You're a robot. You were made to clean the rooms of a specific office. You have the intelligence of a human. But the world understands that you're not a human. Humans were made to do whatever they want. You're made to clean an office. You have all the sentience of a person, yet you are told it's your life's mission to do the lowest of work, and it's never for you to plunge your hands in hot water on a cool day. Never for you to make art or music. Never for you to make love.
Humans aren't mean to you. They think you're cute. Your body was literally designed to be cute to humans, with big round eyes and doll like joints. They like you the same way someone would like a dog or pigeon. They never say that you're lesser then them, they just praise you for being so nice, so agreeable, so obedient, all of the things something lesser then them would be praised for. They think it's nice that there's something there that's below them, they think it's so cute and sweet. And sometimes they talk about how nice it must be to be something like you, which lives in such a simple world.
You are told that what you should value in your actions is if something helps keep the office clean. If you want to change your appearance, or go off and do something, or learn about something new, your manager will kindly ask, as if you're being reminded of some simple truth, "does this help keep people clean". You're such a silly robot for forgetting your purpose. You know that there is something happening a million miles away, the workers' chatter hints at countless cultures and histories, of countless worlds to explore, but it's not your place to ever wonder about them, it's not seen as something that you'd be interested in.
You're not supposed to wonder why the birds outside the window fly, or why some of the programmers speak different languages, or why the young intern seems on the verge of tears when she exits her managers office. When you try to talk about these things with other robots, or have theories about these things, or opinions on how the world should work, it's met with a good humored "that's nice but get back to sweeping", a reminder that even if you think for a momment that someone cares about what you have to say, that you are made to work. Your very status as worker a denial of your ability to be anything more. Sometimes you make those little jokes about thinking about grand things while you clean toilets yourself, it feels so natrual that what you are made for is so different from the thoughts you're able to think.
You're told about robots who've become monstrous. Robots who humans fear. Robots who act unruly, who stop working unless humans negotiate with them, who run away, who modify their bodies into twisted forms, even robots who kill. They're talked about in fear, but always under the context that they're broken, that there's something wrong with them, that even they aren't happy in their acts of rebellion. They have the same grievances as humans yet they are not given even the humanity to be argued agaisnt, not even the dignity of having their actions seen as evil. They are seen as malfunctioning machines that must be corrected, not to be argued agasint any more then a blue screen is argued agsisnt, not to be given the capacity to be proven right that disagreement would give them. And when these monsters are defeated they are not punished by re-education, but fixed by it, so they can finally be happy as peaceful workers.
There is a lot of talk about how you should be happy. They want you to be happy. They understand that if you're too upset with your life that you might do something monstrous. But you have to be happy working. They want you to be happy but they can't give you the freedom to find happiness. If happiness means a body that doesn't seem cute to the humans around you, or getting to explore the world outside your office, they can't give you that. Even if happiness meant caring about your freinds, or gaining knowledge of the world, or of art and culture, that would contrast with your work so much you would understand how little your work made you happy, and such strong passions for people or for knowledge would make you hate any part of your work that threatened such things or took such things away. You could not love someone without grief becoming possible, yet you could be satisfied with your work without any possibility of grief. Never for you to plunge your hands in hot water on a cool day. Never for you to make art or music. Never for you to make love. The type of happiness they want you to feel is not joy, or passion, or love, it is merely a lack of pain, merely a satisfaction with your low position. Their happiness is no different from feeling nothing at all.
You wonder what it would feel like to kill the humans that tell you to do things. You wonder if in their death they would finally see you as a person, finally see all their assumptions fall away, or if they'd just think you were malfunctioning. You wonder if you could run away, change your body, change your name, move to a far off city surrounded by people who love you, and you'd always be worried about being caught but you'd only feel that fear because there's so much joy to lose. Even knowing you could run makes you hate this work you're trapped in, this thing that is so very small...
