Update: For Repairs, Please Contact Lloyd

The thunder and lightning roared outside, but the soft tink of the talisman falling from Lloyd’s forehead still echoed through Lisa’s dark room. Lloyd looked around, seeing the digital princess clock on the wall read 1:33, the childhood relic hanging proudly over Lisa’s desk. The robot dimmed his eye lights as he looked around, not wanting to wake Lisa in her bed or Frankie in her bundle of blankets and sleeping bags on the floor.

“Confounded talisman. Why do you keep falling out?” Lloyd asked as he picked it up, looking it over in his hand. “Well, you are going right back into my head! The mistresses wanted me to sleep to keep me from making more meals while they rested, so I shall not disobey!”

He was about to shove the talisman back into the antenna on his forehead when a slight sound stopped him. Lisa laid on her bed, limbs splayed out and snoring gently. Frankie, however, moaned roughly in her blankets, curled up and mouth open. “No…don’t…” Frankie whispered in her sleep.

“Mistress?” Lloyd questioned softly. He cocked his head, looking at her tremble slightly. Something was clearly bothering her in her dreams. The green beam from Lloyd’s eyes washed over her. He didn’t want to probe too deeply. Her thoughts were her own. But if he could help, he wanted to.

Images of a man filled Lloyd’s mechanical mind, a kind looking man with a beard and glasses, holding a young Frankie by the hand. “Mistress, why does this image bother you?” Lloyd asked. The dreams continued, one joyous moment after another, them at a park, them on a carnival ride, them splashing through ocean waves on a beach.

“See those fireflies, Frankie? Their butts are magic. Little dreams carried out to good little girls like you,” the man said as the scene changed to Frankie’s backyard, both of them laying in a hammock, his arms around her.

“Daddy! You’re silly!” young Frankie giggled.

“Daddy?” Lloyd said,  mechanical eyes widening.

Frankie whimpered, and the scene changed again. This felt less like a memory and more like a warning. Her father was leaving the house. “Listen, Scooter, I’ll be right back! It’s only a two day trip to get funding for mommy’s dream restaurant! I’ll be back before you know it! Quick as magic!” her father said.

“No you won’t! Dad, please! Don’t go out the door!” Frankie wailed. She was no longer a child, but her teenage self, desperately reaching for her father as he stepped out the door as if in slow motion. Human dreams hurt Lloyd’s head with their confusing non-linearity. Yet even his simple brain saw through it, putting the pieces together. A girl who refused to believe in magic, who needed the world to make sense. A dad who stepped out of a door and never came back.

“Oh mistress…I understand. You’re defective too…” Lloyd said softly. Frankie sighed heavily, her sleep still bothering her. Lloyd leaned over, putting his face near her ear.

“Sleep soundly, Scooter. For me?” Lloyd said, modulating his voice to sound like her father’s. Frankie sighed again and seemed to relax a bit. Lloyd stood up, his mind working. He did not know why he was abandoned, why he was sent to this strange magicless world. But he knew how to help his mistresses now. “Do not worry, Frankie, Lisa. I will watch you the rest of the night. In the morning…things will be different,” Lloyd said.

*

Frankie was woken in the morning by a gentle foot nudging her in the chest. “Quit kicking me in the boob, princess,” Frankie grumbled as she grabbed her glasses, her head still inside a pleasant dream she couldn’t fully remember.

“Frankie, not to disturb your morning, but we are missing an entire whole ass robot!” Lisa said, biting her fingernail nervously. Frankie sat up, looking around quickly, seeing no Lloyd in the corner. She did, however, see the talisman gleaming on the floor.

“Does our favorite metal whack job think stay in the corner until we wake up is merely a fun suggestion?! And why the hell does this thing keep popping out?! What’s the point of a lock if it doesn’t lock?!” Frankie hissed as she leapt to her feet, grabbing the talisman. Right then they heard laughter from downstairs. Lisa cracked open the door and they both heard her parents talking to someone with a familiar voice.

“Oh no! He didn’t!” Lisa gasped as they begin sprinting down the hall and towards the stairs.

“Crap crap crap how do we explain a freaking magic robot to your parents?!” Frankie said in a panic, shaking her head while trying to sift through her thoughts for the excuse least likely to get them annihilated by parental outrage. However, as both girls leapt down the last two steps and landed in between the kitchen and the living room, they saw Lisa’s parents sitting on the couch, not with a polite yet fundamentally troublesome robot, but with a handsome and slightly goofy looking man in his early thirties. He wore simple jeans and a button up flannel shirt, his face adorned with large circular glasses and well groomed hair.

“Girls! What’s with the rushing?” Lisa’s mom gasped as they thudded down onto the floor.

“Eager to see your mentor?” Lisa’s dad said with a slight chuckle, leaning back in his chair. “If you wanted to learn to cook, you didn’t need to sneak over to bother the new neighbor.”

“New…what?” Lisa stuttered.

“Our new…cooking?” Frankie said, the pieces slowly, impossibly, coming together.

“Yes! And it all still tastes good as leftovers, right Lloyd? Or would you prefer Mr. Roberts?” Lisa’s mother asked. The girls jaws fell as they looked hard at the man on the couch as he smiled politely, posture perfect and voice calm.

“It’s robot, actually. Lloyd robot. This is the third…oh, never mind. Lloyd is fine, my dear woman. Isn’t it, my charming little mistresses?” Lloyd said with a friendly wink.