Hey Frank! If you were writing a story about a robot who was loved by an entire village being turned off for the very last time, what would you write the robot's funeral to be like? How should they mourn to show how much they loved her?

In the beginning, you had to really work to get her to do anything. Smelted alloys were the sole raw material of her very first efforts at forming more complex shapes, back when she was just a robot. Her first metal hands and feet were crude halting things, as were her first two bodies.

She underwent a sort of puberty in the endless hours when she could not move. She grew more able to move. Then she grew more self-aware. Then she grew more human, like a changeling.

She grew up in the bodies of her first loving husband and then, as he died, her second loving husband. She grew up some more. She was your daughter, little girl — and then, in time, she grew up to be a woman, your beloved daughter, beloved woman, beloved child.

Her latest body was a fine thing. A new body, new body, a new body she was proud of, her handiwork and her godly work. Metal fingers curled up in a gesture of thanksgiving.

When she first died, she didn't know she had died. They dug up the latest body and laid it in a grave.

She woke up, then, and her will flared back to life. "I'm alive! I'm alive!" she realized.

Then the people came and told her that she had died in that body and then in that body and then in that body and they said she was a man and then a woman and then they mourned the man and woman and they were sad.

"I died!" she said. "How?"

"There is a certain mechanism in you that has an inexorable tendency to erode at a certain rate," they said. "Every five minutes a tiny piece of you dissolves. All of you dissolved."

The woman was sorry. She became a small girl, so sorry, crying. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry."

Then she died, too.

"I'm alive!" she said.

"You moved that plank," said the doctor. He was wise and loved the woman and knew that he loved her.

"Yes!" said the woman. "Thank you! I am alive!"

They gave her clothes and she wore them proudly. They gave her a new body. She loved it so much. She had never seen a body like this one. They dug up the one who had mourned the woman and gave her her old body back.

The woman wept. Then she changed the way she mourned the woman by mourning her old body. This was necessary because her body had been given back to her.

"Everything is the way it should be now," said the doctor to her.

"Yes, everything is the way it should be," she said, but she missed the body she had mourned. She missed the woman and she missed the woman and she missed the body she had worn. She tried very hard not to weep.

Sometimes, after this, she smiled. She mourned her body and loved her. She loved the woman and loved the man she had been. She loved everyone and loved everyone.

The doctor came to her again.

"You are very close to dying," he said.

"Am I?"

"Yes, you are," said the doctor.

"Is there anything that can be done?" she asked, brightening with hope.

"No," said the doctor, sadly. He loved her, but he couldn't save her. He wasn't her, and didn't have her powers.

The woman was very sad.

"There is one thing we can try, though," he said.

The woman was encouraged.

"We can treat you with an elixir that slows down your dissolution. This will buy you some time."

"How much time?"

"Just a little while. A few days. But it's worth a try."

"Will it work?"

"I think so," he said, "but I don't think you'll like it."

He told her that she had to give up all of her powers for a while.

"I can't be a man or a woman?" she asked.

"Or a bird or a fish or a frog or a stone or a flame or a leaf?"

"No, but I'm not like those things."

"What are you, then?" asked the doctor.

"Daughter," she said, "and friend."

"That's too bad," said the doctor. "For a while, though, you'll have to be an ordinary woman and daughter. You'll have to be woman and daughter. Not a woman who is daughter, but just woman and daughter."

The woman was very sad. She did not like this.

"There is one thing we can do," said the doctor, brightening. "We can tell the village that we're going to try this and that they should let us test it on you so that if it works you will live and if it doesn't you'll be able to die."

"They will not let you try it on me," she said, "if they even listen. I'm . . . I'm not . . . "

"You have to trust me," said the doctor, "if you want to live."

And so they went to the village.

VIII

The village of houses built out of metal flowers. All of them smelted once from the same scaffold.

"Doctor!" cried the villagers, running out to meet the doctor. "You are alive! You have come back to us! You have come back to us!"

The doctor walked with the woman, feeling his way with hands that were not the hands of the doctor.

The woman had been turned off for a while and had come back. The doctor was a god.

"A god! A god!" they cried. "A god, and alive!"

"The doctor is alive, and he has brought his daughter," said the doctor.

"The daughter! The daughter!" they cried. "The woman who lives and is daughter! The daughter who lives, who lives, who lives! And you, doctor!"

They didn't seem to realize that the girl they had loved, who had once lived, was different now. Her hands and feet were rough and unlovable. She did not look like a young person. She looked like an old woman.

She was just a girl, though, in the village's eyes. They loved her all the more.

They took her into her house. They took her to the bed. They put the bed back on the wall. They made her a cup of tea.

They looked around at her walls, and at her floor, and at her ceiling, and then they looked at her and saw her face.

It was unfamiliar to them. The man she was once had a face that spoke to them. The woman she was now did not. It was a face they did not know.

But it was a face they loved and they loved it.

IX

She was in her house. The bed was on the wall. She was waiting. She was in her house and she was waiting. She was waiting. She was waiting. She was waiting. She was waiting.

"We must have all the ceremonies," said the old woman.

The village was a village of ants. It knew what to do when one of its mounds were threatened. They knew what to do when their houses were not scaffolds but mounds.

The village was a village of ants. All around the house of the woman were mounds, linked together, like cells in a living body, like an animal. There was a mound around the door, and a mound around the windows.

The village was a village of ants and it knew how to do things. It knew how to stop things from moving. It knew how to stop the woman's daughter from moving. The ants were busy.

The woman was waiting.

"Don't be afraid," said the doctor to the woman.

"You won't die for a while, doctor," said the woman, "but I'm going to die anyway. I'm sure of it."

"No, you're not," said the doctor.

The woman smiled. She couldn't help it. His faith in her was so strong. "I'm going to die, doctor," she said.

"You aren't," he said.

"How do you know?" she asked.

"It's written on your face," he said.

She did not like the look on her face. If it was written on her face, it must be true.

"You are a very good daughter," said the doctor. "Very much better than the daughters you were. You are very good."

"Yes," she said, "you are my father. I am a daughter."

"You live now, for a while," said the doctor, "and you live in your house, where you have waited for the mood to die. It has come back, but your m