Earth, Sophie is 25

Zara and I are finally building something together, after talking about it for years. Having basically no machine foundation but inspired by the organic tech of her home planet, she has drawn me a diagram of a little companion bot she wants me to figure out how to make, and help me with. The idea is basically a flying solar powered little thing, with a plant growing out of the top. The complicated part being meshing the organic to the mechanical so that it is essentially naturally powered. Mickey graciously found me a paper on the Rakling energy guns and how the power cells functioned, and even managed to procure a fleshy little remote thing from Rak - a trinket really, but getting the incredibly small amount of energy it needed to function from the moss cells on its surface. Very cool. Not exactly in my wheelhouse but I'll always take a challenge.

Zara hovers around me - wait not literally but that'd be cool - as I fiddle with wiring, thoughtfully rub leaves between my hands, connect and reconnect power sources. I don't think I've ever really tried to teach anyone the way I build things before but I think Zara is a very good student and I'm probably a terrible teacher; she doesn't know what she's doing but she somehow understands my vague explanations and she asks lots of questions that I do my best to answer.

This is one of my classic devices cobbled together mostly from what random bits and pieces I've been carrying around - and since I haven't accumulated machine scraps for a good few years now the stuff I have is quite old at this point, but it's getting the job done. Zara has a software personality template downloaded that we're able to transfer onto a chip I scrounged from some automaton on Tiberius, and with a few false starts we get some basic commands down with the thing wired to a temporary power source, before I tackle the more complicated biotech aspect.

As I study the Rakling wiring designs and tentatively attempt to extract the construct that is able to bond the natural solar cells to the electronic wiring, Zara is trying to brainstorm a name for the bot. I chime in with intentionally bad ideas every now and then but in spite of my meddling she settles on calling the bot 'Zee', which is very cute. She strokes the leaves of the plant that we have placed haphazardly within our creation, as I try and fail to get the wiring correct.

We take a break not long after this, and wander from below deck to the top of the settlement, bobbing over the water. We get some Roksti style seafood snacks and Zara winces at the psychic buzz exuded by the seller. We sit with our legs dangling in the water and Zara tells me about what she has been learning in school - she does a mix of Earth schooling and this remote program Mickey found through a Rakling support group - and tells me about when Kris and Graycien came to visit a few weeks ago. Soon she becomes all jittery about getting back to the bot, saying that she wants to be able to bring it with us to show Abi and her parents when we go to Flauraan tomorrow.

I'm being lazy - mostly teasingly - and she resorts to pulling on my arm and saying "Come on ammi!" and it still sounds wrong hearing her call me that but I give in and head back to the dining room turned workshop where our work remains cluttered about.

Hours later, and after much trial and error, we finally succeed, and fully disconnect Zee from the power bank so that it is completely self sufficient. It hovers wobbily off the table, and Zara claps gleefully, crouching down to get a proper look around it. Of course, the exterior isn't properly secured so the ferny plant almost topples out taking all my hours of wiring with it so I hurriedly instruct Zara to tell Zee to land again and put it in sleep mode so that we can assemble the casing properly.

Mickey returned from his daytrip with the girls not long ago so Zara disappears for a bit and I can hear her excitedly describing our day to him while he bustles in the kitchen. I only say a brief hello to him and the girls because I know how badly Zara wants the bot to be finished tonight. When she comes back I'm only a quarter of the way through tightening the casing and I still have a buttload of calibrating to do.

"What can I do to help, ammi?" she asks me.

I scrutinise the bot for a moment and then gesture over to my bag of tools, hoping she'll be able to interpret my vague descriptions of items. "Hand me that part, Zara." I say.

Earth, Sophie is 8

"Okay ammi!" I say brightly and take her the part she asked from where its hanging on the wall.

This is my favourite type of day. When baba looks after Rachel and Kris because ammi says they're too young for building things, and me and ammi spend the whole day together in her building room. Today she is letting me help a lot!!! Normally she just explains things and I try to remember but I'm not very good at that so she said maybe you learn better by doing Sophie and I said okay ammi and she let me grab tools and then held her hand over my hand as she explains what it does and sometimes I mess up and she says it's okay mistakes are how you learn and I think wow she's so smart I wanna be that smart one day.

We are making a robot today!! I asked ammi what's it gonna do and she said whatever you want it to do and I said will it have legs and she said of course it'll have legs and I said can it sing that song from the cat show and she said Sophie that sounds perfect and then we found one of baba's speakers and she said baba won't mind and she helped me take off the screws and showed me which part made the music come out and we put it in our bot and she said do you have an idea for a name yet? and I said ohhh I don't know and she said just think about it while I finish the wiring and I thought about it for a bit but then I got distracted singing the song and then ammi laughed and then when she finished the wiring she turned the speaker on and then we both sung along to the song and then she said let's get started on the legs.

So we do that and ammi lets me tighten the legs on and then shows me how to get the motor running. “It worked!” I giggle gleefully as sparks fly and then we watch the bot start to move and it's so exciting.

When baba brings Rachel and Kris home Kris squeals when he sees the robot scurrying across the floor and ammi says maybe we put it away for now and then ammi makes me have a bath and then we eat dinner and then we eat the special dessert baba brought home and then they say its bedtime and I crawl into bed and ammi and baba say goodnight before going to read a story to Rachel and Kris and I fall asleep trying to remember all the big words ammi taught me and I still don't remember but I dream about robots anyway.