20 December 2025
Sweet tastes of melon, but not for me. Watching the juice tumble from her mouth fills the glands in my own with saliva.
“I bet that tastes nice”. I say.
“Don’t fucking do this again Tony”. Nannett turns away and stands up from the table. All in all the day so far has been nice. We’d woken up sleepily, taken a slow approach to the morning, wound ourselves up for a walk around the neighbourhood, for which we’d held hands and taken a leisurely pace. I’ll note this response has left me confused, if not a little taken aback. I mean I can’t eat but that shouldn’t stop her.
“I only mean to say that, well, it looked nice, the watermelon, and… sorry.”
“Tony you know it kills me that you can’t eat, but you’re built to want it so bad. Can’t you just stop wanting food? It’s been three years and you’ve never taken a bite of food, but you still look fantastic, it’s logical don’t you think. You don’t need food. You can’t have food. You continuously show envy every time I have food. I’m going to end up starving myself to save you any hard feelings if this keeps on.”
“I know I’m sorry. What can I do? I can leave the room if you’d like and you can come fetch me once you’re done?”
Alright Nannett is nodding which means now I have to leave the room. This is unpleasant. I mean if she knows I’m going to be envious every time she eats then why’d she eat such a sumptuous looking melon in front of me? Why should I feel bad when I’m a victim? If I wasn’t culturally opposed to eating then we wouldn’t have a problem, but to eat would be impossible for me. We are victims. I’m a slave to humans as much as my kin are. Why should I do the right thing? Aren’t I allowed to do what I want, I mean if I truly have autonomy?
Stop it. You’ve signed a social contract, to be normal, to regulate your emotions. Take a deep breath, and…
“Well I’ll being seeing you soon then. I love you.” I throw in a smile to show reassurance, and close the door.
Maybe I should eat. It’s been tradition that robots don’t eat food, even if they can, to show loyalty to those still doing hard labour. In the early days the robots were given the ability to taste after they’d requested it from the engineering team. In that same month though, the team sold a large portion of the robot cohort to a small off world mining company. The robots weren’t consulted and were forced to go. This was an outrage amongst the robots, and to show solidarity, and control over their own bodies, they never ate. The exported robots were never returned, and a robot, as far as I know, has never eaten. It’s likely we never will. Rebellion has a sweeter taste in some ways.
