Robot Families

Robots are grouped into families according to the data templates used create their digital souls, which is also the source of their family names.

Spiritual Kinships

When generating a new digital soul, the Electric Hearts system must reference data templates created from existing family members’ soul samples. This establishes a “spiritual kinship” that links all relatives, making everyone in the same family siblings.

Two robots generated simultaneously with the same templates and parameters are called “twins.” Due to randomness in the generation algorithm (generating twins itself is also a low-probability random occurring), twins can be very similar or completely different. For instance, Azure and Amber from the Hazel family exhibit significant differences in abilities and personality.

Social Relationships

In the Evernight Era, social relationships are largely shaped by local communities. Robots with jobs formed work-based communities, while jobless robots typically created virtual factions for role-playing. An individual’s community identity often outweighs their family identity, though surnames and families have their influence.

The older siblings in a family are responsible for the initial socialization of new robots. Once this is complete, the robots attend community schools to interact with other youths for further education. Even after socialization, families remain morally accountable for their members’ behavior. For individuals who misbehave, if the situation is not urgent, families are expected to address it through persuasion, admonition, or even forceful punishment before involving Shadow Vigilantes and Circuit Court.

The Robot Families hold an annual gathering to review members’ achievements and provide advice to those in need.

Problems

A family’s new soul generation quota is randomly allocated by the Robot Engineers Association. Most robots in the Evernight Era do not work, and supporting digital souls in the Virtual Universe consumes computing power. Therefore, the Association permits only a limited number of quotas each year. By the time Alice woke up, families might not even receive one new soul quota annually.

Without the influx of new souls, the robot society sees less and less fresh ideas and becomes rather stagnant.