The little girl appeared to be eight years old, with sallow complexion, dirty blonde hair, and a small L-shaped scar over her right eye placed there by some mishap from earlier in her childhood. She lay curled up in her gray bodysuit with what appeared to be a monkey-headed dog, of largish poodle type, both animals upon which his cuddly designed had been based, long since extinct.

The gray beard of the monkey face was stained and streaked a dark black from the copious drool that had recently escaped his lips. One could tell that the monkey was a male by some imperceptible indication embedded in his design. The golden eyes of the monkey had large dilated black pupils, and shed slowly seeping tears that appeared like amber emerging from the bark of some ancient tree.

Beneath the fuzzy cheek, to which the tears seeped and dried, was a small sallow hand, brushing the quivering jaw line of the creature, which showed, with a rigid trembling chatter of the jaw, that he was suffering.

Behind his slightly trembling head, of smallish size—being smaller than the girl’s—and of eggshell delicacy, pursed the thin quivering lips of the sad-eyed girl. “I’m here for you Bennie. Mommy is here for you.”

The gleam of grateful intelligence—not the intelligence of the kind that had designed him, but of the kind that cared—shone in his watery golden eyes as he tried to turn his head to look into the face of his companion, who put a staying hand on his cheek and soothed, “I’m right here, Bennie Boy. Don’t strain yourself.”

The sad-eyed girl then regarded the four gray walls and the soot-stained skylight ceiling with dismay. Her single piece of furniture was that fiber cushion upon which she reclined, hugging her Bennie around his sagging breast, beneath the two palsied front legs, from which limp long-nailed paws hung weakly. Her face formed into a stone frown as she recalled how she had once scolded him angrily for scratching up her one worldly possession—her precious fiber cushion—when he had wanted only, in his joy at being adopted out of the sim bin, to leap into her arms and nuzzle her four-year-old face. She had not known at that young age, that her efforts at grump replacement would usher in the few joyous years of her life.

Then, last year, when she was seven, she had to stop trimming his toenails, for the quick had risen and he would bleed and whimper. From that point on it had been a pleasure to have him scratch up her fiber cushion as she hugged and tickled him and his hind legs worked spastically.

Then, one night, his hind legs no longer worked, and the forelegs started to tremble. He could no longer get down off the cushion as his nails had curled in upon themselves and prevented proper walking. She brought him aqua tubes from the grump case, and stole buddy pellets from their cabinet as they sat, glassy eyed in their recliners.

She sneaked next door and stole Old Grump Greer’s evacuation extender and attached it to her own, so that she could help Bennie with his evacuation. She flipped him over to face the other way and picked his curls, oiling the skin underneath with Grumpy’s shaving cream.

She made things interesting for the both of them, by stealing Crumper’s nail polish and painting Bennie’s nails like he was a Grumpiless Grumper on the slouch for a new Grumpy. Grumps were ridiculous, always had been, she supposed, and she resolved—and so swore to Bennie—that she would never become one.

She hugged Bennie slightly, afraid to hurt him, and whispered in his ear, “Do you want to see her?”

Bennie’s eyes brightened to a sim-sun yellow and the next oozing tear ran a bit more clear. His little oval tongue tip slipped out over his fangs and he sighed affirmatively.

“It’s time to go then, Bennie.”

So saying, she slid out of bed, hooked her lean arms under the expectant animal, squatted low, and let him slide down to her shoulders, where she cradled him up, and stood with a groan that sounded as if it should have come from an adult male of her kind, not from some eight year old female.