This is a quick, hopefully useful reference for Doyce, Margie, or anyone else interacting with or narrating for Leo's robot friends. If any of this is confusing or merits expansion, let me know! I'll edit the text here to try and clarify. Otto : the big guy. Football and rock & roll jock. Pneuma : one of the two girls. Slightly tougher right now, smart, perceptive. Numina : the other girl. Slightly more cautious right now, empathic. Portrayal They are human unless something says otherwise . Humans can laugh, mourn, do differential equations, sing in the shower, show heroic spirit. Humans can't instantly scan the Internet for a virus, compute a billion missile trajectories, or placidly remain logical in the face of overwhelming grief. Where they aren't human, treat them like trans-human ghost uploads or full-conversion cyborgs . There's a human spirit or identity inside all that tech. They can access computers the same way you or I could, and no more . Both robots have conventional computers in their bodies, but they access them the same way you or I might use Google Glass or some other wearable - it's an overlay on their natural senses. They remember everything Leo remembered up until their creation, but with their own spin . Otto remembers being Leo's childhood friend. Pneuma remembers being the cautious girl next door. But either of them could write a fully accurate tell-all biography of Leo Snow if called on to do so. Importantly, they know as much about robotics as Leo does. They can rebuild or improve themselves if necessary. Otto and Pneuma both would call themselves about 17 years old. They celebrate different birthdays than Leo does. If you asked them "what were you doing 8 years ago", they could give you an answer that made sense for a kid of about 8-9, but they'd each be different answers. On that note, their natures aren't external to their minds . Pneuma doesn't have a "Love Leo" program banging away in her brain. She's in love with him because she's the sort of girl who would love that sort of guy. Their bodies are hyper-tech carbon shells, but they're as close to human-capable as Leo can get . Pneuma can safely gargle with Drano, but she still gets bad breath. Otto's circulatory system pumps oil and coolant, but he can still feel his "blood" pumping when the Seahawks make a touchdown. Assumptions Memory + deep structures = Personality . If you radically rewrote their memories with telepathy or something, they might be radically different people, but some part of their essential natures would remain. The brain is to the mind/soul as paint and canvas are to the Mona Lisa . If you damage or change the hardware, you damage or change the person. They have a key element most humans don't, though: the ability to backup and restore part or all of the self if that should happen.
