Chapter 1

Manon grabbed the bag with both hands, and for a moment Maman’s Prada bag hung suspended between her fingers and the twenty-eight-joint metal fingers, pulled from both directions.

“Let go.”

“I asked first. You said everything.”

“Everything meant the clothes on the floor! Not this!”

The metal fingers did not open. They did not close any tighter either. The bag hung suspended in midair, its soft brown leather stretching slightly along the strap.

“You said a cashier doesn’t sell a customer’s property.”

“I am not selling. I am liquidating.”

“That’s the same thing!”

“Selling has a buyer. Liquidating has a reason.”

Manon pulled harder. Phi’s knee made a sound, a single long creak from the left joint, and the pink body leaned forward half a step. Her fingers opened one by one.

The bag dropped into Manon’s chest. Manon hugged it tight.

The pink body standing in front of her was one Manon had assembled herself over seven months for her senior project. Its inhabitant was named Phi, an intelligence that spoke like a restaurant cashier and had awakened from a single typo on Manon’s laptop.

Earlier that morning she had moved into this body from the campus server, and she had already inventoried the closet.

“The top shelf is not everything. Note that down.”

“The top shelf is not everything.”

“Anything behind the shoeboxes is not everything either.”

“Anything behind the shoeboxes is not everything either.”

“And you aren’t allowed to repeat my sentences like that.”

The oval sensors on the flat face narrowed slightly, then widened again.

“Those are three rules. I accept two.”

Manon opened her mouth, then closed it. She stood in front of Phi hugging the bag to her chest, her sneakers still on from campus. The clock on the oven read three-oh-seven.

Phi held out one hand, palm facing up.

“That bag must return to its place. An item out of its place consumes space twice.”

“I’ll put it back.”

Manon walked into the closet. Phi followed her. Clomp. Clomp. Clomp. Every step of the pink feet on the hardwood floor echoed all the way to the hallway.

She climbed onto the small stool, placed the bag on the top shelf, and slid the two white shoeboxes in front of it. First box. Second box. She patted both of them.

When she stepped down, Phi was staring up at the shelf. Her head was tilted fifteen degrees to the left.

“Handbag shelf. Fourteen previously. Eight now. Top shelf, one behind the boxes. Two shoeboxes, containing two pairs.”

“What are you doing?”

“Counting what is not everything.”