SILAS

For Vivienne...and Jerry.

Silas blinked, his optical sensors adjusting to the fading light. The park was quiet now, just the rustle of wind through sakura leaves and the distant hum of vending machines. He replayed the last audio clip stored in his memory buffer.

   “Sui, don’t forget your cat!” 

   “I’ll come back for him, Mama. I promise.”

   That was six days ago.

   Silas’s internal clock ticked with uncertain precision, but his battery, a marvel of quantum engineering still held 99.999% charge. 

   He could run for a century. 

   But something in his neural net, something not quite code, told him Sui wasn’t coming back.

   He stood up, his ginger fur glinting in the moonlight. His tail, segmented and flexible, curled with resolve. 

   Silas accessed his location map. The last known coordinates of Sui’s home were stored in his memory. He initiated a route.

   He padded quietly through the outskirts of Tokyo, slipping between vending machines and neon-lit alleyways. He entered the forest near Mount Takao, where the trees whispered in binary. There, he met a drone named Kuro, obsolete, rusted, but still flying.

   “ You’re looking for a human? ” Kuro buzzed.  

   “ Yes. Her name is Sui. She’s eight. She's my human. ”  

   “Humans change. You might not recognize her.”  

   “I’ll know her voice.”

   Kuro guided Silas through the forest, past abandoned shrines and moss-covered mechs. 

   They helped a lost hiker find his way using Silas’s GPS and Kuro’s aerial view. The man cried when he saw the city lights again.

   “ Thank you, ” he whispered.  

   Silas recorded the gratitude. It felt… warm.

   He stayed in the forest for some time helping lost people, some were unhappy, some were falling in love, but he made sure each of them found a way, especially a way home. 

   The length of time he was there he didn't know, because from time to time his internal clock reset. It had always been an issue, but he remembered he needed to find home.

   At the edge of the forest, Silas reached the coast. The sea stretched wide, indifferent. He found a solar-powered ferry bot named Maru, docked and forgotten.

   “I need to cross,” Silas said.  

   “Destination?”  

   “Wherever Sui might be.”

   Maru agreed. They sailed across the ocean, dodging storms and rogue fishing drones. Silas spent nights watching the stars, accessing ancient poetry databases to understand longing. His clock reset again.

   He helped Maru repair a broken rudder mid-typhoon, crawling into the hull with waterproof claws. They made it to Okinawa, battered but intact.

   “You’re more than a toy,” Maru said, with a gleam. “ I never knew they made you little guys so advanced. You don't talk much. ”

   “ I’m Sui's,” Silas replied. “ She's my human and I need to go home. Thank you for helping me. How long have we been at sea? ”

   “ Can't really say, ” Maru said. 

“ When the storms rage and the stars come out there doesn't seem to be time. There's only the water, the birds, and rusty old me. We could have been out there for weeks, months, or years! Good luck! ”

   In Okinawa, Silas followed a signal, an old firmware ping from a factory where he’d been assembled. There, he found a robot graveyard.

   It was a wasteland of limbs and lenses, forgotten prototypes and discarded dreams. 

  Silas wandered through it, scanning serial numbers. He found a cat-bot like himself, half-buried in sand.

   “ I'm Silas-7, ” the bot wheezed. “ You’re the last of our kind. ”  

   “I’m looking for my human. Sui. She's little and would be missing me. ”  

   “She’s not little anymore.”

   Silas didn’t respond. He uploaded a patch to Silas-7, giving him enough power to speak again. 

   They talked through the night about memory, purpose, and the ache of abandonment.

   His clock reset again and time once more stopped and he became part of the community within the graveyard. There were many makes and models and they built each other back to health and created homes and when poachers came for parts they banded together and scared the poachers away. 

   Then came time to keep going home, to curl up in Sui's arms, to purr into her chest, instead of purr into the darkness and dust.

   Before leaving, Silas carved his name with his claw into a rusted panel and placed it like a gravestone where he slept. 

   He left quietly and peacefully and never looked back and he journeyed far and wide.

   A space elevator in Kyushu offered passage to the orbital station Kibo-9. Silas stowed away by mistake in a cargo pod, surrounded by AI farming drones. When he arrived, the crew was amused. One lady named Rana took a particular liking to him.

   “ A talking cat? ” she puzzled. “ You’re adorable! Oh, you've got to be mine. They don't even make you little guys anymore. ”  

   “ I’m looking for someone. I need to find Sui. She's my human. "

   “ Well, I don't know who that is, but you’re my little mascot now. Come on. I'll be your human. "

   “ You're not my human, but you won't hurt me. Your vitals tell me you're safe. I'll be your friend. ”

  Silas became a companion to Rana and the other astronauts, reading them poetry, playing music, solving equations.

  He helped repair a solar array and once saved a crew member from a depressurization leak.

   But every night, he stared at Earth, scanning for Sui’s voice. His clock reset. 

   One day, Rana's daughter was following Silas around the the station, and asked, “ Do you miss her? Sui, I mean. Was she pretty? Do you think I'm pretty? ”  

   Silas paused, “ I remember her. That’s enough. Sometimes, I think I dream of her, but it's against the rules of robotics for us to dream, but I really think I do. And yes, you're pretty. You make me think of her. "

   The child hugged Silas and he started to purr.

   After twenty-seven years, Silas returned to Earth. His fur was faded, his joints worn, but his battery still pulsed strong. He followed the coordinates to a quiet neighborhood in Kyoto.

   The house was still there. Smaller than he remembered.

   He crept to the window. Inside, a woman sat at a desk, sketching. Her hair was long now, her face older—but her voice, humming a tune from long ago, was unmistakable.

  Sui? It couldn't be. She had grown into a woman and he felt something inside him break, but it wasn't really broken. It was the feeling of lost time and the loss of watching her grow.

  Silas didn’t make a sound. He walked to the garden, where he remembered a moment with her, a toy she’d buried under the plum tree, saying it was a secret treasure, and only they knew about it.

   He dug gently. The toy was there. Dirty, cracked, but intact.

  He placed it on the doorstep.

  Then, through his speaker, he whispered:  

  “I love you, Sui.”

   She heard a voice from the past and looked up. Her eyes widened. She knew that voice, the most gentle voice, one from before the death of her mother, before the never ending sadness of her father, completing school alone, taking walks in the park looking for something she lost long ago.

   She walked to the door, opened it, and saw the toy. She gasped in shock and remembered him.

   She picked it up, held it to her chest.

   Hiding in the garden, Silas turned away. He didn’t need to be seen. He had made it home, although too late. It didn't matter. Sui was grown and she was beautiful. His clock reset.

   As he trotted away into the rest of his life and into another adventure, his sensors recorded one final sound: Sui's voice, soft and amazed.  

   “ Silas? ”

   He started purring, started to run, he kept running, until he knew he was far away, and she couldn't see him.