“I’m angry at you,” M-Bot interrupted, waving an arm. “Of course, what I feel is not real anger. It’s just a synthetic representation of emotion created by my processors to present humans with a realistic approximation of…of… Gah!”
I set aside my own concerns and focused on how he sounded. When I’d first found M-Bot in the little drone, his speech had been sluggish and slurred—like he’d been on heavy pain meds. But he was speaking clearly now, and quickly, more like his old self.
He buzzed back and forth in front of me like he was pacing. “I don’t care anymore if the emotions are fake. I don’t care that my routines simulate them. I am angry, Spensa! You abandoned me on Starsight!”
“I had to,” I said. “I had to help Detritus!”
“They ripped my ship apart!” he said, zipping the other direction. Then he froze in place, hovering. “My ship…my body… It’s gone…” He drooped in the air, sagging down almost to the ground.
“Uh, M-Bot?” I said, stepping up. “I’m sorry. Really. But look, can we have this conversation later?”
I was pretty sure that jungles like this were full of dangerous beasts. At least, in Gran-Gran’s stories people always got attacked in jungles. It made sense: anything could be hiding out among those shadowed trunks and deceptive ferns. I remembered how intimidated I’d felt when I’d first stepped out of the caverns and seen the sky. There had been so many directions to look, so many open places.
This was even more unnerving. Something could come at me from any direction. I reached down to touch M-Bot’s drone, which still hovered near the ground. “We should map the area,” I said, “and see if we can find a cave or something for shelter. Does that drone of yours have any kind of sensors? Are you picking up any signs of civilization, like radio broadcasts? There are mining operations in here, I think.”
When he didn’t reply, I knelt beside him. “M-Bot?”
“I,” he said, “am angry.”
“Look—”
“You don’t care. You never care about me! You left me!”
“I came back,” I said. “I left you because I had to! We’re soldiers. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions!”
“You’re a soldier, Spensa!” he shouted, hovering up in the air. “I’m a survey AI designed to search for mushrooms! Why do I keep letting you push me into doing things? I didn’t want to even enter that sphere, and you pulled me in! Aaah!”
Scud. That drone had surprisingly powerful speakers. And as if in reply to his shouts, something roared in the distance. The sound echoed in the forest ominously.
“Look,” I said softly to M-Bot. “I understand. I’d be a little angry in your place too. Let’s—”
Before I could finish he zipped away into the jungle, sobbing softly to himself.
I cursed and tried to follow, but he could fly—while I had to deal with the underbrush. I leaped over a fallen tree trunk, but on the other side I had to wiggle through a tangle of vines and fronds. After that something caught my foot, and I ended up tumbling to the ground.
When I finally managed to right myself, I realized I had no idea what direction he’d gone. In fact…what direction had I come from? Was that log over there the one I’d climbed over? No…that had been before I’d pushed through the vines. So…
I groaned, settling into the hollow of some overgrown roots, gun in my lap, and sighed. Well, my quest had started in a traditional Spensa-like fashion: with everyone mad at me. I realized that I needed a moment to decompress. M-Bot wasn’t the only one with a lot of powerful emotions.
I’d gone from confronting a delver to floating in space thinking I was dead, to waking up in a hospital, to escaping a hit squad sent to kill me. Now I’d had to make a snap decision about coming to this place, and I worried I was wrong.
Maybe I should have gone home and found a way to send someone else into the nowhere to find answers. Someone smart, like Rig. Or someone careful, like Kimmalyn. Right now I felt lost. I didn’t know what had happened to Cuna, and I worried about my friends.
I was alone, isolated, lost. And to top it off, my only companion—who was supposed to be the emotionally stable one, by programming design—had just thrown a tantrum and left.
Did people in Gran-Gran’s stories ever feel like this? I wished I knew what Khutulun of Mongolia or Calamity Jane of the Wild West had done when feeling overwhelmed.