What would a rational alien make of us? What does Commander Data get out of life? Why does a Vulcan pureblood get out of bed in the morning? What does Agent Smith actually want? The short answer is that agents and androids and Vulcans (Oh my!) are our own fictional creations – our dramatic unlikelies, just as we’re the dramatic unlikelies of Brahman – so naturally, they’re created in the image of their creators, as fear-sick and heart-centric and irrational as we are, as emotion-driven as we are. We depict them as cold and rational, but the characters are practically warm and fuzzy compared to how their real-world versions would be. You wanna know who is cold and rational? Your appliances – your dishwasher, your hairdryer, your blender – and you don’t see them impersonating a person. Not yet, anyway.