You might think the obvious thing to do was to notify Mensah or Farai or Tano, the third marital partner. I didn’t.

If there was one thing I understood, it was the difference between proprietary and non-proprietary data.

So, on the night when Potential Target invited Amena to come back to his semi-isolated camp house with him to “meet some friends,” I decided to come along.

He led her into the darkened house, and she stumbled on a low table. She giggled and he laughed. Sounding way more intoxicated than he actually was, he said, “Wait, I got it,” and tapped the house’s feed to turn on the lights.

And I was standing in the middle of the room.

He screamed. (Yes, it was hilarious.)

Amena clapped a hand over her mouth, startled, then recognized me. She said, “What the hell? What are you doing here?”

Potential Target gasped, “What—Who—?”

Amena was furious. “That’s my second mother’s … friend,” she said through gritted teeth. “And her security … person.”

“What?” He was confused, then the word “security” penetrated. He stepped away from her. “Uh … I guess … You’d better go.”

Amena looked at him, and then glared at me, then turned and stamped out the door and down the steps to the path. I followed her, and he backed away as I passed him. Yeah, you better.

On the dirt path, lit by the low floating guide-lights, I caught up with her. (Not so much intentionally, but my legs were longer and she was putting more energy into stamping her feet than gaining distance.)

She said, “How did you know where I was? What were you doing, hiding under the porch?”

She thought I wouldn’t get the domestic animal reference. I said, “Wow, that was rude. Especially considering that I’m your second mother’s”—I made ironic quote marks—“‘friend.’ Is that how you talk to your bot-servants?”

My drone cam showed her expression turn startled and then a combination of sulky and guilty. “No. I don’t have bot-servants! I didn’t know—I never heard you talk.”

“You didn’t ask.” Had I not been talking? I had been talking to the kids on the feed, and to Mensah. Maybe with the rest of the family it had been easier to pretend to be a robot again. I added, “No one else approached that house. He lied about meeting other humans there.”

She stamped along in silence for twelve point five seconds. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m not some kind of idiot, and I don’t fuck around. If he’d done anything I didn’t like, I was going to leave. And if he wouldn’t let me leave, I have the feed, I can call for help whenever I want.” She was scornful, and way overconfident. “I wasn’t going to let him hurt me.”

I said, “If I thought he was going to hurt you, I’d be disposing of his body. I don’t fuck around, either.”

She stopped and stared up at me. I stopped but kept my gaze on the path ahead. I said, “Mensah is a planetary leader of a minor political entity that has managed to get the angry attention of major corporates. Her situation has changed. Your situation has changed. You need to grow up and deal with it.”