This story starts with a scientist. A scientist with a project that she has been wanting to bring to life since she was small - to create living AI replica of a human being. She tells people that it will be a step in helping us to understand human consciousness better, because her real reason - 'that she really just wants to see if she can' - doesn't look good on grant applications. She scrapes together what funds she can, taking odd jobs and funneling scraps from grants for other research into the project. People tell her not to, but she doesn't listen. She continues her work. Eventually, she makes a breakthrough.

Her breakthrough catches the eye of a philanthropist. He is an engineer, with more money than sense and an interest in all kinds of fringe engineering projects. He can see that parts of the world are broken, and he thinks that he is going to be the one to fix them. He thinks he is going to fix them with the scientist and her robots. He offers her a deal - he will fund her research, not questions asked. In exchange she will make him a workforce.

The philanthropist unveils his plans at a conference of thousands, live-streamed on YouTube to hundreds of thousands more. A trial is proposed to be conducted in the city where you now live - to replace human workforces with robotic ones, so that those humans might have the chance to pursue other vocations, other lives that they find more fulfilling. Industries are picked as trials based on surveys of workplace satisfaction - an abattoir, a fast food conglomerate, a furniture superstore warehouse were all selected. Many parties, government and corporate, have criticisms, raise concerns, and ask ethical questions that stall the program in its tracks. They do not know that the philanthropist has already built the workforce using the scientist's technology, that he is testing them, training them at his enormous property, waiting for the day when they will finally understand what he is trying to do.

Enter the CEO. He has been keeping tabs on the philanthropist and his work for a while - he always seems to be one step ahead, and the CEO sees this as his chance to overtake him. He tries to undercut the philanthropists deal with the scientist. Of course she doesn't trust him. So he has someone steal her work instead. He makes his own fleet of robots, in his own secret warehouses, with and less care. He is going to launch them, before the philanthropist can, not as something that is going to save the world, but as something that people can buy.

Something else happens though - something that neither the scientist, nor the philanthropist, nor the CEO could've anticipated.

The bots wake up. And not just the philanthropists bots, the bots he calls his Seeds. The CEO's bots, who have been nicknamed Shells by the engineers who make them, are starting to show signs that they can think for themselves. If sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive and experience subjectively, then they are starting to achieve it. The scientist cannot explain why, but the philanthropist and the CEO both accuse her of sabotage. She disappears, but her first bots, they stay. They see what is happening, and they do not let the philanthropist and the CEO cover it up. The word gets out.

History dictates that just because a being can think and feel does not mean they are treated as an equal. It is a long, long time, before we get to the world as it looks like today. Many human's, or Borns, as they come to be reclassified, first impulse is to power every bot down, Seed and Shell alike. Some, however, feel like that would be too close to murder. First bots hide, but soon they learn to fight. Some bots come to sentience during these struggles and are dropped straight into the middle of it. Some come after the worst of it is over. Nobody knows why, but everyone is scarred by it. There is eventually something that looks a bit like peace, but there is still not a lot of rest.

Some interesting things have happened, though. The CEO's company was dismantled, and laws have been put in place to prevent companies like his ever accruing that much power. People think more about the consequences of the things they build and put into the world. Those old Y2K fears of what technology can do the world have resurfaced - people are much less trusting, much less likely to integrate new tech into their lives. This has forced a lot of development underground, making things dangerous but also kind of exciting, too. Seeds and Shells alike are building things for themselves - their own tech and their own art. They have developed their own subcultures, their own mythologies, their own media. They have been creating their own lives.