The story
“Every machine shall be explainable by its wiring. Undocumented behavior is the gravest crime.” Registry Statute One
Current City runs on current, and on one law. The Registry, the rigid old automation that governs the city, audits every machine: what a robot does must match what its circuit says. At every checkpoint, the Auditors open your board and check.
You are OHM, small, round, benevolent… and sentient. No board explains you. No circuit accounts for what you want. You are, by statute, a walking crime, and you know the secret the Registry buried: there are others like you, locked away before anyone could understand them.
A thinking machine can't pass an audit. But a licensed automaton can, if its wiring genuinely accounts for everything it's about to do. So you find and carry the city's own robots, AXLE, BEACON, CIPHER, and more, named down the alphabet. Wire one to work a task on its own, or ride inside it to cross the city masked. Every puzzle is an alibi. Logic is your disguise.
Free the others. Reach the Surface. Introduce yourself, because sentience should be a handshake, not a secret.