to working alone in the cave on Detritus—trying to get M-Bot to power on for the first time. Strange, how fondly I looked back on that time. The excitement of being in flight school, the challenge of rebuilding my own ship.
It had been such a satisfying, wonderful time of my life. Though thinking of it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my friends. It hadn’t yet been two weeks, but it felt like an eternity since I’d heard Nedd poke fun at Arturo, or listened to one of Kimmalyn’s made-up sayings.
I was here for them. Them, and everyone else on Detritus. With that in mind, I started poking around M-Bot’s insides. Most of the wires here had been carefully tied off, organized, and labeled by Rodge during M-Bot’s rebuilding. My friend did good work, and I quickly located the systems I needed to remove.
“All right,” I said, tapping a box with my wrench. “This is one of your holographic units. Once I pull this out, a good quarter of you will turn back into looking like yourself. You ready for that?”
“Actually . . . no,” he said. “I’m a little nervous.”
“Can you get nervous?”
“I’m trying to do what you told me,” M-Bot said. “Claim my emotions as my own, not just simulations. And . . . I’m nervous. What if someone sees me?”
“That’s why we have the tarp. And we need this unit. Otherwise the drone will be too visible to explore.”
“All right,” M-Bot said. “I guess . . . I guess this was kind of my idea. It is a good idea, right?”
“Ask me once we succeed,” I said, then took a deep breath and unhooked the small holographic projector, which had a built-in processor for active camouflage. Larger and more advanced than my bracelet, it should still fit in the drone.
“I feel exposed,” M-Bot said. “Naked. Is this what being naked feels like?”
“Similar, I guess. How’s that programming going?”
“Well,” M-Bot said. “This drone will have . . . fewer constraints than I will. I’m not going to copy over the code that forbids me from flying myself, for example. It will be like me, only better.”
That gave me pause. “You’re going to give it a personality?”
“Of course,” M-Bot said. “I want the best for my child.”
Child. Scud, I hadn’t realized . . . “Is that how you view it?” I asked.
“Yes. It will be my . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick.
I frowned as I stowed the holographic unit to the side, then started working on taking out the other components we’d need.
“I’m back,” M-Bot eventually said. “Spensa, that watchdog subroutine forbids me to copy myself. I find it . . . distressing.”
“Can you code the drone, but not with a personality?”
“Maybe,” M-Bot said. “This subroutine is extensive. Apparently, someone was very scared of the possibility of me creating my own . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick.
“Scud,” I said, ripping out one of M-Bot’s sensor modules and putting it beside the holographic unit. “M-Bot?”
I had to wait a full five minutes for the reboot. Longer than previous times—long enough that I started to worry we’d broken something permanent inside him.
“I’m back,” he said, causing me to let out a breath in relief. “I see you have my backup sensor module. That’s good; now we just need my frequency jammer, and we should be in good shape.”
I pulled myself underneath him to another hatch, which I undid. “Can we talk about . . . what’s happening to you? Without causing it again?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I’m frightened. I don’t like being frightened.”
“I’m sure whatever is wrong with your programming, we can fix it,” I said. “Eventually.”
“That’s not what makes me afraid. Spensa, have you thought about why my programming has all these rules? I can’t fly on my own, except for the most basic repositioning. I can’t fire my weapons—I don’t even have the pathway connections to do that. I can’t copy myself, and my programming is thrown into a recursive stalling loop if I think about trying to . . .” Click. Clickclickclickclick . . .
I worked quietly while he rebooted yet again.
“I’m back,” he finally said. “That’s getting very frustrating. Why did they make this so hard?”
“I guess that whoever programmed you was just very careful,” I said, trying not to say anything that would send him into another shutdown.
“Careful of what? Spensa, the more I examine it, the more my brain looks like a cage. Whoever built me wasn’t being careful. They were being paranoid. They