Unnatural

  * * * *

  Standing in the hall of the Luna Capitol Building, Sabrina couldn’t help but feel more respect for the woman she had so vehemently challenged minutes ago. Anti-emotional as she could be, Anya Zolnerowich was a cool and collected speaker, no question. She had the best interests of her citizens at heart, but it was her treating them as “her citizens” that made her an unlikable politician to Sabrina. Those citizens may have liked the security of subordination, but she knew this was just the societal form of battered wife syndrome.

  Sabrina caught sight of several unorthodox digital “paintings” lining the walls, amidst legal documents that were a constant reminder to the politicians here that their first allegiance was to the law.

  One such piece of art illustrated, with governmental dignity, the pitfall of polarizing groupthink. All the more reason to believe Zolnerowich was a governess who strove for excellence in optimizing her society, so much so that her work tended to dehumanize her vision of that society. With such responsibility in her hands, who could blame her for having lapses in judgment?

  On the other hand, her remarks on the disposability of not only emotional androids, but even the humans who would assemble them, couldn’t be so easily rationalized in Sabrina’s mind. Could she trust a woman who would rejoice at her and many other Christians’ deaths if she didn’t have a rogue android on her hands? She thought about this while reading a plaque that read, Mala informationia cum malis hominibus moriuntur.

  Evil ideas die with evil people.

  Zolnerowich may have been disagreeable, but of course Sabrina’s decision didn’t rest on whether she felt like appeasing her. This was a matter of protecting the last hundreds of humans from the malice of a robot, and of revealing the truth about the Dethroning. Might as well do something that had no chance of making her feel useless.

  Having decided to keep her distance from the governess yet to fulfill the mission, she returned to the office.

  “I’ll do it,” she said, her hands placed on the table as she remained standing, “but I’m not promising anything. And before you ask, I refuse to let you arrange my marriage to Uriah to keep the species around.”

  The governess sat with her mouth open, yet silent.

  “I gathered. People don’t exactly let me forget that I’m the only Organic woman here, and your hesitations and answers to my questions about the last Organic male cinched it.”

  Zolnerowich returned her focus to the screen, with a ghost of a grin on her face. “Be at the Terrestrial-Lunar Transportation Base by six o’clock.”

  Sabrina went home to her gateway between Luna and the outside world. She told Vlad to leave her alone, cloistered herself away, and wept for her father.