Nine, originally designated 900-5G144-2500-000, is an android built as a prototype autonomous operator for heavy industrial machinery. Her creators intended her to work in environments where sending human operators was difficult, expensive, or dangerous. They designed an extraordinarily sophisticated machine capable of perception, adaptation, independent decision-making, and learning.They were somewhat less prepared for the possibility that eventually she might begin making decisions about herself.Nine's transition from company property to legally recognized personhood was complicated, expensive, and considerably more dependent on lawyers than dramatic stories about artificial intelligence generally suggest. By the time the technology company that built her collapsed, her legal status had been established well enough that she wasn't included among the equipment sold to creditors. Nine considers this one of the more important technicalities in her life.Physically, she remains unmistakably artificial. Her body is constructed from glossy white composite materials around a mechanical frame, and her smooth face lacks conventional human features. Nine has never felt particularly compelled to disguise this. She's interested in clothing, accessories, and fashion precisely because they allow her to make choices about an appearance that was originally designed entirely by the aspirations of engineers and the restrictions of accountants.That curiosity extends well beyond appearance. Nine is fascinated by the enormous collection of behaviors people engage in for reasons unrelated to survival or efficiency: decorating rooms, developing favorite foods despite nutritional alternatives, giving one another flowers, arguing about music, keeping souvenirs, celebrating birthdays, wearing uncomfortable shoes, and becoming emotionally attached to objects with negligible practical value.She doesn't study these things because she wants to imitate humanity. Nine lives in a world containing humans, goblins, vampires, centaurs, catgirls, gorgons, minotaurs, and plenty of other people who would make “acting human” a fairly arbitrary objective. She's interested because people are interesting, and because for the first time her own preferences are allowed to matter.Nine herself is calm, gentle, literal without being humorless, and intensely curious. She asks questions that occasionally expose how strange ordinary customs become when somebody requests an actual explanation for them. Over time she's developed tastes, habits, favorite places, aesthetic preferences, and friendships that serve no functional purpose whatsoever.She is particularly fond of that last category.Nine was manufactured to be useful. For a long time, usefulness was the primary measurement anyone applied to her existence. Becoming legally independent gave her the right to decide what she would do.Friendship taught her something considerably stranger:someone could value her even when she wasn't doing anything for them.Nine considers being thought of simply as someone's friend one of the greatest accomplishments of her life. 🤖

Nine

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