The flaw that has compelled Batty and crew to murder is that a timer was built into the robots, which times them out on a certain year, day, hour. Batty is facing the end of his mortality, and, as is common to the human struggle in the face of its own mortality, he is looking to survive.

What is very interesting in this science fiction film is that technology is not used to detect the technological life of the robots as much as is a test of humanness, which is done through a series of questions to the "person," and answers. The only way to reveal the robotness of the person, if they are indeed a robot, is to ply them with a set of psychological teaser questions they must answer. If the question is so human in nature that the robot's own emotional experience cannot find the answer in...
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