(A/N) Hey guys, I'm sure you're all in a bit of a state of emotional breakdown after the epicness that was the trailer for RvB Season 12?! And their anniversary video?! And the new Immersion video, kicking off its second season?! Well, just so you know, we've also put up the winners of our Awards night, and so, if you think you can handle the awesomeness, I'll list them out as follows:

Best Complete Epic - Salvation – Nan00k

Best Work In Progress - Murderer's Row – Violent-Medic

Best One-Shot - Leaders – Petchricor

Best Crossover - The Freelancer Initiative: Tales from Earth 636 – Gumby1011

Best AU - Murderer's Row – Violent-Medic

Best Moment - The Totally Not Gay Musings of Lavernius Tucker – Last Paragraph – RockefellerFrank

Best Pairing - Grif/Simmons – Murderer's Row – Violent-Medic

Best OC -Agent Kentucky – Taking the Wheel & Explosive Enthusiasm – Gumby1011

Best Canon Character Representation - Agent South Dakota – Just Us Against the World – Lili-Hunter

Caboose's Choice for Most Off-The-Wall Pairing - Coffee Guy/479er – Coffee Mug and Radio – Niriall

Now, without further ado, I'm going to leave you in the safe hands of WargishBoromirFan, and ask you all to strap yourselves in for another Georgia chapter!

Enjoy!

Chapter Forty-Eight - Daedalus's Laboratory

Agent Georgia

Written by WargishBoromirFan

"You get so tired of having your work die. I just wanted to make something that people would actually use." - Bram Cohen

Georgia had always appreciated having something to do and people to do it with. It was far easier to work through emotions than have to think about them, and God bless him, Kent never seemed to slow down to think. So when Georgia had picked that lock well enough to almost pass for York, neither Florida nor Kentucky had paused between praising his skill and rushing the door to notice when he'd slipped and asked, "Not bad, huh, Ark?" under his breath. Even when Florida brought up the topic of exactly who had taught Georgia those fancy skills, Kentucky was too busy running forward to spend the time looking back, and all for the better.

Kent had simply hollered for "Greg" to join them in the armoury and help carry back components, ogling the fancier bombs that they didn't dare touch for the thrilling fear of getting caught. And there had been such pretty bits of sheet metal and wiring and chemical tanks and other such goodies that Georgia wasn't sure he'd managed to keep track of all the things they'd used for which experimental homebrews, but it was amazing fun, the best he'd had in a very long while. The guys had been bouncing ideas off each other and him so fast that there was no time to think of who else might have enjoyed their break-in; there was no one and nothing to worry about other than making sure the boss man wouldn't miss what items they'd taken.

Now, Georgia was doing inventory. He added up all the equipment he, Kent, and Florida had liberated from the armoury. He counted in all the times he'd practiced his new locksmithing skills, with Connie and Nev while hacking away at that Mastery Cube whose mastery remained ever tantalizingly just out of reach, "for experience" by himself or under York's wing, and just because he could when nobody was within sight. He made notes of all his inventions and upgrades in comparison to what they had cost Project Freelancer. He put together exactly just how many times he'd made a successful kill or saved someone's ass in a fight with how frequently the others had had to rescue his sorry easily-defeated rear. He hoped it had netted him something positive in the long run, but Georgia was hardly counting on it as he stood nervously outside the Director's office, fingers shifting half-consciously from spinning his lucky penny to tap against his legs to the toolkit the Director had requested he bring along and back while there was no one watching him.

He was alone in this section of the ship. The Director could kill him and the others wouldn't know he was missing until Utah badgered them into a systematic search of all his usual retreats and Kent attempted to call him for another building session. He wanted to make that next build. It made him feel like he was living usefully again, when the Mastery Cube left him flinging his brain against the walls of his past.

All right, maybe he was being a little ridiculous. "Agent Georgia, here as per your request, sir," he reported in with a salute once F.I.L.S.S. announced that the Director would see him now.

"Good." Dr Church was not waiting behind his desk, but met the engineer at the door, nodding for him to follow deeper into the ship as the old man punched in his code to the rear door of the office. Beyond the Director's office was another gray industrial hallway, its primary feature within view consisting of a service elevator. The Director led him in and pushed the button for a lower unmarked floor. He didn't make any chitchat as to what he'd called the engineer into his office for, and Georgia was afraid to ask.

So this was where unwanted specimens of the project were disposed of. It certainly wasn't open to good little rule-abiding agents.

Georgia was being paranoid. Maybe Dr Church just didn't like to come down here without somebody to hold a data-pad behind him and make noncommittal statements in a soothing voice. Where was the Counselor, though? Had the Team Dynamite misadventures brought the usual voice of reason within Project Command so far to the edge that he wouldn't even watch the Director get rid of him? Georgia shifted uncomfortably in the elevator and the Director offered him a sidelong smirk behind his thick lenses. He made no comment until the car stopped its descent, a process that had taken entirely too long in Georgia's point of view.

"I bought a set of designs you had made some years before joining Project Freelancer," the pale older man said, adjusting his glasses as the door opened to a low-ceilinged workspace. It was actually fairly spacious, once one got over the impression of impending flattening, but the paint job down here was darker and most of the lights remained off. Workbenches and processing stations lined the walls, and Georgia could have sworn he saw a gurney lurking deeper in the gloom, one with the chest and arm and leg straps and everything. Its presence was more than a little disconcerting among the power tools. "Tell me, Georgia, have you followed up on those automated soldiers?"

That had been his master's thesis, what now, four, almost five years ago. His time in the army had flown by. "Well, a buddy of mine in the old ODST squad I did maintenance for and I tried to build a prototype, but we never quite got the legs working right and the head would pop off if you so much as said 'boo' to it. That cranium was nearly as hard as his though; you could chuck it from orbit and still have it perform its basic functions."

It had been just a game then, a silly pet project to keep his skills sharp when the technician was stuck with the same old repairs on every mission or held back from the front lines because he was "too valuable to risk" and was left to spar with his own creations or nothing. It hardly seemed the sort of invention that would be of much interest to the head of Project Freelancer.

Dr Church raised an eyebrow and nodded. "So do you believe that with the correct materials, you could create one sturdy enough to perform its intended functions, now?"

"Within certain parameters. I think I've improved my programming skills by far now, but there're some things you just can't code for. I could make you a sturdier, nimbler model than what I designed back at Georgia Tech, but it probably couldn't think as well as a soldier. It'd work all right as an advance drone or a door guard, but even something as good as F.I.L.S.S..." The shipboard A.I. had been disconcertingly quiet as well since they'd gone down to this level, as if she weren't plugged in. That was one of the things that had left Georgia nervous. There were speakers and memory drives and probably more than a few hidden cameras and microphone recorders, but the state of this room suggested that nothing came in or out without the Director's express permission. "Well, every system has its limits, and you just need that spark of humanity to really get a top soldier like our agents, sir."

There had been something of an optimist hidden in Georgia's heart when he'd made those designs, something of his mother's fears about allowing her boy on the front line that made him sketch an idealistic alternative, even if it was just used as a test dummy for his more explosive experiments. Now, he feared, that idealized alternative might remove not just him, but all the Freelancers from the front lines.

"You concentrate on creating the hardware. I can supply the programming, as well as the supplies and manpower," the Director assured him. "Your robots can, of course, accept pre-designed A.I. of complex intelligence, can they not?"

"Of course." Georgia nodded in reluctant echo. F.I.L.S.S. was a damned good A.I., but she was still a fully artificial creation. They might last longer than the smart A.I.s created from flash-cloning or more barbaric processes, but there was a reason that her kind were colloquially known as "dumb" intelligences. She and the other artificial programs like the Freelancer Integrated Logistics and Security System could carry out complex instructions, but showed no will or initiative of their own. They came close to personal agency, but it was only an illusion, a well-performed and intricate magic trick of their developers thinking ahead for them. "If you say so, Director," Georgia hedged, and then shut himself up. He really shouldn't ask. He really didn't want to know the fallout from this.

"You remember our enhancement server, I trust." Dr Church appeared to have smelled his misgivings. Flipping on a certain switch, a blue screen flared to life, illuminating a small holographic figure in plain white Mark VI armour projected onto the workbench nearest where the Freelancer and his boss were standing.

The figure stared up at him, small enough to fit in Georgia's open palm. "Oh, hey, Jacobs, right?" a tinny Midwestern accent fired up at him.

The engineer blinked, not even thinking about why the server would know any part of his name beyond "Agent Georgia." "Jenkins, actually."

"Right. There're too many names going around here for me to keep track of you all, sorry." The little hologram shrugged.

"It's okay." By this point, Georgia decided to just roll with it.

"They say to call me Alpha, or it starts to get confusing around here. Don't know why that asshole can't take a nickname, instead. It's as much my memories as his."

The Director glowered at the small mind in the machine from just behind Georgia's shoulder, but the engineer, for one, was quite relieved to hear that. Flash cloning was still weird and a little more than downright creepy if one thought about it too hard, but it was good to see the expensive results in the hands of their deviously-minded, circuitously-loquacious creator. Better than the other methods of creating complex A.I. that were capable of showing initiative beyond what a human hand could program in there. Needed a brain to get a brain, as the saying went.

He tried not to think about the gurney.

"You know you will not be discussing any part of this project with your fellow agents, Jenkins, upon pain of termination of our contract." The Director remained just barely on the edge of his vision, hands clasped behind his back.

"Yes, sir." His expression probably resembled that of a stunned deer shoved in front of a train light only to realize that the rails turned away far ahead of him, but the Freelancer hadn't earned his state name through stupidity. Georgia didn't have to be brought all the way down to the science dungeon to realize that any mention of the Alpha outside of this room would have a certain Supply Sargent P. Jacobs Jenkins, MSE mentioned on the obituaries page and nowhere else.

"So you can build the body?" The green-eyed Southerner's natural accent was in full force today. "I would prefer to know exactly what equipment the Alpha is possessing, particularly if I require him in the field."

Georgia couldn't resist one little experiment. "Yes, sir, Dr Church."

"Good," two voices answered as one.

There was a pregnant silence before the computer-modulated one added speculatively, "So... how much would you say you'd be able to do about customization?"

Georgia smiled. He'd come up with the idea during grad school, having spent the latter half of his teens and most of his early twenties on a co-ed campus in an engineering major after growing up working the farm with his brothers and rarely getting away from them for more than a few days in a row before college. Of course he could customize.