When Nell opened her eyes, she was lying on the seashore with the cold waves lapping her legs. The evening sky spread blue above her.
She sat up, shivering. Nearby floated a little star-shaped robot with a light in the center that reminded her of an eye. She froze, watching it warily, waiting for it to shoot lasers or something. But all it did was watch her.
"Hello?" she said.
The robot didn't move. Maybe it was some kind of hovering camera. Its edges were scuffed and rusted, and one of its segments was slightly bent. This robot had been through the wringer.
Nell climbed to her feet, shivering, water streaming from her thin jumpsuit. What had happened to her clothes? Surely she'd been wearing something else. A dress. Hadn't it been a dress? Then she'd fallen off the boat, and the sea had been so cold ...
"Did I drown?" she asked the robot.
It didn't answer.
She turned in a circle, scanning the beach. As far as she could see, it was deserted. Boulders littered the sand, and pines crowned a bluff behind them, somber and dark. "Is anybody there?" she called. "I found your robot."
No answer.
Nell crossed the sand, picked her way through the boulders, and climbed a low spot in the bluff. Despite having drowned, her body felt strong and nimble. Even in her wet clothes, warmth burned inside her--not quite a fever.
The robot followed her.
The rapidly approaching night made it hard to see under the trees. Something scurried away as Nell stepped into the wood. "Hello?" she called again. "Anybody?" She looked at the robot. "You had to come from somewhere. And why are you following me? Shouldn't you be trying to take me back to your owner?"
In response, the robot's eye brightened like a flashlight. It shone a beam of light ahead of her, under the trees.
"That's more like it," said Nell. "I'm getting hungry and it's cold out here."
The robot guided her through the woods with its light. Nell hurried along, her damp clothes clinging to her and her wet shoes squishing with each step. She felt wide awake and alert. It may be growing dark, but she had been asleep a long time. Sleep wasn't necessary right now.
But she had the oddest feeling that she hadn't been asleep. "Was I dead?" she asked the robot again. "My brain feels so strange. I can kind of remember a few things ... like, I was wearing a dress. I think my name is Nell. Nell ... Anderson? But I can't remember anything else. Did you erase my memory?"
The robot's silence seemed sinister.
Nell tried to put these pieces together. "So, I have amnesia. I was injured or drowned or something, but now I'm alive somewhere in weird clothes. Am I some kind of escaped experiment?"
The robot mimicked the human motion of shaking its head, making the headlight sway from side to side.
"You understand me!" Nell said in surprise. "Or whoever is controlling you does. So. I'm not an escaped experiment?"
Another head shake. No.
"Was I dead?"
A nod this time. Yes.
"I was dead!" Nell exclaimed. "But how am I alive, now?"
The robot moved on, and she followed the light. "You're not going to answer me, are you? Or the people running you. I'll bet there's somebody in the back of a van with a headset and a remote, listening to every word I say."
The robot didn't reply.