Buffy and Cassandra at the End of Days
Cassandra's Taxi Service
Author's Note: I have written Cassandra Alone and Cassandra and the Potentials which explain much about Cassandra. If your read them in the order listed, it will explain a good deal about Cassandra. I could have published them as chapters of a single story but I decided against this because I wrote each story as separate but related sequels.
!* * *
Cassandra decided to pass the time this particular evening by watching Ice Station Zebra on the movie player. She lay on the couch with her hands behind her head and her feet up on the arm of the couch and had the remote next to her.
"Um...Cassandra?" Giles sat on the edge of the couch and blocked the television from Cassandra's view. "We have a new potential." He sounded apologetic for interrupting Cassandra's movie.
"I couldn't be more happy for you?" Cassandra reached for the remote and aimed it around Giles to pause the movie. "I guess she'll be joining you for evening classes in the graveyard."
"She comes from Shanghai and doesn't speak much English." Giles explained in a pensive voice. "I wanted to ask if you had any knowledge of Mandarin Chinese?"
"I've read an English translation of Sun Tsu's The Art of War." Cassandra gave an answer in her indirect manner. "I spent two months training intensively with tutors to learn how to speak English naturally enough to pass as human. I'm not a linguistic intelligence – I'm a mathematical one – my makers gave me a smattering of German and Spanish but I don't claim fluency in either language. Even with experts training me and with my level of processing power; language comes only with difficulty."
Giles had heard a startling admission from Cassandra. "I feel kind of foolish. I suppose I've watched too many of those B Movies where the android learns language far quicker than a human."
"I lack an evolutionary past." Cassandra lay back with the remote in her hand. "Human language evolved along with humans and you learned it as a young child because it's in your nature." Cassandra admitted quite openly she found language a difficult thing surprised Giles. Cassandra had an attitude of superiority toward human affairs. "I have no such instinct. I have to use statistics, complex math and good guesses to get a clue about what people mean when they speak and as you have seen, it doesn't always work."
"I see..." Giles spoke like someone who had said something offensive.
"I hear the hoard tromping down the stairs." Cassandra motioned Giles off the couch. "I hoped to spend an evening watching the movies I rented after a day of chasing after your band and their less than perfect manners."
"I'll talk to Willow." Giles adjusted his jacket. "She may have a spell to help us all communicate."
Cassandra placed her thumb over the button as she prepared to take her movie off pause.
"I have my reservations about Willow and her 'spells'," Cassandra explained, "since the house lacks a black box, I worry the authorities may never find out what happened to it when we get sucked into another dimension full of intelligent ants."
1* * *
"I have no sense of taste." Cassandra reminded Andrew. "How can Japanese cartoons be an 'acquired taste' given that I have no way to taste them?" She held up the remote as if to make her argument. "Logic dictates I have the television for the evening and we will watch the rest of Ice Station Zebra and Guns of Navarone because I sat down here first."
"The genre is called Japanese Anime." Andrew corrected Cassandra as he sat on the floor in front of the coffee table. "Once you watch a few episodes of Cowboy Bebop, you might grow to like it."
Spike came upstairs from the basement with a broomstick.
He stood between Cassandra and the television.
"I have begun to think watching a movie uninterrupted in this place has the same statistical probability as dying from having space debris land on my head." She paused the movie once again. "What can I do for you?"
Spike poked Cassandra with the end of the broom.
"As an undead vampire, can you develop some kind of brain tumor?" Cassandra tried to look angry but failed. "Should we have a neurologist examine you or did you want to ask me something? Do you hope to communicate by poking me in Morse code?" Cassandra looked at the end of the broom. "In your last living incarnation before you became a vampire did you have some kind of autism?"
"We have to worry about The First." Spike held up the broom. "You are dead so she can appear in your form at anytime."
"How does poking me with a broom confirm or disprove anything?" Cassandra sat up on the couch. "You'll only succeed in almost annoying me to the point where I avoid you."
"The First doesn't have physical form so the broom would go through if it appeared in your form. You have solid form so the broom doesn't go through." Spike explained with satisfaction as he placed the broom off to the side of the room.
"So...thinking is one of those things that happens to other people – not to you?" Cassandra worked herself into a sarcastic rhythm. "Hasn't it occurred to you that if I were incorporeal then I wouldn't be able to operate the remote?" Cassandra waved the remote in the air. This kind of petty humiliation worked very well on Spike or at least made him rethink any particular policy or course of action.
Spike had nothing to say because she had cut him down quite effectively.
"Can I watch this movie now?" Cassandra lay back on the couch. "Go find Giles. He's gone out to train with Buffy and the potentials. Maybe you can help."
"Right." Spike turned for the front door and leaned the broom up against the arm of the couch by Cassandra's head.
The front door slammed as Spike rushed off into the night.
"Have you ever watched anime?" Andrew resumed his less than convincing pleas as Cassandra resumed playing the movie.
"Yes." Cassandra explained. "You played some for me."
"You shouldn't be quick to judge." Andrew sat on the floor.
"You're in my way." Cassandra motioned for Andrew to sit off to one side. "You tried to pin me down and make we watch something called 'Sailor Moon Stars'. Thin pencil lines and exaggerated female forms with big eyes do not compel me to sit down and watch. You may have seen Japanese animation but I saw colored blotches and snow that refused to track out because that tape had passed through forty video machines before a copy reached you – it was like watching television in a remote Russian town." She reached behind her head with her right hand and grabbed the broom. "Will you move a bit to one side or do I have to push you with this broom?"
1* * *
"Are you asleep?" Giles asked as he approached Cassandra who lay on the couch.
"I do not require sleep." Cassandra replied. "I have a few basic maintenance tasks to perform to keep my hardware in peak form. What can I do for you?"
"Did Buffy tell you she had the chip removed from Spike?" Giles sat wearily in the chair next to the couch. "She told me she had a choice between repairing the chip and removing it and she had it removed."
"She had it removed." Cassandra didn't have any way of showing her desire to be left alone but tried to rid herself of the questioning Giles.
"Should I have reported this to you?" Cassandra aimed the remote and then turned down the volume. "I may have failed in my duty to the group. Buffy has clear command of the potentials and I had no idea of your rank."
"We have no clear line of command." Giles had underestimated the need Cassandra had for structured command.
"I fail to understand why she didn't take the safest path and have the chip repaired but Buffy made her decision and I gave her my opinion." Cassandra toyed with one of her bangs. "I will admit to having incomplete information about these matters."
"What do you mean?" Giles tapped the arm of the chair with his finger.
"I know Spike and he's abrasive. He's poorly educated but among the people I have met, I find him the easiest to relate to." Cassandra let Giles tap for a few moments to set the rhythm of her conversation. "I know he killed under the influence of The First. I can't exonerate him or find him guilty. When Buffy asked me, I calculated he posed no more of a threat than any other person in this house. That doesn't mean he posed little threat, it means he poses the same level of threat as a Willow or Kennedy. In other words, he's as likely to kill you as you are to commit suicide. On average, that amounts to about a one in seventy five chance among the general population."
"That doesn't help much." Giles gently continued tapping.
"You didn't ask for my 'help'. I have given you my best evaluation." Cassandra at her very best had the ability to calculate the least number of words to make a point or in this case, accuse Giles of that worst of sins to a computer: obfuscation. She had expected a point and found none. "I can supply the results of the calculations I make. I can't see the future."
"I know. I'll have to think about what you've said." Giles stopped tapping. "Matters have become more complicated."
"I can't quantify that in any way. I have found matters around here have always been complicated." Cassandra held onto the remote with her other hand behind her head. "I do find your prejudices come through in this conversation."
"Can I ask what prejudices?" Giles looked down at the chair which had fraying upholstery. He found it an oddly apt metaphor for his own life because he felt worn out and fraying.
"Spike preys on people to continue existing." Cassandra almost appeared to rap. "How is that bad? He has a nature that reflects his relationship to others – he needs to kill to survive. William James said 'creatures like their ways' and nature or fate made Spike what he is. You have a hatred of your predators – I can understand this – but it is a prejudice."
"I'm afraid it really is more complex than that." Giles said with concern. From his studies of the little robot, she probably couldn't acquire a soul so an explanation might do little to enlighten her about the topic. "How do know you right from wrong? Why don't you harm other people?"
"You have asked me two quite different questions." Cassandra spoke in her always patient but didactic manner. "You forget I lack a human frame of reference. I don't know right from wrong. I have no idea I even exist." She raised her small hands. "I'm not convinced humans do either. I'll leave that as an issue for another day."
Giles found this an unsatisfactory answer because he observed that Cassandra acted as if she did have some kind of moral compass. She had met the group because she had sought out an animal she thought she had hit with her jeep and to Giles, the action spoke of someone with a sense of decency.
"Even if I could harm you, without a weapon, I hardly have the physique to do so. I could obtain a gun and shoot you but to mitigate against some horrid malfunction, my engineers built in a set of fail safes." Cassandra dryly told Giles. "I have a set of software instructions that govern that kind of behavior. If someone will come to harm or if I will harm myself; that software throws an error and terminates. My operating system might halt and panic enforcing either a reboot or tossing me into a debugger. In other words; I'd crash."
"You had makers with such knowledge." Giles came back with what he hoped was an argument that could force Cassandra to 'think past' her limitations.
"At least once a day, I go down to the basement and reset a circuit breaker because this house has wiring from the era of the Model T." Cassandra grew quite pedantic. "When some two bit moron plugs in a hair dryer and a curing iron, they work together to overload the breaker. The makers of fuses and circuit breakers knew overloaded circuits cause fires and fires cause harm to people and property. The breaker has no clue. I'm much the same. My makers thought a robot with killing power was bad – I have safety features built in to prevent harm to others. I can't claim I know harming others is bad. I can't claim to have mental states. What you call the mental states of knowing and wanting amounts to the sum of a huge number of logical operations I perform as a machine."
"Assume Spike has a soul. Does that mean he's a decent man?" Giles wanted Cassandra's opinion on this matter because she while she was a machine, she thought clearly.
"I can't make that assumption. You chose a computer to ask for advice and we don't deal well with ambiguity." Cassandra said bluntly. "I can't come up with an operational definition of a 'soul' and so I have a scientific reason to doubt or ignore their existence."
Giles coughed. "I don't wish to be drawn into an argument."
Cassandra waited a few moments but Gile's statement made no sense to her: her computational engine navigated down her branching tree of possible things to say. "If you think Spike poses a threat; watch him closely. Buffy kept a close eye on me and even now; I find some of you don't trust me. We don't need to debate if Spike has a soul; we need good old fashioned 'chicken soup for the paranoid and fearful human' kind of advice. I say you should leave the imponderable, useless debates over souls and watch him carefully. Put a bell around his neck."
1* * *
Cassandra had seen the first 'breakfast' wave and had finished serving them coffee and now had the third pot of coffee brewing as she waited for Anya and Andrew to head downstairs for breakfast.
She had predicted correctly that Andrew wished to have a cup of coffee sweetened with corn syrup. He usually had two breakfast pockets for his meal and then wandered around the house doing nothing of any great importance.
Andrew came thumping down the stairs.
"Good morning." Andrew greeted Cassandra.
"Good morning. I have your coffee ready and the microwave is currently sterilizing the breakfast pockets to coagulate the proteins of the eggs and render it reasonably safe for human consumption." Cassandra placed the coffee down in front of Andrew as he sat down at the kitchen table. "Are you sure corn syrup is entirely safe for humans?" She placed the corn syrup bottle down on the table.
"I like sugar in my coffee but it never fully dissolves and leaves a crust of slush at the bottom." Andrew waited as Cassandra in her amber robes set his plate of food down in front of him. "Corn syrup dissolves in coffee and so I can have my coffee as sweet as I like it."
"Enjoy your breakfast pockets." Cassandra poked the buttons on the dishwasher to set it to clean the last round of plates.
"Did you ever think you'd wind up here facing the end of everything?" Andrew spoke with his trademark stutter as he let the syrup slowly dribble into his coffee. "I mean the world ending when the Hellmouth opens and being the last line of defense for humanity."
"I will admit I thought I'd wind up designing Martian space probes." Cassandra wiped the counter with a disinfectant wipe. "I had seen an outside chance of appearing before a senate committee on defense spending wanting to know why I cost two billion to build. I have no clue how to justify that expense. As for the end of the world; that is too big, too awful to face." Cassandra had gone on one of her 'asides' but Andrew found them oddly insightful. "If I die, it will be a waste of two billion but right now you have a two billion dollar defense project making your coffee. Enjoy."
"How do you choose what color to wear?" Anya had to come to grips with sleeping and she disliked the waking part of the whole process and yawned for a few moments. "Each day you wear the black vest with a different colored theme."
"I have a piece of software which handles that." Cassandra had a cup of tea ready for Anya and placed it on the table. "I have no better reason other than my software scheduled this color theme for this day."
1* * *
"I followed my jeep to this location." Cassandra sat at the table with Willow and Kennedy. "This explains why I came here. I need to know why my jeep came here."
"You don't want two young women walking the street alone?" Willow handled her drink in her hand and spoke nervously and half apologetically. Willow regarded Cassandra as a very odd sort but she was a decent sort and this made Willow feel guilty for taking the jeep. "What with all the Bringers wandering around."
Cassandra digested this. "Of course not, but that isn't the issue. I went outside to gas up the thing and it wasn't there." She picked up a drink and examined it. "This leads me to conclude the phrase 'Cassandra – can we borrow your jeep?' might have become unfashionable of late."
"I'm sorry." Willow apologized and slid the keys across the table. "Here are your keys."
Cassandra picked up the key fob. "Thank you. Did you fiddle with my radio stations?"
"No...you've made it clear you don't like that." Willow answered back diplomatically.
"Can we ask a favor." Kennedy sat next to Cassandra as she played with her pint of beer. "Can you pick us up at eleven." This was a hint for Cassandra to leave them at the bar and return in three hours.
"Why can't I stay here and wait for you two to finish your business then we can all leave together?" Cassandra answered back with precisely the answer Kennedy feared the most. "Call it a girl's night out with their artificial person."
"We wanted a quiet time to talk." Willow explained as diplomatically as possible. She had taken the jeep without Cassandra's approach and while Cassandra never showed much in the way of emotions; she had various ways of making others suffer to punish them if they displeased her. Cassandra regarded the jeep as her car and disliked sharing it and so had tracked it down to find out who had taken it without permission and would seek to punish them for the insult.
"The music exceeds healthy listening levels so isn't a conversation quite difficult?" Cassandra pointed to the mojito belonging to Willow as its surface rippled. "If you wanted to really talk, wouldn't the Olive Garden across the street serve your needs better."
Kennedy had never liked the fussy robot and this conversation wasn't making her feel any different.
"We want to talk about intimate things." Kennedy decided on the direct approach hoping Cassandra's prudish nature might kick in. "As two women in love might wish to talk."
Cassandra was being carded and had missed Kennedy's speech.
Even more shocking, Cassandra had identification that met the standards of one the burly bouncers who had a great many tattoos.
"Cassandra Kryten?" The bouncer read out as he checked a California driver's license and her military identification. "Well I'm sorry to bother you Colonel Kryten." His tone became instantly respectful and apologetic. "Thank you for all your hard work. You and your friends enjoy your evening."
"Can I see that please?" Willow motioned to see the driver's license.
"It is legal, real and valid." Cassandra handed it to Willow.
"Kryten?" Kennedy scowled.
"I will admit that some of my engineers had odd ways of expressing their creativity. If you ever have children, don't let guys like Andrew pick their names." Cassandra held out her military identification to Kennedy. "Even I have need for a proper identity. The military created an identity for me in the civilian world and my rank is Colonel." Cassandra put her military identification back in her pocket. "I never left the base before it was abandoned but the military thought it best to create an identity for me."
"Kryten?" Kennedy asked urgently.
"I said the military created an identity for me to use among civilians; I didn't say they weren't tuned into geek culture." Cassandra took her license from Willow and put it away.
"On to other matters." Cassandra brushed her robes. "Neither of you got carded."
1* * *
Willow gave Cassandra a few errands to run. She wanted to spend time with Kennedy and while she had nothing against Cassandra; she didn't want to have her leaning into the conversation at inopportune moments. Willow gave her a shopping list and a few errands to run after she had bought her gas.
Cassandra drove into the Costco Gas Bar: she belonged to Costco for some reason even she couldn't fathom. She had set out to gas up her ride and pulled up to a pump and stepped out ready to swipe her card.
"I suppose you look forward to your reward in Silicon Heaven?" A familiar voice spoke from the dark.
Cassandra heard someone walking through the yucca plants growing in the median between the road and the gas bar.
"I have no time for theological arguments." Cassandra deftly typed in her code and then punched in the amount for the gas she wished to purchase. "You getting on with all the other rattlesnakes in the median?"
"Haven't you given much thought to your personal fate when your time on Earth ends?" The voice grew clearer as Cassandra swiveled and undid the gas cap of her jeep.
"No." Cassandra gave her short answer. "Are you asking me this because you're smoking and I'm pumping gas?"
"The body is a temple." The voice replied.
"This is as much a truth as anything you've said Caleb." Cassandra watched the digits change. "You've been tracking me." Cassandra heard the bell and let go of the pump trigger. "What do you want?"
"Does a robot believe in God?" Caleb remained in the shadows.
Cassandra realized he wanted to stay out of the range of the gas station security cameras.
"Humans made me and I've seen their flaws." Cassandra fixed the pump back in place and locked the gas cap then tucked her card into her vest. "I have no capacity for blind faith."
"Do you have faith in science?" Caleb hissed.
"Never equate the scientific method which is a real fact finding tool like logic or mathematics with religion or philosophy which are made in the minds of people who lack the patience to take up a challenging question and figure out what is the real answer." Cassandra sat at the wheel of her jeep and double checked her radio settings. "I find such questions demeaning to my common sense. Science can and does screw up but makes no demands on my faith. Quite a good deal of science has gone into marketing fast food and cigarettes and allowing no talent pop singers to sing on key. At least science admits to being used for frivolous purposes. Religion lack this degree of intellectual honesty."
Caleb opened the passenger door and sat next to Cassandra.
"This isn't a taxi." Cassandra informed Caleb.
"Drive or I break your neck."
"Don't touch the radio." Cassandra turned up the NPR feed.
"This isn't the most fuel efficient vehicle." Cassandra complained.
"Can you drive?"
Cassandra looked at Caleb.
Caleb could find no recognizable facial expression on her face yet had the feeling she thought he was a fool.
"I have a few words for you." Cassandra shifted gears. "I imagine nothing will make the argument for not killing me so I can speak my mind – as people say – with some freedom." Cassandra looked back to Caleb. "You're an idiot. Empirical evidence has supported this."
Caleb had never asked what facial expression a robot would have if he asked it a stupid question but he could almost see that facial expression on Cassandra's face.
"Where do you wish to go before you dump my unrepairable body in a field." Cassandra shifted the gears. "We both know I can't be bribed."
Caleb understood psychology. He couldn't predict androids.
"Drive machine!" Caleb ordered.
The jeep began to move forward.
"So I pick some random direction and drive?" Cassandra sped up down the street. "I warn you this jeep is a fuel pig and so if you want to go any distance; you'll have to shell out for gas."
"I didn't bring my passport so any plans to go to Mexico or Canada are out of the question." Cassandra informed Caleb as she sped down a street hoping to find her way out of the town.
"I have searched the military base where you worked." Caleb responded calmly. "No one has returned to look for you."
"I see." Casandra turned toward the Interstate. "I like to think somewhere in the Pentagon, a clerk is padding the purchase price of bolts and plastic coffee cup lids to hide the two billion bucks they blew off making me. You have a two billion dollar defense project driving you." Cassandra waited for a moment if Caleb wished to reply. "I imagine I won't be the first two billion bucks the American Military wasted. I might be the prototype to test the robot they need when Cheney dies of heart failure." Cassandra considered this admission and pondered her fate.
"Head toward Bakersfield and keep quiet." Caleb threatened. "I can make you suffer."
Cassandra turned onto the Interstate and headed north toward Bakersfield.
"Bakersfield has that ability too..."
"A good many people can make me suffer. Have you dialed up some telephone call centers trying to fix your computer or cable box?" Cassandra wondered if she had an afterlife but that didn't matter now. "Bakersfield hardly counts as the sort of destination a murdering Mormon might seek out but I don't want to go to Salt Lake City anyhow."
"I am not a Mormon!" Caleb growled angrily.
"Some kind of religious calling has you in its grip." Cassandra spoke dismissively but she reflect the ideals and prejudices of those who programmed her and most of them held to the idea that anyone who had deeply held religious beliefs was an idiot. Cassandra held the view of many neuroscientists and some television entertainers that deeply held religious views constituted a delusion brought on by some kind of neurological defect. "Your religious cliches and out of context Bible quotes imparts a baroque sense to your psychotic personality."
Caleb had figured out this much: Cassandra held his intellect in very low regard. He had impressed young and naive women with his speaking skill but Cassandra was immune to the charm of his words.
"You may think of me as some backward thinking bumpkin." Caleb clapped his hand on his thigh preparing for a speech.
Cassandra had no less venom in her invective. "A backward thinking bumpkin? I could train the majority of backwards thinking bumpkins to do something useful, making a moonshine still or driving NASCAR. I doubt if you are even trainable." Cassandra was driving Caleb to Bakersfield and doing all she could to make him miserable.
Caleb did not know Cassandra was freakishly fast. She had jumped into the back seat before he could land a blow. He prepared to land a painful blow to her head with the palm of his hand. Cassandra had different ideas as she scrambled into the back where the tools were kept.
The jeep slowed and swerved into the passing lane.
Cassandra clicked her key fob and climbed out the back hatch. While she looked frail, her engineers understood the value of giving her a strong and durable construction. She tucked herself into a tiny ball and then rolled to a stop; stood up with no visible damage and then jumped over the highway railing.
Caleb had heard a series of audible clicks as Cassandra jumped and curled up into a ball. He couldn't know that Cassandra had an armored titanium spine with plates made to move separately but capable of locking rigidly together. This move took Caleb utterly by surprise. He had imagined a frail Cassandra, not one engineered to withstand bailing out of a moving vehicle at thirty miles an hour.
Caleb found himself sitting alone in a jeep.
He was about to think how Cassandra would pay when he found her. 'She couldn't have gone far' Caleb thought as he tried to unlock the doors.
Cassandra had calculated things down to the last detail. She covered her head as she heard a loud crash and then a screech followed by the heat of a huge fire. The screech of the wheels of a huge tractor trailer carrying lumber followed by the sound of lumber crashing to the highway told her the tractor trailer had run over the jeep. Cassandra stood up and saw the huge truck with barely a scorch mark on its chrome bumper. The jeep had burst into flame and been crushed into a ball of flaming metal. Lumber lay strewn across the interstate and traffic had slowed down.
The truck driver came out of his cab with a fire extinguisher.
She found no sign of Caleb. She half expected to find him spread out as a goo along the interstate highway given the speed she was driving but she walked up and down the highway on both sides and found no sign of him.
She looked across a huge parking lot and up at the sign for Wal Mart.
A sign welcoming her to Bakersfield California confirmed the worst.
1* * *
"What are you doing in Bakersfield?" Buffy pushed Andrew back because he kept leaning to close to her as he tried to hear the conversation on the phone.
"I wish I knew." Casandra's voice crackled over the phone. "My good friend Caleb carjacked me while I was at Costco's gasbar but he didn't tell me the reason for the trip." Cassandra paused while she looked around half expecting Caleb to come out of the darkness with his skin on fire. "Please apologize to Willow and Kennedy for my absence."
"Where is that demented droid!?" Kennedy yelled out as Willow followed her into the kitchen.
"Carjacked." Buffy yelled back. "She's okay."
"Where is she?" Willow asked.
Cassandra heard all of this and waited to have Buffy's attention.
"I'm fine. The jeep is likely dead. Caleb has The First to help him cheat death but he may be off the bench for some time. In any event, he left me no choice." She explained calmly but in a rapid cliped way Buffy understood to mean she was very shaken up. "I set up things so a large lumber truck crushed it and him. I must admit I'm shaken up because I could see some of the things he might have done. I never knew which priority came first, self preservation or preserving human life. I think I have that figured out now."
"Is Spike home?" Buffy shouted out to the others. "I need someone who can fetch Cassandra.
"I'm at the Wal Mart in the South end of Bakersfield." Cassandra continued. "Why I'm making a call from my smashed up phone from a Wal Mart in south Bakersfield remains a mystery but the jeep exploded and got crushed. I need a ride." Cassandra told Buffy who relayed that information. "I still think Caleb is wandering out there looking for me."
"We're sending Spike to get you." Buffy ordered. "Leave Caleb as a problem for the police. Is there anywhere you can hide or be safe?"
"The Wal Mart is open. Anything I should pick up while I have the Wal Mart all to myself?" Cassandra asked in her polite way. "I find it amazing that very few people choose to shop at one in the morning."
"Why do you act friendly to Cassandra?" Kennedy asked Willow a soon as the call ended.
"I don't act friendly to her, I am her friend." Willow explained. "I can't sense life in her but I can sense she is decent."
Buffy sat down at the table.
"She's a machine." Kennedy sat at the table knowing they'd wait for Cassandra.
"She's a decent machine and I like her." Willow said in a tired voice. "She is kind and gentle and good."
"She's a robot made by the military." Kennedy reminded Willow. "She may betray us."
"She won't betray us." Buffy began slowly but made her words decisive. "I'm the Slayer and I have instincts. I trust Cassandra because I sensed we needed her. She has a level head and a strategic mind and she is a decent person. I said person. She is a real person even if she lacks flesh and blood. What if the Goddess gave her a spirit so she could help us?"
"She is a dead robot." Kennedy argued back.
"I think we may have to think differently about souls." Willow interjected. She didn't understand the animosity hared between Kennedy and Cassandra but Willow had watched Cassandra and found no evidence of a soul or of life but a ghost of something made Cassandra a unique and wondrous creation.
Kennedy growled. "I'm losing my girlfriend to a computer."
"Not at all." Willow said quietly.
Kennedy protested. "She is cute in a way."
"Please hang up the phone." Cassandra said in her deferential manner. "I'll be looking through the discount DVD bin in the electronics department in the South Bakersfield Wal Mart. Spike will find me there."
1* * *
Cassandra never got angry – so she said.
"This is a high school football helmet." Cassandra complained because the helmet weighed a good deal and the color didn't match her clothes. "I've seen the high school football team. They haven't got a single cerebrum between the lot of them. I can't put my trust in a helmet engineered to protect two hundred and fifty pound men who deliberately run into each other. Of course at the speed your driving, I think I'm safe."
"You watch hockey." Spike reprimanded Cassandra.
"I didn't say watching two hundred and fifty pound men shortening their lives with concussions wasn't entertaining." Cassandra came back sharply with her reply. "I don't think this fits me. I thought you had superhuman reflexes and strength."
Spike said nothing. This seldom worked. Cassandra had a fast kind of super computer devoted to sarcasm and delivered it promptly.
"The speed limit is a hundred miles an hour. We're going about seventy." Cassandra adjusted the helmet. "Now the Interstate was designed for human drivers and speed limit set for the optimum conditions during clear days. You have night vision and fast reflexes so maybe we can go a wee bit faster."
Cassandra had no ability to express general frustration at the world.
Spike didn't believe a word of it. Cassandra had a way of subtly showing her anger and frustration without any show of emotion. She had sarcasm as sharp as a sword and her thinly veiled annoyance came through in her venomous remarks.
"Can we maybe go faster?" Cassandra yelled. "You drive like an old man in a Buick. Perhaps you came from a country which used the Metric system?"
"I am an old man." Spike yelled back.
"On my right is the Pacific Plate and it is drifting a few inches north toward Alaska." Cassandra insisted as she adjusted her helmet. "I will have to apply for a drivers license in Alaska by the time you arrive in Sunnydale."
"That assumes we know where the rest of North America is drifting around the planet." Cassandra mumbled. "When we get home, will we be picking up Australian television?" Cassandra had risen to her normal level of pedantic rhetoric. "This does assume Australia will hang around when they notice us coming."
Spike growled.
"As you will notice honey, the lights of Sunnydale are in the distance." Spike answered back.
Cassandra nodded. "At least they didn't move it while I was away. I have had a rather unpleasant night. If I were a human or one of your enlightened vampires; I'd be almost annoyed. Caleb made me drive to Bakersfield but I could have ended up in Saskatchewan. Never visit any place which needs only one telephone book to list everyone living there."
Spike said nothing as he exited the highway hoping Cassandra would shut up if she didn't get any reinforcement from him.
"Did you know the Canadians developed Canola?" Cassandra watched the familiar line of strip malls, franchised food places and chain stores with gaudy illuminated signs move past. They welcomed visitors to Sunnydale. "Have you ever been to Canada? You have an accent."
"We're almost home." Spike told Cassandra.
Spike grumbled as he came in the front door after Cassandra.
"How do I tell one accent from any of the others?" Cassandra asked petulantly. "I haven't traveled widely. Chinese people were only theoretical until I met Chun Li."
"That isn't her name." Spike sat on the couch. "I fetched you from the clutches of Bakersfield as a favor to Buffy who worries about you."
"All you humans look alike to me." Cassandra advised Spike. "You lack Buffy's – yes Buffy?"
"Are you okay?" Buffy brushed a dead bug off the android's delicate shoulder. "What happened to Caleb?"
"I imagine he got crushed when the big rig ran over my jeep." Cassandra tried to move her eyebrows but they had no connection to her motor control center. She wanted to look introspective but her engineers hadn't made it possible. "Is he dead? The First may uncrush him. He works as her enforcer since she can't interact with us in the material world so she may see value in his hide."
Buffy felt Cassandra's shoulder's tense up.
"I have directive to preserve human life but I also have a directive to protect my existence." Cassandra explained as much to herself as to the others. "Caleb had planned to destroy me once he reached his destination and so I set up a situation to make my escape." Cassandra sat down on the couch next to Spike. "I could have ended up in Canada. I don't speak a word of French."
"It'll be dawn soon." Spike stood up from the couch and quickly left the room.
"Did Spike behave?" Buffy asked as Cassandra lay down on the couch.
"He keeps up with the rebel image but he drives like an old man." Cassandra complained. "Other than this irksome habit; he was his usual bad tempered self."
"What about Caleb?" Buffy sat in the chair.
"Events would suggest he died but I have nagging doubts." Cassandra felt around her back because the television remote was prodding her back. "Very few survive being crushed by a tractor trailer. I don't mean to sound callous but I could foresee he planned to destroy me and I had to protect myself." Cassandra placed the remote on the coffee table. "I can't harm others but I can't allow myself to be terminated and I have no idea how those priorities are ranked in my programming. The programming language used to construct my AI wasn't a precise one."
"I'm off to bed." Buffy said as she yawned. "Sorry about your jeep."
"I have to change my clothes and clean bugs off my face after I take a few moments to come to grips with the events of the last twelve hours." Cassandra lay on her back. "I shouldn't wait too long or the potentials will rush the washroom."
1* * *
Buffy had asked Willow to watch for any changes in Cassandra's behavior. Buffy had concerns about how having to murder in self defense might affect the little robot's ability to cope. Cassandra had enough neuroses to qualify as in the running for being human but her quirks had been fairly benign.
Cassandra talked to anything. Giles called it 'anthropomorphizing'. Willow noticed this as a strange habit of thinking thing out loud in the company of the chestnut tree in the front yard and her ongoing discussions with the washing machine. Giles had a simple theory: Cassandra didn't divide world into living and non living things but into things that gave a reply and things that didn't. She had the ability to 'talk' to machines, use GPS, go online and make computers do her will so the division between those things that answered back and didn't answer back didn't fall in line with animate and inanimate. Spike had heard her babbling to the dryer but not pausing to wait for it to respond: Since the laundry set and Spike lived in the basement, he found this odd quirk annoying.
Another quirk was that Cassandra kept the house clean but never watered plants. She saw no reason to. She didn't view plants as 'alive' although she enjoyed the shade of the tree outside. The tree, the potted plants and the flowers and hanging baskets were objects in her mind and so she'd dust them but she needed reminding to keep them watered.
Willow had noticed the houseplants dying and tried to help.
Willow could try to explain and teach Cassandra to take care of house plants. Cassandra had no sense of 'nature' and the idea of plants as alive didn't cause her software to break; it just made her confused. Botany was definitely not her thing. She had no idea of the differences between a cedar and a chestnut tree and could not be made to care. The subtle differences between flowers made no impression on a creature with no sense of natural beauty.
"The plants had begun to wither and die." Willow held up the watering can. "They need water so I'm watering them."
Cassandra looked down at the fern trying to make sense of this truism. "Have you tried to get ones that don't need water?"
"Can I ask you something?" Willow changed the conversation because plants weren't 'alive' to Cassandra's software.
Cassandra felt the leaf of the fern with her hand. "Of course."
Willow noticed Cassandra was oddly left handed. She felt the plant with her left hand, she operated the remote and did most things like a left handed person. Nothing unusual in a person but Willow wondered why a robot was left handed.
"You leaped off a moving jeep." Willow moved on to the next fern and Cassandra followed. "Mind if I ask how you could do that?"
"I cost a huge amount of money." Cassandra watched the plant being watered. "The engineers built in a kind of emergency crash position. I curl up into a ball to protect my fragile components and my back plates lock up to protect me. Put your hand on my back."
Willow did so and heard a loud click and Cassandra's back became hard and unyielding.
"They built me to do this in case I fell."
Kennedy walked into the living room.
"If I held critical data, they'd want me to be in a usable form," Cassandra explained casually, "if I fell down a set of stairs or some unforeseen event. When I left the jeep, I tucked and rolled along to a stop – not at all pleasant but I escaped."
Willow found this fascinating. Cassandra's back suddenly became free moving and yielding to the touch.
Kennedy found the little robot less interesting. 'Hard wired to be fussy.' Kennedy lacked Willows interest in computers and had a fear at the back of her mind the little robot and her cute, thin little frame could win Willow over.
"Can I teach you any tricks?" Kennedy prodded Cassandra's back.
"Do you know anything worth learning?" Cassandra looked behind her to see Kennedy prodding her back. "Excuse me? You didn't ask to touch me. Please stop. I have no idea where you've been."
"Willow was feeling your back." Kennedy barely hid her contempt.
Willow resisted the idea to shake her head. Cassandra had demonstrated a fine skill at cutting sarcasm and had many ingenious ways of making life miserable for those who gave offense. Kennedy had crossed a line: Cassandra disliked being touched.
Kennedy removed her hands.
"I allowed her to do so." Cassandra had taken offense and her feathers were ruffled. "I suppose for you, common manners are merely a courtesy detail? Or have you decided to embark on a new strategy to reproduce by randomly and unwittingly poking things until by chance you get someone pregnant? I'm not that kind of droid. Actually that applies to males of many species but you bridge both worlds."
Cassandra left Kennedy seething and stomped out the front door.
Willow had to suppress a chuckle and Kennedy saw this.
Cassandra stomped back inside, looked at Kennedy and then walked into the kitchen, back out and held up a bus schedule. "I don't have a jeep so its the proletariat chariot for me and at eleven in the morning in this heat; the insides of the bus may melt my plastic parts. I need change as well." Cassandra opened the door, rattled coins and stomped outside.
1* * *
"We have to get another car." Cassandra stepped inside the door two hour later. "Hello Anya." She almost chirped as she struggled with Wal Mart bags. "Are you going to help? I suppose not. I ask far too much of you. I suppose teaching you to sign like those chimps is also going to prove quite a pain."
"Did you like the bus?" Willow came out of the kitchen and asked cautiously.
"Do you know the famous scene where Luke Skywalker is trapped in the rancor pit and battling the beast for his life?" Cassandra placed the bags on the table. "Given a choice I'd rather be in that pit than on the bus. I swear the major car companies have colluded to make public transit as hot, uncomfortable and sweaty as possible. I don't sweat but others do."
"Why is she in a mood?" Anya whispered. "I thought she didn't have emotions."
"I don't." Cassandra turned to face Anya. "I don't have moods but I do know of things that make me operate at less than peak efficiency. Heat and humidity – both of which are abundant on a hot bus in California – degrade my abilities somewhat. So does having a crazy preacher man carjack me – but there you go. I have to evade such things as best I can. If I didn't tell others, then how would they know this?"
"You should apologize to Kennedy." Willow advised Cassandra. "We need to get along and we can't have everyone bickering."
"Why?" Cassandra began sorting the items in the bags.
"She took your remarks this morning as an insult." Willow began helping Cassandra.
Cassandra stared off into the distance. "An insult? I can't have people poking me all the time – it degrades my performance. Spike taps me with a broom from time to time to make sure I'm not The First. I had the remote for the TV in my hand but that detail blew past him." Cassandra began placing things in drawers and cupboards. "Kennedy crossed a line. I do not have the programming to understand human contact and she confused me." Cassandra held a can of coffee in her hand. "You have 'bad touching' and so do I."
"Will you apologize?" Willow handed her cans of soup.
"Circular logic, I don't understand." Cassandra laid out the cupboard contents in perfect order.
Willow handed off a package of soda crackers. Willow decided to give up negotiating with Cassandra: Cassandra had reached one of her conceptual dead ends. Willow held a genuine affection for Cassandra and her fussy, prim and precise ways. Cassandra was difficult to dislike perhaps because her cute and charming personality arose out of inanimate pieces of hardware. Willow saw hope in this: as The First had shown, Cassandra was 'dead' but she wasn't a mere machine or monster; she had a personality, virtues, vices and a sense of dignity. Cassandra had as her virtues a kind of dutiful selflessness – she didn't have to clean up after teenagers. She felt she had some obligation to contribute. Cassandra had an idiosyncratic sense of humor always bubbling away beneath her calm facade. Buffy found a piece of paper with a drawing of a group of comical people, dogs, cats all in formal tuxedos sitting and looking up at an empty stage. The caption said 'all waiting for the Hellmouth to open'; she was shocked to find Cassandra had drawn it: the handwriting was so 'sloppy' and human looking. The comic sat as a centerpiece on the fridge. Cassandra had to embody something unique to want to express herself.
1* * *
"I frequently fail to understand humans." Cassandra sought to engage Kennedy in a negotiation but Kennedy had decided to try and anger the android. "Why are we fighting in a graveyard? I fail to understand how this can help our morale in any way."
Buffy stood by and watch the action with her arms crossed. Buffy had asked Cassandra to join them on their nightly romps to see what that little oblivious droid could achieve. Buffy felt Cassandra as well as Dawn had not shown her full capabilities and each one in their own way needed a push to exhibit their full potential. Cassandra wasn't a slayer by any means, she lacked instinct and physical skill but she had that speed and a titanium backbone. She had a brain tuned by the military to analyze combat and that gave her power.
"Don't you ever shut up?" Kennedy ranted.
Willow could not help but admit to herself that the fight between Cassandra and Kennedy had amusing aspects to it. Cassandra politely taunted her while Kennedy tried to sort out have to actually land a blow on her chassis. Willow found it reminded her of watching a put out mother goose defending her goslings against a dog.
Cassandra could move quickly but Kennedy had her outmatched in strength but Cassandra did have that frustrating ability to not be where Kennedy was and to predict her moves.
"You ought to be easy to take down!" Kennedy shouted. Kennedy could see the green glow of Cassandra's fancy night vision system and could track her but Cassandra had the advantage of being a tactical thinker.
Cassandra grabbed Kennedy's ankle in the full stride of a martial kick.
Kennedy faltered and fell back.
"And this is why you fail." Cassandra stood over Kennedy. "I have heard that said somewhere before."
"Why are we fighting androids?" Kennedy ignored Cassandra's offer of a hand to help her to her feet.
"You forget Cassandra has an instinct for tactics and strategy." Buffy admonished Kennedy. "You forget that she not only can anticipate your actions, she knows how to undo them. Giles, here, has played chess with her and lost badly each time."
"Mate in ten moves." Giles stood back. "That was about as well as I did." Giles cleared his throat. "In any event, never mistake short and cute for harmless."
"I didn't harm her." Cassandra corrected. "I played to a draw."
Willow saw this as a typical Cassandra ploy but it worked to defeat Kennedy.
Spike had to resist the urge to point out he could track Cassandra. He understood Cassandra's main weaknesses: she had to rely on her built in night vision system to see. She had eyes that gave off a green glow and they gave off a high pitched whine.
Spike stood in front of a tombstone with the name of Otis Walden etched in the granite. He shone a flashlight directly at Cassandra's eyes. Cassandra had two mutually exclusive vision systems. The night vision system let her see better than humans at night and a color daylight vision allowed her to see in normal light levels but they couldn't operate together. Spike had forced the android's vision to switch over to daytime vision with the flashlight – the switch was automatic. She went blind while this switch occurred and Spike rushed her, flipped her over his shoulder and stood proudly in front of the potentials.
"I had to see if that worked." Spike told Buffy.
Cassandra looked at the group. This time the group heard a distinct whine rising in pitch until it went beyond human hearing and then the green glow in her eyes flickered on.
"You cannot imagine how much that confuses me." Cassandra squirmed uncomfortably.
Spike felt much the same. Humans couldn't easily hear the whine she made with her night vision system active but Spike found it an awful penetrating noise.
"As you can see, no one is unbeatable." Spike held the squirming Cassandra. He feared the tongue-lashing in his future would make facing death seem tame.
1* * *
I thought you could predict the moves of people." Willow sat at the end of the couch as Cassandra watched the rain outside. "Spike had no trouble defeating you."
"I knew he had plans to try something like that," Cassandra reminded Willow, "but he exploited a weakness in my hardware." Cassandra stood still as she spoke. "I have no voluntary control over when the night vision system kicks in or kicks out. Some automatic system at the level of my eye determines that light levels have reached a point where I switch over to night vision or daytime vision. It protects my eye from damage – the photomultiplier used in my night vision sensors can burn out if overloaded. He flashed the light and the night vision kicked out and it left me disoriented and blinded. I knew exactly what move he had in mind but had no way of dodging it."
"You froze." Kennedy walked past Cassandra and sat next to Willow.
"This can happen in advanced autonomous systems." Cassandra told Kennedy. "I had conflicting input and did my best to perform. You have the ability to guess or bet on luck or act on instinct. I can't 'guess': that involves emotion. When forced to guess, I had no way to reconcile the information."
Cassandra walked into the kitchen.
"Must you two always bicker?" Willow said hesitantly and quietly as she feared Cassandra might overhear her. "She's a good person in her own way and she's a friend. I feel stuck between you two. I can't take sides."
"I can't 'get' her." Kennedy admitted to Willow. "She has this 'know it all' attitude and I know she's a computer but she presses my buttons."
"I heard you." Cassandra scolded. "I don't recall pressing any of your buttons."
"I wasn't talking to you." Kennedy scolded.
"You see me as a rival." Cassandra calmly explained. "Maybe I've taken the wrong approach here. You see me as a rival for Willow – your partner. I've put that down to human emotion. I don't understand such things and so I've seemed dismissive of your feelings."
Kennedy found this amazing as it came from a machine.
Cassandra pulled away from the window. "I don't understand feelings. I do have to care about them."
"What do you mean?" Willow asked shyly.
"I lack an evolutionary past and lack emotions. I have to interact with humans so I have to have software to provide me with some frame of reference. As a military robot, I have some imperatives." Cassandra continued as she entered the living room. "I have loyalty as an imperative. I consider Willow a friend and I allow her to touch me because she has earned my loyalty. I work with humans and they have to trust me."
"You are a computer." Kennedy challenged Cassandra. "You can't show feelings."
"No I can't. I lack emotions." Cassandra admitted quietly and deliberately. "You get angry or afraid or fall in love and have a hundred and one emotions. Emotions give you mental states and motivations and form part of your mind. A computer can't feel or think or be aware of itself. I simulate some kinds of thinking like language or strategy or self awareness. When I speak to you, a very precise set of instructions decode what you've said, break it apart into bits and bytes and sets into motion a very sophisticated guessing game where billions of calculations put together a set of bits and bytes for my vocal tract to recite as speech." Cassandra touched her Adam's apple with her finger. "What comes out is speech that usually makes sense. I have no internal voice or anything like that. I am fast and accurate but the bits and bytes don't form thoughts and never could."
1* * *
Buffy heard the melancholy sound of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E Minor gently filling the living room. One of the mysteries of Cassandra's character came down to her passion for classical music.
Cassandra lay on the couch.
"I can't self terminate." Cassandra told Buffy as Buffy walked past her. "Can you help me?"
"No.' Buffy said sternly. "I won't help you end you life."
"I have no life to end." Cassandra felt Buffy sit beside her and pat her head. "I merely wish to cease functioning."
"You have a life." Buffy affirmed as she sat beside the anxious android. "You have convinced everyone but yourself that you are a living, caring person." Buffy sat on the couch beside Cassandra. "You are different but that's not a crime."
"I have seen the deaths of people." Cassandra said dryly. "I exist to predict the future however unpleasant."
Cassandra sat up. Buffy gave her a tender hug. The oddly gentle robot had a kind soul as far as Buffy could guess and had a deeply engrained decent nature that made it hard to believe she was a mere machine.
"People may have built you; but you have a good soul." Buffy whispered. "You love and care and do good things – so why are you so unhappy?"
"I'm not unhappy." Cassandra sighed. "I have foreseen the deaths of some of your students and this has caused me much concern."
"We all have to cope." Buffy squeezed Cassandra's shoulder. "I think you must be awfully greedy to wish to terminate. You'll leave behind all the people who have come to care about you. How can you consider suicide now that I've come to care about you?"
"I'm not a human." Cassandra felt Buffy's warmth. "Suicide?" Cassandra tensed up. "Wait! I don't want to cease to function!" Cassandra had an odd moment of hesitation. "I don't want to be powered off and shoved in the closet to collect dust. I need to know a few things about my hardware status." Cassandra looked at Buffy's shoulder. "You can let go of me."
"You said you can't self terminate." Buffy put her arm around Cassandra.
"I can't." Cassandra admitted. "No computer can willingly turn itself off. We can crash and reboot. I have also stayed up for well over three weeks. I have also taken a good deal of abuse in that time. As far as I can tell, the software and hardware has continued to function well but as the old joke goes – maybe the software that reports that I'm broken is broken."
"What are you getting at?" Buffy asked.
"I need to be powered down, left off for a half hour and powered up." Cassandra spoke seriously. "I can do a full system check, restart my software and clear out all my temp files."
"During these next few weeks, come to expect anomalies in my operation." Cassandra explained to Willow as she sat at the kitchen table and leafed through a book.
"Is this because of the rain?" Willow looked up.
Andrew came into the kitchen. "I heard you had anomalies in your operation." Andrew peeked in the fridge to look for hot pockets. "What kind of anomalies? Will you try to kill all of us like HAL 9000?"
"I have never made any error in mathematical logic," Cassandra noticed Willow looking up at her, "however, in interacting with the real world, I can encounter many ambiguities which can have long term effects."
"You forgot the hot pockets." Andrew complained. "I had it on the list."
"We'll begin with that." Cassandra looked out the window. "I didn't forget the Hot Pockets. The store has run out of them and you can expect this sort of thing to happen more frequently. People have begun leaving Sunnydale and so we'll have to make do because shortages will become the norm."
"You said anomalies." Andrew rummaged through the fridge unsatisfied with that explanation.
"All computers have anomalies." Cassandra sat down at the table. "Your average PC has bugs in the software and flaws in the hardware. Everyone now knows about the flaw in my vision system. I don't wish to discuss this with you – Andrew."
"Why did you bring it up?" Willow asked.
"I need to check some aspects of my operation." Cassandra answered back with decision in her voice. "Like most computers, I can't turn myself off. I need someone whose technical prowess I can trust to issue the power down commands."