I just sat there, fuming. I wanted to go back to watching media, but I knew it would think it meant I was giving in, accepting the inevitable. For my entire existence, at least the parts I could remember, I had done nothing but accept the inevitable. I was tired of it.

We are friends now. I don’t understand why you won’t discuss your plans.

It was such an astonishing, infuriating statement. “We aren’t friends. The first thing you did when we were underway was threaten me,” I pointed out.

I needed to make certain you didn’t attempt to harm me.

I noticed it had said “attempt” and not “intend.” If it had cared anything about my intentions it wouldn’t have let me onboard in the first place. It had enjoyed showing me it was more powerful than a SecUnit.

Not that it was wrong about the “attempt.” While watching the episodes I had managed to do some analysis of it, using the schematics in its own public feed and the specs of similar transports available on the unsecured sections of its database. I had figured out twenty-seven different ways to render it inoperable and three to blow it up. But a mutually assured destruction scenario was not something I was interested in.

If I got through this intact, I needed to find a nicer, dumber transport for the next ride.

I hadn’t responded and I knew by now it couldn’t stand that. It said, I apologized. I still didn’t respond. It added, My crew always considers me trustworthy.

I shouldn’t have let it watch all those episodes of Worldhoppers. “I’m not your crew. I’m not a human. I’m a construct. Constructs and bots can’t trust each other.”

It was quiet for ten precious seconds, though I could tell from the spike in its feed activity it was doing something. I realized it must be searching its databases, looking for a way to refute my statement. Then it said, Why not?

I had spent so much time pretending to be patient with humans asking stupid questions. I should have more self-control than this. “Because we both have to follow human orders. A human could tell you to purge my memory. A human could tell me to destroy your systems.”

I thought it would argue that I couldn’t possibly hurt it, which would derail the whole conversation.

But it said, There are no humans here now.

I realized I had been trapped into this conversational dead end, with the transport pretending to need this explained in order to get me to articulate it to myself. I didn’t know who I was more annoyed at, myself or it. No, I was definitely more annoyed at it.