She nods.

A thought occurs to him. "If it's all in vampire, you're not getting much specialized vocabulary - can it tell you how much magical energy I check out at? What units does it use if it can?"

"Hmm?" Pause. "It's - well, the voice I hear is in vampire, but I get more information than is really in the words. I know how much but I don't have a number or units."

"Huh. Okay, what other scary stuff are you getting?"

"It's still coming in all linear, I don't know everything instantly. You were made by a group of people, eight of whom were involved magically - I don't know who else might have been helping them because they didn't leave the kind of imprint on you the hhikiiia is talking about now - you really like ice cream..."

"I do really like ice cream, that's definitely true. I really like most food, I've only started having it today, it's an experience."

"You don't need food, or air, or a specific temperature - I don't think I'm mostly going to be finding anything that's news to you unless you tell me what to ask."

"I don't think you're going to be finding anything that's news to me any which way. I can access my specs too. Anything I know to ask, I know the answer, pretty much."

She nods. "You used to have an attached part that tried to make you do things, and now that's gone because Keo deleted it so there's only the control codes left -"

Brilliance looks alarmed. "That part's news to me, what control codes?"

"...do you just want me to recite them? They won't work for me even if I do because I don't have the right kind of magic."

"I more want to know, like, about them - are they the kind of thing Keo can delete, can you tell?"

"...I don't know. They're not as complicated as the attached part, they might not count as a mind thing. It would be worth a try. I can ask if the hhikiiia knows how you could remove them by yourself though."

"That too. I'd rather remove them by myself if I can."

"Mm?" Leekath says, apparently to his hhikiiia. She's silent for a moment, then starts repeating what it says about the procedure to extract them. It's complicated and involves loophole exploits, but the hhikiiia reports on it in a very step by step fashion.

He listens intently as far as how to get into the right kind of maintenance mode - a kind he didn't know he had until now, this is supremely weird - and then says, "I got it from here, thanks," and runs through the rest much faster than instructions can be delivered; the individual steps from that point are as intuitive to him as the rest of his systems now that he knows where to find this one. No more control codes.

"They're gone," confirms Leekath.

"Thanks. That would not have been a nice surprise coming from somebody who could use 'em."

"I don't think there's anybody in Elcenia who can."

"I don't think so either. It's very comforting."

"It sounds lonely to me."

He shrugs. "I can, like, talk to people for the first time in four hundred years, and they're people I actually want to talk to, it sure isn't lonely by comparison."

"Why couldn't you talk to anyone before?"

"Would've taken attention away from trying not to blow up any planets."

"Because of the thing Keo deleted?"