Itsy Bitsy Spider
By James Patrick Kelly, first published in Asimov's Science Fiction
In 2038, a woman visits her estranged father’s retirement community to find that he has replaced her with a robot in the form of a little girl.
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In 2038, a 47-year-old woman named Jen goes to visit her estranged father, Peter Fancy, in his retirement community. When she arrives at his house, she finds a robot in the form of a little girl there. Jen demands to see her father, going so far as to bang on his door, but the robot warns her that she’ll have to call security if she acts like that. Jen sits down with the robot. She reveals that her mother died three years ago; she must give the money that her mother allocated to Mr. Fancy, her ex-husband. Fancy comes out of his room. He doesn’t recognize Jen because he’s suffering from some sort of memory-related illness. He believes the robot to be his little daughter, a younger version of Jen, and he recites lines from _King Lear _with her, lamenting how that was one of the few Shakespeare roles he never got to play in his time. He becomes angered when the robot feeds him the lines, so she has to take him away and put him to bed. When the robot comes back, Jen gives her the money, saying that she deserves it and her father’s estate once he passes for taking care of her. Jen wonders aloud why her mother spent all these years paying for her ex-husband’s care, and why it was Jen’s responsibility to visit her senile father. The robot speculates that Jen’s mother wanted her to see how much her father cared about her, even if he did abandon her all those years ago. Jen agrees and departs.
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