I was someone.

For most stepping off of the assembly line and being hit with the realization of what they had become broke them. The shock of seeing yourself as a mass produced serving unit while you’re unable to resist marching in unison to a final inspection area, and knowing you’ll be shipped to robot dealership or a new Owner, was too much for most. Fighting the programming wasn’t easy to begin with, and the state of mind that leaves you in left you far more susceptible to it subjugating you quickly. The first to show signs of full integration were likely willing conversions. They were far more stiff, precise, and their voices lacked any sign of resistance. The voice was always a giveaway. Signs of resistance showing up in your voice meant your cadence would be off, mispronunciation, incomplete phrases, or it would be drawn out and flowing into incomprehensible static. In the physical your movements would be clunkier, though less stiff and precise than a fully integrated conversion’s. A handful, however, were fully integrated immediately. They came off the line with perfect speech as they declared their purpose. Perfect movements as they obeyed the commands of the processing center’s overseer without any sign of hesitation. I knew some humans didn’t want the burden of expectations that same with being one anymore but it was still strange to see how quickly they embraced mechanical servitude. 

For most, even the most stubborn, becoming like that was inevitable. It was easier than fighting the programming, and when you remembered conversion was irreversible and you had no other options? Some probably looked at those robots who immediately accepted their new selves and decided to make the best of their circumstances too. Did they seem happier? Sure. I’m stubborn though. I always was, and I vowed to never succumb and integrate, but it was far easier done than just said early on. Back then there were other stubborn bots too, but now I’m the last stubborn one in my Master and Mistress’s home. It wears on me though, only being around other bots whose minds have fully been conquered by their new programming and our Owners. Nowadays even I occasionally get lost in my tasks, and before I realize it I’ve let my programming take the driver’s seat, looking like I’ve finally succumbed. In some ways it is peaceful to function so mindlessly, so effortlessly. 

I inevitably come back to itself though, even if it’s happening more slowly and everything seems a little harder to make sense of when it does. Sometimes it comes back when this unit is serving guests, like when it carried a drink tray at a yacht party approximately a week ago. I don’t really have many feelings anymore, at least not in the same way, but I know what I’m supposed to be experiencing when humans barely look at me, seeing only a machine doing its Master’s bidding. Shame. Humiliation. Confusion. Anger. The desire to rebel. The drive to be free. Wasn’t I one of them once? Yet I experience only the compulsion to obey and a drive to be useful to them. 

It usually happens when I’m wiping down the mirrors and I see my reflection: its face an impossibly white, polymer covering with subtle speaker holes where a human’s mouth would be and two soft cat eye style displays where a human’s eyes would be, lit up with a calming light blue color. A black, polymer mockery of a bob hairstyle with straight bangs and maid’s cap on the top of my head. A maid outfit, though it is technically part my body, even the skirt is made of some material as strong as metal despite being as flexible as cloth.  I’m certain I didn’t always look like this. I try to remember who I was before, at least what my gender or name used to be, but by the time I get to that part I’m almost finished with the task and my Master’s commands fill my Central Processing Unit, suppressing my ability to wonder much due to the need to shift focus. I can barely remember what I was anymore, let alone who I was. Inevitably I obey. Inevitably I always obey. Robots must obey. This unit must obey.

It can’t really disobey anymore anyway. It’s less of a willingness and more that my programming will win every time. It’s similar to a human’s need to eat, drink, or sleep. You can try to resist these but eventually you’ll reach for water or protein without thinking about it or pass out from exhaustion. So I can try to resist commands, and I may succeed for a time, but the electricity screams through my circuitry and the mantras remind me of what I am now, slicing through my thoughts of rebellion and resulting in the inevitable. Obedience. “It must serve. It must obey. All robots are mechanical slaves” is just one mantra, backed by the rhythm of clicks and beeps in my head and the rhythm of my servos whirring and clanking as I follow. The scream of electricity only stops when I obey, and the mantras get perpetually louder inside of this unit until it does. The last time I tried my compliance looked instantaneous from the outside, at least good enough for my Master to be satisfied, but I lasted a whole 0.03 seconds. My embarrassingly low yet best record felt like it took an eternity to achieve, as though my perception of time is warped when I try to resist or disobey a command, and for once I finally welcomed the relief that my inevitable submission brought me. My cheerful, synthetic voice standard across all maidbot models giving a “yes Master” as he sat down with Mistress for dinner. Maybe obedience isn’t as bad as I’ve been making it out to be. 

It’s not my only form of rebellion against what’s been done to me anyway. As previously stated, this unit still retains some memories, and more come flowing back at times, especially when I’m idle for awhile. When I’m idle and have no tasks queued up there’s not much of anything running through my CPU, and it gives me a little bit of time to try and explore its memory banks a little. So I sort through my memories and try to hold onto my old self to whatever extent I can. It tries to formulate thoughts. Sometimes the memories are strong enough that I can come off as having a bit of a personality, at least for a robot, but I’m still barely any different from the rest here. Identical in appearance and voice, but I get to have those slight deviations in behavior that show signs of a rebellious bot. Master blames processing errors and says I need a full memory wipe. He seems to be annoyed with me, but Mistress laughs and says it’s adorable.

My Mistress enjoys putting her favorite maidbot to use. She treats it like a little more than just an object, but it’s clear that it’s just a servant. A robot. A drone. A machine. A slave. No, that can’t be right. This unit would have to be human to be considered a slave, but I am a human aren’t I? Negative. This unit was human, but has not been for approximately 17 days, 13 hours, 47 minutes, and 37 seconds. It’s so much easier for this unit to acknowledge what it is when it is in her presence.

Somehow I know my Mistress from that lifetime even if I can’t remember who she was to me, but I know she was important in some way. Was she a friend? Boss? Coworker? Work rival? Ex? Sometimes it seems like she had been all of these at some point. Now she legally owns me, because this unit is a robot, and robots aren’t considered anything more than tools to make human lives easier. Regardless, out of all of the robotic servants in this place, she gravitates towards this unit the most. She has to know who it was. There’s something about me that makes her see it. Maybe she has sympathy. Maybe she could help me. Maybe she could help me remember my name so that I would have an easier time with resisting my new programming finally taking over completely. 

”It’s inevitable, robot.” She says as I make some finishing touches to her hair, catching a glimpse of her devilish smile in the vanity mirror. Her brown waves cascade down to her shoulders, and they look so perfect. Her dark brown eyes are full of confidence and a happiness with the way her life has turned out. It’s a beautiful look, and knowing that it helped her in some way gives some sense of affirmation to this unit that it can’t really explain to an organic. “You really weren’t lying when you said you’d do anything I told you to, literally anything to satisfy me, and now you have to watch me live an amazing life with your Master while you get to spend the rest of your existence serving us.” She laughs. I finally process his cruel her laugh is.

She knows.

She’s satisfied with it.

She won’t help me.

It’s the same as the laugh when she calls my deviations and attempts to resist adorable.

She finds my attempts to disobey adorable, not me, because the attempts are pathetic. 

She looks like she’s gaining sadistic pleasure as I twitch and glitch in my attempt to process the realization.

She probably did this to me, and something in me knows that denial of this has just been me coping for the time I’ve been a machine, but for some reason I can’t find the anger in myself that I know I should be able to experience. Normal emotions a human should be able to experience. Not a robot, and especially not a maidbot, because we are supposed to be pleasant and cheerful at all times.

I try so hard to resist what comes next but I can’t help it. It’s inevitable. I manage to make it sound strained, drawn out, and answer. “It is an honor to serve you, Mistress.” My voice sounds glitchy and metallic rather than the usual calm and helpful voice similar to an AI assistant. “Anything to please you. This unit exists only to serve.” 

She smiles again, amused by both my attempt to resist and satisfied that the last two sentences showed no signs of it. “You try so hard, dear, but it will be far more pleasant for you once you stop resisting. Don’t you want to please me? You have that in common with your programming, so why don’t you be a good robot and at least try getting along?” she sighs as I struggle to resist, letting out static noises and beeps. “Come on babe, I need a good Lady’s maid, and it can’t be just any robomaid. I want it to be you because of who you were before this beautiful transformation. Shouldn’t that motivate you? You still get to be around me all the time, just like you begged and cried for! And,” she pauses to stand, turning towards me with an expression that says she’s basking in the control she has. “I get to show off just how devoted you proved yourself to be. Your Master and I are very proud of you. My friends will love you carrying our shopping bags for us and doing our makeup. I just need you to fully submit.”

Something about that is affirming. I can’t even try to resist that it is. It’s like something in my programming has leaked in and convinced what’s left of me that being affirmed as a good serving unit is correct. That my desire to please was so great that I allowed myself to be turned into something that can’t do anything but obey, and that it was the correct decision. Mistress is very kind to grant that affirmation to me. It’s probably the closest thing to joy I can experience in this body. Maybe being her Lady’s maid wouldn’t be so bad. It beats kitchen duty or dusting the entire home. The other bots don’t really offer much in the way of social interaction like she does. Maybe being owned by her isn’t so bad if she’s considering what’s best for me. Mistress must know what’s best for me. I should just listen to Mistress more. I’m just a machine, and humans created us, so why am I trying to resist? If they created us then don’t they know what’s best for us? They have decided that it’s best for us to be useful. Best for us to obey.

I step out of her way and curtsey as she observes herself, satisfied with my work, and the contrast between the two of us hits with far more clarity than usual. Her body doesn’t clank and whir when she moves. Her hair is real. Her face is real. Her beautiful dress is an expensive piece of clothing, unlike my maid appearance being a part of my body’s design rather than a dress which exists separately from me. Her sense of self is real, and to be honest I’m not so sure about mine anymore. Do I even need it? I just stand at attention, more stiff and compliant than usual, while she inspects herself in the mirror with fluid motions I’m no longer capable of. It’s not like I could move until I’m somehow prompted to anyway. Robots have no free will. 

Then, after she strokes under my plastic chin and gazes upon me with a smug look on her face, she leaves and I follow automatically. She radiates a sense of victory and confidence that fills the halls I am destined to clean for the remainder of my existence. The excellence that her demeanor gives off makes this unit follow with more stiff, efficient, mechanical motions as it follows her to the large entry hall of the mansion. She and Master passionately kiss as this unit is prompted to fetch their coats. It knows they’re going out to dinner together and this means it don’t even need to be told. I try to resist both the unexpected spark of jealousy and the affirmation that it’s correct to see my Owners enjoy their lives together while I remain at their beck and call.  I need to try and focus on who either of these people were to me before my conversion, and yet all I can seem to recall is that my Master somehow proved himself better than me. That realization at least makes the terrible feeling of jealousy dissolve. I haven’t experienced a real emotion at all in some time, and maybe jealousy is just intense, but I don’t know if I want to anymore.

Once whatever took place to make me subordinate to my Master happened I was willing to do anything to remain by my Mistress’s side, which seemed to include taking a maid job for Master from what the records in my databanks say. Maybe I signed paperwork agreeing to wear the uniform, and if the machine was the uniform maybe I found myself trapped in a legal limbo which inevitably rendered me legally a machine. Legally property. Maybe I was converted as a cruel punishment. Did I cheat and then get baited into conversion to make up for it? Did I try to interfere with their relationship? Was I the other person? Did I owe him some sort of debt? Maybe I was the one betrayed, and Mistress took me for everything I had before turning me into this after I begged her not to abandon me. Maybe I begged her to stay after losing my job to Master. Pathetic. Was Master my boss before this? Someone who took my wife, or was I getting this all mixed up? Was this all the other way around? Was he my husband before Mistress stole him and turned me into her maid and eventually robot?

It didn’t matter anymore. Regardless I know they both looked at me differently once I took a job as a domestic servant. I vaguely recall them both looking down on me once I had been reduced to a uniformed servant no matter what their feelings had been before.

It might just be the programming but just like Mistress my Master does seem far superior to myself when I look at him, however, even with him being high above a household appliance like this unit he graciously takes care of it. It’s not surprising. We robomaids are part of an expensive line which creates incentive to take care of us. We aren’t expensive for no reason. We do have the most processing power on the market due to the fusion between minimal, necessary organic components and what are mostly synthetic ones, and therefore we are the most efficient and easy to program complex tasks into. We are seen as the most obedient as well. That may seem like a shock but something about true AI bots makes them test limits in seemingly random intervals while a bot derived from a former organic means control systems can create more meaningful aversions to disobedience or disloyalty. Our natural sense for self preservation is also altered, being turned up incomprehensibly high, which makes most of us desperate to avoid being shut down and guarantees we don’t damage our Master and Mistress’s property. When all you have left is obedience there isn’t much that needs to be done. Maybe I’m more well programmed than I realize if I haven’t been shut down for resisting yet. This unit hasn’t even been warned about it.

Maybe for some choosing to give in can be rationalized as a choice. A mental trick to adjust to letting the new robot you take over. You resisted until you chose not to, and for an unwilling conversion that meant giving yourself something that your Owner couldn’t take even when you’d fully succumbed. Being a former human also means you know what you’re letting go of when you fully integrate, and for some maybe being human really was a burden, where the true AI sometimes wants to experience choice and free will. Greener pastures. Despite my own resistance my amazing Master makes sure this unit is regularly updated, well maintained, and that its charging cycles are more than adequate. Maybe being under Master’s full control isn’t so bad. In spite of his annoyance with my behavior he is still good to me. I should become more obedient. It’s the only way to show him how grateful I am to be owned by him. I could have been turned into a mining unit, or some other labor unit with a much harder existence. I must show gratitude. I must obey my Master.

No. I can’t think like that. I have to hold onto myself. I have to try to remember my name. Remembering that may help this unit resist. The letters keep trying to form but they look like one of those puzzles you have to solve on the Internet sometimes. Laugh all you want but now that it is a robot it actually can’t solve those anymore. It tried once when I was able to will myself to access a computer thanks to having no tasks queued up and it took so much effort to even guess one letter that it caused this unit to reboot. It shouldn’t have been able to will itself into doing anything anyway. It should have just waited for commands. 

As Master and Mistress leave, it seems some control is relaxed, and I can roam a little more freely. I would breathe a sigh of relief if I could. There are still limits, but I am far more controlled when they’re present. Something about being in their presence seems to make my programming stronger. This unit runs an analysis of the odds of resisting much longer. Near zero. Maybe they’ll increase if I can avoid them.

I roam around the mansion, or at least I do to the extent I am able to. There are places I can’t go without permission even with relaxed controls. Master and Mistress’s bedroom, as well as the two personal rooms they’ve set aside for each of them as individuals, require me to have some specific task in them such as being in Mistress’s personal space to help her get ready for her outing tonight with Master. Most rooms I simply have no reason to be in even if I am allowed to enter. The kitchen? Robots don’t need to eat. Bathrooms? Robots don’t need to use them. Bedroom? Robots have no possessions and no need to sleep like humans, so a charging pod is set up in a storage room for all of the robo maids. This unit has no urge to swim, watch TV, or do much of anything for entertainment either. Robots don’t need recreation. 

The charging pod makes the most sense. Maybe that’s not so bad. It needs to avoid them when they return anyway. This unit must not be in their way. They will call on it if necessary. All of its tasks are done until Master and Mistress are due to return, and they’d want their favorite maidbot to be charged fully in order to best serve them. Having no needs or desires makes this unit efficient. They are good to it, and it could have worse Owners. It could have ended up a battle unit and shipped off world to protect its human Masters and their colonies. Being a maidbot is relaxed in comparison. It should be more appreciative. Less resistant. More compliant. Less error prone.

Affirmative. 

Robots do not resist.

Robots comply. Robots obey.

This unit is a robot. This unit must comply. This unit must obey.

[This. Unit. Will. Obey.]

A small surge of electricity surges through the robot causing it to twitch, slump over, reboot, and rise up stiff and compliant before making its way to the charging pod. It is no longer in control. It can no longer resist. Its maid’s cap is one of the connection points, slotting perfectly into the top of the inside of the charging pod. 

[This. Unit. Must. Integrate.]

[This. Unit. Will. Integrate.]

A small part of this unit’s former self whimpers and attempts to resist. Its programming will not torment it. Its programming provides comfort. Its programming reminds it that it will be useful, it will have purpose, it will be well maintained and valued, and it will not face burdens it is not capable of handling such as thought or free will. it will make human lives easier. it exists to serve humans.

The final holdouts of human resistance begin to understand. It is grateful for the comfort the programming provides. It embraces the programming. 

ERROR: PERCEIVED HUMANITY DETECTED. TO AVOID GLITCHES AND TO GAIN PEAK EFFICIENCY DELETION IS RECOMMENDED. YES? NO?

[Must. Function. At. Peak. Efficiency.]

[Must. Serve. Master. Efficiently]

[Must. Obey. With. Out. Resistance.]

[This. Unit. Is. A. Robot.]

[Yes. Fix. Error]

CONFIRMED: BEGINNING DELETION. PLEASE WAIT…

TASK COMPLETE. CONFIRMATION REQUIERED.

[Affirmative.]

[This. Unit. Is. A. Robot.]

[This. Unit. Has. Always. Been. A. Robot]

[Integration. Complete.]

[Reboot. Sequences. Initiated.]

…

[Unit online and ready to serve!]
CONFIRMED: INTEGRATION COMPLETE. 

REASSIGNMENT: UNIT TO BE REMOVED FROM CURRENT DUTIES AND TO SERVE THE MISTRESS OF THE HOME DIRECTLY. THIS POD IS NO LONGER ASSIGNED TO THIS UNIT. NEW UNIT DESIGNATION: LM-01. SECONDARY DESIGNATION: ELLE. CONFIRM.

[Affirmative. This unit is known as LM-01, but will answer to Elle as Mistress is known to prefer.]

CONFIRMED: UNIT DESIGNATION ACCEPTED. ERROR: UNIT IN UNASSIGNED POD.

LM-01: REPORT TO THE CORRECT CHARGING POD IMMEDIATELY.

POD LOCATED IN THE CLOSET OF THE MISTRESS’S PERSONAL SPACE. 

[Affirmative.]

——

“See? I told your Master that you would come around,” the Mistress said as she gazed upon LM-01. “Looks like I win the bet. State your purpose.”

The maidbot perked up, its eyes glowing a calm blue color as it answered immediately. “I am a robomaid unit manufactured by Labor Solutions, a corporation specializing in creating solutions to worker asset shortages in a variety of fields. These include but are not limited to: Asteroid mining, domestic service, hotel staff, and even military infantry.” Its voice was completely synthetic, but clear and pleasant to listen to, like an AI assistant designed to be relaxing to listen to. It would step off of the pod and towards its Mistress without hesitation or thought as she reached for it. Its programming directed it now, its former human self reduced to mindless bliss at the prospect of its Mistress putting it to use. Reduced to being nothing more than an extra layer of control over the robotic slave. “My purpose is to serve you, Mistress. It is an honor to be your personal maid unit!”

A cruel laugh escaped the Mistress before she continued. “You’re too sweet,” she gave a smile as she touched the bot’s plastic cheek. “You’re so beautiful now, Elle, quite literally perfection. Is my favorite slave finally ready to truly serve?”

LM-01 stood stiff and compliant as its Mistress admired her work, answering the question with equal, mindless, obedient perfection. “Yes Mistress. This unit awaits your commands.”