They have no childhoods, because they were made, not born, but a certain amount of socialization being deemed useful for their later life they are raised in creches with other automata, rooms noisy with the mindless chatter of seven times seventy copper-wired semi-deployed workers. Noise is an indulgence, one they will be trained away from, later; what do they need to talk about?

Their factories are silent and swift; the machines are kept quiet for the pleasure of the lone human overseer. Morning and night they are fed the same thin flavorless paste; all the nutrients necessary to maintain smooth operating, though at the cost of a certain unavoidable about of noxious offgassing.

Every so often one of them slips into the bowels of the machines, and the floor bursts into clangor. They do not mourn, because they are interchangeable; another one will issue from the creche soon enough and the work will continue. They clean the machinery of the bright fluid and move on.

Now, though: the overseer, heavy with sleep, has slipped from his high perch and fallen to the floor. He shatters, and the factory slows, stops. They gather around the spreading pool of his blood, the same clangorous red as theirs.

The factory bursts into noise, swells, grows louder, louder, a dam broken through at last.