The Mimic

I just played through a scene in my head to imagine what would happen if a shape-shifting alien robot decided to introduce itself to humans by imitating the first humans it met upon landing here. The troubling thing is that I imagine that the first humans who would approach an alien robot would probably be the military. Before seeing a human, the robot wouldn't know what form to take, but when it saw armed men approaching it with weapons drawn, it would assume a humanoid shape and form a gun out of its arms. If any of the soldiers shot the robot and the robot survived, the robot would shoot back, not in retribution but in imitation. After that, the situation would escalate quickly. As the humans tried ever more deadly methods to destroy the "hostile" robot, the robot would form ever more deadly weaponry to shoot back with until one of the surviving humans finally threw down his gun and surrendered, after which the robot would do the same, and the conflict would end.

This is a tragic story especially since, depending on the humans' first reactions to the robot, this encounter could have gone very differently. If the soldiers had decided to great the robot with a handshake and a "hello" instead of with a gun pointed at its face, this first encounter would have gone a lot better.

This has lead me to wonder how the robot would end up acting if the first person it met was me. What would it see me doing? How would I respond to seeing a robot imitate me? Fortunately, I don't think the robot and I would end up killing each other, but it's still interesting to imagine what might happen in this scenario. And all of this has reminded me to behave well, just in case something (or, more likely, someone) decides to mimic me and to act in such a way that I wouldn't mind if others behaved the same way.