"Welcome, new hires, to Hammond Robotics! Please have your signed and dated non-disclosure agreements ready to hand off as you reach the front of the line."

The receptionist at the inside of the revolving door, with her brilliant, white teeth, perfect makeup, and smooth customer-service voice, gestured to a series of sleek metal kiosks. Those who'd arrived earlier were already standing in neat rows, waiting their turn to approach.

As he followed Mila to the back of the line, Tae-joon took the opportunity to look around the lobby. A massive screen above the front desk played a clip of the most recent championship match: Revenant standing over the ruined body of the opposing competitor with his back turned, then slowly looking over his shoulder into the camera. The video faded out to the Hammond logo, then looped.

Opposite the front desk was a display of various robot arms that assembled products in automated factories. They were performing assorted tasks to demonstrate the range of their capabilities: assembling and disassembling pens, threading a complicated embroidery at an incredible speed, winding magnet wire for induction coils. One robot wrote the time on a dry-erase board, only to erase and rewrite it each time the minute changed.

Further from where he stood, mechanical limbs and cybernetic organs were displayed in plexiglass cases. Small television screens between them showed videos of users who'd received them, living their best lives. All the way at the back of the lobby, where Tae-joon didn't have a good view of them, was a showcase of the parts that went into the robots and cybernetics.

Mila made it to the front of the line. She had a wide grin on her face as she handed over her paperwork. The older man behind the kiosk pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose while he flipped through the documents, ensuring that initials and signatures were in all the right places. Everything was in order– he placed the paperwork on top of his stack and slid an ID badge across the counter.

"Mila Alexander, software engineering," he said in a bored tone. "You're going to Conference Room 4 for orientation. Down this hallway; third door on your left."

She gave a nod of thanks, picked up her badge, and stepped out of the way. Her brother took her place at the kiosk.

"Tae-joon Park, cybersecurity," the man drawled in the same unenthusiastic voice as he repeated the process for what must have been the hundredth time today. "Conference Room 4. Down this hallway; third door on your left."

Like the majority of conference rooms, this one had a long wooden table in the center, surrounded with cushioned chairs. At one end of the room was a podium with a large screen. At the other was something much more unusual: a robot arm operating a coffee maker, pouring cups of coffee, and holding them out to people who walked by.

"Awww, it's adorable," Mila squealed. She took the coffee cup it offered, and the arm waved at her before returning to its task. Tae-joon smiled and rolled his eyes as she waved back.

"General-purpose model, available for retail sale," announced a nondescript man in a suit and tie. "The software that allows it to run the coffee maker is available for free download on our website."

Mila responded to him with a polite nod before taking a seat at the table. Across from her, two stuffy-looking businessmen were having a hushed conversation about something on their laptop screens. Tae-joon carefully lowered himself into the chair beside his sister. His focus was turned toward the end of the table closest to the door, where he noticed a woman who was distinctly ex-military in her mannerisms: squared shoulders, air of purpose, looking around the room to assess its exits and danger zones. Near the doorway was a brawny man who looked rather out of place in a business meeting, with his green-and-blue hair shaved into a mohawk and flipped over one side of his head. He noticed Tae-joon watching him and scowled. The programmer quickly looked away.

"All right– running on time, running on time." As he spoke, a middle-aged man walked briskly to the podium. He wore a crisp, white lab coat embroidered with the Hammond logo on one side, and M. Bennett Tyrell - Director of Artificial Intelligence Research on the other. "Everyone– welcome to Hammond Robotics! Please take your seats. I know you've all signed your non-disclosure agreements already, but I'd hazard a guess that at least half of you didn't read them all the way through, so we're going to begin orientation by going over some key points that you might have missed. As we're doing that, my assistant here will be passing around a few more forms for you to sign– thank you, Mr. Bradley."

The salesman who'd been standing beside the coffee maker walked around the table, setting a new stack of paperwork in front of each person.

"All of you came highly recommended, and have been hired to begin working on Division One projects straightaway," Tyrell continued. "Division One contains our most highly sought-after proprietary research and development. Nothing that you do here is to leave its designated workstation without approval from a supervisor. Information on Division One projects is not to be shared with employees who are only cleared for divisions two through five."

He looked around the room to ensure that everybody was paying attention.

"While you are in our facility, you will be monitored and recorded. Our security team reviews the footage 'round-the-clock to ensure that no industrial espionage is going on. Recordings that are no longer needed for security are sent to our anthropology and psychology department, who aid in programming AI to behave in a way that seems more human. One day, we might even introduce a robot that shares some of your unique mannerisms."

Tae-joon and Mila exchanged glances. She could guess what her older brother was thinking: he valued his privacy, and hated being photographed or recorded for any reason.

"After we finish up here, I'll be bringing you to a restricted Division One area. When we go through the security screening for the first time, your biometric data will be collected," said Tyrell. "If you're ever in an accident that could allow your biometric data to be compromised - if you were to lose a hand, for instance, or an eye - you need to notify your supervisor immediately. As an incentive to adhere to this protocol, Hammond Robotics will fully comp your cybernetic replacement– God forbid that such an accident were to happen, of course."

As he spoke, his assistant was walking around the table once again, this time distributing paper bags with the company logo printed on both sides.

Tyrell addressed that next: "Mr. Bradley is handing out uniforms. Inside this building, you're welcome to dress as you choose, provided that your badge is visible and your clothing meets the standard safety requirements: no loose articles, no open-toed shoes, I'm sure you all know the drill. Any time you travel to a venue as part of your work with us, we ask that you wear these uniforms– and be mindful of how you speak to reporters. There will be a training in the next couple of days on dealing with the media, but in the interim, if they approach you: give them your name, title, and a short overview of what you're working on for Hammond. If they keep pressuring you, ask them for a business card and let them know that you'll pass it on to a supervisor. Please, try to avoid saying 'no comment–' the fringe journalists have come to interpret that phrase as meaning that we're hiding something…"

Tae-joon rolled his eyes. He could relate to what the director was saying; journalists had a way of twisting words and manipulating circumstances to get more attention from the public. Mila loved that kind of dramatic writing; she felt that it made a dull world and a difficult life more interesting… To him, on the other hand, it made every bad societal situation worse.

"Well, then!" Tyrell clapped his hands together as he stepped away from the podium. "Let's get going. Lots more to do today!"

He opened the conference room door and stepped into the hallway. There was a bit of a bustle as everybody seated around the table collected their belongings and stacks of paperwork before they followed. The director led them down a long, brightly-lit hallway and into an elevator.

"Oh– I love this," gasped a young woman standing behind Tae-joon and Mila. She looked around with wide eyes, enthralled with the panels of laminated glass on the walls, ceiling, and floor that allowed her to see the elevator's system of cables, motors, and pulleys working. Mila turned toward the sound of her voice.

"Natalie… Pa– Paquette? Did I pronounce that right? Electrical engineering…" She squinted at the print on her new coworker's badge and grinned. "Cool! I'm Mila."

The engineer ignored her greeting, clearly more interested in watching the gears and cables of the elevator do their jobs. Mila pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a soft laugh.

They came to a stop. The doors slid open, revealing a sort of lobby leading to a sleek, polished archway with Division I Research engraved at the top in block text. Smaller lettering below that read, "A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human." - Alan Turing

"Is the computer intelligent," Tae-joon whispered to his sister in a joking tone, "or are you gullible?"

In answer, she stuck her tongue out at him.

Two men in gray security uniforms stood just inside the archway. One was scrolling through spreadsheets on a tablet; the other was looking up at the ceiling with a bored expression.

"Single-file line," the guard with the spreadsheets said gruffly as the group approached. "Palm on the scanner there; look straight ahead at that glowing blue doohickey on the wall, and don't blink for a couple seconds while it's going."

Without looking up from the tablet, he gestured to each of the devices he'd indicated. Mila obediently approached the biometric reader and did as she was told while her brother waited his turn behind her. On the other side of the security station, Tyrell pointed out a row of lockers built into the wall, each using the same type of biometric scanners.

"Please, choose any locker with the green light in the upper right corner turned on," said the director. "We ask that you leave your mobile phones, laptops, and any other personal electronic devices in your lockers for the duration of your shifts here. You'll find company phones and tablets inside to switch them out with– which are to remain in this building at all times. This protocol is to protect your privacy, as well as our intellectual property."

Before Tyrell finished his sentence, Mila had already retrieved the tablet from her locker and begun looking through the tabs on the company portal.

"TJ, look at this," she exclaimed, holding it out in front of him. "This thing has access to every piece of information for every project we could be working on with these things! It's so efficient– and, check this out! We can look through all of Revenant's code on here!"

She scrolled through the display faster than she could possibly be processing any information. "Honestly kinda' expected it to be… more unique or something. There's just a lot of it. I really hope the most advanced AI ever built isn't just, like, ten thousand pages of if/else statements…"

Before Tae-joon could open his mouth to say I told you so, something in the scripting caught his attention. His eyes narrowed– without really noticing what he was doing, he found his hand reaching for the tablet. "Let me see that…"

Mila rolled her eyes and snatched it away from him. "You have your own! This one is mine!"

He sighed. Typical little sister.

"Big fan of robot combat, Ms… Alexander?" Tyrell smiled at Mila as he addressed her. She flashed a wide grin.

"Fu– heck yeah!"

"Well, then, I'll see if I can get the marketing department to bring you some merchandise. We value workers with a passion for what they do around here! In the interim– what if I told you that we're about to go see the champ, up close and personal?"

An excited gasp, almost a squeal, escaped her. "Are we?!"

Tyrell winked at her. "Follow me…"

Tae-joon lagged behind the rest of the group as they made their way down the polished white corridor. He had retrieved his company tablet from his locker, and was scrolling intently through Revenant's code.

"Focus, TJ," said Mila as she grabbed his elbow to pull him along. "We're going to have plenty of time to look at that stuff later!"

The director led them to a heavy, steel door which almost looked like it belonged to a bank vault. He placed his palm on the scanner. The door unlocked with a pneumatic hiss and swung open. It was at least three inches thick– not a vault by any means, Mila thought, but it sure seemed like overkill for an industrial facility!

She found herself standing in a huge expanse, something between an auditorium and a warehouse. It was difficult to fathom that this room was only a small part of the massive headquarters. At its center was a large, empty square, the boundaries of which were clearly marked with yellow-and-black striped tape. The rest of the space was filled with neat rows of cabinets, tables, shelving, mobile computer terminals, and some heavy, powered equipment. A scrawny man with thick glasses, whose darker skin tone contrasted heavily with his crisp, white lab coat, typed furiously on a laptop.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and– ah, 'gentle-them's," Tyrell addressed the group, "the nerd with the laptop behind me is Venkat Narayan, head of the company's combat robot initiative. If you ever run into a problem that your immediate supervisor can't help with, you bring it to his attention– and hope that he can look away from his screen for two seconds to hear you out. Ah, well– we value focus and dedication like his around here!"

Without saying a word, Narayan closed his laptop and set it aside. He picked up some kind of remote control from the table beside him, which he used to dim the overhead lights. Something mechanical inside the walls - or perhaps under the floor - whirred to life. A section of paneling along the wall lifted up like a garage door. Tae-joon raised his eyebrows– he would never have guessed that there was a door concealed there, and he usually had a knack for picking up on small details like that.

"Revenant," shouted Tyrell, "front and center!"

The machine stepped out of the compartment hidden behind the wall and crossed the warehouse floor. Its movement was silent– unnerving, given the stature and bulk of its design. Tae-joon felt like he was watching some kind of illusion, a poorly-edited video– but it was happening in front of him, in real time. The robot was staring back at him, too, with those ominous yellow-orange optics. It came to a stop at a blue line marked on the floor inside the empty square. There, it faced the group, standing perfectly still like some kind of stone monster.

No journalist, if they were present at this moment, would possibly think the thing was sentient– and yet, Tae-joon couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching him. It was observing and calculating his weaknesses.

The designers knew what they were doing– that is certain.

"What you see here today," Tyrell addressed the new employees proudly, "is the result of thousands of hours of hard work, trial, and error - mostly error - put into AI development by hundreds of workers over dozens of years. The past decade of research on the integration of artificial neural networks in robotics by myself and Mr. Narayan here has opened the gateway that led us to this moment! All right– and now that I've had my little moment of grandeur…"

On queue, Narayan turned the overhead lights back up to full brightness. Tyrell stepped back, offering his fellow project leader the opportunity to speak. When Narayan finally did open his mouth, his words were quiet and awkward, spoken with a distinct accent.

"It will take time, as you are working here, to be– understanding, really, all of what makes this robot the best in the field," he said, "but for now, I can give today a small overview. A part of what makes Revenant unique from the competition is– there are subroutines in his code that he can rewrite himself, instantaneously, without a human involvement. This is a level of autonomy and adaptability that was unheard of with an AI, before this project."

"Simultaneously our best invention and one of our most frustrating," Tyrell cut in. "Every time it rewrites something we don't want in its code, we have to write up another inhibitor script to interrupt the function. Those of you who were hired for software engineering, expect to spend a lot of late nights working on those!"

Narayan emphasized the point with a single, firm nod. "There is another thing that I wish to show you here," he said.

He fiddled with the remote control in his hands. Another section of paneling, this time along an adjacent wall, folded up into the ceiling. Another robot stepped out– this one was painted sleek black with green accents. In contrast with Revenant's eerily silent movement, the other one had heavy footfalls. It walked across the warehouse and stood inside the marked square, across from Hammond's champion.

"In a combat, adaptation is– is everything," Narayan continued as he walked up to the two robots. "Historically, this adaptation is something that robots cannot be good at; not like humans, and even animals. So we thought."

He reached for a panel in the plating of Revenant's upper chest. Though he remained still, his optics followed the motion of Narayan's hand as the researcher pried around the edges of the panel and removed it. The inner workings of the machine's left shoulder were now exposed.

Narayan grabbed a fistful of wires and tore them from their connectors. Sparks flew. Revenant's arm fell limp at his side. If he was aware of this display of ruthlessness from his handler, he did not react in any way. The young engineer that Mila had met in the elevator, on the other hand, flinched.

"With other robots that are in the competition," said Narayan, "they could not keep going with this kind of damage. It is making all their protocols useless. What to do next– even the mechanics of staying upright become affected. But this one, he can adapt. Watch."

The researcher scurried off toward the perimeter of the room. Once he was safely out of the way, he shouted: "Fight!"

Before the echo of the command fully faded, Revenant had jumped off the line and lunged at the other robot. The opponent side-stepped and swung their fist– something that Revenant seemed to anticipate, as he ducked low and slammed his shoulder into the enemy's weighted knee. Both robots fell to the ground with a cacophony of metallic clattering and scraping. Revenant was first to recover, and as the opponent attempted to right themself, his one working arm reconfigured into a blade and carved a large, jagged gash in their neck. The enemy went still. Revenant backed away and returned to his line on the floor, awaiting orders.

"It won that fight too fast," Tyrell concluded with a frown. "At the exhibition match next week, I need it to draw the game out longer. Audience needs to feel like they're getting their money's worth out of the event– get your team on that, Mr. Narayan, will you please?"

The researcher nodded silently.


"Interesting first day," Mila exclaimed with enthusiasm. "When do you think our paychecks are going to come through? It'll be nice to eat something besides ramen for once– no disrespect to your cooking, of course, TJ! This is… nice, too."

As if to emphasize the compliment, she made a point of loudly slurping the rest of the noodles out of her bowl. Tae-joon ignored her, the cogs and gears of his analytical mind spinning at top speed as he thought over the day's events.

"So, I guess you were right," she continued, her demeanor becoming sheepish. "I didn't see any interesting conspiracies going on at Hammond HQ, and that robot definitely isn't sentient– just really, really well-engineered. Those journalists are editing things however they think will get their ratings up, just like you've said a hundred times…"

She deferred to her older brother and emphasized his victory over her in an effort to get a reaction out of him. It proved to be ineffective– he made a noncommittal sound in his throat as an answer, while continuing to pick at the late dinner that he'd barely eaten.

Mila sighed in defeat. "I'm going to go play with the cat," she announced. "Byte is more interesting than you are, anyway!"

She grinned mischievously and winked at him before getting up from the table and crawling around the living room on her hands and knees, looking under the furniture for the familiar ball of orange fur.

He really should say something to her, he thought– but at the moment, Tae-joon thoroughly lacked the thought capacity to form the words. Their first day at Hammond Robotics may have persuaded Mila to drop her obsession with the conspiracy news surrounding the company– but it had convinced him that she was onto something. The corporation was definitely hiding information from the public.

The programmer highly doubted that there was some sinister plot to control supply infrastructure or to create a race of sentient AI slaves, as fringe journalists were so fond of screaming about. It was something small, something much less likely to interest the general populace. Hell, it might be nothing– it might be that he was overthinking what he'd seen.

The massive list of if/else statements in Revenant's programming– when his sister had glanced over the code, she'd figured that they were what drove his behavior. Tae-joon, however, had taken a closer look and found that they worked opposite her assumption: they were conditions of inhibitor scripts. More than half of Revenant's core programming was inhibitor scripts, used to suppress any information or skills he learned that Hammond didn't want him to have access to. One in particular that had caught Tae-joon's attention was used to control his reactions to physical damage. The programmer's first thought upon seeing him act like it hurt him in the video on Mila's phone had been that they wanted him to behave that way, to draw the audience into the brutality of combat. Now, he knew the opposite to be true.

Of course, that didn't mean that the machine was really in pain. More likely, it was an action he'd learned to imitate after watching a human do it, and the executives at Hammond didn't want the behavior being used as ammunition by conspiracy theorists. Tae-joon rested his chin on his hand and sighed heavily. This was the difficulty of any significantly advanced AI– trying to figure out why they'd learned the things they'd learned, and what their responses to that information signified.

He headed over to his desk and sat down, leaving his mostly-uneaten bowl of ramen on the table. Normally, around this time, he'd open his compiler and work on some side project to make a little extra cash. Tonight, he found himself searching for scientific journals, reading theories about artificial intelligence instead.