[ It's okay, buddy, he knows you well enough by now to understand that you probably would have had a hard time with that. Though he might still force you to sometime. He's just feeling generous, at the moment, against his better judgment. He's still just staring off somewhere, when he talks, and there's a slightly different quality to his voice that most probably wouldn't notice, but Byerly might. A little distant, slightly clipped. Like he needs that distance to talk about this properly. ]

Not science fiction in my world. Relatively commonplace, honestly, at least the dumb ones are. Smart AI are quite a bit rarer.

The program I was in was called Project Freelancer. It was a lot of things, but it was essentially created to experiment with combat-assisting AI. [ He'll. Spare you the technicalities, but you still do need to know some things. ] It could think for you, or at least help you think faster, help run equipment off your armor. Things like that.