We got them arranged on the floor and sat down. She looked at me and bit her lip. “You’re really augmented, aren’t you. Like, a lot. Like more than someone would choose voluntarily.”

It wasn’t a question. I said, “Um, yes.”

She nodded. “Was it an accident?”

I realized I had my arms wrapped around myself and was leaning over like I was trying to go into a fetal position. I don’t know why this was so stressful. Tapan wasn’t afraid of me. I had no reason to be afraid of her. Maybe it was being here again, seeing Ganaka Pit again. Some part of my organic systems remembered what had happened there. In the feed, ART started to play the soundtrack to Sanctuary Moon and weirdly, that helped. I said, “I got caught in an explosion. There’s not much of me that’s human, actually.”

Both those statements are true.

She stirred a little, as if debating what to say, then nodded again. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I know you know what you’re doing, but … I have to try, I have to see if this guy really has our files. Just this once, and then I’ll go back to the transit ring.”

In my feed, ART turned down the soundtrack to say, Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans. This is what my crew tells me and my own observations seem to confirm it.

I couldn’t argue with the wisdom dispensed by ART’s absent crew. I remembered humans had needs and asked Tapan, “Did you eat?”

She had bought some meal packs with the hard currency card and had them stuffed in her bag. She offered me one and I told her my augments required me to have a special diet and it wasn’t time for me to eat yet. She accepted that readily. Humans apparently don’t like to discuss catastrophic injuries to digestive systems, so I didn’t need any of the corroborating detail ART had just researched for me. I asked her if she liked media and she said yes, so I sent some files to the display surface in the room, and we watched the first three episodes of Worldhoppers. ART was pleased, and I could feel it sitting in my feed, comparing Tapan’s reactions to the show to mine.

When Tapan said she wanted to try to sleep, I shut down the display. She curled up on her pad and I lay down on mine and continued watching in the feed with ART.

Two hours and forty-three minutes later, I caught a ping from right outside the door.