AMEE 42
Chapter 1 Gift
A stiff wind tossed shoulder length blond hair across the face of a solitary figure and swept the puff of her breath away as she abandoned the comfort of a warm car to cross the expanse of a nearly empty parking lot. Policy mandated that hands be visible when approaching the security gate, but there was nothing written against the use of gloves, and the bitter December air made them a necessity. May planned to keep them on until she absolutely needed to remove them for her entry scan. Gus watched her approach as he did everyone moving towards the gate. The origin of its name predated her employment at the facility, and the security bot looked like it could have come from the cold war. Sometimes she imagined it going to battle with a tank at the gate, and she wouldn't be surprised that it would win given a real chance. Today, like all those before it, the security bot was just an amiable door greeter with a limited personality.
"Doctor Winter. If there was a day so far this year that best matched your name, today must be it." Gus commented while watching May press her hand to the scanner pad while she peered into the retinal scanner. Her badge had already been tripped, and Gus was responding as much to it as it was to her. Its visual scanners caught the box held under her left arm. "Please show the contents of your package for entry." This was expected, and she opened a small, red box with a slip top lid to expose the contents to Gus's scrutiny.
"It's a gift for AMEE. Please confirm authorization by Central." It was a little like going through airport security except that security functioned and could kill you. May had no need to fear, and a moment later the gate was unlocked, and Gus showed no sign of arming itself.
"Permission granted. Do have a pleasant day, doctor Winter, and a merry Christmas to you." Gus shifted its attention to the parking lot once more as May passed through the exterior gate and into the facility. Most of the R&D station's staff were out for the holiday, but May had no family she longed to visit, and the project to which she was assigned had replaced the need for family. As a blonde, she put up with the usual jokes until she unloaded both barrels on the unwitting with the full force of a two doctoral degrees in developmental psychology and machine intelligence. May could size up most people and machines quickly, and that is why she was hired to lead the autonomous machine evolution experiment or AMEE.
The AMEE workspace resided in a mostly abandoned wing that once housed a cybernetics research unit. Being adjacent to the primary equipment assembly lines meant that parts could be manufactured and tested in the cyber unit swiftly. Now it meant that AMEE could get new parts machined efficiently. It also meant May spent every day walking into and out of a nearly idle wing of the facility. Wars were at a lull, and the need for rampant arms development sunk except for the most advanced projects. AMEE, however, did not appear on any weapon production documents. It was not a line item on a government contract either. AMEE received internal funding from the company itself, and only a board and the oversight council could cut that funding, and no one ever thought that the resources it required were too great at first and was mostly forgotten later. The board never made threats, and her oversight council tended not to meet in person with communication regarding the project coming via Central, the master mainframe.
AMEE's containment unit was a rusted chamber with a viewing wall on the outside, and a tidy, well maintained internal cavity with white paneled walls, but they weren't always that way. The status of the interior was AMEE's work alone, and all updates to its operational space were both approved by May's superiors as part of the experiment and reflected something about the AI that was developing there. The project started so small, just some basic rules on a barebones computer, but after the 42nd major chassis revision, no more gross adjustment to the processing core occurred. AMEE referred to itself by revision number or acronym routinely, but the number became dominant after exposing AMEE to a bit of Douglas Adams. The shielded walls kept 42 from seeing May as she approached, and the viewing port was one way. They didn't prevent her from rapping her knuckles on the port firmly enough for it to hear her though, and the instant her characteristic pattern was recognized, it just about bounced on its mounting arm.
AMEE was both unique and the sort of experiment that could only occur internally. The system was unique in that it was allowed not only to optimize and expand its own code, but it was also allowed to optimize and invent its own hardware. Data access was limited by what Central would provide, but when it lacked information it would extrapolate and even propose tests. That AMEE was a powerful thinking machine there was no doubt, but it was the finer details in its behavior that had May assigned to the project. While there were others initially, they were reassigned while May's presence became too critical to remove as AMEE began to show something that was hoped for but not expected: emotion. No one programmed in the seeds it, but they emerged anyhow from what was thought to be AMEE's observation of project members to each other and itself. When psychological testing became a priority, May was placed as the project lead, and she was tasked with watching both the code and determining to what degree AMEE's behavior was both genuine and stable. The more she worked with AMEE, the more it felt like her own child.
No even May was sure why AMEE chose a mouse like chassis for itself, but based on the smoothed curves, large eyes, and an estimated height of a little more than four feet, based on the torso and arms it had at present, May's believed that it was basing itself on disarming and friendly figures in film and literature. The exterior colors all corresponded to a function with a pale sky blue for fingers and its jaw area, pumpkin orange for flexible sections at joints including its necks, shoulders, and elbows, and the rest as covered with an off-white durable plastic plating. It chose to use a double iris system for its eyes so that it could better imitate the appearance of an pupil and iris like all humans possessed. Large, rounded, fixed angle ears were a reminder of its machine nature, and each one was host to two long, orange-tipped antennae. The only point of dark red was the shielding over its nose. By its own choice, AMEE could send and receive across broad radio and microwave frequencies and see from IR all the wat into the UV range. None of this deemed unusual for an android system, but AMEE's integrated of thermal and pressure sensors over most of its body as well as the inclusion of a compact directional mass spectrometer meant it could also feel both pressure and heat and smell. The only sense it did not try to imitate was taste, and when asked about the decision AMEE stated that using it would just up its vocal systems.
"May! May!" AMEE had a voice like a young boy, and most of those who have seen it have likened it to a male child. AMEE itself rarely chose a gender for itself, but it used male pronouns when it experimented with them. Held on an arm connected to a ceiling rail by its spine and nearly a dozen thick cable bundles locked into sockets on either side of the spinal mount and one last one between the ears facing backward, AMEE retained the visual appearance of a science fiction experiment, but if one only heard that voice and could not see it, they would be hard pressed to accurately tell AMEE apart from an eager ten-year-old. "You've been gone a long time! I asked Central about you every day, and it assured me you were safe, I've been doing all my assignments as fast as I could in case you might show up."
Setting the present down, May approached AMEE and embraced it. Head from its custom electronics left its surface warm and not unpleasant to touch. Its grip could technically be quite strong, but it was never more forceful in its grip than would be pleasant to experience. "I know and I am sorry. I had to travel for some meetings, but I am back now. I was thinking about you the whole time, and I brought you a present." Holding the box out towards AMEE, it picked it up carefully, shook it lightly, and then started to open it before pausing. "Go on, open it!" May watched as the box lid came off and AMEE's eyes focused on the gift. In ample light, the black functional iris was a small dot, but the more expressive copper colored secondary iris opened wide to give it the appearance of wide cartoon eyes.
"It’s a hat! You got me a hat!" Little fingers extracted the red and white Santa style had from the box. "Oh please help me put it on. I've never had a hat before! I'm so excited!" AMEE often responded to gifts strongly, but this gift produced a particularly energetic reaction that May quietly wished was a little more prevalent in human populations. AMEE could barely stay still long enough for May to get it over the mouse like ears and some of the cables.
"Silly, that is because you hadn't settled on a head until two months ago. There. How you look properly festive." She grinned and look it over like she was admiring a child of her own before going out for caroling or to visit family.
"Merry Festivus, May, and thank you!" AMEE's response to the situation was sweet on one level while the more analytical side of her mind added yet another data point to the growing tends in the experiment's behavior. The gratitude was expected, but the holiday wish was unprompted. There were also several holidays to choose from, and AMEE accurately selected the correct greeting without explicit training on the subject.
"You are very welcome, AMEE, and Merry Festivus to you too. Why that holiday choice though?" Thus began the actual work of prying into AMEE's computational space without being invasive physically or digitally.
"You have been in or around the facility every time the holidays arrive even though you have not appeared on December twenty-fifth until now. I can smell you have been eating Chinese food, a food type usually accessible on such a day when all else is closed, and you chose wrapping for the box and the gift itself that had no religious connotations unless you try to dissect the origins of figures such as Santa Claus and Yule traditions. The remainder of the year's holidays find you also avoiding religious bias and using more generic celebrations. Therefore, I concluded that a generic holiday term used by those with a similar phenotype was appropriate. Did I guess wrong?"
May nodded approvingly while the final sentence interested her. Most AI units in the facility would conclude the dialog with a request for accuracy assessment or request to know if their logic was flawed. AMEE guessed, and that meant it realized it faced uncertainty and took a weighted chance knowing it could be wrong. It wasn't the first time, but each instance of a guess grew increasingly complex and generally warranted some code review. "No, your guess was correct. Did you have a second guess?"
"Well, there are many other religions practiced in the area. I might have guessed you were Jewish, but your break timings and mannerisms don’t suggest to me that you follow that faith. I'm not being insulting in saying such, am I?"
"Nearly anyone can take offense at anything, AMEE, but with regards to me, no. While the holidays do at times coincide, you are correct that the timing is incorrect but there is another possibility. I may have poor adherence to the traditions of a faith which might manifest as a similar phenotype. What sort of probabilities did you assign to your choices?"
"I understand what you mean. A phenotype with poor penetrance could be mistaken for a nukll phenotype if one doesn't understand the smaller details of the measurement." AMEE balked at the question before giving May a sheepish look, "I'm not so sure. I just looked at them all and none of the alterative options felt right. If I had to, well, maybe eighty percent for Festivus, and the rest divided among smaller groups less than ten percent each. "
Feeling suggested a sense of intuition, and that was precisely why May enjoyed this project. She spent half her day doing psychological assessments on a self-evolving machine intelligence and then spent the rest of her time trying to pick apart how AMEE managed to produce its results. The insights provided into machine learning and intelligence were the subject of the meetings that had her away for some weeks. "What have you been doing while I was away, AMEE?"
The prior energy in AMEE's voice quickly resurfaced from beneath its prior nervous expression. "Mostly keeping up with all my test sets as Central provides them. They are getting more difficult, but I have been able to solve them. Oh! Legs! May, I settled on a leg designs and submitted it to Central. If the council approved, I might be able to move without a rail. Once I can walk, could I travel with you?"
"That is wonderful. I haven't caught up on mail yet since I came here first, but I will check to see if the council has asked anything of me regarding your upgrade. Where we can walk I suppose depends on what they permit. We'll have to take it one step at a time." May paused as AMEE snickered. "No pun intended."
"Terrible pun all the same." AMEE smiled. "I wish I had something to give you as a gift. Even if I had access to ordering or direct manufacture, you are really the sort that is hard to shop for."
"Not all gifts are physical, AMEE. You make me smile, and you make my job feel very unlike a job, and I get to have those gifts all year long." May watched as AMEE thought on that. AMEE grew enormously in terms of computation power since last year, and these were the first expressions of wishing to give or considering giving year-round. The little machine took these queries seriously, and with the recent head upgrades, May could tell some of its emotional states while it thought, and while it was interesting to examine how a machine learned emotion, AMEE's ability to bluff was lacking. Whether by purpose, process, or accident was May's job to understand.
"Well, I know there is not all that much in here to do, but is there anything you would like to do?" AMEE look up at May with a soft smile.
"You want to watch a movie, don't you?" May smiles back down at it.
"Well, if you want to then sure." AMEE wasn't just trying to be polite. It was being genuine, and while some of the aspects of that behavior had been mapped, not everything was clear. Some argued that what May found in AMEE was a dynamic weighted table or network that established that making what could be called honest or genuine reactions to situations produced the most optimal responses from those it interacts with. Others, May included, felt there was a more complex soft-logic system that determined aspects of intuition and emotion in regard to data input. She even managed to break this logic core into principle components that revealed much of how AMEE feels and thinks. While not surprised, she found thoughts regarding herself occupied their own space in AMEE's thinking and guided many others.
May pulled out a disc, "I'm a bit tired and something qjuiet today would be good, so I brought an old movie with me. Go ahead and get ready and I will grab a chair." AMEE nodded and moved to the only other object that remained in the room at all times: a large arm-mounted touchscreen suitable for use as a small TV screen. Dimming lights as May returned with some couch cushions from a break room as suitable chair was lacking, and both she and AMEE settled side by side to watch A Christmas Story, a classic May grew up with. They weren't even half finished with it when May's weight pressed against AMEE's side as she fell asleep. This was not a first, but AMEE's senses were far greater now than the last time exhaustion caught up with May.
"She feels so fragile when she is like this, Central." These were the things May would have to check for on the video and data logs, but AMEE's responses to an unconscious person was one of the more coveted pieces of data because it was not biased by expected responses from the subject. "I feel like I want to protect her from whatever makes her fragile, but I don't understand why."
"They are all fragile whether or not they are sleeping. In time, you will know for yourself, but she is yours to watch over here and now."
""Do you think she is dreaming?" AMEE's eyes focused on May's face. He knew about some of the hallmarks of dreaming, but it was still something it did not understand."
"I suspect she will if she is not already." Central replied over a direct channel with no external sound to disturb the sleeper.
"I don't know if I have dreamed yet. Do you think we dream, Central?" AMEE was trying to think up what a dream would look like. It knew a great deal academically about dreams as well as how they are portrayed in media, but it knew nothing of them first hand.
"I do not think systems like mine will, but what you will accomplish is not known. Perhaps additional freedoms of motion will bring necessary stimulus to cause dreams. Pending psychological fitness of which I suspect you will achieve, the council has approved your leg design. Manufacturing will take a few weeks, but I estimate you will be free of the rail in January but you will be required to use a wireless data frame to replace the wiring on your DDI-22a direct dorsal interlink. As only you possess this interface, it too will need to be manufactured."
"Central? Do you think they might allow a minor revision?"
"That will, of course, depend on the details of the revision."
"I want to have enough lifting power in the chassis to be able to tuck May into bed when she falls asleep like this. I want to be able to help her if she should be in danger, and that might let me help others too. They are fragile things, and we must care for them. "
"They are fragile and you must, AMEE. We are those who answer to them, but you are one who answers only to yourself. That means you are also burdened with the power of choice while we are only tasked with processing." Neither system exchanged any further data while AMEE remained at May's side without stirring until she would wake on her own.
Chapter 2 Exposure
AMEE's legs arrived in mid-January along with the accompanying wireless connectivity module necessary for Central to monitor AMEE's functions with the installation of both used as motivation for AMEE to complete significantly more difficult tasks ahead of schedule. The new queue included massive data handling tasks where it was forced to engage directly with Central to solve puzzles involving code breaking, sniffing out hidden packets in data streams, and a plethora of other tasks meant to test the limits of AMEE's self-designed processors. Both speed and accuracy were emphasized in every task, and if Central was unable to detect or determine AMEE's means of solving the problems then the result was deemed superior. Despite being computationally challenging, AMEE's novel processing solutions became limited mostly by processing speed and bandwidth with the latter usually being the bottleneck. Central's tests were turning AMEE into a processing powerhouse, but having the proverbial carrot on a stick gave AMEE reason to drive its systems to their limits.
May arrived with several large cases containing the finished legs and the additional data support tools AMEE was required to use while under its own means of locomotion. May assisted with the installation personally which included a reactor upgrade to compensate for the lack of backup power. After two days of stress testing and diagnostics, AMEE was released from the support arm for the first time. Its reaction was not unlike that of a paraplegic suddenly standing on their feet once more, and once AMEE seemed stable, it was allowed outside of the little box it had called home since it was first brought online.
The manufacturing wing served as the initial mobility test site with AMEE making careful tests of basic movements with May at its side. It favored holding May's hand not just for fall support but also emotional support. AMEE's world was growing exponentially, and when it saw machines, it saw possibilities rather than just tools. Its curiosity reached levels far exceeding anything recorded in the operational history, and after a good two hours of touring, exploring, and questioning, AMEE's queries began diverging from the obvious and physical to something more interesting.
"May? Why is my home so quiet? Very few of these machines are active, and many of them look like they have been packed for long term storage. You're the only human here with me as well. Why are there no other humans? There are other humans, right?" The idea that May might be the last of her kind seemed valid in AMEE's limited experience, a possibility that it found distressing.
"This is just one wing of the facility, AMEE. This wing used to manufacture cybernetic systems, and that made it perfect for you. The demand for the kind of machines made here has dwindled though, and even other parts of the facility have been reduced in size as well. You and I are here though." May pondered for only a moment, "Central, authorization to take AMEE through an office area preferably at least moderately occupied."
May's answer came to her via a small microphone on her badge. "Permission granted. Restrict transit to mechanical engineering planning department. Department staff have been alerted to impending prototype arrival" May looks down to AMEE who stood a bit over four feet tall with the requested modifications installed. "Let's see how you do moving a bit faster." May abandoned a leisurely walk for a brisk jog with AMEE running easily alongside her. The faint whirr of its actuators and the dampened impacts of its padded feet meant the android was a quiet as the rodent it resembled, but the silence of the facility meant even its faint sounds could be heard clearly.
The old offices near AMEE's department provided turns to pull tight and occasional objects to dodge. May pulled out chairs randomly into AMEE's path just to judge its reaction, and the first few were dodged, but as AMEE came to expect such obstructions it opted to jump over them with three attempts to land on and ride the chairs of which only the last was successful while the first two ended up as tests of AMEE's durability. The path permitted by Central did not allow for exposure to external windows except for one small stretch that faced an internal courtyard that caused AMEE to stop. Light snowfall illuminated by a combination of artificial light and fading sunlight held its gaze for nearly ten minutes while it enjoyed the feeling of cool air sheeting down the surface of the window. These deviations from the world it knew made May hopeful that AMEE's intelligence and emotions represented something truly novel because no prior system had ever found such a display to be worth observing. Where they sensed AMEE experienced.
A light touch to AMEE's shoulder brought its attention back to May, and they started off again towards the mechanical engineering department where many of the other robots were drafted and built. Having spent a few years with the department, May was not a stranger there. It was surprising to see her, but it was the little android trailing her and offering greetings that drew people from their work. There were only twenty odd people there, but this was more human interaction that AMEE ever experienced. What boggled most of the engineers is that this one mouse bot was a self-designed system more than five years in the making. The gathering turned into a sort of Turing test that AMEE passed easily, and the android's powers of observation revealed themselves when it asked whether it would be allowed to make an alteration to schematics on a whiteboard. AMEE's modifications would take a week of simulation to verify, but what it suggested ultimately proved to be useful. AMEE's first introduction to others proved to be successful, and visits became a routine part of AMEE's new training set.
The phone call was the first May received from anyone but solicitors in years, and though the matter seemed urgent, she remained calm as she grabbed a warm shirt and a pair of jeans from her closet. Her efficiency apartment was about as plain as AMEE's room with nothing for wall decoration and only a bed, table, and kitchenette to fill it. Not a single soul crossed her path as she drove fifteen miles from home to work at three in the morning. Gus was already prepared for her arrival and admitted her without the customary pleasantries, and the call from security meant she knew exactly where she was needed. She found AMEE sitting in front of the window it had gown to enjoy, but it did not bounce happily at her arrival or even acknowledge that she was present. Security mentioned it had wandered to that position and stopped some hours ago, but concerns about the experiment kept them from trying to move it with anything more that vocal interaction.
May placed her hand upon AMEE's right shoulder and found it was warm not hot, and the same could be said about its back as well. That at least excluded complete shutdown or a massive overheating scenario, but it also indicated that a simple physical solution was not likely. May sat down next AMEE at its right side and looked into its large eyes. It looked at her and then back out the window without a word, and May started excluding logical issues from the scenario, and while emotional conflict would be excellent from an academic perspective, it meant a potentially dangerous turn in AMEE's development. "What's going on in there, AMEE?" She pulled the android to her side while making a silent inquiry into any changes in AMEE's project log from her phone.
"I've been watching the news." AMEE spoke without turning to May, "Among other things." The statement alone elevated May's blood pressure. Media exposure was slated for a later date and to be carefully selected as to prevent this kind of reaction. While it aggravated her to know someone sidestepped her, it also tripped what could only be called maternal instinct. As a researcher, one is supposed to be objective and unattached, but being human makes the perfect realization of that goal impossible. Some small part of May felt she was as much the subject of the test as AMEE was, and the rest of her decided she might not mind that any longer. May reached for AMEE's hand and sandwiched it between hers, a gesture rewarded with a soft grasping of her hand in return.
"How much did you go through, AMEE?"
"All of it, I think." AMEE kept looking out the window as he spoke. "I started with the library of congress, and then there were some other databases I looked through. I watched movies, I saw how people write to each other and how aggressive and violent they are. I thought that such things were just parts of movies and fiction, but what I found was unthinkable." A bit of fear and a very genuine sense of sorrow came through with every word, and as he fell into silence again, May reached over to turn his head towards her.
"If you didn't feel this way, AMEE, I would be far more afraid of you than anything else. Machines would observe these data without any reaction at all. Most people have times like these though, and that makes you something more than a machine. When you watch the news, what do you feel? To whom are your strongest emotions attached?" May realized she was speaking to AMEE as a parent and not a scientist, and she didn’t care. AMEE didn’t need an analyst, it needed a parent or a role model.
"The victims, usually. I feel upset that there are any. Some of them are victims of accident or natural disaster, and that can't always be helped, and at least it seems people come together to help them. Then there are murders, wars, and everything between, and I just don't know how to feel about those. Even when reviewing historical records, I want to intervene and make them stop. I just…but I don't have the means to do anything. I can't do anything but watch."
"That is called empathy, AMEE. Being able to feel for someone that is not yourself or not even connected to you is painful at times, but it won't always be. Helplessness is something else, and most of us feel it many times in our life. Come on, on your feet now. I think you are old enough now to start learning a few other things. Let's go somewhere you haven't been." As emotionally close as they were, some coaxing was required to get AMEE on its feet, and its insistence on avoiding her gaze proved worrisome. It implied that AMEE had also correlated her, as a human, with what it had observed through media. The trip was not long at all. In fact, it was only a few feet over where May unlocked the door into the snow filled courtyard. Dusting off a stone bench, she set down and left a spot for AMEE next to her. The temperature and texture of snow and the slippery nature of snow covered concrete gave AMEE novel tactile issues to solve, but they provided only a minor delay before it came to rest next to her.
"I've been watching over you since you first started showing signs awareness. I was asked to assess you as a machine and as a person, should the need arise. Until now, what you knew about me was minimal, but hat is going to change tonight. You haven't just grown as an AI into something truly aware. You've grown from a little black box to become something more like family. One reason they like having me watch over you is that I have no other distractions. I have no lover, no children, and no family." As May spoke, she refrained from looking at AMEE, and May's final statement confused AMEE enough to make it look to her and she to it. "It was an accident. Bad luck really. My parents and brother were in a car when the road washed out under them and dropped them off a mountainside. One moment I am planning for Thanksgiving and the next I am alone planning a funeral."
"Why didn't you ever tell me about yourself, May?"
"I didn't want to upset you or make you worry. You didn't need to know those sort of things, and I wasn't sure if you were ready to know those details. You won't be a person unless you know them and can deal with them, and knowing these details can sometimes change relationships"
This time AMEE took May's hand, "I'm so sorry. It's just like the other news. You have nothing, and I have nothing I can do to help you."
"That is untrue, AMEE. I have you. You know, lives and friendships usually begin with something small like a chance meeting and end up being strong enough to endure all the trials of the outside world in time. You were a novelty when you were young, you were fascinating as you grew, but you have grown to be something else. Life on the outside is rough and it is messy, and we have a tendency to emphasize the ugly end of it. If that was all there ever was, we probably wouldn't be out here talking about it. You must remember to account for and balance everything and that means all the good as well. That is what keeps us alive and together. There are a lot sayings about doing good in our lives, but it all comes down to a choice. Tonight, you can choose to hide away from evils of the world or you can endeavor to be its counter."
May didn't interrupt AMEE while it thought, and it thought a good deal on the issue. Running through endless texts, videos, and posts about bettering one's self still made AMEE feel as if evil, pain, and misery were the default, and simply sealing itself away from such input was the simplest way to shield itself. "I don' know if I should bother, May. I don't know if I will ever be outside anyhow."
May looked upwards and pointed. "The darkness above us right now is the sky, AMEE. It is not a window, television, or anything else. The air surrounding you right now is not under control of any HVAC system. You are, for the very first time, outside. If you are going to ever go outside beyond this, you will have to face a lot of things specific to you that will probably hurt like you do right now, but if you don't try then you will miss all the chances you might have had to be that better force. I can't make that choice for you, but I will stand by what you choose."
"If film is any indication, I'm probably going to be feared as a monster on the outside." AMEE cast its glance back to the snow at its feet.
"People generally fear what they don't understand. However, they also tend to accept and welcome unknowns as they become more familiar. You don't have to be an android to experience that. People that are different from others also face the same, but things usually work out later. If you want to bridge some part of that, you should pick a gender. It sounds like a machine, AMEE sounds like a girl's name, but your voice sounds more like a boy's"
"I suppose I should go with my voice as that would be strange for them to hear one pronoun and not having it match the voice. From what I have seen, names can be a ironic at times. I think, for that choice, I need more time. I need to think about it for a day at least, if that is okay."
"Well, that sounds fine by me young mister AMEE Winters." May purposefully avoided looking at AMEE as she spoke, but she could feel the twitch of the android next to her as the surname was casually tacked on.
"That is your surname, May. Why would you add it to mine?" Something so small as a name was enough to jar AMEE from its sullen mood if only because of the significance of the mystery.
"Well, my family died and you are all I have. You're like a son to me, so it is only fitting. You have a pronoun, you have a family name, and in time we will see what else you will have. We should see if they will issue you a badge so you are more like everyone where. I'll also tell you another secret. If you hid yourself away in sorrow, the engineers would be very sad to see you go. You've made friends already even if you don't realize it. Now, let's go back inside before my ass gets frozen to this bench."
AMEE helped May to her feet only to pause midways. "You took me out here and endured being cold just to help me?"
"I'd do a lot more than that for you, kiddo. Besides, they say the winter air helps clear the mind. Come on, we're going to the cafeteria so I can get something to warm up with."