1

"Director, may I speak to you?", Justin Ayo called out.

The General (for she was still in her Minutemen uniform instead of the CLEAN BLACK SUIT she used to denote her position at the Institute) set her duffel bag down. If Dr. Ayo had been from the surface, his time around the Director would have led him to become instantly suspicious. She rarely carried anything of significant weight she could foist off onto a companion. But he was of the Institute: Why wouldn't someone on the surface have to carry an entire life's possessions on their back? It's not like the Wastelanders had any security to prevent theft or even homes to keep things in. So even though this wasn't the first time the head of the Buereu of Synth Retention had caught her with a stuffed duffel bag, it made him lose some of the small respect he had gained for her instead of render him suspicious.

Considering how difficult it was for her to move such a heavy item, the General would take a modest amount of contempt over enough suspicion to start investigating every time.

The General nodded. "What can I do for you, Justin?", using his first name to try to kick him over into friendly conversation rather than one of professionalism.

"Now that the Railroad has been brought to heel, there lies an opportunity to aid in ensuring its destruction.", he informed.

The General's eyebrow raised. How could she state this as putting the Institute first? "With them under our control, why would we need to 'ensure their destruction'. Haven't I made them a useful tool for us to curtail the threats the Commonwealth hold for us? We don't exactly put self destruct switches in our spanners."

Dr. Ayo agreed...sort of. "But our spanners are not made of fanatics. I've checked our records. It seems that the Great War was preceded by a War on Terror, in which when an extremist group of one sort or another was destroyed or disbanded or transformed into something other than an enemy militant group its members would simply disperse and reappear as another, harder line enemy militant group. Now that the Railroad as an organization is working with its most dire enemy, those seeds must already be planted. We need to prepare for that."

The General crossed her arms. "And how do you suppose I do that? In a manner that I'm not already pursuing? Demanding the knowledge of every safe house they've established will be seen through as a transparent attempt to plant explosives. I believe gaining their trust with and ordering only genuine and expected directives while continuing to force the examination of their ideology, and ours, whether synths are built sentient is the best way to keep them in line."

"As handling a tool, I agree.", the man stated. "I'm not opposing continuing on that path. What I am suggesting is something that I believe you can sell as more...conciliatory action on the Institute's part. With the results from Turing testing coinciding with your idea that a Synth can be sentient if it's worked up enough thought over time, we have an excuse."

"Excuse?"

"We offer Type 3 Synths to the Railroad as agents. You can state that they are 'the ones most likely to become sentient but aren't yet', so they retain our property status while allowing the Railroad fanatics who would group into a splinter cell something to do instead: teach how to be sentient. This behavior will probably take the shape of attempting to form relationships with what is effectively a machine. These relationships will help to glue the Railroad together, even as it acts under our will.

"Plus, it's not like they can afford not accepting the offer. Even the Railroad couldn't withstand the hypocrisy of us looking more interested in Synth 'freedom' than they are. They're own untestable ideology will demand going along with our proposal. On top of that, they've faced our Coursers in the field before. They can't deny that they don't serve as talented agents.

"This way we can infiltrate the entire organization. By having our agents be used as their agents. And it's not even a loss of resources because their agents act as our agents through the Minutemen."

The General considered her next statement, as if weighing the best two of four choices. Taking the top one, "How do know that the synths you send in won't become sentient? And if they are Coursers, won't they give the Railroad valuable intel?"

"Not more than the one already in Railroad possession: code named Glory, I believe. Coursers don't actually know about the workings of Institute technology, or at least that which gives us a critical edge on the rest of humanity. And they certainly don't know the actual location of the Institute.", Dr. Ayo explained.

"As for actual sentience - only two passed the test. And how long did it take them to achieve what we are currently accepting as their sentience scores?"

The General rolled her head. "One claimed to have philosophized for a century without interruption. The other had a hundred seventeen years of research an eighty three of pure processing on other hardware before her transfer into a synth body and adventures within."

The man shrugged. "So a five year tour in the intelligence branch of the Minutemen, where missions and Railroad personnel are a constant focus, should prove no threat at all. Especially when Coursers are already rated as the least likely to malfunction."

"Who did you have in mind?", the General asked.

"Which.", Ayo corrected.

The General waved a hand. "Of course."

The man dismissed it as well. "W4-40 and K6-70."

"Name them.", the General instructed. "I don't want the Railroad giving them an identity. Then they'll think of it as theirs, like naming a dog instead of finding out its name.

"Anything else?"

"No, I don't think so.", Ayo replied. "I'll prep them and have them Molecular Relay to your office in the Castle."

"No, I'd have to take it as an insult to my standing as Minutemen General.", the General informed him. "I'll inform Home Plate in Diamond City. Have them appear someplace private and report there."

"Alright.", Dr. Ayo stated. "Er...can I have a synth help you with your bag."

"No.", the General ordered. "I have to learn to handle this myself."

2

The General pulled the duffel bag off Dogmeat. She was nearly certain Dogmeat wouldn't betray this secret.

"So how are the negotiations going?", Dr. Cabot asked.

"They haven't started yet.", the General informed. "That's how I had enough time to get you these tools. You know, for the work you're supposed to be doing and not listening to the radio all day."

Jack side glared at her but not for long. "I've been able to analyze the materials and they all seem pretty mundane, if rare post war. It's the microarchitecture building techniques that I'm concerned with now."

The man gestured to the alien space craft he had been tasked with studying. "The hull isn't hull like we know it. It seems to have channels of separate subsystems, as if every macro piece is also serving dozens of molecular and atomic scale functions. It makes sense considering the magnetic or potentially gravitational shielding that the engines would need to withstand their own thrust for interstellar flight."

"If you say so, Dr.", the General conceded. "Just make sure you can explain that to an Institute scientist even if I can't understand it."