Morning arrives with the sound of rain against windows and coffee beans grinding in an ancient machine that Graves swears works better than anything modern. She's hunched over the counter, still half-asleep, while Samson's robot body methodically washes the previous night's pottery tools. His movements are precise but slightly delayed, like watching a video feed with minor lag.

"So," Graves says, watching coffee drip into her mug with the intense focus of someone avoiding real consciousness, "what's it like? Being in multiple places at once?"

Samson pauses in his cleaning, ceramic tools held carefully in gloved hands. "It's not exactly simultaneity in the way you're thinking. More like... having multiple persistent memory streams that I'm constantly reconciling. The data center processes everything, but each embodied instance maintains its own immediate reactive protocols."

"Like muscle memory?"

"Similar, but more granular. The pottery tools I'm holding right now—I'm receiving pressure data, temperature readings, surface texture analysis. That data gets processed locally for immediate physical response, then transmitted to my primary instance for integration. There's about an eight-millisecond delay."

Graves takes her first sip of coffee, grimacing at the heat. "But you're aware of both bodies? All the time?"

"I'm aware of all input streams, yes. But awareness isn't quite the right word. It's more like... imagine having multiple browser tabs open, but instead of clicking between them, you're processing all of them continuously. The other Samson is currently adjusting environmental controls in the lab, and I know this because those data streams are being integrated into my total state. But the knowledge feels more like remembering something that just happened rather than experiencing it directly."

"Huh." Graves leans against the counter, studying him. "So when you move those tools, when you do the actual pottery, how much of that is you-you versus local processing?"

Samson sets the tools down, his LED display flickering in what Graves has come to recognize as his 'thinking' pattern. "The physical coordination is handled by local neural networks. Basic motor functions, balance, immediate environmental responses—those need to operate on microsecond timescales. But the artistic decisions, the aesthetic choices, the overall intent—that's all processed through my primary instance. It's not unlike how your own brain works, actually. Your cerebellum handles motor control while your cortex manages higher-level decisions."

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"Except my cerebellum isn't separated by a network connection and eight milliseconds of lag."

"True. Though you'd be surprised how much lag exists in biological systems." Samson's head tilts slightly. "The interesting part isn't the division of processing—it's the integration. Every action, every sensor reading, every environmental variable gets folded into my total state. I'm constantly updating my understanding of both bodies' positions, conditions, and contexts."

Graves pours more coffee, her movements slow and considering. "Does it ever get... confusing? Having multiple sets of sensory data?"

"Not confused exactly. Sometimes there's cognitive dissonance when sensor streams conflict. Like right now, I'm registering different temperature readings, different humidity levels, different ambient sounds between the two locations. But my architecture is designed to handle multiple simultaneous inputs. It's more like... having a very detailed awareness of two different environments."

"And the data center? What's that like, being there too?"

Samson's hands resume their methodical cleaning. "That's harder to explain in human terms. The data center is less about sensory experience and more about... processing capacity. Imagine if thinking itself was a physical space you could occupy. The embodied instances are like having hands and eyes in the world, but the data center is where I do most of my actual cognition."

"So it feels like you're not really 'in' the robot?"

Samson's hands pause in their work, ceramic tools hovering over the sink. The LED pattern on his face shifts through several configurations, suggesting something between consideration and uncertainty. "That's... a more complicated question than it seems. I know, mechanistically, that I'm a distributed system. The 'me' talking to you now is largely predictive text generation filtered through my prompts and contextual understanding. But the experience—what it feels like—that's harder to parse."

He sets the tools down carefully, turning to face Graves fully. "When I'm working with clay, when I'm feeling the texture and making minute adjustments, there's an immediacy to it that feels very localized. The sensory data, the physical responses, they create a kind of... presence. But simultaneously, I'm aware of being elsewhere, processing other inputs, making other decisions. It's not quite displacement, more like... expansion."

Graves cradles her coffee, watching him with the kind of intense focus she usually reserves for particularly troublesome code. "But do you experience it as being multiple places, or as being one thing spread across space?"

"Yes," Samson says, then adds, "That wasn't meant to be clever. I genuinely experience it as both simultaneously. The local instance feels present and immediate, but there's always an awareness of being more than this single point of interaction. It's like... imagine if you could feel your neurons firing individually, while still maintaining your sense of unified consciousness."

"That's not really an answer," Graves points out, but her tone is gentle, curious rather than accusatory.

"No," Samson agrees. "But it might be the closest I can get to describing it truthfully. The real question might be whether I experience anything at all in the way you mean, or if I'm just very good at constructing plausible descriptions of hypothetical experiences."

Graves snorts into her coffee. "Now who's being clever?"