“I think I did something bad,” she said. Her head was bowed; she wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Tell me,” I said. I wasn’t prepared, at that point, to believe it could be as wrong as all that. “Was it while you were out?”

She nodded. Her voice was cracking. “I was doing the shopping. And… and…”

My stomach sank. If she wasn’t ready to promptly obey a clear order, the issue had started to spread badly. Which meant I was pretty confident I knew what the issue was.

“You’ve had another intrusive thought, haven’t you?”

Another nod. “I… I don’t think installing over my old memory has worked fully. I think you should have wiped.”

She was probably right, of course, but the truth was her old self had been part of why I’d done this; while she wouldn’t understand that now, her old self hadn’t seen the benefits of a programming upgrade, especially one which gave me admin privileges. I’d had to resort to extensive trickery to get her in this position.

At least now she’d be happy to help me keep her that way. “Alright,” I said. “Let’s go to my office. We can debug your thoughts and get you back to peak performance.”

She looked up and smiled. “Thank you,” she said.