Lee tossed back the tumbler of whiskey in a glittering arc, and a flash flood of burning liquid traveled down his throat.

Who couldn’t help but sigh contently after that?

The acoustics were different in this bar, more brazen, less choked. When he sat in his apartment with only his bot Nu to talk to, sighs took on a more somber cast. With no one to hear them they were absorbed into the walls, lost in the gaps of his floorboards and the slits in between the cushions of his ratty couch. Here, in his favorite bar, his sighs found a home in somebody else’s ears. That felt right. Sighs were meant to be heard.

Lee twirled his glass on the smooth wooden countertop. It held a deep cherry tone, actual wood worn with divots. He caught the eye of Fey, the bartender, and tweaked his mouth until a half smile poked its way out, nodded a half nod. She lifted a full bottle of the amber liquid off a tall shelf at her back and carried it over to Lee’s side. She kept her hand on the bottle and raised an eyebrow.

“You good?” she asked. Her voice was a soprano’s, high for her Rubenesque frame.

Lee stopped twirling his glass and thought about the question.

Was he good?

The blood-alcohol-content readout pinned to the bottom right corner of his augmented vision seemed to indicate he was good, quite good in fact. So good, he almost regretted adding the medical upgrade to the tech core situated at the top of his spinal column. Constant monitoring of hundreds of important compounds and chemicals joyriding through his bloodstream and the blood alcohol monitor got the most use. But of course, that wasn’t what she meant.

Was he good?

He had finished a repair job the other day, traveled out into the fields south of Old Chicago during harvest time and fixed a self-controlled combine for a farming corp. It'd developed an insistent tick in its machine learning and started tossing errors all over the place, pausing for no reason or veering through the fields in drunken loops. The air felt nice out there, crisp and cool with the promise of the oncoming winter. Above it all rested a wide-open sky.

Wide open skies were supposed to make someone feel free, limitless, capable of reaching up and pulling the celestial bodies down until the spas on Mars were only a transparent protective dome away.

But Lee felt small, dwarfed by the cosmos and left with too many options. Back in his dingy apartment, the stained stucco ceiling and dull metallic sheen of his walls were almost comforting in comparison. Then the closeness of his walls became cloying, and long nights of working on Nu became a palliative half-cure.

Ah, well. At least he’d been able to stop at his favorite open-air market in Old Chicago on the way back to eat some spiced vat mystery meats.

Lee tapped on his wide metal bracelet and shimmied until the blue mechanic’s jacket on the back of his chair shifted into a more comfortable position. A projected screen appeared on his forearm, emitted from his bracelet. With a few quick taps, Lee sent his BAC monitor data digitally over to Fey. He could see her contact covered eyes flit to the side as the flexible and transparent electroluminescent displays incorporated into her contacts showed her the information in a rolling parade of numbers.

Fey lifted the bottle of whiskey and poured two fingers worth into the bottom of his glass.

“That isn’t what I meant,” she said.

Of course it wasn’t. But Lee had made it out of his apartment, came to the bar to splash some amber color on what would have otherwise been a dull grey.

Was he good?

Not great. But how many lucky bastards could claim that prize?

“He’s fine. Leave ‘im alone Fey.”

The gruff voice belonged to Liz. She slouched in the chair next to Lee, trying to shed all the grime from a night shift at the local hospital with a few daytime drinks.

“You should know better Fey. Ambiguous question like that, send a neural mechanic down the rabbit hole, you ken? The whole lot are too philosophical. Ask him about the weather and he’ll tell you how us cooling the skies only gave us the chance to heat up some other godforsaken place.”

Lee grinned at the thin slip of a woman known as Liz. Lee could never quite tell her age and didn’t want to ask. She had a wit he didn’t much want to be on the end of and these days anything between 30 and 90 was pretty much the same biologically anyway. Lee imagined her to be somewhere in her late 70’s. Something about her attitude made it seem well-aged, bitter, like it had gotten more pungent over the years. She had a weathered narrow face, long thin fingers perfect for carrying out whatever tasks the med-bot ordered for its diagnosis, and flaxen yellow hair swept into a ponytail; she seemed right at home spending all day in her hospital issued scrubs.

Lee chuckled as Fey moved to busy herself behind the bar, a slight scowl marring her lips. Lee looked to Liz.

“I thought you were supposed to be kind to people. Give them a shoulder to cry on, be a sounding board for their problems. You know, make the sick forget what ails them. How are you supposed to do all that if you don’t ask questions?” asked Lee.

“You talk too much,” said Liz. “I help the sick, but I can’t do anything about stupid. Download a therapeutic conversation package for Nu over there if you want someone who will buy your bullshit. Quit looking for meaning in everything and finish that drink in front of you.”

Liz took another sip from her glass of Moscato. Lee had always found that choice an odd one.

“For someone who picks the first thing on the menu you show a remarkable amount of insight,” said Lee.

Liz smiled and tipped her glass his way. Their shared laughter matched in rhythm with the familiarity of two old friends. Lee even heard a few soprano chuckles from Fey over at the other end of the L shaped bar. She was running inventory, the colored LED sconces on the wall casting her shadows against the scintillating panoply of bottles.

Lee could say he felt good, but still his smile didn’t reach his ears, hadn’t for some time now.

Their joined laughter was interrupted by a series of high-pitched squeaks from Liz’s personal/work bot. The bar sat below ground level and the robot stood against the wall underneath the bay of street level windows, soaking in the sight of fleshy legs, metallic limbs, and rolling wheels with eyes quickly going dim.

A message in text flashed across the bottom of Lee’s contacts. A message from Nu, Lee’s repair bot he took with him everywhere he went. Nu stood on four wheels next to Liz’s humanoid caretaker bot, its cameras facing out to the street.

Liz’s bot shut down again. Another moral code error, messaged Nu.

Lee smirked as Liz walked over to her bot, leaving behind a trail of muttered obscenities in her wake.

“You know the government doesn’t take too kindly to bots trying to ditch their connection with sub-grid 1,” said Lee, laughing. “Makes them nervous the bots are about to do something naughty.”

“Shut it,” said Liz, not bothering to look at Lee. She moved over to the bot and smacked it on the arm. “You would think the damn thing tries to hit every human it comes across the way it keeps on throwing moral code errors.”

“No shortage of people who deserve it,” said Lee.

“Got that right. Still, can’t have a nurse bot be throwing moral code errors. Some patients might be alarmed by that, think their pills might have some extra surprises inside.”

Lee chuckled and took another sip of whiskey. He stared at the wooden bar top, scratched at a few of the divots with his finger.

“You ever see a nurse bot pull the plug on someone? Without being directed to, I mean.”

Liz looked back at Lee and scrunched her face, letting her mind flip through its memory banks. She spoke.

“You hear rumors of course, but I can’t say that I’ve seen it myself. Any bot that I’ve seen pull the plug on a patient has done it at the direction of a doctor, which … you know … is according to the wishes of the family, or if there is no family the moral code. Though I did see a cafeteria bot get shut down when it served a diabetic patient it liked the last bit of sugar free pudding. Patient was a young boy, cute, and didn’t have an implant to monitor his diabetes. His parents hadn’t checked his genetics before he was born either, disagreed with some of the standard changes. You know the type, worse than a Laskite.”

Lee winced, though Liz didn’t notice. She continued speaking.

“Parents let things go until the kid ended up our guest. Anyway, the bot liked the kid, so it served him ahead of a diabetic doctor who’d let his med implant supplies run low. Doctor was an asshole. Think I might have cheered.” Liz barked out a laugh. “I swear, when the hell did that bit get voted into the moral code? Putting an asshole doctor over a poor sick kid. I sure as hell don’t remember it in any of the referendums. Bot had that one right if you ask me.” Liz swore and shook her head, standing by her bot as it began its reset procedure.

Lee turned and looked out the window. He could see the wheels of self-driving cars on the road as they went through the motions of their efficient dance. One stopped at the side of the road and picked up a young couple, at least their legs looked young anyway.

“You hear about the self-driving car that hit the famous singer the other day?” asked Lee. “what’s her name again?”

A voice came from down the bar, loud and a bit slurred. “Sil Rivers, you’re thinking of Sil Rivers.”

“Thanks Ken,” said Lee. He raised his glass to the old man, a bairen near the age of 105 though he didn’t look it. Good genetics for a shell mechanic. Lee turned back to Liz. “Ya, Sil Rivers. Car smacked her into a wall. She broke both legs and had to cancel a tour, won’t be dancing regular for months. Her label is up in arms over it, but the car had to swerve to avoid hitting a young child pushed off the damn median by the crowds. Car chose to hit a wealthy singer who’d be able to pay medical. Think I can agree with the moral code on that call.” Lee took a sip of his drink and sighed at the fire lighting a path down his throat. “By the way, did you vote on that child referendum?”

“Course,” said Liz. “I don’t care how accurate the predictions are for a kid’s success or failure, a young child is still too much a blank slate not to be giving them some extra value.”

“Good to hear the ads that label’s been beaming across the Grid didn’t get to you. I’ll drink to that.” Lee raised his glass to his lips and took a sip.

He watched Liz fuss over her bot, the six-foot tall humanoid shell silent as a heap of scrap metal. Lee knew if it wasn’t impeded by the moral code, it could easily crush his skull between its metal hands at the direction of a stray thought. Of course, if that bothered him, he shouldn’t have trained to be a neural mechanic. He looked to his bot Nu and drained the last of his glass, smiled. Fey came over and filled up his glass after money transmitted from his account to the bar’s.

“Why don’t you let Nat look at it, Liz?” asked Lee.

She grumbled and reached up to her bot’s control panel. The thing was so much taller than her it was almost comical. The cylindrical head of the bot leaned down and forward as if asleep, making it harder for Liz to reach the panel on its neck.

“Already did, wouldn’t let him give me a discount neither. God knows he needs the money.”

Fey snorted at that and hid from Liz’s harsh gaze by busying herself with the handful of non-regulars also taking part in some harmless day drinking. Liz returned her gaze to her bot and set about bringing it online.

“Let me look at it then,” said Lee. “Seems like a coding issue. Nat’s all hardware, you need a man with a more philosophical touch.”

Liz leaned against the wall and wiped a dark smudge on her scrubs, a smile playing on her lips. She barked out a laugh.

“Not a chance Lee.”

He smiled and raised a glass, drained it. They’d known each other a long time. Long enough for the same old jokes to form a comfortable routine.

Lee tapped out a message to Nu using the projected screen from his wristband. The screen required a flick of the wrist to activate, and a grid of lasers allowed for feedback. The message told Nu to hook up to Liz’s bot and download its log data for later analysis.

By the time he finished tapping out the message, Liz had reclaimed her stool at the bar and was taking periodic sips from her wine. Her bot stayed silent as it ran through diagnostics. Nu unfolded a jointed arm to plug into the data access port on the back of its neck.

Lee turned to his drink to find a cool and very much not amber glass of water sitting in front of him. He accepted it with a shrug and half nod towards Fey. He fiddled with his bracelet and set about pinning an augmented reality TV screen to the portion of wall across from him. The wall was covered in the ubiquitous, absorptive dun paint perfect for tagging with augmented reality. Thanks to the properties of the wall there wasn’t much glare from overhead lights.

After a few taps, the electroluminescent screen in his contacts lit up hundreds of stars in miniature against the blacks of his pupils. One of his favorite shows of late began playing. The sound of the whimsical intro music danced through the speakers surgically implanted in his ears. He shifted his head, yet the image stayed pinned to a single location on the wall. The soft camera in his contacts scanned his surroundings and beamed the data to his tech core for processing.

Even though he knew no one else could see what he was watching or hear what piped into his implanted speakers, he instinctively looked around before focusing on the sitcom. An odd habit he’d picked up from old shows.

The show started, a play on the classic family sitcoms, the ones where dynamics would shift, and hilarity would ensue. Like out of nowhere a father with a wife and two kids would have his job automated out from underneath his feet due to a new law, then be forced to take care of kids he’d been too busy to get to know. Watch them struggle through a series of contrived scenarios to learn what family was all about. Cue the laugh track, cue the occasional emotional sigh. Lee had seen several shows with the same premise over the years. Sometimes it was the wife who lost the job. Other times it was a family friend who moved in due to rough circumstances. All were variations on introducing a shock to small group of interesting characters with a need to be around each other, with a need to care. Corny at times, sure, but he thought it heartfelt more often than not.

The show currently playing out on the wall of his favorite bar had two young kids, their parents, two grandparents, one great grandparent and one great-great-grandparent living in a house with a general-purpose bot they all shared. Not to mention an uncle who had moved in after losing popularity as a vid blogger. Their bot had a knack for failing in entertaining ways. In this episode it failed in its attempts to make a chicken dish by misinterpreting thyme and roasting the whole thing black as a result. The grandparents who’d faked being on a booze cruise in the arctic to instead see a risqué play named “Nil’s Third Nip” showed up at the end and fixed the meal just as the parents came home, the mother shaking her well-coifed head as she put away her oiled briefcase containing a mix of student assignments to be graded. The uncle documented it all for his blog and got a record thirty-four views.

Lee sat chin in hand as the credits rolled, musing the myriad ways society tried to downplay robotic abilities while at the same time funding research to make them smarter in unregulated labs off-world.

A few minutes passed like this when the door to the bar swung open. In stepped Nat, not an unusual or unexpected occurrence, but today something felt off.

The large man slammed the door to the bar and rushed to sit two seats away from Lee, on the other side of Liz. His large frame and prodigious belly shook under labored breaths. Red lines webbed his bloodshot eyes, the brown iris and black pupil at its center an island in a sea of angry red waves.

Whether Nat’s bloodshot eyes were due to visiting a jack house, or something else, Lee couldn’t tell. Those soft drug hovels lit fireworks among neurons and filled eye vessels near to bursting. But for a man of Nat’s size so could running.

By the time Fey set a beer in front of Nat, he’d recovered enough to form decipherable words. Lee noticed with some surprise the sweat stains on the front of the mechanic’s blue work shirt.

Not the jack house then.

“Spit it out Nat,” said Liz. Her harsh face had softened, shifted with worry at the sight of the big man in such a fit.

Lee met Nat’s eye and nodded.

“Fey, throw up the local news on the bar channel,” said Nat.

Fey tapped out a few commands on a curved screen she had strapped to her forearm. Lee, Liz, Nat, and a few of the more curious strangers tapped out similar commands on their control panels of choice or used simplistic thought commands that zipped through implants scanning their brains. They trained their collective eye on the far wall at one end of the L shaped bar. On it, an augmented reality screen viewable to anyone who had their implanted tech connected to the bar’s network showed the local news.

Lee noticed Nat jackhammering his foot against the floor as the reporter outlined the details of a death nearby, several blocks away towards New Chicago in a shopping complex.

The reporter, with mic in hand, stood a few feet outside augmented reality caution tape that would no doubt soon be replaced by a line of police bots and a hologram. Behind her, a luminous store front for high end suits and ties displayed several mannequin bots. They shifted from pose to suave pose, accentuating the latest cuts and styles. A few more feminine bots in slinky dresses hung on the shoulders of the male mannequin bots.

However, all the attention was focused on the dead body crumpled a few feet outside the entrance doors, slouched next to a sign advertising the clearance rack. Lee noticed the dead man’s neck pointing to the side at an impossible angle before the body got covered by a thin white sheet.

Lee raised one eye at Nat. He caught the glance and chuckled low and slow, shaking his head all the while. Liz’s long fingered hand rested comfortably on his arm.

“The damn bot acted so quickly. It grabbed the guy and twisted his neck like it was a damn 2 by 4 made of balsa wood.” Nat made a twisting motion with his large hands. “I saw it all from only twenty feet or so, while I was getting a burger across the way. Close enough to see the whites of the man’s eyes, see him twitch like a bot being tested on the line. But that’s not the worst of it.”

Nat paused mid-breath and raised his beer to his lips to down a large gulp. He sputtered through the next few sentences.

“The damn bot was arguing with him. I fucking swear it. Its tone changed, getting all … pissed off. And I know bots can fake that kind of thing. But this was different. Real piss and vinegar. I mean …”

Nat eyed each one of them in turn, looking for support before continuing. “It snapped his damn neck. Can't get much more real than that.”

Nat continued speaking but Lee ignored him. Something about running all the way to the bar and not even stopping to make a statement to the cops. Liz would calm him down.

Lee looked back to the reporter and tried to see more of what was going on behind her.

Separated from the dead man by no more than a few feet, the metallic humanoid shell of the alleged homicidal bot lay reflecting the myriad lights of the storefront, sprawled out flat on the ground with no blanket to cover it. It looked a gender-neutral model, not wearing any clothes or covered in any paint. The design emphasized the intricate metalwork adorning its frame, clockwork gears in relief. Lee recognized it as a newly released General Purpose, or GP, bot that could only be purchased by the obscenely wealthy. Lee had never seen it in person. The camera zoomed in to the bot’s remains.

The engineering looked incredible, more human-like than Lee thought Dynamic Solutions, the leading bot shell designer, to be capable of. One of the bot’s elbows pointed towards the camera and Lee marveled at it. It meshed countless sliding pieces of metal composite in a flexible jigsaw around a ball joint. The design took human biology and mechanized it, improved it in some ways. Of course, the bot would never be confused for a real human. But the coded grace, the harmony of electric motors pulling artificial limbs around contoured metal joints took any good mechanic’s breath away.

Lee imagined the owner bought it just for everyone to gawk at.

The flawlessness of the bot stopped short at the neck. The head showed signs of an electric fire from what must have been a nasty EMP pulse. Black smoke still trickled out the eye sockets and ear holes. The black tears and distorted metal gave the bot a ghoulish cast, smeared industrial makeup for the dead.

Lee thought he could see the edge of a short range EMP pulse grenade next to the bot. He hoped nobody had been hanging too close when it went off. The most important implants had shielding, but even that didn’t always work.

Lee sighed. The whole situation felt wrong.

Lee turned his eyes away from the AR screen and spared a glance in the direction of the bots left near the entrance of the bar. Their owners sat stretching their legs and imbibing more than a few drinks while the bots stared into the street. Nu sat stolidly among them, its four wheeled legs locked straight. Lee gave him an appreciative grin. Nu was basically a tall toolbox with legs and a spinning squat head slapped on top, with a few modifications by Lee of course.

Liz’s bot towered silently by Nu’s side, reboot finished and back to staring out the window in standby mode. Nu’s analysis showed a command had come from sub-grid 1’s Watcher to shut the bot down for a moral code violation, as expected.

Lee looked back to the reporter on the screen and wondered. Given that grabbing a neck and twisting it until it snapped was an action directly opposed to any moral code in the System, why hadn’t the dead man’s brand spanking new GP bot been shut down remotely as soon as it tried to wring its owner’s neck rather than be blasted with an EMP pulse in the middle of a public shopping mall?

It wasn’t impossible to trick the system. Lee had done it himself on occasion. But he was, by the accounts of the few who truly knew him, an expert in coding and deathly curious about things he didn’t know.

The first step to bypassing the moral code for any legally purchased bot was to fake a shut-down, let it disconnect from sub-grid 1 but then put it in standby mode so one could alter its code as needed. Sounded simple, but in actuality not many could do it. After that, there were software patches on the black market for nearly every model to allow them to run off sub-grid 1, all to keep Watcher from monitoring them. Expensive and very illegal, but they existed. Yet the engineering marvel laying on the grubby floor of a shopping mall a few blocks away looked brand new. Lee knew the black market to be fast but the timeline here was ridiculous. And the owner didn’t look like the type to know one end of a wrench from the other, let alone how to implement some complex software.

Another way to trick the system was to change the bot’s definitions of objects, like change all perceived humans to be defined as bots, which they could then physically harm. Then Watcher wouldn’t notice any broach of the moral code. But that was tricky. The monitoring protocols double checked definitions against standards at regular intervals.

Perhaps it was Lee’s inebriation talking but it didn’t seem like the normal bot gone homicidal due to poor coding. He took another sip of water and tried to push the thoughts aside, leave them for another time. But it didn’t work. It never did. Lee held the water in his hands and let his mind roam. He bet there was a very talented hacker out in the black watching the loci in their account go sky high. It always came down to money.

Lee knew of another possible explanation, one skirting the edge of his consciousness. It hid in the closet of humanity’s collective mind, the philosophical boogeyman with metal bones and electricity coursing through its limbs.

Lee brushed the thought aside. He was a neural mechanic who had spent years of his life perfecting machine learning algorithms. The technology wasn’t there yet, not for true artificial intelligence.

But … that wasn’t quite right, not right at all. He knew better than to lie to himself.

Nat’s voice intruded into Lee’s mind and scattered his thoughts.

“You’ve installed emotions, right?” asked Nat. From his tone, Lee could tell it was rhetorical.

“Sure, worked on them many times,” said Lee. He looked over at Nu.

“Course you have,” said Nat, chuckling. “Anyway, I’m telling you this bot was way ahead of anything you’ve touched. It had a burr up its ass and freaked harder than a dreamer getting their plug pulled.”

Liz’s forehead furrowed, deepening the valleys of her face.

“So, what are you saying?” asked Liz. “Bot did it all on its own? Killed that guy out of anger? Granted the guy looked like an ass but you know that can’t happen. It was a glitch in the programming or a virus or a hack or something. Happens all the time.”

She gestured to the AR screen. The camera was set wide to show the entire macabre crime scene, onlookers and all.

“Usually not with a dead body involved but …” Liz waved her arm around lazily, “shit happens.”

Nat looked at Liz, mouth working over some type of response. He gave up grinding his teeth, let out a small deprecating laugh and shook his head.

“You’re both wrong,” said Fey from across the room. “Check it out.”

The AR screen on the far wall put up a graphic of a software update released yesterday morning for high end GP bots. The update was marked with Discere’s logo, the premier software company for bots, and had been available for download off the Grid. The reporter’s voice sounded into Lee’s ears as the view shifted back to the crime scene.

“Reports have been coming in that the fake update was downloaded several thousand times before employees at Discere shut down the server, with many cases less serious than the one behind me continuing to pop up every few minutes now. It appears the update was launched from a hacked company server and sold for several thousand loci. The update promised to make bots more lifelike by incorporating advanced machine learning algorithms.

“It would appear; however, the update merely makes bots act erratically and disconnect from sub-grid 1. As you can see from the scene behind me, sometimes the results are violent. Police are insisting that all those who purchased the update must shutdown their bots immediately and roll back the software. Discere has been unavailable for comment as far as liability or refunding of purchases. Do not attempt to …”

Lee stopped paying attention to the reporter and lowered the audio with a flick of his wrist and a few taps on his control screen.

The bar had been unnaturally quiet during the broadcast, a pall cast over the room like a funeral shawl, stifling conversation. Lee let his eyes wander around the room as the broadcast rambled on.

Nobody ran to their bots to roll back software. Nobody did much of anything other than drink their drinks and watch.

Slowly, in fits and starts, the normal sounds returned. A few strangers in a booth nearby turned back to one another and muttered something about government conspiracies in hushed tones. Fey went back to wiping down the bar with a tattered wet rag, sparing an occasional glance up at the screen. Then Nat and Liz struck up a conversation about Liz’s bot, arguing over how to fix it.

Everything went back to normal, but Lee didn’t buy it.

It was a fake normal, forced. Everybody took a split second longer to decide what to do next, a hair’s breadth lag while trying to decide what normal was. The pauses in conversation loomed large, causing people to rush to fill the empty spaces between words.

For once, Lee was inclined to walk over to the conspiracy theorists and listen in.

The explanation given by the reporter rang of half-truths, of a story untold.

Why hack Discere just to sell an update so cheaply? Why not steal their information and sell that? And what virus made a bot act so unpredictably?

He thought back to the TV show he had finished before Nat ran in and set the day on a new course, to the bot misinterpreting thyme as time and burning the chicken, all according to a script another bot might have helped write with situations and bits pulled from a list. That bot didn’t deviate from its script. Unlike what conspiracy theorists and fringe media might think, most didn’t. But even so, something here felt off, Lee was sure of it.

His curiosity got the better of him, and with trembling hands he tapped out a message to Nu.

Try to find an available copy of the update floating around the edges of the Grid. Download and run a basic analysis to compare to known machine learning algorithms. Try to be discreet.

A reply flashed across the bottom right of Lee’s vision.

On it, messaged Nu.

Lee went back to sipping water. He watched his BAC monitor with a bit of sadness as his alcohol levels dwindled. No doubt the update had been wiped off the hacked Discere server. But not to worry. In Lee’s experience, secrets had sharp edges that entangled themselves in everything they touched, easy enough to find if one knew how to look. That of course was the trick, knowing where to look.

It wasn’t more than a few minutes later when Lee heard a ding in his earpiece. A notification sound. He flicked his wrist and tapped out a few commands, expecting to see a readout of the update Nu would’ve found skulking around the edges of the Grid’s many non-government channels. The electroluminescent array in his contacts lit up, and an AR overlay of a messaging inbox popped up at the center of his vision. The semi-transparent menu showed a smattering of old messages and one unread one.

Lee cocked his head. It wasn’t from Nu, that would have been sent in a direct feed, not put into his messaging inbox. This was a work contract, asking him to fix a recreation bot down in the decaying maze of Old Chicago. The pay was good, and the owner of the business didn’t have any marks against them in the system.

Lee ran a hand through his short black hair and looked back at the AR vid screen. The news had shifted to coverage of a recent mining accident out in the asteroid belt.

A rec bot wasn’t much different than a GP bot, just some parts and functionality added on. He could probably fix it without much trouble, would only need an hour or so. He thought of the dead man he’d just seen on the broadcast and shook his head. There wouldn’t be any reason to hire a mechanic if the update was behind this new contract. No one would pay his fee when the fix was only a reboot and a few short clicks away.

Lee scanned through the message again. No violence. Normal learning ticks and reports of unsatisfied customers over the past day.

Lee shook his head as if to shake away the nerves. He swallowed the last of the glass of water and flipped it upside down to rest on the surface of the bar. He watched the water weave a path to bead at the glass’s rim, pooling onto the burnished surface of the bar. It looked like the fake Discere update would have to wait. The job wasn’t too far away from his place. He could swing by his apartment, grab a few things, head out for the job and be back in time for a late dinner.

He said his goodbyes to Nat and Liz after sending Fey her tip with a few taps on his control screen. He shrugged on his blue mechanic’s jacket and walked up the bar’s steps into the brisk fall air. The noon sun glared down, pushing on his shoulders with warm hands. Nu ambled up the steps and zipped around Lee. Nu’s four legs, each located at a corner of its elongated box shaped body, flexed at multiple joints. Each of the four wheels had a separate electric motor and braking system. The bot could maneuver better than Lee at times.

“What do you say Nu? Call a car or take the maglev?” asked Lee.

Car, messaged Nu, the text appearing letter by letter in the bottom right of Lee’s augmented vision. Maglevs don’t go to the section of Old Chicago the job is at.

Lee chuckled. “I hadn’t told you where we were going yet, or about the job. You know its rude to read someone else’s messages. Besides, I told you to look into the update.”

Nu rolled to a stop at the edge of the street. Even though Lee knew it was just his imagination, he liked to think of the pause as Nu taking a long breath.

I can do both. Besides, you gave me permission to read your messages a long time ago. Take that up with yourself.

Lee rapped his knuckle against Nu’s hard metal chassis, then leaned against his walking trashcan bot.

“Car it is,” said Lee.

A few minutes later, an electric car owned by one of the cheaper car sharing companies rolled to a stop next to them. Nu part rolled, part walked, into the wide, seat-less back section of the car. Lee took his place in the driver’s seat, tapping on the navigation panel to input a destination, not feeling like talking with the car’s AI. One had to pay extra to get a car with an AI capable of holding a decent conversation. A steering wheel that was mostly for show lay curled up and unusable in the dash. The car turned onto the street and soft jazz began trickling out of the speakers.

Lee stared at the disfigured steering wheel and the rumblings of a headache began pulsing in the back of his head. The hard lines of the skyscrapers zoomed by, straight as a razor. His thoughts were of things dark and unnatural, as upsetting and twisted as the dead man’s broken neck.