Page 6 of Logic Broken

Akri confidently strode across the square room, ignoring the service desk, and headed straight for one of those nooks. I followed him, unsure what he was going to do next; he was entirely unpredictable.

I also didn’t know exactly how banks here worked. Credits were just digital though they had chips with standard amounts or chips you could add amounts onto directly. I wasn’t supposed to handle any kind of payments at Drova’s bar, but I’d made sure to learn as much about the monetary system here as I could. I had to if I wanted to survive out here. It was those separate chips that I’d managed to steal here and there and squirrel away. I didn’t have a com device to access my ‘credit’ account with, so that was the only way I could get my hands on money. As an added bonus, those chips were untraceable, so they were my best bet.

When I reached his shoulder to peer around him and see what he was up to, Akri had already hooked himself up to this computer. This went even quicker. In less than a minute, several credit chips thunked out of the slot at the bottom and I hurried to collect them. Reading off the amounts with astonishment, this was more than enough. This was the equivalent of nearly a hundred thousand dollars. I could easily buy passage to a safe world with it. I could get myself into Kertinal space for sure, but even better would be hitting Aderia. This would definitely be enough for that.

“Wow, Akri, that’s plenty,” I said when I realized more chips were falling. More than I could carry on my person, I didn’t have anything to put these little chips in other than my bra or apron pockets; neither were meant for carrying such large amounts of money.

His head tilted down to look at me, and his pretty eyes stopped sparkling as he focused; immediately, the clattering chips stopped dropping into the slot. “Are you certain, Jenny? It is no trouble at all. You can have as many credits as you want.” He shrugged a muscled shoulder, the leather of his coat making a gentle creaking noise as he did so. Gesturing at the screen he was hooked up to, he added, “The credits are untraceable when added to chips like these.”

“I’m sure,” I said firmly, “I can’t possibly carry more even if I wanted them. This is more than enough to start a new life with. Thank you.” I didn’t need much anyway. I wasn’t a city girl; I’d grown up in the country, where my father had taught me how to hunt before I’d even learned to read. All I wanted, once I got off Ov’Korad, was a quiet cabin in the woods somewhere, and I liked to work, so a job would be nice too.

Akri still looked dubious but he did as I asked, shutting down the system once more and unhooking himself from the device. I’d gathered what I could and tucked it away on my person but there were still chips on the floor when I was done. Those he picked up with nimble fingers and pocketed with a shrug.

“We must hurry. I have set the system to power back up in two minutes,” he told me. I immediately turned for the door, my eyes seeking out the cameras that were tucked into the corners of the room. He knew what I wanted to know before I even asked, “There will be no trace of us. I disabled them before we entered and erased the footage from outside the bank.”

There was still no one out on the street, but since there were no homes here, that made sense. It looked like we were getting away with it, robbing a bank without triggering any kind of alarm. I started giggling when we’d turned the corner, then outright laughing when Akri looked at me with a completely baffled expression.

“Are you experiencing a malfunction, Jenny?” he asked when I was still laughing two streets later. This guy said the weirdest things and it was starting to grow on me. Did he truly not get that I was having a reaction to the adrenaline after that stint we just pulled?

“Yeah, I’m great. Come on, let’s find a place to hunker down for the night. I’m cold.” I gestured down the streets, vaguely in the direction of what I thought was the port. We had to go that way in the morning, so we might as well find a hiding place for the night along the way.

“You are correct,” Akri said, and then he shrugged out of his long leather duster. “Take my covering. This body is more suited for lower temperatures than yours.” I didn’t say no to that, letting him drape the coat, warmed by his body, around my shoulders. It was blissful to finally be warm again and as an added blessing, his coat smelled like him; it smelled good.

Chapter 4

Akri

Jenny decided on a closed and darkened dinner to break into and rest for the night. It was an establishment located in the business district, a section of Akrod city where skyscrapers domineered, filled to the brim with offices. This was a much finer location than the place I’d found Jenny in, but that didn’t mean their alarm system was an obstacle to me.

I’d set the force field to raise again behind us so all would look normal from the outside; it would also obscure any lights shining from the windows. I didn’t think Jenny knew that; she told me not to turn on any lights as we hurried through the door. That was fine, we didn’t need much to see anyway and she had a clear purpose in mind.

I had learned the limits of this body better and knew that I required sleep. Jenny probably needed it even more. She was human, her body not built for endurance the way I was. Then I felt that hollow little rumble and I realized I had an even more pressing need; I was hungry again. That wasn’t odd, considering that it had been hours since we’d escaped from that bar. Hours since my last meal, which meant it was probably even longer ago since Jenny ate anything.

Jenny was ahead of me, walking between the empty chairs and tables with confidence in the semi-dark. She was drowning in my coat and I found the sight of it oddly appealing. Why did ill-fitting clothing make her look so good? Or was it not so much that the clothing didn’t fit as that it was my coat that she was wearing? I needed more data if I wanted to understand this. When I returned to the Vagabond, I should ask my gladiator friends if they had experienced this phenomenon too.

She ducked around the counter and then through two folding doors into what I assumed was the kitchen. It still smelled like food in there, savory and mouthwatering, with that strong, pungent smell of the stimulant the people of Ov’Korad liked to drink. The kitchen had no windows and Jenny confidently turned on the lights and started rummaging around. She was pulling out bread and cold cuts, so I assumed that she too was hungry. Good, that saved me from having to ask.

“So, where are you from, Akri?” she asked as she set down some plates and started making sandwiches with the food she’d found. I watched avidly as she worked. So far, I’d always bought food when I felt hungry. It would be a good skill to acquire; making my own food could save time. I often just ate ration bars too, but I strongly disliked how they tasted.

I liked watching Jenny’s agile hands as she performed this simple task, they were graceful, and she had a little freckle on one knuckle. Her question was a difficult one to answer, mostly because I didn’t know myself; that was what I was trying to find out. Since people often asked complicated questions but didn’t actually want a truthful answer, I struggled to figure out what she expected me to say.

“Hey, Earth to Akri, you still there?” Jenny said, the sound of her voice embodying the smile on her face. She’d dipped her head a little to peer into mine from an angle. I was standing across the counter from her, staring at her hands, and now I had no choice but to look right into her eyes.

She made it sound like she was talking from one ship to another when she said that; I liked that, and so I went with the truth. Maybe Jenny would understand. “I was built on Lacerten as a small planet hopper with stealth capabilities. Then I was transferred to a Star Class Cruiser called the Vagabond, which is the ship my friends live on. Most recently, I inhabit this body.”

Jenny’s eyes had gone huge in her face, “Woah, that’s quite the story… So you lived on a Star Class Cruiser? Is that one of those cool long-range scout ships? Aren’t they usually military owned?” She didn’t understand what I meant, that I once was the ship. I opened my mouth to correct her but then closed it again. Did it matter if she knew? I preferred to be truthful in everything, but being a truly sentient AI was outlawed nearly everywhere; it was considered too dangerous. If Jenny discovered that I was created, not born, would she fear me?

“You are from Earth,” I said, which was not a question. I was supposed to ask questions if I wanted to keep a conversation going. Struggling to come up with a good way to keep her talking, I ended up with, “What year were you stolen from?” That was not a good question. It could be traumatizing to talk about her abduction. I’d worked hard to be better at conversational skills; why was it so difficult when speaking with Jenny?

She laughed, shoving a plate in my direction with a rather lopsided sandwich on it. “Sorry, I’m a terrible chef but it should taste alright.” I didn’t care; I was so hungry that I’d eat anything by now. Besides, I had faith in her skills.

“I’ve learned to say, the start of the third millennium. I was a country girl, so finding myself stuck in Akrod has been… life-changing.” She grinned as she said the last, a joke then. “It hasn’t been too bad. Drova won me at a Klepto game before I’d been through anything traumatic, then he just put me to work in his bar. I’m certain I got off light, all things considered.” She smiled again but I was certain it was a little more forced this time. She made it sound like what had happened to her wasn’t bad, but it would have still left marks, even if they weren’t visible.

This was when I was supposed to distract her. I was fairly certain that’s what my friends would advise me to do. I could imagine Ziame saying something comforting before changing the subject, or Abigail might joke about things on Earth they had in common. I racked my brain to find a good subject and suddenly found myself spouting off statics on Akrod’s port. “Did you know that more than a million shipping containers leave Ov’Korad’s atmosphere each day? Those fill the holds of 997 long hauler freighters.”

She pressed a hand over her mouth, head shaking. I heard the noise of that strange, hiccuping laugh that had bubbled out of her earlier. Not the intended result, but good enough; I deemed her sufficiently distracted. “Thanks, I’ve always wanted to know that.” I was certain she was speaking sarcastically, a kind of lie that was not meant to be a lie. I found that confusing but I liked it when I figured it out. It was kind of like a puzzle.

“I know, I wanted to distract you in case I made you remember something unpleasant. My friends are all former gladiators…” I trailed off, unsure how to explain what I meant. I just wanted her to know that she was safe with me; I wanted very much to protect her, to keep her safe.