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As plans go, I'd been part of worse. All we needed now was a human with a doctorate (I had learned far more than I had ever wanted to know about Preservation's academic system during this conversation) to manufacture a legitimate reason to be at the university. As much as I hated to admit it, there was only one obvious choice.
I sighed. "We'll send Dr. Gurathin in."
Arada gave my nearest drone a weird look. "SecUnit, you do realise Gurathin isn't an actual doctor? Doctor is his first name."
"His what?" What the fuck was a first name?
"On Preservation, humans typically have two or more names," Mensah explained.
That didn't seem right. I said nothing, but my confusion must have shown on my face because she elaborated, "It's a holdover from a time when names were used for identity verification. For example, my full name is Ayda Gurathin Mensah. Ayda would be my first name and Mensah is my last name. Gurathin, my middle name, isn't used on most documentation."
What the fuck? Mensah had other names she hadn't told me about? "If your middle name is Gurathin, does that mean you're related to -" I couldn't bring myself to finish the sentence.
"No, it's a common name on Preservation."
Okay, so things weren't quite as bad as I'd first thought. They were still pretty bad though. Mensah was my favorite human and she didn't deserve to get stuck with a name like Gurathin. I pulled some documents on Preservation's name change policies to look at later.
"Arada, Overse, why don't you tell SecUnit your full names?" Ratthi suggested.
"Oh! Well, I'm Murderbot Arada and Overse is Peri Overse," Arada said.
Overse gave a nod of agreement. "Quite a coincidence, huh?"
That was an understatement. They had to be messing with me, right? My humans didn't usually make jokes out of my private name, but this was way too unlikely. It was like something out of one of my serials, or rather a bad fanfiction based on a serial. While preparing an adequately snarky retort, I checked their extended feed profiles, only to find their names listed exactly as they'd said. While I was looking, I checked Ratthi's profile, and -
"Ratthi, your name is not Howard Gurathin Thaddeus. I'm not falling for this."
"It is!" Ratthi said, far too happily given the situation. "Howard after my father, Thaddeus after his father, and Gurathin as the name passed down through generations of our family."
"That's a ridiculous name," I stated. Sometimes humans don't notice obvious things unless they're pointed out.
Ratthi nodded. "It sounds a bit pretentious so I go by Ratthi for short."
I didn't know how Ratthi was short for any of that, but whatever. If my name was Howard Gurathin Thaddeus I would go by any nickname I could too. "And you're not related to Gurathin?"
"Oh, I am! He's my brother."
I was so shocked I looked at him with my actual face. "No he isn't."
"He is!" Ratthi said. He didn't sound ashamed at all. "My family adopted Doctor when he first arrived at Preservation."
"Un-adopt him then."
"People," Mensah broke in. In an obvious attempt to redirect the conversation, she said, "We haven't discussed Pin-Lee's name yet."
From the corner, Pin-Lee spoke up. "And we never will."