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We speak often about our relationships to machines. See: Tucker, Groskopf, Elliot, Snodgrass, Snider. (2023). The Voice of the Robot: An Analysis. We examine herein the lacunae in the research namely: do the machines ever dream of us? And other topical questions. Pyramids lay slack and yellow on a southern continent; a jaguar finds a rock in direct sunlight and the surrounding jungle awaits greenly. Thirty clicks from here we set our scene. The lab. Dr. Ephraim Rivers, he’s letting a skinny cigarette burn down in his red plastic ashtray, and he’s rubbing the back of his hands; he’s got peripheral vascular disease. Plus a hangover. Can’t figure out if the world hurts less with the glasses on or the glasses off, so he vacillates. To his immediate right, Dr. Rivers’ splenetic assistant Jack-O, applying percussive maintenance to a desk fan that’s stridulating like a rove beetle.