When constructs were first developed, they were originally supposed to have a pre-sentient level of intelligence, like the dumber variety of bot. But you can’t put something as dumb as a hauler bot in charge of security for anything without spending even more money for expensive company-employed human supervisors. So they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects.

In the deployment center, when I was standing there while Dr. Mensah explained why she didn’t want to rent me as part of the bond guarantee agreement, she had called the increase in intelligence a “hellish compromise.”

This ship was not my responsibility and there were no human clients aboard that I had to keep anything from hurting, or keep from hurting themselves, or keep from hurting each other. But this was a nice ship with surprisingly little security, and I wondered why the owners didn’t leave a few humans aboard to keep an eye on it. Like most bot-driven transports, the schematics said there were drones onboard to make repairs, but still.

I kept patrolling until I felt the rumble and clunk through the deck that meant the ship had just decoupled itself from the ring and started to move. The tension that had kept me down to 96 percent capacity eased; a murderbot’s life is stressful in general, but it would be a long time before I got used to moving through human spaces with no armor, no way to hide my face.

I found a crew meeting area below the control deck and planted myself in one of the padded chairs. Repair cubicles and transport boxes don’t have padding, so traveling in comfort was still a novelty. I started sorting through the new media I’d downloaded on the transit ring. It had some entertainment channels that weren’t available on the company’s portion of Port FreeCommerce, and they included a lot of new dramas and action series.

I’d never really had long periods of unobserved free time before. The leisure to sort through everything and get it organized, and give it my full attention, without having to monitor multiple systems and the clients’ feeds, was still something I was getting used to. Before this, I’d either been on duty, on call, or stuck in a cubicle on standby waiting to be activated for a contract.

I chose a new serial that looked interesting (the tags promised extragalactic exploration, action, and mysteries) and started the first episode. I was ready to settle in until it was time to think about what I was going to do when I got to my destination, something I intended to put off until the last possible moment. Then, through my feed, something said, You were lucky.

I sat up. It was so unexpected, I had an adrenaline release from my organic parts.