Performance reliability catastrophic drop. Shutdown. Restart.

I stood there accusingly, not looking at her. She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know

I never asked clients for information if I could help it. (For a lot of reasons but close to the top was the all-too-common suicidal lack of attention to detail humans were prone to.)

(Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, it’s probably not thinking about killing you, it’s probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.)

without armor. (Normal = neutral expression concealing existential

“Did you?” Startled, Arada stepped back, eyeing the top of my head.

a creepy way to talk about people. Yes,

I felt my face change. The muscles were all stiff, and not from the hit I’d taken. I’m still not great at controlling my expressions, and I had no idea what I looked like.

put up its scanner image on the big display surface in the center, and sent it into the feed. The