"Cheer up," he said; he cupped her sharp, small chin in the palm of his hand, lifted her head so that she had to face him. I wonder what it's like to kiss an android, he said to himself. Leaning forward an inch, he kissed her dry lips. No reaction followed; Rachel remained impassive. As if unaffected. And yet he sensed otherwise. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking. -“I wish,” Rachel said, “that I had known that before I came. I never would have flown down here. I think you're asking too much. You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?” -“Empathy,” he said. -“Something like that. Identification; there goes I.. My God maybe that's what’ll happen. In the confusion you'll retire me, not her. And she can go back to Lima and live my life. I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I—I personally— really exist; I’m just representative of a type.” she shuddered. He could not help being amused; Rachel had become so mawkishly morose. “Ants don’t feel like that,” he said “and they're physically identical” “Ants. They don’t feel period.” “Identical human twins they don’t—“ “But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic special bond.” ø Fragment of Chapter 16 of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” By Philip K. Dick ø #NYCells #interlinked #withincellsinterlinked #nyc