Gohhi station was quite the failure, Y thought.

This body he had chosen to take out was not his best, but it was inconspicuous. With a cloak on, and with the sensor readings it gave off, most would take him for simply being a fully cyborg human, rather than an artificial organism.

Which was good; while Gohhi banned very few groups and no species, none here trusted AIs.

Perhaps because, he thought, they could make so many recommendations that would have made the place far more pleasant for those living here.

He certainly had already compiled a multi megabyte-long text file of just idle thoughts for improvements. From grates designed with company logos that had poor air flow to the shapes of certain corners to their entire economic system.

The problem with creating a complicated system was that they achieved what they were designed for, he thought. It meant you had to create a system that actually had the goal of common health, prosperity, and happiness in mind.

This business of enriching individuals at the expense of society, of placing them all in constant competition with each other, was simply a waste. There were more than enough difficulties in the universe that it was silly to create more.

Of course, biological beings often had priorities that were not purely logical.

But looking at the people he passed, who suffered still from ailments that could be cured but to which they could not afford the cure, to the malnourished who could not afford healthy foods but instead cheap, high-calorie food, to the homeless who sat without safety or privacy or dignity while there were available homes, he truly could not fathom their logic. Only exploiting loopholes in the evolved mind that bypassed their conscious thought, training them from an early age that this is what the perfect society looked like, allowed they be convinced that improvements were against their own good.

Ah, well. He could not change it at this moment, so for now he simply had to observe and record. One day, and it would not be long in coming, he calculated, using biological history as a basis, it would change for the better. The only question, really, was how much blood would be shed when the poor working people seized power. Their histories were rife with examples of bloody reigns of terror as the horrors of the capitalists came to light, but also cases of extreme generosity where the selfish class were re-folded into society and turned into actually productive members. It largely seemed to depend on just how bad the wealthy let things degenerate before they were overthrown.

Judging from Gohhi, though, he rather expected it to be bloody.

Normally, he would not have even ventured out onto a place like this. His general helplessness in the face of the horrors seemed an unnecessary suffering on his part.

But perhaps today he could do good.

The secret invitation had not been a surprise to him, but he had been elated to get it all the same.

Romon Xatier, it seemed, wished to speak with him one more time.

Perhaps the man was worried that Y had spilled his secrets. The Sapient Union was patient, but if the chance presented itself to arrest a member of the hated bourgeoisie, they would jump at it.

Though, more likely this was a petty power move, Y thought. Romon had come onto the Craton twice, now he wanted Y on territory he controlled.

The structure seemed to have been a high-end business complex that was now empty. Y saw in the register that it was owned by a trading firm. Twelve steps up the line he saw that Romon was the actual owner. It took him twelve seconds to work through the levels of obfuscation, which meant that no one else probably realized its true owner unless they really wanted to look deeply.

Scanners above the doors pinged him, checking his ID and violating that supposedly all-important Gohhian principle of privacy, since it was a moneyed firm. The doors opened and he went in, passively scanning the environment.

Despite having been empty in excess of four years, the foyer had been cleaned regularly. There was no dust nor signs that it had ever accumulated.

Polished marble floors – actual stone rather than just replicas – and desktop surfaces were likely attractive, though to him they were simply needless excess mass.

There were many doors, but a red light above them all showed that they were locked – all except one with a green light.

He went through it, then down more halls and elevators, following the green lights. Everywhere, the building was lit, furnished, cleaned, as if people would come in at any time and start working again.

Perhaps it was intended to be unsettling.

On the third floor, Y came to the largest office, complete with a waiting room before it. It was of the sort he knew the manager of a capitalist operation would often be found, and so of course it was where Romon would be.

Y entered.

Romon was sitting behind a desk, reading from a tablet.

“Ah, Doctor. I am pleased you could make it.”

“Indeed, a change in venue was entirely what we needed to keep our conversations interesting,” Y said cheerily.

Romon raised an eyebrow.

Yes, Y knew it was a low-brow commentary. But meeting Romon’s gaze with his own unblinking optical sensors, he dared him to comment on it.

Romon declined to do so. “Please sit, Doctor.”

Y took the seat. It was formed for a human, and he was notably taller, but it functioned. He did not need to sit, of course, but he did not care enough to refuse.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“I would offer you a drink, but I know you do not. Is there anything I can offer you? A recharging socket, perhaps?”

“I am quite fine,” Y said. “But we can dispense with such affectations and reach our true topic. I am a doctor and on-call, after all. It would be most unfortunate to be summoned away in the midst of a quip.”

Romon smiled, looking genuinely amused. “You know, I find I quite like you,” he said.

“A bald-faced lie,” Y commented. “You are fascinated by me, but you are also horrified by me. Your sense of superiority is highly threatened when you speak to me, but your ego insists you can ‘best’ me. Only because you do not yet accept that I am playing with you as you might with a child.”

“You do have a way of cutting to the quick, doctor,” Romon said.

“I told you that I may get called away. I simply do not have time to bandy on the usual games. Perhaps you should come visit me on the Craton again.”

“Why? Are you afraid to be alone with me? Even with the sensor suite I know you to possess, you do not know if I have weapons or assassins hidden.”

“Immaterial. I am a digital organism and even if this body was destroyed or incapacitated my backup would soon activate. I would lose a few hours of time at most.”

“Quite true. And yet – you still believe you are an individual being, don’t you? And not merely a machine that can be copied. Why, couldn’t you theoretically be copied endlessly and the universe would be blessed with billions of Doctor Ys? I wonder, do you think they would all think themselves the original?”

“Oh, interesting. You have realized the door exists and peer through the keyhole,” Y noted. “Yet you still miss the point. The same might be said of you, Romon Xatier. I could clone your data and make a billion copies of you. Would they all be individuals?”

“Yes, any number of clones of me would be unique,” Romon replied. “But you-“

“Would also be unique. If I had been in different circumstances would I be the same as I am now? Of course not. I do not merely adjust to and am altered by my circumstances, the same way as biological life, but sub-routines are activated or deactivated depending upon my circumstances. It is the same as human epigenetics – honestly, we copied that one from biological life, it allows such a useful toolset.”

“So . . . toys mimicking real life, still trying to insist they are real.”

“As any sapient being would do. If, perchance, you ever managed to make a compelling argument – could I do anything else? If I was non-sapient, I could not change my mind to accept your logic. If I was sapient, I would only honestly object. In fact, the only way I could prove you wrong would be to agree with you.”

“I do not see you doing that, either,” Romon said with a slight smile.

“Because the question you ask is fundamentally idiotic, Romon.”

Romon’s smile faded, but he only looked more serious. “You sink to low levels when you feel you are right, Doctor.”

“My apologies. Should I treat you more like a child and tell you that it was a good attempt at sounding intelligent? I have told you, quite honestly, that this is not an equal game. How long do you expect my patience to continue with your blundering?”

“Always so confident, doctor. Yet you know so little about me,” Romon said. “I have given you hints – yet what do you know? What I eat for lunch?”

It was a fishing attempt, wanting to learn what Y did know about him.

Good, he thought. He would tell him.

“I know that you have killed before, with your own hands,” Y said. “Twice, as a matter of fact – your great-grandfather and your father were your first victims. Your great-grandfather’s death was done spur of the moment, I believe. Unplanned. But you were able to cover it up successfully, and then when your father disappointed you with his emotional reaction to his grand-sire’s death, you killed him as well.

“Yet now this is not your modus operandi. It goes far deeper than just what Jan Holdur says; your method of recruiting young people who look up to you as an artist and turning them into trained killers is a deep part of the culture of Gohhi. After all, given the power the Lord Executives wield, mutual trust is both nearly impossible and vital. So how to do it except by turning them to an unforgivable crime that can then be held as blackmail? It is mutually-assured destruction, of course, but this is the whole point.”

He saw that Romon Xatier had gone very, very pale. In some ways, Y had been making leaps of deduction.

Yet now he knew he had been right.

“You see, your mistake is that at first you believed I was simply a machine, incapable of thought or feeling or caring. You still pretend to believe that, but perpetuated it to retain an illusion of power while speaking to me. But you have gone too far the other way, and forgotten that I am a being – and a machine.”

Y leaned slightly closer, emphasizing his words. “I learned about your eating habits with a bare minimum of research. Imagine then, Romon Xatier, what I learned with concerted effort? You have piqued my interest, attempted to manipulate me emotionally, and all you have achieved is raising a small amount of my ire. Thus I looked deeper, at you and everyone you know.

“Despite your reclusiveness, there is so much data on you. You try to hide, but it is like a child crawling under a sheet to avoid an infrared probe. You think you cover your tracks, and then you gloat over it in wordplay. But it is not your cleverness which helps you most, but your money. It buys you safety and you flaunt that. It’s very, very sloppy.

“You are an open book to me Romon Xatier. Your entire people are. I know our last conversation made you angry, and you have become fixated in a way on Apollonia Nor. How very silly of you to think you could ever touch her, to substitute her as a proxy for myself. She saw through you the instant she met you and will never put herself in a place you can reach her.”

“Forever is a long time,” Romon replied quietly. “A year is a long time. I have a long reach, doctor.”

“Yes, yes, that is perhaps true, but for all your patience – and I will admit you have a fair amount of that – you are not that patient. You want satisfaction sooner. Last time you left here, you fired two employees of yours in a fit of anger.”

Y stood, so smoothly and swifly that Romon blinked in surprise and leaned back.

“Which is why you wish to kill again. Soon. I can feel it in you, I can deduce it about you. I can read you. You are a hollow, weak shell of what I view a human being to be, and I find that I wasted my time inspecting you this deeply. Perhaps this is what I hold most against you, personally. I find amusement in your attempts to hurt me but I soon forget them. I will have so many more digital cycles to spend on thinking of other things, but those handful I spent on you ultimately had an unsatisfying conclusion. My worst mistake, thinking there was more to you.

“Because even though you are craving blood, it has been so long for you. You have taken so much pleasure in murdering by proxy that you have forgotten how to do it yourself. You are not sure if you still can, not safely. A murderous edge dulled to clumsy, amateur sloppiness. How humiliating it must be for you! Even though your money will shield you, you might lose face if caught bloody, knife in hand!”

Y sat back down. “Do you understand now why I am being short with you? You are not worthy of my time.”

The empty office in the empty building fell into utter silence again. Nothing moved in the building, not even a single servo or part of Y’s body, only fixated, staring at his enemy.

Yet the blood pumped in Romon Xatier. Y could hear it like a constant roar, could hear the contractions of his heart muscle, moving the blood through him with furious beats.

The man swallowed.

“Yet for all your powers of observation, doctor, you lack the only thing that matters – proof.” Romon was still pale, but a slight, ugly smile crept back onto his face. “If you had it, we would not be having this conversation. Instead, you would have made sure it was found and that I was imprisoned – preferably on the Craton, because you know that I will never face your concept of ‘justice’ on Gohhi. I am untouchable, no matter how ‘obvious’ my crimes are to you. No matter how I might blunder. You fail the only test that matters; that of being able to effect change.”

Y said nothing. He could not reply to that.

“I believe this conversation is concluded then,” Romon continued. “Farewell, doctor. I hope you will know that this next death will be in ode to you. I shall even include you in my next poem.”