"He's hurt," Sinthia murmured, apropros of absolutely nothing, since biologically neither she nor the little 'bot around which she still held her cupped hands could feel. But she kept contact with the household thing; it was a sort of universal remote, it would learn--in a sense--commands and follow around the owners to repeat them to the necessary lower-order objects like viewing and privacy screens, autochefs and the like.

She held onto it on the side of its intact wing, really a round repulsor disk with the infrared array that it would sweep over the input sensor for whatever it was 'talking' to; it buzzed and trilled at her when she gave it a command to be still for Darcy when she picked it up, as if it were a bird likely to fly off. "Do you think they can feel it? When they're thrown away?" she asks, carefully inspecting the broken polymer of its wing and eye. She had no oils on her fingers to harm the wiring anyway.

"He looks like he can."