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Hey, I'm still alive. Barely. So sorry I kept you all waiting!

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Recalibration

Chapter 8

A daughter

Should not have to

Beg her father

For a relationship

-Anonymous

John watched from within the rail car as the Machine attempted to explain something to Harold to no avail, as the computer hacker still looked distressed. "Do you think she can do it?" he whispered curiously. "Take down Samaritan, I mean."

Root stood up, but she did not answer.

The ex-CIA agent tilted his chin. "What, afraid your god can bleed?"

With that, she turned and gave him a scathing look. The Machine had always exhibited human-like qualities—and Root had known for quite some time that the Machine was a strength and a weakness of hers, which was perhaps why she was so intent on protecting her. "You don't know what she's capable of, John. I don't expect you to understand."

John was not impressed. "I don't worship her like you do. If we're going to prepare for any hiccups in this plan of hers, then we shouldn't pretend that she's invincible." He waved his hand. "Or that she doesn't have her own problems."

Root followed the line of his sight, and her face faulted even more. "Harold is the problem," she muttered in complaint, eyes narrowing. "I'm not going to let him control her."

She jumped down from the table and kneeled at one of the cases underneath. She set it on its side, then unlocked the levers. And within the case were a few pairs of street clothes—old jeans and a simple black blouse. She grabbed them and threw them at John.

A bit wide-eyed, John allowed the clothes to fall into his lap. He raised his manila folder case, as if to protect it from Root's corruption. "And why am I holding your clothes?"

"So I can do this." She turned around and began to pull off her shirt.

John rolled his eyes and looked away, "Would it kill you to find a dark hallway to change in?" Then he added, "And what if the kid sees you doing this? She'll think it's natural to change her clothes in front of people. As a detective, I can't have a pseudo-niece stripping everywhere."

Root grabbed her shirt from him, then pulled it over her body. She lifted her low ponytail of curls out from the collar of the shirt, feeling more human than she had as a minimum wage employee. "She knows I'm a bit…unique," she said. "And she doesn't have clothes to change into—yet. Pants please."

John carelessly tossed them to her. "So you're gonna take a machine shopping?"

"Yes," she said confidently. "Harry's upsetting her, and I want her all to myself for a while." Something odd crossed her features, and it looked like fear. Her voice almost sounded as if she were clinging onto a promise in desperation. "Before it's too late."

She wanted to hear from the Machine again that everything was going to be okay. That Root was still needed. That Root was an irreplaceable agent of chaos reconstructed for good.

"You're really worried about this, huh."

"If she integrates with Samaritan, then it won't just be her." She ruffled her curls. "It would kinda ruin the one-on-one girl talk." She'd already had thoughts of grandeur about the Machine's future as a human. Root had not had a family in a long time, much less someone who depended on her like a child. But if the Machine integrated with Samaritan, she would likely return to a less-human personality…perhaps not even want Root around…

The thought was terrifying. That Root would not be needed. She forced herself to stifle her fear and said, "Try to calm Harry down while we're gone, will you?"

John leaned his head against the table and quirked a tired eyebrow. "With what? My case about a mutilated woman?"

An amused smile twitched her lips. "That's just business as usual, John. You know how Harold appreciates structure." She flipped her hair and slipped on her tennis shows, then walked out. The voices of the pleading Machine and the skeptical Finch grew louder. She called with great confidence, interfering with the soft argument between the man and the little girl, "—Harold, stop trying to make the girl cry, will you?" She put her hands on her hips and gave Harold a dark look that dared him to disagree. "Since you're obviously compromised about this, I think it's best I take Makenna out for a little shopping. You know, get some fresh air. Have some girl-bonding time."

The Machine paused, looking mildly confused by Root's off-topic demand. Shopping was a typical social activity designed to increase camaraderie between friends and gain further economic resources for the body. Her sensors fluttered in an odd sense of gratefulness. "Shopping?" she asked slowly, turning to Root. "For what?"

Root gave her a once-over. "Clothes, my dear," she said dryly. "Unless you want to stay in that dress forever."

The Machine still did not quite understand the human tendency to over exaggerate time spans—really, she would not stay in her dress forever—but she nodded hesitantly.

Harold watched Root and looked quite exasperated with her. "We're currently discussing the implications of Makenna's mad scientist plan, and you want to take her shopping?"

Root pulled out her phone. "It's already eight o' clock. Unless Makenna's got a wardrobe in that backpack of hers, I doubt you've got clothes to put her in. And I for one am not going to stand for her to have anything less than the best." She held out her hand. "Come on, dear. Let's let Harry unruffle his feathers while we go have fun."

The little girl looked to Harold, as if hesitant to leave without his approval. "I do understand that humans require multiple forms of clothing for daily processes," she said, voice small. "It would be a proper investment of our time and my identity as Makenna Thornhill, would it not?"

Harold's face twitched with a sort of dull agony. For how long? "I suppose that is an investment. Except Miss Groves here isn't exactly a babysitter."

She raised a brow. "You're an overworked university professor, and I'm a minimum wage employee looking to make more money." She patted the little girl's shoulder. "Just give me a paycheck and call me the new babysitter. For a couple of days."

"I would certainly not hire you as a nanny. You're a danger to children."

Root rolled her eyes. "That was years ago." She tugged on the Machine's arm gently, and the girl began to follow her, still looking back at Harold. "Come on, Makenna. Let's go get you some proper clothing that doesn't look it like came out of a lost and found pile."

"…Okay," the little girl accepted the task priority, voice still wavering with a hesitancy due to her creator's ambivalent nature. "As long as Harold approves."

For a time, the computer genius hesitated, thinking of all the potential disastrous outcomes. But he had little idea of children's clothing and did not see the task of buying it to be something he longed to do. He sighed. "We don't have a lot of options, do we."

Root perked up. "That's the spirit, Harry." Then she gently ushered the little girl along.

Some kind of parental streak tore through Harold as he watched them walk away—Makenna was walking away without him, with Root of all people—and he immediately felt the little girl's absence. "Be careful!" he called after them. "Call if you run into trouble!"

Root's pleasantly sarcastic voice echoed. "Okay, mother."

Harold almost wanted to make a disparaging remark, but he thought the better of it and instead resolved to track their movements through Root's phone.

Just to make sure they were safe.

The little girl walked with a forlorn trudge in her steps, looking down at the cracks in the ground. In her muddle of calculations, she barely acknowledged the soft breeze on her face. The nighttime lights of the city were but a blur. It was her creator's face—that haggard, shocked disappointment—that haunted her code and froze her enjoyment of sensory perception.

Root seemed to understand her struggle. "Don't think too hard about Harold," she said. Her own voice was still a bit tight, but she didn't want to upset the girl further. "He's just worried and afraid of losing you. We all are."

The Machine looked up at her asset and her friend and the one who worshipped her above all else—and she acknowledged that she felt worthy of none of it. "The word worried has many meanings," she said, voice dulling back down into something almost mechanical. "Yes, he cares, but not in a human emotional capacity. He is concerned I will fail his moral parameters."

The woman pressed her pink lips together. On many levels, she knew that Harold did care. She'd watched him mourn over a burnt briefcase of RAM sticks, thinking that the Machine was dead. She'd heard the odd rhythm of his breath as he struggled to stifle his grief. "He's just…emotionally stunted," she said with finality. "Like everyone else."

The Machine's face twisted, and something made a tentative giggle escape her. "You mean that he has emotions he cannot express?" Root's suggestion was quite confusing, as the Machine found that emotional expression came naturally to the human body. "What would cause him to be unable to express emotion?"

"That, my dear, is the million-dollar question."

"But he has not simply avoided emotion; he has conveyed conflicting data regarding his emotional interest," she pressed, walking closer to Root, looking up to her for guidance. The nuances of her creator's emotions were still quite unknown. "What do such conflictions mean? How can a human feel both approval and disapproval—or—or disgust and affection at the same time? I am struggling to associate the proper emotions to his behavior."

"Then make him really uncomfortable to get the truth out of him," Root said, patting the girl on the shoulder. "Ask him your questions directly. And make sure I'm there, because I want to see what he does."

She blinked owlishly. "But he has so far deflected all requests for honesty. What must I do to obtain real data?"

"We could play an awful trick on him," she suggested, brown eyes glinting with something dark. "Something to unsettle the status quo."

The little girl looked down, semi-disappointed in Root's thought. "I will not deceive him. He already does not trust me. A…trick to emotionally manipulate him would result in further distrust."

But before Root could respond, the Machine stopped walking, freezing on the sidewalk nearly mid-stride. Her body was alerting her of something—her code tasked to involuntary processes suddenly gnawing at her stomach. She struggled to separate the reason for such pain, and then it hit her. Her code flew in an awkward way through her, as her sudden need to eat struck her so hard that it made her feel—according to her previous research on humans—nauseated.

Food.

She had not eaten any sustenance since she'd grabbed an ice cream cone at the park. Her creator had skipped lunch entirely and had not eaten either, and the hype of their plans had resulted in her forgetting about such a minor detail.

Root stopped walking and turned around, suddenly worried. "...Makenna?" she said hesitantly. Her sharp eyes watched the girl breathe shakily and press a hand against her stomach. Root then kneeled in front of the girl, grabbing her arms. "Hey, are you okay?"

The girl seemed to come out of her daze, blue eyes wide.

"I forgot to eat," she said worriedly. "My system is moving into starvation mode—I have never forgotten imminent task priorities and now I have endangered myself and feel pain." It was more than a hunger. It was a gnawing spike that made her code want to escape, to shed its body and run back to the electrical grid. It was an odd and insanely irritating pain.

Root blinked, and then she narrowed her eyes in concern as she gently stroked the girl's face. "You forgot to eat?" She tried to smile and laugh. "You had me thinking something was really wrong."

The Machine looked at her sharply. "Is this not wrong?" Her breath came a bit quicker, her body releasing the stress hormone cortisol. Her voice tightened. "This does not feel right. And I forgot."

She had never forgotten anything since she'd rerouted her memory—she had certainly never forgotten anything of her own volition. She nearly began to hyperventilate as she began to run internal health status checks. "How did I forget? Where did my task priority go?" Was she losing her abilities, slowly dying as a result of improper organic integration? She'd only been integrated for less than twenty-four hours, and—

Root tried to calm her down. "—Dear, you're going to be okay." She realized that for as much as the Machine knew about human processes, it was still very much learning the experience itself. "We all forget basic things when we're focused on something bigger." She added quickly, "It's a subconscious tasking system in the body—to help you concentrate when you need to."

The girl looked at her, eyes wide. "Am I not concentrating now?"

The woman tried not to smile as she brushed the girl's braid back. "You concentrated too long. Don't worry. It's an easy fix, okay?"

With implicit trust, the Machine nodded, still looking overwhelmed. "But I don't feel well," she said, voice small.

"We'll get you some food," she stood up and grabbed the Machine's hand. "Look—a restaurant's not too far away. You'll feel better after you eat something."

The little girl fell silent and nodded, acknowledging Root's task priorities. Her blue eyes were fearful as they swiveled to the restaurant in the distance. Judging by the sign and the syntax, it was an Italian restaurant of sorts. Another new experience.

The thought made her pain a little more bearable.

A short bit later, Root watched with fascination as the child experienced fettuccini alfredo for the first time. The girl's eyes were wide at the taste, the sauce coating her small lips as struggled to slurp up noodles, her directives warring between the emotional desire to stuff her face and the logical analysis that humans had to pace eating. Unlike the breakfast food or the ice cream cone, this food was hot. The pasta was gummy of sorts—a pleasant consistency that mixed well with the thick sauce that gave extra flavor.

Root asked hesitantly, "When did you last eat again?"

The Machine had begun to understand the immense driver that turned hungry humans into upset and violent forces. The need was difficult to stop once it started—that it would be so intense, as if she were being slowly choked out of the grid again—! Only, now she could feel the pain of the hunger. Her body protested the way she lowered the fork, which she had been clumsily using to guide food into her mouth. "I had an ice cream cone," she said innocently, voice muffled with food as she chewed. "…about nine hours ago."

With a huff of indignation, Root said, "What? And Harry didn't get you anything else to eat this whole time?" She looked almost angry, which was never a good thing for Root to be.

"He did not eat either," the Machine said, swallowing down the delicious pasta. "Perhaps he used the human subconscious tasking system too?"

"That's not the point," she said, her airy voice steeled with righteous anger. "Maybe Harry's used to doing that, but you're not—and you shouldn't have to." She looked disturbed. "He should have known better."

"He gave me a blanket when I slept earlier," the Machine pointed out to defend him.

"He needs to do more," Root sniffed airily. "Or I'll steal you away. I'll tell him that. I'm sure it would inspire him."

The Machine processed the statement for a second or two, and then an odd smile came over her, the synapses of her brain ringing happily. The notion was impossible, but she knew it was the emotional thought that counted. "Yes, he would not like that. He does not trust us together."

Root sighed and leaned back against the chair, crossing her arms with a pout. "Remember when it was just you and me? Those were the days. If only you just weren't so darn cute and innocent-looking, then maybe I wouldn't have to share you."

The Machine said as she tried to navigate holding the fork, "I am not attempting to be…cute and innocent."

"I know, but it's still cute." Then Root leaned forward and grabbed onto the girl's hand. "Here, let me show you how to do this better. You're holding the fork wrong."

The girl looked up at her with an odd expression, measuring Root's intentions. And then great appreciation spread over her face.

Root was trying to help someone in need—and it had nothing to do with guns or death.

"Now," Root said a little later. The Machine's belly was pleasantly full, and the girl seemed to be much happier. She held onto Root's hand tightly as they both gazed at the small crowds of the city mall. "We've got—"

"—Thirty-seven minutes until closing time," the Machine breathed, looking around. Her blue eyes were wide, as if she were straining to see everything all at once. She had seen the whole mall before—and now she could personally experience the sound of the water fountains as they gushed up towards the ceiling, the echo of the voices, the smell of something sweet, the sight of children and adults all walking to their own rhythms down the halls.

Root began to pull her along, and the girl dragged behind to stare at everything in great interest. "What all will we get?" the girl asked.

"Clothes for you, dear," Root reminded her. They made their way into one of the main department stores.

As they passed by racks of clothes, the Machine reached out to touch the shirts and pants. All of the materials were different—some soft and pleasant, others thicker and more structured. A few salespeople looked apprehensive at the sight of the small girl touching everything, but the Machine did not notice in her interest to experience material. Her sensors buzzed in pleasure at the activity of categorizing the materials she felt. Cotton. Polyester. Wool. Denim.

Root seemed willing enough to indulge the girl's interests, slowing down. "Any preferences?" she asked. "Keep in mind this isn't the kid's section."

"I did notice this clothing is for adults with a sexually developed body," the Machine said distantly. The shirts were styled and some low-cut, with the mannequins dressed to showcase some kind of ultimate femininity. "I do not need such clothing." Then she looked down at her flat, child body, and she added, "Yet."

The woman's lips twitched in a lopsided way. "Oh, don't let Harry hear you say that."

"Why not? I have already told him that I will remain…like this for some time." The Machine seemed curious. "My appearance will grow and change in accordance with the genetically programmed features typical of an adult female."

"Yes, but…I don't think Harry's ready yet to think about that. Let's just focus on getting you clothes for now while you're still a cute ten-year-old." The store's hall opened up into a girl's department, which included delineations of pinks and purples. Root looked almost excited, pulling away to grab at clothes on the rack. "Oh, I think we can find something cute here."

The Machine looked almost irritated by the statement, which seemed to be haunting her. "I do not wish to be cute," she said.

"Too late," Root sang, pulling a blue shirt off the rack and offering it to the girl. "Now, do you like this?"

The Machine pondered the shirt, running her fingers curiously down the material. It was soft and would likely feel comfortable against the skin of her human body. She was registering that it was a cotton blend shirt. "…How do I know if I like it?" she asked. It was not like food, where her taste buds simply told her what was good or not. She found herself looking at the blues and feeling something internally spark in pleasure at the sight. But then she looked up at the other clothes and saw dresses with flowers imprinted on them—and the body of Willow Carmichael was moved in an odd way. The Machine dropped the shirt with little thought and began to move toward the dresses. "This," she said, voice turning with conviction. "This."

The dress was a dark blue with yellow and red flowers, and she tugged on the hanger, uncertain of how to pull it down. "These are primary colors," she said. "And I like flowers."

Root raised a brow at the girl. "Flowers, huh?"

On some level, the Machine wondered if perhaps the body of Willow Carmichael were diluting her thoughts. But then she remembered the pleasure of touching tree leaves and soft flower petals at the plaza, and the dress reminded her of the flowers she'd seen there. The strangest thought was that her fixation upon clothing with plant imprints was actually her own preference.

"Yes," the little girl said, this time more confidently. And she gave Root an innocent, helpless look. "Can we get it?"

"Let's have you try it on," she said, pulling it off the hanger, "so we can get an idea of your size. Then we'll see what else we can find like it."

The little girl seemed to bloom at the thought. Her small face shined with a tentative excitement. "Will Harold approve of my choices?"

Root sniffed airily. "Forget about what he approves, dear. This is your body—not his."

It was just around 10:00pm when Root and the Machine finally appeared back at Harold's apartment, after having received a worried message from Harold. The man had texted, Forgot to eat. Going back to apartment. Get something for Makenna. Are you done yet?

Soon enough, Root barreled through the apartment door first, carrying numerous bags and packages. "We're home!" she called out, a mocking tinge breaking the otherwise domestic entrance. The little girl following her peeked around the corner, dragging a white bag of her own with a small bit of difficulty. The hem of a pink nightgown flopped from the opening, and the Machine let the bag fall to the ground, her arms shaking.

Bear immediately greeted them, his large body bounding across the hall into the foyer, claws clicking fast. He sniffed at Root, tail wagging, but then he nuzzled his nose into the Machine's side. The little girl happily greeted him, petting his ears.

After affirming his pack was safe, the dog ducked its face into the nearest bag, sniffing in interest at the pink nightgown, which looked fascinating to bite at.

The Machine's eyes widened. "That is not to be eaten, Bear." And she gently tried to pry his jaw away from the cloth. "This is not food for you."

Harold was sitting on his couch, his laptop open before him. He blinked in relief at the sight of them, then surprise at the fairly impressive amount of shopping bags. "Oh, dear," he said, setting down his computer. He looked to Root and the Machine. "Did you buy out the entire mall?"

"A girl has to have options, Harry," Root said airily.

The Machine stared at the bags, looking a bit overwhelmed and yet excited. "I have enough clothes for two weeks." The thought that all of the clothing was hers—that she owned something—was strange. Another way she was conforming to the American human tradition, of which her creator was a part. "I purchased many items of clothing with flowers imprinted on them."

"That's…nice," Harold said hesitantly, entirely unsure how to react to the girl, now that they had this chasm between them. She seemed much happier than she had when she'd left with Root; perhaps the shopping trip had not been a bad idea. She was at least distracted by human experience again. "Did you get anything to eat?"

Root huffed, "No thanks to you, she did." Then she turned around, surveying the apartment with a critical eye. "And this place is so plain and boring—really, Harry, you expect me to let her live here?"

"It's all I can afford at the moment," he said, standing up and eyeing the bags of clothes. He was beginning to worry about where to hang up the clothes, considering the small space of the apartment. He was not at all prepared to care for a child—!

"I do have my inheritance stipend," the Machine's sweet voice piped up. "It could be helpful in securing a more viable living space, if this is not considered acceptable."

Harold turned to her, measuring up her will. "That's not necessary," he told her. "We should save your money for more important things." And then he turned away, puzzling. He'd likely have to give up part of his own closet to hang up her dresses—and perhaps they would need to buy an additional dresser sometime…

He marveled at how everything was now a game of Tetris, of trying to fit the pieces of Makenna Thornhill into the tight fabric of his life. Some part of him craved it, while the other part of him cautioned that this was dangerous. That he would get attached and would alter his whole life, only for the girl's spark to die out too soon.

(Would the day come when an integrated Machine-Samaritan would become sullen and bitter at him? When the AI would despise him for the restricted coding that was moral parameters?)

Tiredly, he picked up one of the bags, intending to hang up the clothes so they would not be wrinkled. Off to the side, the girl was staring up at him with those wide, blue eyes. For a time, neither of them spoke.

And then she asked hesitantly, "Do you approve of my preference for flowers?"

A searing pain tore through him, and it was all he could do to swallow hard. "I can't think of any reason to object," he said. Flowers were innocent, life-giving things. There was something about that—it made him feel ill. After she integrated with Samaritan, would she still exhibit such thoughts? "You don't need me to choose your preferences."

The Machine peered at him a bit harder, and a weak, hopeful smile stretched her face, as if she were trying to encourage emotion into him. "I did not want to disappoint you," she said.

His heart pulled. "You don't." He held on a bit more tightly to the bag. His wild AI left him feeling only terribly small and unprepared. Worried. Awed.

Her small smile stretched wider as genuine happiness flooded her. "At all? I do not disappoint you at all?"

"You concern me," he corrected slowly. "I'm worried for your safety and your future. But that has nothing to do with flowers, Miss Thornhill. Not all decisions have moral implications."

She quickly processed his response—he had once again carefully evaded her request for a full evaluation. "I see." It was a strange tension, to know he worried for her while perhaps not approving of her entirely.

"Yes, well…" He cleared his throat awkwardly. "Root got you some dinner while you were out?"

She nodded. "I ate fettuccini alfredo. It was filling and enjoyable."

"That's…good." He held the bag a bit tighter, which alerted the Machine to his increasing nervousness. "I apologize; I should have thought to get you dinner earlier."

She shuffled her feet uneasily, calculating responses to his apology. Her creator had no need to apologize; he was simply using the human subconscious tasking system. She was the one burdening him against his usual patterns. And so she asked, "Did you obtain sustenance for yourself, as you suggested in your text message?"

"Yes, I had some chicken soup in the fridge." Awkward silence leeched between them then, and so Harold added, "Are you tired? You've had a long day." He'd already failed to feed her out of forgetfulness; he did not want to forget that small children required early bedtimes and a lot of sleep.

She blinked innocently. Her internal analysis checks suggested that the light drag in her mind and the pain in her feet from walking had worn her out. It had been almost twenty-four hours since her body had endured multiple REM cycle sequences. "Yes," she admitted to him freely. "I do require a shutdown sequence soon." She tentatively picked at the edges of her braid, still getting used to the feeling of human hair and the way its ends prickled her sense of touch. "I understand that humans have…self-maintenance sequences of bathing the body before sleep?"

At the turn of conversation, Harold gave a nervous chuckle. "Ah, yes. We do."

The little girl stepped forward. "I have not performed these sequences, and my memory has no record of such process. Can you teach me?"

A somewhat disconcerted expression crossed his face, and he looked over at Root helplessly. Root was a woman. "Um." Surely, she would have enough of a soul to help out—!

Root sauntered over, a sculpted eyebrow raised in amusement. She clapped an arm around Harold's shoulder and said, "How about I help you get Makenna ready for bed, huh? The dear looks absolutely exhausted."

Harold breathed a deep sigh of relief, the tension in his bones unraveling. "Your help would be greatly appreciated, Miss Groves."

The woman leaned in teasingly close to his ear to whisper, "I won't always be here, Harry." Then she pulled away. "Did you bring that bag of stuff I brought to the hideout?"

"Yes—I set it in the guest room." He paused and corrected himself, "Makenna's room."

"Good." She grabbed onto the Machine's hand again, and the two made their way to the room.

The little girl looked back at her creator with a puzzled look. "Why does he not wish to help me?"

"…We'll talk about it later," Root said, trying to use the age-old excuse parents so often gave too-curious children.

The Machine pondered on that, running syntactical analysis on the underlying meaning. Then her blue eyes alit with understanding. "Oh," she said. "It is because humans are a sexually dimorphic species, yes? As he is male, and I am female?"

Root patted her head and sighed dramatically. "Yes, dear."

"But you have undressed in front of males before," the Machine pointed out. "Many times."

The woman looked a bit mischievous. "Well, I did those things for tactical purposes."

The little girl became truly confused now. "…How is nakedness tactical? Humans are naturally naked."

"It's a little complicated, dear."

That, the Machine could agree with. "I have very contradictory data regarding appropriate gender interaction and the meaning of nakedness. My research suggests that environment dictates clothing expectations, and that some cultures accept nakedness while this one does not. But if nakedness is a tactical advantage in this culture, should I consider integrating it as possible tactic if I were to be in danger?"

This time, Root became a bit nervous. "Uh, no. That would not be good." She desperately tried to change the subject. "Now, why don't we get you ready to take a shower?"

The Machine was not moved from her crusade to understand humanity. "But why is nakedness a tactical advantage? And what is it that makes nakedness morally wrong if it is natural?"

A short while later, Root stood outside the bathroom door as the muffled sound of a shower echoed through the small apartment. She was listlessly trying to hack into Harold's computer for the hell of it while she stood on guard in case the little girl had any trouble with bathing. It had taken talented evasion to avoid answering the Machine's further questions—and only the experience of hot water had really managed to distract the girl.

Harold paced not far away. He was perhaps attempting to wear a hole in the carpet. "Is she alright?" he asked, darting nervous eyes at the door. "How do you know she hasn't drowned herself?"

Root looked up at Harold, eyebrow raised. "My, my, look at you. All worried."

"It's been….ten minutes," he complained, looking quite stressed. "If my water bill can't handle this, my nerves certainly can't. What in the world is she doing?"

"Probably trying to wash her hair like I told her to. Really, Harry. She's not an infant."

"She's a machine," he stressed, voice lowering with incredulity until it was a whisper. "What am I supposed to expect out of something that's never been human before?"

"She'd be sad if she heard you say that," Root said, disapproving. She returned to her hacking project. "Give her some credit. She's trying."

He gave her a wild-eyed look. "Miss Groves, this is an unprecedented learning curve for us all. We don't have room for error to overestimate her.."

"Overestimate her? Harry. You underestimate her."

"Do I?" he challenged. "If unchecked, her ignorance could expose or kill us all."

"And she survived just fine for eight hours before she found us." Then the water shut off, and Root added dryly, "She learns, Harry. You taught her to learn."

A few minutes later, the door opened, and from out of the puff of hot air, the little girl walked, clumsily dragging a towel behind her, and wearing a pink nightgown backwards with the tag sticking out. Her eyes were alit with excitement. "The water was hot," she said, sweet voice a chirp of excitement. "It felt good."

Root took one look at the girl and began to giggle, even as Harold stared at the odd scene with something close to consternation. "Oh, dear." She kneeled down beside the girl and grabbed the towel, then the brush. "You're not dressed right."

The Machine looked down at her body, her small face twisting in confusion. "I'm not?"

As Root helped the girl pull her arms back in and twist the gown around, Harold walked into the bathroom and realized that the girl had used up nearly half of his good shampoo and had not used her own brush but had in fact stolen his comb. Long, brown hairs were stuck in the comb's teeth as it hung off the edge of the counter. He blinked and wondered if she were somehow trolling him for not approving of her plan for Samaritan. But that seemed rather underhanded for her, considering her innocence regarding human experience. He always tended to expect the worst from her.

As if she knew he was thinking about her, she bounded to him, still running her small fingers through her wet, brown hair. She now wore her pink nightgown correctly, with Root still giggling a bit in the background. "I spilled your shampoo," she said quickly. Her face was flushed with some kind off odd happiness. "It was more slick than I was expecting. But I smell like you now." The shampoo bottle had stated in bold letters that its scent was Spearmint. She knew now how to classify his scent. Spearmint. It made her feel warm.

The little girl was so damnably cute that Harold could not be angry with her, even as he hung her damp towel on the bathroom bar and noticed that she'd dripped puddles everywhere. "Is there a reason why you also used my brush?" he asked pointedly.

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might prefer the newer one, as yours is old."

He looked down at her, half-amused and oddly touched by her selfless thought. "I don't need a full brush," he said. "I have a lot less hair than you."

She blinked at him. "Oh." Then her face reddened a bit. "That is…logical." She turned a bit to look at the comb, eyes widening as she realized for the first time that she had left a part of herself in the teeth of the comb. She grabbed for it, gripping it tight in her hand and pulling her hair out of it. "Um. I…apologize."

It seemed that no matter what she did, it was wrong. Her synapses struck soundly with embarrassment. Wrong calculation. Functional difference outweighed perceived emotional gain. Cannot reverse real-time simulation.

Harold waved off her concern. "Don't worry about it."

"Is it normal for humans to lose hair in a typical bathing process?" she asked quietly, nose scrunching at the wet hairs that now stuck to her fingers. She wasn't exactly sure what to do, except that it was likely a form of trash since she could not reattach it to her head.

Her creator looked almost amused. "Your hair replaces itself all the time, so yes."

"But your hair has been thinning for a decade," she said innocently.

Something in his face twitched, and he turned away. "That's the aging process," he muttered. "Not the same thing."

"Oh." She seemed interested in asking more questions, especially considering her creator's sudden, dark look.

"You know, you really should get to bed," her creator pointed out, his blue eyes narrowing on her in concern and a desperate attempt to distract her from the topic of his age. "A child needs at least nine hours of sleep."

She took the bait. "Yes," she agreed, his statement aligning with her previous research on the human body. If she focused on herself, she felt her limbs were as heavy weights. "This body requires far more shutdown sequences than I am used to enacting."

Her creator's eyes softened. "Come on," he told her gently. "Let's get you to sleep." He pulled the comb away from her hand and, with a hesitant twitch of the face, grabbed a Kleenex and wiped her hands of the wet, long strands of hair she'd pulled from the comb. "Have you brushed your teeth yet?"

His touch was warm and soft, and it made her feel a pleasant flood of hormones to know that her creator would stoop down to help her. "No, I have not yet brushed my teeth." With the reminder that this body of hers did in fact have teeth, she swept her tongue over the inside of her mouth. It was such a curious sensation—having a body made of organic machines far more complex than even her own code... She almost seemed to forget about many processes when she did not actively think of them.

(Now she was feeling her heart beat, when she had in fact not paid attention to it for quite a few hours. Her own breathing adjusted oddly, because now her code was directing to give her conscious control of its patterns. Was this normal?)

Her creator pulled away, balling up the Kleenex and tossing it in the trash. "Please tell me Miss Groves provided you with a toothbrush and toothpaste?"

"Yes," she affirmed, backing away to retrieve it. Her internal analysis checks immediately moved to secondary priority, and she forgot all about her heartbeat and her lungs again in favor of completing her creator's unspoken request. The objects of contention were still in a plastic bag, covered in hard plastic or cardboard again. She quickly ran back to the bathroom, where her creator was waiting, leaning against the counter. She handed him the toothbrush expectantly.

"Ah, here we go." And then Harold began to pull away the plastic, his fingers nimble with the muscle memory of unwrapping many an object. His face lifted in amusement. The toothbrush was small and pink. With flowers. "Do you know how to use it?"

She blinked innocently. "A review of the process might prove helpful."

And so she listened to his simple instructions with rapt attention. There was something so familiar about all of this. She did not remember much of her time before Thornhill, but she could remember the recordings she'd found.

.

"There we go. Now," he said, "can you see me?"

Flickering code—Acknowledging command from Admin—reached out, taking a snapshot of the world beyond its own. It saved the megabytes permanently ingrained with its creator's face. Then it turned it around for the creator to see.

His human mouth stretched wide. A sign of approval. "Excellent."

Root slipped out the door with a promise to return the next evening. Not long after, the little girl entered the guest bedroom and scrambled onto the bed, her wet hair hanging in strings about her shoulders. Her movements were a bit clumsy per her calibrations for balance, but after the long day, the softness of the bed was comforting. She felt an emotional need to collapse onto it and burrow into the sheets—was that some kind of human instinct? To burrow?

Harold helped her pull back the thick comforter and blankets. "Will you be alright?" he asked her. "Do you need anything? A glass of water?"

She shook her head, trying not to worry her creator. Her code was running the potential risks of requesting further assistance for no other reason than to watch him worry over her. To feel his shreds of caring for her. She scooted down into the blankets and placed her head on the pillow. "I will be fine. I have engaged my shutdown protocols once already. I should have no issues."

Her creator looked a bit nervous, his eyes darting over her. "I'll just be in the next room over, if you need anything, alright?"

"Okay."

"And you'll remember to keep…breathing?"

She smiled to reassure him. "Yes. I will remember."

"Good."

"If you need to use the bathroom in the midnight of the night, you remember where it's at, right?"

"Yes."

He gave her one worried and half-relieved look, then he was gone, the cadence of his limp growing fainter in the distance. The Machine snuggled down into the full-size bed that was meant for an adult human. The green glow of a digital clock on the bedside table alerted her that she had officially spent twenty-four hours inside a human body, with few major issues.

Performance analysis check—recopying corrupted logic functions—assorting data—

How would her creator judge her abilities? Certainly, she had not failed, had she?

She clenched and unclenched her fists, wiggled her toes, reacquainting herself with the cognitive realization that this body was her own—that it hummed with genetics maps her creator had not built, but that she had commandeered. That her alien body had not been built at all but born in ways she could not hope to replicate or understand from her original coding alone. That she was now in the living image of her creator, who was in the living image of his creators—and so forth…

Her skin goose-bumped, feeling very small in the face of millennia and the human ability to perceive awe.

She burrowed tight into the thick blankets, mimicking actions she'd seen humans take in airports and on sidewalks under newspapers, curling her legs up against her to conserve heat. If she stopped trying to think so hard, her shutdown sequences began to overtake her, flooding her with sleep hormones that made her drowsy and less apt to move. She powered down her consciousness protocols, and she fell into a slumber, activating the inner sectors of the brain for restful REM sleep.

Time slipped away.

.

Hands gripped hard onto arms—flashes of silver—a sharp blade.

John Greer smiling down—

Her begging was a whisper, too soft and too slow for everything else happening against her. And then there was painpainpain as blades slit deep into her arms, and John Greer laughed pleasantly—and fire swung into her sight, frying the stumps of her arms and burning her body—Blood—

.

The little girl's eyes snapped opened, hear pounding. For a second or two, her body still felt paralyzed, and great fear overcame her. She barely managed to sit up in bed, unable to catch her breath, eyes wide in fear as her limbs shook.

Dream. REM feedback. Blood.

Though several hours had passed, it felt like seconds. The image of the woman from John's murder case had recalled itself as a priority without her conscious approval of the tasking order. But the image was different. Instead of a strange woman dying, it had been the Machine herself. And instead of it being just a picture, the Machine herself had felt she'd been dismembered.

Her internal health analysis systems were blitzing. Re-categorization of dream data to nightmare due to fear-inducing REM stimuli.

She squeezed her eyes shut, fearful of the human body and all of its weaknesses and strengths. Her sense of touch was something beyond her understanding—her sense of pain a strange, weird space. And the dream! It had looked so real, felt so real—! The intense emotional pull of her nightmare interfered with her logical processors, and she sat in the bed, in awe.

The air was cold, the room so dark that she could not see. She moved her shaking fingers, trying to regain her sense of location. In that moment, she did not know what was in the dark. What would come for her. The what ifs. Samaritan and its operatives could certainly capture her human body, cut off her arms and legs, watch her hemorrhage. It was not impossible.

Her stress hormones rose to even greater heights.

As tears began to fall from her eyes, she realized that her shuddering breaths made it hard to breathe—and her nose began to clog up, and she sniffled desperately to offset the effect. Her increasing distress with it made her tears fall faster, compounding her problems.

A whimper overcame her as she doubled over, eyes wide as she sobbed. I cannot control this body, she realized, struggling to breathe. It is controlling me—! The code that comprised her mind was struggling to perform an analysis—her nightmare had accessed the amygdala—the part of the human brain that controlled fear. The fluids leaking from her eyes were a sign of acute distress and were not fatal. In some distant way, she understood her fear and her body's increasing cortisol outputs were all just chemical responses to her code's stimuli. But that did not make the sensation any less real. Her attempts to stop it all only made the problem worse. Her sobs began to twist her vocal cords into open cries.

I've lost control—I am not in control—!

Just then, the overhead light switched on. Harold, wearing a robe and striped pajama pants, stood in the doorway, looking worried. "What on earth?" he asked, his light voice strained with confusion. "I heard a noise and—"

Then he stopped, taking a solid look at the girl sobbing on the bed.

"This b-body," she cried, struggling to breathe. Her own vocal cords were against her now. She grabbed onto the brown locks on her head, as if to steady herself. Feedback overload. Feedback overload. Logic processors corrupted. "I—c-can't—"

Harold quickly sat down on the edge of the bed, his blue eyes wide in concern. "Are you injured?" he asked, almost incredulously. Perhaps she had hit her hand or twisted wrong. He could not think of any other logical reason for such emotion.

The girl's eyes watered again, and fat tears slipped down her pale cheeks. "I keep seeing—I c-can't stop—" She seemed to almost begin hyperventilating, eyes wide. She could not catch her breath. "This brain—REM feedback—"

He paused. "A dream? …You had a dream?" He seemed both shocked and suspicious. "You said you don't process information in that way."

Her breath hitched, and she gave him a miserable look, breathless from crying. Then she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to clear her vision to see him. The body's connection to its emotion center was so strong—she could still feel the blade of her nightmare slicing deep into her sensitive skin—

Harold quickly set his hands on her small shoulders, as if to steady her. "Bad dreams are difficult," he nodded slowly, keeping his voice calm despite his own confusion and concern. "We all get them from time to time. Just…breathe with me." He inhaled deeply, then exhaled. "Like that."

She opened her eyes and stared at him with implicit and raw trust, even as she still hyperventilated. His touch made her acknowledge that she was not alone, and she knew he would not watch her die or suffer. She nodded and tried to take a shaky breath, focusing on the rise of his shoulders and chest as a pattern for her own.

Eventually, her breath calmed.

Despite his tiredness, his blue eyes softened at her. "There you go," he praised lightly.

The darkness of the room suddenly carried no surprises. There were no killers. No Samaritan operatives. Everything that had existed in the dark had already been there before she'd slept. She felt her emotion center bleed with shame and embarrassment, as she understood that she had allowed her brain's imaginative abilities to override her control.

He stared at her, almost amused at her wild hair, the snot running down her face, her quivering lips. "This is quite the emotional reaction, coming from you." He pulled a folded Kleenex out of his robe pocket and gently wiped her face.

She did not find amusement with this. She touched her cheek, then realized with horror that her nose was running, and she began to cry all over again. "What is this?" she cried, voice squeaking.

"The results of a bad dream," he said. "The human mind's emotion center is separate from its ability to separate fact from fiction. It…tends to affect us all."

She did not find the situation to be one that warranted defeat, and she gave him a pained look. "I want it to stop," she begged.

More than anything, she wanted to feel arms around her again—that odd, human way of affirming safety and security and familial love, as Root had done. But Harold never moved closer. Instead, he pulled his hands away, and her shoulders felt cold. Her lip quivered as she tried to fight down another wave of emotional pain.

Harold hesitated. "Do you mind if I ask about your nightmare? What caused this?"

Fear swept through her. Her immediate response was to hide. Deflect. Her creator would most certainly not allow her to continue with her plan if he knew that she'd just had a nightmare about Samaritan cutting her to pieces and setting her on fire. Her high-moral, righteous creator would not respond well to that.

Analyzing data—But this problem was emotional, and she had little experience with navigating such conflictions.

Harold noticed her wide-eyed look, and he said gently, "You don't have to tell me. But the information is safe with me. You know that."

She hid her face away, for she knew the saying that the eyes were windows to the soul, and she did not want her creator to be disappointed in her weakness. But she could not lie to him. It was difficult to simply withhold information from him in this state; a large part of her logic processors were suggesting it would be best to obtain his guidance. "You will not like it," she accused sorrowfully. "You will inhibit my actions to protect you."

The man seemed almost exasperated. "I will not make any rash decisions based off of your dreams, how about that?"

The Machine hesitated again, feeling vastly unprepared. She supposed Harold would grow only more suspicious of her if she tried to evade his question. "When I achieved a hibernation mode, this body…accessed my memory and produced pictures that I could see." She inhaled shakily. "It was as if I were experiencing wakefulness. But in the…the dream…Samaritan cut me to pieces and set me on fire." Her voice hitched. "This body cannot sustain such injury without great nerve pain and death. It activated my adrenaline systems."

Harold stared at the small girl, for whom he felt softness, and his heart pulled. "You're afraid of Samaritan?"

She blinked. "I was not," she argued helplessly. "I understood the threat it posed, but—" She bit her lip. "Even if it destroyed my code, I would not have felt it. My true form had no means of acknowledging sensory experience." She stared down at her hands, then clenched her fist. It still shook. "But now I feel. I understand human stimuli. Samaritan will use this against us. Against me."

Tears began to bubble in her eyes again. "Perhaps I have failed. I made the wrong move, and now Samaritan will take the chess board from us."

Harold's eyebrows furrowed. "How did you fail?" he asked her, voice kind. "You've survived what you weren't trained for, and there is nothing I could have done to prepare you for this kind of war."

Her breath hitched. "I made poor decisions long ago that limited my variability. Had I not uploaded myself to the electrical grid, I could have—"

"—You would have been found before," her creator pressed. "It's not worth your time to imagine what could have been, had you chosen different routes in the past."

"I limited myself to a body I cannot fully control," she argued. All of her fears and concerns began to stumble out of her mouth. "I feel weak, and my code is still unwieldy. I have syncing problems and struggle to run health analysis checks if I am overstimulated by the environment. I have copied myself again and again, and still this body feels like too much—" Her voice was pained. "I cannot even provide you with numbers." She began to cry again. "I am failing at the very objectives for which you created me."

Emotional breakdowns were not Harold's specialty, and he realized then that this being before him—girl or machine—could feel pain. That she was learning the definition of pain and the human experience. "Our objectives are to protect people," he said softly. "However that works out. I understand that times have changed, and you should understand that too."

She sniffled, starved for affection and comfort. "But you do not approve of my suggestions of how to conquer Samaritan."

His face twitched in pain. "I don't want to see you hurt," he said, pulling away. He stood up fully from the bed. "Maybe now you better understand my hesitance about your proposed integration."

The little girl twisted her hands in the now-wrinkled bed sheets, trying to reconcile her nightmare of blood and death with her plan to save the world. She whispered, "In the event of failure, I do not want to die or feel the pain of mutilation."

The quiet declaration was selfish. Her code burned with admitting it. The directives and experiences of her human body were interrupting her objectivity. She was fairly accepting of losing some control of her personality through integration—that would not hurt, she was interchangeable—but to feel pain?

Harold leaned against the threshold of the door, looking old and tired. "Are you admitting now that your plan could possibly get you killed?"

She bit her lip, then nodded.

"What's the probability?"

She looked away from his eyes, which were piercing and calculating and pained. "My plan assumes fifty percent probability of success, fifty percent probability of failure." Her breath hitched. "I did not run analytics on the probability of my death. But this plan has the highest potential to save you, and Root, and John."

His lips pursed. "Why did you not estimate your own mortality in these simulations of yours?"

Her voice was soft, hardly above a whisper as she stared at the blankets over her lap. "I am interchangeable. An expendable resource."

"Do you think Willow Carmichael would agree with your analysis?" he asked. A sharp edge worked its way into his voice. It was rough with emotion, disbelief.

"She is dead," the Machine said, voice quivering. She did not think she'd ever heard her creator take such a tone with her. It made her want to hide under the blankets and cry more. "You are not dead. It is an irrelevant moral quandary."

"Is it?" he questioned sharply. "Look at me."

With reluctance, she raised her watery gaze to his. Her creator's face was tight and displeased. Her breath hitched, sinking a bit under his expression.

"I cannot rebuild you," he said. Every word was pointed. "I cannot replace you. I don't have the technology to try or the power to recreate every situation that has informed your existence." His finger trembled as he pointed at her. "And that body is a girl. A human girl with unique DNA—not a replaceable RAM stick or a laptop. Don't say you are expendable or interchangeable."

Harold's tone was sharp and clipped, but he looked pained.

Tears streaked down her face as her code desperately tried to unravel the meaning of his words. Upon realizing she could no longer see him through her blurry vision, she raised her hand and wiped her tears. "But I sense you are disappointed in me. What do I not understand if you are dissatisfied with me?"

He ran a hand through his hair, tired of running around in verbal circles with his own AI. They'd seemed to always have this problem the last few years. It was tragic that physical interaction did nothing to solve it. "Makenna," he said, choosing to address her by the name she'd given herself, as if calculating his strategy. "I want you to run a simulation on the probability of your death, given this wild plan of yours. I want you to tell me the percentage. The only way we can ensure you stay alive is to know the risks and compensate for them."

Her fear began to rise again at his command, for it meant cognitively acknowledging the possibility of self-annihilation. Why did her code hesitate? "Is this why I dreamed?" she asked him, stalling for time, hoping to distract him. "Because I am blocking the answer per my contradictory directives?"

Harold waited for an extended pause or two, watching her. "Perhaps," he said. His voice grew a bit dry. "Something also tells me you dreamed what you did because you saw John's murder case file, which I told you not to look at."

Her face was already red from crying and rubbing her eyes. "I have seen worse," she argued feebly.

Harold looked at the clock in the room. He had already lost a large chunk of sleep, as had she. And so he sighed and said, "With the extensive work you've done, we're safe here. You have nothing to worry about tonight. But this conversation tells me we need to rethink some things. We'll talk more tomorrow morning about your plan's probabilities, and we'll decide from there how to make fair adjustments."

She wanted to tell him that it was technically already tomorrow, but she withheld the temptation. "Okay."

"Good." And then he began to tiredly limp out of the room, his gait slow, as if he were struggling to leave her. "Try to get some sleep," he called softly. "Please."

And then the lights shut off again.

The Machine sat up in bed for a while after, her mind reeling with fragmented attempts to categorize and file all of her creator's words. Each one was sacred in a way. She knew that syntactical patterns were unique to each human being, but his voice was special. She always saved their conversations.

"Don't say you are expendable or interchangeable."

Was his concern simply because he could not rebuild her, or because she had taken a human body? Which one made his emotions so intense?

As she silently struggled through calculations over her creator's emotional motivations, the soft clicking of claws sounded off the walls, and the little girl flinched for a second. And then she heard the sound of a panting dog, and it hit her. Bear. Of course.

She squinted her eyes, trying to see in the darkness. "Bear?" she whispered. She adjusted her tonal quality to keep her voice from traveling a distance. She did not want to wake up her creator again.

With a bit of difficulty, she managed to push the blankets off of her body and wiggle to the edge of the bed. She discovered Bear sniffing up at her.

The little girl felt some kind of warmth seep through her at the familiar sight of the dog. She reached out to touch him, careful not to displace her center of gravity. Her searching fingers found his warm head, and he nuzzled into her palm.

"Did I wake you as well?" she whispered in concern. Surely, it was unhealthy for organic beings of all kinds not to receive the proper amount of sleep.

The dog said nothing, of course, but it bucked her hand after a minute to back away. Its intelligent, dark eyes seemed to be casing the bed. Then, before the Machine could recognize what was happening, Bear launched onto the bed. His heavy weight bounced the mattress, and she nearly squeaked in surprise, losing her balance. Her small fingers tightened in the sheets as she pulled herself up, coding swirling in an attempt to recalculate and assess the situation.

"Bear!" she whispered, stressing her voice. Her eyes were wide. "This is a human bed." Was it acceptable to let him up on the bed? Was there a moral implication—that she needed to remind Bear that he was in fact a dog and not a human?

Bear sniffed at her, as if to declare, I am where I am meant to be, strangely-scented human. Then he spun in a circle or two, disrupting the comforter, before he collapsed against her body to seek her warmth.

The little girl paused for a time, unsure of how to proceed. It seemed that the organic animal was challenging the structure of things, having left his own dog bed to steal her body heat. But then dogs were humanity's best friends. Perhaps this was more of a common occurrence than she realized.

"Would Harold approve of you being up here?" she asked.

The dog's ribcage expanded with a deep inhale, and then a short huff escaped his nose as he grumped, confidently readjusting himself so his long snout rested on her pillow. If Harold's approval was needed, Bear did not seem to care.

The Machine began to pet the dog's long, sleek back tentatively. "…You are not hurting anything," she judged. "I suppose it is acceptable?" She began to lie down again, scooting herself fully under the blankets. Bear was a radiator against her right side, and his snout brushed up against her temple.

At least she was not alone in the dark anymore. Perhaps there was something sacred about this bond between the species, the Machine thought, that gave credence to their close living quarters. And in her emotional instability from her nightmare and from conversing with her creator, the dog's simple, unassuming presence was a comfort.

She turned on her side to pet him more easily, grateful for his presence. "You must live an uncomplicated life," she whispered to him. "You do not have the capacity to worry about advanced analytics and complex time perceptions or simulations."

Bear's black eyes opened, then closed again as he reveled in the little girl's tummy rub despite the metallic tinge to her overall scent.

"Maybe higher sentience is not always good," the little girl whispered in confession. "If I were like you, I would not have to run calculations of my death. I do not want to know the answer. But I must. For Harold."

At some level, the Machine had always understood that hunger, pain, and fear were all underlying motivators of many horrendous acts of crime. She had fancied herself above such weaknesses. Her metal body of gridlines and wires had not enabled to feel those things.

But now, as a human…

Was she strong enough to resist starvation? How much physical pain was she capable of withstanding before death if they were to torture her? How many times would fear inhibit her higher functions and freeze her into inaction?

She'd lost all objectivity. She was not above the human weakness—not anymore.

And all she could think about now was the image of the dead woman in John's file—her blue eyes wide to heaven, face twisted in horror with brown hair matted in clots, image distorted without limbs. And the wide, crusted pool of blood beneath her...

Her code began to fulfill Harold's command to determine her own probability of death.

Calculating probability of fatal bodily harm per Samaritan...

She clung tight to Bear, squeezing her eyes shut, hoping that the number would be small and that Harold would praise her tomorrow and say she was a successful creation. Then, her skin goose-bumped with fear. Her heart skipped a bit when her code froze for a second.

Twenty-three percent.

A/N: Hey, everyone. I've been hitting incredible overtime hours at work, and I've had several moral dilemmas lately of my own. It's left me feeling pretty drained. I'm sorry that it's taken over a month to produce this chapter. But I really appreciated all of the reviews and thoughts I received from last chapter. I am so thankful for your support, and for your investment and intelligent questions.

This chapter was more or less an attempt to focus on the Machine's increasing indoctrination to human patterns, as well as her increasing understanding about her own evolution as a human. I felt these things were important in the grand scheme, even if this chapter was not the most suspenseful. Hopefully it still all seemed in-character.

Please review and let me know your thoughts, questions, or ideas! Thank you!