"Listen, there's just something I have to take care of...No, I know I'm leaving in the middle of a crisis, but seriously, Steve, how awful was that press conference I just gave? ...you don't have to tell me. I'll be more useful where I'm going, I promise." Jane hung up the phone with a sense of grim resolution. She was on I-93, headed north out of Boston, driving toward Ottawa and Maura's office. She had spent a frustrating half an hour navigating the website of the robot government, trying to find Maura's address, and another hour agonizing about whether she was making the right decision in trying to track Maura down-what if she didn't want to see Jane again?-and then she looked at the clock and realized that it was almost eleven and if she wanted to get to Ottawa that afternoon she should get on the road.

She made the drive feeling tense. As she crossed the border into New Hampshire she wondered why her jaw was sore, and realized that she'd been clenching her teeth. She sighed and punched the button to turn on the radio. The rest of the drive was calm; there were not many drivers on the roads.

Maura worked in a smallish, slightly rundown brick building tucked out of the way in a quiet suburb, with the disconcerting title "Office of Human Affairs" spelled out on the front. From the outside, it looked like Jane's elementary school. The doors were unlocked.

It was cold inside, about 50 degrees. There was no secretary at the front desk, just a computer terminal, and Jane typed in Maura's name tentatively. The whole place gave her the creeps. She felt hopelessly out of place. She couldn't help worrying that her fingerprints would be used against her, as proof of some kind of transgressive humanness. She wondered if this was how robots felt in the US, then remembered that robots didn't have feelings. It was a fact that was becoming increasingly difficult to remember.

The screen returned a result: "Dr. Maura Isles - Room 319." Jane took the stairs to the third floor, her footsteps echoing in the concrete space. She was growing increasingly uneasy with every second she spent in this building, in this country. Why hadn't she seen anyone yet? What exactly did "Human Affairs" mean? She had a brief vision of robots descending on her, appropriating her for experiments, cutting into her body...she banished the idea; it was paranoia. Robots were uninterested in humans. That was why they had chosen to break away from the States.

Jane's impression that this place had once been a human school only intensified once she reached the third floor: it had a tiled floor, a high ceiling, and unadorned wood walls stretching away calmly to either side. Maura's door, which was at the end of the hall to the left, was the same kind of wooden door with a glass window that had been a feature of Jane's elementary school education. Jane knocked on the door.

A robot wearing scrubs, a unisex haircut, and a blank expression opened the door. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'm looking for Dr. Maura Isles?" Without a word, the robot stepped aside to let Jane into the room.

She was taken aback to find herself in a high-tech lab, with fume hoods and benches full of scientific equipment. It was almost like Maura's lab back at the hospital; if anything, it was more intense. It was the last thing you would expect to find inside an old school building. Scattered throughout the room, working at individual stations, were several robots; Maura Isles stood at a desk near the front of the room, reading something on a screen.

"Hi," Jane said tentatively. Her voice came out shaky, higher than usual.

Maura turned slowly to look at her. Her face was absolutely expressionless. "Jane, what are you doing here?" For an instant Jane was worried that the robots had brainwashed her or something, that she had forgotten everything about Jane. What was there to forget? she asked herself.

"I came to find you." Jane had practised a speech in the car on the way up, about how she needed Maura's expertise on robots in order to solve the public-relations crisis she was enmeshed in, but now she realized that that wasn't it at all.

"Why?"

"I-" Jane was at a loss for words. "Because I feel like we have unfinished business? Because I still don't understand what happened...between us?"

Maura looked unmoved. "Well, we can't have this discussion here. Come into my office."

Maura's office was incredibly tiny, less than twenty-five square feet. There was a bench along one wall, and a screen facing it; there were several drawers and ports in another wall; but there was nothing else. There was no window. A dim light emanated from a fixture on the ceiling. Jane watched Maura close and lock the door.

"This is your office?"

Finally, Maura turned away from the door and looked at Jane with a tired expression on her face. "I don't need as much space as you do. All I need is some place to recharge my batteries. This room gives me space to decompress, to categorize all the information I've come across in my day's work." She paused. "Sit down, Jane."

Jane sat down on the bench, and after a moment Maura sat down next to her. It wasn't a very wide bench, and they were pressed in close next to each other. Jane could feel the tension in Maura's body. It was as if she was holding back, holding herself away from Jane, and the part of Jane's brain that wasn't clouded with panic wondered why.

After a moment, Maura spoke. "I'm sorry I left so abruptly."

"You did what you had to do, I guess."

"Jane..." Maura sighed. She reached out for Jane's hand, then pulled her hand back. "I don't know what you expected to find here. We had a productive partnership. I enjoyed learning from you. But there's no place for you in my world, and no place for me in yours." It sounded formulaic, as though Maura had prepared this speech precisely for this situation.

"Do you really care so much about what people think?"

"That's the only thing that matters, isn't it? We're made by the expectations people have of us."

"So what happened, back in Boston? What went wrong?" Jane's mouth went dry as she remembered kissing Maura.

Maura closed her eyes for a minute, as if she were frustrated by Jane's obtuseness, but when she spoke her voice was almost beseeching. "It was an experiment, Jane. I'm an information-gathering machine, tasked with gathering knowledge about humans. It was never anything more than that."

Jane could feel despair welling up in her stomach. "But you got something out of that experiment too, didn't you, or you wouldn't have done it. There must be a reason you want to experiment, right? You want to find a way out of your own condition. You want to see if there's something more out there, something more than information gathering."

The room was absolutely still for a moment, except for the sound of Jane's breathing, and she thought for a second about how strange it was to be the only breathing thing in-how many miles?

"It's almost funny," said Maura, her voice flat and without emotion, "that you could think that I want something. I'm a robot, Jane."

"I know that!"

"Do you know what that means?"

Jane closed her eyes. "The dictionary definition of a robot is an automaton created in the likeness of a human being."

"I'm not human, Jane. That means something."

"It doesn't mean I can't love you. It doesn't mean you can't love me."

Maura was silent.

"Whatever it is you're looking for," Jane said after a moment, "I could help you find it. I'm right here, Maura, and I don't understand what's going on any better than you do, but I think we should at least give this a try."

For a minute Maura looked conflicted, as if she were debating with herself, and then she gave in and looked miserable. "I can't, Jane. I'm not brave enough. I'm not programmed for uncertainty; I'm programmed for avoiding uncertainty, for metabolizing it."

"Just try."

Maura was silent. She closed her eyes, as if she were trying to access a program, or write a new one, and then she opened them and put her arms, slowly, around Jane. Jane's pulse hammered away steadily. Maura wasn't soft, of course, but there was something tender in the strength of her arms around Jane that made her relax into Maura's embrace. After a moment, Maura pulled away, looking at Jane solemnly.

"Jane...I can't promise this will work. I can't promise I will be able to feel anything about you, ever. I just don't know what's going to happen."

"That's okay," said Jane, although her stomach was in knots. "Neither do I."

"But I want to see what's going to happen." Maura's voice was very quiet now. "I want to see..." Her fingers slipped gently over Jane's face, as if she were trying to absorb the texture of Jane's skin, and Jane was reminded of her own uneasiness, less than an hour ago, at the idea of leaving fingerprints on the computer in the lobby. Then her hand curled around the nape of Jane's neck, gentle but firm, and she leaned in and kissed her softly. The contrast with her preoccupied, unemotional manner moments before was startling. Jane's hands had been clenched in her own lap, but now she reached out tentatively and put her hand on the curve of Maura's waist. But the next moment, Maura was reaching for the hem of her own scrub top, pulling it over her head.

"What do you want to see?" Jane managed to ask the question, although she was distracted by Maura's breasts, which were very realistic. She was torn between wondering who would plan a detail like that on a robot and feeling strangely aroused.

"I want to see what will happen if I do this." Maura took Jane's hand and put it on her right breast. Jane swallowed. It felt as realistic as it looked. Maura smiled at what must have been an extremely strange look on Jane's face. She leaned in until her breasts were touching Jane's and kissed her neck. Maura's skin was cool under Jane's fingertips, her lips soft against the skin of her neck, then her jaw. Jane's heart was racing. She felt herself letting go, relaxing into Maura. But some part of her brain twinged with the awareness that something wasn't quite right, and she pulled away.

Maura looked almost exasperated. "Jane, do you want for us to have sex or not?"

"Yes, of course I do. But..." Jane leaned back against the wall of Maura's office and sighed. "I can't stop worrying about how you feel about this, whether you feel anything. I just...I don't want to do this until I know I'm not just using you."

"Why not?" Now Maura looked positively puzzled. "Surely you can't have any qualms about my consent or lack thereof? There's no way you could influence me one way or the other."

"I just don't understand. You have feelings about some things, clearly, and you also don't really understand where they come from. It should be impossible, right? Everyone knows robots don't have feelings, but it's obviously not true! How can I feel okay about...having sex with someone when I don't know if they're even capable of consenting to it, and there's even the slightest possibility that they might get hurt?"

"So..." Maura leaned back. "what do you want? Do you want me to make a confession of love?"

"What good would that do?"

"It might make you feel better about what we're about to do." Maura's hand traced a pattern on Jane's ribcage. Jane shivered.

"You would do it, wouldn't you." Jane felt a great sadness welling up inside her. "You would do it, but it would be a lie."

"Jane, I can't lie."

"You don't know that. You don't even know if you have feelings or not, and neither do I." Jane stared at Maura for a minute. She was already regretting leaving. "I'm sorry, Maura. I just don't feel ready for this."

She left Maura sitting alone and half-naked in the tiny office.