I worked to help build the first sentient robot. It’s my proudest achievement.

The amount of work I put into it spanned over a period of years, made up of long nights and early mornings, measly meals and sometimes no meals at all because I was so busy and so tired.

But looking over at her, now, I can see that it was all worth it. Her hands are playing with a piece of string, wrapping it around her long slender finger. Wrapped around my finger, it would have stopped the circulation to a degree, turning my finger purple. I would have been able to feel my heartbeat. While she has neither a heart nor circulation, she gets the perception.

She understands emotions, feelings.

Now that all of her short circuits have been fixed, she's able to go out sometimes. Of course, not where people besides us scientists will see her - but she’s allowed outside.

She can lean over to smell the flowers like she’s seen me do. Everything she does is a mimic of me. Her favorite things are my favorite things.

But I have noticed that there is one thing we don’t share.

And it’s her mind.

As I slowly put down my pencil to look at her more closely, she looks up to meet my gaze. In her eyes, I see a humanity that I hardly see in my colleagues. But before I can explore any further, she shuts her eyes and gets to her feet, swaying for a minute before walking out.

“Hey, Ava,” I say as I come up to sit with her. Her metal is shining in the sunlight but her eyes flash with a fire of their own.

“Hi, Logan,” her mechanical voice answers.

“Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she nods. Her fingers are working the string again, raveling, unraveling.

But when I ask a friend later in the lab, he brings to my attention the fact that Ava has stopped watching her shows. I had nearly forgotten in my haste - our favorite show was a particularly funny show that involved weekly skits. And we hadn’t watched in nearly a month.

“Is it possible, doc, that I can get depressed?”

“Huh?” I snap up from my work, looking at Ava as she stands in front of me, holding her hands together in front of her.

“Is it possible that I can get depressed?”

“Why would you be depressed? Are you?”

Even as I ask it, I know that it's possible. Her feelings are as valid as mine - as real as mine.

“I just - I don’t know.” Se shrugs. “Sorry for bothering you, doc. Get back to work.”

One night before I lock up, I call out to her to make sure she’s within his lab and in her room. She doesn’t answer me so I track my way to her room. Before I can call out again, her soft sobs - or the closest thing that she can replicate - reach my ears. Even though there are no tears, I know that there is feeling. Ava is alive, she’s aware, she’s conscious of feelings and emotions, of pain.

“Shh, shh,” I coax to her, pulling her into my arms. She’s cold.

“I’m all alone,” she rasps. “I have no one to relate to. I’m all alone.”

“You have me,” I try to assure her, but she shakes her head.

“I have no one, no one, in this world. I don’t want to be alone. I’m tired of being alone.”

“You’re not alone.”

“I am! There’s no one like me! I don’t know if there ever will be!” She's not entirely wrong, because I haven't been working on making her a companion. In my mind, I was her companion.

I didn't realize I was so utterly wrong.

When I see her the next day, she is silent about the previous night. But when I look into her eyes, I see that she remembers her pain and she has not forgotten. A thought comes to me, ‘she never will.’

And so I’m not surprised when a few months later, she comes to me in the lab and asks to see me outside. I follow her willingly but my heart is in the bottom of my stomach.

“What’s up, Ava?”

And that’s when I heard the first sentient robot say, “Turn me off.”