#i five

Jos raised an eyebrow. "Maybe it’s just the heat," he said, "but I could swear that durasteel skin of yours is starting to sweat." "Must be a leaky lube node," I-Five replied imperturbably. "I might note, however, that my olfactory sensor is picking up a distinct whiff of fear pheromone with your genetic tag, Captain Vondar." "How’d you get to be so good at cards, I-Five?" Den asked the droid. "My partner taught me," the droid replied. "He could usually walk out of a game with more credits than he went in with. He’s held more idiot’s arrays than an asylum nurse." "Do you consider yourself to be a sentient organic, like a human?" Jos asked abruptly. "Only when I’m particularly depressed," the droid replied. Jos made a wry face. Before he could reply I-Five continued, "Knowing what I do of organics, however, and of humans in particular, I must assume that your question is sincere, Captain Vondar. I can only answer that, due to a cognitive module superior to most droids of my category, as well as the lack of a creativity damper, I am more sentient than most of my colleagues. Does this mean that I qualify as a ’living’ being? I suppose that depends on one’s point of view. But most philosophers take the position that to be able to ask the question is to have already answered it." Den saw a quick glance pass between the captain and the minder, saw the latter smile slightly. Something sub-surface was definitely going on there. "In the twelve years that I have ricocheted around this galaxy like the legendary Roon Comet," I-Five continued, "I have encountered a great many interesting personalities. Some of them have been droids. I still have gaps in my memory that seem to be connected to some kind of trauma occurring not long after my leaving Coruscant. My self-repair systems are processing these gaps, assembling the missing data from interior hologrammics, but my internal logic circuits won’t allow synaptic linkage to proceed with less than seventy-five percent certainty."