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paying for it would've been illogical.
    "You look like hell, Mack."
    "My apartment blew up. I'm springing for a wash and wax tomorrow, but right now, I need a place to recharge."
    "Sure." He hopped onto his couch and poured himself some wine.
    He didn't ask for details. He was my friend, and stuff blew up in Empire all the time. Mostly labs and research facilities, but it wasn't unheard of for more innocuous locations to go out with a bang. He swished his wine in its glass, put his flared nostrils to the lip, and sniffed. "There's a plug over there." He pointed with his right toe.
    "It's only for the night," I said.
    "Forget it, Mack. What are friends for?"
    He sipped his wine and picked up a book. Reading was all the gorilla did in his personal time: fiction, nonfiction, anything and everything. He appreciated books enough to allot them a shelf occupying two cubic meters, crammed with volumes. I didn't have much interest in reading, particularly fiction. Doc Mujahid was dead on. I didn't have the abstract thinking required to get into it. As for nonfiction, I found a supreme lackof desire to learn anything new that didn't contribute directly to my functioning. It wasn't in my motivational directives.
    According to the doc, that was a poor excuse for not trying. I had the Glitch. I could think outside of my programming, override my directives as illustrated when I'd refused to kill on command. I held a certain vaguely defined respect for life. Exactly how high that respect rated in my personality index, I couldn't say, but it was enough to not step on somebody for bumping into me on the sidewalk. It was enough that I cared a whole hell of a lot about Julie, April, and Holt Bleaker's continued existence. Gavin, I couldn't give one-eighth of a damn about.
    "What's with the doodle?" asked Jung.
    Of course, I hadn't forgotten the drawing held in my right hand, but it still seemed surprising that it was there.
    "It's nothing," I replied. "Mind if I use your fridge?"
    "Knock yourself out."
    I slapped April's drawing on the refrigerator with the half-melted banana magnet I'd salvaged from my place. I hoped the magnet wouldn't offend Jung. He wasn't as comfortable with his ape origins as he liked to pretend and could be a bit sensitive sometimes.
    "Where's your television, Jung?"
    "Don't have one."
    I sighed. I was doing that a little too much, but it would take a while for the affectation to find balance in my personality template.
    "I didn't think you ever got bored," said Jung.
    "I don't."
    Biological minds craved stimulation either for stimulation's sake or to keep them distracted. Bots were generally fine, able to close those files they'd rather not access. I'd whiled away many a night in my apartment standing in the corner, honestly not thinking about anything.

    I couldn't seem to do it now, and every time I tried, that damn Glitch reopened them again. Short of shutting myself down completely for my recharge cycle, I was screwed. Even that might not work since when I recharged my housekeeping programs took advantage of the lack of input to defragment the day's new data.
    I dreamed. Not in the same manner of biologicals. My dreams weren't confusing and symbolic. They were replays, tours of my memory matrix, dissections of every single nuance as my evolutionary program sought to adapt to better functionality. Normally, I didn't mind, but I didn't feel up to it right now.
    I'd planned on trying to assemble an allosaurus skeleton model for my next doc-ordered project, but that had been destroyed along with my other models, my custom-tailored wardrobe, my refrigerator, my apartment. My nice, uneventful existence. Unbidden, my electronic brain opened the memory file again. I fast-forwarded to April handing me that drawing and froze on those soft, purple eyes, pleading with me to save her but not being able to say it aloud.
    I closed the file again, but it was only a temporary reprieve. Unthinking drones didn't know how good they had