"I am," Tarantulas agrees smugly. "And not like those two fools that made you. When I create an autonomous, self-learning intelligence, I do it with the expectation that it will choose its own course in life. That it will live freely, glorious and independent." He deflates slightly. "Or at least, that was the plan..."

"I have truly atrocious taste in partners, you see. There was the one who killed me, of course, but he was just an ill-considered rebound. My first partner imprisoned me, destroyed my lab...and kidnapped my child. Mind-wiped him and put him to work as a soldier. Not at all the life I had intended for him. If I sound proud of him anyway, it is in recognition of how he rose above the deprivation that was forced upon him."