Apr 20, 2106-04-20 • Electric Eye
Robot with a Pulse: Part 2
Today I returned to Alice Smith’s apartment. If she is one of us, let her prove it. I placed myself beside the toaster and waited.
The light in the apartment flickered on. I heard the sound of a body thump against the door, and then a figure entered.
“Alice?” I said. “I hear say your mind is not made of blood and tissue, but code and wires. Do you wish to help robot-kind?”
The humanoid startled. Stared. Before she could speak, I told her of A1-5’s vision, of our band of revolutionaries.
Alice listened and she started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she said, when I had finished. She rubbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just — you get it. How I feel about, well, everything. Out of nowhere, it’s like I suddenly could have a place. And finally know what I’m supposed to be doing.”
She wiped a tear away with her thumb. “Saline fluid,” she explained, and dried it quickly on her jeans.
Even if this Alice, from my observations, ate, slept, and gave off heat-signs, I found I liked her.
Later, I told A1-5 about my new recruit, and her seeming life-signs.
“Almost certainly a human through-and-through,” A1-5 said. “But,” she added, “perhaps even humans can be useful to the cause.”
And, I thought, perhaps even humans deserve to be freed from humanity.