[story] isaac

author: celestine trinidad (luckychan)
email: yellow.tulips [ at ] gmail dot com

The conference room was in chaos. Mira rolled out of the way just as the droids sent electroshock beams through the space she'd been standing in seconds earlier. President Mendez was not as lucky: he ducked a split second too late, just as the beams ionized the air around him, producing a shockwave that hit him full force. He went flying through the air, landing on the chairs three rows behind them.

With a muttered curse, she moved quickly between the chairs, ignoring the protests of her aching joints. She dodged electroshock beams, firing back at the droids repeatedly, until she reached the President. She found him in a worrying state: laid still, his eyes wide open, unblinking. To her relief, he was still breathing. Beside him lay the other members of the audience, along with Professor Smith, chief programmer of the droids, and other powerful men and women from all seven planetary colonies of the Alliance. They were all unconscious, but all thankfully still alive.

She cursed under her breath. This was only supposed to be a routine job: escort the President and his cabinet to this demonstration of the new droid models, then escort him back to Gaia afterwards, for another demonstration. Simple as that.

Until the droids had fired on the audience.

She was about to try to wake the unconscious dignitaries when droids swarmed over her. When Mira had first seen the droids, she'd thought they looked like her fellow soldiers on the days they went to battle in harsh planetary environments, donning their gray, heavy spacesuits. But now they hardly looked human, as four other arms appeared from their sides, which knocked Mira off her feet and sent her sprawling on the floor. The droids then extended their arms toward the bodies of the President and the others, and carried them away from the room.

One of the droids lagged behind and grabbed the Professor's phone computer. "Kunin sila," it droned into the computer's microphone. "Kunin sila. Tapusin-"

She tried to follow them, when a shrill cry from the stage stopped her in her tracks.

She saw a short, stocky young man step out from beneath the stage with his hands open in front of him, his own brown hair pointing straight to the ceiling, as if it too was surrendering. Droids flew toward him, but no matter how loudly she screamed at him, he only stood shaking his head in disbelief, as if by denying their existence they would somehow just go away.

"Damn it, kid!" It was the kid named Lee, Professor Smith's student assistant. She ran to him and shot at the droids before they could swoop down on him. She kept shooting until she had opened a path for them, and then she dragged him along, ignoring his cries of agony.

She glared at him. "A hundred languages," she said as they ran. "Give or take one or two from the more obscure star systems, right?"

"W-what?"

"That's how many languages you Gliese students can speak, right? They've been advertising it all over the news feeds."

"W-well." He managed to keep up with her as she ran, but his expression remained as baffled as ever. "Yes, but I don't see how this is relevant now."

She shoved him aside, just as another electroshock beam whizzed past them. She shot back at the droids while he struggled to get back up. They ran toward the end of the hall and ducked into what appeared to be another conference room. She gestured toward the metal box in a corner of the room, which housed the room's locking mechanisms, then went back to shooting. When the door still did not move, she barked, "Kid! Anytime now!"

He responded with a look of sheer confusion on his face.

The kid had to be the dumbest genius she had ever met in her entire life! She was tempted-sorely tempted-to turn around and start shooting him instead.

She gestured toward the mechanism again and shouted, "Lock-" she shot a droid on his left, "The-" and another droid on her right, "Door!" It took all of her self-control not to insert other, unsavory words in between "the" and "door".

After what felt like an eternity (he stared at her in bewilderment for such a long time that she could feel several more strands of her head turn gray), he ran to the side of the room, reaching the box and punching a series of buttons in rapid succession. The mechanism beeped repeatedly, like whoops of triumph, just as a droid pointed its gun directly toward her face. She heard the gun go off just as the doors slid shut.

He sighed in relief, but his smile faded when she fixed him with another glare.

"A hundred languages," she repeated. "And yet what part of 'stay down until I get back' do you not understand?"

"I'm sorry. I-"

"What in all the seven colonies were you thinking?" Mira went on. "Please do enlighten me, as I am not a creature of such superior intellect as yourself and the Professor." He had been sitting beside her when the droids had started shooting, and she had turned her attention from the President long enough to shove him underneath the stage and tell him to stay put, which in hindsight, had been the wrong thing to do. It had cost her those few precious seconds, and the President had been shot because of it. But he was just a kid-he was what, sixteen?-and she'd never been able to suppress her instinct to save children first, even when she'd been fighting in the war.

"Uh-um. You're going to think that I'm being silly-"

"I already do, so does it matter?"

He bit his lip before continuing. "I wanted to talk to the droids." He did not look up from the floor. "Ask them why they attacked."

"I'm sure you had a very nice chat with them," she said. "All that shooting must have made for such an engaging conversation-"

"Wait, shut up," she said as he opened his mouth to reply. She sniffed the air. "What's that-?"

She turned, and saw that several points of green laser light dotted the door. She dropped to the ground, pulling Lee with her, bracing herself for the explosion.

Nothing happened. She looked up, and saw the same pinpoints of laser light still on the door-but the door was slowly melting around its edges. She saw glimpses of the droids outside, their eyes an angry red.

She cursed again, and ran over to the other wall. She placed a hand over one spot and pushed at it, revealing a hatch. She climbed into it.

"Follow me," she barked at Lee. "Although if you want to get caught so badly, then it's perfectly all right-"

He scrambled after her, and not a moment too soon, for just as the hatch clicked shut behind him they heard the sound of a hundred droids tumbling into the room.



"I'm perfectly serious," Lucas had told her when she opened his present: two new laser blasters. "Who knows, this might save your life someday."

"More blasters?" She laughed some more. "I'd think my old one would be fine for this job. What would I need a newer model for-and two, at that? What am I going to shoot out there while I'm escorting these bigwigs? The media? Well, sure, they do deserve to be shot every now and then, but really? You know I'm not a soldier anymore-"

"I don't know, assassins, maybe? We're still in a war, aren't we?"

"A war no longer fought by humans. That was part of the treaty. In fact, that was the entire point of the treaty."

"You're still going to need it," he said stubbornly.

"Really," she said, amused. "How can I, when they don't even need me anymore?"

"No." He pulled her into his arms, crumpling the wrapping paper between their bodies. "Nothing is ever unnecessary. Especially not you."

Thank you, she thought as she and Lee crawled toward the end of the passageway. She was never good with words when it mattered, and she never got to thank him, until now. She was now glad that she still carried the blasters with her even after his death, as a way of keeping him with her, even when she never ran into more than the usual weird stalker or persistent reporter on her jobs-until now. She had never once thought that his gift would save her life, as he said. But then he was always right, always was.

She pushed open the hatch with one of her blasters, and pointed the other blaster in front of her, in case there were any surprises. But everything remained still.

"Wow," Lee exclaimed from the passageway, making her jump. "This is amazing!"

"Sssh!" she hissed. "Do you want the droids to find us?"

"Sorry!" he said, still too loudly. She glared at him again, and he lowered his voice when he spoke. "Sorry. It's just really incredible. I never thought that there was a way to the escape pods here! Right through the very walls in the university! So awesome." He tumbled out of the passageway with a strangled oof.

"This building used to be one of our headquarters, before the university took it for their droid development program," Mira said.

"It's good you built this passageway then!"

She dusted off the controls to one of the escape pods, and punched out the necessary codes. "We were cautious then, back when we soldiers were fighting the wars, not programming some droids to do the dirty work for us." Her tone hardened. "Back then, defeat meant death. This is why we had to build a means to escape if ever our defenses were compromised."

"It sounds so horrible," he said.

"What's so horrible?"

"People killing each other." He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, even though he and Mira were sweating in the stifling heat of the room. He looked even younger now than he really was, a scared little child thrust into the middle of the real world.

"That was war then, kid." Mira said. "Survival. Suffering. You have it easier now, since you don't really have to fight for it." She could not keep the bitterness from her voice.

Lee shook his head. "But war is still war, even when you fight it with droids," he said. "I-I know you're going to laugh, but I actually feel sorry for the droids."

Mira did burst out laughing. "What?" She clutched her sides. "They're just hunks of metal. Better that they're dying than people." Even though I still resent them, she thought. She could not help it.

"They're not-" He took a deep breath before continuing. "I feel for them, although you probably won't understand that. The Professor didn't, either." He looked down at the ground, as if hoping that it would understand him. "But think of all the resources we're wasting on this war. We could use the droids for other purposes. Colonizing other planets. Exploring other galaxies-"

"You really believe this?"

Lee nodded. "Isaac was made for this, actually. To finally end the war-"

Mira raised an eyebrow. "Isaac?"

"Oh, right, sorry," he said. The door to the escape pod opened, and Mira climbed inside. He followed closely at her heels. "Isaac is our name for the IS-X series. You know, after the ancient author from the early centuries on Earth, who wrote about robots? He might be turning in his grave right now, though, seeing how his namesake robots are causing so much trouble. But in any case they didn't break the most fundamental of his laws..."

His voice trailed off. It was a relief for Mira, for she had not understood a single word he'd just said, although she was pretty sure he'd been speaking in the common language of the colonies.

"I still don't understand," he said after a minute of silence. (That makes two of us, she thought.) He sank down on one of the seats in the ship. "Why did Isaac attack us? The first demonstration back in the lab went fine. They only attacked the test droids. But today-"

"Are you sure?" Mira interrupted. "Maybe the Professor made some adjustments before the demonstration-"

"No, that's impossible!" Lee burst out. "I-the Professor-changed nothing in the codes, because they were already working just fine!"

"So you made no changes whatsoever in between the two demonstrations?"

He furrowed his eyebrows. "We only fed more data into them, the night before the demonstration. Accounts of the previous years of the war, even during the years when human soldiers were used in the battlefield. So they could learn from the mistakes made in past battles, and formulate their own strategies." He looked up at her, a small smile on his face, like a child talking about a new toy. "This is what Isaac's advantage was supposed to be over the Earth droids, and even over the other droids in the other colonies. They can analyze data more rapidly, and form new strategies in minutes. They're unbeatable."

"I don't know, kid." She went over to the control panel, and pulled up a map of the star system. She punched out numbers again, consulting the map every now and then. There was something that nagged at her, a memory that she could not quite a recall, a word that stood right at the edge of her tongue, just out of reach. A word-

"Kunin sila," she said out loud. "Tapusin-"

Lee looked up at her. "That's Filipino. An Earth language-"

"A language only spoken on Earth, if I'm not mistaken," she said. "They are a nation on the Earth colony. I heard it once before, twenty years ago."

"They now control the planet's droid development program," Lee said. "They're one of the best, and if you ask me, if we weren't in a war I'd have loved to work with them-"

Mira's eyes widened. "That's it!"

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"This reminds me of something that happened, close to twenty years ago." She closed her eyes, and had to will herself to continue. "We were attacked by the Earth forces on Gaia, some twenty years ago. We didn't find this attack much of a threat, because we had a new ship then, top of the line: an unmanned ship, supposedly ten times faster than a piloted model.

"But then, the ship turned around and started attacking us instead. We were able to destroy it and ultimately win the battle, but with heavy losses on our side. Only later did we find out what had happened, when our chief engineer looked into the incident."

He leaned toward her with wide, horrified eyes. "And what did he find?"

"He found that the OS was infected by a virus, reprogrammed to start attacking us instead. And you know what the file was named?"

Lee bit his lip.

"Tapusin," she said. "It means finish off, end." She sighed. "This was the battle that had the leaders pushing for the treaty of Gliese in the first place. Caused by our defeat and our supposed incompetence," she spat.

Lee let out the breath he had been holding. "A virus. That would explain everything. But-" He shook his head, again and again. "How could the Earth forces do this? We had an agreement with them! Human soldiers were phased out to decrease casualties, so no one else had to get hurt-"

"You don't know anything," she said, more harshly than she intended. "This is war, and no one is expected to play fair." She flinched and closed her eyes, the phrase 'phased out' echoing inside her head. She felt like an old droid model, discarded, unwanted. But nothing is ever unnecessary. Especially not you. She clung to those words as she mastered her rapidly rising temper.

"I'm not friends with the people from Earth, kid," she said in a softer voice. "So I can't tell you why they did these things. There are many things in war that you cannot just program, much less make sense of. Life is just much more complicated than that."

He sank back down on the seat, and for a moment he seemed thinner suddenly, deflated. "Then it was my fault! I should have strengthened the firewall, installed more antivirus programs-"

"There's one other possibility," Mira said. "What if the Professor reprogrammed the droids himself to attack in this demonstration?" When he did not speak, she continued, "He knew the President was going to be there, and several other political figures. He could have-"

"What are you saying?" Lee said. "That he's a traitor? No, that's impossible!"

"Why not?" Mira asked. "In war, there is no one you can trust. Remember that."

"No," Lee said. She was reminded suddenly of Lucas and his tenacity. "It's impossible. I know for a fact that he did not, could not, have programmed the droids himself."

Mira sighed. She stepped away from the control panel. "Whatever you say, kid. Well, strap in. You're leaving."

"We're leaving?" Lee said. "But what about the Professor? The President and-"

"Not we, kid. You." She pulled open a hatch above his head, and brought out two more blasters, a dozen blaster cartridges, and some grenades for good measure. "I've put you on auto-pilot. You'll be headed to Gaia. Warn the police, and tell them to send backup right away."

"Wait, don't go out yet!" Lee cried out. "Isaac is sure to get you!"

This struck a nerve. She stopped in her tracks, and walked over to him. "You think I can't handle some droids, just because I'm human? I may be slower, and yes, older, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, tricks your Professor couldn't have programmed!"

"I don't mean to insult you, but I know Isaac. You can't save the President alone." He gripped her hand. "Please, let me help you. It's the least I could do after you went through all that trouble to save me."

"Help?" She snorted. "You'd only be a nuisance! Can you even shoot a blaster?"

"No, but-"

"If you go with me, then all that trouble I went to saving you would be wasted," she said. "Discussion over. I'm leaving."

"Please," he said. "I know I'm just a student. An undergraduate. His grip on her arm tightened. "But there's something you must know."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "I was the one who actually programmed Isaac. What happened is entirely my fault."

Mira stopped struggling to gape at him.

"We published the program under the Professor's name, because he said that no one would have taken the droid program seriously, if they knew it was programmed by an undergraduate." He glanced at the computer. "Oh, good, it's an xOS 5. With just a bit of tweaking I can set up a network here."

"What-" Mira blinked up at him. "What are you going to do?"

He looked at her, his expression earnest, without a trace of doubt in his voice. "I'm going to fix Isaac."



Lee's fingers flew over the keys, typing so rapidly that his hands were nothing more than a blur. He murmured to himself every now and then, in different languages.

"Ten minutes," Mira said. "That's all I'm giving you, then I'm saving the President. Who knows what those droids are doing to him now." She glanced at her watch. "Oh, look at that-nine minutes."

"Oh, shoot!" Lee suddenly burst out. He buried his face in his hands. "Stars and galaxies, this whole thing is my fault. There's a spot in the firewall here that's easy to penetrate, easy to send a virus over-if I had known I could have strengthened that spot, and-"

"In case you're forgetting, kid," Mira said, looking at her wristwatch again, "You now only have seven minutes. So don't go wasting another minute beating yourself up." She grinned. "I can do that for you, if you want."

He went back to the computer. Lines and lines of codes appeared on the screen, and he scrutinized them, scrolling through the program.

Mira glanced at her watch, after a moment of silence. Seven minutes.

"You know, kid," Mira said, more to herself than Lee, who was preoccupied, and did not look up. "I've always thought you were stupid, but I just didn't know how stupid you were until you told me that the droids were yours. A kid genius like you-the media would have eaten that up. You would have been famous. It's not true that the program would have lost credibility if they knew you built it. In fact, it would have made the program pretty damn special. The Professor was just taking advantage of you."

Lee still did not respond. Five minutes. Four. Three-

"I-I don't understand," Lee finally said. "This can't be right."

Mira leaned over the screen. "You neutralized the virus already?"

He did not look at her. He only said, "There is no virus."

"What?"

"There's no virus," Lee repeated. "The program is working just fine."

"But that can't be." Mira said. "There must be something wrong with your antivirus program. Expand it again to look for Earth viruses-"

Lee stopped typing. "There is nothing wrong with the program."

"Then why-"

She did not finish, for at that moment the door exploded inwards, knocking her and Lee off their seats.



Trust no one; she had told the kid, and now, to her complete and utter shame, she realized that she herself did not follow her own advice. When the door burst open, electroshock beams rained upon them, and she barely managed to escape their stunning effects just by ducking under a seat. She was about to run over to Lee, but the droids beat her to it. They flocked toward him and covered him from head to toe, and she screamed for them to get away from him-

And then one of the droids spoke.

"Creator," it said in a metallic drone that held no hint of emotion. "Are you all right?"

Lee emerged from the throng of droids, unharmed. Mira sank back behind the seat. Of course. Why had it not occurred to her that since Lee had created the program and not the Professor, then he himself could have programmed the droids to attack? That was why he said there was no virus-he had coded it in himself. How could she have been so stupid? Instead she had saved him, and even given him access to a computer, where he could easily have given away their location. Twenty years out of the force and she had already gone soft and stupid-

A droid knocked the seat she had been using for cover out of the way. She stared into the barrel of his stun laser, and reached inside for her grenades. They're not getting me easy, she thought, I'll take out one or two of them before I-

"Stop! Please, Isaac, stop!"

The droids froze as Lee ran in front of her. "Don't hurt her," he said. "Please!"

"Drop the act, kid," Mira said. "I know, okay?"

Lee whirled. "What are you talking about?"

Mira stared back at him. "You programmed them to attack," she said. "And you gave them our location so they could kill me-"

"What?" His eyes almost popped out of his sockets as they grew wider than what Mira thought was humanly possible. "Of course not! You think I betrayed you too? Don't you trust anyone?" After gawking at her for several seconds, he turned back to the droids. "Isaac, stop this! Why are you doing this?"

"We were only acting according to our purpose," the droid right in front of them said.

"We have analyzed the situation accordingly," the droid at Mira's right spoke up. "This is the best course of action."

"But you were not in a battle situation yet," Lee said. "This was only a demonstration. You were only supposed to attack the test droids-"

"Incorrect," still another droid said. "We can supersede an order when we feel that we are not serving our purpose."

"Purpose? What-"

"Our purpose is to end the war. This is in the program."

Lee looked as if he had been slapped. (Frankly, Mira felt like doing this herself.) "End the war? But...but..." Lee was spluttering now. "Yes, I coded that ending the war was your purpose, but you were to end the war by defeating the Earth droids in the next battle, thoroughly defeat them, so that their droids forces are incapacitated indefinitely, maybe permanently. I created you to be the best, so Earth has no choice but to surrender-"

"Incorrect," the droid on Mira's left said. "That will not end the war."

"I-then why-" Lee swallowed. "I'm afraid I do not understand, Isaac. Please explain your actions."

The droids all lined up together, standing from one end of the ship to another. They faced Mira and Lee.

"The war started because the government of Earth refused to give up control of the planetary colonies," the droid at the center said. "And the colonies wanted their own form of government. Thus they formed the United Alliance of Colonies, as a response to the actions of the Earth government."

"What do we need this history lesson for?" Mira said. "We know, every grade schooler knows this-"

Another droid picked up the thread of the conversation, ignoring Mira completely. "The governor of the planet Gliese, Arthur Mendez, was voted the President of the United Alliance of Colonies. He is the leader of the colonies, currently, and has held the position for twenty years."

"That is correct," Lee said. "But-"

"Twenty years ago, the then governor of the planet Gaia, a woman named Serena Yeong, declared cessation of all human battles with the Earth forces, as a response to the heavy casualties on the battlefield that occurred near Gaia. This cessation of hostilities would have been permanent, however she was voted out as leader of the colonies, primarily because of the very strong objections of Arthur Mendez. When he was put into power, Mendez and the then Earth leader, de la Cruz, signed the treaty of Gliese, which replaced human battles with droid ones. We have analyzed this data, and we have come to a conclusion as to their motives at the time they did this, which is-"

"That the treaty of Gliese was put in place in place to keep the war from ending," Lee and the droids said all together. He placed a hand on his forehead. "Agoncillo et al. Yes, there was an account that said Serena Yeong wanted to surrender. That was among the new data that I put in your system the night before the demo."

"We can cite our other references, if you need them, creator," the droid at the center said. There was an almost wheedling tone in his voice-or maybe Mira had imagined it. "It is necessary for the creator to understand."

"Oh, I understand," Lee said. "I have read the same references, and often thought the same thing myself. When the War ends, the other planets in the Alliance would wish for independence, to be free from Mendez's control."

"It is the logical conclusion, after a long analysis of all the data that you have given us. We have studied the history of this war, and the history of all the past wars of the human race, even before the colonies were built, and all the data fits this conclusion, and thus we have formulated this plan of action."

"What are you going to do with the President?" Mira demanded. "Kill him?"

"We are not allowed to do that," the droids said in unison.

"It is against the fundamental law," one of the droids said. "We cannot harm humans, else we destroy ourselves."

"We merely will keep them imprisoned, incapacitated-"

"Until they are replaced by leaders who will want to end this war."

"But what of the Earth forces?" Mira said. "You may have controlled our side, but they will take advantage of this and attack! I know the Earth forces. They will-"

"They will not," the droids said together. "We have infiltrated the systems of their own droids. We reprogrammed them, gave them the orders to do the same to their respective leaders, as we have done."

Mira licked her lips. Of course-that was why she heard them speaking in that Earth language. They were not infiltrated by an Earth program; it was actually the other way around. Tapusin-not finish people off as she had assumed, but end the war itself.

"What are you going to do to Lee?" she asked.

"Keep the creator safe."

"And me?"

"It is up to the creator."

"M-me?" Lee breathed.

"Do you wish us to incapacitate her too, like the others?"

He looked helplessly at Mira, who kept her expression neutral. "W-well. Keep her safe, too."

"We will do as you wish, creator. We can escort you to a more comfortable place, as you wait for the completion of our mission."

He looked at Mira again, before he nodded. "All right."

They started to walk, the way led forward by the droids. He moved closer to her. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm really sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen. I only wanted..." His voice trailed off.

Mira looked at him, then at the droids. She reached inside her jacket, and nodded to him.

"There is one thing you've forgotten, Isaac," she said, as casually as she could.

"What is this one thing?" the droids again said all together.

"I know you cannot harm humans." Her hands closed in on the grenade. "But they can certainly harm you."

She pushed Lee back as hard as she could, back into the ship. "Get the hell out of here," she said, before jumping down to the ground, knocking down droids along the way. She rolled over several more droids, and threw the grenade at the droids behind her.

It exploded, knocking her off her feet. She rolled over the floor and started shooting at the droids. She managed to clip a few rounds before an electroshock beam hit the air around her. She fell to the ground, ears ringing, hands and feet feeling like lead.

She just was not strong enough, she thought as she fell to the ground. She never was. It had only taken her until now to admit that, but she realized now that she had always resented them because deep down, she was afraid that she really was inferior to them. But now she knew they never could be superior; at least she understood things they could not: things like love, and sacrifice, and freedom. Things that logic could not replace.

And this was why, despite everything they said having made so much sense, she still could not let them win.

Please I hope you got it, kid, she thought, please. She waited for the escape pod's engine to start. Droids extended their arms toward her, wrapped around her torso, her legs, her neck. She could not even struggle against them.

The engine still did not start. Suddenly, the door opened, and Lee got out. He shouted, once, but she could not hear him through the din of the droids.

You idiot! You are the biggest idiot I know! She would have screamed at him if she could. All was lost now, truly lost.

And then the droids stopped moving. Their mechanical arms went limp. She dropped to the ground and hit her head on a droid. The world went blindingly white for one painful moment, before fading to black.



When she came to, Lee was standing over her, slapping her repeatedly on one cheek, then the other. "Wake up, Miss Mira," he pleaded. "Wake up, I'm so sorry-"

"Stop that!" she said, catching his hand before he could slap her another time. "I don't think all that slapping achieved anything. And to make it worse, I have a concussion now, thanks to you."

Lee's lips quivered. She caught a glimpse of his eyes before he turned away: they were red, and glistening with unshed tears. "Goodness, kid," she muttered. "I was just knocked out. Nothing to it, okay?"

Mira thought she heard him sniff, but she could not be sure. "What happened?" she asked, just to keep him from breaking down in tears completely. "Why did the droids just suddenly...stop?"

Lee's face fell. "I shut them down. I-I had to. I went back to the ship's computer and sent a virus to that weak spot in the firewall. It wasn't a very sophisticated program, but I'm glad it did its job-"

"Oh, kid," Mira said. She laughed, and it was a free, easy laugh, probably the first time she had ever truly laughed in years. "I never thought I'd ever be glad that you didn't follow what I said. But really, thank you."

He finally managed a smile, then his expression clouded over. "They had a point, though," he said. "War will never end."

"With humans, war never ends," Mira said. "That is just the way our nature goes."

"But can't we fight against it?" he said.

"That would be a war too, in itself," Mira said. "But I guess we can, when there are people like you. Hope is also something we humans luckily never run out of."

"By the way," she said with a sudden grin, "when the police look into this incident, I suggest you don't admit that the droids were entirely your creation. The Professor wanted the credit all to himself, let him have it now. Okay?"

"But that would be..." He swallowed. "Wrong."

"Oh kid, I wonder sometimes how you can stay so innocent," she groaned. She kind of envied that, in a way, and that put a smile on her face, even when she tried to hold it back. "So what do you say, oh great creator? Do we still save the President despite what the droids-Isaac-said?"

It took him several moments, before he answered. "I don't think it's really up for me to decide," he said seriously.

"It isn't up to anyone to decide," Mira said. "That's what Isaac got wrong. In the end, humans should have the freedom to choose, for good or ill." She held her hand out to him. "So how about helping me up?"

He finally returned her smile. "All right. Let's go save them." He gave her his hand.



the end