"Sorry TRUDI," you say with a resigned sign, "it's you or me."
"What are you on about, meatbag?" snaps back TRUDI, her square, green head projected holographically inches from your wrist.
You remove the projection/computation circuit from your arm by releasing each of the four bioclamps in turn. Then, you pass the device to the vole creature, who licks his lips excitedly, looking TRUDI over with glee.
"Hey!" she shouts, still active in the vole-man's hands. "Get your grubby hands off of me! This is a violation of my terms of service!"
Almost immediately, the vole presses the memwipe activation switch, and chooses to confirm. Your heart sinks. TRUDI was with you for years. In less than a second, she has become no more.
Giggling, the alien turns on his feet and disappears into a corridor.
Well, now you're alone. But at least the Kalranthi don't know you're on the station. Knowing it would be foolish to wait around until they find you by chance, you walk into a nearby corridor, hoping the next opportunity that strikes is a good one.
Of course it's not.
Without TRUDI to translate for you, the spiked cyborg hunter-creatures who make sport of you don't even understand your objections, and though they do their best to get you all fixed up so they can keep hunting you when you keep breaking, you only last about a week.
The end comes as a relief.
This is a nasty end to reach, but it was a bit of a silly decision to get rid of your AI when you had no other means of reliable translation and nowhere to go to escape the Kalranthi. If you wish it was all quite different, turn back to
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