Free B785 by Eve Langlais

up. If I had my way, you’d be in chains undergoing a debriefing, but apparently, that would be cruel.”
    “Aramus!”
    “What? I said I wanted to, not that I was going to.”
    Why did Einstein have an urge to bang his head on a wall? Violence to his cranium wouldn’t solve anything.
    “Kinky, are you, captain? I’ll bet the ladies love that.”
    “As if you’d know anything about ladies,” Aramus retorted.
    “Touché. But back to the spy thing. You have questions. Ask away. I have nothing to hide.”
    “I doubt that.” Aramus, true to form, didn’t trust anyone. Einstein often wondered why. Just what had the big cyborg suffered in his past to make him so leery of anyone, even his own kind? And especially women.
    “Wow, I don’t know where you were when they handed out the nice guy microchip, but apparently, you should have stood in line for two. You are some kind of suspicious.”
    “Just following protocol, Pita.”
    “Pita?” Her nose wrinkled. “My name is Bonnie.”
    “Not to me you aren’t. In my books, you’re P. I. T. A. PITA as in pain in the ass.”
    With that, Aramus whirled on his heel and stalked off, leaving Einstein alone with Bonnie, who giggled. “Wow, is he ever easy to rile up.”
    “He has his reasons. Not everyone made the transition from mindless droid to sentience with ease. Some woke with memories best left buried. Aramus was one of them.” Even if the surly droid denied it. Aramus claimed to not remember anything, but his attitude spoke of a grudge. However, Einstein respected his right to privacy. They all did.
    “I suffered too. It doesn’t mean I turned into a righteous bitch.”
    “Then you’re luckier than many. Some found the memories of their past and indoctrination with the military too much. Many went insane when they remembered what was done to them.” The suicide rate in that first year and kamikaze missions was statistically high for a population their size, but in the years since had thankfully settled down. They still had the occasional cyborg snapping, or sporting a quick temper, but most came to some kind of grip with their past lives and moved on.
    “Poor bots,” she murmured. “I guess I can understand that. Fiona and some of the others went through some rough shit, rough enough that forgetting was probably a blessing in disguise. Even Chloe began to blank out in the end.”
    “And you?”
    Bonnie sighed, a sad sound so unlike her usual bubbly nature. “Cursed with the memory of an elephant. Defective, as the doctor used to say every time he tried to program me into being the perfect little soldier.”
    “How did they program you? I saw no sign of an exterior port and you exhibit no wireless signal.”
    “I already told you. None of the females had wireless. General Doom claimed he wasn’t making that mistake again. When the docs needed to upgrade my software, they used to slice me open right behind the ear. I’ve got a micro connector embedded back there for hard wiring.”
    “When we get back to our planet, if you don’t mind, I’d like to connect our computer to you. We’ve been trying to gather as much info as possible about the different cyborg units. While we have the males pretty much figured out, the female units seem to all have different characteristics.”
    “Every flavor possible,” she joked. “We were the general’s experiment. No two female cyborgs were made alike.”
    “Why?”
    She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
    As they walked back to his lab, he questioned her, in the name of science, of course. “How did you come to the military’s attention?”
    “I got drunk one night and caused an accident while my sister was driving. They said it was bad. I don’t know. I don’t remember any of that. They kept me pretty drugged up. When I woke up, I was part machine, a whole lot of pissed, and a prisoner of the military. You?”
    “I have no memories of my time before, but from what I’ve gleaned on the