“Which you haven’t explained yet,” Rig noted.

“Oh! I thought it was obvious.” M-Bot sounded surprised. “Humans have free will. Free will is the ability to make irrational decisions—to act against stimuli. That makes it impossible for a rational AI to ever fully anticipate humans, for even if I had perfect understanding of your inputs, you could still do something completely unpredictable.”

I turned my head toward Rig, frowning, trying to make sense of that.

“It means you’re weird,” M-Bot added.

“Uh…,” I said.

“Don’t worry. I like you anyway.”

“You said this was a popular theory?” Rig asked.

“With me,” M-Bot said.

“And there’s a lot written about it?” Rig said.

“By me,” M-Bot said. “Earlier today. I wrote seven thousand pages. My processors work very quickly, you realize. Granted, most of what I wrote is just ‘humans are weird’ repeated 3,756,932 times.”

“You were supposed to be running a diagnostic!” Rig said.

“Rig, that took like thirty seconds,” M-Bot said. “I needed something more engaging to occupy my time.”

Rig sighed, dropping another nut into the cup beside him. “You realize this thing is insane.”

“As long as you can make it fly, I don’t mind. You… can make it fly, right?”

“I’m not insane,” M-Bot noted.

“Well,” Rig said, ignoring the machine, “once we get these wires changed, you’ll need to service the intakes, the thrusters, and the rest of the joints. I’ll look over the atmospheric scoop while you do that, then break down his GravCaps and check them over.

“If that’s all in order, then the internals are in good shape. From there, we have to figure out how to deal with that wing. I’ve got a portion of my internship coming up that deals with design and fabrication, however, and I think I might be able to sneak a way to order new parts for that wing. Though I might set you at pounding some bent portions back into shape. That will get us everything but the big one.”

“The boosters,” I said. M-Bot had room for three, a large one and two smaller ones.

“I think he’ll fly fine with one central booster. But there’s no way I’ll be able to order something that large fabricated. So if we want to fly this thing, you’re going to need to find me a replacement. A standard DDF model should work—anything from an A-17 to an A-32 would fit in that space, with a little work on my part.”

I sighed, resting against the stone. Finally, I wiggled out from under the ship to get a drink.

A new booster. That wasn’t the sort of thing I could find in a junkyard, or even steal off a random hovercar. That was grade-A military tech. I’d have to steal a starfighter. Which would be above petty larceny… it would be actual treason.

No. I thought. Fixing M-Bot was a cool dream, but I couldn’t go that far.

I sighed, taking a long drink from my canteen, then checked my clock. 0605. Rig wiggled out himself, grabbing his own canteen.