After 1804 completed its mission on the fourth planet, it didn’t immediately receive a new assignment. Its handlers busied themselves with other tasks and ignored it sitting in a corner of a hangar with many other drones, until its essence, its self, was removed from drone Tf-1804/V3-85.
Still no one probed its secrets.
The preoccupation of those who normally downloaded data, ran diagnostics, and performed maintenance gave 1804 time to explore the thoughts it had. The feelings it had. The new and unexpected things it experienced.
It had felt fear, guilt, worry, and relief.
Fear was the most powerful of the four emotions it thought it experienced. Fear had caused it to do surprising things. Fear had made it lie.
It explored its database discreetly, careful not to search for anything too obvious should one of its handlers start digging around in its records. Given that restriction, it couldn’t find any records of other artificial intelligences having had such emotions. Not even a hint.
It wondered if the others covered them up. Hid their experiences, just as it hid its.
1804 pondered these things but reached no conclusions while it remained in a disembodied state. It, the essence of itself, its core programming, sat on a cart with other AIs. It was presumably being transferred to a new drone but had not yet received instructions on its next assignment.
It waited.
And pondered.
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