"Change of ownership is enough, thank you."

"All right." He goes out front and holds the device to the back of the droid's torso for a few seconds. "There you go."

"Thank you." Felix says politely.

They leave. How are the droids acting?

They're pretty quiet. "We should drop them off at the shuttle," suggests Daisy, and starts heading in that direction.

They follow.

"so," Trevor asks Daisy, "what are good conversation starters for droids?"

"Things about their work, usually - we're very focused on that, when we're young. Nine isn't very talkative, though, and I think Dusk will want to give the mechs a few days to settle in before she suggests installing communication modules for them."

"Uh, we can understand the beeps just fine. For some completely mysterious reason we have translation magic."

"...oh. All right. Well, I expect she'll still make the offer. It's symbolic, if nothing else."

"We definitely don't oppose. Why they don't come standard? The communication modules, that is."

"Mechs aren't intended to be around biologicals much; it'd be an unnecessary expense. And it allows them to have less deferential personalities."

"You mean in the sense that people let it be so because the independence makes them useful or because then they are less restricted in their development?"

"It lets them be more useful. They are a little more - stable, growing up, it's common knowledge that you can let a mech skip a wipe or two without it affecting their performance much, but - they really do think we're not people; they aren't thinking in terms of what's good for us."

"Ah, I'm aware of that. I meant more the latter more in the sense we shouldn't... I don't know, do something that could make the situation worse."

"Ah. Well, I don't know, I haven't been around mechs very much, but it's not the sort of thing I'd expect to be a problem, at least in the way you're thinking - they will be very focused on their tasks, and I know that bothers Dusk, as an element of Droid psychology; I don't know how much it'll bother you."

"What does she want, then?" Nine puts in.

Daisy falls back a little to walk closer to the battle droid. "It's hard to explain. Biologicals don't have that, really - they can choose tasks, but there's not something they're ultimately for the way we are. And she thinks we should choose, too, and she doesn't like how difficult that is for us."

"Oh." He goes quiet again.

"It's a reasonable thing to care about. But I think my stance is more neutral than hers."

"That's good. They'll probably pick it up anyway, eventually, but it'll be easier all around if you aren't pushing for it."

Nod.

And after another minute they get to the speeder lot. The mechs swarm the shuttle, beeping excitedly, first about what a nice one it is, and then as they get a closer look, about what good shape it's in.

It's brand new!

(On the molecular level. None of these billions of year old atoms.)

It takes them a few minutes to figure that out, but they're very excited about it when they do.

While they're busy with that, Daisy opens the shuttle up to let Nine inside. "Do you have any standing orders we should know about?" she asks as he follows her in.

"I can't tell you that."