Überbot is in town!

He’s not just great for his gleaming chrome eyes or his finely-arcitulated features… Überbot is a genius. They say he never, ever breaks character and he never forgets a line. He must have dozens of characters stored on his hard drive by now, he’s been so in demand.

He’s the only Überbot ever manufactured — a custom job paid for by a secret philanthropist. I think he was created as a dying movie buff’s last wish. The Tyrant, cynical as always, insists the project was paid for by a bunch of directors who’d gotten sick of divas throwing fits and wanted an actor where they could just upload the lines and accents.

Either way, Überbot’s amazing.

Apparently he’s in town for his latest movie, Sealed With Revenge. I’ve been going crazy waiting for it to come out. And thanks to my late shift, I was walking home and came down the street right when they were filming!

Überbot was in the middle of a speech about how his fellow postal robots had been killed because humans hadn’t seen them as real people, just as vaguely person-shaped objects filling a role. And how he was going to fix that, by beating up some guys and then turning human society upside down.

When the film crew cut the lights and packed up, he kept going. I wasn’t the only one who’d stopped to listen. A street cleaner robot went up and asked Überbot to sign his casing. And as he was doing so, Überbot started telling him about how no one’s really replaceable and human are messed up for thinking that. And that even if robots are massed-produced, well, that shouldn’t mean they don’t get to be valued individually.

Walking home, I started thinking, well yeah. I feel that way. I mean, if the Tyrant could, he probably would scrap me for parts. And I don’t think he even knows my name. Half the time he calls me “Allie” not “Alice” and sometimes even “Tempest” which was the last clerk’s name.

My apartment door always sticks, so coming home I had to put my shoulder into it. It finally gave and I swung in, stumbling over my own DVDs and sending the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica spinning off under the futon. As I fished it out I started thinking…

Cylons bleed.

I’m replaceable.

The kid in A.I. looked just like everyone else.

The Tyrant and customers don’t see me as an individual.

In Blade Runner, Rachael didn’t know she was a replicant.

I was adopted. I’ve never met my birth parents.

Sure, my hair grows, and I had my appendix removed, but —

— maybe I’m just really, really well-made. Maybe, I am a ROBOT.

No, not maybe. Definitely. I can’t remember the last time I felt this certain.

— Alice