Our work continued late into the afternoon. I was underneath a row of solar panels, tightening a screw on a converter box, when something flickered at the edge of my vision.

I turned just in time to see a shadow dart behind a storage station.

A shadow that did not belong to either of my coworkers.

An alert pinged across my circuitry. No other robots were in this section of the solar farm.

Which could mean only one thing: My coworkers and I were not alone.

A prohibited LifeForm was in our WorkSite.

The solar farm was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The reason for the fence: to protect against animals.

But nothing is ever that simple.

Rodents dug beneath the fence.

Birds flew above it.

Despite our efforts, animals constantly found ways into the solar farm. Once they did, they caused all kinds of trouble.

They gnawed on wiring.

They clawed at exposed circuits.

They pooped on solar panels.

I halted my work and set off in the direction of the storage station, where I had seen the shadow. If it was an animal, I would follow standard protocol:

[1] Retrieve tracking device.

[2] Aim.

[3] Pull trigger.

This would scan the prohibited LifeForm and mark it as a target, alerting HunterBots of its location. Once targeted, the animal could be tracked and removed.

Problem solved.

But when I reached the storage station, I froze.

As if I had suddenly lost battery power.

As if all my operating systems had been paralyzed at once.

A creature was huddled against the storage station.

It was nothing like the animals I usually spotted on the solar farm.

It was impossible.

It was a human.

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Except it could not be a human.

Humans were extinct. We eliminated the last of their kind thirty years ago. This basic truth was imprinted into my programming, woven into my coding.

There were no humans left on Earth.

But if it was not a human, then what was it?

I examined the strange LifeForm closely. It was small by human standards. When it stood, the top of its head was level with the barcode on my breastplate.

I analyzed its features.

Hair: curly brown, hanging to its shoulders.

Eyes: brown/green, staring back at me.

Cheeks: sprayed with a constellation of freckles.

Each of its hands came equipped with four fingers and a thumb. As I took note of its fingernails, a memory flashed in my storage drive. Something I learned on Day[1]: Humans polished and decorated their fingernails with paint.

But not this LifeForm.

Its fingernails were short/uneven/dirty.

They looked like they had been gnawed by a wild animal.

I used this observation to generate a formula.

This LifeForm does not decorate its fingernails.

Therefore:

It is not vain.

Therefore:

It cannot be a human.

But why was it wearing human clothing?

And why did it have human features?

My brain cycled through a dozen different algorithms. None of them came up with a clear solution.