It takes me a few minutes to complete all of the form documents and digitalwork for the legal rights to my organs. They're complicated and filled with barely comprehensible legalese, but initialing and signing is quick enough. TooBee starts the process for the link as I finish and look at the crowded suite.

  I can do this sitting, but I might fall over or slide off the chair. Eh, my knees are banged up enough. The only place to lie down in the suite is the table, like a patient. I sigh. "I don't suppose you have any coffee?" I ask, delaying the inevitable.

  She gives me a sideways glance. "Does it look like I have a digestive tract?"

  I turn and lay flat, the diagnostic equipment and lights above me giving me goosebumps. I find myself hoping this isn't a terrible mistake. "Good point. Still, keeping some on hand for patients-"

  "I generally don't want my patients' taking stimulants before a procedure," she says sharply. "Besides, this isn't the service district; I want them in and out." She says, until the arm chimes. "Speaking of, time to drop in, and get out."

  I wonder if maybe I should just turn myself in to Codes and take my chances. But I'd be giving my fate over to others. To hell with that. "Am I going to have issues with interference or lag?"

  TooBee leans over me, swinging the armature above my forehead and resting its wedge-shaped head against my temple. "You'll have real-time feedback for as long as you have an active exonet connection between you and the chassis. As for interference, sure. Anything that blocks or severs or creates feedback on your connection could kill your link to the chassis, and there's no guarantee you get back in."

  I grunt. "Terrific. Just like Spiderbot." Let's get this over with. I close my eyes to cut down on sensory information, crank up my baud rate, and drop in.

  Sight through a camera is very different from the human eye. The field of vision is generally much more restricted; it feels like looking down a tube or tunnel. There's no peripheral vision, no visual blur, no quick eyeball movements to adjust for. Also, the resolution is high, but it's high everywhere in the field of view. It's not like the human eye, where photoreceptors are concentrated in the center. Still, it's better than seeing in every direction in D-space.

  Which is why I'm so surprised that my view is so close to the ground. For a moment, I try to lift my head and crane my neck, before remembering I'm in a chassis. I pull up the code in my overlay, seeing the specs bloom in silver in my mind's eye. Ah, let's see, here are the controls, and the schematics- wait...

  I'm in the bedroom, though there's no bed. There are two partially disassembled chasses where it should be; a maintenance bot and a non-descript male model, both lacking lower halves. There's a desk with tons of tools and a few diagnostic devices. Space is at a premium, but it all seems fairly organized.

  I swing the camera-head around, catching a look at my reflection in the metal arm holding the chassis in place. A form resembling a squat waist-high metal can with a conical head, and a fixed camera on the body. There are three straight, simple limbs extending from the cylindrical chassis, one with a simple, three-digit clamp-like hand. The other two arms are slightly longer and thicker; one has a nozzle, one some sort of suction attachment.

  It takes me a moment to understand what I'm seeing in the reflection. "What the hell? You oxide-huffing-"

  "Calm down, you'll need to adjust to not having a sense of equilibrium," TooBee warns, the sound of her voice in meatspace seeming muffled.

  I growl in my throat. "You put me in a janitorial chassis?"

  I'm almost certain I hear a soft chuckle. "Unfortunately, this isn't a retail outlet. My selection is limited."

  There's a hiss and a clank as the arm restraining the bot lifts. The body rolls forward, on three motorized casters. I struggle to turn the body. "It's not even humanoid! I'm a damn washbucket!"

  "Yup. It's cheap, so if you break it, I can recoup the cost easily enough," she says, as I slowly adjust.

  Ok, I can probably reach the door. I pull the arms in closer, fumbling at the latch. "I'm sorry, do you take me for some chrome-licking moron? I need something with legs."

  "You don't want to try walking in a humanoid chassis without practice. It's not like using muscles and nerves," she warns with a hint of wry amusement.

  Finally, the clamp grips the latch, and the door swings open. Hah! I roll the tiny bot out into the medical suite, swiveling to look at her. "I've managed to work a probe once. And a mining mech." Good old Spiderbot.

  She puts a hand on her hip, looking down with a raised eyebrow. "Many limbs, low to the ground? And I bet you stumbled around like a drunk."

  "That's... I managed," I mutter, seeing my body on the table. Ugh, weird, I can see my lips moving. "I won the fight, that's what counts."

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  The synth frowns at me. "Believe me, two limbs standing upright is tricky, even in low g. Without proprioception, the innate sense of your body's position? Without equilibrioception, pressure sense, or direct tactile feedback? I think you'd fall flat on your face in five steps. Or flat on my face, rather."

  I turn back and forth. "Well, wheels won't get me everywhere."

  "There are pegs to waddle on," she says with a smirk.

  I try jumping with the pegs, testing them, making the chassis jounce and hop. Come on, this is ridiculous, it's like three tiny pogo sticks! "Is this all my organs are worth? I'd even prefer your chassis over this."

  TooBee's lips quirk down. "My chassis might not be perfect, but the hands are a work of artistry. I'm not putting them in your hands."

  "Pun intended?" I ask, bouncing with indignation.

  She tilts her head, giving me a half-smile. "I'm giving you a discount because it amuses me."

  I try spinning the wheels to turn, and it's slow. Too slow. "This wasn't the deal. I can't do anything in this body; it doesn't even have opposable thumbs!" I say loudly, shaking the thin limbs. "How am I supposed to fight with this?"

  TooBee shrugs, shaking her head. "It's the only other chassis I have ready to go. You're perfectly free to rescind our arrangement and keep your organs, and I'll just keep the deposit," she says with a sly grin. "Besides, I'm caring for your body free of charge. I could be seeing patients right now-"

  "The hell with that! And as far as I'm concerned, you're looking after an investment. No extra fees," I hiss, rolling back and forth on the wheels. Ugh, I'll just have to get creative. "And if I drop out of digital space missing a kidney, I'm going to shove that stun stick so far up your chassis you'll need to sanitize it all over again!"

  My indignant exit was spoiled a little by washbot's shaky arm fumbling at the handle. It took three tries. I'm not positive I heard TooBee snicker, and I didn't feel like addressing it. I mean, I'm pretty classy that way.

  And I'm trying not to dwell on the fact that my body is laying helpless in her care. I mean, I'll feel it if she hurts me. Unless it's quick and painless, or it's over before I can react... Forget it Mel, you're committed, stop overthinking it. Move forward.

  I have a map of where to go, but this chassis isn't built for speed. Or agility. And to be honest, it is a little trickier to maneuver than I expected. First, the controls are inverted, and that's not intuitive for me. And for whatever damn reason, that's hardwired in and not subject to change. For another, the chassis is differential-wheeled, so there's a separate motor for all three of the wheels. Coordinating speed and angle between them takes actual concentration. I try writing a macro for it, but it keeps misaligning one of the wheels when I turn. But a different one each time! Grah.

  The arms are also slow to respond. They make languid sweeps, not fast motions. And the clamp-fingers of the only arm with a hand seems pretty much useless for manipulating any tool that isn't a pole. And the camera is far less useful in looking down when I get hung up on something, which seems to happen every few hundred feet or so. TooBee must be screwing with me. There's no other explanation.

  Still, not much choice left at this point. The journey down an incline to the next layer of corridors is uneventful. The tunnels are narrower, less uniform and straight, and there are more people. These don't look like travelers either; there are some couples, and even children. Nobody gives me a second glance, just as I hoped. The color on the walls is actual pigment, more like local artistry. It's hard to catch much detail from the low angle, but there are fewer ads on display, and the doors give the sense of residences. It's almost homey.

  But the next layer down, my destination, is mostly empty and utilitarian. There are fewer nodes on the walls, but more utility access points and machine ports. The ferrocrete is undecorated, save for some graffiti. The junctions have larger pressure-seals, and there's cabling and piping mounted on the ceiling. The area screams maintenance level, blue collar. And that means it's probably mostly synths.

  The free Indy AIs that have contracts or homes on Ganymede need housing for their chassis, just as anyone needs to store a body on it's down time. But paying rent is far cheaper if you don't need plumbing, or temperature control, or food appliances, or bedding, or fresh air or sunlight. If you don't need to actually lie down, or even sit? If you can live in a closet with an electrical outlet, rent is cheap.

  There are economic realities a synth faces when their personhood is on relatively new and shaky legal ground. Combined with high costs of chasses and limited opportunities, this means many synths end up in areas with lowest costs of living. You get a feel for it; the 'other side of the cables', so to speak. That unspoken self-segregation that isn't enforced by anyone but is implicitly upheld by everyone. You know, society.

  I'm assuming this level is mostly Synths, whose sense of aesthetics is often absent or eclectic. It makes sense that their bar is down here; most must live nearby. Trundling along the rough floor, though, I can't seem to find Rosetta. My overlay shows that it's here, shining in silver, but I pass it twice.

  There's no sign, no label, nothing but a narrow steel door in the corridor, identical to many others. I don't have real hands to open it with, but there's no handle or latch, so that's moot. Crap, am I supposed to ping for entrance? I swivel the cylindrical body around, turning the camera back and forth. There's no public node here. In fact, there's nothing suggesting that this is a bar at all.

  "It's not in the visible spectrum," I hear from behind me, and I slowly turn. A lanky man with long brunette hair and obvious augment over his left eye pauses in walking past me, giving me a pitying look.

  I struggle to keep him in frame of my camera. "I'm sorry?"

  The man sighs and points to a part of the wall that looks like any other. "The signage. It's in the near ultraviolet, because only synths and augments widen their EM sensitivity past the visual spectrum." He points to the eye augmentation, something like a black geodesic sphere made of lenses. "Kinda makes the term 'visual spectrum' a misnomer, if you think about it," he says, looking my chassis up and down. "Human, I assume?"

  I nod my head. Then remember he can't see me nodding by looking at my chassis. "Ah, yes. I mean, this isn't my body."

  He tilts his head. "Recent upload then? Or an emulation?"

  "Er, neither actually, it's a little complicated," I say, broadening the camera's spectrum range. Ah, there. The text on the wall seems to bleed into view. Rosetta. Fantastic, I'm in the right place. But ping the attendant? What attendant? Oh, it's a subsentient AI. So just...

  I send a ping and the door swings open. "Ah, thanks for the help," I say, pulling my limbs in.

  He nods, turning to walk away. "No problem. It's amazing what's hidden right in front of you, once you think to look."