“Companions were not allowed to lie. I don’t know why. I had tried a few times when I was young to get Benjamin to lie, and he never could. As we got older, I tried experiments, attempting to find a way for him to lie. Lies of omission, white lies, whoppers. Nothing. He couldn’t lie. My father told me that they were programmed that way. He seemed kind of proud about that.
And now, I hoped, that would save my life.”