After his eventful delivery on the fifth ring, a few weeks went by in blissful peace. Alexander’s only concern during that time was reading more technical documents and moving about scrap along with other deliveries. Not that he minded. The work was dull, sure, but every day brought him closer to his goal of freedom.

That bliss was shattered as a hurried set of steps neared the entry. It was a good thing his body had excellent hearing. Even so, Alexander had to rush to log out of the terminal and return to his spot before Yuri practically ran into the salvage yard bay. It would not have been good if the man caught him away from his assigned spot.

The man had a panicky look on his face as he practically sprinted across the entry area and into the room he used as his office. Which was impressive given the man was probably in his eighties. Alexander had never seen the old man move so quickly or seem so flustered.

He could hear muffled cursing as items crashed to the ground from inside the room. After only ten minutes, Yuri rushed out carrying a duffel bag. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken that damn job!” The man spat as he hurried over toward Alexander.

Fearing he had been caught, Alexander stiffened. What could he do if he had been discovered, kill the guy? That... That wasn't going to happen. Alexander wasn’t a killer. During his moment of indecision, the man had made it to him and set down his duffel bag. Then he reached into a dirty pocket on his overalls and fished out a data disk.

When the man didn’t call him out, some of the tension left him. Alexander had seen the digital storage devices before but hadn’t ever used any of them. They looked like quarters, only with completely blank faces. The man shoved the tiny disk into the control module glued to his chest.

“Greetings” the same mechanical yet somehow cheerful voice that accompanied all of the communications from the box responded.

“I have given you a list of responsibilities ordered by priority. You are to continue to carry these out until I return.”

“I understand,” the voice repeated.

An actual calendar appeared inside Alexander’s mental space with a list of duties for each day. As he read through the ridiculous list of tasks, he also watched Yuri.

The man inserted a credit stick into the terminal Alexander had only just logged off from. From his vantage point, he could clearly see the man emptying his bank account into the digital wallet. He only left enough for what seemed like a month’s worth of operating expenses for the yard.

Either Yuri wasn’t coming back, or he expected to be back within a month. Neither option was great for him. There was a moment where he thought it would be beneficial to let the older man in on his secret, but rationality quickly pushed that thought to the back of his mind. Even if he didn’t mind Yuri, he certainly didn’t trust the man. And there was no way Alexander wanted to get caught up in whatever nonsense had him so flustered that he was packing for a one-month trip in the middle of the night.

Yuri Sokolov, the old man and owner of Sokolov Repair and Salvage stopped at the exit, taking one more longing look at his life before vanishing down the corridor.

The man hadn’t even shut the door in his haste to leave. Waiting a few minutes to make sure the man was truly gone, Alexander went over to close the door, but the program Yuri had installed beeped at him.

“Deviation from assigned tasks. Please remain in place until your next assignment is scheduled.”

The robotic voice repeated this message with every step. Alexander sighed mentally, this was going to get old fast. He closed the door and returned to his spot near the wall. He had tried just standing still but every thirty seconds the voice would repeat itself if he wasn’t where this dumb program wanted him to be.

It obviously wasn’t an AI, but some sort of tracker or assistant that Yuri had modified. He wondered briefly why the man hadn’t bothered installing it until now. Then again, maybe Yuri knew how annoying it was and didn’t want to listen to the things constant yammering either.

Alexander attempted to remove the disk from the control box, but paranoid Yuri had added preventative measures to block him from attempting it. To be fair, the man was right. Of course, Alexander already knew of these hard-coded rules. He had explored most of the features and rules that prevented him from doing certain things over the years. Part of getting his freedom was knowing what he could and couldn’t do.

Not that he couldn’t bypass most of them by now. But some were stubbornly ingrained in the device. Alexander couldn’t afford to damage the control module either. It was literally the only thing keeping him conscious.

That being said, he already had a way past this specific restriction. He made his way over to Yuri’s office, the stupid program badgering him the entire time to return to his storage space. He ignored it, although he wished he could turn off whatever allowed him to hear. Unfortunately, willing it to happen didn’t do anything. He sighed and kept going.

Much like the main entry door, Yuri had left the office door wide open. When Alexander peeked inside, he saw the contents of the office were scattered everywhere. He shook his head and dipped below the door frame to step inside.

Scattered items lay on the floor and Alex pushed them aside with his feet so he didn’t crush anything. The office would need to get cleaned up, if anyone saw the state of it, there would be no doubt that Yuri had fled. And if he wanted a new life, he needed more time to save money.

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Inside one of the still-open desk drawers was exactly what he had been hoping to find. He reached in and plucked out the soft-tipped stylus. It was a good thing that capacitive touchscreen tablets were still a thing.

Alexander easily maneuvered the stylus to the eject button on the control interface. He didn’t actually need the capacitive properties of the stylus, he just needed something soft yet sturdy enough to activate the simple pressure switch on the control box. There was a click and the silver disk ejected halfway from the device.

Using his other hand, and taking care not to touch the box, Alexander removed the data disk. As soon as it came free, the annoying voice ordering him to return ceased.

He held the disk up to get a good look at it. How something so small could cause him such annoyance was beyond him. He gave a mental shake of his mind and crushed the disk. Then he set about tidying up the office.

***

When it came time to open for the day, Alexander followed the calendar he had been given. There were certain free time slots inside the calendar that he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

He didn’t have to ponder long though. During the first free slot, a group of men came in looking for Yuri. They appeared to be maintenance workers. When they couldn’t find him, they sent him a digital message. Essentially an email.

When they left, Alexander went over to the terminal and logged into Yuri’s account to read the correspondence. They were looking for some replacement components for an EVAP system. Alexander had no clue what that was, but they were helpful enough to leave part numbers. And he knew exactly where those parts were.

As he was retrieving the parts, a realization struck him. Surely that cagey old bastard had factored in random people coming by. He must have built responses into the new program to account for them. Alexander was suddenly wishing he hadn’t just destroyed his only way to communicate.

In the meantime, he wrote a note and taped it to the office door.

Tell the robot what you need! I’ll be back later.

It wasn’t the greatest solution but it would work until he learned how to code a new interface and install it. After placing the note, he took the parts to the destination in the email.

***

It was sort of funny that nobody questioned the note. They would come in, read it, and come over to where he was and tell him what they wanted. Then he would retrieve it and they would send payment to the company account. Thankfully the walk-ins only happened during the select few hours marked as free. The rest of the time was scheduled for other deliveries and sorting incoming inventory that Yuri must have scheduled weeks or months in advance.

This would have been great had it lasted. But less than three weeks later, a group of three entered the salvage yard. These were not the normal blue-collar type that normally frequented the yard. The woman in the group had a tight hair bun and a severe face. She was also wearing something that looked like a cross between coveralls and a full-body scuba suit. It was not a very flattering look. He assumed this was one of those elusive vac-suits. He had heard about the vac-suits but none of the station regulars bothered wearing them. They were difficult to move around in, making any work slow and tedious. This was the first time he ever saw someone on the station wearing one of the things.

Thankfully Alexander had managed to cobble together a basic assistant program that could ask people what they wanted.

“Greetings. How may I assist you today?”

The woman glanced over at him but didn’t say anything before returning her attention to the other men with her. “Make sure you get a full inventory, everything must go. We have a party interested in purchasing this space and I don’t want any of this junk here when they move in.”

Move in? What was she talking about?

“You sure?” One of the men asked. “The old man could come back.”

She barked out a laugh. “Unless that old bastard figured out how to breathe in a vacuum, he isn’t coming back. I received confirmation that the freighter Livera was destroyed by pirates with all crew and passengers aboard. And that included Old Man Yuri. That means this space reverts back to the station to do with as it pleases.”

“What about the bot?” the other man nodded toward Alexander.

She glanced back over, looking at him more closely before frowning. “What about it?”

“Well, it looks unique,” the one man stated.

“Unique? Do you know what runs through my mind when I hear that word?” The man paused for a moment before he shook his head. “I hear expensive, hard to maintain, prone to failure. I mean look at it,” she waved her arm in Alexander’s direction. “Yuri didn’t even bother fixing the damn thing. He stuck a cobbled-together patch on it and called it good. The stupid thing doesn’t even have proper greeting protocols built into it.”

Rude!

“Just scrap it,” she stated before turning and leaving.

After the woman left, the two men began to tap on tablets as they quickly inventoried the room.

Alexander had a choice to make. After Yuri’s late-night escape, he had made a plan B so to speak, assuming the man would never return. Although he never expected the man would die. He just figured Yuri would start a junk pile in some other station. He wondered if the trouble he had been trying to run from had caught up with him or if the attack was simply random bad luck.

He pushed those thoughts aside as there were more pressing concerns. As soon as the two men passed into the aisles of stored junk in the back of the yard, he made his way over to the terminal and entered Yuri’s credentials. He really hoped nobody looked too closely at the log or his plan would quickly fall apart. Being as fast as possible, Alexander scrolled through the dozens of purchase and sales logs until he found the one he had set up.

The sale of himself was dated on the same day that Yuri left the station. It didn’t have a delivery date but Alexander quickly filled that in and stamped it paid in full using Yuri’s identity. He would have transferred the remaining funds inside Yuri’s business account to his own, but he was certain that would be noticed. He would just have to hope the meager amount of money he managed to earn was enough to keep him afloat. Closing the terminal, he returned to his spot next to the wall and waited.

It took just over an hour for the two men to catalog every item in the warehouse before one headed toward the office. The other walked over to him and waved a scanner over the code embedded into the control box. His tablet gave an angry beep and he frowned down at it.

“Kirill!”

“What?” Kirill shouted from inside the office.

“This robot says it’s been sold.”

“So?”

“So! So, Miss Kuznetsova said everything needs to go.”

“Well, when’s it supposed to be picked up?” Kirill asked, stepping outside the office.

The man standing next to Alexander looked down at his tablet and scratched his head. “Says it's supposed to be delivered sometime today.”

“Then I fail to see the problem, Grigory.”

Before Grigory could respond, Alexander moved, startling the man. Kirill laughed at his companion as Alexander simply walked out of the salvage yard for the last time. If he had a heart, he was sure it would have been beating a mile a minute.

The last thing he heard was a muted chuckle from Kirill. “See, Grigory! If you wait long enough, some problems solve themselves.”