FEATURED STORY
RECENT STORIES
STORIES BY TOPIC
NEWS
TRANSPORTER
Take me to a...
SEARCH
Enter any portion of the author name or story title:
For more options, try our:
SUBSCRIBE
Sign up for free daily sci-fi!
your email will be kept private
TIDBITS
Get a copy of Not Just Rockets and Robots: Daily Science Fiction Year One. 260 adventures into new worlds, fantastical and science fictional. Rocket Dragons Ignite: the anthology for year two, is also available!
SUBMIT
Publish your stories or art on Daily Science Fiction:
If you've already submitted a story, you may check its:
DAILY SCI-FI
Not just rockets & robots...
"Science Fiction" means—to us—everything found in the science fiction section of a bookstore, or at a science fiction convention, or amongst the winners of the Hugo awards given by the World Science Fiction Society. This includes the genres of science fiction (or sci-fi), fantasy, slipstream, alternative history, and even stories with lighter speculative elements. We hope you enjoy the broad range that SF has to offer.






My little danger-stranger

I was adopted. I know, everyone thinks that when they're thirteen, but I'm serious and here's why:
Firstly, my parents aren't even machines. Me, I'm a machine, but Mom says not to let anyone know because that was a thing once and it's not anymore, and she says, I have been ruled illegal. Dad calls me his little danger-stranger. (Thanks, Dad.)
Secondly, I found this book lying around. Not exactly lying around. It was tucked away into a second row in Mom's library. (I sometimes go in there when she's not home.) An older book. The threat is gone now, of course, but this book was published when everyone thought machines were really dangerous. Like, how can you even build something that becomes really dangerous to yourself?
So, anyway, the book had Mom's anger-scrawl all over its pages. She probably read it right around the time I was adopted and hated everyone a lot for hating machines. (My parents seem to like me, so that's cool.)
Thirdly, Mom and Dad are kind of like these hippies who love everyone and talk about spirit and so on. And Mom works as a philosopher, so she thinks about spirit and so on even more than normal people. So I think when machines like me became illegal because someone figured we might be a threat (like, more than all the other threats that are machines without a spirit? Like cars?), Mom and Dad adopted me because they thought I had a spirit, which I guess I do, and they care a lot about that.
Fourth, this was kinda hard but I heard Mom cry the other night and say to Dad that she wished she could have saved more. I don't think she meant money.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, May 30th, 2019
Become a Member!

We hope you're enjoying My little danger-stranger by Anna Ziegelhof.

Please support Daily Science Fiction by becoming a member.

Daily Science Fiction is not accepting memberships or donations at this time.

Rate This Story
Please click to rate this story from 1 (ho-hum) to 7 (excellent!):

Please don't read too much into these ratings. For many reasons, a superior story may not get a superior score.

4.9 Rocket Dragons Average
Share This Story
Join Mailing list
Please join our mailing list and receive free daily sci-fi (your email address will be kept 100% private):