When her father was drunk, he'd say ‘I used tо have a brother, you know’, and get a faraway look in his eyes. She realized she knew very little about her father and she was sorry she learned something new about him only when he was drunk. Her father drank rarely, so she devised a plan to get him drunk more often and she managed to do so surprisingly well. Sitting there, in his favorite tin chair, drinking machine oil, her father became the most animated robot she knew.

Other robots drank with malice, but when her father drank, joy fortified and flowed out of his wearisome existence.  So it came to be that in the tranquil presence of his only daughter, in the echo chamber of mechanical utopia, he drank every night the best machine oil there was and his only daughter spent half her salary to get him the best machine oil there was. In return, she got so much more and finally learned about his brother, the one responsible for the faraway look in his eyes, he had been a human and she wondered how it was so. 

You have never spoken of grandpa, she remarked casually one night. Was he human too? No. His father was a deep sea fish. And his mother? He couldn't remember his mother. His mother could have been a star system.

They grew to love their time together. Father and daughter.

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