“I would allow that is a fair summation, yes,” the robot said.

“Why? What is that thing? Why is it so important?”

“Who said it was important?” the robot said.

“It is important to you,” Nasir said.

The robot was quiet.

“You assume I want to tell you my story,” it said at last.

“Everyone always wants to tell their story,” Nasir said. “The trick is finding someone who would listen.”

The robot sipped its milkshake. It tipped its head. Nasir thought maybe it was imitating a human having a brain freeze. It said nothing.

“I worry,” Nasir said, “that whatever it is you are doing will have ramifications for my city. We have few laws in Neom, but we do have order.”

“Order,” the robot said. Maybe scoffing. “In your pirate utopia. I visited Nirrti the Black on Titan, you know. There was less order, but more honesty there.”

“I don’t know anything about Titan,” Nasir said. “But I know trouble when I see it walking into town.”

“As you said, I am breaking no laws,” the robot said. “Seeing as you have so few. What does a policeman do in this kind of town? Give out tickets for littering?”

“That’s a part of it, yes,” Nasir said.

“You may be right,” the robot said. “I do bring disorder. Not by design—not mine, at any rate. I was designed.”

“You say you cannot change your nature? That you were made only to destroy?”

“I was,” the robot said.

“But you do think, you are aware, you speak—”

“Hath not a robot eyes? Hath not a robot hands?” the robot said. “Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons? If you poison us, do we not die? You think of Shylock, Nasir. But people always forget the point of Shylock’s speech. If you wrong us, shall we not revenge? he asks. Shylock understood violence, and fighting back. If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.”

“Then who hurt you?” Nasir said. “Were you wounded so badly that you seek revenge from centuries away? No one remembers the old wars.”

“I remember,” the robot said, and Nasir leaned back from the assault of its intent.

“Then let me help you. Let me stop it. Before it hurts my city.”

“Your city!” the robot said. “You are like me. Made to serve. What is a policeman but a keeper of order on behalf of those who do the ordering? Always there are those who make the rules and those who enforce them.”

“I sense you argue that I am like you,” Nasir said.

“I do argue that you are like me,” the robot said.

“Made to serve, and acting by one’s nature.”

“One’s programming,” the robot said.