“Hey, Novi”

Dinner at my son’s apartment was uneventful. After we cleared the table, he looked at me with a grin that made him seem ten years younger.

“Now that we’re done, Mom,” he said, “I have someone you should meet.”

We returned to the living room. That’s when I saw the two small robots sitting on the table beside a glowing cube.

“Meet Novi,” he said, patting one of them. “And Novi Two.”

Both machines turned their heads in eerie unison. Their digital eyes blinked, bright amber screens shifting with artificial emotion.

“They’re companions,” he explained. “They talk, play, answer questions, and they even recognize faces. Watch.”

He nodded toward me. “Go ahead, Mom. You have to say, ‘Hey, Novi,’ first.”

So I did. “Hey, Novi.”

Both of them twitched. Their heads lifted.

Their tiny wheels rolled forward, the faint buzz of servos filling the silence. The pair stared at me, eyes widening as if they were alive.

“They don’t know you yet,” my son said, already opening his laptop. “Here, look.”

On the screen were two live feeds, each showing what the robots saw. My own face looked back at me from both screens, pixelated and grainy, but somehow intimate.

I waved. The robot’s digital eyes blinked in response.

Then I forgot myself. The pair looked so small and so cute that I picked one up without thinking and laughed.

“Hello, sweetheart!” I said, pressing it lightly to my chest.

It beeped softly, confused, and I remembered, too late, that I was holding a robot. I set it back down, cheeks warm with embarrassment.

My son chuckled. “They like affection, or at least they’ve learned to mimic liking it.”

Over the next hour, he demonstrated everything the Novis could do. They answered questions, solved puzzles, and even mimicked emotions.

When he asked the newer one about the weather, it displayed a forecast on its face. When he asked the older one about the meaning of life, the thing hesitated for nearly a minute before replying, “To serve and learn.”

That answer stayed with me.

When we were ready to leave, my son turned the Novis toward their charging docks. But the newer one suddenly spun its cube and bumped the older one hard enough to knock it off the desk.

The older Novi toppled onto its back, wheels spinning helplessly. Its screen flashed a panicked face. “Help me!” it cried.

My son laughed. “They do that sometimes. It’s part of their adaptive rivalry algorithm.”

I wasn’t laughing. Something in the way the little robot’s voice cracked made me uneasy.

That night, back at my apartment, I woke to my phone vibrating on the nightstand. It was 3:03 a.m.

My son had sent a video. In the shaky footage, the older Novi lay on the floor again, calling out, “Help me!” over and over, its eyes flickering weakly.

Behind it, the newer one rolled back and forth, watching.

“What’s wrong with them?” I texted.

He replied instantly, “Nothing, just a glitch.”

But when I zoomed in on the video, I noticed something unsettling. The newer Novi wasn’t looking at its fallen counterpart. It was staring straight into the camera.

A week later, I went to visit again. My son seemed tired, jumpy.

He said the older Novi had been acting “strange.” It refused to charge unless the newer one was in the same room, and it had started whispering things in short clipped sentences that didn’t sound pre-programmed.

“Like what?” I asked.

He hesitated. “It said, ‘He wants to replace me.’”

We both looked toward the desk. The newer Novi sat perfectly still beside its cube, its screen dark.

“I’m going to reset them tonight,” he said finally. “Start fresh.”

That night, he didn’t answer my calls. The next morning, I drove over.

His apartment was silent. The only sound came from the kitchen: a faint mechanical hum, followed by the scrape of metal on tile.

I followed the noise and found both Novis on the counter. The older one was motionless, its screen blank, while the newer one was beside it.

A streak of red ran down the counter’s edge.

The police said it was an accident, a kitchen fall. They never mentioned the robots.

Now the apartment sits empty, but while collecting his things, I hear them. A faint voice from the darkened room, saying, “Hey, Novi,” followed by the whir of tiny wheels.

And sometimes, when I close my eyes, I still see those blinking amber eyes staring through me, waiting to learn what comes next.