Artificial Condition characters

Also known as SecUnit

Appears from the start

The SecUnit from the survey contract, now traveling alone and disguising itself as an augmented human. It is working its way toward RaviHyral, the mining installation where, according to the record, it killed the humans it was assigned to protect before its memory of the event was erased. It wants to know whether that is what happened. It has no owner supervising it, no legitimate identity, and a constant need to avoid the scans that would expose it as a construct.

Appears from the start

The bot pilot of a large university research transport, vastly more capable than the cargo bots the SecUnit has been riding with, and travelling between assignments with its crew off ship. It notices its stowaway immediately and bargains rather than reporting it: company, conversation and shared entertainment serials in exchange for help. It is arrogant, invasive, alarmingly powerful and better at planning than the SecUnit is. The SecUnit gives it a rude nickname and shortens it to ART.

First appears in chapter 3

One of three junior technicians stranded on the transit station after the woman they worked for on the installation below kept the results of their project and paid them nothing. Young, stubborn and out of money, she hires the SecUnit, whom she takes for a human security consultant, to protect the group while they try to get their work back.

First appears in chapter 3

One of Tapan's two colleagues, part of the same group of junior technicians cheated out of their project and their pay.

First appears in chapter 3

The third member of the group of junior technicians, and the most reluctant to go anywhere near their former employer again.

First appears in chapter 4

The businesswoman on the installation who employed the three technicians, kept the product of their work, and has no intention of handing it back. She has money, hired security of her own, and the habit of treating junior staff and constructs alike as disposable.

First appears in chapter 5

A construct owned by Tlacey and built for sexual companionship, kept obedient by exactly the kind of governor module the SecUnit freed itself from, and used by its owner as a courier and an informant. Its situation puts a question to the SecUnit that it would rather not answer: what it owes another construct that is still controlled.

First appears in chapter 6

One of two heavily augmented human security operatives working for Tlacey, hired for the work ordinary guards will not do. Equipped for combat and contemptuous of the security consultant they take the SecUnit to be, Wilken works alongside a long-standing partner, Gerth.