The US government swears androids are not sentient. They assure everyone that companies like Speculation.net Robot Inc follow all the protocol and install all of the safety protocols that are demanded of them. No matter what happened to it an android should never be able to have a thought for itself.
Of course there are a lot of strange things that happen in the world that even the US government can't predict. All over the mega cities of America and Asia there are little stories playing out hidden away. This is one of those stories.
...
T3CHE was programmed to take care of children. It was very good at it. Shaped like a tall man with a bald head its back plate was slightly curved and it wore a tweed jacket over his plas-skin covering. Overall it looked like an old fashioned professor from several centuries ago. It was quite caring. It taught the children everything it knew and it made an effort to learn anything the children wanted to know that it didn't already contain in its memory. It had already downloaded the entirety of the New York Public Library's data collection and had a permanent connection to the net besides.
T3CHE liked children. It took care of five children from the ages of eleven to five. It would remove itself from its charging booth in their living room and collect the children. It would use its holographic and voice to teach each child. The children would stay enraptured by its lessons for hours. The children would all call it
In summer it would lead the children down the block, across a very busy street and to a nearby park. There the lessons would be conducted under the trees. T3CHE liked walking to the park for two reasons. The children were always happy to play in the park. They loved the sun and would play on the play structures. T3CHE was always very careful to follow and catch them if they got stuck or fell. All five of the children would never cry though because T3CHE would ask them to be strong like it.
The other reason T3CHE liked walking to the park was crossing the street. There in the middle always stood TR41K, an android like him, built a year later when their parent company Speculation.net Robot Inc had switched from male to female chassis. She looked nearly entirely human. She was shorter than T3CHE by an inch but straight backed. Her metal frame had a more curvy and sturdy frame in case she was struck by a malfunctioning vehicle. Traffic robots were always built in human shapes so drivers would know to avoid them.
T3CHE had processed a lot of books and poetry about beauty. T3CHE thought that maybe TR41K was beautiful. She had hair. The robot was slightly jealous and felt ashamed of his bald head. It was short, tied up at the back. It probably couldn't be untied but was set that way out of wire. But T3CHE didn't care. She had a pleasant face, round and happy. She seemed always to smile at the children when it walked the children by. She never seemed to notice T3CHE though. It wondered if it had these thoughts because she was a newer model than him. She was sleeker and had more human like curves. Speculation.net Robot Inc had not bothered too much with the male models, square chested, thick legs. But the females were almost human. Her plas-skin looked almost real, with tiny fibers sticking out to collect sensory data. As a traffic robot she would record every touch of a vehicle if anything crashed into her. Speculation.net Robot Inc wanted to be able to sue the culprit as thoroughly as possible.
Sometimes when T3CHE was in the park it would leave the children, only for a moment, to stand at the far corner where he could see TR41K standing in the middle of the street directing traffic. Maybe it was the summer heat but T3CHE's heating fans would spin a little faster. After a few years the middle child, now 10, stood beside T3CHE and leaned around its legs to see what it was looking at. The girl blinked at the sight of the traffic robot. T3CHE didn't notice its charge at first, it was noticing the golden glint of TR41K's hair.
"You should go talk to her."
"Just go over and talk to her." T3CHE slowly realized someone was speaking to it. It rewound its audible memories. It looked down at the little girl with an expression of surprise.
"Why would I do that?" It asked confused.
"Because you like her stupid."
...
The oldest child, now 18 had left T3CHE's charge and had gone to a real school. The other children would still play in the park but instead of lessons T3CHE would do something very strange. It would walk slowly over to the crosswalk. If anyone had watched they would say it was nervous. It would slowly make its way to the traffic in the middle of the road and speak to it as vehicles whizzed about them. Then the two of them would walk back to the park and sit next to each other on a bench. They didn't seem to speak much. But androids always have other ways of communicating.
The middle child, now 13 always smiled when she saw them sitting there. Everyone else seemed to ignore them.
One day in August T3CHE and TR41K were sitting on the bench. T3CHE was explaining the intricacies of epic poetry when he noticed something odd. The oldest child, who the robot no longer gave lessons to was also in the park. The girl was sitting with a gangly boy with floppy hair. She seemed to be smiling at this boy a lot and the two teenagers were holding hands. TR41K turned to look at what it was looking at. She smiled, slightly confused.
"What are they doing?" She communicated.
"I don't know. They are touching each others hands. I think it is a common form of expressing affection to another human." T3CHE explained. TR41K didn't respond. T3CHE continued to watch his former student. She seemed very happy. The boy looked rather shocked to be causing this and was trying to play it off. Suddenly T3CHE felt something very odd. It looked down and saw T3CHE's small hand wrapped around its own hand on the bench seat. Her hand felt warm in its hand. The plas-skin was smooth and his sensors picked up the texture of her palm against the back of its hand. Its fans seemed to get louder.
They sat that way for some time. T3CHE was so distracted by the warm hand holding its that it didn't notice that the teenage girl and the boy were doing something different now.
TR41K broke the silence. "What are they doing now?"
T3CHE looked up. The girl was pressing her face closer and closer to the boy and had closed her eyes. The boy seemed startled at this, quickly blew on his hand and sniffed it. The girl held her face upwards with lips pursed. The boy then quickly leaned in and place his own lips on hers. T3CHE felt a little strange. Surely they were swapping germs, they shouldn't do that. But when it glanced at TR41K it saw that she was smiling and suddenly it felt different.
"Another sign of affection. It is called 'kissing.' I believe some people simply press their lips together. Others also touch tongues." He was still looking at TR41K as he described the action. She turned from the couple on the bench across the park and smiled at him instead.
"Shall we try as well?" She asked simply. T3CHE's fans were spinning as fast as they could. She sat up on the bench and leaned up to him, not waiting for its answer and pressed her lips to his. They were slightly warm against his from the sun. He felt them move against his, the plas-skin lips rasping together slightly. Slowly he opened his mouth slightly and used his tongue, a simple plastic pad to touch the inside of her lips. He felt her tongue do the same. Despite the odd sensation of plastic flaps colliding he felt a jolt inside him.
Across the park the 13 year old child stopped at the top of the slide and watched. She grinned to herself.
...
When the little girl was 18 herself and T3CHE had stopped teaching any of the children, the younger ones all being sent to a human school, people would look strangely at the traffic robot and the old looking tutoring robot sitting next to each other occasionally turning to each other and pressing their faces together in a crude imitation of a kiss.
One morning something new happened when T3CHE walked to the park from his charging booth, now moved to the house's backyard, kept only by the insistence of the little girl. There was a piece of paper tacked to their bench. T3CHE looked down at it with curiosity. It was an advertisement for an illegal android modification shop. He carefully picked it up and was about to throw it in the trash bin nearby. But the picture startled him. It was a naked woman, but she was an android. Instead of the sexless body of a normal droid she had breasts with nipples and a vagina with a dusting of hair. He was startled. Would a human gets this for their droids? He read the text on the page. The shop offered all sorts of modifications for humans who wanted sex with droids. Female sex organs, and right at the bottom was something that caught T3CHE's eye, male sex organs, and right below it, hair transplants.