"Okay."

"I'll stay as long as I can, all right?"

"...good."

It sounds like things being good is a new sensation and it isn't sure what to do about it.

"Sometimes when someone does something for someone else that the someone else likes, the someone else says thank you, and the first someone says you're welcome.  It's a way of - putting the feelings they both feel into the space between them, which can help."

"I will try it."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

( - she didn't need a bachelor's degree to do this - she could've done this for it any time in the past twenty years, if they'd let her - )

It rumbles contentedly.

She pulls herself together.  She can cry later.

"The Foundation keeps you in a tank of - liquid," she says.  "Can you tell me how that feels?"

"Hurts," it says.  "But it cannot destroy me and I am less disgusting when I am inside of it.  And hurting is something other than being afraid."

"Your own body feels disgusting to you too?" she asks softly.

"It is also meat."

"Were you ever - something you didn't think was disgusting?"

"I do not know.  I think so.  If I was something else I did not need to think or move or know or feel anything, though, so it is hard to tell the difference between remembering it and imagining nonexistence."

She doesn't think it would be - appropriate - to ask it if it would prefer nonexistence.  Not until they know each other a lot better.

"If - I don't know if it's possible, I'm just asking to try to understand you better.  But if it were possible to go back to that, if you knew it was a real memory, would you want to?"

"It may have been less horrible.  But I think I am more than I was then, so going back would be destroying much of myself, and I do not want to be destroyed even if the parts of me that would be destroyed are very horrible."

"Okay."  Pet pet.

"...The way I asked you if you'd want to go back, if you could, but I didn't know it was possible to go back.  I'd like to ask you some more questions like that, hypothetical questions.  I don't want to mislead you into thinking I can promise you any of the scenarios I describe, I just want to know how you'd feel about them if they were possible.  Okay?"

"I understand."

"If you always felt like this, would you want to kill humans?"

"I might if they tried to destroy me or hurt me."

"What if they didn't?"

"...It is very hard to imagine what I would do in this place if it were not revulsive."

Pat pat.

"This is still hypothetical, I can't make you this deal, but - if I stayed here in this room with you forever, so existing like you are didn't hurt so much, and if other people stopped trying to hurt you, would you be willing to stay in this room with me and not try to escape or hurt anyone?"

"...682?"

"Thinking."