I should've sensed what she was capable of and ran the other way.

We spent the next few days planning the whole thing out. If her

little bowling-ball malfunction didn't show me what was really

going in that head of hers, her proficiency at planning a murder

should have.

At the time all I thought was, "Sure, she's a robot, of course she

would be good at planning a murder. It's how they think."

It turned out she already had his clone wrapped around her finger.

He was in love with her. He was engineered to be slow in the

intelligence department; all he could really do was perform some

menial tasks around the house. Somehow, though, she had managed to

spark some dormant impulse deep within his genetic code and he had

fallen for her. She assured me she could get him to do anything.

Of course, we couldn't actually get him to, you know, commit the

murder. There were too many fail-safes programmed into the genes of

those...things. The triple indemnity clause was rarely invoked.

Clones could still accidentally kill in the same way humans

sometimes could, but they couldn't intentionally do it.

Her husband - Walsh was his name - was due to attend a business

meeting on IO in a month. She said that he always went on a space

walk on the return trip. That was where we would do it. We'd murder

him, let the clone take the blame, and ride off into the sunset

with our bags of money.

Easy, huh? At this point I trusted her with everything. Planning a

murder together has a way of bringing people closer, whether you

like it or not. She had me all wrapped up in the details and in the

pictures she painted of our life together afterwards. There was

only one catch. She was like the clone, it was impossible for her

to actually kill Walsh. So, she turned to me and asked if I was

prepared to kill someone. She told me it wouldn't be pretty and she

would understand if I was queasy about it.

Looking into those glossy blue eyes of hers, I didn't hesitate for

a second. I said I'd kill him for her.