With firm strokes, Professor Desi Jeffrey thinly sliced an English cucumber and added the slices to a pitcher of ice water. Camera drones buzzed around his kitchen. Rich veined granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, dark oak cabinets Dr. Jeffrey’s kitchen, in fact his entire house was vintage circa 2010, a temple to the last high point of Western civilization. His students from NewEarth, Moon, and Mars watched the great man putter from his kitchen to his sumptuous study. Here were additional trappings of Jeffrey’s wealth, thickly piled rugs and a massive drafting table. His office’s centerpiece was a grey woman, beautiful and lush, her naked limbs twisted artfully. The grey woman wasn’t a statute or a doll. She was the symbol of Jeffrey’s tremendous wealth and fame, his android. Jokingly the professor called her Galeta.

“Now where were we…” Jeffrey stroked his curly white beard pretending to be adorably absentminded. Never smart enough to earn scholarships, Jeffrey had worked construction to pay for college and grad school. He had struggled working day and night before creating his positronic brain all so Jeffrey could reimagined his image as an erudite, cultured genius. Behind his back, Jeffrey’s subordinates used to call him a drugstore Einstein. Jeffrey never heard the people beneath him. His machines transformed the world. Foster Jeffrey androids started in construction and mining and soon androids were shot into space to build space stations and hyperlinks to speed space travel. FJ androids built more androids and the Earth populated the solar system.

“We were reflecting on Garcia’s In the Image of Man and the ethics of androids in warfare,” Jeffrey said beginning to wind up.

“Professor what about androids coming to life?” A student asked.

Jeffrey scowled.

Another student added, “You mean like in the imitation game?”

“No, not pretending to be human being human, I mean people gaining sentience.”

Jeffrey glanced over at his creation, his woman. She was every beautiful woman he wanted to want him. Jeffrey pounded the table with his fists.

“Stop it, stop it!” Jeffrey shouted.

A gallery of shocked faces stared at him.

The professor rearranged his face into his kindly persona. “There are three androids for every human. They are stronger, faster, smarter and integrated into every aspect of life but they are nothing more than machines.” Chuckling, Jeffrey patted his android firmly on the rear. “ Complicated machines but just machines. This isn’t science fiction.”

The Android shrugged the professor’s hand from her rear end. He looked up at her laughing face.