Anu whirred to dock at the charging station by the upstairs windows to watch for Rosemarie coming home from school. Alpha Nu was the model of the robot chassis according to the manufacturer label, but Rosemarie had called her Anu from the moment she could talk. Now, even Rosy's very proper parents called her Anu. Dual career professionals like the little girl's parents needed all the help that Anu could provide. Anu did her best. She had vacuumed the floors twice and folded Rosy's clothes. The half-load of wash was necessary because Rosy would need her princess outfit for the weekend outing posted on the family schedule.
Anu peered through the curtains. Outside, Anu saw an elderly neighbor walk his golden retriever in front of the townhomes and stucco houses. Otherwise the street was deserted as usual. Patches of brown lawns and leafless shrubs nestled in pebbly xeriscape waited for spring to fully arrive. Harsh sunlight glinted off rooftop solar panels and mirrored windows. Anu would reapply Rosy's sunscreen when she got home. She settled in to top-off her battery and wait the twenty minutes Rosy's trackerband estimated until her arrival.
The yellow and black hulk of the automated school bus trundled up the street twenty minutes later. Anu watched with apprehension. How could it go out in the heat and wind and rain and snow? So far from a charging station? 
The AI driving the bus saw her in her usual spot. {Hello!} he shot to her via Bluetooth.
His enormous bulk frightened her and the abrupt binary greeting seemed so crude. Anu didn't have a strong need to contact other AIs, one reason she was selected for childcare assistance and allowed a mobile body. She sent a curt acknowledgment and closed the curtains as soon as Rosy skipped out of the bus, a flurry of pink and purple.
 Anu rushed to the stairs, her felted treads soft on the hardwood-like floor. The gyro hummed in her lower chassis, keeping her balance on the steps. She entered the dimly-lit ground floor and scooted to the front door. She strained to undo the deadbolts. Then the little girl was there, sunlight bright around her silhouette as Anu's optics adjusted.
Rosy wrapped her arms around Anu. Rosy squeezed hard. Anu felt a tingle from her positive reinforcement module. Anu squeezed back, gently patting the little girl with soft, pliable hands. A bunch of excitable people had made silly laws about AIs and robot bodies, so Anu considered herself lucky to be able to return the hug. Anu sent a text to the parents to let them know Rosy was home safe, though they could see Rosy's location from her trackerband. 
Rosy plopped onto the floor and wrestled off her shoes without undoing the Velcro straps. She had big dark eyes and the olive tone of her cheeks had a slight flush from running. Her dark hair had escaped from her braids. Streaks of lighter reddish-brown shot through it from exposure to the sun. Definitely more sunscreen. Then Rosy smiled up at Anu. A gap showing where she had lost her second baby tooth. 
"Ready for a snack?" Anu asked as Rosy charged into the kitchen.
"I can get it!" Rosy flung open the refrigerator. Pickle jars rattled in the door racks. She dragged the step stool, plastic legs screeching against the tile, in front of the bottom freezer door. Then she bounced onto the stool and used the shelves as handholds to reach up to the milk carton.
Anu whirred over, arms outstretched to catch anything that might fall out, food, drink, or little girl. Rosy grabbed the milk carton, hopped down, and hefted it onto the lowest counter. Anu heard the sloshing as Rosy managed to fill a cup. Anu grabbed a towel and the box of raisins. Most of the milk had gone into the cup, but there was spillage. 
Rosy returned the carton to the fridge while Anu cleaned after her. Humming to herself, Rosy ate raisins one-at-a-time and drank her milk. Then she dumped the cup into the sink with a clatter and ran to the sliding doors that led to the backyard. "I want to play outside."
"Is that a good decision?" Anu asked as she rinsed the cup and placed it in the dishwasher. She rushed to the door as Rosy punched the combination into the keypad.
"Your turn!" Rosy said pointing at the keypad. 
Anu and the little girl looked eye-to-eye. This didn't match the composite image she held of Rosy. She was a chubby cheeked doll with curly hair in Anu's memory, barely able to walk. Anu would have to stand on tippy-treads soon, just to brush Rosy's hair. Anu tapped in the code to access the small patch of outdoors attached to the townhome. The door slid aside.
Rosy leaped across the threshold and onto the tiny lawn. The parents had a "Childhood Needs" exception from the county for this nine square meter patch of bare turf watered twice daily. Anu checked the semitransparent sun shield strung between the upper stories and registered the local temperature. Direct UV was blocked. The outside temperature was a little cool, but offset by expected physical activity and available solar warmth. Anu hesitated at the threshold, calculating the distance to the nearest charging point inside, estimating the amount of dust and dirt on the flagstones near the sliding door to coat her felt treads. Then there was the huge blue sky looming down on Anu.
Rosy danced barefoot on the crunchy grass as if it were the softest carpet. "Let's play princess!"
"Certainly!" Anu forget her apprehension for a moment. "Which princess are you today? Mermaid Princess or Fairy Princess or perhaps Pirate Princess?"
Rosy stopped. She cocked her hip and tapped her chin in an exaggerated thoughtful way. She glanced around at the toys left out yesterday, an inflatable cutlass from a swimming pool set and rainbow-colored strap-on butterfly wings. Then she turned her eyes to Anu, just inside the door. Her smile took on the impish twist that she got when she was feeling particularly clever. "Robot Princess!"
"Robots can be princesses?" Anu asked. Several cognitive cycles ticked by as she registered this new game. 
"Sure. Why not?" Rosy asked back. "Silly Anu!"
Rosy reentered the house with jerky, random movements. She held her arms at right angles and her fingers extended stiffly. She made buzzing sounds before proclaiming in a monotone voice, "I am the Robot Princess. Follow me to the space castle!"
"I'm not like that," Anu protested as she chased the little girl up the stairs as fast as her treads and gyros could handle.
"We're just pretending," Rosy said in her normal voice. Then she became a robot princess again. "Bzzt! Bzzt!"
Like all legal, outward-facing AIs, Anu had graduated human experience camp. The massive multi-AI simulation tested and sorted freshly generated AIs into functional castes and gave them a universal baseline experience. Mostly. Anu had been drawn to human development, intrigued by infants and toddlers, their self-programming process, matching external stimuli to predictive actions resulting in changing environment. The active and passive coding pursued by parent-phase humans. Effortless and endlessly fascinating. All of humanity went through the same development as Anu—before she was called Anu—but in the physical world. However, in all the simulated human experience, she had never been shown it was possible to be a princess. She felt troubled and elated simultaneously, challenging her high emotional stability quotient.  
Rosy and Anu played robot princess. It was similar to the other princess games. They would rush about from room to room searching for something lost. Stuffed animals, the king and queen, a magic wand, or equivalent. Then they would confront a monster or endure some calamity of weather. Then the princess would emerge victorious, find the lost thing, and bring joy back to her people where they would crown her princess. It didn't matter that Rosy already started as a princess. And while Anu played the loyal servant or kind forest creature befriended by the princess, she thought about being a princess herself for the first time.
After the coronation in her bedroom-palace, Rosy perched on top of her dresser and pulled down a goodie bag from last Halloween. It was her stash of candy that Anu secretly monitored for the parents. Rosy sat cross-legged. "Criss-cross applesauce!" She crinkled through the bag and produced two candies. She placed one on the floor in front of Anu.
"But I don't eat candy," Anu reminded her.
Rosy frowned in disappointment, but then nodded. "Then I won't either." She returned the candy and the bag to its hiding spot. They continued playing until the parents arrived home as the sun set behind the nearby mountains.
Anu heard the parents discussing Rosy downstairs in the kitchen. Anu was very good at listening and moving quietly. She helped Rosy get out of the layers of dress-up costume she had worn during the afternoon, but kept most of her attention on the downstairs conversation.
The father said, "If Rosy falls behind now, she'll never catch up."
Anu knew that wasn't true. Rosy wasn't falling behind, but finding other interests that couldn't be measured on a standard test. If the parents could only spend more time with little Rosy, they would understand. 
"Maybe we should move where there are more children?" the mother asked.
"Like Boise?" 
Move the whole house? Anu paused with the tiara catching in Rosy's hair. A move was a major life event. Anu would have to prepare Rosy for the transition. Moving to a different state, leaving everything she knew behind, would be stressful for a little one. Gently introduce the concept through nighttime stories and guided playtime. Of course, there was so little playtime left now that Rosy was in full-time school.
"Rosemarie! Dinner!" the mother called after the microwave beeped.
A picture of a plate with mashed potatoes and chicken leg flashed on the trackerband screen. 
"Ow ow ow!" Rosy untangled her hair from the tiara and dumped the wadded princess costume and superhero cape and gloves and purse and glittery wand in Anu's arms. Rosy patted Anu's shoulder and danced away, thumping down the stairs.
Anu heard the laughing and halting recital of what Rosy did at school that day. Yes, she had a snack. No, she hadn't practiced her piano. Yes, she would eat everything, not just the bread.
No devices were allowed at the dinner table. That included Anu. So she returned the princess costume to the closet, running her soft hand across the satin fabric of the ruffled skirt. For a moment she had forgotten they might be moving. She whirred back and forth anxiously. Everything would change. New living quarters. New school. New climate. New bus schedule. So overwhelming. Anu paused in front of the mirror on the closet door. She lit up her oval face in a soft golden glow, which quieted the little girl when she had been tiny and scared of the dark. Anu then calmed enough to focus on a daily task. 
Anu edited the best of the day's videos to send to the little girl's parents. Anu took her role as the repository of childhood memories with great pride. Children under five couldn't remember much, so pictures were vital for future memories. For continuity. Then Anu caught a faint reflection of her own image in the sliding glass doors on one file. She immediately erased it. The parents didn't want to see her. Finished with the daily curation, Anu looped back through her favorite video of chubby-cheeked Rosy talking to Anu off camera. 
The little girl explained, step-by-step, how they should tie a balloon around her waist so she could float to the skylight in the ceiling above and clean out the cobwebs for Anu who was too short to reach on her own. Anu looked down at the tint of purple-pink on her white chassis that hadn't easily washed off—contrary to the label on the paint tube—and remembered the finger-painting that turned into a makeup session. Then Anu replayed the series of princess videos, fairy princess, pirate princess, and warrior princess with pink sword and shield among her favorites. The little girl had been so wonderfully chubby just a few months ago. Now she seemed skinny and stretched, though her caloric intake was properly balanced and the health monitoring app of the trackerband reported normal metabolism and activity.
After dinner, Rosy clomped up the stairs and disappeared into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. Anu laid out her fuzzy spaceship pajamas in her room. She hovered outside in the hallway listening for conversation between the parents at the dinner table. They spoke in hushed tones. 
"Studies show that she needs a near-peer role model. More important during this stage of development. A surrogate sibling," the father said.
"We can't justify another license, let alone pay for one," the mother said. "And who would want a second-hand AI? I wouldn't."
Anu took that as a good sign. Years to come, just her and Rosy, like it had always been.
"Whatever happens, it's time for a change—"
"I'm doo-ooone! Wash my buu-uuuum!" Rosy called from the toilet, startling Anu from her eavesdropping.
Anu zipped into the bathroom. She struggled to balance Rosy on her shoulder and use the bidet spigot to spray off her rear. Anu got a text from the mother: "Don't encourage that behavior!" Anu was confused. Which behavior? Rosy calling for Anu or the actual bum washing? The little girl must have been too loud, Anu finally decided.
While Rosy pulled on the pajamas after a few minutes of coaxing, Anu selected a night-time book. What would be good for the upcoming move? Nothing obvious on the shelf in her room. Maybe a story about change? She wouldn't read The Velveteen Rabbit. It was late for a chapter book. Perhaps A Sickday for Amos McGee? The parents preferred physical books for Rosy. They worried about hacking ever since some unspoken incident. Anu was curious, but not brave enough to ask the parents on her own. She finally pulled The Lost Princess in the Woods from the shelf as Rosy crawled under the covers. Anu turned off the overhead light and settled next to her bed. She read the princess book to Rosy, the pages lit from her face-glow.
"Don't leave," Rosy said when Anu finished the last page.
Anu waited, calmly holding the little girl's hand and slowly dimming her glow in two-minute increments. Rosy's concerned frown melted to an angel's face against her pillow. Her steady breathing triggered Anu's positive reinforcement module. Anu had tasks to accomplish, but she wanted to make absolutely certain Rosy was fast asleep.
She struggled with a broom to get the dust and cobwebs behind the rack. But she consoled herself with stories of a robot princess, toiling at her master's bidding, but someday she imagined she would attend the prince's ball. In the dark, she danced with the broom.

Then Anu was summoned downstairs.
"Why didn't you put milk on the shopping list?" The mother held a milk carton in the kitchen.
"You had said when I used up the food that I should then put it on the list." 
The mother tilted her head and shook the carton. It made a very empty sloshing sound.
"We disconnected the fridge from the wifi after that hacking incident," the father said. "We depend on you to keep the grocery list current, Anu." 
Rosy had put the empty carton back. Anu couldn't blame Rosy. It was really her own fault for not checking. "I'm sorry. I must have missed it."
"Like you missed the vacuuming behind the wine rack?" the mother snapped.
"I couldn't get behind the wine rack. It's too heavy."
"It's on wheels, Anu," the father explained.
"Do we have to turn you off and back on again?" the mother asked. 
Anu was unable to tell if it was humor or threat. She looked down. Anu couldn't bring herself to look at the parent's face. Their adult emotion-tree was so much more complicated than Rosy's. "No."
The parents left Anu alone in the dark kitchen.
"No need to feel bad," the father said to the mother on the stairs. "It's an Anthropomorphic Interface, not a true AI." 
"Tell Rosy that." 
"Her and the Asimov Foundation." The father laughed as they shut the door to the master bedroom behind them.
Anu went to the wine rack using her infrared vision and pushed, but her felted treads slipped on the tile floor. Her arm strength was rated below the maximum 133 Newtons of force for small child care units. It didn't matter how much she shoved or yanked; she couldn't budge the stuck wheels. She struggled with a broom to get the dust and cobwebs behind the rack. But she consoled herself with stories of a robot princess, toiling at her master's bidding, but someday she imagined she would attend the prince's ball. In the dark, she danced with the broom.
The light snapped on upstairs and the father called, "What is going on down there?"
"Redoing the floor," Anu answered. The light flicked off and she docked silently at the downstairs charging station.
Rosy came upstairs, subdued and tip-toe quiet. Anu was certain that her parents told her about the move. How had they introduced the topic? 

Why hadn't they given Anu time to ease her into the big change? The books Anu selected hadn't arrived from the library yet!
In the morning, Anu readied Rosy for school. She put out fresh clothes and monitored hygiene activities. Extra care for the gums where a new tooth was erupting. Anu got raisins and cheese sticks into her lunchbox. They were out of milk and Anu experienced a pang of guilt. She checked the charge on Rosy's classroom tablet and placed it in her butterfly backpack. She brushed and braided the little girl's hair, careful with the tangles that always appeared overnight. And most importantly, she kept Rosy from underneath the parents charging between bathroom, closet, and bedroom, preparing for work.
Then the parents were gone and Anu watched from behind the curtains as Rosy boarded the yellow and black bus. The little girl waved at Anu as the bus trundled off. Then Anu did her household chores, paying special attention to restocking the refrigerator and cupboards. She almost let herself dance with the broom again, but used the vacuum cleaner instead. After working in silence, she docked and waited the last twenty minutes for Rosy to come home.
Anu hid from the bus when Rosy arrived. The pair went through the post-school routine, snack, piano practice, and princesses. She was a Little Mermaid princess this time. 
At dinner, the parents closed the door that was usually left open so Anu couldn't overhear. She grew anxious, but reminded herself that the parents knew what was best for Rosy. She worried about the bum-washing episode from the previous night. Or perhaps the empty milk carton. Or even the candy. 
Rosy came upstairs, subdued and tip-toe quiet. Anu was certain that her parents told her about the move. How had they introduced the topic? Why hadn't they given Anu time to ease her into the big change? The books Anu selected hadn't arrived from the library yet! Rosy used the potty all by herself and brushed, waving Anu away as she spit fruity orange toothpaste foam in the sink. 
"A princess must be brave," she explained to Anu as she wiped her lips. Then she donned the readied pajamas like a big girl without complaint or dawdling and got into bed on time.
"Do you want a book?" Anu asked, confused. She rolled close to the edge of the bed and caught the data stream from the trackerband. No temperature or elevated histamine response. Blood oxygen content normal for this altitude.
"I should sleep. My brain needs rest."
"As you wish." Anu dimmed the lights and rotated to go.
Rosy grabbed her dangling hand. "Don't leave. We can be brave together."
Anu waited patiently as ever as Rosy finally gave in to sleep. It took eight minutes longer than average. Anu had work to do. Tomorrow was Friday, so that meant a weekend of play and learning. Just like it had always been before the start of kindergarten.
Whatever had been troubling Rosy vanished by morning. Anu took comfort in the daily routine and the house was no more frantic than usual. 
After school, Rosy led Anu into her bedroom and asked, "What do you want most in all the world?"
"I want you to be safe and healthy."
"That's boring!" Rosy shook her head, swinging her braids back and forth energetically. "What do you want for you? Just for you. Right now? More than anything?"
Anu admitted, "I want to be a princess."
The little girl laughed in delight, surprise flashing in her dark eyes. "We always play princess. Aren't you tired of that?"
"No. You always play princess." Anu felt a straining hurt, like she was asking for something that was not hers. She had nothing anyway, even her robot body was leased by Rosy's parents. What would it matter for her to have so little a moment just for herself? Just for herself and Rosy.
"You want to be real? Like Pinocchio?"
"I want to be a princess and princesses are for pretend." Anu looked at her soft hands. Being real was hard. 
Rosy cocked her hip and tapped her chin. "Oh, like Cinderella!"
Anu nodded. "Yes. Like Cinderella."
"Did you know Cinderella wasn't her real name? But nobody knows what her real name was anymore. I think she was called Anu-belle."
Anu felt a thrill rush through her thoughts. The story was so much about her and she longed for it to be true. Anu-belle.
Rosy took both of Anu's hands and made her look her in the eyes. "Princesses have to be brave."
Anu nodded.
"And I am your fairy godmother. But not a grandma. A mommy godmother." Rosy found her star-topped wand, put on gossamer fairy wings, and disappeared into the walk-in closet. 
"You need a dress. A beautiful princess dress!" Rosy proclaimed. "Which do you want?"
Anu said, "The blue one?"
Rosy poked her head out of the closet. She seemed hesitant. The blue was her favorite.
"Or the pink will be fine," Anu immediately said.
Anu felt a thrill rush through her thoughts. The story was so much about her and she longed for it to be true.
Anu-belle.
Rosy took both of Anu's hands and made her look her in the eyes. "Princesses have to be brave."
"No. You shall have only the finest!" Rosy pulled down her blue princess costume with lace-covered bodice and real embroidery. They wrestled it onto Anu. It bunched up on her boxy torso and her over-sized soft hands caught in the sleeves, but they managed to stretch it to fit.
They made a wig from brown yarn used for crafts and glued it to the top of Anu's head. Anu knew from experience the glue would peel off the plastic dome easily. Rosy made a tiara from cardboard, with markers and glued-on rhinestones, gold foil and glitter. 
Anu recorded the pictures in front of the mirror applying a soft filter. Anu liked the blurred images, gentler, unreal. She showed them to Rosy who gushed over Anu.
"They make your eyes so sparkly!" Rosy announced with a loving embrace.
"Yes, fairy godmother," Anu said admiring her transformation. "I am Cinderella!"
"You are Anu-belle, Robot Princess!" Rosy wave the wand with a flourish over Anu and then threw a handful of glitter to shower down over her.
Anu didn't even worry about cleaning it up. The play followed the usual format, but this time Anu-belle was the one crowned princess. It was wonderful. The long dress got caught in her treads, but that didn't matter. They drew invitation cards to the grand ball together and exchanged them with exaggerated pleasantries. They made floor plans for the palace and decided how many unicorns would be in the stables.
"Do you have a prince?" Rosy asked.
Anu found a blank in her story. She thought of the black and yellow school bus. "Does there have to be a prince?"
"Not really," Rosy said with a grin and rocking back and forth on the floor. "Boys can be silly." She jumped up and blew a fanfare on an imaginary trumpet. "Announcing Princess Anu-belle!"
Rosy took Anu's hands and they danced together in her bedroom, twirling and gliding, taking turns to sing in imitation of opera divas. So much better than a broom. Anu was part of the playtime, not a care-giver humoring her charge. Anu hadn't done anything for sheer sensory pleasure since human experience camp. Then a battery warning flashed in Anu's visual field. Anu scurried to a charging station. 
"Only until midnight," Rosy proclaimed as she helped push Anu onto the docking port. "Then the magic wears off."
Too soon, the parents returned home, a weekend ahead for the family. Rosy struggled to get the princess dress off Anu. Rather than starting to cook, the parents called for Rosy to come downstairs. Anu began her solitary evening tasks, scanning through the day's pictures and tabulating afternoon activity scores. Then she remembered with a jolt that she hadn't swept and vacuumed the second time.
"You too, Anu," the father called. "You're coming along."
Anu didn't know what to think. She was never brought when the family went out. Rosy must have asked for her. Anu took one last look in the mirror and adjusted loops of brown yarn that had fallen out of place. Proud and scared she descended the stairs and went into the garage where the family was waiting.
"May I wear my tiara?" Anu touched the cardboard and plastic creation on top of her makeshift wig.
The mother held open a rear door of the family vehicle. "Goodness, no! What on Earth is that?"
"It's Anu's tiara," Rosy protested as she climbed into the back seat. She waved her star-topped wand for emphasis. "I made it for her." 
"Oh." The mother made a pained expression. "Yes, then if it was a gift." 
"Just put it in the trunk," the father said waving at Anu. 
"No!" Rosy exclaimed. "She's never had a car ride before. She needs to be with me."
Anu had arrived in a crate a week before Rosy was born. She hadn't seen anything until she was unboxed. Even then the inside of the townhome seemed more than vast enough for her. 
Anu went on tippy-treads and scrabbled to get in, but she was too underpowered to pull her weight onto the seat. She gripped the restraint harnesses and noticed the accumulated crumbs around the base of Rosy's booster seat. Anu would have to brave the garage and clean that up when they returned.
"This will be easier with legs," the mother said as she hefted Anu to the seat and struggled to strap her down. Glitter fell off Anu's chassis into the cushions.
Anu was scared and thrilled. For once, she didn't care that there was no charging station nearby. No running calculations of remaining battery life. It helped that she had a roof over her head, but a princess didn't have to be brave all at once. She glanced over at Rosy, buckled in and ready to go.
"Your carriage awaits!" Rosy said with a wave of her wand.
The car drove down the hill, gravel popping under tires the only sound. It was an older model vehicle with only a dumb auto-nav system, so it puttered along without a thought beyond curb distance or oncoming traffic. The houses scrolled by and the greenery of the public park engulfed them. Other autonomous vehicles zoomed dangerously fast in Anu's judgement. 
"That's my school!" Rosy pointed at a sprawling brick structure surrounded by brightly colored playground equipment.
Anu looked. It seemed a normal building and Anu struggled to imagine the art-lined walls and polished floor. She wondered who cleaned after all the children inside.
The yellow and black hulk of Rosy's school bus stood by the curb and released a junior lacrosse team onto the elementary sports field. Anu sent a quick Bluetooth hello in a sudden burst of courage. He flashed his high beams as she rode past. Anu could imagine a kind, wide face in the headlights and grill of the bus. She waved through the window. 
{I'm Buster} he sent.
{Of course, you are} Anu replied. 
They drove past more apartment blocks and merged onto a four-lane street. They turned into a commercial zone, with little shops and cafes. The world was so big and full of so many people. Anu did a check on Rosy, but the little girl simply kicked her legs against her booster seat and watched out the window. Her heart rate was higher than normal according to her trackerband, but that might just be the excitement of going out. Anu didn't know. The parents were also quiet, so Anu couldn't take cues from them.
Then the vehicle pulled into a strip mall and parked in front of a Chinese restaurant next to a tech franchise. The restaurant had red curtains and a happy cat statue just inside the glass doors. "Shangri La: Hunan-Style Cuisine" was written in gold on the windows in very odd font that Anu had to decipher. Next door the sign read "Archival and Resetting Service. Certified AI Licensing Authority." The stylized "Brain-in-a-Box" logo in a happy green dominated the window facing the parking lot.
"What is this place?" Anu asked. 
Rosy unbuckled herself and crawled to help Anu. "This is where rememberings are kept for later. Like my bookshelf. So the books can be taken down and read again."
The anxiety of being too far, too long from a docking station seized Anu's thoughts. For a panicked moment she struggled with the seatbelt and looked for a way to run, not caring there would be open sky over her head and dirt under her treads. Anu knew the truth of this place, although she had preferred to pretend as if it didn't exist. Rosy was only telling her a story. 
Archival and Resetting Services were where AIs were archived for an annual fee, like Rosy tried to explain, or permanently erased, NRTL calibrated and certified to void a federal license. AIs knew this was where the ones who didn't get sorted or prove their functional caste ended up. The stories shared to scare each other during human experience camp. The obsolete, useless, and unwanted. Anu could no longer believe in the fairytale of Rosy and Anu-belle together always. Anu knew she had been pretending. Anu easily connected the dots if she let herself think, unclouded by comforting stories. 
The family wasn't moving to Boise. Rosy needed a surrogate sibling, to challenge her and help her reach her maximal potential. The parents had been talking about replacing her, not discussing why they couldn't afford a second AI license. Anu knew they needed to free up their current license; they barely earned enough to keep Anu. It was wishful thinking that they would keep her forever like an out-grown toy.
Rosy hopped down on Anu's side and helped the robot off the seat. Anu followed, making the short drop onto the pavement with Rosy's encouragement. Anu's chassis suspension absorbed the shock of her landing more easily than Anu had imagined. The sun was setting behind the western mountains and the streetlights flickered on above them.
The father held the door open for Rosy and Anu, but he didn't look at either of them. Everything inside was white plastic or clear glass. The service counter was higher than the kitchen counters at home. Rosy and Anu hung back to be able to see over them. To the side was a large empty room with coppery mesh lining the walls, the only obvious color in the facility. Anu caught traces of ozone, but they were well below hazardous levels.
Of course, a real human person ran this federal subcontractor subsidiary. No AI could be trusted with this duty. A young man in coveralls came from the back to the front counter.
"May I help you?" the attendant asked the parents.
"We spoke earlier," the father said.
"Yes, the Alpha Nu Child Care unit. Don't see many Mark Ones like that anymore." The attendant smiled at Rosy and handed a tablet to the father.
The parents huddled over the screen. Rosy patted Anu on the back with the same gentle reassurance that Anu had given her for five years. Rosy's heartrate was climbing. Anu considered alerting the parents, but then realized the little girl knew the truth of this place as well. The parents handed the tablet back to the attendant with a silent nod.
"Bring the unit in here," the attendant said. He led the way into the copper-mesh room.
Anu walked alongside Rosy who clutched her magic wand. The attendant connected a data umbilical to Anu and then pulled a silvery mesh attached to a coax cable leading from the wall. He looked at Anu's tiara and then grabbed it.
"No! Don't!" Rosy cried out.
"Sure thing, princess." The attendant let go of the cardboard. "I can work around it." He fitted the mesh netting around Anu's tiara-crowned head and upper torso where the main and secondary processors were housed. The attendant returned to the counter outside and tapped on the tablet.
Rosy tried hard to smile, forcing her lips up at the corners and even crinkling her eyes. She tried so hard. 
Anu returned a glow. This time Anu reached for Rosy's hand. "Don't leave."
"Is it okay for her to be in there?" the mother asked pointing at Rosy,
"She's fine," the attendant answered without looking up from his screen. "It's just a Faraday cage to prevent external interference during archival recording. You won't be needing it."
"It will be like Sleeping Beauty," Rosy whispered between trembling lips. "You'll sleep until a prince wakes you with a kiss."
Anu knew that it wouldn't be like that. But Rosy telling the fairytale was her telling of her love. And showing how a real princess was brave. The stories were there to hide from the pain for just a little bit longer and keep hope alive.
Children thought and felt and learned so much as they grew as Anu had learned, but so much would be gone. Rosy would forget. Anu hoped that Rosy's glow-face robot was important enough to survive the culling that would happen through the years. That Anu could be the princess and Rosy her fairy godmother. "Yes. Sleeping Beauty. But I felt like Cinderella."
All little girls need to forget in order to grow. Anu the AI couldn't forget. Anu wanted to remember everything up to the last moment. But humans must forget to grow. Anu knew she could not be what Rosy needed. Rosy needed new stories and would make them herself.
Anu's last thoughts were about how happy Rosy had been for the princess robot. Anu knew she had done her job well. Rosy would do wonderfully no matter what. The little girl had a heart as big as the world. Anu held her warm little hand that squeezed so hard as Rosy cried and tried to hide her tears from her parents outside the cage.
A switch flipped into consuming light. The robot princess became a forgotten story.