It was just like any other Thursday afternoon. Marsha arrived home at four o’clock after working in the pharmacy. It was seventy degrees and sunny outside, so she walked home, picking up a fresh bouquet of tulips from the street market on the way. She grabbed her mail from her PO box on the first floor of the apartment and headed up one flight of stairs until she arrived at the purple door with a yellow five painted on it, her home for the last two years.
As she entered her two-bedroom apartment, she slipped off her shoes, put the fresh flowers in a vase with water, and began rifling through her mail in the kitchen. Everything was good until she saw her pharmacy’s symbol printed in ocean blue on the last envelope. Marsha tore the envelope apart to find a white piece of paper and her eyes bulged as words like “Dear Miss Marsha,” “proof of physical examination,” “needed by next Friday,” and “to keep employment” jumped at her. To anybody else, this would not be a huge deal, but to Marsha this meant she needed to find a way to protect her identity and keep her job.
Marsha was a humanoid, a robot designed specifically to look and act like a human. On the outside she appeared normal with a black bob, expressive facial features, and functional limbs. However, on the inside she was nothing more than wires, circuits, metal panels, and a huge internal control system embedded with code and AI. Marsha was happy in Bayside. After years of feeling misplaced, she had found a home. She finally had coworkers to talk to, making her life a little less lonely, but she still felt isolated and had no one to confide in. She had to keep her identity a secret so her manufacturers that she ran away from did not find her. She had spent years collecting data with her sensors, learning how to blink at specific intervals and move like a human, but she lacked two key human components: the ability to breathe and a heartbeat!
Her Thursday night plan quickly changed from a date with her couch and the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy into a mission to install the respiratory kit she stole when she ran away all those years ago. She had always been so careful, planning her every move and never stepping out of line. She wanted control over her life and needed this appointment to pass as quickly as it came.
Frantic, she typed 5308 into the grey keypad attached to one of the bedroom doors. As “Welcome Marsha” appeared on the screen, she heard the deadbolt unlatch and threw the door open, running over to the control island. This was Marsha’s lab she created to make modifications to her hardware and internal system. The control island is in the center of the room and has a model of herself that she can analyze from every angle. She grabbed the respiratory kit, laying the pieces out in an organized arrangement on the table adjacent to the island and began reading the instructions while taking mini-Marsha apart on the screen.
Marsha locked herself in her lab for hours connecting a circuit to the senses panel in her internal control system. The circuit ran straight through the heartbeat simulator and down into the two flexible bags that push against her chest piece to replicate lungs. After ensuring that currents were being sent through the respiratory circuit, she used new flexible screws to attach her metal chest plate and plugged herself in for the night.
Over the next four days, Marsha meticulously combed through video files she had stored from her visual sensor. She sat in her lab for hours on end as footage shone on the control island to collect data. She was analyzing human breathing patterns and the rhythm at which their chests expand and contract with each breath. After this search, her artificial intelligence component used the data to understand this human process and instruct her internal control system to act at the correct rate. Marsha’s AI instructed the internal control system to send a current through the respiratory circuit every four seconds. Each current stimulates fifteen heart beats in the heartbeat simulator and inflation and deflation of the flexible bags acting as lungs. This made Marsha’s heartbeat sixty times per minute, and her chest expand and contract fifteen times per minute.
Marsha spent all Tuesday with the circuit running as she did things at work to see if the new mechanical and artificial processes could function for long periods of time without malfunctioning. After she ran all her tests to ensure it functioned properly, she called the Bayside Clinic to schedule her physical on Wednesday.
Less than twenty-four hours later, Marsha was sitting in the empty waiting room staring at posters about the risks of smoking and the importance of the flu vaccine. Her sensors were running at full capacity, and she felt like every move she made was wrong. If possible, she would be sweating through her shirt and having a fast heartrate, but due to her situation her fan was only spinning a little faster to accommodate this hyperactivity, so she did not overheat. Less than five minutes after checking in, a middle-aged nurse with butterfly scrubs on appeared from the door beside the check-in desk and the words “Miss Marsha” rang throughout the waiting room. Giving the nurse a small smile, Marsha slowly stood up and walked towards her, but something was wrong. Her fan slowed as the words “Warning, respiratory circuit down” flashed across her visual display.
Marsha instantly felt frazzled. She did everything right! After all her hard work, why did it stop working. Panicking, Marsha chose to reboot the circuit while the nurse asked about her day and took her height and weight. It was all she could do, a full system shut down would take time and power that she did not have. The nurse led Marsha into her room and told her the doctor would be in shortly, but Marsha grew even more concerned because the reboot did not work.
She stared at the clock on the wall as she played with the hygienic paper on top of the exam table. What could she do? Marsha had never felt like she belonged, and she finally felt a sense of normalcy in Bayside. She couldn’t just go back to the stuffy lab where she was made. Marsha saw no other option but to leave and reschedule when the circuit was operating again and once her decision was made, she stood to leave. As her hand reached the cool metal of the handle, Marsha jumped back, startled by the doctor’s appearance.
“Sorry for the wait, my name is Dr. Francesco, and I will be doing your physical today,” said the youthful girl in the white coat with blonde hair cascading down her back.
“Uhm, yes hi,” Marsha replied quietly.
She apprehensively retook her place on the exam table and played with a thread on her jeans as Dr. Francesco washed her hands and logged onto the computer. Marsha started to think of all the reasons that she could give the doctor. She thought that maybe she could say that her heart acts like her veins, it sometimes takes more than one try to find? Then she thought how pathetic that excuse was.
“Ok, I am just going to take a quick listen to your heart,” Dr. Francesco said as she stood up with a smile on her face completely snapping Marsha from her trance.
Marsha sat completely frozen, like a statue, as Dr. Francesco came closer. She closed her eyes as Dr. Francesco unwrapped the bright blue stethoscope from around her neck and situated the earpieces. The bell connected with her chest and Marsha spiraled. How would she explain this? Would Dr. Francesco scream and run? Will she have to leave Bayside, the only city that has felt like home and hide forever?
Dr. Francesco held the stethoscope in place for a few seconds, which felt like hours to Marsha, and listened carefully. Instead of the steady lub-dub that was expected, she was met with a low mechanical hum. As Marsha opened her eyes to mumble an excuse, she was met with an amused face.
Dr. Francesco did not seem confused or frightened. She was chuckling to herself, and her smile grew wider as she placed the stethoscope back around her neck. Dr. Francesco’s eyes locked with Marsha’s and Marsha could not take it anymore.
“I’m a robot,” flew out of Marsha’s mouth, but also Dr. Francesco’s.
Marsha could not believe what she just heard and was too stunned to speak.
“I am a humanoid. I assume you are too. If not, I need to run some serious tests on you!” exclaimed Dr. Francesco followed by another laugh.
“I can’t even begin to describe how relieved I am to hear that,” Marsha replied as her shoulders relaxed and she felt at ease for the first time since she received that letter.
Marsha’s secret was safe for another day. The following months, Marsha and Dr. Francesco became friends and finally had someone to confide in about their situation. Bayside was not only the place where they found a home, but also the place where they found each other.
Annotated Bibliography
Børnich, Bernt. Meet NEO, your robot butler in training | TED Talk, April 2025, https://www.ted.com/talks/bernt_bornich_meet_neo_your_robot_butler_in_training?subtitle=en. Accessed 12 Mar. 2026.
My story is about a humanoid robot who needs to pass a physical for her job and must create a breathing system. So, I watched this video to understand the ways that humanoid robots move and learn. Børnich explains how, “We actually need to take these machines and we need to adopt them. We need to put them into our society and let them learn just as we do.” He then goes on to share the story of how his robot NEO began living with his family and this diverse data in the home expanded the machine intelligence. These humanoids are a mix of mechanical technology and artificial intelligence. Therefore, robots have different mechanical components, such as tendons, that pull and make them move like a human along with artificial intelligence allowing them to understand, process and learn like a human.
“The One With The Girl From Poughkeepsie.” Friends, created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, season 4, episode 10, Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, 1997. Accessed 10 Mar. 2026.
Marsha, my humanoid robot, is being modeled after Monica Geller – one of the main characters of the sitcom Friends. Like Marsha, Monica is a very organized and cautious woman who will do anything to keep her job. In this episode, Monica becomes the head chef at a restaurant and to keep her job and respect from the other staff, she hires her friend Joey as a fake waiter to then fire and prove her authority. This specific episode helped me see the determination that Monica has and how she will go above and beyond to stay where she wants to, which is what Marsha does throughout my story. Monica also lives in a very organized apartment in the city and gets frazzled easily when things are not exactly how she wants them. Visualizing these traits helps me understand how to better describe Marsha in the story. One difference I plan to make is showing Marsha feeling isolated from others as she hides her secret of being a robot, which is something Monica does not endure as she has friends all around her.
“Crush, Chop & Burn, Part 1.” Lab Rats, created by Bryan Moore and Chris Peterson, season 1, episode 1, It’s a Laugh Productions, 2012. Accessed 10 Mar. 2026.
My story takes place in two different locations, Marsha’s two-bedroom apartment and the Bayside Clinic. I wanted to portray one of Marsha’s bedrooms as her lab where she monitors her footage and makes mechanical changes, so I watched an episode of Lab Rats, a Disney channel show where a man has a basement where he designed three bionic siblings. One of the details of the lab that interested me was the keypad system that must be activated by a correct code to enter. This ensures only the correct people have access to delicate equipment and secret codes that control the bionic humans. Additionally, I found it interesting how there is a large table in the center of the room that has space for mechanical work to be done, but also a large tablet like screen on another table with a model of the humans. This allows for all sides of the bionic humans to be assessed and information from sensors to come through in real time. I plan to put a similar setup in Marsha’s room where she can have a model of herself to analyze how to put the respiratory kit in and view footage from her sensors side by side.