she gaped at him as if he’d just admitted to kicking cute little ulto pups for fun.

“It not him,” he corrected. The drone was a machine, after all. It had no gender. “And I don’t call it anything. Why would I talk to a machine, other than to give it orders?”

“Well...” She shrugged. “You live alone and have no one else to talk to. Why not?”

“Do you talk to the hospital AI?” Every patient room had a drone centrally operated by the hospital AI.

“Of course I do. I’m not allowed to program his name in the system, since he isn’t mine, but I gave him a name anyway.”

“You gave the hospital AI a name?” Well, the woman really was out of this world.

She nodded. “I call my drone Mani.”

“Why Mani?”

“It was the name of the dog we had when I was little. My dad says it means ‘jewel.’”

“Jewel?” He eyed his house drone that looked more like a loose part of a spaceship than any jewel. Clearly, the woman had an overactive imagination. “Alright then.”

“So, what’s upstairs?” She gestured at the balcony of the second floor above.

“A few bedrooms with bathrooms.”

“A few?” Her dark eyebrows rose. “How many do you need?”

“Just one. But the rest came with the place.” It wasn’t like he could annex all the unnecessary rooms from the suite.

Staying focused with her proved challenging. Her questions kicked his mind off all established tracks. He also found himself distracted by watching the ever-changing expressions on her face that hid nothing.

She was distracting, but also oddly stimulating in the ways he hadn’t experienced before. He wouldn’t mind staying here and listening to her nonsense about giving names to inanimate objects. But he’d already changed his afternoon schedule to accommodate this shopping trip. He should at least adhere to the altered schedule now.

“We need to go, Maya. Come, the landing pad is this way.”

Her brows slid up even higher, but she nodded. “Of course, you have your own landing pad.”

“Many people do. Where else would they park their aircraft?”

He took her out to the open terrace.

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