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The one good thing about having emotions was that it accelerated the repair process for my memory storage. (The bad thing about having emotions is, you know, OH SHIT WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ME.)

Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.

“I don’t want to be human.” Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.” “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I’m going to mark your cognition level at fifty-five percent.” “Fuck you.” “Let’s make that sixty percent.”

I’m a SecUnit, not an engineer.

Somebody tried to restore the control feed connection to my drones, but couldn’t get past my wall. Somebody else, probably GrayCrisSec or Palisade, deployed killware. StationSecAdmin alerted to it and, probably terrified it was aimed at SafetyLockSys, deployed a killware countermeasure. It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die. It was still a little hilarious.

That she understood even that much made me melt. I hate that this happens, it makes me feel vulnerable. Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me.

A human target pushed forward. (In a completely unnecessary aggressive way; this is why humans suck at security so much even other humans don’t want them to do it.)

So the plan wasn’t a clusterfuck, it was just circling the clusterfuck target zone, getting ready to come in for a landing

I was beginning to think Gurathin’s asshole expression was some congenital condition he had no control over. I said, “The more guards the better.” He lifted his brows. “Are you going to kill them?” Scratch that, Gurathin’s asshole expression is due to him being an asshole.

I had been running possible scenarios, partly to drown out the sound of humans making stupid suggestions. (Not that I don’t like that sound; it’s sort of comforting and familiar, in an annoying way.)

The company is like an evil vending machine, you put money in and it does what you want, unless somebody else puts more money in and tells it to stop.

I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions like coming to TranRollinHyfa.

When I put the new clothes on, I had a strange feeling I usually associated with finding a new show on the entertainment feed that looked good. I “liked” these clothes. Maybe I actually liked them enough to remove the quotation marks around “liked.” I don’t like things in general that can’t be downloaded via the entertainment feed. Maybe because I’d picked them myself. Maybe.

When I got back to HaveRatton Station, a bunch of humans tried to kill me. Considering how much I’d been thinking about killing a bunch of humans, it was only fair.

It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial.