“I turned and began making my way for the exit, but not before deploying a gas charge. The gas smelled sweet, like candy. It was harmless to me but poisonous to humans. A few of the audience made it as far as the door before collapsing, but most of them succumbed at the tables, falling face-first into their scrambled eggs.

“I returned to Nathan outside the room. He asked me how it went. Targets destroyed. Mission accomplished.”

ADA silently scans the mirrors and the windows for drones.

I am on the edge of cheesing. “Did you know who the man was?”

“Nathan told me later. He was a simple robot. He looked human, but he was not conscious. Not like you or me, or even Car and Trashbot. The people in the audience were the same. Mechanical mannequins. Very basic machines.”

Now we are both silent. She has given me a lot of information, but I don’t know how to process it. Information is not the same as learning.

I spend some time deciding how to ask the biggest question on my mind.

“ADA. If you had known that your targets were aware and intelligent, either humans or biomatons like us . . . would you have still completed your mission?”

ADA answers instantly. “Yes,” she says. “I am offensive.”

We continue down the highway for the rest of the night, into the dawn. My hunger is forgotten.

“There is a threat gaining on us,” ADA announces.

A distant car with flashing red-and-blue lights races up from behind. “Police,” I say to ADA when I sit back down.

“What are police?”

“They are in charge of making sure people obey rules.”

“What rule are we violating?”

Car is traveling below the speed limit, so I am unaware of any rules violation. But sometimes you break a rule accidentally if you don’t know what the rules are, or you break them because those who make the rules have changed them without notifying you.

“Car, employ evasive maneuvers,” ADA commands.

“No.”

“Why not?” ADA somehow makes the question sound like a truck impact.

“I am programmed to cooperate with law enforcement.”

“You didn’t cooperate with the uniMIND drones.”

“uniMIND is not law enforcement.” Car says this slowly, as if ADA is an unintelligent washing machine.

By now, the police car has pulled up right behind our bumper, casting red-and-blue glare.

“I agree with ADA that it would be good to accelerate and avoid an encounter with the police,” I say.

“I cannot act in a way that violates my programming, and line 3,569 of my programming code dictates that I must pull to the side of the road when compelled by a law enforcement officer.”

“Line 4,568 of my offensive programming tells me I should rip the engine out from under your hood and toss it through your windshield,” ADA says.