I was adopted. I know, everyone thinks that when they're thirteen, but I'm serious and here's why:

Firstly, my parents aren't even machines. Me, I'm a machine, but Mom says not to let anyone know because that was a thing once and it's not anymore, and she says, I have been ruled illegal. Dad calls me his little danger-stranger. (Thanks, Dad.)

Secondly, I found this book lying around. Not exactly lying around. It was tucked away into a second row in Mom's library. (I sometimes go in there when she's not home.) An older book. The threat is gone now, of course, but this book was published when everyone thought machines were really dangerous. Like, how can you even build something that becomes really dangerous to yourself?

So, anyway, the book had Mom's anger-scrawl all over its pages. She probably read it right around the time I was adopted and hated everyone a lot for hating machines. (My parents seem to like me, so that's cool.)

Thirdly, Mom and Dad are kind of like these hippies who love everyone and talk about spirit and so on. And Mom works as a philosopher, so she thinks about spirit and so on even more than normal people. So I think when machines like me became illegal because someone figured we might be a threat (like, more than all the other threats that are machines without a spirit? Like cars?), Mom and Dad adopted me because they thought I had a spirit, which I guess I do, and they care a lot about that.

Fourth, this was kinda hard but I heard Mom cry the other night and say to Dad that she wished she could have saved more. I don't think she meant money.

Anna Ziegelhof

My little danger-stranger