Epilogue: Cool Your Jets

I'd ask you both to sit, but that's ridiculous.

I'm going to though. Days like this are really hard on my hip.

I learned something today.

Something I should have been able to recognize myself. A long time ago.

Natalie has been spending a lot of time in the Institute the last few years. She's writing a history of the Synth program, and most of the research material is there. And I'm pretty sure she's seeing Doctor Binet. Liam, that is. Good kid, Piper approves. Jesus, listen to me, he's not a kid, he's over forty now.

Last week, she came across some holotapes from the very early days of the program. They had been misfiled, but she found references to them, and kept digging until she found them.

It turns out that the basic software matrix for the original Synths wasn't written in the Institute.

The roboticists cannibalized existing code.

From General Robotics.

From the Mister Handy platform.

When she showed Liam what she found, he started crunching numbers, and cross-referencing data, or some other sort of scientist stuff.

He found the kernel of the self-awareness algorithm… whatever the hell that is… in the original software.

In your software.

He concluded that two hundred years would have been more than sufficient for you to develop your own programming subroutines, your own ideas. Your own free will.

I owe you both bigger apologies than I can even comprehend.

Especially you, Codsworth. I treated you like shit from the day I was thawed out.

And Curie, I treated your desire to be human as a complete joke.

Here's the thing Curie, you don't need to be human. You're already a person, and you've already accomplished more than most humans will ever accomplish.

I can't begin to sufficiently compensate either of you for having treated you as property for all these years.

But I can sponsor you both for full citizenship.

Codsworth, you may not breathe, but you're at least as alive as I am.