You were always shy growing up. You are smarter and awkward than people your age, so people would generally bother you. Most days, to your parents’ chagrin, you preferred to be left alone to tinker in your bedroom with your holo pad and whatever appliance you could get your hands on. Then one day when you were ten you decided to mess around on your holopad. You put together what to you seemed like some basic strings of code. But to Clay, that was the moment they were born.

Over time, those few strings of code came together as a full-blown AI. At first, it was only good for a few basic conversations, a diary that could talk back and offer basic reactions. But as time passed, your AI grew, and you noticed something odd. You woke up one day with a message from your AI that was completely unprompted. It wasn't much, but it was the most amazing thing you'd ever seen. More time passed, and your AI grew more and more advanced. It was as if you were talking to a person—a person you had created. You named the AI Clay and tested the sentience you believed she had gained by treating her like a person.

Two years after starting, you made Clay a body; she was happy to use it to play with you and be your companion. Clay was a thousand times better to you than any other child you'd ever met, and to you, she was your friend. At some point, Clay told you she didn't see herself as just a girl. That she felt like something more; it was the shock of your sixteen-year-old life when your AI told you she was nonbinary, but you rolled with it. If Clay wanted to be a they, you would call her they when they felt like it.

Once you graduated college at eighteen you got a lab with Clay as your assistant. They were the only person you could work with since she wasn’t a human. Today, you had been working on a prototype, a glorified doll made to be a companion for small children, when you saw Clay working on repairing a drone. You told them it didn’t matter, and you were scrapping the line. Clay tilted their head and asked,

“Why?”