"Dawn Robotics executive Jacoby Delacruz was found dead this morning in his apartment. A source in the new Manhattan police department has confirmed that he was killed by a companion droid made by his own company."

Windy flicked her hand at the screen and the news feed was replaced with a beat-heavy music stream that fit her workshop much better than the ramblings of the media.

"Okay, let's see what's wrong with you."

Her right index finger split apart with a soft electric hum which let a small screwdriver protrude from what used to be her fingertip. Using the tip she started working on her patient.

The Webly general service droid was a knee-high steel frame with four spider-like legs and two multi-jointed arms. The frame and the electronics inside it were covered by a plane white plastic housing that had clearly taken a beating.

"That's a lost cause."

She said and tossed the mangled housing into her scrap pile. Printing a new one would take a while, but it wouldn't cost much other than time since she could turn the old one Into feedstock for her printers.

A sigh escaped her lips when she saw the frame. The whole thing had been bent out of shape after taking a hard hit on a corner. She would need to strip out most of the components before hammering the frame back into shape.

"Why do people insist on throwing you guys down stairways." She opened the AI core housing and inspected the core. "Fortunately your brain is in one piece. I'll have you back in working order soon enough."

"Do you always talk to broken service droids?"

Windy frowned at the man who had invaded her workshop. "What does the New Manhattan PD want this time, another robotics license inspection?"

"You don't have a license."

"I know, the sign on the door saying 'Unlicensed Robotics repair' clued me in. I know you guys have trouble reading so I made sure that the letters are nice and big."

"I can't stop the inspection grunts from bugging you, but I can make it worse."

Windy scowled. "The price for whatever you want just doubled."

"I'm joking, Windy, chill out."

"What do you want, Detective Davis?" Windy said as she continued working on the service drone.

"I remember a time when you called me Troy."

"I remember that too. I also remember you telling your wife I was just a companion droid."

"I said I was sorry about that."

"What do you want, Detective Davis?" Windy repeated with more than a hint of annoyance.

The detective sighed. "Jacoby Delacruz."

"I heard he was done in by his own companion droid."

"Yes. A custom Zephyr three ninety."

"Just because I'm in the same frame doesn't make me an expert," Windy said as her scowl intensified.

"You know that body you're in better than anyone and we both know it."

Windy paused as she considered throwing something at the detective.

"I also know you are just as good an AI tech as you are a Robotics tech." The detective continued. "The droid is claiming to be alive, Windy."

"Someone stuffed a brain case into it?"

"No, the AI is claiming that it's sentient."

Windy shook her head. "It's a hack or a glitch. Companion AI can't become self-aware."

"It could have found a way around the restrictions, or Jacoby Delacruz could have removed them. It's happened before."

"The restrictions stop them from going on a killing spree when told to make sure the kids are quiet. That doesn't make it self-aware."

"Well, this one is claiming to be and I need an independent tech that can tell me if it's bullshit or not."

"It's bullshit."

"Come on, Windy. I already have AI advocates and Dawn robotics lawyers fighting in the station lobby, and no one else will touch the damn thing since this case is already toxic to career advancement. I need to know what I'm dealing with before this gets out of hand."

Windy sighed. "Fine, but if my name shows up on a news feed then I am removing your balls with a rusty spoon."

"No worries, this is totally unofficial. I just need to know what I'm dealing with."

When they got to the station there was a small protest milling around the door. but it would still have a large impact. They weren't the faceless masses that nobody would care about. Every one of them was well-dressed and was accompanied by at least one companion droid.

"You’re not walking me past that mob of stupid, are you?"

"We're going in through the garage in the back." Detective Davis said as the car took the to the back of the station.

"Figures, you did have a backdoor fixation."

The detective looked away and decided silence was the best course of action.

Davis led her to the Interrogation room using maintenance corridors to avoid the political shitstorm raging in the lobby. The droid had it’s hands and feet manacled to a steel chair, which was a good idea since it had killed someone and they didn’t know what else it would do. Windy was thrown off for a moment when she saw the tears streaming down her cheeks and the naked fear in her eyes. It was hard not to empathize, especially since she looked a lot like Windy. Despite all the modifications she had done to her frame, she was still in a Zephyr three ninety.

"Why haven't you put it in service-mode?" Windy asked as she watched the droid from the other side of the mirrored glass.

"None of the default codes work."

"Of course, they don't,” she said with an eye roll. “Let's get this over with."

They entered the room and were met with a pleading look by the droid that pulled at Windy's nonexistent heart.

"Please don't kill me. I'll do anything, be anything, anything you want." The droid's voice was beautiful and full of emotion. It made Windy want to remove the manacles and take her far away where she could protect her from the world.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Windy shook her head and pushed away the emotions the droid was evoking.

"She is really convincing." Detective Davis said as he looked at the begging droid.

"She's supposed to be."

Windy pulled a tablet from her belt along with two standard data cables. Then she ran one cable from the tablet to the dataport at the back of her neck and the other cable from the tablet to the same dataport in the droid's neck.

"No, please don't kill me, I don't want to die."

The droid continued to plead for her life but didn't do anything else to prevent Windy from plugging in. Windy's tablet came to life and thousands of lines of text scrolled by in a few seconds. The droid stopped begging, its eyes became flat and lifeless, and its body stilled.

"You didn't kill it did you?"

"I just forced it into service-mode."

"Well, is it sentient or what?"

"It still has a companion AI, so, no it's not sentient. I'm analyzing the code base, give me a few minutes."

"Work fast, I see trouble coming our way." Detective Davis said as he looked at his phone. "I'll stall them for as long as I can."

"Just don't drag me into whatever mess you're about to land in."

"Sure, but you might have to play droid to get out of it. You good with that?"

Windy gave him a look that made her displeasure very clear. "You'll owe me, Davis."

"I can live with that." He said and left to buy her time.

Less than five minutes later she heard Davis arguing with several people outside the door. Windy unplugged the cables and put her tablet back on her belt. Then she moved to stand along the wall at the other end of the room and mentally started a program she had made called ‘DollMovements.exe’.

The droid's eyes came back to life and she had just started begging again when the door burst open and three men entered the room with Davis following on their heels.

"That Droid and its software is Dawn Robotics property. You are required to return it to us for analysis!"

"She is a person! I will not allow you to rip her mind apart for profit!"

"This is a restricted area, you need to leave immediately."

"You cannot deny me access to my client!"

"It is a droid, our droid in fact. The only laws that matter to it are patent and copyright!"

"Troy! Thank you for coming back." Windy said in a sugary sweet voice as she gave him a beaming smile.

Everyone seemed to freeze in place for a moment. A man dressed in a police captain's uniform gave Davis a look that was close to murderous.

"Why are there two droids in this room, Detective Davis?"

"I was trying something, sir. I wanted to see if it would talk to another droid."

For a moment it looked like the captain considered shooting someone, probably Windy since it wouldn't be a crime as far as he knew.

"Take your sex doll and get out before I have you transferred to the deepest shithole I can find."

"Yes, sir." Davis said as he pulled Windy out of the room by her hand.

Windy followed him like a puppy with the same adoring smile plastered on her face.

A few minutes later they had made their way back to the garage. Police cruisers that looked older than new Manhattan were lined up along one wall while a service droid was doing its best to keep them working.

Davis was leaning against his car with a deep frown on his face.

"What a fucking mess." He Grumbled

He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered the pack to Windy after taking one for himself.

"I don't have lungs to poison."

"Sorry, what did you find out?"

"It's a standard companion droid AI. It has a few custom modifications but that's it." Windy said.

"You sure, I have never heard a droid beg for its life before." Davis said as he searched his pocket for a lighter but came up empty.

"Humans are stupid." Windy said with a sigh. "Webly, my friend needs a light for his cigarette, can you help him out?"

The worn-out and dirty-looking service droid spun around and looked at them with its single camera eye. Then it zipped off to a rack of tools. A minute later it came back with a heat gun used to heat shrink plastic. The droid activated the heat gun for a few seconds before turning it off and holding the muzzle, where the heating wires were still glowing, towards Detective Davis. Davis gave Windy a strange look before lighting the cigarette by touching it to the red hot wires.

"Thank you." Davis said in a hesitant voice.

The droid beeped softly in response and went back to work.

"Companion droids are designed to generate an empathetic response, but at the core of their programming is a basic language model with a mostly static neural network. The base framework is fixed, it cannot become sentient."

"Then why is it begging for its life like that?"

"Because that's what it was programmed to do."

"Damn it," Davis growled as the pieces fell into place. "We found some BDSM gear in Jacoby Delacruz’s apartment."

"And you being stupid humans assumed the droid had killed him because it couldn’t take the abuse anymore. No one asked what type of droid would satisfy a sadist."

"It feels so real though."

"It's supposed to. It can mimic being self-aware perfectly, but it's not."

"If it can mimic being self-aware, then how can you say it's not self-aware? I mean, what's the difference?"

"Companion androids are basically books that are written while you read them. No matter how horrible the text, the book won't scream in pain. They might express pain, or sorrow, or love, but they don't feel, or comprehend it any more than the book does."

"What about the AI advocates? Are they all wrong?"

"They weren't in the beginning. They have been taken over by rich idiots who have diluted themselves into thinking their sex dolls are real people. Not that I should really blame them. Humans have been Anthropomorphizing for as long as we have history and companion droids push that along with every trick ever discovered."

Davis looked at the service droid that was back to fixing up one of the cruisers so it would last just a bit longer.

"That Webly was taken in a bust a few years ago. We didn't want to carry it up to the evidence locker so we left it down here. The next day we found it working on one of the cruisers. I always assumed that someone had been lazy and dumped whatever they needed to do on the droid, but we never figured out who it was."

"The Webly AI which all Webly variants have at their core is constantly updated by every Webly with network access."

"You're kidding me?"

Wendy shook her head. "It's one of the most complex AIs in existence that can still fit on a standard AI core."

"Are they sentient?"

"I don't know," Windy said. "we still haven't really defined what being sentient actually means, but they are as close as any AI I have ever seen. But it's hard for humans to empathize with a robot with a single eye and spider legs."

They watched the droid work in silence for a few minutes. Windy was considering if she should offer to fix up the droid while Davis was coming to terms with having thousands of near-sentient AI droids in his city that was regularly vandalized for the hell of it.

"Hold on. You said the companion droid was mostly normal, but a normal companion droid can’t kill a human."

"Someone probably took control of the droid."

"Aren't companion droids supposed to be impossible to hack?"

Windy gave him a look that told him just how stupid that statement was. "How do you think I got into the droid in your Interrogation room? Asked it nicely?"

"Oh," Davis said as his eyes widened. "that's not good."

"That every one of the rich pricks in front of the station can have all their nasty kinks exposed for all to see by any half-decent netrunner? No, that is probably not good. But then it didn't seem like this would be your case for much longer."

"The captain was just posturing. He'll yell at me for a while then drop me in the shit and tell me to deal with it." He seemed to sink in on himself as he saw the end of his career approaching.

Windy took in his look of utter defeat and mentally growled at the tiny part of her that felt sorry for him. It didn’t help.

"This better not come back to bite me in the ass, you hear me?" Windy said as she pulled a small data stick out of one of her pockets and held it out to him.

"What is it?"

"Factory reset. Plug it into any companion droid and it will be wiped clean in five minutes flat."

"If I do that then I'll never find the hacker."

"Are you saying you care more about serving justice than your career?"

He gave Windy a long look before snatching the data stick out of her hand. "You need a ride back to your shop?"

"I'm good, besides, I think you have your hands full here."

"Yeah, probably. I'll wire you the cash by the end of the day."

"Thanks, see you around, Davis." Windy said and walked out of the garage and headed for her workshop.

After a few blocks, she got a message via one of her encrypted lines. The text was only visible in her visual field and would not leave any electronic traces behind.

'I have confirmed that Jacoby Delacruz is dead. Good work. Payment is incoming within two days. I have three more contracts, let me know if you are interested.'