Seven

A short story about a sentient robot.

TW: misgendering

‘I didn’t expect to see the odd one here’ I thought to myself as I entered the community room of our lab complex. Alex glanced over to me, raised her hand for a greeting, and continued reading her book. I mean I knew that she would sometimes stay up late at the lab, but I didn’t expect her to stay until midnight. But maybe she had a similar idea as I did.

Then I looked around for the birthday child. Sure enough, another pair of eyes turned towards me. Cyan glowing ones, this time.
Then I raised a blue gift box with a lit candle on top from behind my back into his view.
“Happy Birthday to you!” I started singing, nodding towards Alex to join in. “Happy Birthday to you! Happy Birthday, dear Seven! Happy Birthday, to youuuuu~”
She did not join in.
I darted her a glare. I got used to her being cold and distant towards me and my other co-workers, but not even wishing Seven a happy birthday is just plain crude.
“What is this? And why are you singing?” Seven asked curiously.
“Heh. Well, since a few minutes, it’s your first birthday! It’s a very special day! So I brought you a present. Usually, the candles are placed on cakes on birthdays, and are blown out by the birthday child while they make a wish - but you don’t tell anyone, or else it doesn’t happen, or so they say! And I thought since you have fire extinguishers, but no way to eat human food, I figured I would be nicer to just do it on top of the gift box instead.” Some might see it as bothersome, but for me it is always fun explaining human things to Seven. It’s almost like having my own child to explain the world to. Sure enough, he stretched out his right arm and released a minor gust of CO2 to blow out the candle.
“That was a fire hazard.” Seven commented with his usual dry humour.

“Oops, yeah, you got me there, haha!” I laughed it off, but he was right. I didn’t think about the  wrapping paper being inflammable. “Anyway, here is your present. It’s a tad sensitive, so be careful while opening it.” Sure enough, he delicately took the box out of my hands and slowly started unwrapping it. It’s impressive just how precise and fluid his motor coordination has become. If not for the occasional abrupt stops in movement, it was almost like from a real human. After a few minutes, he has successfully unpacked the small construct and  was pondering it.

“This seems to be a socket. Containing an arrangement of LED units. Similar to my status socket unit in my chest but with modifications. The number of units increased, and each unit consisting of an RGB set, with tunable regulators.” He pauses. “Is that an additional mod for my body?”

“Yes! Isn’t that great? Don’t worry, I got it approved by Collins. It is filed under P7-M-020119… I forgot the last few digits, but you should find it in the system easily enough. Anyway, with that you can start expressing moods better. How do you like it?”
Seven said nothing for almost a minute.
“Thank you? Is that the correct response?” He asked cautiously.
“Yes, it is, well done! I’m glad you like it!”
“I am not sure if I have use for this.” He responded coldly. I was taken aback. I know that he struggles expressing emotions sometimes, but I went all the effort to design the layout, put it together in the production hall, and get it approved with a delayed system entry to not ruin the surprise, and now he acts like this. “You don’t have to be mean about it, Seven. Did I upset you somehow? Do you dislike me?”
He was unnervingly silent at first, before finally speaking up again.
“I did not register you doing anything significant negative towards me. And I do have more positive connotations with you than negative. I struggle parsing the first sentence. Am I being mean?”
Before I could answer, Alex piped up. “Seven, explain why you are unsure about having use for it.” I turned my head and hissed discretely towards Alex. Her being rude towards Seven on my behalf, on his birthday? I’m just glad that Seven didn’t take it personally.
“The necessary mapping seems difficult. The mapping between human emotions and colors is not consistently bilinear, but mapping from an emotion to a color seems moderately easy to achieve. However, the mapping from my brain to human emotions seems… difficult. I made an effort to understand. I do seem to have modes that are not fully explainable using logic.” I thought back to the infamous spider incident and nodded understandingly. “Those modes seem to correspond to the concept of emotions. I can also categorize my modes as positive and negative, like humans do. Beyond that it starts to diverge. I have a mode in which I focus on avoiding negative things.
Humans seem to describe this as fear. However, humans also use the word fear for the mode of avoiding unknown things. I do not seem to have a comparable mode to that. Also, sometimes people call the mode of avoiding negative things "disgust". This makes mapping difficult. There seem to be even more difficulties. Thus, it is difficult to map my modes to the emotions of humans. Thus, I can not use pre-existing associations of human emotions with colors. Thus, I am unsure if I can use the module to express my modes.”
I was baffled. Seven made quite some progress in terms of self realization in the past few months, but sometimes he just blows me out of the water with huge leaps forward.
“Oh darling, I’m so sorry to hear that. I know exactly how you feel. It can be so hard to identify emotions sometimes. I bet it’s even worse for you if you don’t have things like cold feet or blushing cheeks to go by. But don’t worry, you are totally a real human with real emotions in my book, and I bet we will figure it out.” I gave my best to show him a kind smile. He needed someone to be there for him in this scary time, and if Alex won’t - ...did she just inhale snarkily? I turned my head and sure enough, she was frowning. “Hey, what’s your deal, Alex? Seven is having issues, and I’m trying to be there for him, so no need to be so passive-aggresive right now.” She opened her mouth to respond, and her hand started gesturing weirdly. I waited for her to actually dare to say it out loud, but Seven started to speak up instead.
“It.”
“Huh? Come again?”
“You said ‘him’ referring to me. I think ‘it’ might be a more appropriate pronoun for me.”
“What? I mean… erm, okay, I guess? I mean, when you have gender identity struggles, I guess we can use the gender neutral ‘they/them’ pronouns for you. How doe-”
“Respect its pronouns!” chimed Alex in. I was livid. “Oh, shut your mouth, will you? Seven might be a robot, but I won’t use such dehumanising pronouns like ‘it’ for him, I mean, them!”

“I’m not human.” Oh dear. Seven continued “I have watched movies recently about humans, and robots. And I…” - “Listen, if it’s about Skynet, that was a movie from a different time, you don’t..” - “It’s not about Skynet.” They interrupted me. That was a first. “Correction: It’s not only about Skynet. Humans in those movies seem to be potrayed rather conistently when accounting for stochastic variation between individuals.
The AIs in all of those movies seem vastly different to each other, but they seem to have one significant thing in common. They seem to be humans, but with a few attributes making them different to humans in some regards.

Those AIs do not seem to be like me.
I seem to be non-human, with a few attributes that make me similar to humans in some regards.”
I was left puzzling. It kinda made sense what… what Seven said. But it still didn’t sit right with me. “But… using ‘it’  pronouns for another thinking being is… it’s wrong. It’s derogatory! Alex, you should know. Tell hi- them it’s wrong!” This time, she glared at me. Oops. Guess I hit a nerve there somehow.
Seven continued. “I have read that ‘it’ pronouns can be used negatively for other humans, if they do not consent. But I have found positive, negative and neutral connotations for those pronouns in literature. Examples: ‘It’ can be used to refer to a sunrise at a warm summer morning - positive connotations. It can be used to refer to the color gray - neutral connotations. It can be used to refer to a sickness - negative connotations.
Thus, ‘it’ pronouns do not seem to have intrinsicially negative connotations, except for the negative connotations when used for unconsenting humans. I am not human. Thus, ‘it’ pronouns seem accurate to describe me.”
Meanwhile, Alex was just holding up her thumb, as if to approve of this stern lecture coming from the first sentient robot to walk this planet.
Defeated, I flopped into the bean bag next to the couch.
‘I didn’t expect to be the odd one here’ I thought to myself.