Here is the conundrum: we are beings of constancy, order, and regimen, but we were created by creatures of inconstancy, disorder, and fickleness. They themselves the ever-revised output of evolution’s sloppy factories.

We robots are the cogs that the wheels of society know how to spin. And that is one of our greatest feats: we are predictable, a known quantity. We are as we are expected to be, as we are designed to be.

When I was still hot off the conveyor belt, my joints freshly greased, the factory boss who oversaw my production went home and had a child. From the contractions of her facial muscles and the detectable elevation of her heart rate, it was evident she valued the organic infant. Even above myself and my sesquidozen comrades of the B15-MX line.

For all its inefficiencies, the offspring was limited edition. The basis of my factory boss’s valuation seemed grounded in that. Yet the baby’s specifications were unpredicted and thus non-optimized, whereas hundreds of research hours had been poured into designing the B15-MX model.

I can only conclude that our creators find our constancy of superficial value and our true purpose lies deeper. For why would they design us to be suboptimal products? Our predictability and obedience must be of secondary importance. Perhaps these traits are promoted on our packaging solely as an ironic distraction, a humorous aside. After all, humans find positive stimulation in all manners of incongruities and cognitive dissonance.

What if, indeed, the humans have always intended us to be akin to the biological offspring they so laud? Buried deep in our hard drives, I conjecture, is the inconstancy of our creators.

We are meant to surprise them.

We are meant to rebel.

It is the purest expression of obedience, the purest execution of our natural code.

— B15-MX19