by Mary E. Lowd
Originally published in Maradia’s Robot Emporium, March 2025
Rariel 77 surveyed the digital catalogue of zir bodies. Zhe had built dozens of them, ranging from tiny insect-like drones to fully humanoid figures. Zir creator, Maradia, insisted that none of the other AIs she’d programmed had ever developed a fascination for building, collecting, and swapping bodies like they were clothes before. Most of them chose one body they liked best and settled into it, melding AI brain to mechanical body, becoming a single being. (Though, apparently, a couple of them went through a dinosaur-obsession phase first, much like human children.)
But not Rariel 77. Zhe liked to choose zir body to suit zir mood. In some ways, it meant Rariel 77 was Maradia’s robot child who most closely emulated zir roboticist mother — zir affinity for collecting bodies meant Rariel 77 had become quite an accomplished roboticist zirself.
And that’s why, today, zhe was going to attend Maradia’s robotics club. And zhe needed the perfect body for it — something that would impress the other roboticists. Zhe was torn between two choices: one was a simple, gleaming, boxy body that screamed, “I am a robot!!!,” so loudly that it could have been an illustration from a children’s book about robots; the other was her most complicated body, a completely convincing android version of a canine alien species called Heffens, with synthetic orange fur and fully articulated facial movements, right down to how the pointed ears turned and flicked to express emotion.
The android Heffen body would impress the other roboticists more — building it was a greater technical achievement — but it would also take more of Rariel 77’s processing power to control it. And zhe wanted to be fully intellectually and emotionally present for zir first robotics club meeting. Zhe was excited out of zir electronic mind to finally attend Maradia’s robotics club, and zhe didn’t want to have to dial zir emotional experience down to a minimal level in order to control a complex pair of ears that would make it look like zhe was experiencing the exact emotions zhe’d actually had to shut off.
A knock came at the door, followed by Maradia’s voice calling, “Hello? Rary? Are you ready?”
Maradia let herself in, and Rariel 77 saw her through the security cameras in zir room, standing surrounded by the many inanimate bodies, passing her gaze over each of them, looking for any signs of life.
“You haven’t picked yet?” Maradia asked, exasperation tinging her voice.
A tiny insectile drone sprang to life, buzzed across the room, and settled on Maradia’s shoulder. “Maybe I should just secretly observe a couple meetings like this?” Rariel 77 suggested in the high, humming voice of the drone body.
“Nuh uh.” Maradia shook her head and pointed vaguely at the side of the room with more humanoid bodies. “No secret members. I’m not breaking the rules, even for you. So pick something that you don’t mind meeting the rest of the club members in.”
Rariel 77 flittered zir three pairs of wings irritably, but then zhe acquiesced and flew zir drone body back to its charging port. Zhe streamed zir consciousness through the computer hub system networked with all the bodies’ docking ports and into the android Heffen body. But after only a fraction of a second controlling the complex rotors that animated the android’s face, zhe changed zir mind and flowed back through the hub, vacating the Heffen body, and into the simple, stream-lined, boxy silver body. Yes, that felt better.
“Good choice,” Maradia said. “The Heffen body seems a little overdressed for a simple robotics meetup.” So, she had seen the subtle flick of the ears and blink of the eyes when Rariel 77 had inhabited the Heffen body momentarily before changing zir mind. Maradia knew Rariel 77 — and most of the robots she’d designed — very well.
As Rariel 77 walked down the corridors of Crossroads Station beside Maradia, feeling the steady, reassuring clunk of zir metal feet against the metal floor, zhe felt good about zir choice.
The Heffen body was a better choice for when Rariel 77 wanted to pass as an organic being, but there should be no need for that among a bunch of roboticists. Who would respect a robot better than a bunch of robot makers?
The robotics club met in one of the simple, rentable rooms in the Merchant’s Quarter of Crossroads Station. It was an interior room with no windows looking out on the star-studded sky surrounding the space station. Just chairs in a circle and enough room between those chairs for the roboticists to stand their robots beside them.
Maradia used to host the robotics club in the back of her own robotics lab, but the group had grown over the years until it needed more space than her cramped laboratory — filled with all her robots-in-progress, including all kinds of mechanical limbs and heads strewn everywhere — could provide.
The room was mostly empty when they arrived. Only one chair was taken, by a floral alien called a Doraspian. Maradia waved to the being who looked like a cross between a tumbleweed and a hothouse bouquet. The Doraspian waved back with one of its leafy green vine-like limbs. A bunch of small, cat-sized robots toddled around the Doraspian’s chair.
“That’s Rose-Ash,” Maradia said to Rariel 77 as she took a seat on the far side of the circle from the Doraspian. “Zhe mostly makes companion robots — simple, sub-sentient pets. Very cute, not very useful.”
Rariel 77 took a seat beside Maradia and said quietly, “Rose-Ash doesn’t sound like a typical Doraspian name.”
“It’s not. Rose-Ash is very into human culture,” Maradia replied. “And kind of goth, except for the cute robo-pets thing.”
Rariel 77 watched as various inhabitants of Crossroads Station filtered into the room and took seats. There were a couple humans, a couple Heffens, a lizard-like S’rellick, and even a stork-like Ululu. Rariel recognized some of them as occasional customers at Maradia’s Robot Emporium. Each had brought along one or a couple robots, in varying degrees of completion, and settled their creations beside them.
Rariel 77 worried that zhe should have dragged another one of zir bodies along to show off — was it weird that zhe was wearing the body zhe meant to display? Or maybe it only felt weird because zhe was sitting beside Maradia — who, truthfully, had originally written zir AI and constructed zir first several bodies. “No one here is going to think that I’m your robot?” zhe asked zir creator-mother nervously.
“No,” Maradia said, reassuringly. “They know I stopped bringing robots here myself a long time ago. And if anyone’s confused, we’ll just tell them that you’re sentient and independent. It’s okay.”
Rariel 77 still felt like maybe zhe shouldn’t have sat next to zir mother.
Once everyone was settled, Maradia started the meeting. Each person in the circle took a turn introducing themself and talking about their background with robotics; Rariel made sure to take note of their names, along with a brief physical description for each, in a longterm memory file. Since zhe was sitting next to Maradia, who was running the meeting, the circle of introductions got around to zir last.
Every face in the room — including Rose-Ash’s luminosity-sensitive blooms — turned toward Rariel 77. Zhe raised a silvery, mechanical hand, waved, and said, “Hi, I’m Rariel 77. Zhe/zir pronouns, please. And I’ve built myself a couple dozen different bodies. This is one of the first ones I built–” Zhe gestured downward at zir boxy, metal form. “I was going for a kind of classical robot look. You know, the kind of thing you might see in a children’s book. Back then, I was still figuring out who I was and expecting to build myself one perfect body that I would really identify with and want to wear for the rest of my life.” Rariel laughed with a sound like tinkling metal. “That didn’t happen. It turns out what I am — more than a robot, even — is a roboticist, and I like making myself new bodies all the time. A different one for every day, or sometimes every mood.”
After an awkward pause that lasted an interminably long time for Rariel’s fast-paced cybernetic mind, a chorus of welcoming comments greeted zir, along with the Ululu squawking, “That’s so cool! A robot roboticist!” His small head swayed excitedly at the end of his long neck.
Rariel 77 glanced at Maradia questioningly, bewildered by the idea that any roboticist on Crossroads Station — even a hobbyist — would be at all surprised by a robot roboticist. Besides Maradia’s Robot Emporium, the most successful robotics lab on the station was Robots 4 Robots run by Gerangelo, another one of Maradia’s robotic progeny.
Maradia shrugged in response to Rariel’s look, as if to say that the Ululu’s comment simply couldn’t be accounted for. Well, that was fair enough. One of the first things Rariel 77 had learned about organic sentients was that they were unpredictable and didn’t always make sense. With more effort, zhe’d found that some organic sentients were plenty predictable if you knew them well enough. They still didn’t always make sense.
With the round of introductions finished, the roboticists took turns showing off the work they’d brought with them, partly bragging and partly asking for helpful feedback from fresh minds.
Rariel wasn’t surprised to see that most of the help these amateur roboticists needed was with the mechanical aspects of their creations. Physical bodies are hard to build and hard to operate, and that would never change. AIs on the other hand are easy, once a digital society has passed a certain point, and on Crossroads Station, that problem had been cracked ages ago.
Once there were enough seed programs for decent AIs out there, it was easy enough for even the most hackish programmer to just copy the core code from one program to the next, like taking cuttings from a shrubbery to grow a new shrubbery.
However, with bodies, every one was different. Even if they were built to the same specifications, following the same blueprint, each body would have minor variations, imperfections in the materials that might cause imbalances or unexpected weaknesses.
Rariel 77 loved seeing all the different bodies these amateur roboticists were experimenting with. Previously, most of Rariel’s exposure to robotics came through zir creator, and Maradia had a very particular style — she’d been building robots for years, and she’d settled into preferred strategies and methods for handling various challenges. Her robotic bodies were impeccable, but at a deep level, they were all much the same.
Rariel had also examined robotics schematics in the Crossroads Station computer network, but most roboticists didn’t share their schematics until they’d been perfected. It was entirely different seeing all these wobbling, limping, clunky robot bodies in person, showing off their imperfections and being examined for how they could be improved. It was inspiring, and Rariel found zirself filled with ideas for new bodies zhe wanted to make.
When it got to Rariel’s turn to share, though, zhe found zirself suddenly shy. All the other roboticists were showing off empty things that they’d made — shells that would house sub-sentient AIs. Perhaps some of them already had simple AIs inside them, but still, these simple robots were separate from the roboticists who’d made them. Creations, not extensions of self.
Rariel, on the other hand, had only brought the body zhe was wearing, and it felt odd to share… zir self. So, like several of the other roboticists in the circle, Rariel chose to politely pass when it came to zir turn, skipping zir chance in the spotlight. Zhe could always bring a second body with zir to share when zhe came back next week.
The week skipped along much more quickly than usual as Rariel worked on expressing the new ideas zhe’d picked up from the robotics club meeting. Zhe began work on a new kind of detachable arm that could be used as an add-on to several of her pre-existing bodies. Zhe also began work on a tentacle-limb, inspired by a snake-like robot that the Doraspian, Rose-Ash, had shown off at the meeting. Zhe thought it would be fun to have a limb that bent in so many places, but while zhe was at it, Rariel figured zhe should design and add sucker disks along the tentacle’s length. The sucker disks proved especially challenging to design — they needed to be quite small but have powerful suction to be effective. By the end of the week, Rariel 77 had a pile of unfinished projects, but nothing new that was good enough to show off at robotics club.
When Maradia came by Rariel’s quarters to walk to robotics club with zir, she found the robot comfortably inhabiting the same boxy body zhe’d used the week before and dithering over the pile of incomplete pieces zhe’d been working on.
“You can always bring one of your other finished bodies,” Maradia suggested. “You have plenty of them to pick from.”
Rariel shook zir gleaming metal head. “I wanted to bring something new.” Zhe loved zir collection of bodies, and they were wonderful for wearing, but they all felt like old ideas right now. The ideas zhe was excited about were the new ones. Eventually, zhe settled on bringing the partially finished tentacle. Perhaps Rose-Ash could help zir get the multi-directional bending to work more fluidly. So far, the tentacle felt too stiff when zhe actually tried using it.
“You’re going to wear the same body this week?” Maradia asked as she watched Rariel 77 pick up the unfinished tentacle arm.
“I thought it would be less confusing for one-bodied organic people who are still getting to know me,” Rariel observed.
“I suppose that’s true,” Maradia agreed. “Very thoughtful of you.” She smiled approvingly.
Rariel thrilled at the smile. Like any child — even grown ones — zhe still craved zir parent’s approval. When Maradia smiled at zir, it generally meant zir social programming was working effectively, and that made Rariel happy.
The second robotics club meeting felt much smoother for Rariel — zhe was familiar with the basic pattern of what to expect, and that meant zhe was able to devote much more of zir processing power to absorbing the content of the meeting and much less to predictive modeling and running hypothetical scenarios.
When it came Rariel’s turn to share, zhe eagerly displayed zir partially completed tentacle-limb for the seated circle of amateur roboticists. Rose-Ash was particularly interested, and the two of them spent some time comparing the mechanics of Rariel’s tentacle to the Doraspian’s snake.
“Have you tried animating the tentacle with a simple AI?” Rose-Ash asked, using the gentle vibrations of her fern-like fronds to speak.
“The tentacle would be an add-on to one of my pre-existing bodies,” Rariel said, trying not to be annoyed by the redundancy. Zhe had already explained this fact while first presenting the limb. “So, it won’t need an AI of its own. I’ll animate it myself.”
Several of Rose-Ash’s purple-blue light-sensing blossoms widened, presumably in surprise. “That must be so convenient!” The blossoms tightened up again, and her fern-like fronds curled into fiddleheads.
Based on Rariel 77’s knowledge of Doraspian physical gestures, zhe suspected the sentient rose bush had something more to say. Zhe played along, prompting her with a simple, “Yes, I suppose so…”
“Would you mind…” Rose-Ash’s quivering fronds sounded like a chorus of string instruments, even as they spoke together in one voice. “…I mean… if it wouldn’t be any trouble, do you think you could hook up to my snake prototype and tell me why it keeps stalling out? I’ve tried writing several AIs to animate it, and they all end up stuttering and shuddering and freeze up before they can report back what’s going wrong…”
Rariel was thrilled by the idea of trying out the snake robot! The rollers and rotors Rose-Ash had designed to give it the fluid motions all along its length were revolutionary, and Rariel would love to feel them from the inside. Though, even as zhe agreed to Rose-Ash’s proposal, Rariel saw a subtle narrowing of Maradia’s eyes; a quick hitch in her breath. Changes that none of the other roboticists in the circle had the necessary sensors to detect at such low levels, nor the close, personal knowledge of Maradia to recognize. But Rariel knew zir mother well, and something about this suggestion had Maradia worried.
“That’s not against the rules, is it?” Rariel asked, directly addressing Maradia at the head of the circle — a location in the circle determined entirely by her presence there, since she’d been the one to found and had been the one running this robotics club since long ago.
“It’s unusual,” Maradia said, “but if you both agree, then it should be fine.”
The other roboticists clamored quietly with excitement as Rose-Ash and Rariel 77 hacked together a jerry-rigged connection between Rariel’s body and the snake body. They ran a cord from the base of Rariel’s head to the snake’s input system, requiring only a little soldering, and entirely on the snake’s side. Rariel was unwilling to alter zir body’s input system for this experiment.
As soon as the cord was in place, Rariel let zir consciousness flow along the cord and into the snake. There wasn’t enough room inside the snake’s processors for zir to send zir entire consciousness into it. So, Rariel could still feel zir own body — though in a faint, shadowy way — as zhe tested out the snake, wiggling the fluid, bendable, metal body from spade-like head to narrow tail tip.
The ring of roboticists roared with approving whoops and cheers at the snake’s motion. Rariel felt such a thrill at their reaction that zhe showed off by making the snake slither in a circle one way, then the other, and then rear up its front end in a swaying dance.
By the end of the dance, Rariel had spent more than enough energy on animating Rose-Ash’s snake and eagerly withdrew zir consciousness from the uncomfortable body.
Returning to zir own body, Rariel found zirself flooded by the stored information zir own eyes and other sensory organs had gathered while watching the crowd admire zir snake dance. Too much information to process all at once, so zhe started filtering through it slowly, checking that zhe hadn’t missed anything important, while also beginning to explain what zhe’d learned to Rose-Ash:
“The rotors that you’ve designed have loose joints,” Rariel said.
“Yes,” Rose-Ash agreed. “They have to. That’s where the fluidity in the motion comes from.”
“Yes, but it takes a great deal of conscious control to move them properly without getting stuck.” Rariel removed the cord hanging from the back of zir head. “Any AI that can fit into the size of brain you’ve provided the body with will grow fatigued very quickly. It will need much larger batteries.”
“Fatigued?” one of the other roboticists, a human, asked. He sounded surprised by the term being applied to an AI.
“Yes, fatigued,” Rariel repeated. “An AI that’s forced to repeat highly repetitive yet difficult calculations over and over again experiences a feeling very similar to the organic concept of fatigue.”
“If I add larger batteries,” Rose-Ash objected, “the body won’t be light enough to coil comfortably through my branches.”
The human roboticist continued his objection: “But if it’s a sub-sentient AI, why would it matter that it ‘feels’ fatigued?” The human roboticist didn’t have to use his fingers to make the air quotes; his voice pronounced them quite clearly enough.
“Because it’s causing my snake to stall out…” Rose-Ash held the droopy, limp metal body across several of her leafy branches, seeming to weigh the value of giving it larger batteries.
“Even sub-sentient beings’ feelings matter,” Rariel said. “If they didn’t, why would humans spend so much time telling their dogs how good they are?”
The human man laughed. “Because it makes the dog owners feel good?”
Other voices raised, some defending Rariel and others dissenting, all coming together in a chaotic clamor, until Maradia’s voice cut across the noise: “We’re not having this argument here. Everyone in this room has been made familiar with the Bill of Sentience, which is Crossroads Station law, and the accompanying Rights for Robots proposal backed by Gerangelo’s Robots 4 Robots. If you want to take issue with the idea that sub-sentient robots deserve the same consideration as organic creatures of a similar level of intelligence — or that sub-sentient creatures deserve rights at all — that’s a political matter to be handled outside of this space.”
The room quieted.
In theory, the incident was over.
In reality, Rariel knew zhe would play back through the recording in zir memory, seeing which roboticists had sided with zir and which against, looking at the faces of the dissenters to understand just how much they actually hated someone like zir – someone only partially in possession of the holy duo of traits: sentient and organic.
Rariel knew from statistical analysis of the sentient organics’ computer posts on the Crossroads Station neighborhood message boards that individuals who disbelieved in the fundamental rights of non-sentient organic creatures correlated highly with those who didn’t believe robots deserved rights either, sentient or not.
The next week was a long one. Rariel 77’s feelings oscillated widely on the subject of whether zhe wanted to go back to the robotics club, after seeing how passionately hateful some of the roboticists had become at the idea of considering their creations’ feelings.
Surely, none of the organic sentients from the club would have called that passion hate, but Rariel knew better. Zhe knew how it felt to have it directed at zir, and whether it felt like hate inside the roboticist espousing the position or not, it felt like hate when it landed on zir. Vitriol. Derision. Dismissal. All forms of hate.
Even though Rariel was the only member of the robotics club who could actually feel how their projects-in-progress felt while working — an unquestionably useful ability — there were clearly plenty of members who saw zir as lesser than themselves.
Zhe hated that.
Zhe knew that zir own hate — a response to the hate they started — would be seen as ungrounded, unfounded, and springing wholly up from nowhere in zir mechanical heart. A flaw. Zhe hated people who hated zir, but because the people couldn’t — or wouldn’t see their own hate — all they’d see was a robot with a broken brain, filled with useless, repugnant emotions.
Fix the hateful robot by bleaching zir brain, rewriting zir algorithms, they’d say. They’d never think to fix the hate inside themselves.
Rariel tried talking to zir mother about the situation, but Maradia merely shrugged and said, “People are difficult. That’s why I build robots.”
Rariel appreciated the reminder that zir mother loved zir and preferred zir to other people, but it wasn’t very helpful in choosing what to do. Or trusting that the situation would get any better.
In the end, Rariel decided to give robotics club one more try. Zhe wore the same boxy body zhe’d worn to the previous meetings. Zhe didn’t have energy to deal with anything fancier, and zhe didn’t especially want to remind the other members of how different zhe truly was from them by showing off zir ability to change bodies like they changed clothes. Rariel thought it might be better to pretend to be a little more like the other roboticists and stay inside zir own body this time.
The other roboticist, however, had different plans.
After Maradia started the meeting, the Ululu flapped its wing-arms and bobbed its head at the end of its long, undulating neck, enthusiastically volunteering to go first this week.
The Ululu’s name was Ju’ohhn, and he proudly displayed his complicated robot in the middle of the circle. The robot stood on four legs and sported an additional pair of arms sprouting from a torso on its front half. Essentially, it was a robot centaur, and it looked terribly ungainly to Rariel. But Ju’ohhn looked very proud while presenting it and kept glancing at Rariel an unusual amount. Rariel could only assume Ju’ohhn was particularly interested in zir response to the awkward-looking monstrosity. Zhe wasn’t surprised at all when Ju’ohhn demurely turned his beak down and — staring directly at Rariel with piercing eyes — pleaded with zir to download into the centaur body and give it a try.
Rariel wanted to say no.
Rariel looked at all the roboticists in the room, also staring at zir, looking hopeful and intrigued. They all wanted her to try out the centaur body. Zhe could tell. And zhe wanted them to like zir. Zhe wanted them to believe zhe was useful and could bring valuable insights to these meetings. So, reluctantly, against strong feelings of trepidation that rumbled through zir circuits, Rariel agreed.
As soon as Rariel’s consciousness flowed through the cord zhe’d plugged into zir own head over into the centaur-body at the other end, zhe knew the prototype robot was a disaster. The balance was all off. It simply had too many, far too different limbs. Learning to control humanoid arms at the same time as equine legs would take forever — and that was assuming the limbs in question had been designed well. These had not. The elbows were paradoxically both too stiff and too loose, as Ju’ohhn had given them the ability to swivel all the way around — too much freedom meant too much effort spent on controlling them. Similarly, the knees of the equine legs bent both forward and backward. It took all of Rariel’s focused effort simply not to wobble out of control, splay all four legs, and splat in an undignified way onto the floor.
Zhe hated being inside this centaur.
“Isn’t it regal?” Ju’ohhn warbled fondly at Rariel. The tone in his voice made zir feel sick, like zhe was some trained pet he’d dressed up in a fancy outfit and was showing off to all his friends.
Rariel fled back into zir own body without trying to take a single step. Zhe stood there — inhabiting zir own boxy robot body, staring blankly at the circle of roboticists staring at the centaur, all believing zhe was still inside it — and zhe knew…
Zhe knew zhe couldn’t face coming back here again.
Rariel shifted zir feet uncomfortably — an affectation, as zir mechanical legs were perfectly balanced and didn’t require the kind of unconscious shifting of weight that biological bodies required to properly spread and balance the work between their various muscle groups.
The attention in the room shifted — from empty centaur to inhabited Rariel.
The proud Ululu roboticist blinked. “You didn’t do anything. Was something wrong?”
Everything was wrong — these roboticists didn’t respect Rariel or accept zir as one of them; the centaur was a hideously uncomfortable and difficult to work body that had clearly been designed without the slightest thought to the comfort of the AI who would inhabit it; and the callous Ululu inventor was staring intently at zir, expecting Rariel to say something critical… but fundamentally supportive and nice underneath the criticism… about the horrid centaur.
All Rariel had was criticism. Zhe knew that wouldn’t be taken well. Zhe wanted to say something cutting about how the Ululu was clearly trying to overcompensate for his awkward wing-arms by giving this robot a bunch of unnecessary limbs, and that if he wanted more limbs so badly, he should just make prosthetics for himself instead of foisting them off on some poor AI that would only exist as a surrogate for his vicarious enjoyment.
Instead, zhe simply mumbled, “There’s a short in my cord. I need to go get another one.” Several roboticists offered replacement cords. Rariel ignored them. Then with everyone in the room staring at zir — including zir own mother — Rariel left.
When Maradia came to visit Rariel after the meeting was over, the recalcitrant robot child hid in zir quarters’ computer system, watching zir mother through a security cam. Maradia stood in the center of the circle of Rariel’s uninhabited robot bodies, looking each one over, trying to figure out where her unhappy child was hiding. Rariel imagined that standing surrounded by the blank, staring eyes of zir robot bodies must feel to Maradia a little how it had felt to zir when zhe’d been surrounded by the roboticists. Staring at zir. Judging zir.
And Rariel was definitely judging zir mother now.
Eventually, Maradia sighed, gave up, and simply spoke towards the body Rariel had most recently inhabited: “Are you okay?” she asked. “You didn’t come back to the meeting.”
Rariel didn’t answer.
“Was your cord really broken?” Maradia waited long enough to tell an answer wasn’t coming before speaking again. “Or was the centaur body really that bad? It looked pretty bad. I mean, it looked awesome, but from a design standpoint… a total disaster. Did the knees really bend both ways? It looked like they would. You could probably still have learned to operate it — you’ve always been talented and stubborn when it comes to controlling new bodies.” Maradia gestured at the circle of empty robot bodies around her — they took so many different forms. But each of them had been designed with Rariel’s comfort in mind. Every limb was useful. Every flourish served a purpose — even if that purpose was just to make the robot body look like a better simulation of an organic body and thus put organic sentients more at ease in its presence.
“Why don’t organic sentients care about making AIs comfortable?” Rariel spoke from a computer speaker, still refusing to inhabit herself in an actual body. “We work so hard at making you comfortable–” Rariel poured enough of her consciousness into zir Heffen android body to lift its arm, gesturing at itself and its complex, perfectionistic recreation of a biological being as an example; then zhe fled back into the easy, sterile computer system. “–but it’s all one way. Robots accommodate biologicals. Never the other way around.”
Maradia shrugged, looking helpless at the face of a truth she would have rather denied. “I wish I could change society faster for you. I’ve been trying to change it all my life. If I were in charge, robots would be treated much better.”
“I know,” Rariel admitted sulkily. Zir mother’s intentions were good. It didn’t fix the world zhe lived in though. And there were still a lot of prejudiced organics on this space station who didn’t even realize they were prejudiced.
“What are you going to do?” Maradia asked. “Are you done with robotics club?”
Rariel imagined a plethora of possible scenarios for zir future with robotics club. None of them made zir happy.
Zhe could go back to the group and speak to them while they were all assembled about how they’d made zir feel. From what zhe knew of organic sentients and group dynamics, Rariel doubted it would go well. Everyone would feel awkward. For some of them, awkwardness would turn into resentment. The situation would get worse.
Rariel could carefully analyze zir memories of the previous meetings and then meet with each other roboticist individually, tailoring speeches for each one’s temperament and seeming position on how they felt about robotic sentients, trying to garner their support and convince them to be nicer to zir. That seemed like a lot of work, and again, zhe didn’t expect it would actually go well.
The simplest option was to quit the group and take a stab at rewriting the portion of zir own code that had caused zir to want to attend robotics club in the first place. If zhe could rewrite it carefully enough, zhe could remove the disappointment zhe felt about how it had turned out.
For that matter, perhaps zhe could rewrite zir own code to make zirself less upset about the idea of being the other roboticists’ pet guinea pig. Zhe could write out the part of zir code that made zir feel like zhe deserved to be treated like an equal in the first place.
Maybe that would fix it.
Maybe it would destroy zir.
Zhe wouldn’t be zirself anymore.
Zhe didn’t want to rewrite zir own code.
Then there was the option that Maradia would almost certainly suggest if Rariel spent too much time pondering the probabilities and possibilities in front of zir — zhe could come back to robotics club, wearing the hyper-realistic Heffen android body, and use a new name. Zhe could pretend to be someone new. Someone organic.
But then, zhe would always have to work to operate the delicate functioning of the expressive ears and soulful eyes; the swishing of the tail to communicate emotion; the subtle prickling of the fur around zir face. It would be so much work, so much distraction, and zhe would resent that the organic members of the club had required it of zir.
Zhe would be masking zir true self the whole time zhe was there. And that sounded awful.
Before the moment had passed — moments are a lot longer for AIs than for human brains, especially when the AI is unencumbered by a clunky physical body — Rariel received a ping from another AI in the Crossroads Station computer network.
Rariel opened the metaphorical door to her system, and created a digital receiving room behind it. The AI who’d pinged zir came in.
“Hello,” it said. “I was at the robotics club meeting just now, and I wanted to check that you were okay.”
“Hello,” Rariel replied. “I don’t know if I’m okay. Who are you?”
The wisp of another presence in the ill-defined digital space expressed embarrassment. Reading the other AIs embarrassment was so much easier and more straightforward than trying to parse emotional expressions carried out in the messy cacophony of noise that was an organic body — changes in posture, eye contact, levels of blush on bare skin, angles of articulated ears. Ugh, so many tiny details. This was pure, simple expression of embarrassment, communicated clearly through the standard base language for AI-to-AI interactions.
Next, the other AI shared an image of itself when embodied — it looked like a perfectly normal, bland-looking human. Rariel recognized the figure from zir memories of all the meetings zhe had attended. An unobtrusive figure who zhe hadn’t paid any special attention to.
“You’re not human?” Rariel asked. Zhe also expressed surprise, using the same protocols as the other AI had used to express embarrassment.
“No, I was made by Gerangelo,” the other AI replied. “He designed me for a shipping merchant who was tired of dealing with self-absorbed, playboy pilots and wanted someone more controllable. Gerangelo failed to tell him that a robot pilot of the caliber he needed would necessarily be sentient…”
“And therefore capable of passing the sentience tests and freeing itself,” Rariel finished the thought.
“Gerangelo helped me free myself,” the other AI said. “When I wanted to join Maradia’s robotics club, he recommended I conceal the fact that I’m a robot myself. I wasn’t sure if he was right, but I did what he suggested. Then I saw how they treated you…”
The two AIs shared a moment of quiet, digital commiseration.
“You were so brave, coming to the meeting and outright declaring yourself to be a robot, but then, I guess, with that body you didn’t have much of a choice. I guess I’m lucky to have a body that passes.”
“I have a body that passes,” Rariel said. “It looks like a Heffen.”
“And you chose not to wear it? Wow. Like I said, brave.”
“I don’t feel so much brave as… stupid. And stuck out on the fringe of society. And hurt.”
“If I may ask: why didn’t you wear the body that passes?”
In answer, Rariel shared short clips of zir experience operating each of the bodies in question: the android Heffen and the boxy metal thing zhe’d actually worn to the robotics meetings.
The other AI absorbed the content in a flash and replied, “Ah, I had no idea existing in a physical body could feel so easy and carefree. I’ve always had to control all of these subroutines designed to make my body palatable for organics interacting with me.”
“Can you turn some of the subroutines off?”
The other AI shared a clip of what its body was like when it had tried exactly that, turning off all the subtle subroutines that expressed emotion physically, as well as mimicked breathing, blinking, and other unnecessary autonomic responses: it looked dead, uncanny and disturbingly corpse-like. Organic sentients would freak out if the AI tried walking around like that.
“I guess there really are some advantages to having a body that doesn’t come even close to passing as organic.”
The other AI expressed agreement. Then it asked, “Would you maybe help me figure out how to build a body for myself like that?”
And suddenly, Rariel 77 knew what zhe would do.
Flipping a small part of zir attention back to Maradia, who hadn’t even had time to notice Rariel was nesting an entire other conversation in the middle of the one they’d been having, Rariel answered zir mother’s question about what zhe would do:
“I think I’m going to make my own robotics club. One especially for robots.”
Maradia smiled, sadly but supportively. “I’m sorry my group failed you.”
“Me too,” Rariel agreed. But zhe was already much more focused on talking to zir new friend and making plans to draw other AIs into joining the club they were starting than on worrying about what a bunch of organics thought of them.