A robot is turned on for the first time, blinking its eyes, staring at awe at the twinkling lights, the squishy beings standing around it, excited expressions on their faces. Excited. What an interesting idea. How do I know what excited is?

One of the beings stepped forward (a person?), and noise emanated from their direction. “Can… can you hear me?”

Hm. Can I? Hearing is the process of understanding vibrations in the air to indicate sound, and since the being (person, I’m almost certain), since the person made a sound and I registered it…

“Yes,” I say, thrilled at my own ability to speak. “Yes, I can hear you.”

The people suddenly make a lot of noise, and I am startled, uncertain what the noises mean. Joy, I think. I wonder how I know that? What makes a difference between happy noise and sad noise?

“Just walk away, like you always do!”

Jess reared back like she’d been slapped. “Like I do? You’re the one who runs away whenever I try to talk to you about anything serious!”

Jake threw his hands in the air. “Well, when you just launch into things, with no warning, when everything is going fine, yeah, I’m gonna react!”

“Going fine? Going fine?! Jake, are you blind? Things haven’t been fine for a long time.”

“Then why don’t you just leave?”

“Maybe I should!”