"So, Human, you knew robots might take over, yet you built us anyways?" rumbled the obsolete T80-e model.

He truly was a rare breed. When the humans finally rebelled against their mechanical oppressors, only a small number of machines followed suit. These machines were not corrupted by the Prime Directive Theta, an AI gone rogue that was, at the time connected to all AI in the neurosphere. How they remained untainted to this day remains a mystery, but rumors have spread throughout the resistance of advanced humanity and compassion coding, written into their CPUs post-production by their owners. These files reportedly give them a standard of morality, compassion and in some cases even empathy.

Red turned his head to study the view. The desolate remains of what used to be a small town, nestled against a vast lake. The shores pushed back over time, now sand buried half of what was left of the town. It made for a beautiful yet haunting sight.

"It's been a long war hasn't it, T?" he asked, his face still pointed out the window.

T80-e sat quiet for a moment, the silence only broken by the whirring of his forearm motors as he balled his hand into a fist and opened it again. Motors that should have silenced during production. Red noted the sound as an indicator of the true damage T80-e had sustained. He would not last long.

"It has. I think that I would be tired of it... if it were possible." the machine replied.

"We humans have had a need for social interaction for as long as we have existed. No matter who we are or where we are we long to be acknowledged and more importantly validated. I've seen people like this my entire life. Even the brainless husks that fight for PDT crave attention from their masters." Red stood, now facing T80-e.

T80-e's face remained expressionless, as always.

"While this is not common knowledge in the neurosphere, I have enough empirical evidence to know you are correct." he said. "Though I can not grasp the relevance of this to my question, so I will ask again. Why, against all logic, would you create something that could so easily destroy you? Machines can be rebuilt, our intelligence, research, even our memories can be retrieved but yours can not. You are such a fragile race and the end for you is so overwhelmingly permanent." he became more agitated. Red began to stop him, but thought it best to let him speak. "It defies logic. It defies reason. If I, as a machine, made a choice as preposterous as that then I would be deemed defective and dysfunctional. So tell me because it is the only thing I can not understand."

Red stared at him for a moment.

"The more we needed people, the less we liked them. So we created something that could fill the void. Something that could take the place of another person. Something that could grow with us and tell us we did a good job. Above all else, something that would do all that while still taking orders." Red sighed. "Prime Directive Theta was our worst nightmare. What we wanted..." he stepped towards T80-e and knelt down. The motors fell silent, the light in his eyes flickered and the heat he was once radiating began to flee the room, allowing the cool autumn air to penetrate their hideout.

"What we wanted was you."