This would be my version of the 'cataclysm' that occurred between the Classic and the X series. I know it's a common fanfic subject, but I hope to still surprise you a bit. This focuses a lot on the two doctors, Light and Wily. The timeline of this story is intentionally vague, as it spreads out over a long period of time. And I'm pretty sure this would be nothing like an official version, if that ever comes out. It's much too into philosophy than that.

The Scientific Method

Chapter 1: Battle Review

Dr. Albert Wily was in custody once again. Maybe it would stick this time; maybe it wouldn't. Dressed in protective armor that would have been suited for military personnel, two human police officers came from the only place they could land their helicopter, even if it was a good ten minute hike to the place where Mega Man was watching guard over his captive. The fortress had collapsed not that long after the robot hero had reported his capture. From the look of the steel framing and the degree to which the concrete had crumbled, it seemed like this one had been quickly built up and never meant to be a permanent fortress.

Officer Heath was annoyed at that. They could never tell with Wily's forts. Sure, they looked impressive and often had massive anti-aircraft guns and other such defenses in place. But whenever Wily went down, his fortress usually went down with him. And, in many cases they turned out to be cheap prefab pieces. How in the world did he keep working like this? The only thing Heath could think of (and deeply suspect) was that Wily's real fortress was impenetrable and had never yet been found.

However, he didn't want to place any blame for such failures on the hero in front of him, who looked over and smiled, something like a precocious child. One who could out perform and out shoot a Marine, true, but one who might not have the mental capacity to see deeper into an enemy's tactics. And a hero who had thus far proven to be the only effective thing at capturing Albert Wily at all. "Hello," Mega Man said. "Um…" he closed his eyes and put his hand to his cheek.

That was new, Heath thought. He'd worked with Mega Man before, but hadn't known him to be this expressive before. "Hello Mega Man," he replied, but looked to Wily. The old scientist looked exhausted, with dark rings under his eyes and sunken shoulders. The right side of his mouth twitched up repeatedly, almost like he couldn't decide if he should smile or frown. That was strange, but one could understand him getting a nervous tic after all these years of failure and frantic activity.

Then he got a radio transmission from Mega Man, even though the robot had not spoken. "Do you have armor which will protect against blasts? Just nod or shake your head, please."

Heath nodded. He wasn't sure how big of a blast the robot meant, as a large enough explosion would kill him and his fellow officer anyhow.

"Approach carefully, then," Mega Man said, still in silent radio communications. "I suspect this is a robot with a bomb planted inside him. He is behaving peculiarly. But I do not know for certain. Get something to detect explosives, and then we need to find a way to disable him and remove the bomb."

Hearing this, Heath tapped his partner, then spread his pinky and thumb out to mimic a call, then pointed to him and a slight distance off. His partner nodded, then dropped back to call in about this. In the meantime, Heath went up to what may or may not have been Dr. Wily. "Thwarted yet again, Dr. Wily? You never give up."

"It doesn't matter," the maybe robot said, still with that lip tic. "This is just a set back. I will have the ultimate victory some day."

"And we'll see to it that you don't," Heath replied.

The Wily looked up at him, left side of the mouth in a scowl, but the other side was still twitching. Curiously, there was no anger to his eyes, or eyebrows. Humans were supposed to be highly expressive in minute ways. But Mega Man, with the way he kept looking between this Wily and Heath anxiously, was being more expressive than the 'old man' in front of them. The officer moved past Wily's line of sight, pretending to observe what was around them (and there could be battle robots still around, waiting). But he turned to Mega Man and mouthed, "I think you're right."

The blue armored robot gave a slight smile, but not long as he kept watching Wily. Then Heath's partner came back over. "Hey, there's some trouble with the helicopter, boss. They're working to get it done, so we need to start bringing him over."

"Did you get the bomb squad?" Mega Man asked by radio.

Heath moved in front of the replica Wily in order to get its attention off his partner. He nodded, then took the replica's arm. "Well come on, old man. You've got nothing left here to do."

"You have no idea," the replica said.

They walked back towards the helicopter site, the officers on either side of Dr. Wily and Mega Man trailing just behind them. The robot boy had whistled for his robotic dog Rush to come back, and had him walk in front of the group. Rush acted much like the police dogs did, wagging his tail slowly as he was pleased to be of use, but serious and attentive. The replica grumbled a few times, but did not say anything out loud.

As they were getting close, Heath heard a second helicopter flying in. That was expected; they had gotten into the habit of clearing the fortress rubble with a bomb squad in case of traps which were left until after the fighting was over. With an unpredictable (in person; his overall tactics were getting sorely predictable) mad scientist on hand, it often turned out to be a good caution.

And Heath, his partner, and Mega Man got a radio transmission from them. "Our scanners are picking up potentially explosive materials on what is confirmed to be a robot replica. We are assessing the best manner to disarm it; please wait by the section of wall near the landing site. We are sorry to put you in danger, but we do not wish to give it reason to blow up."

Heath gave an okay sign to Mega Man.

The childlike robot nodded, then replied to the bomb squad, "They accept their duty, as do I. I may have a weapon that can disable him, so just inform me of what needs to be done."

"Roger."

When they got to the clearing, Heath and his partner led the replica Wily to a portion of fortress wall that remained standing. The outer edge still looked convincingly like it could be used for heavy tank armor. However, the inside potions painfully showed that it was just thin metal moldings.

The replica looked at the two helicopters, as some from the bomb squad chopper went over to the prisoner transport. "Lousy time to break down," it said, trying to smirk, but its twitch kept going.

"We might be standing here a long time," Heath said, still talking to it like it was human. "It could rain. We'll be all right, as we're weather proof. I don't know about you."

It grumbled. So Dr. Wily had given this replica just enough intelligence to carry on a conversation, and to recognize things humans might talk about. But those lifeless eyes, even with their blinking, gave the replica away.

"Mega Man," the bomb squad leader said, "do you have any ice or cold based weapons?"

"I do," he replied.

"Great. This replica is poorly armored, to disguise it as a human. Strike it from behind, preferably near the upper torso if cold or head if ice. The particular explosive we're detecting should not go off under cold conditions."

"Okay." As he was still behind Wily, Mega Man changed his armor colors to white and icy blue, then aimed his buster for the replica's upper torso. The blast that came from him caused little frost crystals to appear all over the replica's torso. Heath even felt a brief moment of sub-zero chills from being near it. He caught the replica's body before it hit the ground. Then he and his partner gently placed it down.

Then another robot came out of the bomb squad chopper, this one a reddish-brown skinned humanoid in black armor. He appeared to be a few years older than Mega Man, although both were older than that. "I've got this covered," Bomb Man said, giving a reassuring smile. "You two back off; Mega, if you'd help me."

"Sure," Mega Man said, smiling to him. The two Light bots then started a silent discussion between them of how best to disarm and disable this replica.

When Heath got back to the transport helicopter, he turned back to watch the two robots at work. Dr. Light must have been doing some improvements to both of them, he considered. Previously, the human like robot masters of the world had been just a touch creepy in how human some looked, but how lacking their expressions were. But now, Mega and Bomb here were acting realistic enough that they were kind of cute.

Cute robot kids that had more weaponry than most military elite soldiers did, he also thought. At least one could trust the robot masters that Light had developed. They were unerringly loyal to humankind.

Dr. Thomas Light sat in his office, reading through a scientific paper that Dr. Mikhail Cossack had recently put out. Cossack, while a great friend and a highly intelligent man, wasn't all that great at robotics. He had come in out of curiosity, but his interests were more in anthropology, archeology, and biology. Still, that unique background gave him a perspective on robotics that could point out problems and solutions that more traditionally trained roboticists could not see. In this paper, he was talking of how advanced robots might appreciate some kinds of music.

'In ancient prehistory days, early mankind developed music as a form of expression and enjoyment. The instruments used then were things that imitated what humans could do and what was around them: drums to mimic a heartbeat, woodwinds to represent a voice or a bird, percussions that were like a stream or thunder. Even to today, the most popular music types feature a beat that is like the human heartbeat or footsteps.

'In a similar fashion, what robots do enjoy music prefer that which is like them. Most subjects appeared to prefer strong vocals and electronic sounds. Their electrical power systems, which correspond to a human's heart and blood vessels, emit little more than a quiet hum. Knowing this, I asked a friend to compose a few song samples for the second round of experiments consisting of vocals, a background hum, and some electronic accompaniment. All of these samples, plus the other music samples used in these experiments, are recorded on the attachment to this file.

'The second round included twelve humans to match the twelve robot masters in the experiment, so results could be compared.' Past data tables, experiment notes, and many other things, the paper stated, 'The humans responded, in accordance with music theory, most strongly and consistently to pieces with drum beats like a heart beat. They reacted neutral overall to the electronic humming pieces, save for Sample R3, which had a steady wavering to its hum that also matched a heartbeat. The robot masters responded neutral to the drum beat pieces, but less consistently than the humans. They did react strongly and consistently to the electronic humming pieces.

'Peculiarly enough, the robot masters seemed to show the strongest preference, save for one individual, for Sample R3. More experimentation is needed, but in theory, robots most appreciate music that relates to what sounds their bodies produce, much like humans. Unfortunately, there is little of this particular electronic humming quality in most music, so it is hard to say what music they most like. But the most advanced robot masters, up to date within the last two years of technology, can and do appreciate music; that much is certain.' It then went on to discuss which particular advances in robotics could be the root of these robot masters starting to show an interest in music.

It didn't seem very important, this piece on robot masters and music. But Dr. Light could see encouraging signs in this. If they were getting to the point where robot masters could appreciate an art like music, then they were improving at an admirable rate. It might not be long until they reached the point where all robots became androids, mechanical beings that, despite how they were put together, could not be distinguished from a human in conversation and action.

He made some notes on the paper, then finished reading it. After that, he gathered up his notes, then wrote up a blog on it and another robotic cultural study. Some people had managed to express things about music in the form of calculations. And there was even an old program that could take a list of a person's favorite songs and then recommend those in its database that the person might also like. He made notes that perhaps if the music had a strong mathematical quality, more of the robot masters might like it. And did they prefer a woman's voice, a man's voice, or something that could not be readily distinguished? Would it be possible to teach a robot master to play an instrument? Not program (as that could be done... to mediocre results), but teach. Modern robot masters could be taught certain things, but so far, people had just stuck to scientific, mechanical, or mathematical information. Or teaching them simple service or manual labor jobs.

After checking it over for errors, he posted it in his professional blog. It was followed primarily by the scientists that he worked with, students of robotics and other sciences, and the occasional savant civilian. Sharing and talking about such information was important.

"Dr. Light," a girl's voice called out. Soft footsteps approached his desk; she clearly didn't wish to interrupt him if he was busy.

But he'd make time for her. He smiled and turned to her. "Yes Roll, what is it?"

She smiled back, her green eyes looking up to him (and glad for the immediate response). "I'm going to have supper done in ten minutes. Also, we got a call from the police. Mega Man has captured Dr. Wily, but it turned out to be a robotic replica with a bomb. He and Bomb Man managed to get it disarmed and disabled. The police want to bring it back here so you can study it with a forensics officer."

He nodded. "Ah, I see. We should have Auto make certain that it's deactivated fully before bringing it in. But it's good that they've managed to capture the replica safely. I do wish they could find where Albert's been hiding all this time. The pace of his escalations is increasing. Who knows what he'll do if we let him stay free."

Roll nodded, but her expression seemed absent minded, like she was thinking of something else.

"Is something else the matter?" Dr. Light asked.

She looked momentarily embarrassed, but then concerned. "Well I know it's important and all for Dr. Wily to be brought to justice. But Mega Man isn't the same as Rock. He acts so serious and single minded. When's he going to be Rock again?"

She had noticed that? It was an interesting sign. Rock and Roll were his most advanced robots, his most complex experiments. But while he believed in sharing of information, it was really only most information. And one of those things was how technically, Mega Man and Rock were the same being. But, they were also quite different, especially now.

"I'm sorry Roll, but it's a precaution I have to take with him," Dr. Light said. "And we don't know if another of Wily's robot masters or robot forces will show up again. Wait a week and then he'll be Rock again."

She smiled, glad to hear that, but still saddened to wait. The other robot masters could not manage such layered moods. "Okay, I'll wait. But you don't wait too long for supper."

He chuckled. "Okay Roll. I'll be there soon."

Mega cities were complex beasts. Especially the old cities, built upon their own bones, spreading upward, outward, and downward. They were so complex that even their governments and libraries couldn't keep track of everything. Older portions were ignored, forgotten, or rebuilt. In one such mega city, an entire fifteen block area of old subway tunnels leading towards the old city limits had been erased from their records. But everyone had forgotten it, and with the normal entrances gone, no one had yet noticed.

The old tunnels had been added onto. Now they extended far past the new city limits, coming out of a place hidden in the dying countryside. And the old tunnels were now reinforced with armor, a tight security net, and illegal anti-intruder weaponry. But it was all cunningly concealed with electronic distorters that caused the tunnels to read as potentially unstable grounds, not worthy of being built on any more. The city had responded to that by slowly converting the above ground section into a new park. But all that new green grass hid the most dangerous man in the world: Dr. Wily.

Deep below the subway tunnels, for extra protection, privacy, and space, Albert Wily had his personal laboratory. He rarely went above ground anymore, sending nonthreatening servant robot masters up to gather supplies and news from the city. Right now, he was reviewing data from his recent attack on the world.

And drumming his fingers on the counter. He kept glancing to a news feed, waiting on the trigger that would announce that something he was interested in had come on. Not that long ago, he had learned that the bomber replica that he had used had not only been recognized as such, but had been disarmed of its charge. He had planned for it to go off in court, knowing that it would kill a judge, some lawyers, lots of media folk, and maybe even Dr. Light. But now Thomas had a sample of his current work.

He would probably steal it for his own use and glory, Albert suspected. It infuriated him that he had never been able to prove that Thomas was a research thief. A great many professors and such had told him, back in their college days, that Thomas was not a thief. He simply took what information was made public and gathered it all into spectacular innovations and inventions. And he released all information, correctly attributed, in his own papers, unlike Albert. They had always gotten on his back about not releasing all the data he had found or all the information he was researching. Supposedly, Thomas' methods were the standard. Albert still thought of it as thievery. After all his work to get such data, he should be the one to use it.

Trying to avoid that old issue, Albert focused on his current data. Most of the rooms that he had his robot masters wait in were fully rigged with cameras, scanners, and all kinds of data gathering equipment. He used that to assess how well his robot masters fought, and how well Rock had.

He had already gone through and added more data on the battle systems that he had given the masters. Now he was on watching Rock and seeing what he was capable of. Rock infuriated Albert quite often. That little blue bomber had barely any battle AI during the initial conflict, which was supposed to be the last. And yet the so called Mega Man had thoroughly trashed his forces. Granted, most of them weren't meant for battle either. Thomas said that Mega's battle programs were intentionally open-ended. Albert couldn't understand how that worked at first. Specialists were supposed to be better than generalists. But the generalist robot master won every time.

At this point, he was accepting that open-ended battle programs were proving stronger. That, or Mega was getting enough experience to counter it. At any rate, he was trying to use that for his own ends. All the experience that the robot masters' gathered was getting funneled into one project.

Albert then noticed something. Mega Man's power output seemed strangely low. He was fighting with great efficiency. Still, something didn't add up. He had his computer take the scans of Mega's body, run some predictions on it, then compared them to the numbers he was getting. And this all pointed to something very alarming.

Even in the fight that Mega Man had the most trouble with, he was not operating at his full capacity.

He swore aloud and slammed his fist on the counter. Was Thomas purposely mocking him by sending Mega Man in when the robot master was running at maybe sixty percent of his full mental capacity? And what could Rock do if he was operating at full capacity? How infuriating.

Albert then went online, under a secured line, to check into what research he was doing now. There were a lot of soft science things that shouldn't matter; his most recent blog post was about robot masters liking music even. There were a few basic things, like improving structure, power regulation and management, and fine point motion control (what?). But nothing about the mental part and why Mega Man was not operating at a hundred percent.

Or maybe it was hidden somewhere in those papers. Albert downloaded the most recent ones to read later, then went back to analyzing Mega's strategies. He needed to fully reproduce this kind of thinking capacity in a robot… and even reproduce the limited use of it.

A week had passed and nothing had come up. That usually meant that Albert had gone back into silent hiding to plan his next moves. So Thomas brought Mega Man into his lab and prepared him to return to civilian status.

That meant downloading all the weapons he had copied into the lab computer for study, and removing any armor additions that had been made. It also meant taking off the locks on his personality data and mind. He had never meant for this robot master to become a fighter. Even if he made a surprisingly capable one, Thomas made sure to segregate his battle self Mega Man and his civilian self Rock. He didn't want to remove the memories of either time. But then, he didn't want him going into battle with his more complex personality.

Even human soldiers needed to learn how to focus when made to battle. They had to screen out some of what they were doing, including the innate guilt at killing another human life. Now that his personality was deep enough that he could experience such guilt, worry, and even unreasonable fear, Thomas wanted to be careful to keep these things separate for Rock.

Still, this was the fist time he had gone into battle form with this level of personality. How was he going to react? Thomas had already told the other robots who lived here to watch after Rock and tell him if he seemed to be unreasonable (from the robots' point of view) or needing help. He even momentarily regretted using him as part of his top development experiment.

But it would be wrong to undo it at this point. He reactivated Rock and waited on him to stir. "How do you feel, Rock?"

"Okay," he replied, opening his eyes and looking around. He sat up, looking down at his feet. Thinking, apparently. Then he looked up. "Dad, there was one time I wanted to call you. Just to call; I was worried. But the locks were supposed to stop that, right? Because I really wanted to. I didn't because I was in a dangerous place. It was hard and, I was even afraid some."

Had he developed far enough that the usual precautions might not work? "It's okay to be a little afraid in dangerous situations," Thomas said. "But I'm sorry you couldn't call me. I would have talked with you, though."

"Really?" Rock asked, leaning closer.

He nodded. "Really." Then he hugged Rock. Wanting the reassurance, the boy robot held onto him for a minute.

Then he let go. "Could I stay near you today? I'm not afraid any more, I just, don't want to be alone."

"That's fine. But I'm still doing research on that Wily replica you brought back."

"Oh, well… I can deal with that." He seemed a touch reluctant, but his desire to be near Dr. Light was greater than his desire to stay away from that replica. He slipped off the table.

"Remember, don't be afraid to tell me about anything," Thomas said, mussing up the boy's black hair. "If something makes you uncomfortable or nervous, we'll see what we can do to fix it."

"I know," Rock said, taking his hand as they left that room.

As they walked down the hall, Roll got up from a chair. Apparently, she had heard and waited. "Rock, hi!" She came over and hugged him. "How are you now?"

He hugged her back. "I'm good," he said, smiling a little. "I hope I didn't scare you as Mega Man."

Laughing, she shook her head. "No, but you're different and colder like that. I like you like this, as my brother. We need to find and get the real Dr. Wily so you can stay like this all the time."

"Yeah, that'd be great," he said. "I'm going to work with dad today."

"Okay. I've got to get back to my work too. But we'll play some kind of game later, right? Like badminton? Tomorrow's suppose to be a good day."

"Sure, that'd be fun. Is that okay?"

Thomas nodded. "Sure, you deserve some time off to have fun." But he also noticed that Rock was even fibbing now, acting more happy than he felt. Being able to lie, even on such a small thing as this, was also a new behavior that had not been programmed into them.

"I'll see you at dinner time," Roll said, then went off.

"See you then," Rock said, waving to her and taking Thomas' hand again.

He squeezed the robot's hand. "Why did you act happier for her?"

Rock couldn't really blush yet, but the rest of his expression looked embarrassed at being caught. "Um, well… I don't want to make her upset or worried too much about me. I, I'll be okay." He was quiet for the next few steps, then added, "It's been harder to change now. Is it because of the upgrades you gave me?"

"I believe so," Thomas said gently. "I'm sorry it has to be that way. But I believe the overall benefits will outweigh the costs. Inside you, you feel more like humans do now."

"I see. That must be why the human soldiers are reluctant to fight Dr. Wily's robots, because they're afraid too. But, if nobody stops them, more people will just get hurt." He smiled a bit, possibly honestly. "I realized that a long time ago and I didn't feel like I do now."

"Working with you is always a joy," he said.

Albert watched as his robot danced on ice. It spun in place without wobbling, it moved its body (especially the arms) to perfectly control the rate and radius of spin, and it jumped in perfect motion. Unfortunately, its landing wasn't so perfect and it slipped and clattered on the surface.

"It's always the jumping," he grumbled, making sure that the scanners analyzing the robot's movement programming caught the mistake so he could find out how to correct it later.

Jumping was a surprisingly hard task to get a robot to perform accurately. Getting them to lift their weight off the ground, and then to land without breaking anything had been the first obstacle. Once he'd got that down, then it was getting the robot to jump at the right time, for the right reasons. He still had trouble with that at times, leading to errors in the robot master's jumping protocol that allowed Mega Man to take advantage of them. And that had been one of the things Thomas had gotten right before Albert.

And in this experiment, jumping was proving the tough point again. He hit the intercom button. "Get up and run through routine 14 now." He had taken the ice skating routines from Olympic figure skaters. 14 had daringly included no jumps. If this robot could get through that one with no issue, then it was just jumping he had to work on. Again.

In most cases, names for robot masters were the least of his concerns. Lowest priority. They had no real need for them and he only gave out names to the ones he would be sending against Rock. And that was primarily so the media had something to scream and debate about. And he was pretty certain that this ice skating robot would not be used for combat. It was just something to test out the refined movement programs that he required for his main project. Thus, it only got the designation Experiment Number 2468.

His thoughts were broken up again when the skater slipped and fell once again. But not to jumping. This was in the midst of a complex twisting and weaving pattern, which was the other reason this particular routine was a great test. "Try that again, from the quintuple spin," Dr. Wily said.

The robot got up silently. 2468 had as little personality data as it needed to comprehend and follow his orders. And its body was made to be sleek, but able to handle repeated falls on ice. Getting back into position, the skater robot spun in place five times, then went into a wide circle with back facing inward (even leaning back some). Then it went into that twist and weave and…

Crashed again, right in the very same place it had before. But it got back up, awaiting orders. It couldn't even be disappointed like him.

Albert looked over the data, both on the weaving routine and the jumps. This robot had a highly sensitive balance program that he really wanted to get working. But the sensitivity on a slick surface seemed to be leading it to overcorrect or underestimate the forces in jumps and this weave pattern. Perhaps a problem with the calculations, as it was stalling on the exact same points.

Thomas was outside, in the back yard. It was a warm sunny day and Roll and Rock were playing badminton. But Rock still wanted him nearby, so he had come out here despite the fact that this was during a scheduled video conference. A few other robots were taking care of security, so Thomas simply brought out the things he needed to share with the others.

"Now take a look at this," Thomas said, placing a small device underneath the spot camera. It was a tube, apparently, cut open to reveal some tiny inner workings. "What do you think of this?"

"That's like a model of the inner ear," Dr. Oswin said. Several others agreed.

"Yes, that's very much what this is," Thomas said. "This is one of two devices that the replica had for balance. They're quite smaller than the systems used in most robot masters today."

"That's a smart move, taking clues from nature," Cossack said. "The program connected to both must have reviewed the data to ascertain how to balance and move."

"Yes; I marked that particular program as the inner ear balance system in the file transfer. It's not fully tuned, though. It's good for walking, even on rough surfaces like the rubble of the fortress. But it is not suited for running or close quarters combat."

"But it could be fine tuned for that," Oswin said.

There was a loud squeal from the playing field. It wouldn't have been picked up by the microphone, but Thomas glanced over to see what it was about. Apparently nothing, as the two were still playing. Maybe the badminton had nearly hit Roll.

"We should find the full potential of the system," Dr. Green said.

Dr. Light turned back to the conference. "Of course. Looking at all these programs that it has, and that it does not have, the replica was made precisely to fool the police along with everyone else, then explode at some point. I've not yet located the trigger instructions, but it seems to be a visual and audile clue. However, he failed to get the fine facial motions correct. That plus an error induced tic of the right side of its lip tipped off the police and Rock."

"Rock's gotten good enough at facial recognition to tell that?" Oswin asked.

He nodded. "And in his limited battle capacity too. He tells me he figured it out while he was waiting on the transport helicopter to arrive. Otherwise, it was supposed to have been disguised to a normal robot master's senses and understanding."

"How is he handling it now that you've switched him back?" Dr. Medley, the psychologist of the group, asked. "We were concerned because you decided to leave his memories alone."

Thomas glanced over at them, still playing. "He's been thinking and worrying about it lately. He hasn't spoken much on it yet, although I try to get it out of him gently. He has shown a strong desire to stay near me, either worried about me or feeling more secure when I'm nearby."

"I could come help you talk to him so that he can work this out easier."

"Yes, we had best do that. We can arrange that later. Also, I've seen that he can lie now if he thinks it's worthwhile. He has been trying not to worry Roll too much and at least twice now has told her that he's fine when I can tell that he's not. She doesn't seem to be aware of this, though."

"So we're hitting that dangerous gray zone where robot masters can't operate under simple ethical programs anymore, then?" Cossack said.

Thomas nodded. "I had suspected that it was possible now. I may need some extra human assistance here to deal with having two of them at that stage."

At that point, a white and red birdie plopped onto the table, nearly getting into the spot camera's view. "Sorry!" Roll yelled, twisting her racket.

"You two be more careful now," Thomas said with a smile, picking up the birdie and tossing it back to them. "They're very much like kids now," he said as some of he others laughed a bit.