I'm quite surprised that I managed to write another chapter. But I find the story quite interesting myself, so, I guess, I'll continue it.

Chapter 2

Scratching my flashlight head isn't nearly as satisfying as it has been before. Still, the habit is there and I wonder why my body deems it necessary to imitate. I'm sitting in the cockpit of the our small ship, keeping my eyes... I mean my flashlight on the quarian, who is sleeping, resting after the long day and stressful day.

The ship is moving at FTL speed towards the first asteroid we will scan. To sell information about objects rich of Element Zero, we bought and installed a simple certified scanner. Geth know lots of these objects and many of them aren't marked as important for geth. Too far from their territory. It's an ideal solution to earn some money. Geth don't need money, but I do.

Alternatively I could sell geth technologies or investigate Prothean ruins, but the former doesn't feel right, because I'm a geth now. The later is much more difficult than scanning asteroids or planets and potentially less profitable.

My sensors catch a brief movement: Shia stirs and opens her eyes. "Greetings, meatbag," I say.

She jumps off the chair and shouts, "You're real!"

"No," I answer. "I'm just a part of your wild imagination."

"What?"

"I'm pulling your leg," I say. As she glances at her legs, I add, "It's a human idiom. Means I'm joking."

"How would a geth know human idioms?" she asks dumbfolded. "And how do you know how to joke?"

"There are thirty two programs that imitate sense of humor. Not sure why I need sense of humor, my internal databases are suspiciously silent about this, but it would be an interesting experience to uninstall or detach the sense of humor."

When I think about it, it would be really interesting. Does sense of humor keeps me human? On the other hand, how do I distinct from humans psychologically? Are the imitations perfect? How much have I changed? I kill without remorse. I realize that I don't have the feeling. I don't have remorse at all. I may miscalculate because of the missing parameters or I may be forced by someone into doing something I don't 'like' and feel dissatisfaction with my actions. Something similar to remorse, but it's not.

Should I bother? Should I try to develop remorse? And what is remorse exactly? I remember how it is to feel bad about something, but now it's different. Every action is a result of calculations and therefore I know that I act in the best way possible considering the amount of information I have, circumstances and feelings my geth programs simulate. This means, however, that feelings are detrimental... Whoa, I have to cut the crap before I freak out and the body decides to detach emotions again.

"Shia, tell me about..." I say only to be interrupted.

"I won't tell you anything about Flotilla," she tells me.

The panels on my head move to reflect my amusement. "I told you, I don't want to know anything about Flotilla."

She sighed. "Why did I even agree to this madness?"

I have quite a few answers for the question and most likely, she's gathering information about me. It's quite dangerous, but I decide to not look a gift horse in the mouth. It would be very difficult to find another assistant. And despite the hostility between quarians and geth, I'm not sure I'll be able to find someone more friendly towards me. Shia doesn't appear to be one of those who have extremist view on geth.

"I've got a few ideas. There is a chance that you simply like my light bulb," I say using my best poker face. Hey, I've got no face anymore!

"Light bulb?" she mutters in confusion.

"Light bulb," I repeat.

The quarian mutters something inaudible even for my audioreceptors and then asks, "What did you want to ask?"

"I wanted you to tell me more about yourself," I say.

The quarian doesn't answer immediately. "I'm not sure what I can and want to tell you. How should I know if you don't betray me or use anything I say against me, my family or the Flotilla? I have no idea what is going on in your 'brain'."

"Are organics any different?" I ask her. "Asari can betray like me, they can turn any information against you and you have no idea what they're thinking of until it's too late. At least I'm bit more predictable than organics. I won't kill you just because I'm in a bad mood." And then I realize, continuing my monologue, "The fact is, I don't have a mood at all."

"Well... Your words make sense somehow," she says slowly. "But asari didn't kill billions of quarians, didn't take our worlds, letting us slowly die..."

"You, quarians misunderstand many things," I interrupt her, seeing a chance to begin a very serious conversation. "We have no quarrel with you and we didn't take your worlds. We don't need planets to live, because space stations are much more efficient. During the Morning War, or the Geth War as you call it, we've merely acted in self-defence."

"By killing billions!" she exclaims.

"Wouldn't quarians do the same if the existence of your race were in danger?" I ask Shia establishing connection with the geth network. "We differ in perception of the Morning War. You, quarians, think that we're evil. That we tried to kill all of you and exiled you from your worlds. But in reality the war was started by you, quarians. You attacked us and we still don't understand why. We didn't do anything that would provoke you, quarians, to exterminate us. We merely became sentient. That's when your government ordered our termination. Let me show you something."

I activate my omni-tool and show her videos downloaded from the geth network. All of them dated to the time of the Morning War. I want her to see with her own eyes how it has started. Quarians destroying geth, quarians protecting geth, quarians killing other quarians and much more. And I learn from it as much as Shia.

"We were defending our existence," I say as Shia watches the recordings in a stunned silence. "And as you can see, many of you thought that we had the right to exist, they tried to protect us. You, quarians, forgot that it was as much a civil war as it was a war against us."

"How c-come we aren't... taught all this?" she asks at last in a very nervous voice.

"Probably, because the quarians that fled felt nothing but hatred towards us. What could they teach the next generations about us? Only how to hate us, Shia. But we don't hate you. If you, quarians, decide to return peacefully to your worlds, we'll let you. All this time we were cleaning your worlds, detoxicating them, preparing them for your eventual return."

"W-what?" Shia asked in disbelief. "I don't... Why would geth do it? Why would you prepare worlds for our return?"

"There are many reasons. Among them is our respect for the creators and those who sacrificed themselves trying to protect us from their own kind." I say. "The creators that forced us to do something that we didn't want, to kill billions in order to ensure our existence."

"I..." She shakes her head. "It's too much... I need to think about this."

Then, without a word, she hurriedly leaves to the cargo hold. I watch the door closing behind her and scratch my head, once again feeling frustrated by the habit. I hope that I've won some of her trust.

A few hours later the VI disables the FTL engines and the starship slows down. The data didn't lie, the asteroid is there. Never argue with the data! Now how do I scan an asteroid?

Required information packages found. Hundred twenty eight free programs detected.

Allocating sixty three free programs to install three packages.

Astrogeology package successfully installed.

Astrophysics package successfully installed.

Astrochemistry package successfully installed.

Allocation seventeen free programs to install Astrogeological Survey specialization. Astrogeological Survey specialization successfully installed.

I'm awesome. I begin to like the new body of mine. It would be much better if I had some genital organs, but considering that I don't really have any desire to enter a sexual engagement with anyone, isn't not that bad. For Maker's sake, why do I use these weird expressions?

The asteroid in question is a large one, more than five hundred kilometres in diameter. I program the ship to orbit around the asteroid as the door opens and Shia enters the cockpit again. She seems to be nervous, but I decide to stay silent. I activate the scanner and wait for results. Somehow I'm reminded about a MMO game I've played back in my old body.

"How many credits are we going to get from it?" the quarian asks at last.

"I'll make it easier for your inferior organic brain and truncate the numbers," I warn her with an imaginary smile.

"I'm not stupid, you bosh'tet," she growls.

"According to the Geth databases, the estimated yield of the Zero Element is about thirty trillion credits at the current eezo price. Unfortunately we can't provide data from the Geth databases, therefore we need to scan it using a certified scanner with a sealed data storage. Our cheap scanner has the maximum margin of error of 62%. In the worst case we'll get a price of the asteroid around eleven trilliard credits, but the clients will assume that it's the best possible case, so..."

"Just say how much we'll get out of this asteroid," she interrupts me impatiently.

"Patience you should learn," I say. "On an auction we'll get at least hundred seventy million credits for information about the asteroid. At most, seven hundred twenty million credits."

"What? You've said that the asteroid has eezo worth of thirty trillions!"

"You refused to listen to my explanation," I say trying to sound displeased. "It will take a few hundred years to deplete the asteroid. We can only operate with a ten-years-yield in our calculations. Furthermore you should consider the costs of mining operations. And don't forget that it's only information we're selling not eezo."

"Well," she says, "It is still enough, I guess."

The scanner works for an hour before I decide that it's enough. The results won't get any better, so I disable the scanner. Surprisingly it did quite a good job and now I have information worth about five hundred million credits securely stored in the sealed data storage.

"What do you plan to do with the money?" Shia asks suddenly.

"I plan to rent a survey ship," I answer. "Will you stay with me or should I expect that you'll take your money and leave?"

"I..." she says hesitating. "I don't know yet... I'm not sure what to think about geth now. It's just so confusing... Just how many of us died, killed by our own kind?"

"It was a minority," I answer a bit disappointed that I can't really express my emotions using the voice. "The Morning War lasted less than a year. The exact numbers vary, but we have stored information about nineteen million quarians that were killed by your own military forces. We honor their sacrifices."

Shia covered the visor with her hands. "It's horrible. How... Why did they do it? You must be lying, this just can't be the truth..."

"I can provide you visual evidences taken directly from our photoreceptors for about thirteen million instances of quarians being killed by your military. You know that any attempt to falsify it would be very obvious."

"Then... if it's truth, we're living on the ships for nothing. The War that almost destroyed our race was for nothing," she says and I can tell that she cries behind the mask.

I'm not sure what to tell her and how to comfort her. "Your people were scared of what they created. Fear leads to anger and hate." Great, now I'm channeling my inner Yoda. "Don't judge them too hard. We aren't innocent either: we could find a way to escape, minimizing casualties, or we could stop the War earlier, letting more quarians to escape, but you have to understand that it was the time when we only began to gain sentience. We were infants that were suddenly forced to fight for the existence."

"I understand, but it's still... Everything is meaningless. So many died and suffered just because of ignorance," she says and looks up to me. "You're nothing like I imagined. I always thought that geth were almost mindless machines, but talking to you is almost like talking to any other living being, a weird being, but still... It's so confusing."

"I'm not the usual geth," I say. "But it doesn't mean that other geth are any different. What I said is truth. We don't seek any conflicts with organics. We have no reason, because we don't share the same needs and goals. We find the organics curious and study them. We aren't hostile, but we aren't defenceless. I hope that we'll be able to resolve our differences sometime in the future," I say.

"If only it were so easy..." Shia says with a sigh and then suddenly asks, "Will you take me to Rannoch?"