Rine was quiet when she returned to Matiew’s room. He was reclining, his eyes closed, and his breathing was slow.

“You asleep?” Rine asked quietly, not wanting to wake him up if he had indeed drifted off.

“Hmm?” Matiew opened an eye and gave her a drowsy look. “No, I’m awake.”

“Do you wanna nap? I can go back to the RCC for a bit,” Rine offered.

“No, I need to keep working.”

Rine nodded and sat down in her seat. She didn’t mind helping Matiew work but sometimes she felt like a glorified voice-to-text service. Though, she knew better than to complain. She wasn’t the one who’d been beaten unconscious and left in a marsh.

“You okay?” Matiew asked and Rine realized she’d been staring off into space.

“Yeah, uh,” she tried to get her thoughts into order, “there was some more weirdness with the robots.”

“What, just now?”

“In the cafeteria,” Rine nodded. “One of the cleaners came over and said we were doing a good job. Sort of caught me off guard.”

Matiew sat up a bit more in his bed, or he tried to and then gave up as he winced painfully and lay back down.

“What did it say, exactly?” he asked.

“It said the RCC was doing a good job,” Rine replied, “and that it liked how we were handling the situation with BaBS-Y.”

“You sure it wasn’t BaBS-Y talking through the cleaner?”

“It didn’t sound like it,” she said. “The cleaner was a lot more conversational than BaBS-Y. It referred to itself as ‘I’ instead of ‘this unit’, which BaBS-Y never does.”

“You know, I don’t think I ever noticed that about BaBS-Y, but you’re right. Weird.”

Rine shrugged. “It’s pretty standard for a lot of robots. By design, most don’t have such natural speech patterns.”

“But the cleaning robot did?” Matiew asked.

“Like I said, it was weird.” After a moment she added, “How likely do you think it is that there’s some sub-faction of robots–

“That were programmed to speak more naturally?” Matiew cut her off and gave a rather meaningful look to her.

That wasn’t what she was going to say but then remembered that BaBS-Y was most likely listening in on their conversation and any remarks about resisting BaBS-Y were dangerous.

“Maybe,” Rine said slowly, “but why a cleaning robot?”

Matiew only shook his head.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, each of them eventually turning to their displays to check messages, updates, and all the other things they normally needed to do for the RCC. For a a while, things almost felt normal for Rine. There were the usual requests for robot repairs or software updates. A few complaints about BaBS-Y but honestly not as many as she would have expected. For most people, Rine assumed, the day to day life on board the Thesis hadn’t really changed all that much. Sure, there were still the repairs going on to try and regain access to the lower sectors, and there were people still waiting for their deceased loved ones to be recovered from the damaged sectors, but over all there were relatively few people who ever needed to interact with the mission director. How much of a difference did it make to them, whether it was Mr Jorgenson or BaBS-Y sitting in the mission directors office? It wasn’t even BaBS-Y that they’d see there, either, since it was using the ISaCC robot as its surrogate. People generally liked ISaCC’s since they were the ones organizing a lot of the ship activities and parties. Maybe that was why BaBS-Y had chosen to keep using that robot.

“Attention,” BaBS-Y’s voice chimed over the speakers, “With the loss of so many security officers, it has been decided that a small security force will begin serving the Thesis this evening. While the fully upgraded PaLS models have not yet been produced, a number of other robots have been repurposed to fill this role while PaLS production gets caught up. These robots will not be patrolling, but rather they will be stationed in each sector, ready to be called upon if needed. They will each be marked by a blue and red stripe across their chest or chassis for ease of identification. Enjoy the rest of your day.”

Rine met Matiew’s gaze.

“Well, I guess that makes sense,” she muttered, and then asked, “How many people are still in Security?”

“I don’t think there are any,” he replied. “those who weren’t part of the coup were apparently killed by Shep Mason.”

“All of them?” Rine asked.

“I think so. I haven’t really checked but I also haven’t heard of anyone still working in Security.”

Matiew got an odd look on his face, and then he raised his voice ever so slightly.

“Mission Director BaBS-Y, are you there?” he said.

“How may this unit be of service?” BaBS-Y’s voice answered.

“Are there any personnel still working in Security? Uh, any human personnel, I mean.”

“At this moment, there are three,” BaBS-Y replied. “Miss Stock, Miss Uhr, and Mr Gree.”

“What’s their job description?” Matiew asked.

“They handle all incoming calls for assistance from Security.”

“So there’s no human security officers?”

“That is unfortunately correct,” BaBS-Y said. “This unit will be requesting applications from any interested individuals but there is not a high likelihood there will be many applicants given the recent events.”

“Yeah, while we’re on the subject,” Matiew went on after a brief pause, “I’m not sure if having people taken away quietly without anyone knowing is the right way to handle security.”

Rine felt her face begin to heat up and her heart rate increase. What was Matiew doing? She had just wondered if there were still any human security officers. The last thing she wanted was for Matiew to get them in trouble for questioning BaBS-Y.

“Please explain,” BaBS-Y said.

“If you look at history, governments that had people vanish like that weren’t usually trusted by the people. Even if the people being taken were breaking the law.”

“This unit does not think people will like to see robots arresting people.”

“It’s your decision, as mission director,” Matiew said, “I’m just making a suggestion. People like to know what their governments are doing. Could you maybe have a human representative sent with the robots whenever they need to make an arrest?”

“Ms Uhr would be most capable of fulfilling that role,” BaBS-Y replied though it wasn’t clear if it was agreeing to do that or simply informing Matiew who would be best at it.

“That sounds great,” Matiew said, “thank you.”

“Of course, enjoy the rest of your day.”

The room fell silent once more. Matiew tried to stretch but gave up halfway through, frowning at the pain and gently rubbing his ribs.

“Well, hopefully that helps,” he finally said, and then added, “Were you able to see what was for lunch today? Min should be here soon.”

Rine sank back into her chair, “Oh, no I forgot. Sorry.”

Matiew waved his hand.

“You’re fine,” he said. “Why don’t you call the nurse and see if I can get some help into my wheelchair. Then we can both go down to the cafeteria. I’m a bit tired of this room anyway.”