H:/Silver/acquisitions/commandcode02

[Thexare]

A young man with solid white hair walked into an office on Seasons. In it, he saw a man in a coat examining the contents of a large crate. Without turning to look, the man in the coat spoke.

"Milton Radley. Former Ageira cybersecurity specialist. Former Buccaneer. Former Deviant of the Vagrant Raiders. Assorted freelance work with other companies, too, always in a similar field; network security for Gateway, a one-off security audit of Kishiro's Isehara facility - I like the irony, by the way. And now you're with Ghostnet. You are a man of many hats."

"Yeah, well, gotta stay busy. Fuel doesn't pay for itself. But I don't answer to you anymore, so what'd you call me for?"

"If you didn't know, you wouldn't have come. In your pocket, there's a storage device with the command codes for one of LaBrie's old... projects. I knew you stole them, but it was amusing so I let it go. I need those codes now."

"Heh. Nothin' gets by you, does it?" Milton handed the storage drive to Escher, who stuck it into the crate's contents. He then looked down at the computer readout running a core diagnostic, and slowly nodded.

"Excellent. All systems still operational. Now to activate it..." He reached into the crate, pushed a few buttons, and closed a metal hatch. The robot inside activated, its eyes glowing green, and climbed out.

"Query: Is there someone you need killed, master?"

"Okay, now we'll have to do something about that personality module..."

"Threat: 'Do something' about my personality module and I will personally-" Escher quickly cut him off.

"Interjection: I'm carrying a Sanford & Wahlberg 1024G EMP grenade. Try me."

"Resignation: Very well, master. Do as you feel you must."

Escher disabled the robot and called Milton over to the computer. "First we'll need to do something about those 'Statement' statements. We need a little more subtlety."

"Security feature. Keeps him from lying to us."

"So does an EMP. And for what I have in mind, I need him to act as human as possible..."

"Eh, you're the boss. As long as I'm getting paid anyway. Gotta admit, though, this is a little beyond me; I've only adjusted AI priorities before, modifying a full personality module is-"

"Same concept, more detailed. You'll figure it out. Quickly, I would assume."