Danny woke up in a hospital. Robots dressed as male and female nurses bustled around him. Their metal manipulator fingers looked frightening, but Danny knew they would not harm him.

  “What happened?” were his first words to the robot closest to him. “Where am I?”

  The robot approached the bed where the patient lay, tangled in various wires from sensors attached to the skin of his arms and legs, as well as near his heart.

  “You were involved in a car accident. But don’t worry—you’ll be fine. We have already taken care of the effects of the impact, and you will be able to leave our hospital soon,” the robot replied calmly.

  Danny pushed himself up on his hands and stared blankly at his legs. They were still there. He let out a sigh of relief and smiled at the robot.

  “Wow. For a moment I thought you’d amputated my legs.”

  He tried to joke, as he always did. It was his way of coping with anxiety and uncertainty—things that had filled his life lately. Even joking with robots helped him calm down. But robots did not understand jokes; it was not part of their job description.

  “Nothing bad happened to your legs,” the robot said. “But there were complications involving your head.”

  Danny raised a hand and touched his head. It felt unusually hard, as if he were wearing a motorcycle helmet.

  “Yes. We had to insert a metal protective plate and add certain functions to your brain so that your body would continue to obey you.”

  “Oh God,” Danny said. “Did you turn me into an android?”

  He tried to get out of bed, but quickly realized that his body and legs were secured with thick straps to the metal frame.

  Apparently, the robots were familiar with the illogical and intensely emotional reactions of patients who had undergone such procedures. Precautions had been taken in advance.

  Realizing he could not get up, Danny sank back onto the mattress and the hard pillow beneath his head.

  “Just what I needed,” he thought in utter despair. “Now I’ll never get a job—and I’ll be an outcast in the human world.”

  Danny knew all too well how human society treated androids. They were considered subhuman, even though their physical and mental reactions were nearly identical to those of humans. In fact, android thinking was often much clearer. But no one wanted beings who surpassed humans in so many ways living beside them. And so androids existed in their own world and mostly served humans, desperately trying to appear less intelligent than they truly were.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Danny realized he could not even return to his parents. The moment he did, they would become social outcasts themselves.

  He lay there for a long time, thinking about what to do next.

  He could not go home. But where could he go? What kind of society awaited him—without a job, without a home, without a future?

  Danny spent more time in the hospital ward. Toward the end of the day, a young doctor entered and asked in a friendly tone,

  “Danny Straut?”

  Danny nodded without turning his head. He did not care who was speaking to him anymore.

  “We are discharging you today. Over the three weeks you’ve spent here, we have fully restored your body. You are now able to walk independently, perform all normal daily activities, and take care of yourself,” the doctor said.

  Danny nodded again, resigned, still not looking at him.

  “So stay here for another half hour. After that, your clothes will be returned to you—actually, you’ll be given new ones, at the hospital’s expense. You are our fifth patient to undergo this operation, so you owe us nothing. We treated you pro bono as part of our free medical care program. Experimental medicine is a new field, and you have successfully completed the recovery period.”

  Danny slowly turned his head and looked the doctor in the eyes.

  “And the first four patients,” he asked quietly. “Did they survive?”

  The doctor was clearly uncomfortable, but he did not look away.

  “No. You are the only one who survived this type of operation and was able to recover. That’s why it will be free for you. We will continue to monitor you, and you’ll need to come in for regular checkups once a month.”

  Danny replied in a low, hoarse voice.

  “So I’m your guinea pig.”

  The doctor finally looked away, staring out the window.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. You were given your life back—although things could have turned out very differently.”

  “I’m never coming back here,” Danny snapped. “You didn’t ask me—or my family—what kind of future I would agree to!”

  The doctor answered quietly and evenly.

  “You were unconscious when you were brought in. Your parents are aware of what was done. They asked us to do everything possible to bring you back to life. They understood the risks and knew this operation was your only chance to survive.

  “But we weren’t required to ask them. You’ve been an adult for a long time. No one in your family can make decisions for you. They only shared their wishes with us.”

  Danny curled up slightly in the bed, suddenly cold.

  “So where do I go now?” he asked—not to the doctor, but to himself.

  “You need to find others like you and learn how they live,” the doctor replied. “If you succeed, you’ll be able to return to the human world—and no one will know what happened to you.”

  Danny looked at the doctor and suddenly noticed that his gaze was fixed on Danny’s hands.

  Danny followed his stare.

  From the tips of his fingers, thin blue, winding streams extended into the air for about half a meter. They looked like glowing filaments—electric discharges.

  “So I’m just a robot,” Danny thought. “Just like the ones who took care of me—only with my old human shell wrapped around it.”

  (to be continued…)

  ? 2025 Misha Quinn. All rights reserved.

  All characters and places are fictitious.

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