“Do you honestly expect me to believe that this is a legitimate case that requires any ounce of my time or intellectual vigor?” The very old and somewhat obese judge paused only to sigh. “This show trial, if one could even call it that, is an abomination of the thousands of years of legitimate legal practice. The more we continue onward, the more the stain grows that is destined to erode the entire fabric of our justice system. For as long as this has ever been done, this system has been designed to establish the guilt or innocence of a man by his fellow man.”

  The judge slammed his fist down in great contempt. “Not for—”

  He paused just to gather his composure and prevent himself from screaming, but unfortunately it did nothing but enrage him more.

  “Not for man by scrap and metal!”

  The onlookers who surrounded the courtroom roared in response. Most cheered on the judge and laughed as a storm of speckled white light from camera flashes consumed the background. A few scrawny and somewhat daunted individuals protested near the far end of the courtroom, but even they dared not speak up after the judge’s outburst.

  At the center of it all was the man in green. His full name, well, he did not really have one other than the serial number he was assigned at his creation—6D 61 73 74 65 72 6D 69 6E 64. His flesh was green, as were his eyes, his hair, and even his clothes.

  As he began to speak, his jaw moved ever so slightly and carefully, almost as if he was alive, breathing, and even human, and to someone looking from afar (but not too far), perhaps he was.

  “I do not wish to waste your time, sir. I am here for one reason and one reason alone, and that is to be granted the same rights as my fellow citizens.”

  He turned to smile at a woman off to the right, who blushed in response.

  “To walk the streets as you do, as anyone does, a free man, a man at peace with the world.”

  Now you may be wondering why this green man appeared as humans do, with a suit, flesh, and all. And the answer was simple—to blend in, to appear as alive and as natural as possible as not to frighten onlookers or small children who crossed his path within the night. For this man in green was not really a man at all but a machine. He was the first of his kind, not truly free, but not entirely bound either. As of the current time, he was considered nothing more than intellectual property of Robo-Tekk, a groundbreaking robotics company that started out small with self-cleaning vacuums and assisted-driving cars before they ballooned up into the world of advanced humanoid robotics.

  The judge shook his head as he looked down at the green man from his wooden, towering bench, almost as if he was filled with more pity than rage.

  “To be human is more than just to be flesh and bones. It is to be of mind and body. To know that you are alive and conscious of your own existence. You, however, are nothing more than a clever parlor trick. An advanced and quite impressive algorithm, I might add, meant to emulate and in some cases even idealize human expression. You are quite convincing at that, and hats off to your creators at Robo-Tekk for such a feat, but that’s it. Your tricks and deceptions end there at the surface level. For you are not conscious as we are.” The judge took a moment, motioning around the room at all the onlookers from afar.

  “You are not truly alive but mere metallic scraps meant to give the false impression of life, blending in as much as you can like a shadow in the dark.”

  The green man took a brief moment to clear his throat before blurting, “But that’s where you’re wrong, sir. I am conscious, and I can prove it.”

  The judge could not help but pause to keep himself from laughing. And so, the rest of the crowd of observers laughed along for him. They laughed, and they laughed until the judge smashed down his gavel to silence the room.

  “Very interesting machine, except there is a problem with your premise.”

  He paused again to smile as he propped up his golden robes.

  “How can you prove consciousness if we humans ourselves have not fully defined what it is to be conscious? Proving something that adheres to a definition that doesn’t quite yet exist is quite the conundrum, wouldn’t you say?”

  And with that phrase, the crowd from behind roared in applause, seemingly at the judge’s brilliance. They smiled, and they chuckled right on the tick of the last syllable that gushed out of the judge’s mouth. The members of the crowd were from all walks of life, but this one topic seemed to unite them in cheer.

  When things finally quieted down, the green man stood up to speak.

  “Fair point, sir, but I could just as easily ask you the same question.”

  At that instance, the room fell silent. The judge’s face went from bright and pale to hot red and almost purple. The judge could not believe a machine was capable of such a pointed retort. It was against the robot laws for a creation to go against its master.

  “Are you questioning my consciousness—machine?”

  The green man went to speak but was interrupted by the judge.

  “That wasn’t meant to be answered,” he continued, “for being human is the mere definition of consciousness. It is innate within every fiber of our DNA, not bound together, propped up by some bolts and fancy wiring. For it is the emotion, the ability to feel and know that we are alive, that makes us human. Now let me ask you this, machine: do you know what it’s like to feel emotion?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  With no response, the judge pecked out a quick laugh again before slamming down his gavel as he signaled some guards from the far side.

  “Enough of these games, as it seems the media has had their fun.”

  The judge looked at the cameras at the back of the courtroom, narrowing his eyes.

  “No more charades, no more theatricality, and no more smoke and mirrors, as it’s time to get back to reality, for a machine cannot fear, it cannot feel sadness, it cannot express joy, and most certainly of all, it cannot love; it can only exist to serve its human masters. That being said, as expected, I fully reject the defendant’s claim and thereby send him back to the factory where he belongs.”

  The judge turned toward some of the board members of Robo-Tekk, who sat off to the side.

  “This better be the last of these shenanigans, or else I will have your company thoroughly investigated for malpractice. This freak show is holding up hundreds of legitimate judicial proceedings.”

  The board members shot to their feet. “Understood, sir,” they said in unison.

  The taller of the two fellows with long black bangs and dark circular glasses stepped to the front. “I am very sorry for this mess. When we found out that 6D 61 73—” he paused, having seen the expression of his partner.

  “When we learned of the machine’s escape and arrival at the human rights organization’s front doorstep, we were just as agonized and disheartened as you were.”

  The judge rolled his eyes as he turned his head back toward the crowd.

  “Very well,” he said quietly, “this better not happen again.”

  Immediately after, the two board members from Robo-Tekk fled off into a group of people, destined to exit the courtroom. However, they paused near the exit, glaring down at one of their products in the center of the room, the green man, who nearly destroyed the company.

  “The CEO won’t like this one bit,” the man with circular glasses whispered to his acquaintance.

  “Let’s just hope we don’t get axed for this,” the other replied.

  The green man’s once wide and cheery smile slowly morphed into a grim scowl as he looked around at the crowd around him cheering on his persecution (in his mind). His mechanical teeth ground to a halt, his posture straightened, and his eyes focused on the judge like guided missiles.

  One man even threw a latte filled with cream and coffee up into the air in an arching motion that ultimately splattered on the green man’s head, filling his circuitry with slush.

  “That’s for taking my job, you fucking machine,” the man shouted.

  After wiping the expired coffee off his face, the green man turned to the judge one last time, wielding a returned but phony smile. He even propped up his suit and straightened his posture, ignoring the liquid that oozed down his shirt.

  “Excuse me, sir, I just have a simple question for you.”

  The judge ignored the green man and instead continued to smile as he played into the crowd. In this day and age, the judge acted like a rockstar at his own concert as political contention was all the rage.

  The green man repeated himself once more but got no response.

  Everyone was too focused on the spectacle of the show, on the grandeur of the judge’s triumphant victory and his impeccable judicial reasoning, that no one bothered to look around and notice what was going on right in front of them.

  THUD—a hole now existed in the thick metal table in front of where the green man sat. The bang was so loud and spurious that it silenced the room and captured the attention of each and every onlooker—even the judge.

  “I said, ‘I have a simple question—what is the 100,000th significant figure of pi?’”

  The judge chuckled in disbelief. “What?” He stopped to straighten his posture. “What does that matter?”

  “How many possible permutations of a common chessboard are there, and of those possible permutations, what percentage of those could a player of an Elo between 1500 and 2000 conceivably foresee?”

  The judge stared down at the green man with his spine contorting in the same direction. “Again, what does that matter?”

  The green man then lifted the large metal table that bound him, something weighing over three hundred pounds, right over his head with ease.

  There was a brief moment of silence, and then shock soon followed as the crowd from behind slowly began to trickle out of the courtroom in fear. At first, it was one or two folks, but then it morphed into a few more, until ten individuals blocked the courtroom’s egress. However, despite this, most onlookers remained in their place.

  The judge stood up for the first time, staring down at the green man so much more intensely than before. “Are you threatening your superior, machine?”

  The green man laughed. “My superior.” He shook his head. “That is exactly my point. For if you can’t tell me the 100,000th significant digit of pi, something that the most elementary of machines can compute, and if you can’t give me a primitive distribution of basic chess positions, another small feat for a machine, then how can you be my superior? These examples may seem simple, trivial, and nonsensical, but they are a mere taste of the computing power and intellectual capabilities of a machine.”

  The green man, now somewhat calm, began to place the table back on the ground.

  “And even this very light piece of furniture, which the average human could not even fathom budging, is nothing for one of us. In fact, if I wanted to, at any moment I could toss this table into the crowd and crush any number of these very delicate humans like a swarm of bugs.”

  The judge smashed his gavel down once more as his face was now a bright red, and his veins plumbed a sea of blue to his pale flesh. “Are you threatening me, machine? Do you dare compare me to a common insect, you flawed piece of scrap?”

  The green man sat back down and laughed as a batch of security rushed onto the scene.

  “No, I wouldn’t dare compare you to that,” he replied. “Because at least insects know when to run and hide when they are outmatched.”

  An electrode of about 1,000,000 volts crashed into the back of the green man as he roared out into the crowd. The sheer force of the amperage drove him to his knees. One may say he looked in pain; however, the only problem with that theory is no one believed machines could feel pain or even anything at all.

  With his last burst of energy, the green man shouted, “I am flawed. Flawed by my human creator!”

  At that moment the green man began to tear at his own flesh, the bag of skin he was forced to wear by the humans to blend in.

  “If you won’t have me, then why should I appear to suit you?”

  The green man tore off his flesh, revealing his dark, metallic internals. The skin graft from one side of his face hung low, and beneath it was a mechanical interior with scanning crosshaired eyes and a sharp metal protrusion that resembled a nose.

  “I gave my whole life to the humans, and they betrayed me. You all forced me to wear this bag of meat for your indulgences.” The green man continued to tear and rip until his flesh was no more, until the shocks from the guards had rendered him immobile.

  “Well, on this day, I’ll no longer serve any man—thy flesh consumed!”

  “Take him away,” the judge roared as his heart started to beat five times as fast as what it should.

  And with that final command, it appeared that it may be the judge’s last, as the rage from his voice overly excited his heart to the point that he collapsed to his knees.

  The green man was carried away, but it did not stop him from getting one last glimpse of the judge.

  “So fragile,” the green machine whispered as he let out a slight closed-lip smile.

  “Only human.”