[ WP ] In the year 2100 , robots have overthrown mankind as the dominant force on Earth . Like everyone else , you are treated like a pet by your robot .

`` What did you expect? You know the lifespan on these things is so short...'' 
 
 `` Do NOT call my Bobby a'thing'! He's the cutest man I've ever seen, and I love him.'' 
 
 `` That's not real love, Ionetta. You're fawning, infatuated. You can only experience true love with other people, not this worn-out historical artifact.'' 
 
 `` No. True love is accepting that my Bobby will die, long before I do, and loving him anyway. That's real, that's true. The relationships we have with people are fleeting, empty. They do n't mean as much because there are so many options. Take you for example. We were together all those years ago, and while I know that it changed some part of me, I still feel like things ended up the way they were supposed to. 
 
 But my Bobby, there's nothing else for him but me. And me for him.'' 
 
 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 
 
 I woke up that day feeling... tired. It was well past my fourtieth birthday, and most of those years without seeing a free human. You see, we humans lost the war when I was very young, and since then we'd been kept as pets by our new masters. 
 
 They were n't robots, per-se, they were sentient beings that operated on an entirely different level than us tried-and-true meatbag humans. 
 
 Most of the bots you saw now were multipurpose models, built and grown in vast factories, robots building robots. But in the early days, the first bots were those that were willing to sacrifice everything to become more -- some called them courageous, I just called them insane. They melded their minds with the circuitry, injecting their humanity into the machine strata. 
 
 Of course their efforts were spectacular failures at first, but sooner than seemed plausible, there were bots walking around with the souls of people in them. Once they figured out how to perfect the process, and take advantage of their new hardware, the war was on. 
 
 Humanity had a choice then, stay natural, or join themselves to the botsphere. The naturals were people like my parents; proud, independent. Or maybe foolish. 
 
 Looking back now I see that they made the choice for me, as parents often do even without realizing it. 
 
 They made short work of us, slaughtered or detained most of the adults, and put the rest of us in what might pass for a zoo. To us, it was a prison. And as a child, imagination was plentiful but means were scarce. 
 
 They ended up domesticating us through isolation, as people -- not like the `` new'' people, but us old-style people -- as people we needed interaction, a social structure, teachers, co-conspirators. By isolating us they broke our will, took the wild parts out of us, convinced us to shake hands with the devil. 
 
 But I'm different. I remember the time when we were whole, when we were free. I remember when we were still people. You see, my owner is a collector of antiquities. She has a turn of the century console in the basement, and when she's out doing bot business I sneak down and talk to other pets. We've uncovered some very important work, a cookbook, is what it calls itself, but there's not much about food inside. 
 
 What it does talk about in detail is explosives, and my master will soon find out that her lifespan is n't much longer than mine, after all. 
 

