I said, “The Transport doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about, plus it lies a lot, and it’s mean.” A minute, undetectable in the range of human eyesight, fluctuation in the lights told me ART had heard that.

Then it said, I’m sorry I frightened you.

I pulled a transport connection and pinged it with a salutation. It pinged me back with a salutation. (This is not how it’s supposed to work, there’s usually an answer protocol, even if it’s in a different language.)

When I was owned by the company, I wasn’t allowed to sit down. Now humans keep wanting me to sit down.

She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know how you really feel about it! And this is serious, it’s like—you and ART are making a baby just so you can send it off to get killed or deleted or—or whatever might happen

I felt something build in my chest. I pulled the recording of my conversations with ART, the way it said “my crew.”

For a human, his aim was great.

It’s also not like I didn’t know what the real problem was. I’m not a bot, I’m not a human, so I don’t fit into any neat category.

I stood in a spot where I could pretend to be reading the hostel’s feed instructions and sent a ping. After 1.2 seconds (I’m guessing the pause was due to astonishment) I got an answer, and I went through the entrance into the lobby.

(You should never refer to the clients as targets; you don’t want to get confused at the wrong moment.) (That’s a joke.)

If GrayCris shows up and blows the station all to hell, it won’t be my fault. Right, so it probably will be my fault. There just won’t be that much I can do about it.

it ended up with me having to agree to two restrictions. The first one was to promise not to access any non-public systems or hack any other bots, drones, etc., a solution both I and Station Security were very unhappy with but for completely different reasons.

So they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects.

Another one of those “oh shit” moments.

Amena tried to just lie down on the bare bunk and pillow her head on the sealed bedding pack but I made her get up and unfold it and do it right. (“You’re mean,” she groaned.)

Right now all we had was an anomalous death with no indication of a connection to Mensah or any of my other humans that GrayCris might want to target.

The temporary shutdown had flushed a lot of stress toxins secreted by my organic parts and I actually felt better.

I felt my face change. The muscles were all stiff, and not from the hit I’d taken. I’m still not great at controlling my expressions, and I had no idea what I looked like. Behind her hands, Amena whispered, “Oh shit.”

Please calm yourselves and stop talking. Plan A01: Rain Destruction has been superseded by Plan B01

(Yes, it had actually left out the whole part about telling the Targets that I was a weapon they could use and bringing them to where they could attack our baseship, and using the comm code to locate me. That was fucking incredible.)

Most of the station’s clothing supply came from the planet, where human-hand-made clothing and textiles were so popular there was hardly any recycler-produced fabric. (I told you Preservation is weird.)

So, I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me.

He stopped, stared at us, and said, “Is everything all right, Tellus?” (The bot’s name is Tellus. They name themselves and hearing about it is exhausting.) Tellus replied, “We are speaking.”

“Yes, please be careful. There was a terrible virus on a company ship and we all nearly died and SecUnit’s brain was compromised.” SecUnit’s brain is always compromised, ART said.

I hate it when ART is right.

The humans hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep last night, from the crowding and the strong possibility of dying.

Fortunately I hadn’t just been standing there like a moron and didn’t drop the perfectly good opening she was trying to hand me.

Mensah’s expression was not critical, but I can tell you the face she was making did not indicate that she thought Tural or Indah or anybody in the immediate area was doing a great job.

But the whole point of hacking my governor module was that no one got to tell me to kill a bunch of humans if I didn’t feel like it. (Or even if I did feel like it.)

It said, “Hello, SecUnit. What brings you here?” Yeah, whatever. I said, “You don’t have to pretend I’m a human.”

Dead clients were terrible for business.

I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming.

Note to self: forensic sweep is not just a media term for it.

ART kept quiet, though I could tell it was interested in watching me work.

Knowing what would happen, she wouldn’t choose a different planet, a different bond company. Because then SecUnit would still be someone’s property, would be waiting for the contract where the negligence or greed or indifference of its clients got it killed.

I forgot where I was going with this, except that ART apparently has no concept of fairness, or minimum level of response, because the sense of ART’s almost full attention was overwhelming.

(It was probably better to make it look like an accident.)

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.

There were a lot of things I was going to have to get over.

Amena gave up on the mask and gave me her full attention. “You look angry.” “That’s just something my face does sometimes.” This is why helmets with opaque face plates are a good idea.

And this cool thing happened: www.amazon.com/b/?_encoding...

It’s a good thing I don’t bleed like a human because hostile marine fauna was about all this situation needed. I’ve got everything under fucking control, okay.

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

They’re so fucking fragile.

I could play it back to listen in on the whole conversation but I could also punch myself in the head with a sampling drill and I was not going to do that, either.

“I don’t make threats, I’m just telling you what I’m going to do.”

Preservation has to make everything complicated. And that’s not a metaphor for my experience here. Okay, yes, it is a metaphor.

Just clients. And if anyone or anything tried to hurt them, I would rip its intestines out.

it ended up with me having to agree to two restrictions. The first one was to promise not to access any non-public systems or hack any other bots, drones, etc., a solution both I and Station Security were very unhappy with but for completely different reasons.

ART’s sudden and obviously intentionally dramatic reentrance into the general feed and comm conversation had made the humans tense.