I had retreated to Bob's apartment - well, mine now - to look through his possessions, and discover more about who he was so I could more accurately be him. I held no illusions as to what would happen to me if my charade was seen through after the events of last second.

The keytool was an oddly heavy weight on my arm. I wondered what exactly it was up to. I knew a little about keytools – that there had only ever been 1024 of them, and that this was the only known one left. I knew they were extremely selective in choosing their guardian, and that many guardians didn't even have keytools. I knew that this particular one had a truly wicked sense of humor. But I did not know what had corrupted Glitch's processor to the extent that he chose me, going through the full exchange of code.  The keytool hadn't even done that with the Matrix boy!

"What are you up to?" I asked the keytool quietly. "What are you trying to accomplish here?"

I didn't get an answer. I wasn't expecting one. I closed my eyes, swearing to myself. I was a Trojan Horse, after all – I knew to beware of geeks bearing GIFs.

"Look." I said reasonably. "If you want this to work – I don't know why you would, but let's assume for now that that's the case, I need to be able to understand you. I need to know enough about the Supercomputer to pass as a native. I don't need you sulking for some reason only the User knows. This was not my idea!"

Glitch chirped and beeped at me, before I felt a further exchange of code. More of myself I was losing forever. It was for a good cause. I frowned then - that wasn't the right expression. It was for my cause. A few questioning beeps came from Glitch – I got the general meaning. "It speaks!" I muttered sarcastically to myself. 

It blatted back.

            I rolled my eyes. "Very well then. Let's see what you can do besides lampposts." I paused as an idea struck me, then grinned widely. "Glitch…BFG."

Glitch swiftly expanded into the six-string guitar I had seen once before. It was, as before, a rather wimpy one. I was appalled at an aesthetic level.

"Oh, come on, you can do better than that."

The guitar blatted.

I fingered the first chord and grinned wickedly. "I'll play 'Stairway'…"

Alarmed, Glitch abruptly slimmed into a deep blue model with sufficient spikiness for my taste. I knew the spammed thing was just being stubborn.

"That's better." I hesitated, my fingers over the strings.

What to play?

I began to improvise, a mournful solo into the night. The guitar wailed with me, as I let out all of the unexpected, unanticipated, unwanted emotional baggage the day had left me in musical form. I poured it all out. The fourth finger was awkward, at first, but it allowed a lot more flexibility in my playing style. I closed my eyes on hitting the last chord, listening to the silence. I was at peace, for a time. It was a novel experience.

"…and at the incredible bargain price of only 99.99.99!"

"Mike…." I groaned, rubbing my temples. "Don't  you have somewhere else to be?" I remembered belatedly that the annoying little cretin actuallybelonged to Bob.

I had tolerated Matrix, and little Enzo. I could tolerate this. And I did, until he sidled up to me, and attempted, as my 'close personal friend', to interview me on Bob's nullification.

I whirled on him in that instant, willing my claws out of their fleshy sheath. That didn't happen, although it certainly felt like they had ripped my tiny fingers to shreds  in the most painful way possible. Thrice-spammed Guardian protocol.

The TV backed against the wall, gibbering, as I growled. At least I could still do that convincingly. I paused for a moment, then deliberately raised my arm up so that it pointed at him.
Time to see how far the keytool was prepared to go to maintain this charade. "Glitch. Narrow beam"

The ray impacted a crate mere nanometers from Mike's antenna, spawning a tear. The TV quivered in an amusing fashion.

That answered my question, as I had been aiming between his eyes. Ah well. Time to improvise.

"Glitch. Portal."

The keytool beeped an irritated assent, creating, as I had wished, a portal to a primitive and remote system closed to the net. Perfect. Looking at Mike, I jerked my head in the direction of the portal.

He gave me a betrayed look. Honestly, was he that dense? I smiled insincerely. "Just think, Mike, an entirely new demographic that has never even heard of a 'Bucket O' Nothing'!"

He still stared at me as he backed into the portal, terrified. It closed behind him, and I frowned. The usual rush of satisfaction I got from such behavior was, this time, tempered by…guilt?

This was unacceptable.