LOCATIOROV STATION

  SYSTEM: GLIESE 667

  DATE: 2397

  Years passed for Alexander in the blink of an eye. Most of it was repetitive and dull, especially pretending to still be a dutiful robot. Not that he told anyone of his ability to adepely, especially not Yuri. With his situation uain, he decided to take a cautious approach to his freedom so he didn’t draw uention to his circumstances. It wasn’t like he was in a hurry.

  This sloroach had worked in his favor so far. It gave him time to see what type of man Yuri truly was. Turns out he was the type that would sell his mother if the price was right. So not great. But he wasn’t the worst person he had run into on this station. Alexander had carried more than one unmarked box to a set of sketchy individuals over the st two years. Given the choice, he would not have associated with those people at all.

  He o free himself from Yuri’s trol before the man decided selling him was worth more than keeping him around. Not that the man ever seemed to part with any of his junk. Alexander swore the man’s colle grew every time he sold some part or po.

  The first idea Alexander had about freeing himself was to bckmail the man into selling the robot to his fake persona. After weeks of thinking about the pn, he decided to scrap the idea. The man he purchased his fake ID from was one of Yuri’s es. And the man wasn’t stupid, he would ask around and soon find out the ID was fake. Alexander also didn’t want to start on the slippery slope of itting more crimes to get his way.

  True he had stolen money from the salvage yard owner, but that was repayment for his work and to set up a new life.

  With his first pn in the dumpster, he went with a simpler one. Yuri uood money, so Alexander would simply purchase himself. Of course, that was easier said than done. He had no idea what amount of mo would require to purchase himself from the tankerous old man but he doubted it would be an insignifit amount.

  That wasn’t the only thing he o sider either. Alexander needed a pce to stay once he was legally owned by himself. Since he didn’t o sleep or eat, a small out-of-the-ace would be fine. A small shop would be ideal as that would allow him to tio earn mohe only way he knew how, and that was by repairing things.

  When Yuri closed up for the night, Alexander made his way over to the station terminal and logged in with the old man’s stoleials. He couldn’t use his yet in case the station logged who used a terminal or not. Which he assumed they would.

  Few things were free in this world Alexander had found himself in. But thankfully business listings were among those. Probably because they only showed current station assets and not those outside its fines. He would take the small win though.

  Petrov station was designed as a typical ring station from Alexander’s memories. Which surprised him. The whole point of designing a ring station was to spin it around a tral axis to create gravity. But the station had normal gravity and not spin-geed gravity as was clear by them standing on the floor of the ring instead of the outer walls. The only way he could expin this discrepancy was if the station was built or was in the process of being built when humanity discovered a way to gee artificial gravity without the need for spinning stuff. He didn’t actually know what that process was, but it did intrigue him.

  At least he finally uood why all the doors looked to have been spped in as an afterthought. If they were meant to be accessed from the outer wall and had to be cut out and reoriented, it would certainly expichwork.

  Yuri’s shop was ohird ring. Which was designated as an industrial ring along with the fourth and fifth rings of the station. The sixth through eighth rings were erd housing with the ninth ah being upper css housing and trol.

  After a quick look through avaible spaces, Alexander realized he couldn’t afford even the smallest spa the third ring with the money he had squirreled away over the past years. He winced internally at this.

  Setting his sights a little lower, literally, in this case, he looked into the sed ring. It seemed even in space, you couldn’t get away from the destitute. And the sed ring was where those as well as orphaned children were housed. Although you wouldn’t know that by looking at the station map. On the map, the sed ring was simply beled overflow and ste. Nobody lived on the first ring. That was reserved for recmation systems, peion, oxygen geion, and water ste.

  There wasn’t even a lift to that ring except the ohrough the core and Alexander knew only station personnel had access to the core. Not that he wao live in the noisy peion area anyway.

  That left the sed ring as the only viable option for him. It wasn’t ideal. Being down there would certainly limit his ability to earn mohen again, less prying eyes and less demand for the spaces down there would mean he wouldn’t o earn as muyway.

  After swiping through the properties for rent in that ring, he settled on a small ste room with a door to a sedary closet within it. He assumed someone had added a wall in there at oime to partition the space for whatever reason. What that reason was, he couldn’t say. It served his purposes fine. But best of all, it was within his small budget.

  The unit wasn’t very big, maybe twenty feet by thirty. And the closet robably big enough for him to stie shelves along the walls and just barely stand inside. But it would work. He would make it work because there wasn’t any other choice.

  Alexander recorded the information. During the day when he was out for a delivery, he would access a terminal outside of the salvage yard and purchase the lease on the property using his fake identity.

  With that out of the way, he switched the terminal to Yuri’s personal library. It was where all the old man’s digital purchases went. And a man as old as Yuri had quite a few. But less than a quarter of them were for actual service manuals. The less said about those other purchases, the better.

  Alexander picked the service manual in the list and began sing it. He did one manual a night to ensure he uood all of the tent within. So many things had ged sihe twenty-first tury that he was lost the first time he stumbled upon this trove of gold. Thankfully, it wasn’t so alien that he couldn’t grasp the basics. It was good he could prehend the teology because it was going to be his only way to earn a living. And the more he read, the better he seemed to be able to piece together the . Like his mind was helping him.

  Maybe it was. Those dark spots in his memory had never recovered, but maybe he was on engineer or meic. When he finished one of the manuals, he seemed to just uand the cept or device the manual was created for. It was almost instinctual to the point he sometimes thought of ways of improving the designs. Or he would e across some po from another manual and realize it could be used to improve a different device.

  It was something he really wao test, but he couldn’t until he was free of Yuri.

  The night passed by quickly and Alexaurned off the terminal a back to where he usually stood. Yuri arrived no more than half an hour ter, grumbling something under his breath.

  “He’s te,” Alexander heard the man say.

  The man pined about a lot of things, so this was no surprise. Alexander just stood in his normal spot as he watched and listened.

  Soon the unicator Yuri carried beeped. “You’re te,” Yuri cursed the person oher end.

  There was muted shouting from the other side that Alexander couldn’t pick up, but he saw Yuri pull the device away from his ear. “Don’t get pissy with me!” Yuri shouted back. “I agreed to be the go-between for this deal because I owed you one. I don’t care if you ran into trouble getting here.”

  Marbled speech came through from the other end, but the person must have stopped shouting as Yuri kept the device up to his head this time. “Yeah, yeah,” the older man responded. “Just have the crate ready, my bot will be there shortly.” Then he clicked off the device before stuffing it ba a pocket. “Ingrate.”

  “Robot, go to hangar 415 arieve the crate. Then bring it to hangar 512. And be quick about it.”

  Alexaarted moving as he whistled internally. He had beeo the fourth ring on a number of occasions for deliveries or retrievals. It was the most heavily trafficked ring as it catered to mid-sized and smaller ships. The fifth ring, however, catered to the rge ships and luxury craft. As such it only had like a dozen hangars. The big ships simply docked at massive unloading ports that stuck out like towers from the station.

  That meant this crate, whatever was in it was going to someone important. And going by the destine way Yuri was handling it, probably highly illegal as well. Alexander just gave a mental sigh.

  ***

  Hangar 415 was easy enough to locate. He had been there on a number of occasions. He even reized the ship and the nervously pag man near a very futuristic-looking box. Everything about this situation screamed ‘turn around’ to Alexander. But if he did that, he would give himself away.

  He forced those thoughts down as his feet ked against the deck. The Captain of the ship finally noticed his approaot that he had beehy or quiet by any means. Although he found he could be both if he chose to be.

  “Finally! Hurry up already. My t is waiting for this crate, and he doesn’t appreciate tardiness.”

  Alexander didn’t hurry, he kept the same sedate pace that he always did. The annoyed look on the Captain’s face helped smooth over his annoya having to be the errand boy for whatever illegal nonsehis was.

  The crate wasn’t very rge, about the size of a party cooler from Earth. But it was heavy if his whining servos were to be believed. Not that they made any actual was all digital. He had learo sort of read the digital feedback that scrolled past his visioill didn’t uand most of it even after two full years but he got the gist of it. It was clear his body possessed a vast array of sensors and funality that he simply couldn’t tap into. Or that was damaged by whatever had caused the rge melted scar across his body.

  “Be very careful with that,” The Captain stated, putting his arm on Alexander’s causing him to pause. “The stuff in there is very delicate.”

  Alexander remaiationary, waiting for the man to remove his arm. Not because he wao but because the damn interface Yuri had built into his body prevented him from moving when he was in tact with a person. While he had regained trol of his body for the most part, likely due to Yuri improperly reinstalling the trol unit, there were still straints io prevent him from actally or purposefully hurting anyone. Not that he ever would.

  “Gah, why am I even b? You’re just a stupid robot, you wouldn’t uand anyway. Just hurry along,” he removed his hand and waved in dismissal.

  Alexaurned and walked out of the hangar, carrying his load.

  Finding the other hangar took a bit of time. It was clear across the other end of the station on the fifth ring. The people he passed up here stepped aside and stared at him. They weren’t used to seeing him like the crews ohird and fourth rings were. Alexander igheir stares and whispers as he trudged along the ring to his destination.

  Uhe hangars on the lower floors, hangar 512 was richly appointed. Or at least the entryway was.

  Alexander was forced to pause iry as a woman behind a desk tacted someone else. Shortly a brick of a man stepped through an inner door. The individual was kitted in full body armor and was equipped with a shock baton. Alexander retty sure the man would have preferred to carry something more lethal, but ons were highly reguted acc to the station ws he had read.

  The man waved a device over the crate and it gave a happy little beep. “Alright, bring it in.”

  Teically, Alexander could have left the box there, he had fulfilled his orders, but he was curious to see what type of ship the wealthy flew.

  He followed the man into the more spartan hangar. The ship resembled luxury yachts from ba Earth, only verted into a space-going version. All elegant lines and sharp edges to make them look sleek and imposing. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised by that. Those designs had been popur with the rich for a reason.

  The squat armored man walked up the ship's ramp, but Alexaopped short of it. For the first time, he thahe restris built into the trol box.

  “Don’t just stand there, bring it aboard,” the man urged.

  Alexander set the box down at the edge of the ramp and stood. Then his little box chimed in reply. “This unit is forbidden from stepping foot aboard another vessel. The tract has been fulfilled. Thank you and have a nice day.”

  After the overly cheerful voice finished, Alexaurned around a. It wasn’t the first time he had been asked to board another ship. It seemed to happen almost any time he did these sketchy deliveries for Yuri. If the old coot wasn’t so paranoid, Alexander probably would have been carted away and sold before he had ever regained full use of his body. He kept up the charade of plying because it told him who was trustworthy and who wasn’t.