This time I had responsibility and authority, and had still failed.

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

Not that I was upset about that or cared about it at all.

After spending my entire existence having to gently suggest to humans that they not do things that would probably get them killed, it was nice to be able to tell them in so many words to not be so fucking stupid.

Something aboard was terribly wrong, something that had left it with no way of notifying the Port Authority that it needed help. I don’t think it had any idea what I was, but I thought it was relieved that I was here.

ART would have laughed at an attack like that. (Actually, ART would have laughed at the part where it sent back a code bundle that would have eaten my face.)

Before she accepted delivery of me, she had logged about ten protests, trying to get out of having to have me. I didn’t hold it against her. I wouldn’t have wanted me either.

They really didn’t want me here and whatever Mensah said, they weren’t going to suddenly change their minds.

“This transport. What did you do to the bot pilot?” ART was so much more than a bot pilot but I didn’t have a word for what it was.

The humans not being able to tell what I was doing just guaranteed that whatever they assumed I was doing would be way, way worse than me having a brief comm interaction with each transport in dock, trying to get info for stupid Station Security.

ART paused for 8.3 seconds for no reason I could think of except to make the humans think it wasn’t going to answer the question.

I was sitting on the counter next to the sink and running episode 237 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon in background so I could pretend to be watching it during the 400+ times ART had pinged me.

Even the humans think about killing the humans, especially here. I hate mines, and mining, and humans who work in mining, and of all the stupid mines I can remember

The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.)

Humans and augmented humans can have null feed IDs. I knew from my shows that it meant different things depending on what polity, station, area, etc., they lived in. Here on Preservation it meant “please don’t interact with me.” It was perfect.

Amena wiped her nose (humans are so disgusting)

I knew her well enough to hear the nervous jitter in her voice but I don’t think anyone else noted it. (They were too busy being nervous about me.)

I love it when humans forget that SecUnits are not just guarding and killing things voluntarily, because we think it’s fun.

I tried to moderate my expression. “I’m not mad.” I was furious.

My name, my real name, is private, but the name ART called me wasn’t something humans could say or even access. It was my local feed address, hardcoded into the interfaces laced through my brain.