An Hour From the Kitchen Cupboard

Dr. Gurathin has quietly come to the conclusion they prefer neutral gender identifiers. Murderbot feels indifferent about this. Still, this change somehow sets them on a path to forming a strong, strangely close bond. They end up talking about gender and feelings and learn a lot about each other. It's all very complicated and weird.

"I’d sat down 32.6 centimeters closer to Gurathin. My body had subconsciously chosen to sit in the middle of the couch, when previously we’d been at the two furthest ends from each other. Worse still, in the moment I somehow hadn’t even registered this change. I ran a full retroactive systems diagnostic, but everything came back operational and untampered. Upon seeing this complete report my performance reliability dropped by 2%. What was happening to me?"