Amena … Amena had carried a chair over next to the platform, and was browsing through the Pansystem University catalog in the feed. I said, “I’m back online.”

She smiled. “I’ll warn everybody.”

I sat up. The MedSystem had finished what the humans had started and my performance reliability was up around 98 percent. I was wearing the kind of soft smock thing that injured humans wear, but my drones spotted my clothes, cleaned and recycler-repaired, folded on a gurney. Before I could think about it too much, I said, “ART asked me to join its crew for a mission.”

ART, as usual, was listening, and this was my way of telling it what I was thinking. It was easier telling Amena, for some reason. Maybe because she had somehow managed to put herself in the middle of my and ART’s quote-unquote relationship.

Amena paused her feed and frowned. “For how long?”

“For the duration of the mission.” But I had the feeling that ART meant for this to be the first step in a longer … association.

Amena’s forehead indicated suspicion. “Just the one mission? Kind of like asking someone to come stay with your family for the break between the work seasons, to see if they all like each other before you get serious?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. I was noticing ART hadn’t jumped in to tell her how wrong she was, and I knew it would have, if she was wrong. So she wasn’t wrong. “But yes, maybe.”

Amena thought it over. “I guess I’m not surprised. How do you feel about it?” My expression must have changed because she rolled her eyes. “Oh sorry, I used the f word there.”

Again, I have no idea why ART likes adolescent humans. “I don’t know,” I told her.

“So … what do you think second mom will say?”

I had no idea. “What do you say?”

She snorted. “I was just getting used to you.” My drone watched her eyeing me. “I don’t think it’s a terrible idea. Except … ART works in the Corporation Rim sometimes, too, right? It’s not all missions out to these lost colonies.”

“That’s a factor.” Though I wondered how often ART’s solo “cargo missions” were actually gathering intelligence in a way no corporation would ever suspect.

Amena didn’t look happy about the idea of me going back to the Corporation Rim. I wasn’t wildly excited about it, either. She said slowly, “I think ART cares a lot about you. You should have heard … the only reason it went ahead and sent your killware to the explorer was because it thought if it didn’t, the only way to get Iris and everybody back was to send you. That sending the killware would mean you wouldn’t have to do something dangerous. Of course, you were already doing something dangerous but we didn’t know that at the time.” She hesitated, and added, “I don’t think it would invite you to come with it if it didn’t think it would be good for you, you know.”