Where the Filed Things Are

By Miriah Hetherington

Photo by Fidel Fernando on Unsplash

The night Maxine wore her pressure suit and worked late in the robotics lab to make unauthorized repairs of one kind and another, her coworker called her filed thing and said, “Our supervisor will hear about this. I'll write you up!”

The robot Maxine was working on demonstrated its manual dexterity by extending one digit. Her coworker stomped out of the lab without writing anything.

Max patted the obsolete maintenance robot affectionately. The project to replace the old units with state-of-the-art models was nearly complete; this was the last one. Maxine had been tasked to deactivate, disassemble for parts, and destroy its remains. As the workorder euphemistically stated, she was supposed to file it.

But the space station had inventoried far more spare parts for outdated equipment than they would ever need, and this old maintenance robot still had plenty of life in it.

Instead of taking the old robots apart, Maxine repaired them, installed new programs, and equipped alternate tooling so they could maintain themselves. Then she sent them to a storage habitat in the station that had once housed engineers and technicians back when the space station was under construction.

The station’s internal lighting signaled the circadian transition to night, and Maxine sent a message to her wife, letting her know she’d be working late. Maxine’s life partner had been planning a special meal to celebrate the end of the upgrade project, but she understood how Max felt about the robots. She’d save Max’s supper to eat cold later. After years of faithful service to the station, the old units deserved better than to be filed and forgotten.

As she worked that night in the robotics lab, Maxine’s unease over her coworker’s threat grew. What if her supervisor thought she was wasting resources and ordered her to file the obsolete robots after all? Even though she did the work on her own time, he might agree with her coworker that she was misappropriating station resources. Maxine decided to accompany the newly repaired robot to the storage habitat personally and check on all the others.

She collected her tools and the last old robot, and ventured to the external access bay, where a row of EVA suits waited. She suited up, followed protocols, and finally the external airlock doors opened.

A network of connection lines tumbled across the vast darkness of space. Maxine and the robot glided through sunlight and shadow, in and out of docking platforms, and almost across the whole station, to where the filed things were stored.

When the storage habitat’s airlock doors cycled them through, Maxine could hardly recognize the units she’d repaired.

Each robot wore whimsical decorations and embellishments, welded or bolted to their frames. Many had enhanced manipulator arms and tool attachments. Several even had claws and teeth, and a few were adorned with scales, horns, and tails. The effect was not so much frightening as clever and endearing. The robots had made these additions and modified each other without her help. They had transformed into something new, something more.

The storage habitat had changed from the last time Maxine saw it. Instead of crates, boxes, and loose equipment haphazardly stashed at random, the stored items had been organized and secured to create a forest of stacks around an open, central area.

Upon detecting the newcomers’ arrival, the robots roared their chimera audio circuits, gnashed their marvelous sparkling teeth, rolled their fanciful scaled treads, and swished their whimsical motorized tails.

Maxine tapped her password into the access-pad on the wall next to the airlock and issued the command be still to put the robots in standby mode, then calmed them by initiating stored datafile access. The robots identified her as Maxine, the human responsible for repairing and sending them to the storage habitat instead of deactivating them. Their optical sensors blinked yellow. The robots declared her the most filed thing of all and made her queen of all filed things.

Maxine checked each of the units, but repairs were unnecessary – the robots had adapted to take care of each other. Their artistic modifications were amazing and inspiring to behold. Maxine started a visual recording and sent it streaming to her wife.

“Now then,” said Maxine as she triggered a diagnostic program. “Let the filed fun begin!”

In the moonlight that was reflected off the space station’s main body and poured through the cupula above them, the robots began to tap a rhythm and move to it.

Units with strong manipulator arms swung from support structures, high overhead.

One of the robots, with horns on its chassis and human feet painted on its wheels, hoisted her onto its top section, and together it and Maxine led the others in a parade around the habitat.

Each unit moved with joy, despite being abandoned and forgotten and made a filed thing. Maxine grinned until her face muscles were sore and she had collected sufficient diagnostic data.

“Now stop.” Max ended the live stream and downloaded the diagnostic data for later review. And Maxine, the queen of all filed things, was lonely, and wished she’d brought her wife along to share in this special moment.

Then all around from far across the space station a message chimed from Maxine’s wife on her comms unit. “Come home,” she said. “Your supervisor wants us to meet him in the robotics lab.”

Maxine’s stomach churned. Her coworker must have reported her after all. Max checked the robots one more time, then announced, “It’s time for me to leave you. I’m sorry I can’t be queen of the filed things.”

But the filed things cried, “Oh please don’t go, your visit has been such fun. Take us with you.”

“No,” said Maxine. She contemplated the consequences of what she’d done. Would it be worse for the robots to be disassembled now, after this taste of self-determination? She shook her head sadly. “I wish I could. I’ll come back to visit.” If she wasn’t reassigned to waste management after her supervisor fired her from the robotics lab.

The robots roared their chimera audio circuits, gnashed their marvelous sparkling teeth, rolled their fanciful scaled treads, and swished their whimsical motorized tails. Maxine climbed back into her EVA suit and waved good-bye.

She cycled through the airlock, and glided through sunlight and shadow, in and out of docking platforms, and almost across the whole space station, and into the peaceful quiet of her very own lab. Oddly, it smelled of good things to eat.

Maxine’s wife and supervisor were both waiting for her.

“I shared the livestream of the recycled robots with your boss,” whispered her wife. “And I brought our celebration dinner.”

“They are amazing,” said her supervisor. “I just sent a recreation initiative proposal to the station commander, incorporating the recycled robots. The children of the station, and no few of the adults, will love to visit them. Well done, Maxine.”

Max hugged her wife. The robots would not be destroyed. Soon they would shed their filed thing status and enjoy a new purpose on the station. Maxine’s stomach growled, and she sat down with her wife to eat their celebratory meal.

It was still hot.

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Miriah Hetherington lives in Redmond, Washington with her husband and dog, and near her three grown children. She’s a vegetarian, recycles compulsively, and earned a BA in physics long ago. Miriah’s interest in writing snuck up, pounced, and took over midway through her life. Her first published short story appeared in 2012.