2035: Susan Calvin is a medical school grad, starting her first year of residency in psychiatry at Manhattan Hasbro. She lives with her father, who works in robotics research. She is befriended by Kendall Stevens, another resident who shares her irreverent views, but she’s dismayed to find that the head of the Psych dept is Kevin Bainbridge, who seems a thousand years old and very distant from current medical thinking. And she’s surprised, on her first day, to be put in charge of four juvenile psych patients. While she’s trying to study up on her new patients in a quiet spot, she’s startled by a tall, quiet stranger who apologizes and introduces himself as “N8-C.” Nate, for short. He’s a prototype of an extremely humanoid robot who can work alongside humans. He isn’t exactly a secret, but his existence is kept fairly quiet, partly to appease the group Society for Humanity, who protest robots living among humans and would like to take him apart for spare parts. Nate admires Susan's father’s work in robotics, and figures he can trust her. For her part, Susan is shocked to find that such humanoid robots exist; her father had never let on that research had come so far. When she confronts him, her father says that the high levels of research are kept hidden because so many people fear that robots could dominate or replace humans.