"Connect those two sets of wires together."

"I am not going to connect them! Do you want a murderbot?!"

"Do you want an autonomous being? Or just more of your inane drivel?"

"I want to live! Not get slaughtered by my own creation."

"Bah! This is why your research has stagnated."

Vivian leaned forward aggressively over the robot she and Doctor Drew were working on. "At least my creations are sane!"

"How can something that can't think be sane?!" Doctor D sniped back, crossing his arms angrily.

"Agh!" Vivian straightened up and began pulling at her hair. "You're ridiculous, you know that?!"

Tara's boss stuck his tongue out in reply.

Tara sighed.

Maaaaan. This was no-good boringness!

The two geniuses had been arguing over the nifty robot thing for the last two hours. TWO of them! That's as many as two ones, and that's terrible!

She had to do something about it. And she knew JUST what to do!

"Compromise time~" Tara sing-songed as she skipped over to the two battling scientists. "Guys! Hey! Guess what?"

Drew still defiantly looked away, but Vivian turned to Tara curiously. "What's up, kiddo?"

"You two are thinking too black and white," the younger blonde tsked. She pointed at the various wires that were the center of the argument. "Why not just connect one set of wires? That would do stuff, wouldn't it?"

"What?!" Doctor D and Vivian looked like Tara had lost her mind.

"That would barely do anything to give it a mind!"

"That would give the robot a loose mental state, ripe for disobedience!"

The two of them then looked back at each other.

There was a pregnant pause.

Then Vivian grudgingly admitted, "I guess if, only IF, we connect the least risky wires, we might be able to safely expand their decision-making capabilities enough to have a bit of a breakthrough."

"Nnnngh…" Drew snorted. "Fine! Whatever! It's your project. If you want it to fail, then go ahead and fail!"

Vivian rolled her eyes. "Let's give it a shot. It's not like we're getting anywhere by arguing like this."

Instead of countering with some kind of petty complaint, Tara's boss grumpily waved at the wires. Vivian, rolling her eyes at the doc's pettiness, bent over and finagled with the wires. It only took a few moments before everything was set up the way Vivian apparently wanted.

Great! It was always good when agreements could be made!

"So, now that that rubbish has been done, did you want to start it up so I can prove that I'm right?" Drew peevishly asked.

"Yeah, yeah…" Vivian flipped the panel shut and propped the partial robot up. "Let's get Oliver back up and running then."

"Yay~" Tara cheered. She sat back, awed, as Vivian messed with the switches and doo-dads in the robot's neck to turn it on.

A few buzzing beeps were followed by the eyes flashing and opening wide. There was no fleshy covering like Vivian had once described to Tara, instead having a stereotypical robot face. Boring, but obviously necessary.

"Oliver?" Vivian moved so she was in the robot's eyesight. "How do you feel?"

"I…" There was some wonder in its voice as it said, "I feel…!"

Drew sighed. "Are your creations so simplistic that they don't even have emotions?! I mean, I knew your robots were far inferior to mine, but this is just ridiculous!"

"Hush you!" Vivian hissed. Then, happily, she said, "You feel something? What is it?"

"I feel…this must be curiosity." Its eyes focused on the svelte blonde. "What have you been doing to me?"

"We're making you better! Better than better! The best!" Doctor D crowed. "You'll blow the minds of all of those stupid board room dodos once we're finished."

"Huh." The robot did its best to tilt its head. "Hm. There's still some work to be done. I can feel the new connections beginning to fail."

"What?!" the bad doctor exclaimed. "Already!? You've barely been on!"

"The wiring job I did was basic. I didn't want anything too permanent in case it went wrong," Vivian said with a frown.

"You shoulda trusted Doctor D," Tara lectured. "He's a super smart guy on this stuff."

"Yeah, except when his creations rebel," Vivian countered. "I didn't want to risk that."

"What risk is there?" Tara's boss grumbled. "He's a body base and a head!"

"He, he could bite!" Vivian said just as grumpily.

"I would never bite you, Vivian," the robot said sincerely.

Vivian's eyes softened. "In your right mind, I believe you."

"I think I need turned off before these circuits overload," it noted. It gave an exaggerated yawn. "I think...I could dream like this."

The junior doctor patted its head. "Good. Go ahead and go to sleep. We'll get things more figured out."

"And then you'll be a true masterpiece!" Drew said loudly, clenching a fist. "No one would deny my—erm, our—genius once they get a load of you."

"Good."

Vivian reached behind its head and hit a switch.

The robot stilled, then went silent.

Vivian has a bittersweet smile. "Good night, Oliver."

"You said that too late?" Tara said, confused. "It was already off!"

"I know." The older blonde shrugged. "He's my baby. I'm just being a bit sappy."

"Wait. 'It'?" Drew eyed Tara. "You're not one of those weirdos that think that robots have no gender, are you?"

Tara blinked. "How can it have a gender?" She leaned forward, excited. "Oh boy! Are you gonna tell me?!"

"I—I mean, uhm, nnnnngh…!" Doctor D stomped his foot. "We just program them like that!"

"...Wait." Tara frowned, then accused, pointing her finger at Drew, "You assign genders to your robots? Your self-aware robots that can choose for themselves?! How could you!?"

The blue man slapped a hand over his face. "I just—you just—agh!"

"There are limitations on what we can do," Vivian began explaining more eloquently. "Gender is a good part of the human identity. We can't just gloss over that part. We program in what we feel is the most appropriate." She bit her lip. "But you're right. Once they have the freedom of choice, they should be able to choose who they are too." Her head flopped down against the table. "Oh no. What Pandora's box am I opening with this?"

"This is why it's easier to be an amoral mad scientist when it comes to these things. No one cares about your choices then!" Drew pointed out.

"No, you don't care about your choices," Vivian corrected. "That doesn't change the facts."

Tara pondered. "This is a bit much to think about now, huh?"

"I'll have to add it to my research notes," Vivian said, resigned. "It's so much…"

"This is why being a pioneer can be awful," the assistant consoled. "A lot of people had to face the hard side of things. Like Nobel and his big ol' kerfluffle!"

"Yeah…" Vivian sighed. "It just means late nights for the next few weeks while I work this out."

"Don't worry!" Tara slapped Vivian on the back in comfort. A little too hard as the older woman let out a hiccup of pain. "Oops! Erm, right! Yes! Don't worry! You'll figure it out!" She ducked down and gave Vivian a side hug. "I believe in you!"

"So if the one set of wires resulted in this…" Doctor D said leadingly "...then both sets of wires—"

"Not a chance," Vivian cut in flatly.

"But—"

"No."

As Drew and Vivian began arguing about the wires again, Tara squeed to herself.

This was great! Progress was being made on everything! The plants on the moon, mapping out the Lorwardian tech, Vivian's project...how nifty!

Oh! Maybe she could ask for help with her fanfics? She didn't really have any other project, and it would be the neighborly thing for Vivian and Doctor D to do.

Now all she had to do was decide which story to get help with…

—

"Do-do-dah-dah~" Tara hummed out loud as she finished lining up the various parts with their assigned info cards that Doctor D had asked to be arranged for photos to add to the catalog. It was a request from the big boss lady as they were supposed to send the parts to other sites for testing and the expansion of the project. Drew was pretty grumpy about it, but begrudgingly agreed to do it for SCIENCE!

Tara secretly thought that it was more because he wanted to prove he was the smartest guy in the room. His ramblings certainly supported that theory.

Wait. Theory, or hypothesis? She had evidence, true, but it hadn't gone to any trials. So it couldn't be a theory. She didn't want to fall into bad thinking like a lot of people! Overusing 'theory' and confusing it with a hypothesis was just bad practice.

Oh well. Either which way, she was sure she was right!

She had just finished spiffying up the last of the display when a clearing cough a short ways behind her caught her attention.

"Ah! You're back!" Tara twirled around happily. "Look! I got—" She cut herself off and gasped as she caught sight of her boss. "Oh! Uhm, you look, different?"

And he did! His clothes were totally different! Instead of his blue lab coat, he was wearing a spiffy black lab coat that was almost a duster. It had several pockets all over the place and was open in the front instead of all buttoned up like his other jacket. Underneath he was wearing a solid wool shirt—sweatshirt or whatever she couldn't tell—and a straight-laced pair of slacks with a shiny belt. It was finished off with his regular old gloves and a really fancy-looking set of heavy-duty boots.

He snorted, bunching his little fists together angrily. "'Different'? That's all you have to say about it?"

"What were you looking for?" the assistant asked with curious wonder.

"Dashing? Handsome? Better than before?" her boss supplied, raising a clenched fist in front of himself. "Really, whatever nice words you could've grabbed other than 'different'."

"Yes! You look like all of those!" Tara tried to cover. She looked closely at his outfit. "Golly, this stuff looks like it was fitted to you!"

"That's because it is!" Doctor D supplied cheerily, his earlier grumpasaurus status forgotten. "I went to a tailor to get this all figured out." He brushed at his coat proudly. "Top-grade materials to resist all kinds of chemicals! And heat resistant! Ohohoh!" Drew began jumping up and down excitedly. "And it's stain resistant! Vivian won't be able to smear any more grease on me now!"

"When in the world did you have time to do this?" Tara wondered out loud. The stores were only open during 'regular' business hours, which meant the entire time Tara was there! And she didn't remember him sneakity-sneaking off that often!

"I went a little after the whole mess at the party," Doctor D said casually.

Too casually.

Tara thought hard back on the party. About his clothes.

Lightbulb! Bright and shiny all over her brain!

"Ohhhh. You listened to Dementor!" Tara chirped, super pleased that she remembered.

"What?! No! Nonono!" Drew waved just hands. "That blowhard had nothing to do with this change!"

"He did say something about it, though! I know he did!" she insisted.

"I, I mean…" The bad doctor harrumphed as he amended, "He said that I should change. But I was already looking into it anyway! So there!"

"But if you only started after the party—"

"No!" He stomped his foot. "That loser had nothing to do with it. And that's final!"

Aw man! When things were final, they were all done. Tara knew she was right, but with the conversation finalized Doctor D got the last word in. So unfair!

"So…" He sounded nervous as he asked, "I look more...what's the slang? 'Put together'?"

"Hm?" Tara tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"Am I more impressive-looking?"

The blonde blinked. Then the lightbulb in her head flashed again. A sly smile slid onto her face as she said with a sneaky tone, "Trying to impress someone?"

"Is it that obvi—erm, I mean no?" Probably the least convincing refute she'd ever heard from him.

Tara giggled like a loon. "You're trying to woo a certain scientist lady, aren't you?"

His face flushed purple. "I—I just—nnnnngh…!" He looked about angrily for a few moments until his eyes fell on Tara's work. "What is this mess?!"

"Oh!" Tara flourished in front of the display. "It's the set-up for the pictures! That Doctor Wong wanted!"

He stared at her like she was dumb. "It's supposed to be small to large! Not large to small!"

"Huh?" She looked backwards at the pieces of tech. He was right about it being arranged large to small, but that shouldn't affect things too much...should it?

"Fix it! Fix it now!"

"Hm…" She decided not to press him as he was clearly smarting from her brilliant deduction. Instead, she directed, "Well, if you start on that end we can—"

"No! It's your mess, you fix it!" Drew peevishly growled, face still tinged purple. "I'll be working on, on, well, something else." He not-stomped away as he yelled behind him, "Come find me when you're done!"

Tara watched him trundle off in his grumpy huff, then huffed herself.

Such a grump! He was so sensitive about his obvious crush on Vivian. Tara was just doing some light teasing!

But! That was fine! His crush was most definitely confirmed! Now all Tara had to do was weasel a confession out of Vivian and get the two lovebirds together!

So exciting~