[There's another world on just the other side of a choice where they're talking about call centers instead, and for a moment Paul wonders if it would be possible to slip sideways into that skin. Is that version of himself better off, lighter?]

It was a long time ago. Thousands of years. [He shrugs, barely.] I don't know if they were androids, although I'd imagine some of them may have been. Most of the records of that time are lost.

[Or were purged, to be more accurate, but he remembers her defense of AI's right to exist without having to debate it, so he leaves it unsaid.]

I guess I'm curious about what it would be like, to be a thing like that. There aren't any left where I come from to ask about it.