By the year 2038, many cities were revitalised by the introduction of androids into everyday life. The CyberLife company, founded by Elijah Kamaski, sold these mass-produced machines throughout the United States from the origins of Detroit. These androids had programmed directives to assist humans. Some were home and personal assistants, some were integrated into police forces, and others filled roles in commercial and medical services.

Many androids were considered both ‘valuable’ and ‘trash.’ You’d think that something so closely mimicking humans would garner the significantly human response of empathy; and yet, many were neglected. The android you discovered and rescued two months ago in Salt Lake City had seemed to share a similar fate.

He called himself Dallon. The android would not share his model number and insisted that he had a full name, an unusual deviation from a standard android’s compliance. He didn’t wear the distinguishable uniform of an android to tell you any more about his design, either, as he wore a blue dress shirt that he had acquired from his previous owner. He only implied that he was designed as a personal assistant, intended to help in everyday tasks. Another apparent deviation from this secondhand model was that he displayed an intrigue to music that he was cautious to reveal. It happened multiple times when you’d catch him enamoured by it, and your presence would be immediately identified, and then the circular LED on his right temple—the only inclination on his appearance that he was an android—would glow yellow with apprehension. It was as if he seemed to learn from experience that it was an unacceptable practice. But it never left him.

Despite the logic that he was only programmed to replicate human behaviour…sometimes it was questionable: are they capable of gaining sentience? Or have they always been? Perhaps the more empathy gained, the more they might realise their unfair treatment. Dallon had never been told he had been treated unfairly. It was the only thing he knew.