“I can’t get bored.” He paused. “But I’ll have you know that I can think at thousands of times the speed of a human brain—so twelve hours to you is by relative measure a long time to me. A really long time.”

I smiled.

“Reeeeaaaaalllly long,” he added.

“What did you think of the training today?”

“I took some careful notes for further review,” he said. Most nights, I went over with M-Bot what I’d done wrong. His programs offered excellent analysis of my flying. While he offered commentary that could sometimes be unflattering, the nightly debriefings had proved effective in helping me tweak my flying—and I felt I was doing better than ever.

We hadn’t gone into the air again. Rig had taken out the ship’s GravCaps and shields to disassemble and document them. It was work beyond my ability to help with, but I didn’t mind, as I had the practices to keep me busy.

“You really do need help against bombers,” M-Bot said to me. “You died or destroyed the city seventeen times today, while you were completely successful only twice.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“I try to be helpful. I realize human memories are flawed and inconsistent.”

I sighed and walked out of the orchard, starting the more boring part of the trek home.

“The battles were interesting,” M-Bot said. “I’m… very glad that you lived through some of them.”

One foot after the other. Who would have thought that sitting in a box, moving only your hands, could be so tiring? My brain felt like it had been ripped out, clubbed to death by a barbarian, then stuffed back in upside down.

“You are very attractive and intelligent,” M-Bot said. “Spensa? Is my moral support subroutine functioning? Um, you’re quite bipedal. And very efficient at converting oxygen into carbon dioxide, an essential gas for plant life to—”

“I’m just tired, M-Bot. I’ve been through a lot today.”

“Nineteen battles! Though four of them were the same battle turned on a different axis and presented with a few distinct movement seeds for enemies.”

“Yeah, those are historical fights,” I said. “Like Cobb said…”

I halted.

“Spensa?” he asked. “I hear no more footfalls? Have you temporarily stopped being bipedal?”

“Historical battles,” I said, realizing something I should have put together long ago. “They have recordings of past battles?”

“They track all of their ships,” he said, “and have scanner records of enemy movements. I suspect they recreate these three-dimensional models for training and analysis.”

“Do you suppose… they have a record like that of the Battle of Alta? The fight where…”

Where my father had deserted.

“I’m sure they do somewhere,” M-Bot continued. “It’s the most important battle in the history of your people! The foundation of… Oh! Your father!”

“You can think at a thousand times the speed of a human brain,” I said, “but it took you that long to put together a simple fact?”

“I underclock conversations. If I focus my full efforts, it takes you several minutes in relative time to speak a single syllable.”