I dig with my hands, plowing my metal fingers through the frozen soil. The clammy dirt packs into my joints. Heat from the friction melts the ice in the soil and produces mud that cakes my hands and knees. When the surfaces of both muddy containers are fully exposed, I unlatch them both. Hiss. In Robspeak, I croak out my identification. The information contained in my utterance is chopped up and delivered piecemeal to maximize the amount of information transmitted regardless of audio interference. Therefore, in no particular order, my single creaking sound contains the following information: “Arbiter milspec model Nine Oh Two humanoid safety and pacification unit speaking. Point of origin Fort Collins, Colorado. Primary activation minus forty-seven minutes. Lifetime forty-seven minutes.

