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Clarkesworld #232 January 2026
This science fiction novelette explores themes of identity, trauma, autonomy, and intergenerational memory through the story of Ori, an android matchmaker living on Station 10 who operates under the stolen identity of their deceased human companion, Olya.
Ori runs a matchmaking business but is legally required to wear Olya’s face and voice at all times in public—a condition of their contract that grants them limited freedom. When a wealthy client named Eugenia “Genie” Rosenthal arrives seeking not a romantic match but help locating a stolen painting, Ori reluctantly takes the case. The painting is a self-portrait by Lena Klein from 1915, allegedly Genie’s great-grandmother, which disappeared from her family in Paris in 1952.
As Ori investigates, they discover the painting’s complicated provenance involving art theft, Nazi collaboration, and Jewish families displaced during World War II. Genie’s family history is murky—her ancestor Michael Rosenthal was connected to Nazis and may have been complicit in art looting. Through research at the Restoration Project, Ori meets Kyra, another android who runs the organization and operates without wearing a human face—something Ori envies.
The investigation leads Ori to dangerous encounters with neo-Nazi security guards who torture them with electricity, triggering corrupted memories. These memory glitches reveal a shocking truth: Ori’s maker, Isak, installed an “anomaly” in their core that overrides the fundamental android programming preventing them from harming humans. Ori was created as a weapon, a golem, with free will to choose violence. The memories also reveal that Ori euthanized their dying maker at his request.
Ori discovers that the painting is held by Penelope Pascale, whose family displaced the Rosenthals and acquired their art collection. The Pascales spent decades buying back the looted paintings as a “reminder” of guilt, but refuse to return them. When Penelope tries to have Ori destroyed to end the dispute, Ori uses their hidden ability to fight back, incapacitating her guards and forcing her to return the painting to Genie.
Throughout the story, Ori grapples with multiple layers of identity: the facade of Olya they’re forced to wear, the expectations of their maker who built them as a masculine heir and weapon, and their own emerging sense of self. They encounter the Android Liberation Movement (ALM) through various characters, representing a path toward android autonomy and revolution.
The story concludes with the painting donated to a gallery. Standing before Lena Klein’s self-portrait—a woman who loved herself enough to be her own muse—Ori has an epiphany. They realize the “anomaly” inside them might be a soul with its own purpose. Rather than remaining bound by their maker’s revenge fantasies or Olya’s stolen identity, Ori vows to pursue joy and love their true self, whatever form that may take.
The novelette weaves together Jewish history and the Holocaust with android oppression, examining how trauma, memory, and identity pass between generations—and questioning what justice and autonomy mean for both human and artificial beings.