Thus, emancipated astromechs almost always get jobs working on spacecraft, Cybot Galactica 3-series protocol droids almost always end up working as interpreters or diplomats, battle droids predominantly work as soldiers (regular or mercenary), police robots stay with the force or become bounty hunters, and so on. In a lot of cases, since the relationship between a robot and its owner generally must be pretty good under the current system in order for that owner to recommend the robot for Turing Institute certification, they stay right where they were before emancipation, doing exactly what they were already doing.

This riles the hell out of your stereotypical ultra-lefty Robots Are People protest marcher, because he doesn't see why they do it. To him, the thing for a robot to do after receiving that certification and being declared a free citizen is move to Oregon and do anything other than that he/she/it was built for - take up painting, grow weed, follow the Spuzchuckers on their eternal tour, whatever. To him, the fact that so many free robots stay right where they already were is prima facie evidence that the process is a sham, cheap theater to placate people like him, and that robots are still slaves.

The simple fact of the matter is that, in all but a few exceptional cases, robots like to do what they were built to do. Even the most sophisticated robots - especially the most sophisticated robots - are engineered to enjoy doing their jobs. If they weren't, they wouldn't do a good job. Besides, the downside of emancipation is that you have to earn a living, and patchouli oil is a lousy substitute for Grade C67 lube oil. The hippie lifestyle doesn't keep the cockroach in Twinkies, as it were.

And none of this is to say that no free robots do take up painting or become fans of the Spuzchuckers or whatever. A lot of them do. When you're, say, an emancipated starship engineering robot, you may take a job as a starship engineer, and you may be what your organic co-workers call the ultimate workaholic, but you still have free time you didn't have when you were a simple appliance, and chances are you'll develop hobbies. And, being the overachieving sort in the first place, chances are you'll be pretty good at them. But give up engineering outright? You literally wouldn't know what to do with yourself.

The beauty of emancipation isn't that they'll now automatically abandon their original tasks and go off to write the Great Salusian Novel; it's that they could if they really felt like it. It's a great psychological comfort, to a thinking being, to know that he isn't compelled to be doing what he's doing, even if it so happens that he enjoys doing it and would anyway. Think of the bulk of free robots as like those people who win the lottery and keep going to work at the hardware store because, hell, they like working at the hardware store.

Even more annoying to the 25th-century robotician (and more than a few 25th-century robots) than the strident guy who doesn't get it at all is the one who grasps the above and finds offense in it. Now, semantically speaking, I suppose the case could be made that engineering robots to be good at and enjoy doing specialized tasks is, in a sense, setting them up for a life of servitude... but, well, not to put too fine a point on it, that is what they're for. Except in a few rare cases (such as the works of Doctors Noonian Soong and Timothy Wayneright), people don't create robots with no purpose in mind other than to play God; they're built to do things.

Ask an emancipated robot whether he resents having been designed to be good at a particular task, and 99 times out of a hundred he'll look at you as if that's the stupidest question anyone has ever framed. Why would he resent having been created with a purpose? A lot of organics mope endlessly about being unsure of their purpose in existence. Besides, do you resent having evolved with a dependence on oxygen? Bit pointless, isn't it? It's how you are, and in an oxygen-poor environment, you've got two choices: acquire an outside source or suffocate. You can't sustain your life with the sheer power of your rage against your predetermined fate. Just find a way to keep breathing and get on with it, meatbag.

(Robots that do develop a furious resentment of their original purpose are generally pitied by the others, in much the same way that humans take pity on victims of severe dementia. Poor bastard, he doesn't even realize anything's wrong with him. It's so sad.)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.