âYou never talk about yourself,â Daniels mused, while adding small pencil marks onto the wooden plank in front of her to remember where sheâd position the saw later on. âYouâve accompanied plenty of deep space missions, right?â
âSixteen,â Walter confirmed, cutting his own plank without any need for marks. He had offered repeatedly to cut hers as well, but she had declined, insisting to do at least a share of the physical work and he hadnât pressed further. To some level he understood that she didnât want to feel excluded from the project her husband had left to her, but far more relevant was the visible effect the work had on her: She looked focussed and determined, the red in her cheeks hinted at a healthy stimulation of her cardiovascular system and her smile came a little easier than it usually did these days. Captain Oram had once relieved her of duty to mourn the death of her husband. Walter knew now that forced idleness had a detrimental effect on her mental health. Better to keep her engaged.
âSo, if any of those crews were half as bad as our lot, you sure got some anecdotes to share.â There it was again, that small, expectant smile. The fact that he had to disappoint was on the list of things he found distinctly Not Preferable.
âI donât remember any of them.â
Her brow furrowed and the smile faded. His facial-recognition software informed him that she was confused. âWhat?â
âWeyland-Yutani was accused of using their synthetics to collect personal data from their employees. Even before the merger. Weyland Industries developed technology to record dream-sequences during cryo-sleep.â It was difficult to speak negatively about the company that had created him, but he pushed back against the programming that urged him to add that all data had been collected to assure greatest customer-satisfaction and was not sold to third parties.
âI remember that,â Daniels said, âIt was a huge scandal a few years back.â
âTheyâre now obligated by law to wipe any personal memories from the hard-drive of an synthetic after a mission ended to protect the privacy of the crew.â When they left, the lawyers had been challenging the decision of the judges, but they had left the range of any Earth communication before the results came in.
A line appeared on Danielsâ forehead and her eyebrows lifted at an angle that told him that something about the information she had just received displeased her.
âAll data necessary to fulfil my duties as expected remained intact, of course,â He reassured her. If the information that memories had been erased from his hard-drive made her sad, the information that others had remained untouched should have made her happy, but the expression on her face proved otherwise, even as she returned to work. Humans were strange like that.
