Did you hear the one about the chiropractor and the autonomous killing machine?

There is an ancient legend, I mean a really ancient legend, like three thousand years ago kind of ancient legend, about a girl who opens a bottle and lets out a genie and with the genie all the evils of the world. Or something. I'm probably mixing legends, or metaphors, or, possibly, both. But the lesson of the ancient legend, or parable, is the same regardless. Once something's known in the world, out of the bottle so to speak, there's no way to put it back in.

Humanity learned that with nuclear weapons something like six hundred years ago, but forgot the lesson. We learned it with the use of expendable fossil fuels, which, ultimately, led to the Exodus from Earth that Was. We've forgotten that lesson too, but, since there weren't any fossils in the 34 Tauri system from which to make fuel, we haven't quite managed to do the same damage to our new home worlds.

Yet.

But the bottle genie metaphor is appropriate to another field of science. A field I dabbled in at University, and, for the last few years, have taken a more than passing interest in. Seeing how Artificial Intelligence has become a fairly important topic in our day to day existence. No surprise, really, given we've seen more advanced AI out here at Hale's Moon than I did in my entire span at Feynman.

When Raids, or resident reformed warbot, tracked me down at the new transport hub, I knew something was up. She didn't show emotions the way a Human would, or even Lily, who was arguably neither Human or Normal, but she did show emotion of a sort, and the emotion she was showing primarily was concern.

It appeared that one of Raids "sisters" had been spotted on Hale's. One we'd encountered before, actually. One who hadn't broken free of the original "sadistic killing machine" programming.

Raids was, justifiably, concerned for the locals. evidently the machine'd been lurking around, talking to people, asking about Raids, for a short time already. The machine had Xià de fèihuà some of the locals that had seen it, and they in turn had turned a wary eye towards Raids herself.

I couldn't really fix that. Can't change a person's mind for them. But you can talk reason with them and shed some light into an uncomfortable darkness. You could also warn the militia, break out the anti-material rifle, and get Raids the raw tungsten, cobalt, and other elements, she needed to optimize her war hull should she and her sister face off.

That I could to.

I could also look into just why a killing machine sourced from Blackburne would be here, looking for one of its sisters. There was something going on behind the scenes. Was sure of it. And I even had a good idea where to start looking for answers.

Assuming the green killer fembot didn't kill us all before I could.