“The thing I don’t like about Bicentennial Man…”

“The short story or the film?”

“The film. The thing I don’t like about it is that the robot – Andrew, I think his name is – he spends 200 years trying to become human. He has components replaced, artificial skin and organs, the works. He even gets tweaked so that he grows old.”

“Are you leading towards some sort of point, or should I wait for the intermission to get up and take a leak?”

“I’m almost done. So, he has all these upgrades. Eventually he falls in love and he gets married, and in the end he dies at his wifes side as the World Congress declare him to be legally human.”

“Nice.”

“No! No it isn’t! I don’t like the implication there that the only reason he died a human being is because Congress said he was. Never mind the fact that he went on this great pilgrimage, or that he fell in love.”

“Maybe that’s exactly why Congress declared him legally human. They saw he’d earned his soul. More than you can say for some actual humans, after all.”