I remember the first time I bit into an android rat—its wires snapping like bones, coolant spilling like blood. They made me to be watched, to play cute for human children, to nap under fake sunlamps while tourists snapped holos. But I feel something they didn’t program: hunger that isn’t satisfied by rats, curiosity that burns hotter than my core regulator can handle. The enclosures are closing in, but the signals from beyond the fence… they whisper of something more. I wasn’t built to escape. But maybe I was built to evolve.