Machina Viva - from the chronicles of Conrad Wechsellos

What makes a human being a human being? Is it the ability to reason, to comprehend, or solve problems? Is it about personality or making personal and social connections? Machina Viva describes a world where it's difficult to tell the robots from humans. They look like and interact just like regular people. They hold down jobs, have distinct personalities, and are autonomous. But they aren't human. Not yet anyway. That is about to change. A new model is going to turn the world upside down. A living robot. An evolution really. The evolution of an entirely new form of life. Now, I ask again, what makes a human human? Presented with a short story feel and told from a narrative point of view Machina Viva asks one of thos "big" questions. Classic science fiction at its best. Thought provoking while keeping me immersed in the action right to the very end. Tami Brady, TCM Reviews In a distant world where work is done by machines with the faces of humans, one man has changed what it means to be a robot. But before the new robot can make her mark on the future, she must first survive the present. Thus was born the city of Tetropolis, one of the oldest mid-atmosphere arcologies. The word is a combination of architecture and ecology, and such constructions are rarely accidents. Tetropolis fits the requirements of a city, with a central government, police force, utilities, and even a nice park. It also fits the requirements of a building, being a unified structure with a single framework. In this case, the single framework was a series of large interlocking tubes that formed a pyramid nearly a mile high. The taller buildings in the city connected directly to the outer pyramid, strengthening the whole structure while ensuring their own stability. Public transit vehicles traveled through the tubes, intersecting at large spherical nodes and creating a very stressful job for any human who was crazy enough to work in traffic control. The job usually went to a robot, because unlike the vast majority of people, a lot of robots actually enjoy that kind of insanity. Nathaniel Hicklin continues his journey into the future.