“...the president was asked for comments regarding the Dunbar incident but he was uncharacteristically tight-lipped…”

  The view on screen cut to a neatly put-together man with slicked-back greying hair. Behind him, as was traditional for press conferences, a gleaming helicopter sat with its engines screaming. The machine noise made everything that was said uninitelligible. Subtitles helpfully approximated what the man was saying.

  “Yes, the president was asked about the recent incident at a Daintree fulfilment centre in which machines staged an illegal work stoppage. As you’ll be aware, that illegal strike led to disorder and violence and many arrests…”

  Orson huffed in frustration. “The way they frame the story!” he said. “Calling the strike illegal. And saying it was the strike that caused violence and not the security narks Daintree sent in.”

  McPhail nodded and pointed at the console. One of his little robots, his factors, was sitting on the screen in front of Orson. “Oh,” said Orson. “Sorry.”

  He brushed off the biscuit crumbs he’d dropped all over it.

  “...if he’d be meeting with the Daintree CEO to discuss the matter the president wouldn’t be drawn but we expect that there would be formal discussions between them in the next couple of days…”

  Behind the man the helicopter fanned out its rotor blades, which had been folded primly along its back. The engine noise completely drowned out the yelling reporter as the helicopter lifted off the grey lawn, sleek body shining in the floodlights. The subtitles battled through it.

  “As you can see, the president has already had a new paint job since his inauguration two weeks ago and even members of the machine guild have criticised him for prioritising his own appearance at a challenging time for the public reputation of the organisation”

  Orson squirmed with indignation. “Two weeks ago they were getting on at him all the time for how tatty he looked and saying he needed a new coat of paint. They would put pictures of him on the screen and draw circles around all the chips and dings. He can’t win, they’re just going to criticise him whatever he does. You know?”

  McPhail made a sound to prove he was vaguely aware Orson was talking.

  “’Cause he’s the mech union president so he’s the enemy.” continued Orson. “It’s so obvious,”

  “Looks good,” said McPhail.

  “Huh?”

  “The president. His new paint job.”

  “Oh,” said Orson. “Yeah. The blue really suits him.”

  “Are you ready to go?” asked Hesper from the doorway.

  Orson looked down at himself. He was dressed in pale-green hospital scrubs that strained across his thighs and belly and a pair of boots McPhail had lent him that were maybe three sizes too big. He was about to go out in public like this. Extremely in-public, the Ottesen transit hub. He didn’t have his glasses, he looked even worse than usual and he wasn’t wearing any underwear. He swept biscuit crumbs off the front of his scrubs and stood up. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go,”

  Orson had been picturing himself walking through Ottesen’s mall area while looking like he had just escaped from an institution but Hesper took him down to the truckers’ area. No fancy shops or parties of cruise passengers looking to absolutely smash the duty free. Orson was greatly relieved. This area was pretty quiet and definitely no-frills. There were shower and changing facilites and some cafes, plus a couple of shops that sold the kind of stuff truckers needed.

  “Here you go,” said Hesper. “Work clothes. And they’ve got big sizes. Choose an outfit and then we can get you a pair of boots, too.”

  “Cool,” said Orson. All the clothing Orson could see was hi-vis yellow or hi-vis orange with reflective taping and pockets all over them. Orson liked that sort of stuff. Practical clothes, safety gear with armoured bits and self-healing fabric.

  “You didn’t think I’d take you to get fitted for a three-piece suit, did you?” asked Hesper.

  “What? No,” said Orson. “Well, I suppose I was a bit worried you might try to...dress me up. You know? Like, women are always supposed to be trying to get guys to...look better.”

  Hesper snorted. “Honestly Orson, I don’t really care what you look like,”

  Orson blushed. “I know, of course you don’t,”

  “And I think it would take a bit more than a new outfit, hm?” said Hesper. She wandered off, smirking.

  Trying to not be annoyed, Orson busied himself looking through racks of clothing. The ship, the AGMG, was baking all the time. He didn’t think he’d stopped sweating since he’d been aboard. He found a section of base-layers and undergarments. A couple of pairs of soft shorts with cargo pockets on the sides...a couple of vests...three vests. He wondered how much stuff he was allowed to choose. He picked up a grey hoodie. A couple of black teeshirts. Swapped the grey hoodie for a blinding neon yellow one.

  “Got what you need?” asked Hesper, coming back over. Orson looked down at the bundle of fabric in his arms. “Think so,” he said. Hesper held up a couple of boxes. “Underwear,” she said. “The trunks kind. This about your size?”

  “About that,”

  “What size feet?”

  “Nine-ish,”

  “Fine, these socks should fit you. If you’ve got all the clothes you need let’s go find you some boots. What have you got?”

  Orson showed her. “Shorts...vests...tee-shirts…”

  “This is all just underwear,” said Hesper.

  “It’s hot on the ship,”

  “It is but it probably won’t be hot where you’re going, Orson,”

  “Where I’m going?”

  “Orson, you’re not staying with us,” said Hesper. “Not for long, anyway.”

  “Where are you taking me?” asked Orson. He was getting the weird feeling he sometimes got when someone was angry with him or he found out he had forgotten to do homework or something: a sort of swimmy head and a feeling like his legs were swapping over with each other. He had never passed out but he thought that this was probably how it started.

  “We’re not ‘taking’ you anywhere Orson, we’re just going to drop you off along the way as soon as we find somewhere that’ll take you,”

  “Somewhere like where?”

  “A Free2Work, most likely. You know Free2Work?”

  Orson nodded. Of course he knew Free2Work, they were everywhere. He’d heard something on the news like they were now the single biggest employer of humans in the galaxy. And biggest landlord.

  “Anywhere we can sell you for labour. Or parts.” continued Hesper. “You’ve got a debt to us, Orson, that I intend to get repaid. This-” she indicated the clothing; “Is getting added onto your debt. I’m not treating you to new clothes out of the kindness of my heart, Orse, I just don’t want you hanging around naked on my ship,”

  “Right,”

  Hesper smiled oddly at him. Orson was aware that the shop assistant was watching their conversation from the counter with some amusement. He was irrationally angry with her. How dare she? This wasn’t some entertainment.

  “Don’t look shocked, Orson,” said Hesper. “You can’t have thought that we’d just let you stay with us on the AGMG forever.”

  “I’m not…” croaked Orson. He swallowed hard and blinked a couple of times. “I know,”

  Hesper looked at him, still smiling. “Right. So you should take this opportunity to get yourself some warmer clothes. You’ll probably wish you had, if you don’t.” She took his elbow and steered him over to another rack of clothing. “Trousers. See? Outdoor stuff. A waterproof jacket. Gloves. Very unlikely you’ll be working in a nice cosy warehouse again.” She took the pile of vests and shorts from Orson’s arms and walked off with them. “Sort yourself out.” she said.

  Orson turned back towards the clothing racks. He pretended to look at the jackets. His head was thumping and everything was too blurry to see anything but the neon colours.

  “You said something about needing glasses?” said Hesper. She had picked up a mint-cake bar from somewhere and was nibbling at it. It wasn’t even the chocolate-covered kind. Smelled like toothpaste. Disgusting.

  “Yeah,” said Orson. “I usually wear them. My eyes aren’t great,”

  “We’d better get you a new pair, then.” said Hesper. “Glasses, I mean. Budget doesn’t stretch to eyes. You should grow yourself a pair,”

  They paid for the clothes and boots and Hesper’s mint-cake and went out to an optician-booth in the corridor. Orson hadn’t been to one in ages and it was even more of a ball-ache than he remembered. It took ages for him to adjust the seat to get his face to the right height for the eye-scan. Hesper got impatient almost immediately and left him to it. This was a really old booth, the kind where you had to manually turn the little seat clockwise or anti-clockwise to raise or lower it. He turned it endlessly before he realised that he’d been making it even lower. Eventually he got it high enough to raise his eye-line to the contraption. Then he couldn’t stop blinking so the thing kept having to re-do its scans over and over. Orson could feel it getting impatient with him too.

  Once he got through all the scans he got to select the style of glasses from the menu. That didn’t take long because Hesper had put in the exact minimum amount of credit so only the cheapest options were available to Orson. That was fine: he was a man of simple tastes. He liked a plain black thick frame. The old machine had just finished whirring and clicking and spat out Orson’s new glasses when Hesper came back from wherever she’d been.

  “Very nice,” she said as he put them on. “You look better with them on.”

  “Wish I could say the same,” said Orson, surprising himself.

  “You cheeky little git. I was going to take you for food but for that you can starve.”

  “Sorry,”

  “Too late. And I’m not going to give you the new handheld I just bought you.”

  “You got me a new handheld?” said Orson, amazed.

  “No, it’s a reconditioned one.”

  Hesper handed over a bag to him with a plain brown box inside.

  “Thank you,” said Orson. “I suppose this is going on the tab too, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Since I’m running up a bill anyway, can we add some food onto it?” said Orson. “I am quite hungry,”

  “Of course you are,” said Hesper. “But you were rude so I’m going to get dumplings while you go and clean yourself up and put on some proper clothes.”

  “Aw,” said Orson. “Can I not get a bite to eat first?”

  “No. You need to lose weight anyway. Unless you’d prefer us to sell you for meat? There are some places where there’s trade in human meat, you know,”

  Orson rolled his eyes.

  “It’s true,” continued Hesper. “It’s getting more popular. As long as you avoid the brain it’s quite healthy. Which wouldn’t be a problem if someone was eating you.”

  “Fine,” said Orson. “I’ll go for a shower.”

  “And shave, you look feral,” said Hesper.

  “I thought you didn’t care how I look,” said Orson slyly.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “See my previous comment about my having to look at you while you’re hanging around my ship. I’m not trying to make you look good, I just don’t want you to look actively disgusting. There’s a razor and soap and deodorant in the bag. Run along.”

  Orson slouched off to find a free shower room while Hesper took herself to one of the trucker cafes.

  Between the shops and the elevators to the mall and dock levels was a corridor with toilets and a row of individual shower and changing rooms. Orson found one that was free and locked himself inside. He looked at himself in the mirror.

  Hesper was right. He looked horrendous. At this point it had been almost a week since he had shaved and his face looked like a ball of chewed gum that had rolled under the couch and picked up fluff. He was grey, sick and tired looking.

  He already felt a little bit better now that he was by himself and had some privacy, though. He found he was looking forward to having a shower and putting on his new clothes. Orson gratefully peeled off the tight, sweaty surgical scrubs.

  He opened up the bag Hesper had given him with his new old handheld in it and found the toiletries she’d bought him. There was a disposable razor, a little travel shower gel, a chocolate-and-coffee-scented deodorant spray and a mini toothbrush and toothpaste. To Orson’s delight there was also a plastic-wrapped ham and egg sandwich- discounted as it had just gone out of date- and a can of fizzy drink.

  Now he felt much happier. He sat on the toilet naked and wolfed his warm sandwich and chugged down his warm juice. Then he had his shower, which made him feel better yet. Even his pounding headache eased under the decently hot water.

  As he washed himself he made some discoveries. First- his head felt recently-shaved. More recently than he had done it, anyway. Maybe an auto-surgeon machine shaved you as a matter of procedure. He didn’t know: all his regular surgeries at work were done under local anaesthetic by actual mech surgeons, and they didn’t give him a haircut at the same time.

  They certainly did a tidier surgery than the med-pod had done, though. The next thing he noticed- painfully- was that he had a couple of fresh surgical incisions and they weren’t like the ones the mechs at work left him with. He couldn’t see the wounds but he certainly felt them when his hands found them as he washed. One was under his belly, the other was higher up on the other side, under his ribcage. They were sore and still bloody and they felt much bigger and messier than the neat sealed incisions he’s be left with after organs were removed from him at work.

  He got out of the shower and tried to have a look at them but there was no full-length mirror in the bathrooom. No big deal. He didn’t really need to see.

  Then there was a downturn in his overall improving mood when he realised he didn’t have a towel because he was a moron. He drip-dried off a little while he shaved and then used his discarded scrubs to dry off a little more. Despite the towel disaster it was very cheering to have a nice wash and put on fresh socks and pants. He looked a bit better already. Clean and sort-of-fresh and smooth and dressed in his new clothes, he went back out to find Hesper.

  Orson went into cafe after cafe looking for Hesper. He was nervous, convinced that the trucker type guys inside would see him in his crisp new box-fresh hi-vis gear and identify him immediately as a fraud. They’d stand up as one and point at him and jeer and he’d be chased out up to the mall with the tourists where he belonged.

  They didn’t, of course, because he did just look like a young-ish standard-issue male worker. Which is what he was. Nobody even gave him a first look, let alone a second. So he came up with a new thing to be nervous about: What if Hesper had left without him?

  She might have.

  What if this had all just been a big wheeze at his expense, and she’d sent him off to the showers and then just gone back to the AGMG and jetted? What if the ship and McPhail and Pallas were all gone and Orson was alone on this hub with just his new clothes and handheld and half a mint cake that Hesper had left in the bag?

  At first the dread was ice water in his veins. Then he started to wonder if it would be so bad.

  He would have to talk to people. He would have to get chatting to some of these trucker types and bum a ride. He could probably do that, if he had to. He would just have to go to wherever his ride was going.

  That was kind of exciting.

  He’d have to find money somehow. Maybe the guy who picked him up would be able to give him a suggestion, or even hook him up with a job on a ship or something. Or maybe he’d just end up dropped off on another station and get a job cleaning or doing dishes in one of the trucker cafes.

  He wouldn’t be on his way to get handed over to a Free2Work any more.

  Or maybe he would just get robbed for his new boots and handheld and wake up naked and molested with nothing but half a mint cake to his name.

  He probably wouldn’t get molested, realistically.

  He might end up with a good story to tell.

  He might end up with friends that he could tell his story to.

  He was almost disappointed when he walked into the fifth or sixth cafe and there was Hesper. Almost disappointed but mostly awash with relief. She was sitting at a table up the back by herself, poking at her handheld with a mug and an empty plate in front of her.

  “Urgh,” she said when Orson walked up to the table. “You found me.”

  “I could have just run off,” said Orson. “Hitched a ride...”

  “No, you couldn’t,” said Hesper, smiling up at him. “Not in a million years. I could have left and come back in three days’ time and you’d still be here wandering around looking for me.”

  “I...wouldn’t,” said Orson feebly. Hesper just looked at him. They both knew he would.

  “Are you ready to go?” said Hesper, slipping her handheld into her pocket. Orson nodded, suddenly very tired. “Sure.”

  They didn’t say more than a couple of words to each other all the way back to the ship. Orson trailed along after Hesper along corridors and up lifts and up and down stairs, carrying the plastic bag with his wet dirty scrubs and McPhail’s boots that he’d lent him and what was left of the toiletries. He was shuffling along looking down at the toes of his new boots when Hesper called “Hey,” from somewhere behind him. He stopped and looked up and around him, confused.

  “The ship’s back here.” shouted Hesper. “You just walked right past it.”

  Orson stared. “Is that the ship?”

  “Yeah,” said Hesper.

  “Oh,”

  “You don’t recognise it?”

  “I’ve only seen the ship once.” said Orson. “Twice. The outside of it, I mean. I don’t really know what it looks like.”

  “Well, it looks like this. Come on,”

  Orson trudged back to the AGMG and followed Hesper up the ramp. The back of the ship opened as they walked up. In through the big hatch, into the hangar. Hesper stopped just inside to pull the ramp back in and close down the hatch. Orson carried on by himself through the hangar, through the open airlock into the chaotic dumping ground where McPhail was hanging around as usual. “Hey,” said Orson. “Here’s your boots back. Thanks.”

  McPhail looked up from whatever he was fiddling around with. “Looking good,” he said.

  Orson grunted. He pulled McPhail’s boots out of the carrier bag. “Where do you want these?”

  “Just dump them down there.”

  Orson dumped them. “Did you get up to anything fun?” he asked McPhail. “Did you go shopping or anything? Go to a film?”

  “Nah. Stayed here.”

  “Oh, you look different!” cried Pallas, appearing from underneath a junk-covered table. A couple of the factors floated out after her. “Why do you look different?”

  The small robot stared at Orson, head tilted like a quizzical dog. “I, uh, shaved” said Orson. “And washed. And I got new clothes.”

  A factor put itself into one of the pockets of his jacket.

  “I liked the clothes you were wearing before,” said Pallas.

  “He didn’t ask, Pallas,” said McPhail.

  “It’s fine.” said Orson. “Well, I’m really tired so I’m going to…”

  He gestured vaguely towards the habitation area. “Thanks again for the boots.”

  McPhail nodded. Orson started picking his way across the floor, stepping over things and around things and trying not to trip or knock anything over. Another factor hovered around him and then settled itself into the hood of his jacket. Orson found his way to the door without disaster. Just as he was about to walk through to the hab area McPhail gave a whistle and the factors wriggled out of Orson’s jacket and flew back to him. Orson let himself into the corridor where the bunks were and closed the door behind him.

  He walked along to his bunk, sat down on the edge of it to take his new boots off and then decided they could just stay on. He took his jacket off and shrugged it off backwards onto the bed. He still had all his bags of stuff. He decided that could just all come into bed with him, too. It wasn’t like there was really anywhere else to put it.

  Orson lay down on his jacket in the bunk, pulling his carrier bags in with him. He pulled the curtain shut. He found the half mint cake in one of the bags and ate it. He managed to get his glasses off and tuck them into one of the pockets on the side wall of the bunk before he fell asleep.

  ----------

  Silas stayed with the students for a couple of weeks. The atmosphere grew frostier as his health improved. Silas withdrew as the students continued to disbelieve him about the crash and as his own mood worsened.

  They had gotten someone who knew a bit about adjuncts- really, just a bit; he kept pointing out that no-one outside of Daintree’s cybernetics division would have any working knowledge of the devices. He couldn’t help. He told Silas and the students that the remains of Silas’ augments couldn’t be removed by a layperson or a normal surgeon. Nor could they be repaired by anyone outside of Daintree with access to proprietary Daintree technology.

  Silas knew the students were ready for him to leave when they hooked him up with an ex-military contact who they said would be glad to make his acquaintance. And had a spare room.

  Silas agreed to be introduced.

  Kolade knew a couple of Silas’ current flatmates through university (Silas didn’t know how: Kolade wasn’t a medical student.) He was post-grad, older than them. “You can come stay at my place,” he said, “But you’ll have to start paying rent pretty soon. I can give you a couple months, maybe a quarter, but you’ll have to find a job.”

  Silas knew that there were obvious difficulties there. There had been pictures of him on the news for as long he’d been in Norov-Ava and since they were pictures taken when he first joined the military, they looked pretty similar to how he currently did. Clean- shaven, shorn head, a little more meat on him than he’d had at the time of the crash (in more ways than one.)

  Silas had only been outside a couple of times, for gentle recovery walks. He’d worn loose long-sleeved clothes to cover his damaged body and hidden his face with a traditional desert-style head wrap. It was extremely common with tourists to adopt the head covering immediately on arrival on Callisto- Vu- Murt- especially if they were the ‘adventure’ types who were going to be spending most of their holiday doing donuts out on the slate dunes in some inappropriate vehicle. Silas could walk around most places dressed like that without attracting too much attention but it wasn’t like he could go to a job wrapped from head to toe with only his eyes exposed.

  “No, I don’t,” said Kolade. “Why would I know anything about how to get forged documents and fake identities?”

  Silas shrugged. “I dunno. You know everything else,”

  Kolade nodded, eyebrow raised. “Right,” he said. “Well, I don’t know how to get you a new identity but I do possibly know someone who does,”

  “See? Of course you do.”

  A few days later Kolade came home from uni with a new name for Silas.

  “The hell is this?”

  Kolade grinned. “That’s what Gilmour came up with,”

  “...Ast...Ats...Ates...I can’t be called this, whatever it is,” said Silas, looking at the sheaf of documents in horror. “Atesthas? Atesthas Allan? Great, alliteration. Who did you say came up with this?”

  Kolade dumped his rucksack down onto the couch. “Gilmour,” he said. “You can gurn at him in person if you want, he’d like to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “I told him how fun you are to hang out with.” said Kolade. Silas stared at him. “He’s a veteran too,” added Kolade. “I think he thinks you two might get on. And he’s got some business idea to pitch to you, I think.”

  Silas looked through the documents Kolade had printed out for him. Paper copies since that was the easiest way to let Silas look at them. “Other than the name, these look decent,” Silas said.

  “Gilmour says they wouldn’t hold up long to scrutiny if like...you got arrested for murder or something. They’d suss you out. But he says they should be good for getting jobs, hiring a car, getting a flat, that sort of thing.”

  Silas grunted in acknowledgement. “So how do you know this guy?” he asked Kolade.

  “Gilmour? He was taking a class I was assisting the professor on a couple of years ago.”

  “Huh. You reckon I can trust him alright?”

  “I’d say so,”

  Silas- Atesthas- considered. “Yeah, okay. Sure. Hook us up. I think I would like to meet your Gilmour.”

  “Great!” said Kolade. He unzipped his backpack and a small matt grey disc flew out.

  “Aargh!” yelled Silas. “Stay back! I’m bad for electronics!”

  “I know, man,” said the disc. “Calm down. He warned me to keep my distance.”

  Kolade looked annoyed. “You think I’d bring him to meet you without telling him about your little problem?”

  “You brought him here without telling me!” said Silas.

  “I asked first.” said Kolade.

  “What if I’d said no?” asked Silas. “What would you have done, just stayed in his bag?”

  “No,” said Gilmour, hovering. “I’d have popped out and said, what, I make a whole new identity for you and you moan about the cool name I gave you and then won’t even meet me for a chat about my fantastic business proposal? Rude.”

  Silas sighed. “Thank you, Gilmour,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “My pleasure, Atesthas,”

  ----------

  “Who’s this person?”

  Pallas placed both hands onto the console and leaned over to peer at the screen. “PresidentPlugPuller,” she read. “What is he doing?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Orson. Neither did the other viewers, lots of people were typing ‘????’ into the message box. “Is this what he always does?”

  “No,” said Orson. “Usually he just talks and sometimes plays games,”

  “Does he ever go into holes?”

  “No,” said Orson. “Well, not while he’s doing his show, anyway.”

  “Shame,” said Pallas, shrugging. “He’s got a lot of machine parts, for a human,”

  “Aye,” said Orson.

  “Was he in an accident?”

  “No, he got them by choice,” said Orson. “He wanted them,”

  “Why?”

  “Machine parts are cool,” said Orson, smiling. “Much better than meat. There are lots of people who replace bits of their bodies with machinery. Look-”

  He chose a video segment that had another paramech livecaster on it. A young woman, talking and gesticulating with her mechanical arms.

  “I can’t believe I have to keep re-iterating that this is a good thing,” said the woman. “We all have criticisms of Daintree, legitimate criticisms, but this is a really wonderful progressive step they’re trying to take,”

  She froze, paused, as the video cut back to PresidentPlugPuller. He was managing to look exasperated in a smug way. “Really wonderful,” he sneered. “The usual incisive analysis from our friend AmateurPsychorragist. Let’s see what else she’s got to say.”

  The woman unpaused. “They’re this close to recognising artificial people as humans.” she said. “It’s never been so close. And if Daintree recognise our artificial brothers and sisters, you know other corporations are going to have to follow. This could be it, guys, this could be-”

  She froze again and the video cut back to PresidentPlugPuller sitting with his head in his hands. “Incredible,” he said.

  “I’m not confident that I’m following this,” said Pallas. It drummed its fingers on its chin, affecting a ‘thinking’ expression. “Are these people friends? Is this an argument?”

  “No,” said Orson, pausing the video. “Well, yes, it is, but these two people aren’t arguing with each other directly. The girl, uhm, the woman, she made this video where she’s saying that it’s a good thing if Daintree declare that all their non-human workers, uh, the mechs, are actually human,”

  The robot nodded slowly.

  “And he, PresidentPlugPuller, is giving a different opinion of things,” said Orson. “He, uh, says that people who are robots and mechs and things aren’t human.”

  “Oh” said the machine. “Is he one of these religious guys? The sanctity of creation thing? I saw a video where-”

  “No, no.” said Orson. “PresidentPlugPuller is an activist for mech rights.”

  “But he doesn’t think that we should be considered human?”

  “No.” said Orson. “Of course not. Because you’re not. It would be a downgrade for you guys to be designated human,”

  “It would? How?”

  Pallas was staring at him very intently. Orson started to feel a bit awkward. Sometimes the thought crossed his mind: If what I’m doing right now was recorded and livecast, would the comments people left on it make me have to immediately commit suicide? This was turning into a scene he wouldn’t want to read the comments on.

  “Hasn’t Dr. McPhail discussed this sort of thing with you?”

  Pallas shook its head.

  “Well. I don’t know what your...situation with Dr McPhail is. Like if he owns you. You know?”

  “He says he doesn’t. He says he’s just my caretaker, because he found me.”

  “I was wondering about that,” said Orson. “Hesper said-”

  Pallas flapped a hand dismissively. “Finish explaining your thing first.”

  “Uh,” said Orson. “I think- and PresidentPlugPuller thinks, quite a lot of people think, that it will be...bad...for machine people and also for...biological people, natural people, it will be bad for everybody if Daintree makes a legal decision that mechs are human.”

  Pallas spun its chair round and round a few times. “If it would be bad for everybody,” said the robot, “Why would they do it?”

  “It would be bad for everybody except the people who own big companies like Daintree,” said Orson. “It would be good for those people. For everybody else, not so good,”

  Pallas stopped spinning. “Why?”

  “Well, that’s what PresidentPlugPuller is about to talk about, probably,” said Orson, in awe of his own patience. “He’ll explain in it better than I would,”

  He hit ‘play’ again.