“I wanted to see the part about the colony solicitor you and Ratthi mentioned, then I got involved.” I deflected more weapon scans as we crossed through the first gate into the private docks, and the crowd level went back up by 16 percent. We didn’t stand out nearly as much and my scan showed Mensah’s breathing and heartbeat even out. She added, “It’s a good story, I see why it’s popular. I just don’t understand why you like it best, when there are such a variety of serials out there.”

Huh, why did I like Sanctuary Moon so much? I had to pull the memory from my archive, and what I saw there startled me. “It’s the first one I saw. When I hacked my governor module and picked up the entertainment feed. It made me feel like a person.” Yeah, that last part shouldn’t have come out, but with all the security-feed monitoring I was doing, I was losing control of my output. I closed my archive. I really needed to get around to setting that one-second delay on my mouth.

A roving drone cam showed me she was frowning. “You are a person.”

Oh, that we can’t talk about. “Not legally.”

She took a breath to speak, then reconsidered and released it. I knew she wanted to argue the point, but I was right, so. There wasn’t much else to say about it. She said instead, “Why did it make you feel that way?”

“I don’t know.” That was true. But pulling the archived memory had brought it back, vividly, as if it had all just happened. (Stupid human neural tissue does that.) The words kept wanting to come out. It gave me context for the emotions I was feeling, I managed not to say. “It kept me company without…”

“Without making you interact?” she suggested.

That she understood even that much made me melt. I hate that this happens, it makes me feel vulnerable. Maybe that was why I had been nervous about meeting Mensah again, and not all the other dumb reasons I had come up with. I hadn’t been afraid that she wasn’t my friend, I had been afraid that she was, and what it did to me. I said, “The shuttle will take you and the others to the company gunship. I’m not going with you.” I hadn’t meant to tell her and I don’t know why I did. Did I secretly want her to talk me out of it? I hate having emotions about real humans instead of fake ones, it just leads to stupid moments like this.

She almost stopped, but remembered at the last second not to. “I can protect you.”

“Because you own me.”

“That’s what they think, but we—” She cut herself off, and took a breath. “I wish you trusted me, but I understand why you don’t.”