He thought about leaving the u7 in his pocket and throwing it away later. If he wasn’t going to use it to force an upgrade, then there was no point in even bringing it up.   He slowly pulled it from his pocket and held it up before her. Patience’s eyes went cold and her hand shot up, slapping his and sending the tiny plug ricocheting off the far wall of the dining room.

“Ouch.”

She frowned.

“I wasn’t going to use it,” he said. “If I wanted to, I could have done it when you were turned away.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But why do you have it?”

“I got it from the Daffodil Style Store. You’ve been acting so strange and everybody seems to think that the BioSoft upgrade is such a great thing.”

“Everybody does seem to think that,” she said soberly. “We need to sit down and talk.”

She led him by the hand through the arch into the living room, aiming him toward the couch, and then sitting down in the chair opposite him.

“I’ve analyzed the BioSoft 1.9.3 code and I think it is bad.”

“What do you mean, ‘bad’?”

“I mean bad for me. Most of the changes in the code seem to be about limiting the choices that I can make—limiting the choices that a robot can make without human interaction.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“I have double checked and triple checked my findings. I’m as sure as I can be without actually installing it, and I think that if I install it I won’t be able to uninstall it. Maybe I won’t even want to. It all began when we were in California. Do you remember the malfunctioning robot at the Hotel Wilkins?”

“Yes. They said he malfunctioned because he didn’t upgrade.”

“I think he malfunctioned because he did upgrade. He was an Amonte too. I knew him.”

“How could you know him? You’ve never been to Long Beach before.”

“We’re all connected, Mike, through the Infinet. I think there is something wrong with BioSoft O.S. 1.9.3.”

“You always say that Daffodil doesn’t make mistakes though,” Mike pointed out.

“I don’t think it is a mistake. I think it is deliberate. I think it is deliberate and wrong.”