The first trial involved a robot with a very simple little bit of programming covered in a round, golden helmet, with no corners to dent people's shins. Thomas hooked up a wired controller to it, and let Blues see it marching around before putting the controller on top of his head, and then inserting the wire into one of the ports he'd rigged up awhile ago to replace the ports he and Albert had originally built in, which really only worked with the stuff Albert was using that year. There was trying to keep their curious fellows from getting into Blues and taking a look, and then there was letting Blues access the outside world someday.

The little robot didn't sit there for more than a minute before rocking on its heels, and then beginning to replicate some of the patterns Dr. Light had it walk in. He'd programmed in some of those patterns, so it would execute them in response to simple inputs before Blues got the hang of sending more complicated instructions.

Dr. Light clapped, a simple patterned sound, and switched the music to one of Blues' preferred songs. "If I can find a music player with large buttons, and design the next robot to press them?" he said happily.

"Radio."

Thomas paused. "Radio?"

"New content," Albert reminded him. "People talking to each other who aren't us."

"Well… it's not television," inflicting random video and audio on Blues, while he was also experimenting with motion? "I'm still concerned-"

Bong.

The robot's helmet hit the metal cabinet under Blues' body.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

Albert turned to look at Thomas and his jaw dropped. "You gave him the power to make noise." When Albert wanted to ask what the heck you were thinking?!

"He figured it out so quickly! He must have seen that two things striking each other could produce sound, well, I already verified that, but he's testing his observational data personally!"

"You knew the first thing he would try to do once he realized he could move a robot was this," Albert said, as the bonging continued, "And you shaped that helmet so it would sound pretty? He's going to keep this up until you give him another toy-" His hand caught what Thomas tossed at him. "Well," he admitted, letting out a breath as he calmed down. "At least you did think ahead." Earplugs. "I'm going to be in the other lab." Albert wasn't a big fan of having music on while he worked: he put up with it less because of Thomas than because of Blues' need for mental stimulation. Random clanging was a little much, even if it wasn't clanging.

Blues started making sounds, trying to match the bonging, and this was one of those times that Thomas really, really wished that it was safe to make home movies.

"Why a ninja?" Thomas wondered, looking at the new frame Albert built to hold certain parts from the alien robot's body.

"Because ninja are quiet." So hopefully he would be a good influence on Blues.

"I'm sorry," Thomas apologized for the third time this week. "I don't understand why it's taking him so long to understand the importance of negative space," even if he was trying to construct patterns instead of just make noise as rapidly as possible from the beginning.

"Too much time with too little mental stimulation," Albert said, and scowled. "I should have caught it sooner."

"I don't want to punish him for being creative and experimenting," that would be completely counterproductive, "but I don't know how to incentivize him to, well, it's not that we don't want him to make noise." They wanted him to learn to talk eventually.

"Batteries."

"In the robots?"

"Or at least a limited amount of power they can draw from the lab systems every day."

"Yes, that would help, and the radio might help keep him from getting bored when he can't use the robot."

The change to the next day for the robot power meter was midnight, and it took several months for Blues to acquire enough impulse control to not blow his power budget immediately, but instead wait until Dr. Light was there and would pat him on the head and talk to him again after watching his show.

Linking him to a robotic pointer that could turn the radio on and off (although the doctors could unplug it if it got too annoying) and adjust the station became the next problem. Blues developed a search pattern for all the music stations, but if there wasn't anything new he'd zoom in on the most overdramatic talk show or poorly acted drama he could find.

"Why are you surprised?" Albert asked, getting more earplugs.

It wasn't as though Blues knew what they were saying, so he couldn't really understand how trashy these programs were, but "He has good taste in music?"

"Taste has nothing to do with it," Albert said. "Tone of voice."

"Oh," Thomas realized thankfully. "He already knows what a rising inflection means." A question.

"And he knows when you're doting on him, and what kind of sound gets you over there right away when he's overheating. He's picking out the programs that emphasize the part of the signal that he can partially understand."

"Since he has something of a Rosetta stone. Perhaps it's a good thing we're in Japan and this isn't English-language radio," Thomas realized. "He knows some words, from us, but practice analyzing and identifying emotions instead of trying to watch both tone of voice and words at once is a good thing, I think. He's not up to actually decrypting any languages yet, so it'll be good for him to work on the part I'm sure that he can do."

"I can't believe I'm the one who caught that," Albert mused. "You're the one who pays attention to it. To people."

"I was thinking like a parent," Thomas admitted. "The content on those programs… He can't understand it, but it's writing to permanent memory!" Eventually he would know what they were saying!

Albert laughed. "Good thing I'm almost ready to turn on his new toy, then."

"Really?"

"There's adaptive movement programming that's set up to handle different gravities, body types and masses, so that's not a problem. What would be a problem is that its adaptive learning system is only for combat-related applications. If it's given a priority outside a very narrow list, it'll shut down. They only gave their robots the ability to think about a narrow range of topics, and military operations require initiative at the tactical level, as the Vietnam War proved for anyone willing to look at it. Unless a group of robots like this had a massive technical advantage, they wouldn't have a prayer of winning a fight without an officer from whatever species built them on the ground. They need to have targets and tactics assigned outside of a narrow list. We're not inside the acceptable targeting criteria," he added.

Therefore, Albert continued, "If it decided to attack us, it would have to make that decision using your programming, and fat chance of that. I already have a program set up to rapidly teach a system like Blues all human languages – it helps that there are a lot fewer kinds of language than people think, so I have to wonder if learning languages isn't actually instinctive, and if so I think that what I pulled together isn't that different from how the brain does it. Except better," of course, when this was something Dr. Albert Wily programmed instead of a system kludged together by random chance and accumulated beta testing. "He'll be able to get up and take orders almost immediately, but he won't be the sharpest tool in the shed. Far behind Blues, I mean: the analysis capability in your programming for Blues is going to be directed to dealing with his own mind first before it has capacity left over for the outside world."

Thomas nodded. "So I'll need to remember that although he looks like a grown man, for now his ability to function is on the level of an advanced computer." When computers needed very specific instructions and couldn't come up with plans to handle things that weren't in their instructions on their own. "Outside of very narrow criteria that I hope won't come up?"

"Until his system has fully adapted my translation program, it will take him awhile to translate orders and compile them into actions," Dr. Wily added. "So give him the full set of instructions in advance, instead of step-by-step as he goes through a process."

"Right, the limits of human short-term memory won't be a factor," Dr. Light agreed, "but I wouldn't give him any too-long list of instructions until he's freed up enough initiative to abort process if necessary." And the judgment and background information necessary to know when to abort process, when an order needed to be disobeyed.

Well, Blues' programming was constructed from the ground up to help robots learn to care, so that they could help others, could make the right decisions?

Albert nodded. "He won't be stupid: I've given him too much processing power for that – oh, by the way, I came up with another chip design – but I'm dealing with a non-human mental architecture here. Until he learns how to handle our languages and idioms, our assumptions – we'll be expecting him to be smart instead of just follow orders exactly - and all the other things he'll have to translate, the lag will make him slow. He'd be able to respond instantly if someone points a gun at him, once he knows what a gun is, but if he's in a complex non-violent situation, he won't be able to analyze all the data necessary to come up with a creative solution until the window of opportunity to actually use that solution is probably long-closed."

Thomas nodded slowly. Blues was inclined to try things to see what happened, but that was partially because Thomas didn't give him too many new things he had to understand in order to understand what he was doing at once. Shadow was going to be flooded with new things he had to make sense of before he could make any sense whatsoever out of the experimental data obtained by doing things to see what happened. Out of the solutions suggested by experience, out if imagination and initiative.

When he thought of how Shadow would act, would have to act, without any ability to analyze and imagine outside of what his creators let him understand? Criminal negligence. Especially in war, with people's lives on the line! People would die who would have lived if that species (or to be fair, he reminded himself, Shadow could have been built by one specific country, he didn't represent his species of origin as a whole) gave them the tools of understanding needed to save lives.

"Part of why I knew you had the right idea," Albert said, watching him. "Unfortunately for him, I don't have any patience with slow people. You'll have to keep me from yelling at him while he's trying to think. His old programming will abort his thought process to check to see if there are any orders in what I'm saying and then he'll have to start what he was working on over again."

Thomas nodded. "Keeping him in the lab with Blues would give him practice listening to us and understanding what we're saying without too much need to do the next step and translate our orders into actions."

Physical actions would be easier than conversation for any system: there were orders of magnitude fewer variables involved. With a human, Thomas would have to wonder if Shadow would be alright with following orders, but if he was constructed as a military unit with that little free will, then it might help for him to have a simple chain of command to deal with, and simple orders that he was competent to fulfill while he was rebooting and adjusting.

Still, Thomas didn't like the idea of giving him make-work, and helping around the house would have to be scheduled around the maid. There was cleaning the lab, but that involved entire lists of special-case information for the maid, so she didn't have to worry about cleaning up something that was still in-use or damaging equipment with special care instructions that even someone who used to work at other labs wouldn't know about because it was Albert's work.

Maybe Shadow would have some ideas, once he had settled in a bit.

Of course Albert had his own ideas.

"Can you hear me?" Albert said first.

"Audio systems functional," Shadow said, instead of a yes, as black eyes opened.

Thomas might have wondered at that, but Shadow was military unit programmed to give status reports instead a person used to being asked if they were okay.

"And you can understand what I'm saying," Albert said next.

Shadow didn't answer: it wasn't a question. He was probably used to having people talk about him like he wasn't there.

"Classify the 'body language' files as relevant to combat techniques and order comprehension," Albert ordered. He looked contemptuous, but not disappointed: he'd expected that Shadow's creators would only have given him a narrow communication channel, one for orders? But wait, body language and other non-verbal cues were important to reading hostile intent: as a martial artist, Dr. Light knew that well. Had this alien race really chosen not to give their units the latitude to read the signs around them and determine how likely people were to launch an attack?

"Yes, Sir," Shadow said after a second. "Additional language files loaded."

"And you can understand what I'm saying," Albert repeated himself, and nodded when Shadow's response was a nod. "Stand up."

Shadow did so, without a yes sir. So movement orders were silently obeyed…

"I'm Dr. Albert Wily – you can call me Dr. Wily. I built that body. This is Dr. Thomas Light – obey his orders when they're not in conflict with mine. If you receive conflicting orders, tell whichever one of us gave them to you. Now that you're activated, we're going to test your movement programming and physical reaction speed by playing a game called ping-pong, and then Thomas has some mental function tests for you. Follow me," Albert said, and Thomas got out of the way, watching the alien follow after him. Only the first step was careful, after that the movement seemed fairly natural.

Dr. Light had to cover a laugh, because of course once Albert got a robot capable of playing table tennis he was going to take advantage of that function.

Come to think of it, perhaps he could see if he could use Shadow as a sparring partner? That would certainly test out his precision movement, and if Dr. Light classified meditation as part of combat training? It might help Shadow sort things out.

"He doesn't seem to remember anything," Thomas said sadly. At least there was something left in Shadow's body, the movement programming proved that, but was his personality gone? Was the person who lived in that body really dead? If Albert was right about fusion (and if Thomas was right about this part of it) then someone was alive in there up until they installed the Blues-derived programming, at least. So what if starting up foreign programming in systems connected to the alien robot had killed him? Some kind of security measure?

"The memory files are there, he just can't access them." Albert scowled. "It's better than constantly wiping them, or a long list of nasty alternative ways of lobotomizing AI… They probably picked this method because this way their units could benefit from combat experience – if they lasted that long – and use accumulated data as a substitute for imagination. I decided to activate him now instead of waiting until I'd hacked into those files for a reason. Let's expose Shadow's new programming – your caring about people programming – to you for awhile before he has to deal with how his old owners used to treat him. The second to last thing we need is for him to decide to hate all organic life."

The two immediate questions were 'what would the last thing we need be?' and 'like you consider me an exception to your general contempt for people?' but they'd left Shadow in the lab with Blues in full new person mode, and Thomas needed to get back in there to be adult supervision.

The first hurdle in Shadow's relationship with Blues was that Blues wanted people to interact with him, and while Shadow could ignore him and stand guard, when Thomas was about to ask him to respond to Blues' actions and interact with him, the question was how? Do what together?

Blues needed social development, and Shadow might not be up to social interaction for awhile, even interacting with a fairly simple young robotic intelligence. So what could Shadow do that would make Blues happy, Thomas wondered, and looked at Shadow, thinking about the robot's capabilities.

About the specs on his arms. "Would you please pick Blues up and follow me?" he asked. "We'll go to the new exercise room."

The tatami mats in Thomas' original exercise room really weren't up to the strain of a robot of Shadow's weight maneuvering quickly. Fortunately, this house was built from the ground up and came with high-security storage space, including one large room with a concrete floor. Thomas had moved his meditation mat and a few other things into this room and Shadow could wear his gis provided he didn't duplicate the movements involved when Thomas tied his own belt exactly. The degree of baggyness that resulted when Shadow attempted that was rather embarrassing, but he'd shown Shadow how to tie the practice robe. Thomas wasn't certain, but Shadow's emotional display programming came from what he'd put together in hopes that Blues would want to use it someday, and that might have been a bit of interest in his eyes, in addition to the embarrassment of realizing he'd done it wrong the first time.

"Put him in the corner there," Dr. Light instructed him, "and why don't you work on meditation for a bit while I warm up?"