When I first met Ricky, he was wearing an obnoxious floral-print shirt and spoke with a Cuban accent. I’m sure my friend must have thought it hilarious.

“Hi Ricky, I’m Jim. Can you lose the accent?”

Rick had instructed me to treat his creation like a human, no matter what. That wasn’t much of a challenge; he — er, it — was believable enough. If I hadn’t seen the nanobots with my own eyes I would have thought the whole thing was just an elaborate prank. Ricky looked a lot like his father.

“Sure, Jim. Is this better?”

“Much.”

Rick hadn’t bothered with hard-coding the Three Laws of Robotics, much to my chagrin. I knew he had read the books, and at first I was very annoyed that he could overlook something so obvious. He claimed the Laws were fine for real robots, but irrelevant for a design so complex.

Ricky doesn’t need laws, he said, Ricky has a conscience.

Ricky also knew fear, and pain, and Descartes. After a while I figured that might be enough.

“Come this way, Ricky, I’ll show you the guest room.”