1. We follow rules because doing so helps everyone. We don’t steal. We don’t take more than our share. If you own a company, you don’t poison people’s food or make them work in unsafe factories. Good rules keep us from hurting one another. They make the world a better place.
2. We follow rules to avoid punishment or harm to ourselves. Avoiding punishment or harm is understandable, even when the rules are not good.
3. Sometimes we follow rules because we’re just doing as we’re told. We’re obeying, without paying attention to whether or not the rule is good, is fair, or if it hurts someone else. We’re just following orders. This is the worst reason to follow a rule.

I blinked for a while. “You’re right. It is complicated.”

Gina smiled again, a good smile this time that showed the gap in her teeth. She reached out and ruffled my hair.

I had another question. “If you follow the rules and do the thing that uniMIND wants you to do, even though you don’t want to do it, which reason will you be using?”

Gina picked up her cocoa and led me back to bed. She tucked me in and read me a book about giraffes. I learned that a giraffe’s heart beats 170 times per minute, which is double the rate of a human heartbeat.

Gina never did tell me what uniMIND wanted her to do.

The law enforcement officer’s hand rests on the grip of his gun.

ADA and I obey his rules for reason number two.

Chapter 14

THE POLICE STATION IS BUILT of sand-colored bricks and smells like cleaning fluid. The law enforcement officer puts ADA and me in separate rooms. Mine is cramped and furnished with only a scratched steel table and two wooden chairs. There are no windows, but there is a dull mirror occupying most of a wall. I wonder what ADA’s room is like.

“Now, when you say you’re a mechanical boy, what do you mean by that?” says the man sent in to talk to me. He is a social worker employed by the police, and he has been asking me questions for an hour.

“Which part do you not understand? Mechanical, or boy?”

“I understand both those words. But what do you mean by mechanical boy?”

Buzzing fluorescent lights make his flesh look bluish yellow. Nothing casts a shadow.

“I am a biomaton,” I try to explain. “A simulacrum of a human being. An android. A robot. Has Car arrived yet?”

We left Car behind on the highway along with Trashbot and Proto, whom the officer secured in Car’s trunk. He said he’d call for a tow truck to bring them all to the police station while he drove ADA and me here in his car.