Buffy and Cassandra at the End of Days
Cassandra and the Potentials
"We're all going to die?" Cassandra approached Buffy slowly as Cassandra sorted the mail. "You sound like the last thing the crash investigator hears the pilot saying on the cockpit voice recorder just before the loud crunch." Cassandra dropped the mail onto the kitchen table almost appearing frustrated by circumstances. "Is this the first in a series of lectures? Tomorrow – estate planning? How to accept death. Today demons will kill you, in your old age, the threat comes from a murky smudge in your brain the doctor sees on a CT scan?"
"You don't think we could all die?" Buffy stood next to the coffee maker Cassandra carefully tended.
"I'm a machine. I'm dead already but if you mean that I might cease to function? Yes, I have thought about that. It's all too big for me." Cassandra explained to Buffy. "You speak of it as a certainty – I haven't yet made that pronouncement. We could all die but I don't know that for sure. One problem I face in making this prediction comes out of my lack of solid intelligence information on demons. My software was designed to predict events like the North Koreans suddenly storming south."
Buffy poured herself a cup of the carefully brewed coffee Cassandra had made. Cassandra didn't express emotions although Buffy had no doubt the girl had them. Cassandra took pride in her computing power and had a great sense of purpose when given difficult problems and she gave the impression of an active intellectual life.
"Am I intruding on your territory?" Buffy asked seriously. "Did I insult your delicate cybernetic pride?"
Buffy had discovered how to play along with Cassandra. Half the time, Cassandra did her thing almost invisibly and quietly but while the cyborg never admitted to having pride; she showed pride in the subtle ways she chose her words. Cassandra considered herself the best computer on Earth; the acme of logic and the 'Princess of Prediction'. The potentials had chosen to nickname her 'The Princess' as a tribute to her fussy ways, neat appearance and dainty looks. She had overheard Buffy lecturing the potentials but because she lacked the ability to properly read humans; she made an insult out of a warning. Cassandra must have taken it as a prediction and one her mighty mathematical mind had not made.
"I felt no insult. I think it a tad abrupt to make such pronouncements this early." Cassandra had no emotion in her voice but she cleaned lint off her black robe when nervous or a tad insulted. "I can't see any real benefit in scaring young girls."
At first Buffy had a deep distrust of Cassandra. Cassandra was a cyborg – a kind of robot - human artificial hybrid and artificial beings had proven dangerous in the past. In the past few days, Buffy had come to realize the other robots like the Buffybot sought to imitate human behavior and emotions to disguise evil intentions. Cassandra looked like a human but her eyes and her mode of dress made it clear she was a very odd looking one. She made no effort to act as a human: she was in no doubt she was a computer and a very powerful one. She reminded Buffy of the HAL 9000 computer in 2001 A Space Odyssey and the sequel. Cassandra had conceptual problems with deep issues such as fear or death or evil. Buffy had tried to imagine Cassandra trying to kill all of them and couldn't picture it without hearing the little robot explain that intention wholly and clinically while everyone ran off or tied her up.
The little robot only left the house to run errands such as shopping and Buffy had accompanied her on shopping trips. Cassandra shopped and proved an utter pain on a shopping trip. Buffy found her obsessive, detail oriented and she loved electronics. Buffy had let her walk down to the church across from the school and Cassandra left and returned precisely on time and did exactly as she had stated. She had passed that test and Buffy decided against letting Cassandra wander alone at night. Cassandra was unique: she was the only artificial being Buffy had seen who had no desire to harm them and she had a certain way about her that made her endearing. Her computing power also made her a powerful ally in the upcoming fight.
"You don't know them," Buffy took a long pull on her coffee, "the enemies we face."
"Does that matter?" Cassandra paced the room. "I merely thought it premature to make such pronouncements before you had consulted with me. Currently I lack sufficient information to make that prediction."
Buffy waited in silence. Cassandra always spoke her 'mind' but moved between being a simpleton and a god. While smarter than most people, Cassandra lacked the little voice in her head to tell her the following would sound 'idiotic' or 'odd'. Part of Cassandra's charm was her ability to swing between speaking profound truths about life and saying something funny, sarcastic, dark or wildly out of line.
"When I know with certainty that we're going to die; I'll let you all know." Cassandra brushed her fine black vest as her usual show of nerves. Buffy wondered if Cassandra could care if she sounded like a simpleton. "At the point where we're certain to die and all my calculations predict that, circumstances will make it self evident to everyone."
Buffy had to keep from laughing. She didn't want coffee dripping out of her nose.
"What do you mean?" Buffy found this question came up a good deal with Cassandra.
Cassandra tidied up the napkins in their wooden holder. "You're the Slayer. You have a kind of authority I don't have and so the girls in your command hang on your words. I think it best not to speak of things like death until I have certainty. At that point, I probably can't do anything helpful except record all your last wills and testaments. Death doesn't come as a surprise when you see the engines drop off the plane. At that point, predicting certain death would be redundant and I couldn't be heard over the screams of the other passengers."
!* * *
Cassandra watched Buffy and the Potential Slayers leave but barely paid their departure any attention. She hoped for a quiet evening of 'music' as she lay on her back on the couch with her CD player and a few choice recordings of Mahler from the public library. She didn't complain about the crowded conditions in the house but she found a need for some space to relax – if that was the proper word for it. She needed time to fill her head with the digital streams of dead composers but as a tribute to her forethought; she lay on the couch in a manner that allowed her to see the dining room and even as far as the kitchen. She slipped on the head set and began to listen to Mahler's Sixth Symphony – a complex piece of century old orchestral music that spanned two compact discs.
She looked utterly at ease as Willow and Xander walked past her. She couldn't hear the conversation and decided this was for the best. Faint and tinny pieces of melody floated up and went away as the music surged forward. Cassandra noticed the people but they appeared occupied in some kind of task and she wished to be left out of the fun at this moment. 'I don't want to be implicated in this.' was the directive she followed.
Mahler rumbled in the background as she waited for the smoke and fireworks. She had a clear view of everything in the room but like all magic; she could make no sense of it.
Xander, Andrew, Anya, Willow and Dawn sat around the dining room table and they began placing items in a circular arrangement.
Cassandra forecast unfortunate bungling with her stuck out in front of the house for hours. She decided to ask a few pertinent questions.
"May I ask what you are trying to do?" Cassandra pressed pause on the player. "Should I go down to the basement and listen to music?" She waved her CD player in her hand. "Do I need to ready the bomb shelter?" She decided to watch the happenings for insurance purposes then realized the insurance company had already pulled the plug on their household policy because of problems with the house having been destroyed mysteriously in the past.
"We're casting a spell to find potential slayers." Willow explained as she fussed over the placement of items. "We need to find out where they might be."
Cassandra sat up. "A spell to find potential slayers?" She examined the contents of the cups, pots and plates on the table but they made no sense to her although she had to speculate on how much the snakeskin was worth. "Will this supernatural inquiry cause any problems for me?" She held up her black CD player. "If you need me to put out any fires, I'll have my hand resting over the 'Pause' button."
"You can go back to listening to music if you want." Xander told Cassandra so Cassandra closed her eyes and resumed playing her CD.
"The room is filling with smoke or sulfurous vapors!" Cassandra shouted at the group in the dining room. She opened her eyes because they had begun to water badly. She had no sense of smell or taste but the pain in her eyes meant the air had begun to become bad. A glowing ball of gas in the living room had begun to swirl around.
Cassandra noted the panic in the room.
Dawn flew across the room and the glowing amber flames of something Cassandra couldn't comprehend pinned her to the door.
"I heard you guys mumbling about the spell misfiring." Cassandra tried to shout over the rush of Anya and Willow, Andrew and Xander trying to bring the situation under control. "The goat caught fire?"
Cassandra sat up. "Is this another attempt to bring people together?"
"Cassandra...please." Willow said quickly.
"Dawn!" Willow yelled.
"She gained air time." Cassandra explained as she disconnected her earphones. "Should I see if I can raise the authorities on the phone?" She asked politely. "I'll make the call and you can tell me what you'll need to rescue the situation."
"Can you go outside under the tree and wait!" Anya yelled.
Cassandra grabbed her CD player and left the house and sat under the tree.
!* * *
"I did predict this." Cassandra looked at Willow and Anya. "I have no obligation to warn you if something like this could happen because I have no software for Wiccan malfunctions or when the forces of magic and mayhem causes a blue screen of death in reality." Casandra didn't look confused: she looked irritated with the two girls for expecting her and her computing prowess to rescue them from their own acts of idiocy.
"Dawn is the next slayer." Willow told Cassandra as they all stood under the old chestnut tree. "Why didn't you tell us? I thought you could make accurate predictions." Willow had a shaky voice. "Dawn isn't the next slayer?" Cassandra bluntly told the two girls. She had predicted the events of this evening but she had to have some knowledge of what she had predicted. She knew what a North Korean invasion of South Korea or a nuclear blast over Austin Texas did to people, buildings or guitars. She didn't know Wiccan magic or what it should do. She had no idea what it could do if it messed up but she knew the facts. "Either your spell utterly failed and just blew Dawn across the room. If it did work, then your spell keyed off of someone else. Dawn stood between it and the target."
Cassandra tapped her foot on the lawn with the CD player and headset in her left hand. "I don't see the future. I see the mathematics."
"She's next to useless." Anya threw up her hands. "We have a robot who can't do anything."
"I hardly think abuse will help us." Cassandra drew her regal robes around her. "I foresaw the Wiccan equivalent of the Super Bowl half time show but all of you were determined to forge ahead. According to my predictions, no one would have listened to me." Cassandra looked up at the group. "Anya would say 'shut up we know what we're doing' and Dawn still ended up logging air time. Next time someone around here decides to do something risky or plain stupid, I can yell 'Danger! Danger!' If you want, I can even flail my arms."
"The spell pointed her out as the next Slayer." Willow argued. "Do you know that means a short and brutal life full of conflict and death."
"Even you admit a spell can go wrong." Cassandra countered. "Dawn and I have never spoken much but this 'slayer thing' doesn't fit my model of the Universe."
"Why?" Anya asked.
"I could say that I saw her at the age of thirty handing out fast food through a Burger King drive through window." Cassandra waved her CD player like a professor waving a pointer. "I didn't actually see that but logic informs my opinion."
Cassandra noticed an angry squirrel chattered every time she spoke.
"We have a house full of potentials and I've read the slayer lore." Cassandra looked up at the tree and back at the group. "None are related in any close way. This tells me the Slayer Selection Lottery isn't genetic." Cassandra paused for a moment to let her inquisitors digest her reasoning. "I have never noticed a genetic pattern in past slayers. Nothing like the line of queens from mother to daughter or some such thing. The chances are so remote I have to conclude your spell is wrong or misdirected."
Anya held onto her urge to punch Cassandra.
Willow knew better. Punching Cassandra would do no good as Cassandra knew how to predict punches.
"Well..go to the high school?" Cassandra had decided they would get her advice whether they listened or not. "Find her first and you can argue with me later."
"You...stay here!" Anya commanded. "Don't tell Buffy."
Cassandra leaned against the chestnut tree.
"Do you ever have trouble with humans...aside from the chainsaw thing I mean."
!* * *
"This tree has not had much to say to me." Cassandra told Buffy as the potential slayers and their teacher arrived back home. "My last command wasn't rescinded so I can't tell you something. Things have calmed down since then with the arrival of new potential slayer and the revelation that you're sister Dawn wasn't – I can't get you past that until Anya rescinds her orders."
Buffy pushed Cassandra ahead of her and the android complied with protests about not having the proper commands rescinded.
Cassandra's heavy robe had a soft almost velvet feel to it as Buffy pushed her into the house. For a girl shaped computer, she had very nice and well tailored clothes and fussed over her looks a good deal.
"Anya told me to stay here, do you outrank her?" Cassandra had to remind the humans that she was a computer at inconvenient times such as this. Cassandra didn't respond to threats under the conditions of such a lock up and so Buffy had to find Anya to 'undo' the command.
"I can shove you with little effort so 'resistance is futile'. Anya is an idiot and you should ignore much of what she says." Buffy complained. "Let's find Anya."
Anya rubbed her eyes as Buffy kicked her out of her bed.
"You gave her the command not to tell me anything." Buffy held up Cassandra as Anya rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "I found her under the tree in the front yard and she told me she couldn't tell me anything about Dawn because you told her not to."
"That droid is demented." Anya slid her legs off the bed and spoke quietly to avoid waking anyone else in the other rooms. "What did I tell you to do?"
"We couldn't tell Buffy about Dawn." Cassandra replied dutifully. "You told me to hang out by the tree."
"Go ahead and tell her." Anya waved her hands. "Do you mean you've been standing under the tree all this time? It must be one in the morning."
"Twelve fifty eight and thirty seconds." Cassandra precisely intoned. "As of the beginning of this sentence."
"We will begin with Willow and the accident?" Cassandra queried. "I can tell by your gritted teeth you don't want that level of detail. The people you left behind cast a spell that appeared to tell them the next slayer was Dawn. Dawn found out and got upset – the job of the slayer has a statistically low life span – medical insurance is costly. She didn't turn out to be the slayer or a slayer and the spell really keyed off of another girl."
"Okay – quiet please." Buffy told Cassandra. "I'll talk to Dawn."
"Keep Anya company." Buffy commanded Cassandra. "She met Mahler."
"What did I do wrong?" Anya complained.
"Shall I explain the structure of Mahler's Sixth Symphony?" Cassandra asked Anya.
!* * *
Cassandra puttered around the house and cleaned up as best she could.
Willow followed her around and apologized for the magic misfire. Cassandra advised her this was not necessary as no real harm was done.
"At least you don't handle plutonium. A Canadian scientist working for the Manhattan Project during the Second World War made plutonium go critical during a lab demonstration. All those in the lab died painful deaths. Evidently uncontrolled fission is bad for living things – not sure about controlled fission." Cassandra had no hint of irritation in her voice but the smart person would have taken this level of abusive sarcasm as her best expression of that emotion. "I put all this effort to keeping the level of entropy to a manageable level and have discovered this probably constitutes some kind of futile quest."
Willow understood Cassandra had verbally cut her down.
Molly looked confused by the concept of this odd girl.
"I haven't been able to use the bathroom this morning." Molly spoke to Willow as she trailed behind Cassandra. "I need to get ready to go to school."
"We have two bathrooms and I know they're not enough." Willow apologized. "This house wasn't built to be a hostel."
"Andrew spends an unhealthy amount of time in the upstairs bathroom with a video camera. He causes many of the long waits for the bathroom. I have theories but no firm facts for this behavior." Cassandra adjusted the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table. "He has many problems with his sexuality and I have no idea how to solve this problem of the human condition."
"So you're like a domestic robot?" Molly tried to make casual conversation with Cassandra. "You look so human and real."
"I am real." Cassandra stood up regally. Even at full height, Cassandra was short and not much of a presence. "I do not do domestic duty as a matter of design like some kind of floor polisher. I have little else to do so I keep the house in order."
"Sorry...I didn't mean to insult you." Molly had the distinct feeling some kind of insult had taken place and no one had ever briefed her on being polite to robots. Cassandra was quite believable as a human except for her lack of emotion and calm attitude to everything and her eyes which never seemed to look directly at you or blink.
"I saw no insult. I am an artificially intelligent robot with a powerful computer designed to make predictions and model complex systems." Cassandra explained as she wiped the table and her ears twitched. "I heard the bathroom door on the first floor open up."
!* * *
"Pity Cassandra because no one believed her." Cassandra in her green themed uniform greeted Anya in the morning. Cassandra had a copy of The Hockey News in her hands in preparation to read it.
"For a machine with no soul or emotions, you have a very good grasp of sarcasm." Anya complained to Cassandra but thought it best to avoid insulting the sensitive robot lest she receive yet another tedious lecture on some dead composer. "We were wrong to ignore your advice. Do we have any juice?" Anya meant the apology to sound insincere but didn't think the android had the ability to pick out that subtlety.
Cassandra sat on the counter and opened her magazine. "We may have run low because someone left me idle by the tree in the front yard so I didn't have a chance to shop yesterday evening but I believe we have some orange juice left."
"Did you know I once was a vengeance demon?" Anya looked through the fridge. "I went by the name Anyanka."
"I did know this." Cassandra sat on the counter with her face buried in the magazine. "The juice is in the jug on the second shelf in the door."
"You aren't the only one new to the human world." Anya said sternly. "I used to have awesome powers and you're not listening to me are you?"
Cassandra shook her head. "I have paid attention to every word – where you're going with this is beyond me."
"With all the bringers and the demons out there and this being the possible end of the world, we should try to get along." Anya pulled out the orange juice and began looking for a glass in the cupboards. "Just saying you know."
"I don't actually know." Cassandra tilted her head. "I know the morning is cloudy because I can see that and it is now seven minutes past nine in the morning. I guess you want to make sure I have no grudges about the five hours you left me under the tree outside the front door last night but I can't hold grudges." Cassandra pointed to the cupboard where she put the glasses without looking up. "You'll find clean glasses in there."
"I hate it when you do that." Anya plucked a glass from the shelf. "I feel like you're intruding in my mind."
"What did she do?" Buffy entered the kitchen dressed in blue pajamas and pink bunny slippers.
"She guesses what everyone will do next." Anya pointed at the girl absorbed in The Hockey News.
"Not to worry, I made another pot of coffee a few minutes ago." Cassandra murmured.
"Thanks." Buffy found the coffee maker bubbling away and hissing as it made the third pot of many for the day. "She knows where everything goes in the kitchen because she put it there."
Cassandra cared for the kitchen in her precise,'place glasses in a row spaced equally down to the last micron' way. Buffy had come to find sleeping past seven in the morning difficult in recent days and found Cassandra's dainty presence on the counter quite comforting in the way watching an anime character of a girl reading The Hockey News was 'odd' in a cute way.
Buffy watched the machine hiss and steam as the carafe filled up.
"I make the best guesses at the sorts of things people living here wish to have." Cassandra explained slowly from behind the magazine. "You drink orange juice and always leave the glass on the counter or the table where it makes those dirty rings. Andrew drinks milk but can't open the top of the carton without ripping it off or opening it up on the 'illegal' side. He has eaten two jumbo boxes of Shreddies in four days. People have predictable habits, and I have observed and adjusted my conduct accordingly."
"I don't want anyone outside after sunset." Buffy held up the carafe of coffee and Cassandra pointed to the upper right cupboard. "I could make that a command for you - Cassandra." Buffy picked out a nice large blue mug. "Bringers and demons and vampires lurk in the shadows of this town so if someone tells you to stay outside after dusk, you have my permission to ignore them."
Cassandra put down the magazine. "I can comply."
!* * *
Spike could not help but find Cassandra very odd.
She had no life and if he were one of the 'uninformed' vampires wandering the dark places; he'd pay as much attention to her as he did to a car or a trash can. Spike's keen sense of smell could track humans and he relied on scent much more than he ever realized. He could smell any human approaching him downwind but Cassandra could sneak up on him and constantly did so. He didn't know if she did this because she knew it bothered her or was oblivious.
Buffy had called her 'frighteningly intelligent'. Cassandra had a really fast computer for a brain. 'Thinking' if Cassandra did think, took place in billionths of a second, in the time it took light or electrons to travel a few inches. Cassandra might have a thousand thoughts in the time it took a single thought to boil across a single neuron in a biological brain. Such a mind could think rubbish ninety nine percent of the time but stumbled – if that was the word – on the correct answer very fast. Cassandra claimed to work on brute computation and merely simulated a mind. Spike had to wonder if she had a special chip for reminding everyone in earshot she was a vastly powerful computer simulating intelligence – a bragging chip.
Spike had the fast reflexes of a predator and he had decided to test these lightning fast reflexes against the doll known as Cassandra. He didn't intend to hurt her but he had to see what made her such an opponent in Buffy's opinion.
She had agreed to this but warned him; he might find the outcome humiliating.
Buffy came home from work and heard a loud crunch from the basement.
"Spike wasn't stupid enough to take on Cassandra?" She came down the stairs and found the potentials watching Spike extract his head from the concrete wall of the basement.
Cassandra looked calm and pleased with herself.
Anya had that 'I told you so' look on her face.
Several scuff marks on the basement wall told Buffy this had happened more than once.
"That girl reads minds." A dazed Spike shook his finger at the neat as a pin, regal looking girl who could almost crack a smile. "She can read the minds of the undead as well as the living!" Spike looked quite put out to have a young mouse of a girl raise no fists and yet soundly send him out of control into the basement walls.
Buffy looked at Cassandra. Cassandra was a computer and a proud one. She took pride in being precise and correct and Buffy understood she could justify letting Spike beat himself senseless if she wished to make her point. 'As long as no one lost an eye' as the old saying went. Buffy had discovered yelling at her did no good: Cassandra had a certain inability to judge human emotion and she had her stubborn, fussy ways and she protected her pride. Buffy also had come to respect her dark wit and that sarcasm which cut to the bone.
"Okay Cassandra...stop fighting with Spike." Buffy issued the command.
"What did you hope to prove?" Buffy pushed through the audience of young girls toward Spike.
"The potentials need to know how to deal with an enemy that can see their every move." Spike smiled weakly as he stood up. "Cassandra can read minds."
"I have no such ability but in a combat situation; I canpredict most outcomes." Cassandra preached. "I have to remind you all not to confuse correct guesses with insight."
Buffy saw on the faces of the potential slayers a kind of dread – not born of fear of the demonic but of the didactic. Cassandra had a very well documented tendency to deliver long theoretical and philosophical lectures on computer science, the theory of mind and logic. She had 'technically' graduated with a doctorate in computer science from MIT and Berkeley. The degrees existed in her complex software but the real world result wound up as a lecture on some horrid branch of mathematics or computer science.
"I have the ability to simulate a 'mind'." Cassandra began slowly. "I use this simulation software to predict what other minds might do and anticipate them." She looked to Buffy who wore a stern 'not more of this' expression but Cassandra continued. "You have the same ability because you've spent eons in the battle of predator and prey evolving the skills to figure out what someone else or something else has planned. I can figure out where Spike plans to move and I get numbers – odds that rate where he will go, what he will do. I can then simply not be where he will end up. You have feelings, intuitions and gut reactions which are just as effective."
"But you're so fast." Molly raised her hand and interjected.
Cassandra patted her robes. "Thank you."
Buffy understood this compliment as feeding her pride. Cassandra was fast but in an odd way unknown to humans. She was by no means the fastest runner in the group, her physical endurance was not nearly as good as most of the girls. Buffy knew this had something to do with her inability to use adrenaline and her inability to call on her 'lungs' to deliver more oxygen. Yet when she needed to move, she could command her small body to move short distances in a flash; like a grasshopper and that unexpected flash of motion was 'freaky' and 'unsettling'.
"She isn't that bloody fast." Spike spoke out as he shook his head. "She can't move as fast as I can." His heightened senses had noticed she moved as fast as any ordinary girl but the time from when she saw him in an ambush and took the correct action in no time at all. "As a bloody computer in drag, she can think a thousand times faster."
"That much is true – not the drag part. A drag queen would be more fashionably dressed." Cassandra answered professorially.
"But she's a brittle tool." Spike smiled wickedly. "Cassandra: Stand still!"
Buffy found this a bit cruel. She liked Cassandra as a person and as a genuinely good one.
Spike picked her up and put her over his shoulder. "She has to obey us."
Cassandra did nothing and bore the humiliation like a saint. Buffy felt for her: even if Cassandra didn't show emotion; her pride took a hit each time she had to obey a trivial command.
Spike found holding her over his shoulder very interesting. She was warm like a human but had a very low hum, not a pulse and she weighed only about forty kilograms. He heard a fan and felt a warm breeze blew over his hand from her back.
"What do you think of this Cassandra?" Willow felt proud Cassandra's humiliation. Willow didn't trust Cassandra fully – she kept expecting the robot to 'turn' evil or to suddenly rampage.
"I have to obey his orders too." Casandra said in a matter of fact accepting manner in spite of the deep injury she endured to her pride. "Someone else can give me orders to stand under a tree or dance like a dog begging for a treat." She looked at her hand. "I have a cut."
!* * *
"Couldn't we set a password only Buffy, Xander and I know?" Willow sat with Cassandra on the couch. "I don't know if having Anya or Spike or anyone else give you orders and forcing you to do their will is a good idea."
Cassandra sat on the couch with her amber eyes looking like they held great pain: her pride had been injured when Spike threw her over his shoulder. She had explained to Willow that the cut would heal and had to show Willow how to use nail polish remover to free her fingers because her whitish blood had glued Willow's fingers together.
Buffy sat on the recliner. "Have you learned your lessons for the day?"
"I wasn't aware of any lessons." Cassandra explained pitifully.
"You don't understand people very well and you have no understanding of vampires or demons. Spike is not just a crass, overbearing, angry man – he's a vampire," She paused, "he has a complicated past and he's a killer. You should never take on his kind in a fight because you have no chance."
"No chance? I rated my chances very high." Cassandra protested.
"You had a chance because Spike didn't see you as food or an obstacle to food." Buffy stopped Cassandra in mid sentence. "He sees you as technology and you're a toy to him. He wanted a battle of wits and he paid for his pride. Others of his kind won't make the same mistake. You have an advantage only because he can't eat silicon or carbon fiber or the glue you call blood."
Cassandra sat silent for a moment. "I have to give your idea some thought. My engineers didn't want me to have too much latitude in choosing to obey commands from people. I have no directives on obeying the undead so I default to the same behavior I have interacting with humans." She looked at Buffy. "I face the same problem you face trying to see in the microwave bands – you can try but your mind and body isn't up to the task."
Buffy stood up. "I enjoy your company and the house looks great but I have bigger fish to fry."
"I don't recall buying any fish." Cassandra advised.
"I have the potentials to train." Buffy reminded Cassandra. Buffy had to remind herself that in some ways, Cassandra was a computer and 'thought' in a different way but this made her no less frustrating.
Cassandra nodded. "Advise the others to be careful about how they speak to me."
!* * *
"From now on, anyone here who commands Cassandra to do stupid things will answer to me." Buffy announced over the breakfast table. "I mean this – Anya."
"I learned my lesson when she kept me up explaining German classical music." Anya picked up her glass of juice from the counter.
"Cassandra has a few software glitches and we don't want her blundering into some fatal situation because someone gave her stupid orders." Buffy continued. "She has her duties and so ask and don't command."
Buffy looked over the group now eating their breakfast.
Cassandra fussed over the kitchen.
Buffy spoke over the noises of the group having breakfast.
"Nod if you understand." She said sternly.
Everyone at the table nodded.
"Good." Buffy said sharply. "Now nod if you're lying!"
A number of confused voices mumbled.
"You can lie." Buffy asked loudly. "Cassandra can't lie." Buffy let this sink in. "This means she'll tell me if any of you made her do humiliating things by ordering her. She records every detail and she can't forget so you won't get away with breaking this house rule."
"My mandate is the accurate processing of information without error or distortion." Cassandra bragged in her own way. "You couldn't trust a computer which failed to deliver accuracy and precision." She held the coffee carafe. "You can't have the airplane computers lying about fuel or altitude or malfunctions. We have value only as far as we perform as designed."
"Yes...well," Buffy looked out over her group, "I gave Spike a similar lecture. Don't have knife fights with the seemingly defenseless robot who can think a thousand times faster than you. You may win but I have no idea how to take a knife out of a robot. I don't know how to find the particular engineer at MIT who built our friend and could tell me."
!* * *
Cassandra had her 'duties' which involved making the kitchen orderly. She had her day planned: she had errands to run and she would keep out of 'potential business'. She had to pick up roughly a grand worth of groceries because while fighting evil had moral rewards; it didn't pay for lunch. Milk always ran out and several people in the house had never figured out how to open the 'American Style' paper carton. She had resorted to running down to the local Seven Eleven at the last moment but the convenience of the convenience store open all hours was outweighed by the hundred percent mark up compared to the local Safeway.
She had to buy other supplies. Willow had explained female hygiene to Cassandra. Cassandra told her in a polite way not to continue as all Cassandra needed to know was 'what to buy' and not the 'why'.
Cassandra was a prude about these 'facts of life' things. She purchased them without complaint but had earned odd looks from the Target cashier for the sheer bulk of her hygiene product purchase which soared up past the triple digit mark on occasion.
Cassandra waited for a lull in the conversations around the table to speak up.
"We don't have cable TV." Cassandra began in her typical manner. "We barely have FOX. I mention this because before the cable people cut us off; they sent us a large bill. They have now begun to send us threats. Should I pay that bill when I go out?"
"Don't bother." Buffy said dryly. "If we live out the month then they can sue me."
"They are very credible threats." Cassandra explained. "I have a shopping trip to plan because we've run out of many things."
"Take Anya with you and get what you need." Buffy told Cassandra dismissively. "Don't take any of her stupid orders."
Anya believed – with some justification – Buffy sent her with Cassandra on the shopping trip not for Cassandra's safety but to aggravate her. Buffy had gone shopping with Cassandra to make certain she had no unsavory plans and Cassandra didn't. The android was a fussy, boring and all together annoying person to shop with as she took her time, calculated, compared prices and used some kind of games theory based algorithm to navigate the mall. Buffy concluded Cassandra wasn't likely to be evil but she was obsessive, detail oriented, boring in most social situations and pedantic.
"This particular sanitary napkin claims to be the 'greatest thing ever' which does trivialize vaccines, electronics and magnetic resonance imaging." Cassandra stood in the aisle of the local Target and piled hygiene products into the red plastic cart. "Of course Willow explained the need for these things but I just find it all unsettling."
In the grocery section of Wal – Mart things were just as annoying.
Anya stood next to Cassandra as the android fussed over prices on milk and held on to the shopping cart.
"Today is a blue day for you." Anya tapped her feet impatiently.
This did no good because Cassandra was so awful at reading people.
"Buying milk doesn't involve this much work." Anya complained in hopes of making this process go faster. "Buy the milk and move on."
"We have a budget." Cassandra reminded Anya of the obvious.
"I could have stayed home and done nothing while you read bar codes." Anya griped. "Buffy asked me to protect you because that Caleb guy is stalking you."
"Right." Cassandra handed three plastic jugs of milk to Anya. "Next on my list – orange juice."
"My life has come to this." Anya complained for effect. "I used to be a powerful vengeance demon and now I have the job of babysitting Buffy's robot."
"I'm not Buffy's robot." Cassandra walked along with Anya searching out the deals on orange juice. "I'm my own robot."
"Where else do you have to go." Anya waited at the end of the fruit juice aisle. The words she didn't want to hear referred to any electronics retailer. "It's almost noon."
Cassandra took a moment to appear to double check her itinerary.
"Radio Shack." Cassandra motioned for Anya to push the cart. "We'll have a need for flashlights and batteries when the vast majority of people in this town cut and run."
Anya winced because she had heard the 'Best Buy' horror story told by Buffy. As Cassandra was electronic, Best Buy served much the same function as a church did for Christians and she spent three hours browsing when she had gone into the store to buy a ten dollar clock radio. The expensive but bagless vacuum and costly computer were not on the list but she bought them 'just in case'.
"Just as long as you don't spend another hour in there. I used to be a demon and had no worries about losing an hour or two as I could live for thousands of years. As a human mortal, I have to make each hour matter."
"You missed the subordinate clause I carefully added to that last statement." Cassandra told Anya. "When the people evacuate this fine city because they don't want to die; the people maintaining the electrical grid will leave us too. We'll need flashlights."
"Can you simply buy batteries so we can get out of this place?" Anya hated Radio Shack since it stocked nothing of any interest to her.
Cassandra kept returning to the cashier with batteries, flashlights, then a radio powered by a spring crank and a ham radio kit.
Anya watched the heap of items grow.
"How do you plan to pay for this?" Anya noticed the radio looked very expensive. "We don't have money for all that stuff!"
"I do." Cassandra held up a bank card. "I have a military salary and pension."
The young freckled teenage boy manning the cash register looked reverently at Cassandra. "You are military? What service?" He began scanning items through the register.
"Cybernetics." Cassandra answered as she swiped the card. "We work to develop artificial intelligence systems for battlefield deployment." She punched in her code. "Of course I've finished my tour of duty."
"Cool." He said in that friendly manner found in all young teenagers working for Radio Shack.
"She's visiting friends in town." Anya lied because Cassandra couldn't lie. "We're happy to see her again."
Anya patted Cassandra on the back. "Now lets get going."
"Thank you." Cassandra said as she picked up the large bags and felt Anya pushing her in the direction out of the shop.
Anya pushed Cassandra out of the mall.
"Why hasn't the military come to look for you?" Anya walked with Cassandra. The little girl looked out of place but no one noticed her mousy presence and odd habits. "I thought you left the military when they abandoned the base."
"That is true." Cassandra admitted. "The military must have had some hint of the events to come. They fled with their secrets to protect their own interests to the very end. They left me behind to record the ways of the enemy. I can come up with no better answer than this."
"Can't they track you?" Anya watched Cassandra open up the back of the jeep.
"They designed a tracking device but they never installed it." Cassandra had wondered about this decision. "I have the WiFi and mobile network interfaces – I have the ability to access the internet and GPS – but no tracking system. I don't know why."
Anya found Cassandra a sad figure in her own way. She had great pride in her performance as a machine, she saw her place in this world with utter clarity and yet had to speak the truth. The admission of her abandonment carried with it the kind of sad cruelty humans often inflicted on those in their care.
"I'm suddenly depressed." Anya stood at the passenger door of the jeep. "Let's go home."
Cassandra finished placing bags in the back of the jeep and entered the driver's door.
"And no Mahler!" Anya commanded before Cassandra had reached the CD pocket. "I put up with that awful crap coming here."
"I was hoping to listen to Vaughan Williams Fourth." Cassandra said as she took her hand out of the CD pocket.
!* * *
Willow helped Cassandra and Anya unpack supplies.
"We've encountered robots before and they had emotions. They didn't always behave themselves." Willow asked. "Why don't you have any emotions?"
"Other robots with emotions?Really?" Cassandra locked onto the first of Willow's remarks. She didn't sound surprised but this information came as news to her. "I didn't know this."
"We even encountered a robot version of Buffy." Willow carried three plastic bags into the house. "She was evil."
"I can only speak for myself: I have no knowledge of other robots." Cassandra answered carefully. "I don't have emotions because my primary function doesn't require them."
"What is your primary function?" Willow returned with her to the jeep.
"The accurate processing and reporting of information without prejudice or error." Cassandra pulled out the receipt and stopped under the large chestnut tree to examine its contents. "More specifically, I was built for the purposes of predicting budgets, military procurement and performing complex calculations needed in order to manage battlefield resources. I know that sounds mundane but the plan was to have a machine of my type in every military base to perform these functions."
"Why do you have such a human appearance? You speak and walk like we do."
"Supercomputers have great power but also have complex interfaces." She read the receipt and continued speaking. "The time required to program such a machine to run something like a military simulation often took months or years and a single mistake could ruin all that work. A group of computer scientists at MIT and in the military decided building a supercomputer with artificial intelligence, a convincing human form and language could greatly reduce the time required for programming simulations. I came out of that work. In many situations such as on board an aircraft carrier or in a command and control bunker, a human form is far more functional. I can move and function in the same environments as people so the military doesn't need to design hardware to accommodate me. You don't require a post graduate degree in computer science to interact with me and I can provide answers to problems in plain language. This is a huge advantage in military situations." Cassandra looked down at her robes. "My designers did give me this uniform and this form which does make me look different. They may have had some reason or simply decided to make me 'cute'."
"The robots I know of worked like weapons." Willow began to feel the heat.
"All of the best military technologies have wound up having much more lucrative commercial applications." Cassandra folded the receipt and neatly tucked it into her vest. "The Internet, jet engines and radar are examples. My designers had plans to market a machine similar to me for the same purposes to commercial and government agencies. Weapons of mass destruction and robotic assassins, drones may make bloodthirsty military brass happy but they grow the deficit and add to human misery."
"So you're more like Data from Star Trek than the Buffybot?" Willow patted and pushed Cassandra on the back to move her toward the house.
"I have no idea what that could mean." Cassandra reached the door first and opened it, holding it for Willow. "You can work with me far better if you think of me as a computer with a very good spoken language interface. Emotions will simply confuse me and make it more difficult for me to work."
!* * *
Cassandra had a bright purple colored vacuum in her hand and guided it over the door mat.
The British engineer selling them in the television ads claimed the vacuum was a marvel of modern engineering. Buffy saw it as a collection of gaudy colored plastic and a waste of three hours of her life but Cassandra did the vacuuming and her fussy nature didn't allow her to use the mundane cheap hundred dollar model Buffy had on hand.
The fancy model was no less noisy.
Still, with Cassandra vacuuming, this let Buffy have time to worry.
At exactly eight in the evening, Cassandra vacuumed because in her mind this was the optimum vacuuming time.
Copies of The Hockey News had begun to form a neat pile on the coffee table. For amusement, the potentials would shift them a millimeter and wait for Cassandra to notice. She noticed instantly and she felt the compulsion to re-establish the proper order of things.
Buffy didn't understand why the fussy little cyborg loved hockey but when Kennedy had suggested hockey was yet another misogynistic sport; Cassandra took those as fighting words.
Cassandra rolled into the living room with the vacuum at exactly eight fifteen.
"Which one of your troop wears boots indoors?" Cassandra asked Buffy as she pulled the vacuum over the mat in front of the door. "I do this to pay back your hospitality not because its the best use of my massive processing power."
"I had no idea." Buffy looked up from the copy of The Hockey News she had begun to read.
One of the potentials named Kennedy stomped down the stairs.
"Can I ask you something?" She walked to Cassandra who obligingly shut down the vacuum.
"I know the vacuum makes noise. Spike told me that much." Cassandra answered back. "If I live through the next four weeks, I'll award him the prize for stating the obvious."
"Did Giles talk to you about the vision quest?" Kennedy asked urgently.
"I couldn't find Smores." Cassandra replied. "You didn't want to ask that but your real question has the answer 'tomorrow afternoon' and 'I have no idea or way to know if Willow likes you'." Cassandra held the handle of the vacuum, having the face of someone who urgently wanted to end this conversation and had to be obliging. "I can't understand that last question but from your behavior, the answer 'yes' would make you pleased."
!* * *
"Vision quests don't interest me." Cassandra walked past Giles with her purple vacuum as he paced the living room. "So far you're only three hours behind schedule."
"How did you...?" Giles waved his hand. "You can't have visions can you?"
"Buffy explained to everyone about the plan to seek out something about someone. I had begun to suspect you were a sex offender. I now know you are not but I have little better understanding of what you are up to." Cassandra picked up and placed a set of notes on the fireplace. "You will take a bunch of girls out to the desert and according to the native cultures of the area; eat some kind of cactus. I can't metabolize peyote."
Giles shook his head. Cassandra proved absolutely frustratingly blind to people. He had asked her to watch over their preparations and the result had metastasized into a kind of chaos with the little robot completely oblivious to the anarchy. He imagined that in her silicon mind, she was supervising the girls but had not grasped the concept of supervising. Frustrating as this was, he could hardly yell at her because she was performing properly.
"I wanted you to make sure the girls have everything ready." Giles explained as he checked his pockets. "We're three hours behind and we've not even got the car packed." Giles looked at Cassandra. "I've decided to take Anya along. I may regret that decision. I thought of asking you along but you don't understand these matters."
"I have a tendency to overheat in the desert heat and sand is bad for computers." Cassandra turned to face Giles as she stood at the front door. "I'd have one function and that will be driving the rabble in your car and then spending the rest of the quest trying to find NPR on the dial and having girls dress me up in cactus flowers."
Cassandra's ear twitched when she heard a familiar rumble.
Cassandra opened the door and then called out: "Have any of you done something with my jeep?" She waited a moment as she held the door open and shot accusatory glances at the girl. "Why has Rhoda driven off with my jeep? Did anyone tell her not to mess with my radio?"
Cassandra had her dignity intact but Giles had the sense she was put out. She walked forward in a flourish of her black robe – today was time for teal - a calming color which Giles hoped would prove calming to the young girls.
The jeep pulled back into the driveway.
"Who said you could take the jeep?" Cassandra stood out by the tree and said loudly.
"You left the keys in it." Rhoda explained. "I took it around the block. Can't we take it instead of the car?"
"I suppose that's my fault." Cassandra never showed irritation but she had ways of expressing her displeasure with the conduct of others. "Did you touch the radio?"
"What?" Rhoda said in a surprised voice. "Why would a robot care?"
"I happen to be a fussy robot." Cassandra answered back in a lecturing tone. "I have come out to make sure you take only the supplies approved of by the fortunate man sent by Fate to guide you on this quest."
"I checked the supplies, the girls have everything they need." Anya answered back as she checked a list on a notepad.
"Can I have my car keys back?" Cassandra asked in a more gentile voice. "I have my radio settings to check."
"Which one of you will have to look after Kennedy and which one of you will have to calm down a put out computer?" Giles muttered as he searched the living room for anything left behind.
The potentials mobbed Cassandra before she could open the door of the jeep. They had the intention of stuffing their robot pal in a goalie bag Molly had set aside on the lawn for that purpose. Cassandra knew this. She made a fast set of jumps on the heads and foreheads of the girls and fell through the front door, rolled and rose to her feet.
A moment later, she held up the key fob and held it up as the jeep made its two loud beeps.
"They have all the supplies they need." Cassandra stormed off toward the kitchen. "If you happen to need me, I'll be in the kitchen trying to avoid being stuffed in a goalie bag!"
!* * *
Cassandra heard a dish fall.
"Andrew!?" Cassandra wiped her hands and then put the dish towel down. "I have to admit this has been an odd day." She looked into the living room and saw Andrew groping Willow. "The next part of this story involves sending the robot out to bury Andrew's body." She whispered to herself.
Cassandra processed this and looked around the room. She listened carefully but couldn't work out why everyone thought she was Warren. Cassandra didn't have that instant sense of recognition for faces found in humans. She wasn't a social creature but her algorithms for pattern recognition had enough sophistication to calculate the odds she had mistaken Willow for Warren as very low.
Spike staggered past and then fell over on the living room floor.
Cassandra hesitated to push past the panicked group examining Willow.
"I'll help Spike." Buffy told Cassandra who then began retreating into the kitchen. Cassandra had an overwhelmed look about her and quickly backed up.
With so much taking place at once, Cassandra had to find a quiet place, so she retreated to the kitchen and began checking her hardware. A machine built for the accurate processing of data couldn't understand why people had become confused by the identity of Willow when in the eyes of Cassandra no such doubt existed – Willow was Willow. She had to make certain this wasn't an error on her part.
Willow rushed out of the house.
"Did you see that?" Kennedy came to Cassandra in a rush. "Willow's turned into that Warren guy."
"I saw Willow rush out of the house. You saw Warren for some reason." Cassandra explained calmly. "I never saw the person who you claimed to see. I don't 'see' I process data and that data speaks of Willow."
"Yes...okay..." Kennedy rushed back toward the living room.
"A lot of excitement around here." Xander found Cassandra drying off the last of the dishes quietly waiting for events to subside. "Willow has turned into Warren and we don't know why."
"I saw only Willow. Everyone else saw this Warren person in place of Willow but logic says this can't occur because Willow killed Warren." Cassandra placed a glass in the cupboard in her precise and fussy way. "I couldn't see anyone else such as this Warren you all saw. I keep having to remind you I have no living mind to fool."
"Uh well...a weird day," Xander sensed the 'princess' struggling with these events, "if it makes you feel any better, none of us know what is happening either."
!* * *
"The chip?" Cassandra unplugged the kettle from the counter outlet. "What chip?"
"Spike haa chip in his head." Buffy had come to seek out the advice of the robot. While pedantic and obsessive, she knew much more about chips and military programs and Buffy held out hope she might help her make a difficult decision.
"You know I make the tea here. I had the kettle all ready and waiting for Willow and she goes ahead and makes tea for Kennedy." Cassandra couldn't show emotion but Buffy understood her 'dignity' was at risk and she had already had her feathers ruffled when the potentials had picked on her. Buffy had spent the better part of an hour listening to her complain about how being stuffed into a goalie bag made her run less efficiently. When Willow made tea, this added more indignity and Cassandra had a need to vent. "You mentioned a chip placed in the brains of vampires designed to keep them from hurting people."
"Spike has a chip." Buffy told Cassandra. "The military implanted it in a secret project. The chip has stopped working and Spike is dangerous."
"I saw he was chained up to the wall in the basement when I went down a few minutes ago. I could have wondered about this but I had gone down to reset the circuit breaker connected to the fridge before the hot pockets thawed. I admit I didn't pay much attention because being miserable and growling is what Spike does. I thought being chained up was a recreational activity for him." Cassandra still had a few ruffled feathers as her sarcasm had not cooled down. "Biomedical implants have always been dodgy. Wetware and silicon don't interact very well – even civilian projects like artificial retinas never worked well. Something about host versus graft disease."
"While you make me a cup of tea, can you explain more?" Buffy sat at the table.
"But you didn't want tea?" Cassandra plugged in the kettle. "I had predicted you wanted a glass of water. You're having tea to spare my non existent feelings." She leaned against the counter and cleared her throat. "The military has long had an interest in brain implants. During the Gulf War, they experimented with an implant to raise awareness in fighter pilots – the air force thought hopping them up could extent their mission time. They abandoned the idea because the test chimps went insane and ate each other. Science doesn't know enough about the brain to manipulate it to do its bidding."
"You never say anything reassuring." Buffy said as Cassandra poured the hot water into a mug.
"Technology has advanced since that time but the brain remains mysterious, largely unknown territory." Cassandra handed a red glass mug to Buffy. "The idea of controlling the brain and mind still seems all too good to pass up on. For those seeking power, mind control is a technology too good ignore."
Cassandra sat down on a chair opposite to Buffy. "Secrets aren't revealed to me. I can't tell you anything more than what I've heard. I can make some educated guesses."
Buffy sighed. "What do you think?" Buffy had the impression Cassandra had a dim view of human nature.
"If you'll bear with me?" Cassandra raised her hand.
"Sure." Buffy said patiently.
"The military made the chip for the purpose of using vampires as a weapon." Cassandra spoke with her usual confidence. "I don't see any other purpose for such a thing." She tapped the table nervously. "The good thing about chips – the computer type – is that regardless of their use in secret projects, most of them are based on simple commercial designs. My vision and hearing use components made by Canon and Samsung; Intel is also inside. If I could examine the chip and the code, I could reprogram a generic type processor to do the job." Cassandra tilted her head for a moment. "This requires surgery to extract it and then fixing the chip. I can set myself the task of building the software only after I see the thing and can download the code."
"I'll leave that open as an option," Buffy stood up, "a final option."
Cassandra had the finest programming skills on the planet. Buffy liked Cassandra and trusted her but Cassandra didn't understand vampires, couldn't understand the soul, had no grasp of emotion, a wobbly concept of self and regarded all these things as trivial. Buffy worried that she might reduce Spike to a burbling zombie because of her intellectual blind spots.
!* * *
"We think Giles might be the First." Xander stood over Cassandra who held a screwdriver in one hand and had the movie player in a neat pile in front of her. "Did you sense anything?"
"No?" Cassandra bent over the skeleton of the machine.
"Can't you sense the presence of the First?" Anya asked impatiently.
"I have a perfect memory so I can sense when a person screws up or defies normal expectation." Cassandra bragged in her own way. She had endured many assaults to her 'prowess' as a computer and sought to remind everyone of her skills. "Giles has done nothing to make me think he's not Giles and he appears to have mass." She turned a white plastic gear in the video cassette player part with her finger. "Spike has developed the broom test. I suggest you poke Giles with a broom."
"He went into the desert with the potentials." Anya said as she poked Cassandra. "I've bumped into you over the last few days so I know your 'real' but no one can remember touching Giles."
"You jabbed me with your finger." Cassandra corrected. "In your mind, jabbing things is the first step to enlightenment through the scientific method?" Cassandra couldn't really express irritation or sound condescending so she paused for a moment. "I heard Hawking began by jabbing people."
"That is called 'not helping' in the human world." Xander answered back.
Cassandra continued turning the white plastic gear in the machine. "Someone stuck a copy of Absolutely Fabulous they taped off public broadcasting inside the VCR. Absolutely Fabulous is a British Sitcom most Americans have never heard of. Giles is a fan of British comedy." She stopped when the machine made a series of satisfying clicks and held up the video tape. "Is anyone else here both British enough to record their favorite British comedy and archaic enough to use the VCR side of this thing? Most people don't know they can get PBS on Channel 54. The First couldn't have jammed the VCR by shoving a busted tape into it, but Giles likes British television had has the mechanical ineptitude to jam the machine"
"If no one uses the VCR why fix it?" Anya asked. "Anyway, your opinion is duly noted. You can babysit Andrew while we go and find the potentials camp in the desert."
Andrew pleaded with Anya, Xander and Dawn to be allowed to go along.
Cassandra never understood why humans asked her for her opinion on things and then promptly rejected it. She placed the cassette with the tape into the slot and bent over and plugged the VCR into a nearby outlet to properly test it.
"We had a phone call." Andrew begged to be believed. "The man said Giles died."
Cassandra had decided to try to concentrate on one problem: Spike's chip. Her fussy behavior came out of the lack of any headway she could make on the problem even with access to all the science she could muster on the Internet on the subject of brain implants. She placed that problem on hold and gave this some thought.
"We seldom believe everything told to us over the phone. I'd have a million dollars and a dozen 'free' vacations to the Bahamas if I did." She pronounced as the group left through the door taking Andrew with them.
"And could you lend us the keys?" Xander came back.
Cassandra threw her keys to Xander. "Don't play with the radio." She finished her sentence after the door slammed shut.
!* * *
Buffy returned to find Cassandra laying back on the couch listening to Vaughan Williams Sixth Symphony at a dangerously unsafe volume.
Cassandra watched Spike head downstairs as Buffy approached her.
"It was a quick fix?" Cassandra placed the CD player and the headphones on the coffee table.
"We had it removed." Buffy tossed the silver pill shaped device to Cassandra who caught it. "It had begun to run out of power."
"Brain surgery in less time it takes to cook a large turkey?" Cassandra looked over the device and the thin wire which dangled about ten centimeters from it and connected to a tantalum electrode. She turned it over in her hands and examined it closely. "A standard issue implanted defibrillator used for heart patients? They must have thought the moral dimensions of their work merited the secrecy."
"What's that mean?" Buffy sat in the large armchair.
Cassandra tossed it back to Buffy.
"If you look at the case, you can read the make and model of that device. They made it for heart patients. If their heart starts to beat irregularly, that thing sends a shock to the electrode and resets it to a normal rhythm. Maybe a million people walk around the world with this device implanted in their chest – a commercial surgical implant made by Medtronics." Cassandra relaxed on the couch. "The military obviously put very different software in that thing to make Spike behave by jolting his brain."
"He's recovering in the basement." Buffy said softly. "Any news about Giles?"
"The Fantastic Four went into the desert and changed my radio settings and found Giles by a campfire and completely corporeal." Cassandra lay back and enjoyed the quiet in the house. "All of them have returned and promised to reset the radio to my preferences at some undetermined point in the future."
"Has Willow come back as Willow?"
Cassandra raised her hand and scratched the back of her head. "That storyline I don't understand. Willow was always Willow. She returned with Kennedy and a gun about a half hour ago and was Willow. I saw her last night and she was Willow. I have no clue why everyone thought she was this Warren fellow. I could ask but Willow seemed upset and I'm not entirely sure Kennedy likes me."
Cassandra waited a moment. "If Spike no longer has that chip; how do you expect to constrain his behavior."
"He has a soul."
"Such subtlety." Cassandra muttered. "We still face as much danger if Spike goes feral. Is the removal of the chip the best choice given that we have a house full of human prey."
"He can choose just like we can choose."
"I lack a soul or a mind or a choice." Cassandra lay back. "Spike had a chip in his head to keep him from harming others – that worked imperfectly. I have a set of computer commands that preclude doing harm to others by making it unthinkable. I have begun to wonder how much of the military experience with chipping vampires led to the decision to simply deny me the choice to do harm?"
Buffy held the implant like a charm.
Buffy disliked Cassandra when she was direct, to the point and brutally honest at times and also devoid of passion or caring. She often was quite right but she delivered her verdict with all of the subtle force of a mallet.
"Do you see him as a threat to us?"
"A well fed lion in captivity poses little threat. She has little motivation to go to the trouble of eating the zookeeper as long as the zookeeper keeps the meat coming." Cassandra mused over the subject. "He does pose a threat but Willow and Kennedy have a gun. I don't see him posing any more of a threat to us than any one of you mentally unstable humans I have come to know and not understand. If someone wanted to kill me with a gun, I'd hide behind Spike because he possesses a strong instinct for self preservation and I'm not part of his food chain."
!* * *
Kennedy found Cassandra fussing over the coffee maker and watching the kettle.
"I came to make Willow some of her favorite tea." She wondered why she had to explain her intentions with a machine.
"I have the kettle on." Cassandra turned around.
"You never saw her as Warren?" Kennedy asked with trepidation.
"Not at all." Cassandra primped herself. "I have no mind to play with or fool."
Kennedy stood beside Cassandra and picked through the glass container on the counter containing the packets of mint tea.
"I was about to prepare tea for her." Cassandra looked at Kennedy. "The question you will ask me pertains to my desires in a partner – to which I will reply that I have no such desires."
"I came to make tea." Kennedy had wanted to ask for advice on relationships but Cassandra had predicted this part of the conversation. This denied Kennedy of the small pleasure of making the prudish machine uncomfortable. The potentials had come to call her 'Princess' because while a machine; she came across as a fussy, prim and proper, prudish, stuck up know-it-all as it had never occurred to any of them a computer had the function of storing and retrieving facts. The Sommer's residence had two camps: Buffy and Giles who found her cute and charming and Kennedy who found her insufferable.
"Homosexuality is rare in females." Cassandra watched Kennedy make the tea. "Statistical rates among vary between one to two percent depending on the statistical methodology, whether those being ask just lie and definitions. Rates of homosexuality in men is about twice as high. I have no direct experience in these matters but I can access quick facts."
"I'll take this to Willow." Kennedy picked up the mug and met Anya as she entered the kitchen. "The Princess is at her best today." Kennedy almost whispered.
"What time is it?" Anya asked Cassandra.
Anya belongs to the more neutral third camp in the house who liked Cassandra because she kept the house neat, had the time, a warm cup of tea and always had an answer for questions like 'how do you spell...?' Anya was lazy by nature and so Cassandra saved her much effort. Anya did find the little robot with the fussy nature all but impossible to have a casual conversation with. She was often oblivious to the common sense needed for a conversation.
Cassandra placed a mug of chamomile tea in front of Anya. "When I end this sentence it will be eleven thirteen and forty three seconds."
"All the excitement and I can't sleep." Anya yawned.
"In what way am I at my best?" Cassandra turned the kettle off.
"Ignore her." Anya advised and sipped her tea. "She's one of those 'buff and serious' lesbians and she has no sense of humor. You have that doll like cuteness – the opposite of buff – plus your dry, dark humor and clever sarcasm makes some people uncomfortable."
!* * *
Spike had a very bad headache and Vaughan Williams Ninth Symphony coming from the kitchen ghetto blaster was not helping him in any way. Spike was British enough to know Vaughan Williams had composed a few prominent pieces of British music and not in the loop enough to know the man had a dissonant side. Cassandra was intent on playing as many of his works as she could borrow from the library but the cheap boom box she listened to had less than spectacular sound reproduction..
Spike held his head. "I don't have the chip causing my headaches any more so has that idiotic robot made it her job to give me a new headache?" He grumbled under his breath.
Killing Cassandra could do no good. Buffy liked her and as the Scooby Gang in her jeep had discovered, she had ways of tormenting others beyond her physical reach. She had decided to disable the radio controls in the jeep so no one but her could fiddle with them and half of the relief upon finding Giles was from fleeing some endlessly looped hideous Shostakovitch piece in the CD player.
Spike had concluded she had a kind of soul and a devious one at that.
At the conclusion of the first movement of that odd work, he wanted to stumble upstairs but knew better. He shouted: "Turn that garbage off." to no avail.
An irritated Anya found her way to the kitchen.
"I came down an hour ago complaining of lack of sleep." Anya followed Cassandra around the dining room. "In that time you have bumbled around here making noise, listened to National Public Radio and now are playing some dead guy and his hoard at an unsafe volume. Are you a closet sadist?"
"This can't be good." Buffy found Cassandra under the chestnut tree three hours later with the kitchen ghetto blaster playing the local FM radio station at a high volume. "Are you out here because of free will or because they wanted to sleep?"
"Sleep." Cassandra said with dignity. "Can I ask you to shut off the radio. I've heard the same Gwen Stephani song three times. I consider this torture. Gwen Stephani is a crime against all music but I digress."
"Come with me." Buffy gave Cassandra a gentle push. "Who put you out here."
"Kennedy carried me out and set me down under the tree. Willow told me to stay and Kennedy set the radio up to torment me." Cassandra walked ahead of Buffy. "Evidently Vaughan Williams merits some kind of punishment."
Willow met Buffy at the front door. "We love Cassandra but she isn't capable of understanding the concept of quiet."
"This time I squirmed in protest but Willow ordered me to stand under the tree until she returned." Cassandra felt the need to inform or warn Buffy. "I apologize for the undone laundry."