“What you can do is stay put, don’t move a muscle, and wait while I go to my car to check this out. Drive away and I will shoot out your tires. And I’m a bad shot, so I might hit something else. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” ADA says. “If we attempt an evasive maneuver you will display bad marksmanship.”

“I would have said it less weirdly, but that’s about the size of it.”

He goes back to his car.

So far, this is going much better than I’d expected.

“I predict that since we have violated no rules, the police officer will allow us to continue on our way,” I say.

“That would be a much better outcome than shooting,” ADA says.

“Agreed,” says Car.

After several moments, the police officer returns to the side of the car. “Well, well, well,” he says. “I pulled you over because I thought this was a case of underage vehicular operation. Little did I know I had a couple of fugitives on my hands.”

He shows us the screen of his phone.

It is the flyer from the gas station. The one with the photographs of ADA and me and the instructions to call a phone number should we be spotted.

“Step out of the vehicle,” the police officer orders.

“What happens if we choose not to obey you?” I ask.

He picks his teeth with a fingernail and says nothing for a long time but never takes his eyes off of us. His face grows more red. Perhaps this is what he does as he processes, similar to how ADA and I blink.

“If you don’t do what I tell you, then I’m gonna have to force you.”

He unsnaps the holster containing his weapon.

I remember another night when I brought hot cocoa down to Gina’s laboratory. Neither of us could sleep. I couldn’t sleep because of my bugs, and I asked Gina why she couldn’t.

She took a sip of cocoa before answering. “uniMIND wants me to do something I don’t want to do. They say I have to because it’s in my contract.”

“What is a contract?”

“It’s like . . . It’s like a set of rules you agree to follow.”

“I understand. So you will do the thing uniMIND wants you to do because it is good to follow rules.”

She smiled, just a little. “It’s a little more complicated than that, Cog.”

I asked her to increase my cognitive development by telling me about the complications. She told me three reasons why people follow rules.