She extends her arm straight out. With a whirring noise, a hatch in her forearm slides open to reveal a cavity. Inside sits a small red-and-yellow rocket. A missile.

One of the drones angles in on us, low enough to the ground that its rotors kick up plumes of dust. “STAND DOWN!” it blares. “BRAKE TO A HALT! TURN OFF YOUR ENGINE! STAND DOWN OR FACE CORRECTIVE MEASURES!”

“What’s a corrective measure?” I ask ADA.

“This is a corrective measure.” ADA makes a fist, and the missile shoots from her arm cavity with a trail of white smoke.

The missile clips the drone on its right side. Two rotors go spinning off in different directions, and the drone noses into the ground with a crunch of metal and plastic that makes me wince.

“My aim is off,” ADA says. “I need more calibration sessions.”

“You can practice your aim on those.” The other two drones are racing for us.

“That was my only missile. I have no more surface-to-air corrective measures.”

“Is this a situation in which I have to praise you and encourage you and motivate you?”

“You can if it makes you feel better, but praise will not reload my armaments.”

“STAND DOWN,” one of the drones blares. “BRAKE TO A HALT! TURN OFF YOUR ENGINE! STAND DOWN OR FACE CORRECTIVE MEASURES!”

I have now seen how a corrective measure works, and I do not want to be corrected. But for all my learning, for all the cognitive development I have achieved, I can see only one way to avoid it.

I can do what the drone commands. I can encourage Car to come to a stop. I can give uniMIND what it wants. I can turn myself in.

My vision goes purple, as if someone has placed a pane of tinted glass before my eyes.

This is unexpected.

I do not know what is happening.

I do not know what is happening.

The sound of the drone’s voice fades away, along with the roar of rushing air and the noise of Car’s tires rolling over the ground.

Blazing tendrils explode all around me, glowing threads, pulsing with light. They remind me of a pattern I’ve seen before, but I’m not sure where. I seem connected to it somehow, and so does ADA, and so does Car, and Proto and Trashbot. And the drones.

I do not know what is happening.

“Your own path,” says Gina’s voice from somewhere deep inside me. And two balls of light shoot from my brain, brighter than lasers, brighter than the sun. The lights zoom along the tendrils like roller coaster cars on tracks and crash into the drones.

Are these corrective measures? Am I being offensive?

The tendrils fade. The purple fades. Normal colors return, and I can hear again. The loudest sound is the whirring of the drones’ rotors.

The drones are undamaged.