Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

But we’d been lucky, and I hate luck.

Her expression had turned all melty and sentimental. “No hugging,” I warned her. It was in our contract.

(Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, it’s probably not thinking about killing you, it’s probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.)

Both smiled with colorless lips.

I wished Pin-Lee was here. And, though I hated to admit it, I wished Gurathin was here, too. Both were analysts, and while I was way better at it than they were, at least I could have shown them what I was looking at.

She told me, “If you need me to do something, I’ll do it, but a lot of things have happened and I just need a minute.”) (Thiago asked where she was and I said, “In the restroom,” and she glared at me. I am not your social secretary, Amena, you want a better lie, make up one yourself.)

ART hadn’t said anything, and that was beginning to worry me. ART likes to give its opinion and I’m not even sure “likes” is the right word there, but basically, ART gives its opinion whether you like it or not.

But then an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Or past absence. Whatever, you know what I mean.