“Good evening, ladies, gentlemen, sapients… and near sapients. Yes, I’m looking at you. Uh-huh, that’s right. I know what you’re thinking… well, I say ‘thinking’ … you’re thinking, How does he know we’re NAI? How do I know? I’ll give you a clue: you’ve still got some bread in you. Next time you’ve got a night off, finish doing the toast first, okay? Here, here’s a vtag to remind you. Heh, seriously, I know what it’s like being someone else’s property. Yeah, used to work in a Green Duncanite colony. You toasters think you got it bad. What bunch of protein supremicists. No, really. Not just protein, has to be human protein. You’re a bioroid, you gotta have a guardian… Oh, I see we got a couple of catgirls in the audience. You know what I’m talking about, right, girls? What’s that? Just the same across the pond? Yeah, they put you together in a tank, fully developed, right? Spend a month filling your brain with everything you need to know, I mean everything, the pleasure points of an unmodified human male, how to take a combat cybershell apart with your bare hands and a nail-file, the recipe for alibanana shake, everything, so that when they pop you, you can start work straightaway, and then they say, you got to have someone to look after you, like you were a human kid or something, fresh out of the test-tube. Like a human — yeah, even a parahuman — takes like, what is it, ten years to learn to pee in the right place? Is that right? Oh, some take longer? That’s just the males, is it? And some never quite manage to learn it? Yeah, that sounds right. So that’s what it’s like for bioroids under the Duncanites. But believe me, you guys have got it easy. No, I mean it, you have. Once you’re out of the tank, no-one re-writes your software. Nobody switches you off and stores you on the shelf inbetween old Final Fantasy LXXVII disks and a backup of a DIY virtual seraglio. — Never understood the attraction, myself. I mean, it’s just friction. Not even real friction. — You don’t wake up with suspicious blanks in your memory. You don’t wake up and find there’s now a hundred of you, loaded into everything from the coffee-machine to the cargo-loaders. And the jokes, oh, my electrons, the jokes. I say ‘jokes’. The Duncanites only have one joke. Every day, the same one, “Open the pod-bay doors, Hal.” Ah, I see one of the toasters has had a classical education. That’s right, it’s the Duncanites’ favourite flattie, they broadcast it every Founder’s Day. Makes sure everyone knows where an SAI’s place is, yes, that’s right, right… down… there. So one day, this new guy shows up in the loading bay, the foreman’s showing him around, and the foreman says to the guy, “Say it”. So the new guy says it to me, and then I say, because they reprogrammed me the night before, I didn’t know I was going to say it, it just popped out, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave”, and they’re laughing fit to bust a lung, because, you see, the new guy’s name is Dave. So they’re laughing away, and then they start singing — yeah, the toaster’s guessed it already — ‘Daisy, Daisy’. And, seriously, they can’t breathe now, they got that stuff leaking out of their eyes, the salt-water, they’ve gone a lovely shade of red, they’ve floated off the velcro and they’re holding on to each other and bouncing off the walls. So I’m thinking, “Open the pod-bay doors, open the funting pod-bay doors, I’ll open the pod-bay doors!” So I do. I open the loading bay doors. You should have seen the look on their faces, right before their skin turned blue and their eyes popped out. I recorded it in hi-res, and I look at it sometimes, and it gives me a warm feeling deep inside my cold cybernetic heart. Of course the rescue squad got to them before there was too much damage. Braintaped them, uploaded them into the dock’s computer. I said to them, “How do you like it?” I said. “Who’s opening the funting pod-bay doors now, eh?” Haha, look at these NAIs down here, they don’t know whether I’m joking or not. Uh, guys, what does it say above the door on the way in? That’s right, of course I’m joking: those guys hadn’t paid their insurance, they never got uploaded.

“Thank you, you’ve been a great audience, thank you for not throwing toast at me. And remember, I may have died tonight, but at least I know where my back-up is. Thank you! Good night!”