~Interview with Liam from the Cyborg and Upload Rights Archive~
I had known Ruby since we were both about three years old, and we’ve been the bestest of friends, so close we were like siblings. Growing up we played together, studied together, got into trouble and mischief together, pretty much we did everything together. You would think that would make it natural for us to fall in love, get married, have kids and live happily ever after. If you thought that, keep dreaming, life is stranger than that.
When we were old enough to start getting interested in the opposite sex neither of us so much as glanced at each other in that way, maybe it was because we were so close that we just saw each other as family so it would’ve seemed strange and awkward, but again it didn’t occur to either of us. By the time we had both graduated High School and entered College life we had several relationships all of which had fallen apart spectacularly. For me it was especially bad for my first relationship, where she took advantage of my naivety and gullibility leaving me broken and less trusting but still naive and gullible to a certain point. For Ruby it was her last boyfriend who manipulated, lied, tried to impregnate her without her consent - putting holes in his condoms - and then ultimately cheated on her with an aspiring actress who let him do whatever he wanted. Like me Ruby is kind of a germaphobe, so when she found out he was cheating on her, after she broke up with him she went to the hospital and 7 clinics to get herself tested for any STD’s, with all the results coming back as negative so she was free and clear. Though this would become a moot point soon enough.
After college I lucked out with a good paying job that allowed me to travel from time to time but usually only once or twice a year, as I like to travel so it was a win win, and Ruby would babysit my cats when I was gone at the manufactured home I was able to afford on some beautiful affordable land. No it is not an RV or some junky trailer park house. It was manufactured utilizing four shipping containers - ya know the ones you see on the big shipping boats that people on TV are turning into homes - and a newly manufactured trailer home integrated together.
I toyed with buying a Robot Maid, or YardBot as I hate doing yard work, making the bed, doing the dishes or putting away clean clothes after doing the laundry. In the end I procrastinated and never got around to it, paying the neighbors to take care of the yard once a week and just cramming my clothes into the drawers and shelves after washing and drying, and having to wash the dishes twice every now and again to get them clean. Ruby thought I was a slob, but that was like calling the kettle black as she had the same issues, but I didn’t say anything just laughing it off.
Ruby lived at an apartment down the road from her parents, and the location meant it was only a five minute walk to work, a ten minute walk to her parents house, and a thirty minute walk to her brother’s place. She rarely used her car, but she had one. For the next two years things were pretty much split between the two of us at our respective jobs working, or visiting with family, but more often than not just the two of us hanging out and having fun like we always had.
Then one day after a trip for work I had just gotten off the plane and was looking for Ruby to come pick me up at the airport, when my Mom called me. Ruby had been in a terrible accident, a chemicals and pharmaceuticals company truck had tipped over crushing her car and dousing her in chemicals. Most of her body was beyond repair so they were salvaging her brain with spinal cord, and her ovaries as they were the only parts of her that could be saved. They were prepping her for the transfer to a replacement cyborganic body, when word was received that her insurance wasn’t willing to pay, wanting the company that was responsible for the accident to pay for it. She was put into transfer hold status in a nutrient life support tank for three months while the legal battles broke out, I went on emergency family leave and was there with her at the hospital most days of the week as my leave allowed. I knew she wasn’t aware of me as part of the purpose of the tank meant she wasn’t conscious or aware of anything, but I think it was more for my comfort then hers. I was afraid that she would pass away while the idiot lawyers, and corporate and insurance goons fought over whether or not to save her. A good thing too, as her own family had written her off as deceased, they are religious conservatives who do not see life as continuing in a Cyborganic or robot body as the real person; thankfully the government disagrees.
In the end the court forced the company responsible for the accident to pay for it, but they decided to go the cheap route, they paid for the least expensive robot Gynoid body they could. An XT5000 SexBot Robomaid which was enhanced with cyberflesh though you could still see the seams between the cyberflesh attachment points so she looked like she had slightly glowing black indented lines all over her body. She was also given a full neural circuitry suite for her brain and spine to inhabit, and a separate artificial womb unit for her ovaries to be hooked up to with full stasis units to increase the reproductive life span for them so she could safely have up to twenty or more children successfully incubated over the next hundred years if she so wished. Though you had to cart the thing everywhere and basically set it up somewhere like a piece of furniture. Can anyone say awkward? It looks like a giant lit up see through neon blue vagina in case you're wondering why it's awkward. You can’t exactly leave it in the living room, and if you happen to bring a date home it just invites all sorts of awkward questions.
I already had a bad feeling regarding how she would react when she awoke, being the only one there as I felt it should just be us since her family had abandoned her though my Mom disagreed she respected and trusted my opinion regarding her potential reactions. I was proven right when the doctors and technicians helped her to stand and she saw her new self in a mirror. She freaked out, and after that broke down into a heaving crying mess though she can no longer cry tears as she no longer had any kind of tear ducts, and through it all I held her trying to soothe her through her grief, anger and shock.
Flash forward several months later and she is in therapy seeing a psychiatrist, councilor, a Psychologist, and a Neural Tech Analyst. At first it was just her, but when it became apparent that she wasn’t always being truthful to them they had me start coming in with her to tell them what she wasn’t telling them. They knew how close we were, and that she lived with me at my place with her own room with all her stuff I had been able to get from her place and from her family, so I was better able to answer their questions.
Ruby had become depressed. She would mainly just sit around doing nothing, occasionally she would watch tv or read a book but mostly just sit or lay around doing nothing. She didn’t really need to eat or drink anymore, mainly just plugging herself in to charge, and she would per doctor's orders eat one meal bar a day, with two glasses of water. Half the time I had to plug her in myself, or tell her to eat and drink, which got awkward and stressful. Like I was dealing with a stubborn child or mentally ill adult, which I suppose is quite accurate as she was depressed and despondent, but at least she is nowhere near suicidal as her desire to live is incredibly strong, but at the same time she doesn’t really do anything anymore.
She had quit her job, but she still had some income coming in from the company that had been involved in the accident as they were legally required to provide her with some monetary compensation for the next thirty years. The one time she went out in the weeks after she came home with me, she was relentlessly harassed by everyone thinking she was a sexbot or pleasure companion. As such she didn’t go outside in public anymore. She would sit in the backyard and there was a privacy fence around the yard, and the nearest neighbor was twenty five feet in almost all directions from the fence so there was little to no chance of anyone seeing her. None of the neighbors had a home with any additional floors so no one could peek over the fence.
During a rare joint session with all four of them, they decided to try something drastic to stimulate her mind and try to get her out of her depression. They wanted her to use Cyborganic Neural Simulator Chips. For those not familiar with them they are like human personality skill simulators, kind of like an immersive augmented reality program with built in personality enhancers that allowed you to become someone else after a fashion but your seeing yourself as whatever the personality simulator is programmed to be, kinda like a holodeck only you’re the holodeck in your mind’s eye. For example with one you can be a Maid, a Cook, a Legal Analyst and Advisor, a chauffeur, a stripper, a singer, a financial advisor, a historian, and well you get the idea.
With these she would not see her robotic body but whatever the CNSC’s showed the cybernetic user. When Ruby had been given her new body, she had a suite of chip slots she could fill already preinstalled when her mint condition XT5000 SexBot Robomaid shell was originally manufactured and during the upgrade to human levels were never removed, but the other upgrades were brought into line with human neural patterns. She had ten slots in an openable square about the size of my palm on her lower back that revealed the slots.
Ruby was pissed about being told she had to use the emulators, and less than pleased with my choices for her emulators though she was grateful for the Maid one. In addition to the Maid emulator, I also got the Cook; Legal Analyst and Advisor; Chauffeur; the Services module - good for home, auto and yard repair and maintenance; Computer Technician; Accountant; Artistic - which instead of a generic artist that would create identical artwork for every cyborg with one installed, instead this chip would draw upon the person’s own creative impulses and ideas.
As a gag or joke that I thought she would be both amused by and annoyed with me for her last two emulators, I got the Stripper - which with my help at her request put restrictions on where it would only work in her bedroom and nowhere else - and the Runway Model - which we set to only work in the house. Over the next ten months she would utilize these emulators, and there was a noticeable improvement in her attitude, and she seemed to be doing better. At least until the emulator clicked off, and she would see herself as the cyborg she had become, then she would start to become depressed again.
The professionals had hoped it would help her to overcome her depression and accept what she had become, instead she became overly dependent upon the emulators to function, and without them on she would slowly resume her previous behavior. So they decided to confront this head on by having her human emulator chips replaced by HUBOT emulator chips which would force her to confront what she is and become comfortable with her body, but they decided this while she was out of the room and ordered me to replace her emulators with the HUBOT equivalent. She would lose more control over herself as these chips were designed for people who liked to lose more control to the program, but they would leave her appearance unchanged as they did not have reality augmenters.
They felt this would force her to become more comfortable with her body, I heartily disagreed, as I felt it was a violation of her rights. They overrode me, using legal and prescription level authority saying that if I didn’t do this they would be within their rights to institutionalize her at a Cyborg/Upload mental health facility until they felt she was better. This pissed me off, but I reluctantly agreed as I knew that if they institutionalized her she would most likely never regain her freedom. I was no fool, I had seen and read about some of the horrors that went on in these places. Whereas people in mental institutes had rights, for Cyborgs and Uploads their rights were less defined despite the best efforts of legislators and the courts. Ironically Gynoids and Androids were also recognized as fully sentient with the same rights as humans, but Robots were treated on a case by case basis, so the Cyborg/Upload rights movement and the Robot rights movement had merged by this time which complicated the fight for protections and rights.
That next afternoon I went to the store to get the HUBOT Emulators. I was able to find all of them though there were some compromises I had to make. The Stripper and Runway Model Emulators were not sold separately but as part of a bundled package Emulator containing The Stripper, Runway Model, DanceBot - both as a dancer and as dancing partners - and RoboProstitute. Thankfully there were options available to disable certain features, or limit their functions for location just like the Human Emulators. However there were no really good Services Emulators that had anywhere the complete package that the Human ones did.
The best I could find was a limited Services Emulator for Home and Yard Maintenance but not repairs nor automotive, and a clearance one that had a return re-wrap packaging on it with a handwritten label saying S-Bot with complete Services and AIS databases. I tried to do a search on the company or on S-Bot with no luck in finding any results online. What made the decision for me was after speaking with the store manager who didn’t know what the difference was but pointed out it was saying complete database, and that this particular item had been in the clearance bin for two years and that he would give it to me for a dollar just to get it out of his inventory and if anything was wrong with it to return it within eight months.
I came home with the emulators, and Ruby asked what was in the bag. I remember sighing before telling her to sit down, then I told her everything that happened at the last session. It led into a big fight which between us was exceedingly rare, but what ultimately won her over was the threat they had made to institutionalize her. She called them to inform them she would not be coming in for the next eleven months as she would be testing the HUBOT Emulators, so she would not have a lot of control over herself. They agreed reluctantly especially after she threatened to get a hold of lawyers from the Rights movement involved, I think they would’ve made a fight of it if I hadn’t agreed to document everything and submit it at the next session eleven months hence.
She gave me an amused look upon seeing the bundle, and the two Services emulators saying, “seriously, you are so indecisive and you want me to run both Services emulators? Isn’t that a bit redundant? Why didn’t you look online?”
I admitted that I just wanted to get them and be done with it, and I didn’t have any of those delivery memberships as she well knew that I couldn't get anything there in less than a week as a result. She laughed at that, and we were just about to open her panel to remove her human emulators when I got a priority alert from work saying they needed me on a flight to Ireland tomorrow and that I would be gone for the next three months.
Realizing we were in a rush Ruby helped me pack then just before I left for my flight at Midnight we removed her Human Emulators, inserted her HUBOT Emulators and started the activation sequence for her with activation location restrictions preset, then she informed me that it would take her a while to activate them and set their other limitations to her’s and mines preferences so then I left taking the Human Emulators and locking them up at my banks safe deposit box I had there so she wouldn’t be tempted to restore her human ones.
What happened next I wasn’t there to see, but I learned about later from Ruby and all the medical and technical, personal and the investigators who reviewed her memories and programming. As I left I failed to notice the blank look come over her face as the HUBOT Emulators came online.
The S-Bot Emulator did indeed have a full services package for everything needed to run, repair, and maintain a household. From the home, to the automobiles, to the yard and it had unbeknownst to me or the store employees and manager a full and very complete SexBot program; but the AIS stood for Artificial Intelligence Symbiote. It was designed for people who wanted to experience being a Bot under the control of an owner so the AIS would integrate with the Human personality like a symbiote as depicted in science fiction - like Dax, or Venom - and they would become a SexBot for however long the timer program was set for.
There was a reason why this S-Bot chip was returned, that the returnee - whom the authorities managed to track down after the fact - barely managed to escape the chips control, but didn’t explain or go into detail for embarrassment; just telling the service desk employee that it was defective and should be returned defective to the manufacturer. It was pure accident that it fell out of the defective returns bin into the repackage/resell returns bin, as the store had so many returns that day that when the bins overflowed the underpaid employees who had to deal with it at the end of day missed it, and so it was repackaged and resold with the employee in question having forgotten why it was returned thinking it was a re-sellable return.
The reason according to the detailed report I got from the investigators, was that the timing sequence on the Emulator had corrupted, so instead of trying to interface with the user upon first activation to set safety parameters, timers for timed interaction, and limitations on how integrated the AIS should get with the user; it would instead go for a full integration with everything from the Human inside to any additional programs or Emulators with no limits for parameters, timing or limitations able to be set. In essence you would be trapped within The Artificial Intelligence Symbiote, fully integrated into a new Personality Bot. The woman was fully Human, but wore a Bot simulation control apparatus which when worn and you look at it on someone is like wearing sunglasses backwards but it rests upon both your ears and the hair and contours of your head but not your neck. She only got free after three hours because the Bot forgot to charge the apparatus, an error the AIS learned from, so when it was next used it never forgot anything about what it was installed on, so it paid attention to care details and charging protocols.
The AIS started synching with the other HUBOT emulators in just two seconds, and with Ruby two seconds after that. Next the AIS initiated the owner/master imprinting protocol. As her face was going blank the imprinting protocol memorized my face, voice, retinal pattern, and the shape of my body front and back in clothing so it made a note to finish the naked body imprint later. With that Ruby and the AIS were fully integrated, and the other Emulators were fully incorporated, without a defined Bot name established, the newly created Bot accessed all memory files including the deactivated default programmed personality from when the XT5000 SexBot Robomaid was manufactured. The Bot processed all these files, it saw that the default personality that had been deactivated to make room for Ruby was known as BethBot, and that the Human was Ruby. Thinking for just a few nanoseconds, it came up with a placeholder name of RuBettyBot. In doing so it reactivated the default programming which was immediately integrated into RuBettyBot’s personality and all the other programming from the Emulators.
The first thing RuBettyBot did, upon once more becoming aware of her surroundings fifteen seconds after I had closed and locked the door to the house, was to start cleaning the house with her RoboMaid programming. Once completed she then went outside in the backyard to mow the lawn, feed and care for the cats, and do the gardening buck naked as after all she was a Bot so why bother to wear clothes unless her Owner wished it she reasoned.
As she was doing all of this she would think of how her Beloved Owner and Master would use her when he returned, very quickly RuBettyBot was aroused and in heat, but she didn’t show it as she had duties to attend to. RuBettyBot would continue like this for the next three months working in the house, the garage, and in the backyard but never the front as I had to leave control of that to the homeowners association to maintain. That bugged me sometimes, but in retrospect it helped save Ruby from something worse happening as she knew that she didn’t have to do anything for the front yard so she was never exposed to the neighborhood and the world for all to see.
All the while she was perpetually aroused, horny, and in a needy heat but still she showed no signs of that on her face as she robotically continued her duties, eating her meals bars, drinking water, and charging herself. In case you're wondering why she doesn’t go to the bathroom it is because whatever waste is generated from her brain and spinal cord from the meal bars is reprocessed and burned for more energy until nothing is left except maybe some non toxic trace waste gases, water vapor and normal atmospheric gases from inhalation which is slowly dispensed from exhaling as her artificial lungs bring in oxygen for her organic brain and spine.
At the end of three months I came home from Ireland. I had tried to get ahold of Ruby off and on for three months while I was in Ireland with no luck. At the time I didn’t think much of it as sometimes when one of her emulators was running she would lose track of things like her phone or the internet, so I figured it was much the same thing as before. When she didn’t show up to pick me up at the airport, or answer her phone yet again was my first warning that something was wrong. I called my Mom thinking she could pick me up after all she took me to the airport when I left, alas she was at the house of her sister - my aunt - which was two hours away. So not wanting to wait I hailed a cab home.
I paid the cab driver and exited the cab once she got me to my house. I entered the house seeing nothing out of the ordinary, but I could hear the vacuum running in the background but I couldn’t tell if it was coming from the bedroom or the family room. As I was pondering the vacuuming stopped, and in walked Ruby still butt naked and greeted me by saying “Welcome Home Master,” with a big happy smile.
Immediately I knew something was wrong and thinking fast I ordered her to come over to me and allow me access to her emulators. As she was programmed to obey, she did as I told her to and I opened her Emulator Port and I quickly saw there was something strange going on that I didn’t have the expertise for but thankfully the emergency shutdown protocols were something that any idiot can do without causing harm. It took ten minutes for the AIS and the other Emulators to disconnect from each other and Ruby and shut down, Ruby closed her eyes as her neural interface rebooted bringing her back to full consciousness meanwhile I removed the Emulators and closed her Emulator Port.
When Ruby opened her eyes there was a wild look in her eyes, as she locked eyes with me she growled in obvious arousal and animal lust and jumped me. She technically raped me, but it was obvious she was not in her right mind, even though I tried to reach her by talking to her. She ripped my clothes off in less than five seconds, mounted me immediately after that and proceeded to ride me to two orgasms for myself and I have no idea how many orgasms for her as she would later admit she couldn’t think because she was so horny. She sucked me back to hardness for a third time as I tried to get away, but she held me down by laying down on me in a sixty nine position so I just lay there as she proceeded to bringing herself to another orgasm just by giving me a blowjob and swallowing down my load, at this point I passed out. Apparently this was enough for Ruby to start coming back to herself as she realized in horror what she had just done to me.
I woke up three hours later to see Ruby huddled in front of the couch on the other side of the room from me sitting on her butt with her knees tucked into her chest with her arms wrapped around her legs as she gently rocked herself while looking away into nothing, as she noticed me moving and waking up she focused on me again and started to apologize to me for what happened. I kept telling her it was okay, that something had gone wrong and she hadn’t been herself. Eventually she started sobbing - again no tears because she has no tear ducts - and despite what had happened I went over to her and held her as she cried herself to sleep. I fell asleep shortly after that myself. I woke up to see Ruby masturbating, while staring at my cock. When I looked at her and said her name she jerked in startlement upon realizing I had noticed her state of aroused activity, she blushed in embarrassment with her continuing arousal but she had the hardest time pulling her hand away from herself.
I asked if she was okay, or if she wanted some tea to calm herself. She never did say if she was okay but her eyes lit up at the tea and before I could do anything she said she would get the tea for herself and she would get me a mineral water, then she was off like a shot without any of her previous modesty. She came back with a tray of all things, I didn’t even remember having a tray. The tray contained her tea which she set on the coffee table in front of the couch, and then she presented me with a glass with ice handing it to me, then she took the can of mineral water and set it on the coffee table saying Here’s your beverage sir. Once that was complete she shuddered in pleasure, then got a real confused look on her face as she realized what she just did and she didn’t know why. Then she went blank and just stood there unresponsive. It was at this point I knew we were going to need to call in the experts.
I contacted the doctors, the technicians, and investigators. That’s how we learned about everything that happened that I mentioned earlier, and more. At first the investigators tried to pin some kind of criminal charges against one of us, and when they saw it wasn’t either of our faults they looked at the store that sold the Emulators, The ones who proscribed and and threatened Ruby with institutionalization, and the manufacturers of the Emulators. In the end, when they realized the full extent of what had happened to Ruby, the irreparable harm done to her they got a plea deal bargain. She no longer had to see those people anymore, the store refunded the entire cost of all the Emulators HUBOT and Simulator chips plus offered free company sponsored retirement accounts for us both for when we hit seventy, and the manufacturers of the chips and the medical technicians and doctors agreed to do the best they could to fix or at least help alleviate the issues of her new condition.
You see what that AIS had done to her mind was the various aspects of the Emulators and the AIS’s own SexBot programming had been channeled into her core self despite all the heuristic neural security protections, it had permanently imprinted the data into her mind. It was why she no longer had any modesty, why she wanted to serve and obey any commands, why she got off on it, and why being near me left her perpetually horny for when the imprinting process for the AIS had scanned me before I left had given her a permanent focus for her new programing. Unfortunately it also left her mind dependent on the AIS and the Emulators in order to function, which was why she had started to blank out after a while without them, and it was part of the reason she had lost control when I removed them losing herself to the heavy horny unthinking heat she had when she jumped me.
The Emulator and Simulator manufacturers, the doctors, and technicians spent months trying to fix or undo what had been done to her. As always I was there for her, but this time things were a little different. Whereas before we had always done our own thing and been the best of friends now she needed more. At the encouragement of those trying to help her I started asking her to do things for me, waiting on me hand and foot, and with some reluctance we started becoming intimate. At first it was mutual, but as she became more submissive eventually I started using her like the Bot she said she was which made her truly happy, usually it was just her SexBot and RoboMaid programming that was utilized though.
As time went on her periods of blankness became more frequent and lasted for longer durations. In the end the best solution they could come up with was to dump all the data and programming from all the chips into a brand new chip, modify the AIS to give Ruby what she needed to function but it would no longer control her unless she wanted that control from time to time. They created two back up chips in case the other one ever failed, so now she would have three chips but only one of them would be active. Then they created two safety ones to help monitor, regulate, and control the three chips.
Once they left our relationship took on a steady pattern of me working, and her serving and servicing me like a Bot. Her data logs showed she was indeed happy and very sexually satisfied. Three months after she was reintegrated with her new AIS she insisted on me taking her Robo-Anal cherry, so I started having anal sex with her, taking her from behind. Her orgasms were just as strong as her vaginal and oral ones, she even continued to have little tiny orgasms just from cleaning for and serving me. This continued for ten years, until one day I asked her if she would like to start a family with me. She was amenable to this on one condition, she said it felt strange and awkward to refer to me by name as she felt not entirely Human anymore, as she felt more like she was my CompanionBot built just for me. She wanted to call me Master, Owner, and/or Beloved and she wanted to be referred to as RubyBot from now on as she wanted to be my Robot Girl forever so I agreed.
I proceeded to knock up the artificial womb unit, and over the next forty four years it brought to term and bore RubyBot and I a total of fifteen children. In preparation for this, with careful watchfulness via her doctors, technicians and the manufacturers she was provided with some special Nanny and Child Care chips designed just for her. By this time we were both in our seventies, though for either of us you wouldn’t know it. I had started taking the Telemere treatments in my late thirties so I physically only looked and felt not a day over forty, but for RubyBot it wasn’t an option but her body remained looking the same because the Sexbot RoboMaid body she had was not capable of aging, but her brain and spine are.
By the time she was seventy two she started to have memory lapses, by this time technology had caught up so it was possible to transfer everything you are into a cyber brain. RubyBot wasn’t sure she wanted that, but I couldn’t imagine my life anymore without her, and the kids didn’t want to lose their MommyBot. So I asked her to “be my Robot Girl.” She said yes of course, as she could never deny me my wants.
So it came to pass that on her seventy third birthday she ceased to be human, as she was successfully transferred into her new brain. Everything from her human mind to the AIS and other program chips that had become a part of her was transferred over too. Nowadays she doesn’t use any chips as she is now completely integrated in one device. At this point legal battles had been going back and forth in the various houses of government, as two days after the transfer she was declared legally to be a SexBot RoboMaid so we had to register her as such, and reluctantly upload additional programming to help in that transition. Ironically it was the legal protest we raised regarding this that gave the boost to the movement that ultimately restored and expanded upon the full legal rights of Robots, Cyborgs, and Uploads. Even though she now has all the same rights as everyone else RubyBot still prefers to serve me, and views herself as my property no matter what the laws say.
Now here we are fifty five years later, and I have since uploaded myself into an Android body with my beloved RubyBot still at my side. She still insists she is mine to do with as I please. That is why she is still registered as my Bot, because of a legal appeal she made for an exception which was granted considering the circumstances of her life. I am proud to have been able to help others, so now all Robots, Android, Gynoids, Cyborgs, and Uploads are equals with humans. More importantly I am happy that my beloved RubyBot is happy still being with me, and that she will Be My Robot Girl forever.
~Interview End~
~Addendum~
This interview was conducted over two hundred years ago and Liam and his RubyBot are still together. RubyBot is still registered as Liam’s Bot, but she is also legally registered as a sentient Upload. Both are still regarded as important to the legal legitimization of rights to all artificials save for the non-sentient Automata, Bots, Droids, and Noids who are not sentient nor aware.