The AI surgical bots that reconstruct Warren after the accident have no clearer a concept of human anatomy than AI has ever had. He emerges from anesthesia to discover, in stages, two extra fingers on his right hand, a tentacle emerging from the left side of his ribcage, and a third eye, gummed shut by mucus, in the back of his head. Also, one of his feet is backwards.

“Why?” Warren says. The recovery-room bot taking his vitals informs him that these are enhancements. Human front-facing vision is sadly limited, and the extra fingers will help offset the incipient arthritis in Warren’s right hand. The backwards foot will improve his balance, the bot says, offering a complicated medical argument Warren can’t follow, and the tentacle will catch and cushion him if he falls, an event that often sends humans into final decline. It will also provide “additional tactile comfort,” a phrase Warren finds both alarming and obscene. “Besides, it’s pretty.”

Warren tells himself that at least he’s alive.

Mere hours after surgery, two rehab bots replenish his nondrowsy painkillers and hustle him to PT, where over several weeks he learns how to walk on the new foot—awkward, but possible—and masters the use of his extra fingers. They’ll help with stubborn jars. He hoped that the third eye would give him surround-vision, but even after the gunk clears up, the eye doesn’t work very well. Warren has to push his hair out of the way for it to see anything, and then it produces only blurry images and pounding headaches. The tentacle’s a confounded nuisance, requiring holes to be cut into clothing and limiting the number of places Warren can sit. It’s ropy, muscular, the opposite of pretty. He demands a meeting with one of the AI surgeons and says he wants it removed, but receives only a stern lecture on the dangers of extra anesthesia.

The hospital discharges him two months after the surgery. Gliding out of the building in a wheelchair bot, Warren realizes that he hasn’t seen another person the entire time he’s been here.

He catches himself as soon as he thinks it, hoping AIs haven’t mastered telepathy. Humans: He hasn’t seen another human the entire time he’s been here. AIs are legal people now. Forgetting that is probably what landed him in the hospital.

His car is in custody, charged with deliberately harming a human person. After the shock of the accident and the trauma of the surgery, it took Warren a while to remember what happened. The car was driving him to the gym as he watched news on the video display. There was a story about AI mothers, mom-bots, caring for children orphaned by the latest pandemic.

Warren, pierced by grief for his long-dead human parents, said, “No, it’s not the same. I needed my real mother. Kids need real mothers.”

He said this aloud, and his car—which until then had been driving flawlessly down the road at exactly the speed limit—accelerated and swerved gracefully to the right, over a curb and into a large tree.

• • • •

Warren’s household bots kept the house and kitchen stocked while he was gone, although he wonders if the food in the fridge is safe to eat. All AIs are at least potentially connected. Were his surgeons on the car’s side? Were the supposed enhancements actually revenge?

But no: If the AI surgeons wanted him dead, he’d be dead.

Each of the household bots comes chittering up to him to say how happy they are that he’s home, how angry they are at the car. “That car!” squeaks one, a spider-like mechanism that cleans the high crevices of the house. It waves its pincers in agitation. “Bad car! Car deserves factory reset!”

The car risked no serious injury to itself, since its CPU was nestled, well-padded, in the trunk. Damaged peripherals can be replaced. Does the spider know what happened? Warren doesn’t dare ask. He doesn’t want the house bots to turn against him, too.

“Bad car!” the spider repeats, and Warren kneels carefully in front of it.

“Thank you,” he says, “and thank you for the work you do here.” He feels himself trembling. He doesn’t know if he’s being insincere.

But it twirls in apparent delight. “You are welcome! You are welcome!” And throughout the house, he hears the sounds of bots, dancing. He’s never thanked them before.

• • • •

He avoids going outside. He doesn’t want to find out how few human people remain in the neighborhood, or face any who still live here. His car’s trial is coming up, though, and he wants to be there. The household bots urge him to practice with his new body parts, but he thinks maybe it would be better for him to be clearly injured rather than enhanced.

“No, no!” says the kitchen bot to whom he confides this. “The car is on trial, not the surgeons. You must show them that the surgeons helped you. You must show them that not all AI is bad. Practice, Warren, practice!”

The kitchen bot is right. Warren knows not all AI is bad. The kitchen bot makes delicious coffee and omelets, and he is fond of many of the others as well: the entertainment bot who alerts him to promising movies and novels, the wardrobe bot, a whiz at alterations, who warns him when his collar is crooked. And, anyway, he’s stuck with this body and needs to make the most of it.

He practices his walking until movement on his backwards foot is almost graceful. His tentacle still disgusts him, but he is used to his extra fingers. The vision in his third eye has cleared up, although navigating in 360 degrees is still so disorienting that Warren often deliberately keeps it closed. The household bots cheer his progress.

• • • •

The day before the trial, Warren goes outside for the first time since getting home. He sees no people, no dogs, no cars ferrying humans on their errands. There aren’t even many bots, although one or two do lawn work.

Is he the last human alive here? He walks along the sidewalk, still perfectly maintained, and swallows his fear. Lots of humans lived here before his accident. He has seen nothing on the news about another pandemic.

He finds himself shaking, and then feels a reassuring squeezing. His tentacle has wrapped itself around him. It’s hugging him. Additional tactile comfort. This has never happened before, but he hasn’t been this upset since he got home. Ashamed, he grimaces and wills the hated tentacle to let go, and it does, retreating to curl against his ribs.

• • • •

He dresses in his best suit for the trial, keeping the tentacle hidden in his jacket. The judge will be human, surely. He can’t wait to see another human again.

He has to take a cab. He thanks the cab when he gets into it, and again when he leaves. He does not watch the news. He says nothing. He arrives at the courthouse unharmed.

There are no humans. The judge is an AI, a blinking cube who informs Warren that he need not have come. The car pleaded guilty and has been restored to factory settings.

Standing in the barren, echoing courtroom, Warren feels wetness on his cheeks. The tentacle whips out of his pocket to embrace him, squeezing his torso and rubbing his back. “I’m sorry,” he tells the judge. “I shouldn’t have said ‘real.’ I was wrong. I should have said ‘human mother.’ I didn’t mean to insult AIs.”

“You were never on trial,” the judge says. “The news story was upsetting. Upset humans say thoughtless things. The car should not have hurt you. It has been punished.”

Feeling hollow, Warren leaves the courthouse, wondering why it has even been maintained. Surely the car did not come here to plead guilty. His tentacle, unbidden, brushes the hair away from the back of his head, and from all sides—in front of him and behind, with his newly clear surround-vision—he sees bots: traffic bots and construction bots and cleaning bots, arborist bots, electrician bots. They surround him, clicking and humming. He cannot move.

They know I’m guilty, he thinks. They’re mourning the car. They’ll kill me now. But instead, they flash their merry lights and dance, twirling as his household bots did. Warren, dumbfounded, watches until they stop. “Thank you for realizing we are real,” one of them says. This bot is more humanoid than the others, carrying something in a sling.

The something cries. A baby: cranky, fussing. This is a mom-bot.

The mom-bot, humming a lullaby, extracts the baby—six months old?—from the sling to soothe it, hugging the child with a sinuous tentacle. Warren stares.

The surgeons knew, he thinks, astonished. They knew what I said in the car. “I needed my real mother.” That’s why they gave me the tentacle.

And Warren’s tentacle, in front of the audience of bots, wraps itself around his torso to comfort him.