yeah. old-fashioned neighborhood type thing, it's pretty cool. lower stakes, too, I don't expect them to mind having you around even without the full vetting.

sounds like that could be okay.

never really lived with people

I think you'll like it. they're a good bunch.

haven't told them anything about you but that you're coming, by the way. up to you what you tell 'em and when.

do they not know i'm an android?

they don't, yeah. I think they'll take it just fine, and I can tell 'em if you want, but if you don't want to that's fine too.

haven't told them you're a rescue case, either. they might guess that but there's a couple other things you could be, it won't be too obvious.

might be nice for a while. to just be a person.

yeah.

you get to keep that, if you want.

wouldn't be able to hide it forever.

maybe i could. if i tried hard enough.

up to you whether it's worth it. I really do think you'll be all right either way, with this bunch.

how are they about skip?

there's still some debate about whether he and Silver get a full say in things, since they aren't human-grade and don't have the same stake in socials. but they take the question seriously, and it's pretty settled that they should get /some/ say, and that's not a problem you'd have anyway.

wow

you guys are *radicals*, huh

not that i wasn't kinda getting that impression

yep. we're not perfect, but - it's important to us that places like this exist, that corps don't get to eat *literally* everything.

sounds like a fun project.

looking forward to weird food and robot rights

good.

And Skip makes her way through the streets, dodging traffic, frequently detouring or doubling back to obfuscate her route, at one point leaping to catch a security drone in midair. (She holds it to her mouth for a minute, then lets it go again. 'PTOOIE'.)

And eventually, Diff comes back.

gonna need you to shut your eyes for this bit. won't be long, almost here.

He loves this robot.

you could shut my eyes down if you wanted

He closes them.

could, yep. but did you miss the part where I'm not an asshole?

you know what's at stake, and that already sucks, I don't need to be a jerk on top of it.

Skip's movements get more erratic for a while - harder to track by feel, obviously meant to throw off Z's sense of where they are - and then the sounds of the city give way to a quieter, echoey place, perhaps a parking garage or empty warehouse. They pass through it, take an elevator down a few stories, pass through another space - even quieter, with padded floors to muffle Skip's steps and no echo to suggest the size, but it's warm, and the air is humid and smells of greenery - and down again, to linoleum-floored hallways. A few turns and the jostle of Skip opening a door later, the straps keeping Z secure on his back recede.

welcome to my apartment. you can open your eyes now.

He does.

Chalkboard paint on the walls, with crude drawings and scribbles and half-erased equations. Full bookshelf, math and programming books as far as he can tell. Multiple pea-green couches — but it doesn’t look like a living space in here, exactly, more like someplace people pass through. 

He climbs carefully down.Z

this is your place?

yeah. your room's down the hall, second on the left; bathroom's first on the right. or if you wanna come see the tank, that's okay.

He drops his washbox in the bathroom first – he'll figure out how to hook that up later – and then heads for his own room, to investigate.

It's not a large room, but still bigger than his space with Luvtek, and much homier than the front room was. The bed is nicely made, covered with a patchwork quilt that seems handmade, if somewhat inexpertly so, and there's a matching smaller quilt draped over the back of the recliner in the corner, coordinating with the shade of the lamp on the table next to it. The table also holds a few books, a fidget toy of a type that was popular a few years ago, and a printed sculpture of a dragon curled protectively around an egg. The room's camera is mounted on a track on the back wall, at eye height, with a little curtain attached to it for privacy. There's an extension cord suitable for z to charge himself with waiting on the bed, plugged in somewhere behind the headboard, and a tablet sitting next to it.

...oh.

He sits down on the bed and touches the quilt, gently.

(There's a sculpture – and one of those toys, he's looked at those but it always seemed pointless to own one...and a curtain for the camera.)

this is all mine?