A/N While Moloch the demon in a robot body can be explained as 'demon Magic', Ted the robot can not be explained as the original Ted simply being a genius. Computers in the 1950's were giant room filling machines and simplistic compared to the computers we had by the 1990's, which included laptop computers, which were very small and getting smaller, but much more powerful and getting more so as time went on. But Magic can explain it and I can look to another tv show favorite of mine for an explanation that works, Warehouse 13 and an artifact called a zoetrope, check their wiki if you're curious. 😜

Yes, Warehouse 13 is on my list to do a crossover story with. 😉

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Cordelia had hauled the robot body back to the High School while Xander carried the head. She complained the whole way about chipped nails and assorted other topics that made Xander smile sympathetically as he knew she was just doing it to distract herself from the horror found in Ted's 'bunker of death and despair' as Xander put it and he appreciated her efforts. Once there they called Ms. Calendar and Giles to come see what they'd found.

"I've started digging into its programming." Willow told them when they arrived. "It seems the original Ted got sick and his wife left him, he built the robot to be a better version of himself and the robot kidnapped her and held her prisoner until she died. My problem is, how did he manage to create an actual robot, let alone program it to be able to replicate human behavior? The Ted robot adapted by getting different jobs and dating different women, that doesn't seem possible given what I know about computers in the '50's. I'm not sure it's possible with today's current technology."

"Research into autonomous robots had only just begun." Ms. Calendar agreed. "This is decades beyond what was capable of being made back then. However, technomagic might be the answer."

"Magic bridging the gap in technology." Xander nodded. "The Ted robot may not have been so much programmed, at least not completely, as the real Ted copied something of himself into a mechanical body."

"An incomplete transfer, because unlike Sid the dummy/demon hunter, Ted wasn't nearly as lifelike." Willow stated. "He could only adapt so far and no farther, whereas Sid, even in a dummy body, could function as independently as a regular person and adapt on the fly, so to speak. Ted was restricted, I guess, to a series of previously approved actions."

"He kept going because a robot's body can be upgraded and repaired." Ms. Calendar agreed. "But a human ages and dies and he had a limited understanding of that. He'd preserve the body of one woman when she died and then go find and 'retrieve' another. I don't think the real Ted was sane by the time he created robot Ted, he basically created a compulsion in the robot."

"Like Sid, the human Ted's body is long gone." Giles stated. "It might be preserved as well, like the bodies you discovered."

"And Mrs. Summers was his next target." Xander said grimly, he liked Mrs. Summers, she was the kind of Mom he would have like to have had, one who actually gave a damn about her kids and did her best to take care of them. "Dawn and Buffy didn't fit into his plans, he could have simply ignored them or killed them or tried to blackmail Buffy into letting him have Mrs. Summers or any number of other possibilities."

"What do we do now?" Willow asked.

"We anonymously report him as a serial killer." Cordelia answered. "So those women can be found and their families can have answers as to what happened to them."

"And we help Mrs. Summers deal with the fact that she was his next victim." Xander finished. "We show her Ted the robot -."

"She doesn't need to know that part." Giles objected.

"Maybe Buffy should weigh in on that." Xander narrowed his eyes at Giles. "But I think it could be used to start a conversation about Magic, the supernatural and how to keep herself and Dawn safe from the demons that are still out there. And I can give them both a means of protecting themselves."

"I agree with Xander." Cordelia gave her opinion. "Secrecy in regards to the public is necessary and a good way to avoid a mob mentality, but Mrs. Summers is Buffy's mother, keeping it from her is wrong. I don't think she's going to be blabbing it around town, she'll understand Buffy's safety depends on secrecy. But she deserves to know her daughter isn't a nutcase."

"If she knows it'll undercut the authority you think you have over her, won't it?" Willow realized. "Just what is your authority, Giles?"

"I can't answer that," Giles said stiffly. "it's privileged information."

"Privileged?" Cordelia glared at him. "Daddy uses that word in business, it usually means information deemed essential to the company's success that they don't want a competitor duplicating."

Xander felt his gut sink as he realized something that would have made no sense to him prior to Halloween. "You said the Slayer is mystical, meaning Magic created her." He stared intently at Giles. "Who used Magic to create the Slayer, Giles?"

"I can't answer that." He answered, refusing to back down.

"That's why the Watchers Council thinks they have authority over the Potentials and the Slayer." Xander's lips pinched in anger. "The Watchers Council created a living weapon, one they think they have proprietary rights to. Do they even understand that they're human beings? Or that if they had the power to create the Slayer, they had the power to fight themselves? Or that using Magic wasn't necessary at all because humans are very capable of fighting all on our own. Within two days of learning vampires existed I dusted my first one. I was barely sixteen and had no power and granted it was a two person dusting as someone ran into Jesse and pushed him against the stake I was holding to his heart, but that just proves humans can do it. Even if we have to work together to accomplish it."