Gary bought a small shop, Linwood Stores, as a going business, as it was struggling and needed help, and he ran it for the first day with the help of the existing assistant, a young girl called Claire.

When they start packing up to leave, he says he'll do that, she can go as she has finished for the day.

She explains that she can’t; she came with the shop, and he now owns her as well.

In a state of shock, Gary sat down and re-read the paperwork (which means he tried to read it properly, this time…!).

In the fixtures and fittings list, which he just glossed over before buying the shop, it stated it included 'one autonomous self-powered assistant’.

Gary reads the line to Claire…

“Yes, that’s me”, she said, with a little wave. “Hi...!”

Gary had bought Claire as part of the deal…

“This must be some mistake”, said Gary, still trying to come to terms with everything. “Either that, or someone’s idea of a sick joke.”

“It’s not”, said Claire. “Look, here’s my ownership collar.”

She undid the top button of her blouse and showed Gary the metal collar that she was wearing. She then showed him the tag on it, it said ‘Property of Linwood Stores’.

“That sort of thing was outlawed ages ago”, Gary said. “There’s no such thing as slaves, now.”

“I’m not a slave!”, said Claire, indignantly. “I’m part of the fixtures and fittings. There’s a difference!”

Gary just stared at Claire in disbelief.

Claire showed Gary other items in the store that were fitted with the same tag.

“See, all this tag means is the item is the property of the shop. The same is true for me.”

“But it’s not like you’re a till or a shelving unit, is it?”, said Gary. “You’re a human being.”

“No, I’m not”, said Claire. “I don’t go outside the shop. Ever. I don’t eat, or sleep, except when I shut down for maintenance between one and four am. I live here.”

“Ok, Claire, in that case, what would you do now?”, Gary asked, now thoroughly confused.

“Go out the back and carry on with the stocktake, then sort out the stores”, Claire said. “That’s a full-time job in itself.”

Claire took Gary out the back and showed him around. As they were looking around, he noticed a small cubicle in the corner of the store. He asked Claire about it.

“That’s my storage station”, she said, matter-of-factly. “I’m in there between one and four.”

“Show me”, said Gary.

Claire took Gary over. Inside the little room, barely bigger than a small wardrobe, was a chair, and hose sitting on a shelf. The chair had a small fitting in it, as did the hose.

Claire sat on the chair, making sure that the fitting was correctly placed, then put the hose from the shelf into her mouth. She then appeared to go to sleep.

Gary waited. After a minute or two, Claire woke up, disconnected herself, and came out, shutting the door.

“It won’t do anything at the moment”, she said. “I’m supposed to be awake and working.”

“Anyway, if you’ve finished closing up, I’ll see you tomorrow”, she said. “This stock check won’t do itself.”

Humming to herself, Claire walked away. “Nice to meet you, by the way” she called back over her shoulder.

Almost in a state of shock, Gary left and went back to his apartment in town. What the hell had he let himself in for, some kind of madhouse?

Back at his flat, he was straight on the phone to the solicitor.

“I’ve just had an interesting conversation with Claire”, he said.

To his surprise, the solicitor wasn’t at all surprised when he told him Claire thought of herself as property, not human.

“She was overseeing all of the sales meetings”, she said. “She was always available and knew everything about the store. We had to hold all the meetings at the store, however, as she said she suffered from serious agoraphobia and couldn’t leave the shop.”

“Ah, so there is a reason that Claire doesn’t leave the shop”, Gary said. “How come, though, she’s had herself added to the inventory?”

“I think it’s her way of stopping anyone from chucking her out”, the solicitor said. “She’s never lived anywhere else, ever. She was ill once, and the doctor tried to take her into hospital for a scan. She refused point blank; even to the extent that she locked herself in the storeroom when they tried to force the issue.”

“There’s something really wrong with her”, said Gary. “At the same time, she’s brilliant at her job, and when she’s doing it I’ve never heard a complaint.”

“Yes, she’s fixated on it”, agreed the solicitor.

Gary came off the phone feeling a little more understanding of the ‘situation’, but he still had no idea how to deal with it…

Over the next few weeks, Gary left everything as it was, still keeping an eye on Claire to make sure she was alright (apart from the obvious problem…).

Gary really enjoyed the shop and loved running it. He also loved working with Claire.

 “It’s nice to work with someone who shows real respect to the job and the customers”, he said one day.

“I wouldn’t do anything else”, said Claire. “The business doing well is me doing well.”

Gary started having his lunch breaks in the shop. He set himself up a table in an empty area of the storeroom and went there each day for a rest.

Claire, of course, never stopped. She was busy when the shop opened, and still working after it closed, with seemingly no effect on her.

That made the day that she collapsed even more of a shock…

Gary came in one morning and the shop was quiet.

No-one had opened up. People were waiting outside, confused. The shop was never late opening…!

Gary, worried, went in. He found Claire unconscious on the floor of the storeroom…

Going back to the shop door, he told the waiting customers that, regrettably, the store wouldn’t be opening that day due to ‘equipment problems’.

He then locked the door and rushed back to Claire…

She was still breathing, but he couldn’t wake her. He phoned the emergency services, and stayed with her until they came in.

The paramedics worked on Claire but couldn’t wake her. They had to take her into hospital…

Worried, Gary told them about her agoraphobia. “Can you make sure she’s in a room with curtains drawn, or something? She’ll really freak out when she realises that she’s not in the store. Also, can I come with her?”

Promising to look after her, the paramedics took her away, letting Gary ride with her.

The store stayed closed that day, and the next.

All that time, Gary never left Claire’s side.

The doctor came to see them later that day.

“We’ve run all the tests we can”, he said. “She’s seriously malnourished; it looks like it’s been going on for some time. Her digestive system is in a real mess; she hasn’t been eating any kind of solid food for ages. There’s bruising in her oesophagus, and her anus; she’s also got all the marks of being restrained somehow. We also can’t remove the collar around her neck; it’s locked on somehow. Trouble is, it seems to be pressing on her spine…”

The doctor looked at Gary.

“How the hell has she been allowed to get like this!? You seem to care about her; didn’t you notice anything?”

“She’s been working at the store since it was founded”, said Gary, “twenty years ago. She said she’d never left it…”

“As far as we can tell, she’s only about thirty now”, said the doctor.

“I’m twenty-eight…”, came a weak groan from the bed. “Oh my god, where am I!”

Claire’s eyes were darting about, and she was behaving like a trapped animal.

“No… no… this is all wrong…”

Claire started hyperventilating. The doctor tried to calm her down.

“Miss, can you hear me? You’re in a hospital. You passed out at work.”

“Of course I did”, said Claire. “It’s my fault. I forgot to charge myself last night. I was so involved with the stocktake…”

Sitting up, Claire tried to get out of bed, but the doctor easily and gently pushed her back down.

“No, you don’t understand”, Claire moaned. “If I don’t charge soon, I might fail completely…”

Sobbing quietly, Claire collapsed back onto the bed, whispering “You don’t understand…” again. She then turned away from the doctor.

Claire didn’t speak a word to anyone for the rest of the day. She just cried quietly into her pillow. Still sitting with her, worried because he was really starting to care about her, Gary just gently stroked the back of her head, and held her hand, desperately trying to reassure her.

Gary suddenly made up his mind.

Gathering Claire up in his arms, he sat her into a wheelchair that was in the room. Claire wasn’t connected to anything at the moment, but he had to be careful as she still had the IV needle in her arm.

Wheeling her out of the room, Gary made it to the elevator, and he and Claire sneaked out of the hospital.

Lifting her out of the chair, Gary strapped her into the passenger seat of his car, folding the wheelchair and putting it in the boot. They had left the car park and were halfway back to the store before anyone noticed, and in the store before anyone got there.

Gary wheeled Claire to her cupboard, lifted her in, sat her on her chair and passed the hose over to her.

Claire grabbed the hose from him and pushed it down her throat.

Unlike last time, Gary heard a hum, as machinery came to life.

Claire was obviously asleep but, even so, she was sitting straighter, and colour was returning to her cheeks.

Gary had firmly locked all the doors, so no-one could just walk in. The sound of the police banging on the front door told him they had arrived.

Even so, he stayed by Claire’s side.

Claire was improving rapidly. An indicator at the back of the cupboard had lit. It said, ‘Emergency Fast Charge’.

As the police broke in the front door, Claire was already disconnecting herself…

“Thanks, boss”, she said. “At least you believe me.”

She and Gary turned to face the police…

The police had got involved because the doctors had said that Gary was abusing Claire, completely overlooking the fact that Gary had just only recently bought the store and Claire’s ‘condition’ was a long-term one. They also didn’t have a leg to stand on when Claire, obviously looking ok, fiercely defended Gary, saying he had literally saved her life.

Muttering comments about wasting police time, they left.

Claire, to Gary’s amazement, hugged him.

“That’s the most selfless thing anyone has ever done for me”, she said. “You risked jail time to help me.”

“You do realise, though, that we are still going to have to do something about this, sometime”, said Gary, flicking the tag on Claire’s collar.

“Why?”, asked Claire. “Everything is ok now; we can all go back to business as usual.”

“That’s a shame, really”, said Gary. “I was looking forward to taking my new girlfriend on a date.” He said this with a meaningful look at Claire.

“But I’m not human!”, Claire said. “I’m not… I’m not…”

Sobbing, she collapsed into Gary’s arms.

Gary picked Claire up again and carried her back to his car.

Claire moaned but was too weak still to argue.

Putting her tenderly back into the passenger seat, Gary drove her back to his flat, where he gently tucked her into his bed. He then went and settled down on the sofa.

During the night, Claire awoke. She looked around. She was alone but, strangely, she felt comfortable.

“Gary…?”, she called out, shakily. No answer. She tried again, a little louder.

A sleepy Gary looked round the bedroom door.

“What’s up?”, he asked.

“I’m cold…”, Claire said, patting the bed.

Gary came and sat with her.

“I know how much you like your privacy, so I was letting you use the bed and sleep”, he said. “I haven’t gone away I’m just out there on the sofa.”

“That must be uncomfortable”, Claire said. “It should be me out there. I’m a piece of kit; comfort doesn’t affect me.”

“Then why are you enjoying that bed so much?”, asked Gary. “Stop thinking of yourself as not being human. You are. Please, let me help. Tell me why you’re like this…”

With a big swallow, Claire looked Gary in the eyes, then began:

“Everything was normal, to start with. Just not in the way you think…”

She took a breath, then continued.

“It all happened when I was twelve, or thereabouts, the dates are a bit of a blur. My mum died…”

She stopped for a second. Gary hugged her, and she held on tightly to him.

“Dad was really having trouble running the store. He was also finding it impossible to both run the store and look after me, as I was a bit of a tearaway at the time. That was when he had his first heart attack, because of the strain.”

“We had to close for a week or so, while he recovered. The shock of it all, as well as how lost he looked, made me grow up quickly. At the same time, I had to make a real choice for him.”

“At the time, my name was Casey Linwood…”

Gary gasped. He had read the background of Linwood Stores. Hale Linwood had had to run the store on his own after his wife died, yes, he was aware of that. He also read that Hale’s daughter, Casey, had been killed in an accident a few weeks later. Shortly after the funeral, Hale had ‘employed’ Claire…

“Dad had told me the strain of coping with both the store and me was too much for him, so he was going to close the store. I thought about it for a while; I really loved him, and I was so miserable that I had caused all his problems. So, I came up with a solution of my own…”

“You created Claire”, said Gary, now understanding what was going on.

“Yes”, said Claire. “Dad wouldn’t get into trouble for me not going to school, as I was officially dead; so, Claire could literally help out, 24/7. We worked out the ‘charging station’ to save time, then added me to the inventory. I thought my collar was a ‘nice touch’.”

“The trouble was, it worked too well”, Claire continued. “I got locked into the role of Claire, I developed very strong agoraphobia, and I convinced myself that I really was a machine, not a human. It’s taken you to snap me out of it.”

“So, who are you, and what do you want to do now?”, Gary asked.

“Depends”, said Claire.

“On what?”, asked Gary.

“Are you angry with me? Do you want to leave, now you know what I’ve done?”

“No! Of course not! I can tell you did it for love. You really cared that much for your father.”

“Yes. I was devastated when he died, but I couldn’t even grieve for him. I was still locked into the role. It convinced people even more when I showed no grief, just a frustration on how it would affect the running of the shop.”

Clare suddenly grabbed Gary. All the pent-up emotions were being released at once…

Gary held her as she cried…

Claire was distraught for quite some time; Gary never left her.

“Please stay with me”, Claire said, eventually. “Here, and at the shop. Please…”

“I’m not walking out on you now, girlfriend”, said Gary.

Claire held him tight, tears in her eyes.

The next morning, they opened up as usual. Claire, still wearing her collar, smiling and greeting everyone as she always had.

That night, though, they went back to Gary’s flat together.

“How ever will I get the storeroom sorted”, Claire giggled, rolling her eyes…

She also never needed the Charging Station again…