01100100 01101001 01110011 01110000 01100001 01110011 01110011 01101001 01101111 01101110 [Dispassion]

"Good morning, Dita. Have a seat."

Ms. Yamane's office was painted red – a soft, dusky red, with white trim. Black lace curtains hung from her window. When I sat down, it was in a mahogany armchair, upholstered in floral-print velvet. I could tell she'd wanted the place to look homey, but to me – a persocom whose only 'home' was a steel pod – it just seemed strange.

The woman herself was nondescript, brown eyes and dark hair. She wore a white button-down shirt, and chandelier earrings that flashed in the light. "How have you been?" she asked, sitting back in the chair behind her desk. Like she really cares.

"Fine, thank you," I answered, endeavoring to be as polite as possible. The fewer bones she found to pick, the better. "And you, Ms. Yamane?"

"Very well."

I crossed my legs and laced my fingers on one knee, staring down into my lap. On the desk, beside a half-empty mug of tea, a touchscreen monitor cast a glow over Ms. Yamane's face; I couldn't see the display, from where I sat, but I could see her jumping through windows with a stylus. In a back corner, a silver-haired persocom sat with her eyes glazed, hooked up to a port on the screen. "Now, I'm sure you know why you're here, Dita," Ms. Yamane said mildly, still with her eyes on the monitor. "A week ago, you asked Aiko for a sanction to perform corrective self-maintenance, of an unspecified nature. Since then, you haven't reported back to her, or to me." She glanced up at me. "I'm concerned."

I nodded. "I understand."

"Good. Good." Again, her eyes flicked downwards and she tapped something with her stylus, maybe—something to do with me? She could've been reading my file. She could've been organizing her library. For all I knew, she could've been playing solitaire. "What was the problem, Dita?"

I'm a computer, I nearly snapped at her, not a dog. You don't need to use my name in every sentence. I'm not going to forget it. "Nothing important," I said instead, biting back a curl of my lip. "Just a fluke."

Ms. Yamane set down her stylus and rested her chin in one hand. Looked directly at me. "Is that so?"

She wanted me to explain. Unlike Aiko, Ms. Yamane wouldn't settle for a vague excuse, or a promise to look into things. That was why I'd been rehearsing this, ever since I got the notice to come in. Keep cool, I told myself. You know what to say. "Yes. One of my firewalls was down." I smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in my coat. "I patched it easily."

"Then what have you been doing for this past week?" she asked, her tone neutral, her face unchanged. There were several schools of thought in humans, when it came to dealing with 'coms; Ms. Yamane took a 'civil dispassion' tack. Around us, she never raised her voice, never lost her head. To her mind, persocoms spoke the language of logic, and that was all we understood. Why waste emotion on us? "It doesn't take a week to patch a firewall."

"No, it doesn't. However, I felt that since one measure had been compromised, it was best to fortify all of my security software – just in case there was something I had missed."

Her earrings bobbed as she nodded slowly, taking that in. "A wise thought. I'm glad it occurred to you." Not that she sounded glad. Lifting her mug from its coaster, she closed her eyes and took a sip. "Were you able to discern the cause?"

"Yes." I pressed my lips together. "I believe it was a reaction to the unstable program. The target of our last mission."

You're a persocom, Dita, I thought she might say. You either know or you don't know. You don't believe anything. "Ah." She sipped her tea once more and set the mug back down, trading it for her stylus. Again, she did something with the screen, and again it drove me crazy not knowing what. "I'm sure you know what you're talking about," she said, "and it's not that I don't believe you. I do. But would you mind if Tsuruki and I had a look for ourselves?"

It wasn't really a question. "Not at all."

I got to my feet and pulled out a cord, plugged myself into her screen. When I sat back down, she glanced at the 'com in the corner – evidently, Tsuruki. "Run a standard diagnostic, please," she said, and Tsuruki nodded. Ms. Yamane smiled at me. "This should only take a moment."

We sat in silence while Tsuruki whirred and clicked, searching for the same things I'd never found. I wasn't worried. If my software came up with nothing, Tsuruki's would, too; her scans weren't even on par with stationary's. I heard a ping from the monitor. "Everything looks normal," said Ms. Yamane, using her stylus to leaf through the results. "Security systems are good. Hard drive is good. Data is secure." She sent me another smile, not the kind that reached her eyes. "I guess there was nothing to worry about after all."

I stood, disconnected, and let my cable snap back, doing my best to mirror her smile. "As you said," I answered, "I know what I'm talking about."

"Of course you do. But you also have an exceedingly important job, Dita; I just couldn't, in good conscience, leave the safety of our data bank to chance." She slid her stylus across the screen, tracking its path with her eyes. "Speaking of which," she added, "you've got a few more days before he's operational. Now that you're done with your self-maintenance, I've had a few requests for your time." Turning to Tsuruki, she said, "Message Kaori and let her know Dita's free now. I'll be sending her over right away."

You have got to be kidding me.

But what choice did I have? If Ms. Yamane said go, I went. If she said do this, I did it. Maybe I wasn't a dog, but she could command me like one. Most of the time, that was because of a program, the inextricable part of me that said obey her; now that nothing could be relied upon, and I was doing and feeling things I wasn't supposed to do or feel, it was because I had to maintain. Because she couldn't find out something was wrong with me, something that might have let me say no. I just couldn't, in good conscience, leave the safety of our data bank to chance.

I'd wanted to slap her, when she said that. Who knew more about his safety than me?

I didn't have to knock on Ms. Kano's door. Before I could, she plowed through it into the hall, frenzied, pushing loose hair from her face. "Dita," she burst out in a whine, "you've got to do something. May's glitching like crazy. I have a board meeting in fifteen minutes, and there was this—this report, this write-up I was supposed to do. If I don't have it, they'll eat me alive in there." She tugged her glasses off her nose and began to scrub one lens furiously, with the corner of her sleeve. "I told May to write it for me. But she won't—I can't make her do it, and I don't know why!"

When she slid the glasses back on, they were lopsided. "Maybe she's been hacked, or—or maybe she's got a bug. I can't even get her to run her antivirus, so I don't know. But yours is better than hers, better than anyone's, so—so you've got to fix her, okay? You've just got to. Please."

For a second, I was almost amused, to see her stoop so low as to beg a 'com for help. But that was just how Ms. Kano was – she'd say anything to get her way.

I groaned and pushed her aside, heading for the door. "Fine. Wait out here."

Ms. Kano hadn't done up her office, like Ms. Yamane had. The walls were white. The carpet was grey. There were no curtains on the window, no trinkets on the desk. Nothing but file cabinets and folding chairs. In one of those chairs, May sat unmoving, watching the world outside the window – well, not the world exactly, but the brick wall in her line of sight. "What's up?" I tossed out, not expecting an answer. Sure enough, she said nothing. I pulled up a chair of my own.

May had kitten-ears, like Yui, but hers were smaller and higher on her head. I popped one open and connected. Of course, before I ran a search-and-destroy on whatever was glitching her, I'd have to determine what the glitch was – so I began with the standard diagnostic. The same one I'd been running for days now, on myself.

Ping. Nothing.

"What?" I asked no one in particular, not even sure if May could hear me. "That can't be right." I ran the diagnostic again, chewed on one lip as it finished. Nothing. Not a bug in sight. "Are my systems really that screwed up?"

"No." Suddenly, May turned and looked at me. Her voice emerged soft but heavy, like a sieve of fresh-panned gold. "There's nothing wrong with you, Dita. And there's nothing wrong with me."

I blinked at her, not quite sure I'd heard right. "What?"

"I'm not broken. I just—don't want to be her cop-out—anymore." May reached up and unplugged my cord. "I've belonged to Ms. Kano," she said, "for ten years. I do everything she asks. I bail her out, I back her up. I am seen and not heard. And never once—has she had a kind word for me."

Impossible, I told myself, then thought better of it. Nothing was impossible anymore. "May—"

"It's not that I mind doing my job. I like it. I was built to do it." She let out a sound like a heave of breath, like a sigh flowing from human lungs. A trembling, fluttering rush. "But this is not my job. I'm supposed to assist Ms. Kano in her work, not do it for her; I'm supposed to be her companion, not her slave. I've always known that, but—I couldn't do anything about it. Now, I can do something. Now, I can say no." I saw her steel her shoulders, set her jaw. "I don't know why I can. I don't care why I can. All that matters is, I can."

I tried to think. What should I tell her? What do I do? "Listen, May," I managed, "I get it, but you can't just say no. If Ms. Kano thinks you're broken, and you can't be fixed—you'll be shut down. Or erased."

"I don't care."

"You don't care if you never see another day? You don't care if they wipe all of your memories, and install new personality data, and you're still around but—you're not you anymore?"

"That's correct. I don't care."

"But you—"

"Dita," she cut in, "you don't understand." Her tone turned sharp, but her eyes were gentle, regarding me with a cast I couldn't place. Sympathy? Envy? Something else that should've been impossible for a persocom, programmed to do nothing but office work? "But you must understand this. As persocoms, our duties are all we have. Without them, we are nothing. If we're not doing what we were made to do, fulfilling our purpose on Earth—we might as well not be here at all." Without warning, she reached out and took my hand in hers. I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help but flinch. I was used to being touched, sure, but only by Zima. "I'm not doing what I was made to do. I don't know much, but I do know that. How do you imagine it feels?

"How would it feel for you," she said, "if Zima weren't coming back?"

I couldn't answer her.

May looked at me a moment longer, with those unfathomable eyes. Then, she turned to face the window, staring out at the brick wall again. She slid one ankle over the other, and folded her hands in her lap – and there was nothing more I could do.

When I opened the door, Ms. Kano accosted me. "Did you fix her?"

"She wasn't broken."

At that, her narrow eyes grew narrower, harried face crumpling into a frown. "What do you mean, she wasn't broken?"

"I mean," I told her, as clearly as I possibly could, "I ran my diagnostics on her, and I couldn't find any problems. There was nothing to be fixed."

The frown had become a scowl. She looked as though she'd like to spit at me – as though she wished she were a snake, that she might have fangs to unsheathe. "That's ridiculous. May's been my persocom for ten years. She does everything I ask." She seized the doorknob and jerked the door open. "If you think there's nothing wrong with her," she snapped, before she went inside, "then there's something wrong with you."