The machine was extremely complicated. Tails could recite the function of every piece and its arrangement upon command, and because his goal was so risky, so antithetical to nature, that was exactly what he did. When he had run out of parts to double-check, he would just go back from the beginning.

"Tails, will you be ready to start soon?"

"Yaaaaaaaah!" He dropped his self-written instruction manual and the pencils he was holding all over the ground, but the girl who had volunteered as his assistant knelt right down to pick them up and gently lay them back down in his trembling, open palm.

"Cosmo!" he breathed. "Uh… yeah, sure!" He wiped a quivering dollop of sweat from his forehead and ushered her onto a circular, short platform on the ground, demarcated as hers with its light green trim. It was one of four platforms, and another was yellow-orange for him, and yet he did not budge after placing the girl he loved on her perch.

She knew he could do better, so she took both of his hands and walked him over, then back to her station. "It's okay," she whispered to him just before letting him go, "you worked so hard on this; you got right every one of my quiz questions about it. Why let that go to waste, Tails?"

He sighed and turned away from her. "Because it's never been done before."

"Well, that's why they say that there's a first time for everything, isn't it? And of course it hasn't – it's difficult enough, but cool enough, that only someone like you could do it."

Although she could not see his face, his shoulder blades tensed up and he turned back to her. He was confident. "Haha, I guess so! You're right; we've got this! And this will be pretty sweet!"

"Besides," she laughed, "I feel bad about always using you as my volunteer for all of my woodworking projects."

"They really should include instructions on the box for removing nails from fur and flesh, shouldn't they? But I guess I have shelves for all of the books like I used for this project, so I'm glad to have helped!"

"Is it time to get transfigured?" she asked, clenching her fists by her sides with excitement.

"It sure is!" He flicked a switch nearby his arm, setting the machine into motion.

The pads occupied by neither Seedrian nor fox almost were: he had created robotic facsimiles of her and of himself, and all four pads were connected to the central mechanism and to one another by several cords each. The machine started revving up with energy, and they could feel the electricity generated between them pulsating through their pads – there was no turning back now. Soon they would experience something never accomplished before: their minds would be transferred, temporarily, to robots' bodies.

It was an exciting proposition. It was a little bit scary. But as the room filled with the light that accompanies lots of esteemed scientific discoveries and both of the living creatures' bodies, as well as those of their mockups, were engulfed in energy, it was soon to be realized.

Zzzzzzapppp!

Suddenly, the lights were out. Tails' heart thudded almost audibly; he wasn't quite sure if he was dead. The machine continued to crackle, though, which served as some reassurance, and he could feel the ephemeral wave of heat permeating through the room.

"Alright, uh, I'm gonna go turn the lights on, Cosmo, so we can see how we look!" He marveled at how realistic his own voice was sounding coming through artificial vocal cords, but that was what one could accomplish with the phonological and anatomical rigor he had sunken into this project.

Click! As if by magic, the lights clicked on by themselves… and he felt immediate dismay.

The Tails robot was still right there on its perch, and so was Cosmo's. He looked down at his hands for confirmation, and there it was: he was still the same old fox as ever.

"Hey, I'm a fox!" he yipped without meaning to. Well, of course I am, he thought. Did I even mean to say that out loud? Rrrrgh.

He could only imagine that his girlfriend had met the same fate – or non-fate was more like it – and so he turned to see. And then his heart dropped in his chest as though its twin tails had been severed.

Her body was lifeless. He stuck his hand to it and, turning her over as she was face-down, listened to her chest. There was no sound whatsoever. She was dead.

"COSMO!" he shrieked, tears welling up across enough of his eyes that it became difficult to see and his voice shattering with the sobbing. "NO! YOU CAN'T DIE! I'VE BARELY EVEN GOTTEN TO HAVE YOU BACK! I'LL INVENT ANOTHER MACHINE TO REVIVE YOU! I HAVE DESIGNS FOR THOSE! RUDIMENTARY, OF COURSE, BUT THEY'RE STILL- Tails, I'm right here! I'm fine!"

Those words he definitely had not meant to speak. He clutched his head and panicked in a much more immediate, terrible way than before: not only was the love of his life gone for real by his own hand, but he had gone insane from the trauma and could no longer control his vocal cords, even to confess.

He decided to try the classic pinching test. Yes, that was right. This had to be a nightmare. But this time, if it were not, he would resist the urges to squeal in pain, because it would be pain he would deserve, and then much more. He lowered hand to arm and pinched as hard as he could. "Ow! Stop it, please!"

Still a murderer and still crazy – Murphy's law. "Tails, don't you get it!" he yelled again. "I'm Cosmo! I'm right here! We're in the same body!"