Field Assurance showed up at 9:17 a.m.

  Not a team.Not a unit.Not even someone in a hard hat.

  A single man stepped out of a rented midsize sedan, wearing a BiOnyx-branded polo and the expression of someone who had rehearsed confidence in the mirror and still wasn’t sure it fit.

  Jake saw him through the lobby window.

  “Oh no,” he whispered. “There’s only one.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s not a good sign.”

  “For whom?” I asked.

  He tried to decide and failed.

  The man extended a badge as he approached, though it wasn’t entirely clear what the badge granted access to.

  “Good morning,” he said, voice too high. “I’m Tyler. With BiOnyx Field Assurance.”

  Jake blinked. “All of it?”

  Tyler hesitated. “I’m… the representative assigned to your engagement.”

  Jake whispered, “Engagement sounds so personal.”

  “It’s a procedural term,” I said.

  Tyler nodded eagerly, relieved someone was helping.

  “Yes! Exactly. Procedural. Nothing to be worried about.”

  Jake looked at him. Looked at me. Looked back at him.

  “Are you worried?” he asked.

  Tyler laughed in a way that suggested he had definitely been worrying.

  “No! No, absolutely not. It’s just a routine, uh—supportive alignment interaction.”

  Jake whispered, “That’s not a phrase.”

  I motioned toward the conference room. “Let’s begin.”

  Tyler followed us with the posture of a man who had prepared for a written exam and been handed a live animal.

  He opened his laptop, which displayed a template that still said INSERT COUNTY NAME HERE.

  Jake mouthed the words at me like a plea.

  Tyler cleared his throat. “I’m here to review BT4-series operational compliance, confirm messaging alignment, and ensure that… uh…”He checked his notes.“…observer inference mitigation meets expectations.”

  Jake buried his face in his hands.

  I said, “We’re happy to help. What would you like to see?”

  He brightened. “Great! Yes. Excellent. First, I’ll need to review your shutdown documentation.”

  Jake handed him a printed packet of everything we’d logged.

  Tyler flipped through it with increasing alarm.

  “You shut them all down,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Even the one with the… what is this… bearing anomaly?”

  “Clunker,” Jake supplied.

  Tyler blinked. “You named them?”

  “No,” I said. “Staff occasionally use identifiers informally.”

  Jake coughed. “Clunker is an identifier.”

  Tyler wrote something in his notes. He underlined it. Twice.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  We walked him out to the yard.

  The BT4s sat in orderly rows, unmoving, lights amber, shapes neat and quiet.

  Tyler stopped walking.

  “You arranged them,” he said softly.

  “No,” I said. “They parked themselves before shutdown.”

  He stared at me.

  Then at the rows.

  Then at me again.

  “…Neatly?”

  Jake offered, “Sometimes they nudge each other into line.”

  Tyler looked like a man trying not to hyperventilate.

  “For balance,” I added helpfully.

  He made a small noise.

  We took him down the first row. He crouched, examined wheels, sensors, and casing as though expecting teeth.

  At BT4-17, he flinched when a breeze moved a hanging piece of caution tape.

  “They’re powered down,” I reminded him.

  “Yes. Right. Of course.” He took a step back. “Are they… does this one… lean?”

  “Parking drift,” I said.

  Jake added, “We think it’s endearing.”

  Tyler scribbled something that looked like ENDANGERING?

  I chose not to correct him.

  Back indoors, Tyler asked to see remote logs.

  I pulled them up.

  He stared at the columns of timestamps, task IDs, and error codes, expression slowly collapsing into professional despair.

  “Oh,” he murmured. “You have… all of this.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “All the time?”

  “Yes.”

  Jake leaned in. “We can export it as CSV.”

  Tyler looked genuinely afraid of the idea.

  “No! No, that’s… unnecessary. I don’t want to overwhelm the… system.”

  Jake mouthed the word “him” at me behind his hand.

  Tyler continued scrolling.

  He paused at one line:

  BT4-19: TASK PERSISTENCE FLAG — REPEATING CYCLE

  “What is this?” he asked.

  Jake answered before I could stop him. “The ditch digger. He really wanted to finish.”

  Tyler slowly rotated his head toward him. “Wanted?”

  Jake froze. “Uh—attempted. Mechanically.”

  Tyler wrote something that looked like: staff anthropomorphizing = high risk.

  I ignored it.

  He moved on to Rusty’s shutdown logs.

  BT4-07: ENTERING STANDBY

  BT4-07: POSITIONING FOR SAFE STATE

  BT4-07: VERIFICATION: COMPLETE

  Tyler exhaled in relief. “Okay. Good. That’s… normal.”

  Jake whispered, “That is the least normal thing Rusty has ever done.”

  Tyler closed his laptop halfway, as though afraid the logs might escape.

  “I have some follow-up questions,” he said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “When you say ‘upright,’ how are you defining that?”

  “Physical orientation,” I said.

  “Not readiness?”

  “No.”

  “Not assertiveness?”

  Jake blinked. “Robots can be assertive?”

  Tyler shook his head frantically. “No. They cannot. They must not be perceived as such.”

  I kept my face neutral. “Our usage is purely geometric.”

  “Good,” he said, relieved. “Good. And when staff described BT4-31 as ‘sulking’—”

  Jake slapped a hand over his mouth.

  I said, “We have counseled staff on terminology.”

  Tyler nodded shakily. “Excellent. Excellent. That… that aligns. That supports alignment.”

  He was sweating.

  A lot.

  Tyler tried to stand, but the leg of his chair caught on the carpet. He lurched sideways. Jake instinctively reached out and grabbed him.

  Tyler startled so hard he made a sound like a bird hitting a window.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Totally fine. This is fine.”

  Jake patted his shoulder. “We can get you water.”

  “No!” Tyler said quickly. “No liquids. Not near records.”

  Jake whispered, “Is he malfunctioning?”

  “He’s stressed,” I said.

  “Oh,” Jake said. “So yes.”

  Tyler packed up his laptop, leaving a small damp imprint on the table where his hand had been.

  “So,” he said, voice trembling, “I’ll be writing a preliminary report. Very preliminary. Extremely preliminary.”

  “We appreciate your time,” I said.

  “Do you?” he asked, eyes darting.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded like someone who didn’t believe me and backed toward the door.

  “If BiOnyx follows up,” he said, “please reply promptly.”

  “We always do,” I said.

  He flinched again.

  Then he left.

  Jake watched him jog—literally jog—back to his rental car.

  The sedan peeled out of the lot with the urgency of someone escaping a haunted house.

  Jake exhaled. “Howard… that man was not okay.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you think BiOnyx will send someone else?”

  “No,” I said again.

  He let out a long low whistle. “Wow. We broke him.”

  “We didn’t break him,” I said. “He arrived broken. We simply participated.”

  Jake slumped into his chair. “So what happens now?”

  I opened my inbox.

  A new email had already arrived.

  Subject: Field Assurance Follow-Up — Internal Review Initiated

  Jake leaned in, eyes narrowed. “Internal review… of us or of them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  But I had a suspicion.

  And from the look on Jake’s face, he had one too.