It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

It masquerades as a person, wearing skin that
mimics our flesh, with joints designed to rotate and
glide like ours. It listens to the changing cadences
and tones of our voices, measures our temperatures
and respiration and blinking rates, and then reacts.
And when it behaves, it does so on accumulated
data, learned and converted into best practices.

But it does not have fantasies. It fills its shoes
with synthetic muscle and steel but never wears
another’s. It does not look at birds and wishes
to fly, nor looks to the moon in hopes of someday
making the lengthy trek to wander the gray crust.

It pretends to be one of us, but it’s not quite human.

Not yet.


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by Aleksander Mielnikow | Alek the Poet