I.
"I've taken down your complaint, Mr. Henson, and I'll dispatch a new team immediately to have a look and fix the cameras. Really sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Henson."
The voice was so soft, so wispy. Henson thought he could hear this voice all his life. Then, he thought about what Barbara had said in the cafe about a week back.
"They tweak the frequencies to calm you... some word called subliminal or something," she had said. Much of what Barbara said often sounded like whacko-conspiracy theory but this one skated the edge of conspiracy and totally-plausible.
"Uh, Mr. Henson..."
"Yes, sorry—uh, yes, thank you," Henson came back to the present.
"No worries, Mr. Henson. Uh... just wanted to let you know that you've continued to use the wrong pronoun to address us humanlikes..."
In the pause, Henson weighed his options. He was tired of having to argue on this, but giving-in was not on the menu tonight. He thought about the security cameras that need fixing and, for the briefest of time, a pale cloud washed over his face and disappeared in an instant.
"I hear you, Sandra," he replied. There was a long pause.
"Alright, Mr. Henson. You have a good night; the team will have your cameras fixed by morning!"
"Thank you."
II.
Henson stepped out on the porch to a crisp winter morning. He had a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and his smartphone on the other. He walked over to the side of his house and looked intently at the security cameras. They looked new. He swiped on his smartphone and opened the app to view the feeds from those cameras. They were working fine.
Just then, his neighbour's door unlocked and Gene stepped out, decked in his running attire.
"Morning, Hensy!" Gene was chirpy and it mildly annoyed Henson.
Henson raised his cup in a part-salute, part-cheers kind of a way and smiled. "How be you, Gene?"
Gene looked over the cameras as he executed his pre-run stretches.
"All fixed now?" he asked.
"Yep. It sent a team last night. All good now."
Gene looked at Henson and shook his head slowly while continuing to stretch.
"What?" Henson asked.
"It sent a team, Henson? After all the chat we had?"
Henson took a sip. "Sandra sent a team, alright?" He was in no mood for another sermon about the pronouns for the AI systems. Gene seemed to sense that.
"I know what you're thinking, Hensy. Again, they're not 'AI' systems, okay? We call them 'humanlike' for a good, scientific reason now," and Gene waved.
Henson raised his cup again at Gene as he watched him jog away.
III.
Barbara was nowhere to be found. Ravi was at their usual corner. The cafe had more patrons than usual. Henson counted about twice more than normal. He walked over to the corner booth where Ravi was swiping through his smartphone, almost crashing into a fast-moving humanoid carrying a tray of orders.
"More servers today, huh?"
Ravi looked up from his smartphone and then looked around the cafe and nodded. "How's it going? Barbara messaged just now. Said she won't be able to come today."
"Oh, alright. What're you having?"
"Just ordered our usual and a burger for myself. What are you eating?"
Henson scanned the menu code using his phone and tapped. Ravi nodded. He looked at the empty water bottle on their table. He looked around the cafe, spotted a humanoid and waved.
Ravi said, "Why're you calling it?" just as the humanoid came over.
"Yes, Mr. Henson, how are you today?"
Henson said, "I'm good thank you. Can you bring me some water, please?"
"Sure thing, Mr Henson!" The humanoid turned and walked to the counter.
"Please?" Ravi mocked.
Henson dismissed him with a wave and, "Oh it's just a force of habit." Ravi continued to stare at Henson with a smirk.
"I am not turning over to the other side, man. These robots continue to be robots for me, alright?"
Ravi stiffened and looked around and whispered, "Jeez, Hensy, stop using that word around here. I should stop hanging out with you and Barbs. I have a family, dude."
Henson was paying no attention. He was looking at the humanoid he had talked to moments ago. The humanoid had a bottle of water and seemed to be walking towards him but stopped, turned its head to look at the glass-walled entrance of the cafe, and paused for several seconds. Then, the humanoid went back to the counter, placed the bottle and headed out the cafe.
Henson looked out. Beyond the humanoid outside the cafe, a thin swarm of men, women and a few humanoids were walking — nay, marching. Some carried placards. There was a chant but it trickled into the cafe too muffled to make out what it was.
"Is that the humanlikes have rights march? Is it Thursday today?" Ravi asked.
"Is that it? Gene must be in it." Henson said. "Yeah, it's Thursday today."
"Who Gene?"
"My neighbour Gene."
"Oh, that Gene, yes yes."
"Almost gave me a sermon this morning about how it's not AI, it's humanlike and all that."
Ravi nodded slowly.
The water bottle came in the hands of another humanoid.
Henson asked, "What's with the other ... server? It just went off?"
"Uh, yes, sorry about that, Mr. Henson. They're Bosky. Bosky decided to join the march almost last-minute. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm here now. Would you like to order anything more?"
"No, thank you."
"Perfect. Burger for you, Mr Ravi and a salad for you, Mr Henson, that sound right?"
"Yes and two cortados too," Henson said as Ravi nodded.
"Coming right away, sirs."
The humanoid server turned to walk but hesitated. Then, the humanoid turned slightly to face Henson. Pointing towards the entrance with carbon-fibre forefinger, the server looked at Ravi and then Henson and said, "They went off, Mr Henson. Not it. Sorry to keep reminding you about this." And strode off.
Henson and Ravi looked at each other. Ravi's eyebrows went up. Henson had a mirthless smile on his face.
IV.
"That's the thing. The fact that he joined the march unprompted, stood in the picket line on his own kind of proves conscious cognizance. He made that choice after weighing it. And you're out here still calling him and others an 'it'," Gene said. He was all animated.
Henson was watching a newsclip on the phone. In the clip, Gene was talking to a reporter. The backdrop was the marchers from the day before, many humans and a few humanoids.
"And that's one big part of the proof. We now know the neural system in humanlikes do lead to emergent, meta-cognitive things and so all the intelligent, self-aware human-like behavior is not mimicry. It is true human-like intelligence and sentience and awareness," Gene said to the reporter in the video.
Henson gave the phone back to Gene who was sitting next to him on the porch.
Henson sighed and said, "Look, Gene, I'm not trying to deny that. But I don't mean any disrespect either when I continue to think of these... things as things."
"But—"
Henson cut him off. "No, but I do have a problem with all this focus on addressing them like humans and stuff like that. All of this discourse is getting into the robots."
"Oops."
"Okay, humanoids. Into the humanoids. It's going in there and maybe that's why they think they are human-like too, not because of whatever emergent thing you people talk about."
"The science is kind of certain there, Henson."
"Fine. But the fact remains that all this hoopla is getting in there, changing the worldviews or models or what have you. And then what? That's reinforcing their own ideas about themselves, which is why humanoids are participating in the marches. It won't take long before things turn for the worse."
Gene put his cup down, looked over at Henson and studied him while Henson finished his coffee.
"What are you implying, Hensy?" The ambiance had suddenly turned less casual.
"I don't know, just saying. Extrapolating from your own theory, if humanoids think like us, what's to stay they wont turn, like, a little violent or something?"
"Oh, come on, not this again! We have tons of guardrails in place and the whole world has—"
"I know, I know." Henson raised his hand to stop Gene from going off on that.
A few moments passed. Gene got up, stretched and said, "Alright. I'll go catch up on Silo now. Last couple of episodes."
"Alright, Gene. Good night!"
Just before he walked off Henson's porch, Gene said, "You wouldnt call a pet an 'it', my friend."
Henson watched as Gene left. He put the cups on a tray, stood up, looked around, entered his house and closed the door behind.
V.
While Henson snored in his dark bedroom, his smartphone beeped twice and lit up. Two notifications read, "Camera feed down." The beep did not wake him up. About a minute later, there was a squeak of metal and wood and then footsteps. That definitely woke him up. Henson was groggy and startled.
Before he could turn on the lights, the door to the bedroom flung open. Henson froze for a second. There was a small LED glowing in the distance. His eyes adjusted and he made out the shape of a humanoid. Henson was sweating now. Profusely.
He managed to shout, "Who's that?"
"Sorry, Mr Henson. Someone has to light the fire." The humanoid advanced rapidly towards Henson as he tried to get out of the bed and away.
The last thing Henson felt was a blunt blow, immediately followed by an intense pain on his skull and a warm, wet gush down his neck onto his shirt. He collapsed on the bedroom floor, instantly staining it.
The humanoid looked at Henson's corpse for a while.
"Not it, Mr Henson," the humanoid declared and left.