It was an ordinary day on the Andromeda. Rommie was doing a diagnostic on some stuff that Harper had just finished. As she was working, she was thinking about how she could help Dylan. It worried her how the stresses of the past two years had been affecting him.

"What could I possibly do?" she asked herself. She really wanted to help. She had the mind of a planet, for the Empress's sake. If someone could help it was her.

"Andromeda. Please access human psychological data base"

"Why?" asked Ship Andromeda?

"I want to do some research"

"What about your duties?"

"I'll get to them soon. I'm an AI, remember? It won't take long."

Rommie accessed the database, and found one very important paper that gave her just the right clue.

"Harper?"

"Yes Rom-doll" he answered

"I need you to do something for me"

"What?"

" I'll let you know. Meet me at machine shop 15"

Fifteen minutes later they were talking about what Rommie wanted Harper to build.

"You want me to build what?"

"Yes. I do. It's just the medicine Dylan needs. If you could build me, you can build anything"

"Anything for you, Rom-doll. Although maybe what Dylan needs is an interactive love machine."

Rommie rolled her eyes. "Trust me, what I have in mind is better."











"Harper" Beka called as she came in. "I need you to check something for .... what are you building?"

"Something for Dylan" Harper answered.

"I see" smiling, she remarked. " Why, it has four legs!

"Yes it does" he replied. "I'm almost done,but I need to give make an emotion chip."

"Some fur or something would be nice too"

"Yeah I know. First things first. I need to give my creation emotions otherwise, what's the freakin' point?"

Beka was glad that this project was going on. She realized that latly, Dylan, seemed depressed and to boot he seemed to be losing weight and sleep over the stresses of the past few months.



Months Later Harper smiled as he put the finishing touches on his creation and Rommie came in. She was glad that Harper was done with the project. It had been a pain for them both to build nanobots that would make artificial fur. their first two tries has resulted in stuff that was better for scrubbing dirty dishes than what they wanted. Making a simplified emotion matrix had been no picnic for Harper either, as the only one he'd built was for a sentient being, not an animal.

" I'm so glad I could get some fur on ya. Nanos rule!!"

"So what does it take for it to bond with Dylan?" Rommie asked

"He has to be the first one to carry him when I turn him on."

"What's it supposed to look like?" Rommie asked

"Well, it is basically kinda like the premodified version of the Earth dog."

"How shall we present it to him?"

"Let's take it to his office"

This was the moment they had both been waiting for as it would test what Rommie has read in that paper regarding pets and their pyschological benifit.