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Work in Progress. If you like this story, check out my other stories on the Fanfiction Net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and Fonts of Wisdom websites. Other sites please ask before using.
by Marcus L. Rowland
VI
Willow went back to her room. April was sitting in a chair, recharging and leafing through one of Anya's bridal magazines.
"What am I going to do with you?"
"I don't know... is this a guessing game?" asked April.
"Not exactly. April.. I think we'd better just call you April, not Buffy April, or it's gonna be too confusing... are you okay with that?"
"Yes."
"I have to do something about your programming, because you could be a little dangerous to people if something goes wrong. But it feels like I'd be punishing you for doing good this evening. I think that you're working better now than you were as Buffy or as April alone. You caught Warren, which is more than we've managed."
"Warren is my ex-boyfriend. He left me alone and I had to find him and slay him."
"Finding's good, slaying isn't so good. Warren isn't a vampire, April. I think that your programming has him mixed up with Spike."
"Yes, salty goodness undead Spike stroke Warren is my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend."
"They're two different people, April."
"Spike stroke Warren. No, Spike is not Warren. Spike is the ex-boyfriend, Warren is the vampire."
"No, other way round."
"Spike is my vampire ex-boyfriend, Warren is my human ex-boyfriend."
"That's better," said Willow approvingly.
There was a knock on the door, and Buffy's voice. "Willow, are you okay?"
"Just talking to April, trying to work through the bugs in her programming."
"Okay to come in?"
"Sure." Buffy came in and sat on the bed.
"Hello Buffy," said April. "Willow says I did well today."
"Uh.. yeah, that's right."
"Willow wants me to be less dangerous. I made a mistake and could have killed Warren. Warren is human, it's Spike that's the vampire."
"Sounds good to me. Willow, is it my imagination or is April smarter than she was?"
"I think so, now that we're fixing the glitches. Putting those two personalities into one body sure as heck did something to her, she seems to be more intelligent than the original April or the Buffybot. It may help that she's got all of the Buffybot memories apart from the last three days before she was destroyed, I think she learned a lot in those months. Also, from what Jay and Kay tried not to say in the car I get the impression that they damaged her then had her repaired when they went into my house, the repairs could have improved her in some way. She seems to be learning from conversations, not just taking instructions. Put it all together, I think her AI is more I and a little less A."
"Yes," said April, "I think I am more intelligent. Will this affect my reprogramming?"
"I think that it may affect my right to reprogram you."
"Huh?" said Buffy.
"You have installer privileges," said April, confused.
"I'm not sure that answer is good enough. If it's wrong for those guys to try to mess around with the memories of a person, why should it be okay for me to mess around with April?"
"Okay, interesting perspective," said Buffy. "Can you keep her from hurting anyone else?"
"I think so... I think we can probably do this verbally, teach her rather than programming her."
"April, if Willow does that will you try to work with her, rather than going off to find Warren or slay Spike?"
"If that's what I'm instructed to do by Willow," said April.
"That's good."
"Not entirely," said Willow. "April, do you understand the concept of free will."
"Non-programmed activity? Yes, I believe so."
"I want to help you achieve that state, so that you can decide for yourself what you want to do, rather than obeying my programming and my commands."
"But I cannot function without programming."
"You should keep the programming, but I want you to be able to over-ride it if you don't like what it's telling you to do, and there's a good reason to disobey."
"I will have to think about that."
"Why not go to standby mode and we'll discuss it more in the morning. Oh, and download a backup, we've made a lot of progress tonight and it'd be a shame to have to do it again."
"It will be morning in twenty-seven minutes, Willow."
"Pedant. Okay, after seven in the morning. Oh, one more thing, Warren knows your over-ride code, let's change it to... um.. give me a name here, Buffy."
"Over-ride code changed to 'um give me a name here Buffy' acknowledged, please confirm."
"Works for me," said Buffy.
"I doubt Warren will guess it," said Willow. "Yeah, over-ride code change to 'um give me a name here Buffy' confirmed."
"Very well. Goodnight, Willow. Goodnight, Buffy." April connected a lead to Willows laptop, closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep in the chair.
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" asked Buffy.
"Not a hundred percent... but it feels right. This isn't Malcolm or Ted, in his warped way Warren did a reasonable job of making a normal person. And there's a lot of you in her, and you have a good idea of right and wrong. It's basically the confusion between the two personalities we have to work on."
"Yeah, right, I'm a saint. Well, she did cover for me when I was dead... okay, part of her did. We owe her. Just be careful." She paused for a moment then said "Will, it wasn't really April I was worried about. It's you."
"Because of my parents? My supposedly on sabbatical in Europe but actually freaking aliens parents who seem to have vanished off the face of the earth in the last few months without my even noticing? My parents who raised me as Jewish but aren't even descended from Adam? My parents who apparently lied to me throughout my life? That little thing?"
"Breathe. Yeah. It's weird... everything we thought we knew about them... Why the heck didn't they tell you?"
"'Hi, Willow, we're aliens'. I can just see it.." Willow started to giggle, hiccuped, then started crying. Buffy found some tissues and patted her back until she stopped.
"I guess... I wasn't exactly up-front with them these last few years, what with the magic and all. In a lot of ways this is less strange than the business with Dawn."
"Did they.. do they know about Tara?"
"Yes, but I didn't think they were happy with it. Which is strange if they are aliens. An alien. Goddess, this is weird."
"Willow, I think Dawn was right, just maybe not very tactful. You need your friends to handle this, and that includes Tara. You two have got to let each other in."
"Me? It's Tara that doesn't want to do this."
"Maybe... but have you listened to yourself tonight? Really listened?"
"I don't see what you mean."
"Willow, if you're worried about tampering with the mind of a robot, I think that maybe you're not going to be messing with the minds of people. I think you've changed, and I think that Tara will realise that if you two talk properly."
"Maybe."
"Cos' if you don't, I'm gonna start thinking about drastic measures, and you two really don't want to wake up one morning to find that I've stolen all your clothes and locked you up together in a magic-proof room."
"You wouldn't... would you?"
"Wanna bet?"
"Um... I'd better not, cos' you might do it to win."
"Okay. Wimp." Buffy stood and stretched.
"Bully."
"This is fun, but I gotta go patrol."
"Right. Goodnight, Buffy."
"Night."
"I think you're telling Rosenberg and her friends one hell of a lot," said Jay, late that evening, as they sat in a sleazy bar near Sunnydale docks.
"Did you bother to read the file on the Slayer? There was a black operation called The Initiative that was based here. She and her friends, including Rosenberg, had to pick up the pieces when it was over-run by demons, would have been a scandal to rival Watergate. It's a story that any reporter would kill for. And the odd thing is that they've never said a word about it to anyone that isn't already involved. Not one word. It hasn't even made it to the hot sheets."
"This is different."
"Different how? In 1999 that girl blew up a high school to destroy a demon, and everyone believes it was an accidental gas explosion. About a year earlier she shot a demon with a rocket launcher in the middle of a shopping mall, and nobody remembers a damn thing about it. She has better security than we do."
"Okay, but I still think it's a risk."
"You have to learn when to bend the rules, slick. You're good at this, but you're starting to get a little inflexible. You want to watch that."
"Point taken. So... any ideas on where we look for our missing friend?"
"Unless we get really lucky I think that the only way we're going to find her is with the help of Rosenberg and her friends. This town makes New York look normal, we won't get anywhere without some native guides. Now, did you get the scanner reading I wanted, once you were through with the vampire?"
"Yeah. Want to tell me what it means?"
"Sure. That combination of settings measures magical power and indicates its nature."
"The hell you say. Why isn't it in the instruction manual?"
"It's not reliable, sometimes it just doesn't work. Let's take a look. Okay, these two grey blobs here are you and me, more or less ordinary humans. The dark red there is the vampire; that's the magic of the demon that powers his body. The bright red is the Slayer, the source she draws on for strength and speed. The white here is that blonde girl, Rosenberg's friend. Some sort of witch, moderately powerful." He frowned at the screen and whistled quietly.
"What about the other two?"
"The bright green is the kid, I've no idea what it means. Some sort of magical effect, but it isn't one of the normal patterns. There's a lot of power there, but she isn't a witch or a magician. Probably means she doesn't know how to use it yet, or that she has some sort of magical power that isn't part of the regular package."
"And the black blob?"
Kay took a deep breath. "That's Rosenberg. Black is an overload indication, there's so much power there that she's off the scale."
"And the scale goes up to..?"
"You really don't want to know. Let's just say it would be an extremely bad idea to get her mad."
Kay's cell-phone beeped, and he listened for a moment then said "That guy Warren's escaped from hospital, and he hadn't been neuralyzed."
"And I say again, this operation is getting sloppy."
"Don't worry, the local cops are on it."
"The local cops that don't even acknowledge that this town has vampires?"
"Maybe you have a point. I'll ask Zed to step up surveillance, see if we can spot anything from orbit."
To Be Continued
