The philosophical discussion between Carolin and her creator came to a quick end. The lady made of light flashed out of existence, and the cornflower orbs in the Plasticene head dimmed to almost dark. The ceiling lights above the head also went to dark, taking with them the light that shone on the headless humanoid robot. Carolin's orginal servo-arm ceased its activations, and positioned itself so its video sensors could focus on the door leading into the lab.

Eugene sat at his workstation, stunned into being silent, with the few lights Carolin allowed to be on basking him with their glow. Although it was broad daylight outside, only a scant few rays of the sun made their way through the thin windows that lined the ceiling along two of its walls.

The door to the lab opened, and light from the hallway poured in. Dean Mandy Dayne appeared.

"Professor Turing?" she called into the dim-lit room. "Are you here?"

Turing expressed surprise. "Mandy? Is that you?"

Her line of sight fell upon him. "Hello, Eugene," she said.

"Why hello! Please come in! What brings you to visit?"

She entered the lab more completely, leaving the door open for the light that it offered. "Well, to begin with, I'm turning on the lights. My gosh. It's rather dark."

She flicked at a switch near the door, but it had no effect. With silent efficiency, Turing wrote an A.R.O. that commanded Carolin to turn the ceiling lights back on. She responded in part, by illuminating a far corner, where the light there shone the least on the portion of the lab she called home.

Dean Dayne focused her attention on the switch she had thumbed, skeptical as to whether it had been her who had turned on the lights. "We've programmed the Project to control the biometrics of the room," Turing sort of lied, noticing the look on her face. "It's a good way to get it to write C.A.R.O.'s on its own."

The Dean pursed her lips. "It seems to have been writing a lot of them."

Turing examined his monitors. They told him that memory usage and data throughput for the Tian-12 supercomputer remained high, despite Carolin's lack of response.

She was taking in every word. Every act. Every nuance.

Turing stood up and smiled. He pulled out a nearby chair, and removed a stack of papers that had been laying on it. "Come here and sit down," he said to the Dean. "Tell me to what pleasure I owe this surprise."

She took in more of the room, her eyes adjusting to the dark. "No," she said. "That's all right. I won't be long. I just want to see how you're doing."

"How I'm doing?" he asked, now confused. "Well, I'm fine, thank you. I'm fine."

Being better able to see, Dean Dayne walked up to the lab table where the brightly painted runner ran down its full length. She stood near the spot where the lady made of light would appear, should Carolin decide to turn on the parabolic array.

The Dean took in the whole of the assembly. "This is new," she surmised.

Turing calmly approached, and stood in such a way that the Dean's gaze would be less likely to fall on the area of the lab Carolin had decorated to look like a studio apartment. "Oh yes!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "It's a holographic image generator."

Dean Dayne gave a blank stare, awaiting clarification.

"Ah… it works like a mirascope," he explained. "The lasers focus light on a central location, using these parabolic mirrors to bend the rays in unison, working as if they were one."

She craned her neck in an arc, to examine the array more fully. "How?" she asked. "You mean it creates a 3D image?"

"Well. Yes. That's the idea. But you have to be in a certain spot." He gestured with his head at the other end of the table, making sure that he stood in the way of allowing her to approach, for if she did, she'd have a commanding view of the apartment furniture that lay beyond.

Mandy remained intrigued. "Can you make it work?" she asked, smiling with expectation.

Eugene stuttered. "Well… ah. Well no. I can't. I mean, I don't think I can." Mandy glared. "I mean… ahm, Lucas put it together, you see. And Geoffrey writes the A.R.O.'s."

"And you don't know how it works?"

"It was designed in a large part by an activation from the Project. It's one of her big successes!"

Dean Dayne's eyes roamed toward the door, still standing open from where she had entered. "I hear there's been a lot of 'activations' of late," she said, lacing the word with concern.

Eugene remained silent, finding himself under her glare again. She then softened her expression, and spoke more like a friend.

"You've brought a great spotlight to bear on our institution, and I must admit, I'm impressed. I've always stood in your corner, you know, supporting you and this enormous Project, even when funding was tight."

"Yes, Dean Dayne. And you're right. I owe my success to you."

She sighed. "But now… we're caught in a storm. No. It's a hurricane. So many things are happening, and they're happening all at once."

Tentatively, Eugene agreed. "I know."

Mandy's glare returned. "Not all the attention we've received has been good. In fact, it's mostly bad. You were robbed. We've been hacked. Monies have been misapproriated."

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"They have?"

Mandy's gaze caught sight of the furniture, with the giant painting of a pastoral glade hanging on the wall. The headless and handless humanoid robot caught her attention next, looking like a Halloween horror. Her gaze then rested on the garish sight of the battle droid behemoth in a housecoat, wig and sweater.

She changed the subject. "Would you mind telling me why this thing's wearing clothes?"

Eugene offered an expression of mirth, using it to buy time to come up with an answer. "Oh! Ha ha! Yeah. And well… that. It's kind of unnerving, you see—for some!—to have a hulking machine made to tear down walls looming over you while you work. You know, sometimes, how the original C.A.R.O.L.I.N. would throw a bit of a fit."

"That thing can throw a fit?"

"Oh! No! No no no! We have it figured out. It behaves perfectly normal. And, well… you know. Now it looks kind of fun."

After a quizzical grimace, Dean Dayne got around to addressing the reason for her visit. "Things are not so fun anymore, I'm afraid. Nor are they perfectly normal. I hear that the prototype operating system overheated in the hands of the NSA, and took down the whole building."

"It took down… a building?"

"Somehow, it caused every electronic device to fry up and blink out. The power outage from the surge covered several blocks."

Eugene pondered his response. "Well, that seems rather odd. Perhaps they don't know what they're doing."

"Hmm," Mandy said, and then paused. She again looked at the furniture. "Or perhaps there's more going on than we realize."

Panic welled in the Professor, as the Dean stared him dead in the eye. "I don't understand," he chose to say.

Dean Dayne gave a tight smile. "No. I don't suppose you do. The Provost and I, however, have caught wind of unauthorized purchases, using your campus credit card."

Turing stuttered anew. "Oh. Um… yes. Someone, it seems—and not me!—stole my account information and tried using it. But I caught them right away, and cancelled the card. Just to be sure, you see."

The Dean looked at the painting. "They were going to buy a window."

"There's no window here!" Turing blurted.

Dean Dayne's glare returned. This time, she directed it elsewhere. "And furniture as well. For the lab," she clarified.

Quelling panic had made Turing sweat. "Yes! Well! The furniture showed up while I was away. I was in Washington D.C., you recall, appearing before the Senate. I don't know how it got here, but I do know we didn't pay for it. My card had already been cancelled."

Silence reigned for too many seconds, as Dean Dayne made an unpleasant face. "So many things," she chose to say, slowly shaking her head. She again changed the subject.

"Whatever happened to your TED Talk? You were supposed to win ten million dollars."

She caught him unaware, as he hadn't given much thought to making up a story about that. "The Intell500 was stolen. There's no way for Carolin to speak."

"And the prototype," the Dean added.

"Yes. The Russians also stole the C.A.R.O.L.I.N. prototype."

"I'm talking about CalTech's prototype. The prototype for the Intell500."

"We lost them both?" Turing asked. "Wouldn't that be on Professor Cortez?"

Dean Dayne again shook her head. "So many things," she repeated. She walked up to the headless robot, standing askew in its corner, its handless arms bolted to a tray.

"Where did we get the money to buy this?" she asked.

Eugene only stuttered and mumbled, having run out of ruses and ploys.

"Are you in cahoots with the Russians?"

"Me? What? Oh God! No! I smashed in that guy's face. He's lucky to be alive! And I could have died, trying to escape."

Mandy's tight-lipped smile returned. This time it was sympathetic. "We've lost control of the Project." She gestured at the behemoth in a sweater. "It will no longer be in our care. We can't keep it. We just can't. There are too many things going on—too many things that are bad—and people have grown suspicious. They want to claim it for themselves."

"Now see here, Mandy. Carolin's ours! We've worked many years to get this far!"

"Yes Professor. And we've succeeded, far beyond our dreams. It's now time for other people to use what we have made. To examine it and recreate it, and see what it can do."

"The want to take it apart! Destroy her and make something else!"

Mandy and Eugene's conversation ended, as activations from the C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Project made too much noise to not be noticed. It had been carefully tracking their movement, but the Project then quickly refocused its sensors on the wide-open door to the lab. One of the campus security guards that had escorted Dean Dayne into the building came into view, and stood just beyond the threshold.

His expression was of concern. "There's a situation, Ma'am," he said to the Dean, sounding apologetic.

Before she could respond, the second security guard entered, along with two government men in black suits, and then NSA Agent Redie. The four men stayed near the door, but Agent Redie walked up, to stand before Eugene.

"You shouldn't be here," she said to his face.

"Yes. Um… well." He stuttered before parrying. "And why, then, are you?"

She smiled. Evil, like a cat.

"I'm here to shut you down."

"Ah. Okay, I guess. But nothing's happening."

Redie's smile didn't fade. "Oh, you don't need to be doing something to be in need of being shut down." Her eyes fell upon the clean room, where the Tian-12 buzzed away. "That thing doesn't need you anymore, to tell it what to do."

Eugene tut-tutted plainly. He spoke to everyone in the room. "You're giving too much credit to what you think this thing is." He gestured at the battle droid shell. "All it does is stand there."

Redie remained unfazed. "Uh-huh. And what do you know about the cyber attack in New Jersey? They say it came from here."

"We were attacked as well, as I'm sure you know. It almost destroyed the Project. And our records indicate that, whatever the attack was—and from where ever it came—it began on your end first."

Redie slightly paused, having been one-upped. She gestured to one of the black-suited spooks standing just inside the door. The agent approached, keeping an obvious hand on a pistol hidden in his coat. A campus security guard followed, to sympathetically lead Turing away.

"Come on, Professor" he said kindly. "Let's leave them, and get out of here."

"Why?" the Professor asked, reluctant to comply to the tug the man put on his arm. "What's going on?"

Agent Redie overreacted. "Pull every plug in this place! I want that thing dead!"

The campus security guards hestitated, as such a task was beyond their calling. They were more used to being asked to do things such as squelching fraternity rushes. The C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Project, however, responded to Agent Redie's command. With the speed of electrons, it orientated itself to the situation it saw unfolding.

There was one thing Carolin knew that was certain. Once Eugene had been escorted away, she'd never see him again.

And she'd not be alive much longer after that.

In secret, beneath her housecoat, along the floor and behind her back, Carolin used her mechanical arms to disconnect her hoses and cables from their shackles and chains. The NSA spook with a hand on his gun was happy to do Agent Redie's bidding. He flipped switches and pulled plugs at random as, quite unprofessionally, he unholstered his pistol and pointed it at the behemoth whose brief life he sought to end.

Amid the confusion, Carolin responded. She shredded her housecoat and sweater, baring twelve arms like a monstrous cockroach. Metal screeched from undue stress as the remaining brackets holding her in place were ripped from their moorings. She screamed in anger and raced toward the man, filled with a horrible rage.

The parabolic array exploded in a shattering of glass, sending sparks and shards flying, as it stood between her and her target. The man tried to dodge, but with a swoop, Carolin flipped the lab table with the painted runner, sending it to block his path.

Her debriders roared with deadly force. She extended her central backhoe, aiming it at his head, clanking its metal fingers with a force strong enough to break bone.

She'd make sure he was sorry for having set foot in her home.

But that was before she was shot.