“How’d that go, by the way?” I asked. “The schematics you drew for the shield?”

Rig shook his head. “It was like I worried. I took the drawings to my superiors, but when I couldn’t explain what was supposed to be different about this new shield I’d ‘designed,’ it didn’t go anywhere. M-Bot’s shield—and his GravCaps—are beyond my ability to figure out. We need real engineers studying the ship, not an intern.”

We shared a look, then Rig turned back to his work. Neither of us wanted to extrapolate further on that idea, the growing truth that we really should have turned M-Bot in. I hid behind the fact that he didn’t want us to, and had threatened to destroy his own systems if we did. Truth was, we were both probably committing treason by working on him in secret.

Rig looked like he needed to concentrate, so I stopped bothering him. I gave Doomslug a rub on the “head,” to which she trilled in enjoyment. Then I climbed out of the cavern and started walking.

“Where are you going?” M-Bot asked when I clicked the radio on.

“I need something to do,” I said. “Something other than just sitting there, dwelling on what I’ve lost.”

“When I am like that, I write a new subroutine for myself.”

“Humans don’t work the same way,” I said, radio to my head. “But something you said has me thinking. You mentioned needing proper information to judge how to act.”

“Early AIs were unwieldy things,” he said. “They had to be programmed to take actions based on explicit circumstances—and so each discrete decision had to include a list of instructions for each possibility.

“More advanced AIs are able to extrapolate. We rely on a base set of rules and programs, but adapt our choices based on similar situations we have encountered. However, in both cases, data is essential to making proper choices. Without past experiences to rely upon, we cannot guess what to do in the future. That is more than you wanted to know, but you commanded me to leave Rodge alone, so I’m finding things to say to you.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

“Also, human beings need someone friendly to listen to them when they’re grieving. So feel free to talk to me. I will be friendly. You have nice shoes.”

“Is that the only thing you notice about people?”

“I’ve always wanted shoes. They’re the sole piece of clothing that makes any sense, assuming ideal environmental conditions. They don’t play into your strange and nonsensical taboos about not letting anyone see your—”

“Is this really the only thing you can think of to comfort someone who is grieving?”

“It was number one on my list.”

Great.

“The list has seven million entries. Do you want to hear number two?”

“Is it silence?”

“That didn’t even make the list.”

“Move it to number two.”

“All right, I… Oh.”

I lowered the radio, walking along my familiar path. I needed to be doing something, and they wouldn’t let me fly. But maybe I could answer a question.