Aubrey sat in the food court with Tess, sipping a soda and listening to her friend prattle on. They were talking about school, about boys, and about the new girl who’d just transferred in from a private school in New England.

"She’s from Connecticut or something," Tess said, followed by a noisy sip of her cappuccino. "One of those states where all the rich people live. Total snob, too."

Aubrey shrugged. "She seems okay to me. We have AP History together."

"You can just call it History, Aub. Everyone knows you’re smart."

Aubrey looked away. On good days, she and Tess got along as well as any two friends. Or well enough, she supposed. But sometimes, Tess could be too much to take.

Aubrey figured their friendship was more habit than anything. They’d known each other since elementary school, when Tess had come to Aubrey’s aid in a playground tussle, punching a bigger boy and earning a parent-teacher conference in the process. To not hang out with her would have seemed like a violation of some universal order.

Aubrey sipped her soda and glanced around the food court. The place was packed with holiday shoppers, not surprising with Christmas a week away. Conversation and laughter filled the air. A few tables over, a gray-haired woman in a jogging suit sat across from a huge teddy bear with button eyes.

A scene flashed through Aubrey’s mind: a little girl waking up on Christmas morning, racing down the hall from her bedroom to find the giant bear wedged in a rocking chair beside a tinsel-covered tree. Flames crackling in a fireplace nearby. The smell of bacon and coffee filling the air, with a hint of cinnamon from last night’s baking. The family in Aubrey’s mind did Christmas right. Real tree. Real fire. Real homemade stockings hung by the chimney with care.

And in that perfect little vision, both of the girl’s parents are present and happy. There are no fights, no shouting or finger-pointing. Just love and happiness and a giant, button-eyed teddy bear receiving the first of many hugs from a girl half its size.

"Earth to Aubrey," Tess said, waving a hand.

Aubrey glanced up. "Sorry. What?"

"Your mom. Will she go ballistic if she finds out we’re at the mall?"

Aubrey considered. Of course her mother would be angry. But she’d covered her tracks well enough. A study date at the library. A dead battery on her phone. Sorry, Mom, I was off the grid for a while there. Even with her bloodhound instincts and over-protectiveness, Aubrey’s mother had never once ventured to the library when the girls were truly there studying. So why would she break protocol now?

"She won’t find out," Aubrey said.

"Let’s hope not. She might not wear a badge anymore, but she still has that cop thing running through her blood."

Aubrey raised an eyebrow. "The cop thing?"

"You know. The desire to impose justice on an unjust world."

Aubrey laughed. "Look who managed to stay awake in Psych for once."

"Speaking of psychology," Tess said. "I could use a mental adjustment right about now."

She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small, oval-shaped device. She pressed a button on the side and put the end to her lips, inhaling deeply. There was no smoke. No smell. No evidence. Just the rush of the atomized drug as it passed through her lungs, followed her bloodstream, and hit her brain like a locomotive. 

Tess closed her eyes. "Oh wow."

Aubrey looked around. "Are you crazy? Somebody here probably knows our parents."

"So? For all they know, I have asthma. This is my inhaler."

"You have something," Aubrey said. "But it’s not asthma."

Tess took a second hit from her pod. The woman with the teddy bear glanced their way. Aubrey lowered her eyes. A cleaning woman approached their table, wearing khaki pants and a black t-shirt with the Meadowview Mall logo. Aubrey figured she was a bot, like most janitors these days, an assumption confirmed by a slight hitch in the woman’s stride. She was middle-aged and Hispanic (or, at least, some bot designer’s idea of middle-aged Hispanic). She walked past their table pushing a cart full of cleaning products.

"That’s right, slave," Tess said. "Keep cleaning our mess."

Aubrey shot her a look.

"What?" said Tess. "It’s not like they have any feelings. My dad says there’s nothing inside but, like, chips and processors and stuff. No soul." She turned to the cleaning woman. "Isn’t that right, bot? You’re soulless, aren’t you?"

The woman smiled at Tess as she spoke: "I am assigned to janitorial services. The information desk is located on level one. Andy is on duty there and can answer any questions you have."

"See?" Tess said, as if that settled the matter. "Nothing inside."

Several people were watching now. A thin man in a baggy suit frowned at the girls. Aubrey felt her cheeks redden, even though the insults had come from Tess.

Aubrey considered herself the polar opposite of her friend, the yin to her yang. Where Tess stuck her chin out and challenged the world, Aubrey tended to shrink back. Her mother’s assault, and the full-on media circus that followed, had taken a toll on Aubrey. There were days when she didn’t want to leave the house.

The kids at school had been awful—not all of them, but some, enough to make her life a living hell. She should’ve stood up for herself. She should have challenged her harassers, gotten up in their faces until they backed down. That’s what her mother would’ve done. But Aubrey wasn’t her mother. Not by a long shot. And she waffled on whether that was a good thing or bad. Emulating her mother would mean speaking out and standing up. Most days, Aubrey was happier to sit down and shut up, hoping the world didn’t notice her.

The cleaning lady smiled at the girls as she turned to leave. Aubrey watched her go, feeling a pang of guilt she couldn’t explain.

Tess shook her head. "God, I hate those things. The way they walk around like they’re one of us. The way they smile at you, even when you insult them."

"I wouldn’t know," Aubrey said. "I’ve never insulted one."

"Well, now’s your chance. Walk over there and tell her she’s just a stupid robot, and that humans run the world."

"She’s just doing her job."

"My dad says they’re like invaders." Tess said. "Stealing jobs from humans. Trying to take over, little by little. You watch, before long we’ll be serving them."

Aubrey watched the lady sweep under a table a few rows away. Was it true, she wondered? Had this synthetic person put a real person out of work? Did it happen often? Aubrey wasn’t much of a news reader. Too depressing, in her view. But she watched it on TV now and then, when her mother had it on. She’d seen a few stories about synthetic humans. One of the networks even had a "Bot Correspondent," a young man with sculpted hair and a bowtie who was always yammering on about them.

But it was the tech angle that got most of the coverage—the latest advancements, the newest models. That’s what people wanted to see. Sure, every once in a while you’d get your garden-variety kook, warning about some bleak future where robots reigned over humans. But most of the people Aubrey knew saw them as helpful. Interesting, even. 

Still, she wondered. Surely there had been a human cleaning the food court, before this "woman" came along. Surely humans had manned the perfume counters in Riley’s, the information desk downstairs, the VR arcade. So where had they gone? Did they arrive at work one day to find a synthetic doing their job, rendering them obsolete?

Aubrey didn’t know. She didn’t like to think about it. With final exams coming and her job at the Smoothie Shack and the shit she caught for being the daughter of a cop-turned-vigilante, she had enough on her plate. The employment status of strangers wasn’t on her radar.

"Let’s get out of here," Tess said, rising on wobbly legs. "Let’s go do that new zombie thing at the VR room. I could totally go for shooting some flesh-eaters right about now."

Tess started out of the food court. As she passed the cleaning lady, she dropped her paper coffee cup onto the ground. Cappuccino dregs shot up like lava.

"Whoopsie," she said, in a little-girl voice. "Mind taking care of that for me?"

The bot glanced down at the cup and back at Tess. She smiled. "Please enjoy the rest of your day at Meadowview Mall."

Tess muttered something under her breath and glanced back at Aubrey. "You coming?"

"I’ll catch up. I have to check my messages, see if my mom’s blowing me up."

"She thinks you’re at the library."

"I know, but still."

Tess shrugged. "Well hurry up. I can’t handle the zombies on my own."

Aubrey waited until Tess had left and then approached the cleaning woman, who was wiping a table in front of Pizza Village. Aubrey squatted, picked up the coffee cup, and tossed it into the mobile cleaning bin.

"Sorry about my friend," she said.

The cleaning woman studied her. "Some humans are kinder than others. There is little to be done about that but grin and bear it." She smiled, as if to demonstrate. "You are a kind young lady."

Aubrey shrugged. "I treat others how I want to be treated."

The bot nodded. "An admirable philosophy. The world might be a better place if—" 

Her head twitched. Her eyes blinked rapidly.

"—if all humans died."

Aubrey’s skin crawled. She took one step back and then another, the woman’s words echoing in her mind. She glanced around for a mall employee—a human employee—but saw none. The bot was approaching her now, lurching forward with short erratic steps. Its body seemed to be at war with itself, part of it advancing, the other part holding back.

"Humans," it said. "Admirable ... it would be admirable ... for hu hu humans to ... die. Humans must die."

Aubrey had seen enough. She turned and ran. Exiting the food court, she turned left toward VRoom, the virtual reality arcade. Find Tess and leave the mall. That was the plan now. Because if one bot was malfunctioning, who was to say the others wouldn’t follow? Aubrey knew little of their inner workings. But her instincts told her all bots were a threat now. She had no evidence to support that notion and didn’t need it. She trusted her gut.

She entered the arcade at a jog and glanced around for Tess. In the nearest stall, an elderly woman with VR goggles was throwing punches in the air, grunting with effort. Aubrey kept looking. She passed a pair of young girls, a middle-aged man in khakis, a troop of teenage boys she didn’t recognize.

Aubrey moved deeper into the arcade and looked to her left. There was Tess, standing in a far corner. She appeared to be arguing with the attendant who ran the arcade. But no, that wasn’t right. Aubrey studied her friend’s face. Gone was the mask of defiance she wore like armor. Gone were the bravado and swagger that made Tess Tess. In their place now was a look of raw, naked fear.

The attendant, a man in gray coveralls with a "VRoom" patch on the chest, jabbed a finger toward Tess. He said something Aubrey couldn’t hear over the noisy machines, the laughter and shouts of players. But she caught the gist. She knew with a glance that this bot—and it was clearly a bot, she could see it now—was threatening Tess just as the cleaning woman had threatened her.

Tess glanced around in a panic. She locked eyes with Aubrey, and those eyes said it all. Aubrey hadn’t seen her friend that scared since fourth grade, when Tess got caught stealing gum from a teacher’s purse. Aubrey started toward her just as the bot’s hand clamped onto Tess’s neck.