"Lucky," she says, and she fully means it. At least in that case, Adia's world is more evolved, better at human rights, if not people rights. Victor chews down on her lip and doesn't even notice that Anya is trying to feed her hat to Ziggy the robot dog. "I've built him. I've programmed him. I just haven't put the two together yet."

She leads a little away from the girls. Anya might not retain the information, but Athena has a memory like a video camera, and good hearing besides. "I'm just nervous, is all. I don't know why. I guess I've never had so much control over the process before. Anya was a surprise, Athena was mostly built by Billy, and now I have the control, and I can't hit the final buttons."