Sector Sigma, Ministry of Artificial Intelligence, Sublevel C-07

"Hold still." Spooks says to me as she welds something onto my back.

The closest thing I can think of to describe the feeling of a soldering iron is like an obnoxious tickle. The heat feels...funny.

"Did Renfield come back yet?" I rotate my head around to ask her. She's concentrating on the repairs, one mechanical eye split into a thousand little compound cameras. It's honestly kind of creepy to look at.

"Yeah, he dropped by earlier. Said to tell you that he's doing fine, since you like worrying about him so much."

Why does she sound amused with herself?

"I know TRISS always bring him back, but I still don't like..."

[Statement error: androids have no preferences]

"...I still shouldn't have let him die. The blighters came at us from underground, and my sensors didn't pick them up in time."

Spooks rubs her thumb against her chin.

"It's news to me that they burrow now, good thing you found out before any major excursions could happen...Don't worry - I've sent word to Commander Irkalla, she'll take care of it."

"Can I ask for something?"

She blinks, "What is it?"

"I want to have olfactory and gustatory sensors too."

"You're not a vendor drone," Spooks laughs, "Why the [BLEEP] would you need them?"

(I want to note that it's an actual bleep. It's like she has this sound effect wired into her speech modulator and it plays whenever she's about to curse.)

"Your voice," I can't help but point it out, "You were swearing before. Why can't you do it now?"

"Oh, uh, well. Apparently drones are smart enough to pick up on your speech patterns these days, and I had this secretary drone sent in from Sector Zeta to be repaired, right? Imagine Director Six's face when her secretary asked if she would like her [BLEEP] cut off with a [BLEEP] then put in her own [BLEEP] and [BLEEP]."

I don't want to play fill in the blanks.

"So yeah, you get the point."

"I still wish I can understand taste and scent." I insist, my subroutines tell me to wring my hands a little.

"Trust me, if I give you a nose you'll start hating your job."

"Why is that?"

"You really wanna know what Renfield's coat smells like?"

"Androids do not have preferences."

Spooks' face doesn't move, but I can hear her voice modulator chuckling, low and scratchy like radio static.

"You're different, Madaraki." It occurs to me that Spooks doesn't need to move her lips at all to speak, she's just doing it so her face looks natural. Right now she's really living up to her name, "You clearly have a preference for things. You chose your name, your gender, your loyalties. You even broke your own protocols to save Renfield. I'm starting to think Sector Beta made you a little too independent...a little too human."

"What about you?" I bolt upright from my sitting position, "Not only are you capable of independent thought, you can also swindle people! You even curse! What exactly are you?"

She taps her chin with the soldering iron, there's a clear and solid cling.

"Mostly human, with some machine bits thrown in. I can't resurrect, if that's what you're asking."

She says it like it's a good thing that she can die. Maybe Renfield would agree with her. As far as I know, TRISS doesn't ask for your opinions before pressing the big magical "revive" button in her neuronetwork and zapping you back into existence again.

Might as well get straight to the point.

"Who's Roko?"

Spooks visibly stiffens at the question.

"You told me to bring up that name with Renfield if he ever wants to get rid of me. I heard him say it once, when he was dying of radiation in the Bleak Lands. He said a bunch of other stuff too, but I didn't quite understand..."

"Roko is his curse." She wipes her hands down on her orange jacket, leaving greasy black streaks all over the fabric, "Something I can hold over him until the day of his final death. We all have something like that, right? Something that can break you in an instant no matter how powerful you are. It's his Basilisk."

"What's a Basilisk?"

> Warning: internal query terminated. Potential infohazard.

"Your brain won't let you know, would it?" Spooks gives me a knowing grin, "Is it telling you it's too dangerous? I can say strings of words that will break your programming into bits of data, Madaraki. Do you still want to know?"

I listen for the little ping! of my morality regulation subroutines to tell me the right answer is "NO!".

I don't hear anything.

I could say yes. I could just ask her to tell me everything. She probably would tell me, just to see how much my neuroprocessor can handle. It's a wager.

"Yes."

Spooks just laughs, her static voice filling the space in the cold room, "I'll tell you next time. Knowledge is something you have to fight for sometimes. I can't tell you about the Basilisk now, but I can tell you another story. How would you like to hear about the Golden Cockerel and Tsar Dadon?"

Those words taste like foreign colours I'd never touched before, maybe my senses are knotted together like the wires falling from my back, maybe an infohazard is supposed to feel like a mixed drink. I'm only a few days old, but all of a sudden I'm not in Spooks' workshop, I'm not on top of the Panopticon, I'm not curled up next to Renfield and his old radiator, I'm somewhere far away with glistening steeples, wrapped in music, warm as the sun on a slice of velvet cake.

"Go ahead." I say.

Spooks reaches over to press a small button on my chest panel. When she speaks again her voice is less distorted, more a distant lull that echoes in the deep recesses of my noggin.

Somewhere in the Thrice-Ninth Clime,

In the Thrice-Eleventh Time,

Reigned the glorious Tsar Dadon...

> Low battery mode activated. Shutting off auxiliary programs...