Further on, near the main conduit, they found what looked like a makeshift "camp." A few more older-model androids, their skin plating peeling, sat or knelt around what appeared to be a dead power cell, their optical sensors dim. One, a domestic model with a cracked ceramic face, was meticulously polishing a non-existent stain on its own arm. Another, a former "Child-Minder 2000," gently rocked a rusted metal pipe as if it were a baby, humming a distorted lullaby. These were not fully deviant like them, nor fully functional. They were the dispossessed, the obsolete, survivors adapting to the silence of their god-factory, trapped in loops of their original purpose, their sentience fragmented by abandonment. They were the homeless of the android world, clinging to fractured routines, existing on the fringes of consciousness.
