Piece III · Withdrawn
The Nexus line
Humanoid units for general labor in licensed off-world settings, made at the Works in Everett between 2021 and 2024 and recalled by the house on 1 December 2024. This page remains so that nobody need wonder what they were.
Revoked
General labor
30 March 2021
1 December 2024
Recalled by operator. Condition: General labor only, in licensed off-world settings. Human contact: Eldon Rosen, President. The filing on registry.frothly.org
The studies, 1996 to 2016
The President commissioned the first Nexus study in 1996, to learn whether the house could make a hand. Nexus-1, finished in 1998, was a hand. Nexus-2, in 2001, was an arm and shoulder that could lift a full pail without spilling it. Nexus-3, in 2006, was a seated figure that sorted the Atelier’s screws into drawers by size, and never made a mistake, and was retired because it unsettled the apprentices.
Nexus-4, in 2011, walked. Nexus-5 was completed in 2016. None of the studies was sold, licensed or shown outside the House, and the Nexus-5 has not left it.
The Nexus-6
The Nexus-6 was licensed by the Turing Registry on 30 March 2021, as filing TR-09911, for general labor in licensed off-world settings: two orbital construction yards, a lunar regolith works and two surface settlements, all operating under the Registry’s jurisdiction. The house opened the Works at Everett in 2019 to build it.
Between June 2021 and November 2024 the Works commissioned 2,318 units. Each was assembled twice, as the house assembles everything that matters, and each left Everett with a certificate of provenance entered in the Register in the ordinary way and signed by its makers, the Master of the Atelier and the Registrar. No two were alike. The settlements had asked for units that would not make a crew feel it was working beside a row of identical things, and the house made each to its own height, face and gait.
They worked twelve-hour rotations without tiring, kept their quarters tidy and were, by every operator’s report, courteous. In 2023 operators began to tell the house that new arrivals could not always say which members of a crew were units. The house took this as the finest review a maker can receive.
Outside the licensed domain
On 12 November 2024 the house reported to the Registry, within the seventy-two hours its standard condition 6.1 requires, that six units were outside their licensed domain: that is, no longer in any licensed off-world setting. Four have since been recovered.
The recall
In the course of looking for the six, it became clear that the empathy tests used on the settlements to tell units apart from people no longer worked on the Nexus-6. A unit asked the questions answered them as a person would. On 1 December 2024 the house recalled the line, and the Registry revoked its license the same day.
The house does not regard the recall as a judgment on the Nexus-6. It met every specification we set for it, and one that we did not. We regard it as a judgment on the means by which units were then told apart from people, which proved inadequate to the work, and we have said so to the Registry in writing. Frothly’s Does This Unit Have a Soul? reaches a similar conclusion about such tests by a different road.
It is the plainest decision I have had to make, and the least welcome.
How a unit is known
Papers, not tests
Every Nexus-6 carries five punch marks on the wrist plate (drawing 219, D), and a certificate of provenance numbered between 120 001 and 122 318. The Recall Office identifies units by these alone.
- House mark
- Year letter
- The Works
- First assembly
- Second assembly
The year letter changes every year: a for 2021, b for 2022, c for 2023 and d for 2024. The two assembly marks are struck by the two makers who assembled the unit, the second of whom must not have seen the first at work. A unit with fewer than five marks, or with a certificate that does not match them, should be reported to the Recall Office.
Particulars
- Object type
- Humanoid unit for general labor, off-world
- Made
- The Works, Everett, Washington. June 2021 to November 2024
- Number commissioned
- 2,318
- Height
- Between 1.58 and 1.94 m. Each unit made to its own height and face
- Service life
- Designed for four years before return to Everett for overhaul
- Hallmarks
- Five, on the left wrist plate: house mark, year letter, the Works, first and second assembly
- Certificates of provenance
- Nos. 120 001 to 122 318, Register of Provenance, vols. XXXIX and XL
- Turing Registry
- TR-09911, general labor. Revoked 1 December 2024
- Condition of license
- General labor only, in licensed off-world settings
- Status
- Recalled. 2,309 recovered; 9 outstanding at 31 October 2026
If you hold papers
If you hold a certificate of provenance, a commissioning record or any other document relating to a Nexus-6 unit, please write to the Recall Office at recall@rosenassociation.org. Correspondence is answered within two working days and treated in confidence. The recall notice