Ex mens
--for everything out of sight is out of mind

A robot that had been assembled with the purpose of serving a human family was expected to take over daily chores to allow humans the freedom that came with unoccupied time.

It had no other purpose; it merely took over the jobs that a human servant would be expected to do, and more. There were very simple explanations as to why they would do so. A robot had a greater occupational capacity than a human, and had no such inhibitions as physical or mental fatigue, or emotions that would culminate in the delaying and/or disregard of tasks.

Furthermore, a robot could do repetitive tasks that a human had no capacity to fulfill. Humans, after all, had a distinctive need for variety in their tasks, and the expectation of a human to complete the same tasks repetitively for ten hours on a daily basis would result ultimately in the erosion of the human mind. Repetition would have positive effects at first, increasing effeciency at the initial stages, but over an extended period of time, it would lead to the decaying of areas of the brain had ceased to be used; it was the reason why there had been such a great demand for the replacement of human workers by robots.

Human workers eventually decreased in their efficiency due to dispositional factors such as mood, repetition, but also age. Robots were consistent in their results; efficiency would only ever decrease due to hard- or software irregularities. They were also cheaper in the longterm compared to humans, as robots did not require rest-days and could work all twenty-four hours of a day without pause.

This was the reason why robots had eventually negated the need for human workers at high-risk or low-pay jobs* (and in the case of commercial businesses, had the added benefit of deterring thieves and robbers).

But it also meant that for the tasks that Professor Jason Chaewon Jung had for Taeyeon - formerly Android T43 -, it would have to be able to fool other robots into thinking it was human.

And that was what Taeyeon had been required to do, on this very day.

It had a grocery list downloaded into its system. Nevertheless, Professor Jason Chaewon Jung had given it a tablet with the exact same list written on a document, telling it to refer to that instead of its internal memory stores when shopping for groceries.

Furthermore, it had orders to behave as humanly as possible, and to return 'home' the very moment it was done with its task. Which was to buy groceries without alerting any human or robot to its artificial origins.

Taeyeon had been made to obey orders given to it by its creator.

And thus, it would carry out Professor Jason Chaewon Jung's command without fail.

Brown ceramic optics flickered between the sheet of paper in its hands and the selection of vegetables in front of it. The variety of foods that could be found would confuse an inexperienced human, but Taeyeon had been implemented with the latest of technologies available at that moment in time.

It could recite the names of anything within its visual range. It could tell where it came from, its nutritional content; anything that it could access using the extranet*.

The list it was supposed to follow could be recited from what humans would call "memory".

[Retrieving file 'grocerylist2701xx.txt'...]
1. Cucumbers
2. Tomatoes
3. Potatoes
4. Cabbage
   [cont.]

Nevertheless, it would look at the sheet of paper periodically, before looking back at the vegetables in front of it in a manner that simulated a human's. This was confusion, and Professor Jason Chaewon Jung had required it to hide its identity as a robot. It would have to fool other humans that were shopping, as well as the robots that were working around it.

Taeyeon reached out to take hold of a cucumber, gazing at it momentarily. The vegetable had been h