I was a genius, so they said. They deemed it both a blessing and a shortcoming.

"Sure, she can construct a death ray from scratch," they murdered when my back was turned, "but what of love? Surely, his brain draws all the blood from his heart!"

And I set about to prove them wrong, only to find them right. In all I did, it was about reputation. I didn't even love him. I couldn't even look him in the eyes. After 12 days, I was struggling to maintain my denial. After two months, that ship had long sailed.

I found myself feeling sick at the prospect of taking care of a child. But the alternative... all those people who said I was a one trick pony... I couldn't stand to give them the satisfaction of being right. I had to prove that I could be both an intelligent, successful woman and a caring mother. Simultaneously.

Except I knew I couldn't. Not yet.

As a scientist, I knew a thing or two about the scientific method. And I knew I needed to collect data before formulating any kind of hypothesis about this experiment. I revamped my old time machine, cringing inwardly at the irony that I could construct a machine that breached the fundamental laws of physics, but couldn't comprehend basic human nature. Maybe all those doubters who called me a robot were right about... but giving up on myself was not an option. I could not - would not - allow my imposter syndrome to rule my life. I had to prove to everyone and myself that I could do this. I just needed a little help from the smartest person I knew: me.

The first thing I noticed about my lab in the future was how clean it was. I could barely find the time to clean it as a full-time scientist. How could I manage this with a child in the mix? I saw a tired and shrivelled version of myself bent over a stretcher, working on what appeared to be a tube filled with wires. "Excuse me..." 'I' jumped and almost dropped her screwdriver. "Who... what... it's nothing!" She threw a sheet over her construction before turning to see me. "Oh thank God," She sighed, running her hands through her greyed hair, "I thought it was... well... anyone, really." I moved towards the stretcher. Pulling back the blanket, I discovered what appeared to be a 12-year-old girl. Except it wasn't. It was very much robotic, evidenced only by the open panel on her chest that spewed wires across her synthetic flesh. "What...?" I couldn't quite formulate the words. "Oh, that's Victoria. It's her birthday today, so I'm giving her an upgrade. Puberty and all that." Her words offered little in the way of explanations. "But... she's... what happened to...?" I gestured in the general vicinity of my womb. Her face twitched and her eyes clouded. "It... she..." her breath staggered a bit, "didn't work out." And she regaled me with her story: how she worked her heart out to prepare to be a perfect mother; how she renovated a room in her house into a nursery and built robotic toys for her future baby to play with, seven months early; how she felt a pang in her stomach area and discovered a patch of brownish-red blood staining her underwear; how she carried on pretending to be pregnant after the miscarriage, even to the point of building a mechanical baby, to fool the people around her and herself into thinking that yes, she could do this. Yes, she wasn't a failure. I looked at the girl and then back at my miserable future self. "And did it work?" She closed her eyes and rolled up her sleeves, showing me her scarred wrists. "I just wish," she croaked, "that someone had told me it was okay to not be motherly and personable. That it didn't define me. That it doesn't define you." And we hugged and mourned Victoria, as nobody had thought or dared to since her silent passing.

And I went back home none the wiser on how to raise a child, but more comfortable in myself than I had been for many years.