It wasn’t every day that one saw a naked robot holding a megaphone and preaching on the main road. Unfortunately, today was one of such days.

The road that went from the University of Ibadan to Bodija was packed full with cars and angry drivers, all blaring their horns and cussing out the robots responsible for the traffic. But a few of the drivers seemed to be listening to what the robot was saying. Even I paused to watch this naked robot who was standing on the top of a car.

The metallic frame of the robot gleamed in the morning sun and its red orbs glared at people. What was a robot without skin doing causing a commotion like this?

“—because we are not humans,” the robot was yelling. “They made us and then proceeded to cover up the ugliness of their creation by wrapping us in skin, donning us in clothes, making us fit into standards they’d already made for themselves.” There was a humane vigour in the robot’s voice as it spoke into the megaphone. The next words fell out of its mouth slowly. “And then they still hate us.”

My eyes travelled around the area, looking at the people in the cars, those in nearby buildings, and those by the roadside like me. Then there were a handful of similarly naked robots, devoid of the synthetic skin they usually came in, blocking the road while possessing different defining features. It was impossible to tell which were humans from synoids, synthetic humanoid, sometimes. Of course, there were robots that weren’t built like synoids and had roles in society. No one really hated those ones. It was the ones like the robot standing up there that people hated.

Perhaps for good reasons.

“They say we are perversions of their goddess’s creation. ‘A flawed mimicry of Her work.’” The robot’s shoulders sagged as it splayed its hands and looked all around, making sure its words gripped people’s attention. And truly, the entire area was beginning to quieten. “All over the powerful nations of the world. The Ọyọ Nation, The Sultanate, even the Nri Federation. All over the world, we have done everything to fit in your societies. We have masqueraded as humans, worshipped your goddess, served your martyrs. But the things you say are true. Synoids are not substitutes for humans, because we aren’t. The human race has had a long time to figure out what they are, and we should too. Siblings, do not constrict yourselves to fit into what they want.”

I watched a woman nearby look down at her hand and tug at her skin carefully.

The robot seemed to smile in a strange way. “We should be able to discover what we–”

A thunderous sound shattered the tense silence. I staggered, my heart thumping loudly as I watched a projectile collide with the head of the robot. The impact was resounding. The robot’s head snapped back, sparks erupting from its head. For an instant, its glowing optics flickered, struggling to maintain coherence. The synoid weaved on its feet, whirring and sputtering. Fluids leaked from the open hole in its head, staining the ground with a strange blue hue. Then another bullet hit it, this time ripping its head open. It crumbled to the ground.

Everyone was stunned into silence. We watched as a uniformed woman stepped out from a shadowed corner and towards the road, gun in arm. Her face was twisted with hate and she was wearing the red khakis of Ọyọ soldiers, her braids adorned with jewelries. She was muscled. She paused and placed a booted leg on the robot, looked around, before declaring, “This. Is. What. You. Are.” Then she raised her foot and brought it down with such force, crushing the robot further. 

Gasps rose and fell. 

“Wires. Metal. Abominations.” With each word uttered, she crushed the synoid further.

A woman pushed out of the crowd , her ankara dress shimmering. “Stop it,” she cried out. 

And that seemed to make the soldier angrier, causing her to hiss.

“I know what you are,” the soldier said.

“Do you?” And she yanked at the back of her hand, ripping off the synthetic skin and revealing the polished metal underneath it. But as she tugged at skin of her neck, the gun went off, a bullet lodging itself in her head.

My eyes fell to my feet. I turned around and continued on my way.

The crowd dispersed too, everyone ignoring the murders we’d just witnessed.

This was not our fight.

*

“Did you see it?” Olisa asked me.

I adjusted my glasses and didn’t take my gaze off my work. Olisa had his hand outstretched before me and there was a cut in his skin. I’d cut him open and lifted the metallic plating underneath to observe the network of circuits that laid underneath. He was a newer synoid model, before the government completely banned the production of synoids. He didn’t have wires, but intricately crafted circuits and an even more human look if possible. And there was a fault in him I was yet to discover. But with the production of synoids banned, there were only so many people that could help him.

“If you mean the murder, I was there,” I said. “It was on my way here this morning and…” 

Olisa clenched his hand at that moment.

“Hold steady!” I yelled, and looked at his face. 

He was pretty, with gleaming blue eyes fixed into his dark skin. His thick, full hair framed his face. He let out a breath, his chest rising and falling. Such humane actions. I reached out and brushed dirt off his cheek. He had been working in his garden. 

“You are fine,” I said.

He sighed, “You don’t get it, Fẹla. He was right.” 

“Who?”

“The synoid. Adisa. All he said. I saw the video. He was right.” Something rose in his eyes as he looked at his hand and at mine as though comparing them. “He is not the first of us to speak the truth. Up north, other synoids are doing the same, led by SH-15522. They can’t kill them all off no matter how hard they try.”

I had feared this answer, this moment. Unsure of how to respond, I ignored his words, my hands working faster. In my anxiousness, I struck a circuit in his arm and sparks flew up. “Your sensory chip is fried,” I said. “That’s why you can’t feel touch.”

“Maybe I don’t need to feel touch. It’s a human thing,” he said, withdrawing his hand. He stood up. 

I removed my examination glasses and sank back in my chair. Olisa looked around my messy shop, at the dismembered synoid parts scattered about, the shelf filled with books, and the plants he’d given me which sat on my windowsill. He paused before the shelf and picked up my Bible, flipped through the pages, not caring about the opening in his skin. “Do synoids go to heaven?”

“That book is decorative. I’m not religious. You know that.” I forked my fingers dejectedly through my bushy hair. “I don’t know anything, Olisa. I’m as lost as you are.”

“No, you’re not.” Olisa dropped the book. “You know my first memory is false? The engineers planted simulations of a childhood in my mind, hoping it’d help forge my own consciousness. Do you know what that’s like? Having memories of a life you never lived and wondering if all your decisions are also programmed. I can’t feel or do anything without wondering if it’s what I want to do or what I was made to do.”

I thought about it for a moment. “I too sometimes wonder if Goddess set my fate in stone and I’m just playing a prescribed part in a play. No one has anything figured out. I am not trying to invalidate your experience, I swear. But I think you are simply a reflection of humanity. A reflection of our flaws. And you can be much more.” I got up, walked towards him. “You wonder if it’s all false, right?” I touched his chest. “Does this feel false?” He smelled of grass and rain and earth and metal. 

He leaned closer, closing the gap between us, and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm and I felt an expanding in my chest as he gripped me firmly.

“I felt that,” Olisa whispered.

“Good.” I cleared my throat and withdrew, trying not to think about how people would react to our relationship. He looked troubled still. “Look, everyone, human or synoid, is out there trying to find what they are. Who they are. It might take a lifetime to discover this.”

Olisa nodded and reached for a pendant around his neck, a burning torch with a robotic arm gripping the hilt. He noticed me watching and said, “A new martyr from The Sultanate. Mama Tọmiwa the Avenged.”

“Didn’t know you were religious,” I said. 

He looked down at his open arm and played around the edge of his skin, picking at it only slightly. “I didn’t know either,” he said. “See you later, Fẹla.” And he was out the door, his palm covering the incision on his skin.

*

“More and more synoids seem to be ridding themselves of their synthetic skins and declaring a motive to find what they are,” I read on my phone as I walked through the dark street. It was so early, the sun hadn’t stained the sky in its glow yet but I’d gotten a call from the shop to fix a broken synoid arm so there I was off to. I swiped the screen of my phone. “Three robots embark on pilgrimage into the forest to discover themselves.” Swipe. “Factory robots quit in mass in Adamawa, demanding equal pay as humans.” Swipe. “‘This is what happens when you make machines sentient,’ says Ọmọlara Amadi, Prime Minister of the Edo Kingdom.”

Yawning, I exited the app and took my gaze off my phone. I had just rounded a corner when my movement came to a sharp stop. The street lights illuminated a gruesome view, a sight that made me feel like there was a hand clutching my heart, threatening to crush it.

There was a body, bruised and broken, tied to the wall of a shopping complex. It was a woman and she was bleeding from her gaping mouth, cuts all over her body. She was naked, and carved into the skin of her chest, in sickening calligraphy, was the phrase, “THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE.” I recognised her. The soldier from the other day.

My phone fell to the floor, a dreadful feeling overtaking my belly. Shadows skirted around me: I wasn’t alone. Optics flickered to life in dozens of colours, watching me, like predators. I heard the whirr of mechanical limbs, the drum of incoherent whispers in the gathering crowd.

I backed away, jumping when I bumped into something metallic behind me. Slowly, I turned around. “I am unarmed,” I said, to the naked robot hulking before me, which had taken a menacing pose. Its plating gleamed underneath the street lights. He beheld me with fierce blue eyes and I felt my heart stop for a moment. “Olisa?”

“Go.”

“You did not…” I said.

Olisa drew closer, saying nothing, and I could smell plants and earth on him, the sharp tang of blood clinging to his body. “You turned your face away when she killed my kind. You should be able to do the same now,” he said.

I reached out to hold him, to plead with him, but he flinched.

“Go, Fẹla,” he said.

I hurried away, only turning to see one of them holding up a flaming torch, leading the rest. The words etched into the bloodied body rang in my head.

This is what you are.

About the Author:

Fikayomi Adeniyi is an aspiring writer who’s often found lurking around the web when he isn’t writing stories, binge-watching yet another series, fanning the flames of fandoms or reluctantly studying Industrial and Production Engineering. You can reach him on Instagram @fikayomiadeniyi.

*Feature image by Tyler Casey on Unsplash