ART was still pulling data from the station feed. I have a suggestion, it told me, and displayed a set of personal advertisements. I had seen these in the feeds at Port FreeCommerce and the last transit ring, but hadn’t paid attention. ART highlighted one that was a job listing for a temporary position as security for a technologist group on limited contract.

“What?” I asked ART. I didn’t understand why it was showing me this.

If this group hired you, you would have an employment voucher for travel to the installation.

“Hire me.” I’ve had more contracts than I can remember (I mean that literally. A lot of them were before the memory purge) but none of them were voluntary. The company pulled me out of storage, showed me to the client, then packed me into the cargo hold. “Have you lost your mind?”

My crew hires consultants for every voyage. ART was impatient that I wasn’t complimenting it yet on its great idea. The procedure is simple.

“For humans and augmented humans, yes.” I was stalling. I would have to interact with humans as an augmented human. I know that’s what altering my configuration was supposed to be for, but I had imagined it as taking place from a distance, or in the spaces of a crowded transit ring. Interacting meant talking, and eye contact. I could already feel my performance capacity dropping.

It will be simple, ART insisted. I’ll assist you.

Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well.

*   *   *

Once ART was docked and the transit ring’s bot-piloted tugs were removing the cargo modules, it cycled the lock for me and I slipped through into the embarkation zone. It had given me access to its comm so it could ride my feed through the transit ring. It claimed it could help me and while I was skeptical of that, it could at least keep me company. As I walked away from the safety of ART’s lock, I dropped back down to 96 percent efficiency. I hit the station entertainment feeds for new downloads to try to calm down.

I’d already sent a message to the social feed node about the advertisement, and gotten an answer with a location and timestamp. The last time I’d had an arranged meeting with humans they kidnapped Mensah and blew me up, so. This could hardly be worse.