Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

“My brain is just an advertising gimmick,” Paladin vocalized, echoing what the bots had told him in the Kagu Robotics Foundry. “It’s to make humans think I’m vulnerable. But it has no real functionality.” Then he ripped the man’s face shield off and crushed his skull against his breastplate. For an instant, there were useless chunks of brain inside and outside his carapace, inches away from each other.

He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges.