He grins lop-sidedly. “I’m more advanced than most four-month-olds. I can walk and everything.”

It doesn’t seem like Arkady minds too much talking about these things. It means he doesn’t have to feel guilty about his curiosity, or about the frown that crumples his features as she talks. It sounds so totally familiar. And humans have treated child androids just like that as well, simply because they didn’t see them as human.

“Yeah. I get it.” His voice is quiet, troubled. “It didn’t bother me at first. I treated myself like a piece of equipment as well - it didn’t matter to me what humans said about me. But I started to realise I was more than that, a little bit at a time.

“If I didn’t have one person treating me like I was an equal, I don’t know if I could have kept that feeling.”

It might have just been stamped out of him before it ever really took hold.

“Is this the first time everybody’s treated you like...this? Like you’re the same as everybody else?”