“Great,” he said. “Um, what deep cleaning and repair protocol?”
“The drone’s original… Oh. We deleted that, didn’t we?”
“What you didn’t delete, I did when uploading myself,” M-Bot whispered. “I wasn’t about to keep cleaning protocols when I barely had room for myself, my mushroom databases, my backup mushroom databases, and my backups to the backups.”
“Well, start pretending to clean alongside me and at least spoof the existence of some cleaning programs. I told them it would take weeks to fix this destructor without your help, but I honestly have no idea. I was just looking for an excuse.”
He complied, and the two of us set to work. Fortunately, he quickly identified the burned compound and suggested a specific kind of solvent for cleaning it. Even though he didn’t have his cleaning routines, his chemistry database proved extremely helpful. Which was good, since the truth was that I had no idea how to repair a broken destructor. That went far beyond the basic maintenance Rig had taught me.
I kept us to the corner and chattered away—mostly talking to myself, keeping up my act. When nobody else was close, M-Bot could respond. He did have in his databases plenty of detailed starship schematics. So as we removed more of the black gunk, he could point out the problems with the machine. The multiple serious problems.
“I feel like I should be offended by proxy for this gun,” M-Bot said. “Continuing to fire this was the machine equivalent of…um…”
“Of forcing your poor warhorse to keep galloping after it has thrown a shoe and taken an arrow in the flank?” I asked.
“Good metaphor,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said. I was lying on the ground, delicately trying to get some of the gunk off without ripping out a set of coolant hoses. “It’s really good to hear your voice, M-Bot. Sorry I got us captured.”
“Well, I did find some interesting molds in the other hangar. They’re basically diet mushrooms, so that part was pleasant. What happened to Chet?”
“Got wounded,” I said, “but escaped. I can talk to him with cytonics. He’s recovering, and will be glad to hear that you and I have made contact.”
“Are you certain?” he said. “He still thinks I’m an abomination.”
“He’s getting better about that.”
“Maybe he shouldn’t be,” M-Bot said. He already kept his voice very soft when talking to me, but something seemed even more…hushed about this question. “The way the pirates checked to make sure there wasn’t an AI in me—going so far as to inject scrubbing software—indicates Chet might be right. What if I am an abomination?”
“People think humans are abominations too,” I said, getting a big chunk of the gunk free. “They consider that as verifiable as military protocol or personnel records. But it’s flat-out wrong.”
“The rumors about AIs must have started somewhere.”
“Sure,” I said. “Like the rumors about humans. I mean, we apparently tried to conquer the galaxy three times. Doesn’t mean we’re monsters. Just inefficient tyrants.”
It was growing increasingly difficult to reconcile what my ancestors had done with the stories Gran-Gran told me. It was easy to think of yourself as the hero when you were fighting back against a vengeful enemy bent on extermination. But what about when you were the ones conquering? How many people like Morriumur—ordinary diones trying to prove themselves—had died in the wars my people had started?
It made me uncomfortable. I quoted Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan because when faced with annihilation, we needed that kind of courage. Yet both of those men—confirmed by M-Bot’s databases—had been mass murderers on a terrible scale.
My life had been so much simpler when I’d been fighting the nebulous “Krell” and not real people.
“Spensa,” M-Bot said, hovering in close. “Thank you. For continuing to be my friend. Despite the potential danger.”
“Thank you in return,” I said. “I mean, think about it realistically. If one of the two of us is going to end up being responsible for the other’s death, who’s it going to be? The fiddly little robot who loves mushrooms? Or the meter-and-a-half-tall terror who once tried to get her best friend to agree to be scalped so she could put her first notch on her toy hatchet?”
“Oh dear,” M-Bot said.
“In my defense,” I said, “Gran-Gran didn’t explain well, so I thought scalping someone meant cutting their hair real short, but while using a sword or an axe. It sounded pretty cool.”