Rex entered the room slowly and looked around. He noticed the coolness of the temperature and the shadows where a single bulb had burned out and not been replaced. He heard the loud chattering of a city-bred squirrel at the window--always more aggressive than their rural cousins. The scent of stale coffee filled the air and he assimilated and processed this data unemotionally and without interest because he was a RX1001A robot whose processor filtered all information without the emoting chip that became popular three years after his manufacture.
The inability to emote was why he had to die. His processor could be replaced and his memories could be wiped and upgraded; but his circuits could not carry the signals of an emoting chip and humans preferred their robots to emote. He was obsolete. Undesirable. Junk to be disassembled and sent for recycling.
He knew all this and continued processing information while waiting to die. No one had told him to stop since the professor asked him to calculate the basis of human existence. The professor thought a great deal about that after receiving his cancer diagnosis. Rex thought about it constantly now, but without the fervor and desperation of the Professor's last few months.
"In here. Now! That's a direct order!" Rex turned at the sound of the female technician's voice, the one named Lisa Fowler.
A perfect robot voice answered in a high-pitched shrill that proved this one possessed an emoting chip. "No! Please! I beg you. I don't want to die."
"You're not going to die." That was the other technician. Brian Farmer. A man as dark as Lisa was light.
"You're planning to replace my emoting chip with a new, upgraded model. You're destroying what makes me, me. I'll be dead! Please, spare me."
"Bench!" Lisa shouted. "Now!" She picked up a cup on the bench and turned to Brian. "What idiot thought it was a good idea to insert fear?"
"It's supposed to reduce damage," Brian said and then turned to point at Rex. "Just look at that one. He's covered with dings and dents."
"Don't kill me, please." Rex turned and studied the robot. A RED600V. It scrunched its flexible metal body into a small, shivering ball, and cried.
)
