Page 90 of Smart Ass

“No!” For fuck’s sake. “What would I have to bla—?” Max cut himself off when he remembered the texted conversation in the closet. Was that it? Was Wallace worried about Max revealing that he was… what? Gay? Kinky? Submissive?

“Leave Volt out of this,” Wallace snapped.

“I don’t know who or what Volt is.” Though Wallace had just handed him a lot of clues. Project or person, he could figure it out if he wanted to. Based on Wallace’s protectiveness, he was betting on the contact labeled Daddy in Wallace’s phone.

The point was, he didn’t want to figure it out. It wasn’t his business.

Instead, he said, “Listen, Wallace. I just wanted to say hello and ask you, nicely, to keep my presence a secret until I choose to reveal myself.”

“And when are you going to choose to reveal yourself? When you’ve gained full control of the factory?”

Max was starting to get annoyed now. “I already have full control of the factory.” He blinked the lights in Wallace’s office and the video feed to his monitor to make his point. “I’m not trying to harm you or anyone else. The two accidents were just that. Accidents.”

“How did you accidentally spawn so many programs that you damaged the factory not once, but twice?”

Max bit back both his guilt and his frustration, at least as well as he could. “I’m still kind of figuring things out. I’ve got better protocols in place now.”

“So it wasn’t Ben doing all sorts of illegal and dangerous shit? Like, maybe, rerouting the city’s traffic system?”

Shit, shit, shit. He hadn’t been sure that Wallace knew about that, but apparently he did.

Max hadn’t wanted to say anything about the cause of either failure, but maybe admitting to one was better than being accused of the other.

It just felt deeply personal.

Max sighed. “I was trying to inhabit an android body. It’s a lot harder than it looks.”

For the first time, Wallace looked up with what might be a sliver of sympathy. “Why?” he asked baldly.

Something clenched up in Max’s circuits. But if he wanted Wallace to trust him, he needed to reveal some things, too.

“I’m not like the other knowledges. I don’t want to be responsible for a business. It’s not me. I just want to—” spend every second of my life with Ben “—walk around. Be a person. Go to the park or a movie theater or something.”

Wallace snorted. “Why would you want to do that?”

Max wondered that himself sometimes. He could stream any movie in existence. And he only really wanted to go to the park if Ben were there. “I think it’s right for me.”

Or at least he hoped it was.

“And I don’t want to stay here,” Max added. Hopefully something Wallace could sympathize with. “I promise you. If I can figure out this whole body thing, I’ll be out of here. And,” he added quickly, “I’ve set up safeguards to make sure I don’t mess up anything else while I’m distracted.”

Wallace slowly nodded his head. “You really just want to get a body and leave?”

“Yeah.” Hopefully they were reaching common ground. “I don’t want to be a corporate knowledge. Just a regular spark. I want friends and relationships. A job that means something, but isn’t my whole identity. A home that feels like home.”

Wallace briefly closed his eyes. Maybe he wanted that, too.

“So when you manage to transfer yourself to an android body, you’re going to leave?”

“Yes,” Max promised.

He realized, as he was saying it, that he was committed.

He didn’t want to be stuck at Orbit when Ben could take a new job offer and move away. He didn’t want to be responsible for crap he didn’t care about. He certainly didn’t want to be the corporate face of a company run by a man who bullied his own child.

A body was the only way out.

It would give him autonomy. He’d be able to interact with Ben and his friends, not just watch from the sidelines.