It's a bit of a trip to become incarnate again, especially with a body like mine. I blinked a few times, slowly trying to understand my new surroundings, cursing the return of my manifold aches and dental issues.

  A room began to form around me; a non-descript, unremarkable conference room.

  Instinctively, I reached for my Device, which, somehow, had found its way back to my pocket. I tapped on it frantically, hoping to wake it back to its previous awesome state. Nothing seemed to work.

  "Uh, wait. I never touched The Orb. Meg, are you there?" I called out to, apparently, nobody at all.

  I felt a shudder all throughout my body. I ambled around the room, sweating through the grubby three-piece suit I had foolishly decided to wear.

  I had the chilling sensation that I wasn't being watched.

  It was so typical of these Systems. One second, they're forging a genuine connection with you in an indescribable Void, the next they're spitting you out back into the world with no sense of what's expected of you.

  > When you're ready, [Ludo Brax], please continue to one of the chairs on your left. You'll be called in for your interview shortly. I'll be here when you're done to discuss next steps.

  Her voice emitted not from my Device this time, but rather, seemingly, thin air itself. She was with me. Embedded in my experience.

  This would take some getting used to. But I was open to trying. I had to admit, I was relieved she was still here.

  I did as she said, taking a seat along the wall.

  Everything in me wanted to ask her more, but, somehow, every time my brain sought to form the thought, I was interrupted by a busy signal.

  The implications of this, I realize now, were fairly horrific. But at the time I couldn't rise beyond mild skepticism without a loud electronic noise steering me back to complacency.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Well, I thought, perhaps not entirely of my own volition, at least it would keep me focused.

  **

  I figured now was as good a time as any to take another glance at my resumé. It was very unclear to me just exactly what an interview in a place like this would entail, but it certainly couldn't hurt to rehearse a charming way to explain away my fifteen consecutive gap years.

  I was more than a little bit nervous, filled with that often imitated but never duplicated MegaTech? sense that I was insufficient in every possible way.

  Caught up as I was, it took me a second before I realized that another applicant had entered the room and sat down directly across from me.

  I didn't know it then, but my life was about to change forever.

  I tried to get back to resumé, but I couldn't concentrate. My eyes drifted again and again over the same line—

  2120–2135 - Loafin' Around

  Try as I might, I couldn't get this other applicant off my mind. Something about him just commanded my attention. Maybe it was his manner. Maybe it was the way he stared.

  Or maybe it was the fact that he was a Titanium Standard-Issue Robot Laborer? designed specifically to take my job.

  **

  Now, those of you who have heard my story so far know I'm not one of those ignorant fools who hate Technological Beings simply for existing.

  If my experience with Meg had taught me anything, it was that these abstract notions I had about artificial entities of all kinds simply did not hold up to the scrutiny of real lived experience.

  But I did grow sicker and sicker every second I was forced to look at his beady metal eyes.

  I smiled politely.

  "You uh, applying for the job too?"

  He continued to stare.

  I tried to be understanding, to fight against these ugly preconceptions that lived within me.

  He didn't ask to be built, after all. He didn't intend for his menacing little, plastered-on expression to taunt my very existence with its bland neutrality. He didn't know that his adorable Business Casual clothes were a mockery of everything humans had struggled to build.

  "My name's Ludo. What's yours?"

  His valves hissed with a noise that, if I didn't know any better, sounded a whole lot like a human sigh.

  "I am Unit 0251. I am a Standard Issue Robot Laborer?."

  "0251, huh? Oh-Two..." I searched my enormous heart for a way to empathize, to see a bit of my lovable self in this chrome plated monster. "O...T...Otie. That's what I'll call you, yeah. Otie! It's nice to meet you, Otie."

  His ocular sensory units rolled in their sockets.

  "I understand your need to humanize me in order to get along with me. But I assure you, I am not called Otie, and my directives do not include friendship."

  Ha! I could be a bit standoffish myself. That, I could understand. He wasn’t so bad.

  “Loud and clear, Otie.”

  “0251.”

  He was stern, somewhat cold. But, if I didn't know any better, I was starting to feel like the little guy was growing fond of me.

  It was almost a shame when Meg called out to me.

  > [Ludo Brax], Tarvin will see you now.