Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)(11)

It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

*

We exited the wormhole on schedule. As soon as we were in range of the transit ring, ART stretched its reception and picked up the destination info packet for me, which included a more detailed map of RaviHyral. Rotating the map to look at it from every angle didn’t jog anything in the fragments of memory I had of that time. But it was interesting that Ganaka Pit wasn’t marked anywhere.

I could feel ART in my feed, looking over my figurative shoulder again. I checked the timestamp, and saw the map had been updated multiple times since the time period of my incident. “They took it off the map.”

Is this usual? ART asked. It dealt only with star maps, and removing something from one of those was kind of a big deal.

“I don’t know if it’s usual or not, but it makes sense, if the company or the clients wanted to conceal what happened.” If the company wanted to continue to sell contracts for SecUnits to other mining installations, concealing the fact, or at least obscuring the fact, that fatalities had occurred was important. Maybe instead of a legal battle, the company had paid out on the bonds quickly under the condition that the client minimize details about the incident in the public record. This hadn’t been a situation like GrayCris and DeltFall, where there were multiple parties involved and the company was all over the newsfeeds, trying to generate sympathy for itself.

ART pulled more historical info, searching the pit and service installation names that were listed. RaviHyral had originally been held by a number of companies with mining rights to different areas of the moon’s interior. But over the past two system-years, a company called Umro had bought out some of the claims, though many of the original companies were still operating as contractors. None of the names sounded familiar.

I’d have to figure out where Ganaka Pit had been before I could go there. I would have been transported there as freight and there weren’t any memories of the trip, partially erased or not.

I started to search through the rest of the info packet, looking for schedules. I would have to get a shuttle from the transit ring to the RaviHyral port. That would be tricky. Well, the whole thing would be tricky. From the information on the shipping schedule, only people with employment vouchers or passes from one of the mining installations or support services were allowed to board the shuttles. There was no tourism, nobody coming and going without official authorization from one of the companies or contractors on the moon. Since I wasn’t a person and I didn’t have an employment voucher, I would have to hack my way into one of the supply shuttles …

ART was still pulling data from the station feed. I have a suggestion, it told me, and displayed a set of personal advertisements. I had seen these in the feeds at Port FreeCommerce and the last transit ring, but hadn’t paid attention. ART highlighted one that was a job listing for a temporary position as security for a technologist group on limited contract.

“What?” I asked ART. I didn’t understand why it was showing me this.

If this group hired you, you would have an employment voucher for travel to the installation.

“Hire me.” I’ve had more contracts than I can remember (I mean that literally. A lot of them were before the memory purge) but none of them were voluntary. The company pulled me out of storage, showed me to the client, then packed me into the cargo hold. “Have you lost your mind?”

My crew hires consultants for every voyage. ART was impatient that I wasn’t complimenting it yet on its great idea. The procedure is simple.

“For humans and augmented humans, yes.” I was stalling. I would have to interact with humans as an augmented human. I know that’s what altering my configuration was supposed to be for, but I had imagined it as taking place from a distance, or in the spaces of a crowded transit ring. Interacting meant talking, and eye contact. I could already feel my performance capacity dropping.

It will be simple, ART insisted. I’ll assist you.

Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well.

*

Once ART was docked and the transit ring’s bot-piloted tugs were removing the cargo modules, it cycled the lock for me and I slipped through into the embarkation zone. It had given me access to its comm so it could ride my feed through the transit ring. It claimed it could help me and while I was skeptical of that, it could at least keep me company. As I walked away from the safety of ART’s lock, I dropped back down to 96 percent efficiency. I hit the station entertainment feeds for new downloads to try to calm down.

I’d already sent a message to the social feed node about the advertisement, and gotten an answer with a location and timestamp. The last time I’d had an arranged meeting with humans they kidnapped Mensah and blew me up, so. This could hardly be worse.

I hacked my way through embarkation zone security and out into the ring’s mall. It was utilitarian compared to both the last transit ring and Port FreeCommerce. No garden pods, no holo sculptures, no big holo displays advertising arrays of shipwrights and cargo factors and other businesses, no shiny new interface vending machines. Also no big passenger transports coming through, so not nearly as big a crowd, of humans or bots. ART’s idea was beginning to seem less like a stupid risk and more like a necessity. Blending in here would be harder, if everyone was only here on their way to and from the installations on the moon. In my feed, ART said, I told you so.