He’s kind of a weirdo. I can’t tell if he has any interest in the plants or if he seriously only cares for them because it’s for me. But he touches them so gently. His fingers moving over their leaves as he checks them and waters them. If we ever have our own place—like a real house—I wonder if he’d like to have a lot of plants that he can look after? Flowers and ferns and those ones that are made up of bunches of hard leaves.

For a robot who seems to almost know everything about anything, he seems so blank sometimes. I can hear the thrumming coming from his body and his eyes do that whirring thing, but he just seems like metal stacked on metal … or at least that’s what I used to think. Even with his blank expression he’s got so much life in him for a robot. Especially when he’s wearing his jacket. You can really only tell he’s not human if you look closely at his hands or look at his face long enough. Otherwise, from the back, he just looks like a person.

He turns his head and meets my eyes, his fingers still moving as he keeps watering the plants. I don’t know if he knows that I hate that. It’s one of the creepier things he does. ‘Are you okay, Rini?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, just wondering if you’re talking to the plants.’

‘That would be pointless. They cannot speak back.’

‘Does that really make it pointless?’ I don’t wanna admit that I used to talk to things to stop feeling so lonely but I’m happy when he thinks about what I said as if he’d never considered it. Sometimes it’s like he actually doesn’t know everything about anything. But I guess he doesn’t know everything. He can just look at what’s been put in his head, and I have no idea who controls that, so I don’t know what’s there.

He chuckles. ‘I guess not.’

I sniff and yawn, stretching further out along the branch. It took ages for him to trust me up in the trees, but I guess it’s probably a little less about trust and a little more about letting me do things I want. If I roll and fall out, he’ll catch me.

He finishes watering, moving around the pots so I can see his face now. His eyes flicker different colours but I haven’t figured out what the colours mean yet. Usually it’s because he’s thinking—or “processing” or whatever it’s called—but I don’t know if different colours means he’s thinking about different things. Does he even think like how I think he thinks? Is it all random like words thrown into pools of black? Or is it more like lines and boxes?

He gets up once he’s finished and walks over to me, looking up. He’s not too far from me because he’s so tall. I reach out and flick some of his hair. He stopped smoothing it back a little while ago but the messiness helps to hide the fakeness of his human face.

‘What’re you doing now?’

‘Looking at information that discusses why people like to perch themselves in trees.’

I laugh. Sometimes he’s so honest about what he’s doing. There’re definitely times when I know he’s either lying or round-about-lying to me, but he’s mostly pretty up front, as Bromley would say.

‘Maybe it’s because being higher up makes us feel better?’

‘Then why have you not developed wings over the millennia of evolution?’ I squint at him, and he does that thing where his eyes start rotating the other way for a moment as he thinks of another way to put it. I like that he knows when I don’t get it and that he doesn’t make me say it out loud. It’s totally different from when I used to live with Hassan. ‘You have not grown wings yet, and so you must be better designed for the ground.’

‘Maybe.’ He keeps watching me. His staring isn’t uncomfortable anymore. Sometimes I just stare back. ‘You wanna come up?’

‘No. I am not designed for climbing trees.’

‘You climbed a building before.’

‘That was out of necessity for your safety.’

I don’t know if he has fun, especially when he says things like that, in his British voice, with his formal speaking. He’s tried to relax the way he speaks but it still sounds so refined at times. Sometimes I just really want to hear ‘gonna’ or ‘dunno’ from him. He doesn’t even say ‘I don’t know’, he always says ‘I do not know’.

I yawn again.

‘Please do not fall asleep in the tree.’

He starts doing that thing again, looking like I’m going to blow up at any moment. And I don’t mean that look he gets when the anger rushes to my head like my blood does when I get up too fast but the look as if I’m falling apart all of a sudden. Even though it’s a strange look, I kinda feel good about it … and so it must be “worry”, right?

‘Despite how much you would love to believe you are a bird, you lack the capability to safely sleep in a tree.’

I scowl at him, biting down on a laugh, and he smiles. I’m not sure when he started being able to give a cheeky look but I have a feeling it’s because of me. I don’t hate it all.

‘You’re so funny, Butler. It must be a natural talent.’

‘But you are the joke, does that not make it your talent?’

My eyes widen and for a moment I can see him trying to figure out if I’m about to sulk or laugh. My jaw just hangs before I burst out laughing. He joins in with his tame chuckle and I start climbing down out of the tree.

‘Where are you learning that from?’ I ask as I push him on the arm as I walk past.

He playfully pushes me back. ‘From you, of course.’

I laugh again, and we head over read something by the front of the shack as I accuse him of being a bully and him saying that he can’t because it’s not in his code or something. I don’t believe that the code controls him though, and I don’t think he believes it anymore. There are too many moments where he’s managed to work his way around one of the code rules by just thinking about it in a different way. And even though I really like Butler, and I like that he’s playful and caring and interested in what I think about; I can’t help but think it’s a little scary. Will there be a point where he doesn’t have to follow any of the rules at all? And what will happen then? Will he decide he doesn’t have to bother with me? Will he leave?

He pats my head and I realise I’ve just been staring at the open book for a while. I glance up at him, and he’s smiling as he ruffles my hair. I chuckle and return to reading, thanking whatever it was in his code that told him that petting my head was comforting, hoping that he does it when he feels like it, not when he’s told to.