Gridless

Chapter 4

Lily wakes up to something bright. Shielding her eyes, she glares around to try to find the source of the light.

'Probably a new lightbulb,' she thinks, forgetting for a moment she's no longer home.

Blinking, she finds the light coming from large squares in the wall. Windows? Lily remembers how faint light would come through the small window in her house and how Mertha explained how it was a huge star called the Sun that lit up the room. But nothing could make this much light, could it? Not even a giant lightbulb would be this bright, right?

She shifts and finds herself in Mertha's arms. The robot is leaning over her with her eyes closed, her hair faintly glowing. Slowly sliding out of her arms, Lily stretches her stiff body. Out of the corner of her eye she notices a small plug where a few of Mertha's cords have connected. Glad that Mertha got some sleep after all, Lily starts exploring her surroundings.

Everything is lit up from the 'Sun' outside, displaying all the filing cabinets and metal desks like the ones at home. Skipping, she opens any door she can and marks the ones she can't with the heel of her shoe so she can find them again when Mertha wakes up.

She comes across two doors with different symbols: one a person in a dress and the other a person in pants. Looking down at her clothes, she opens the dress door and steps into a room that smells clean and not clean at the same time. Inside are tall walls that don't go all the way to the ceiling and don't go all the way to the floor, each with a door attached. Opening the first one, Lily jumps back when she finds a toilet. Slamming the other doors open one by one, she steps away from the strange toilet room.

'Why are there so many? Where's the bathtub? And the sink? And the cleaning stuff?' she thinks in horror as she backs into the row of sinks behind her. Seeing the sinks lining up perfectly with the toilets, Lily runs from the room.

Meanwhile, Mertha begins booting up. Her cords snap out of the outlet one by one and she stretches.

'Wait a minute,' she thinks, her eyes moving to the empty blanket in her lap, 'Where's Lily?'

All system's on, Mertha scrambles to her feet, letting the quilt drop to the floor. Radar scanning wildly for any sign of her daughter -- 'What if she was taken while I was charging?!' --  Mertha runs around the office desperately. Looking under desks and in closets, Mertha nearly takes the stairs to the floor below when something appears in one of the cameras beneath her hair. Swiveling around, Mertha spots the culprit: a skinny black cat, looking no older than a few months.

Crouching down, Mertha holds out a hand. The kitty trots over and starts rubbing its face against her fingers, purring. Up close, Mertha can see just how skinny he really is. Scanning the back of his neck with one hand, Mertha reaches into her pack and pulls out a creamy nutri-drink.

'I was going to give this to Lily, especially since I don't know if all the things in here will help this poor thing, but no way I can let him go like this,' she thinks, pulling out a short bowl and pouring the milk mixture into it.

The cat messily drinks up the milk. While he's distracted Mertha scans the microchip between his shoulder blades, taking his ID number to the nearest computer. He ignores her, licking up as many drops as he can, while she logs onto the guest account and hacks a nearby vet clinic. Code flashes across the screen as Mertha scans the area, her radar calmer after settling at the desk. The cat rubs against her legs, circling the chair, as she downloads his medical history.

"Little," she says. Little looks up at her with glowing green eyes. She scratches him under the chin just as she spots Lily coming out of one of the washrooms.

Little follows her to the other side of the office, quickly finding himself held by a skinny girl -- little like him. He takes to Lily instantly, purring in her arms as she hops into a swiveling chair.