With Carolin screaming that he should leave, Eugene grabbed what data he could in regards to the attack she suffered, to pore over and analyze in the sanctity of his home. The facts were incontravertable—someone had used the prototype's operating system he had given to the NSA, in an attempt to download a copy of the Project's BIOS.

The reason why someone would do such a thing was of little concern. They did it because they could.

"Or at least they thought they could," Eugene said out loud, as he examined Carolin's counterattck.

Whoever orchestrated the attack believed Carolin would be offline. Eugene had told people she would be, when he gave up the operating system in exchange for the right to go home. He now knew, of course, that such was not the case. Not only had Carolin survived his attempt to deprive her of power, by throwing circuit breakers galore, but she actually had thrived. In his absence, she had gone from being a servo-arm bolted to a table that communicated by pointing at pictures, to an image of a woman in human form, capable of serving dinner and making conversation.

And defeating an invasive hack with ease and efficiency.

The truth of that final statement concerned Eugene the most, and came as a total surprise. Back in the lab, while he fiddled with the information he'd gleaned from the overloaded buffer he sent, Carolin addressed the matter with an attack of her own. The results of her effort were brutal. Not only did she fend off the attempt to shut her down and gain access to her BIOS, but she also destroyed the computer that ran the offending program. What he didn't know, however—as the data he had didn't show it—was that Carolin also directed an attack on the NSA field office, burning out a power transformer to send a surge of electricity, causing irreparable damage.

As late evening became early morning, while poring over the data, Eugene found himself dozing a time or two at his desk. After too few hours of sleep for a man of his age, an early morning phone call brought the matter back to his attention.

"Professor Turing? This is Dean Dayne." Her tone was not polite. "I need to see you right away."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Sleep-deprived and frazzled, and with the Project's evolution leaving him in a daze, Professor Turing could only guess at what Dean Dayne might want. He chose to consider the worst. Had the attack on Carolin been brought to her attention? Was he considered implicit—perhaps criminally so?

Despite the ramifications, after having borne witness to the lady of light, and the glory of her creation, Eugene found himself enjoying a level of inner peace. No sort of punishment or rebuke would lessen the impact of the miracle he had seen.

He breezed into Dean Dayne's office with a smile. "Good morning, Mandy!" he said.

Dean Dayne was not her usual self. She too, seemed a bit frazzled, and not in a good way, like the way Professor Turing was enjoying.

"Have a seat," she said without smiling, nor looking him in the eye.

She directed him to his usual chair, and took her spot as well, directly opposite him. Between them sat four people, two on either side. One of them was Chief Budget Officer Aaron Hilbert, a usual member of the Round Table of Death. Another was Bob Haskins, DARPA's Program Manager for Artificial Intelligence, who Turing had met before. Next to CBO Hilbert, and at Dean Dayne's right hand, was the Provost of Curry College, Fei Lee Posner.

On her left was a man Turing didn't recognize, having never seen him before. But being that he sat next to the man from DARPA, and since the Provost was Dean Dayne's boss, Turing logically assumed that the man was Haskin's boss. He was certainly dressed for the part.

Despite the bleak circumstance Turing found himself in, those seated at the table gave him little pause. What wiped the smile from his face were two men standing in the far corners—one on either side, and behind Dean Dayne's back. Their black suits and unblinking stares afforded Turing with no trouble in determining who they were.

Agents from the NSA.

"Professor Turing," Dean Dayne began, "we find ourselves together, at an unfortunate juncture."

Turing chose to remain jovial. "What's troubling you, Mandy?"

She paused to assess his demeanor, and to determine its sincerity. Deciding his light-heartedness to be true, she sighed, and graced him with a smile.

"Things have not been going well these days at our little college. Both you and Professor Cortez were victims of serious crimes while on your way to New York."

Turing had to agree. He nodded somberly. "I feel terrible about what happened to Deborah. I hope she's all right."

"You concern is admirable, considering you suffered worse."

Stolen novel; please report.

He lightly scoffed. "What? Who me? Oh, thank you, but I'm fine." He smiled at one of the spooks standing in a corner. "With the full force and resource of the American government on the trail of the crooks who robbed us, I think we can agree that they are the ones who should worry."

"How's the guy with the broken face?" he asked of the other agent from the NSA. "Is he out of the hospital yet?"

Dean Dayne smiled at Turing's quip, more naturally this time. She chose to look down at her papers, and lightly shuffled them, to keep from acknowledging the expressions of the men sitting at her sides.

They were far from festive.

"You have a remarkable way of taking adversity in stride," Dean Dayne to said Turing as a compliment.

"Thank you!" he returned. "And might I say, Dean Dayne, to you, and to all who are here with us—" He looked each man in the eye. "We at Curry College take pride in being resilient."

He addressed Dean Dayne directly. "Especially those of us who are in charge of the Science Department."

Mandy's smile became wry. "You know how to work the room. Don't you, Professor Turing?"

He spread his hands invitingly. "I'm just here to help."

She sighed softly again, and refrained from shuffling her papers. "Eugene, what I have to say does not come easily." She looked to the Provost on her right. "But we've come to a decision, and we believe it wise. The C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Project is leaving our school, and being turned over to DARPA."

Profesor Turing could no longer pretend that nothing was wrong. "I… I don't understand," he stammered. "We're at the pinnacle of success, after many long years of effort. Why would we quit now?"

The two men from DARPA on Dean Dayne's right both gave a slight harumph. "Our success comes at the expense of the people who've provided us input. The government has spent a great deal of money on the C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Project."

"Oh! I agree!" Turing said. He smiled warmly at the men from DARPA. "I appreciate their support. It was the right thing to do, accepting their generous offer. But I don't think the success we've had comes solely due to them. I think we would have achieved success regardless. On our own, without their help."

Dean Dayne pursed her lips. It was obvious to Professor Turing that his good friend was in a bind. The words coming from her lips were not of her design.

"Professor Cortez is distraught. She lost important research when the CalTech Intell500 was stolen. Propietary software as well, and devices of her own making."

"I lost everything," Turing said, trying to not be dismissive. "And I got kidnapped."

"Yes. And because of that…"

Turing continued with his defense. "And I'm not giving up. We're making excellent progress."

Both Dean Dayne and the provost stared the professor down. The two spooks in the corners, despite not even so much as flinching, somehow became more menacing.

"And how would you know that?" Dean Dayne asked. "You've been banned from the lab."

"Well, I wouldn't rightly say banned. We came to an agreement while the kidnapping was being investigated." He locked eyes with one of the men from the NSA, matching his unblinking stare. "Agent Redie, bless her heart, was concerned about my safety. She was afraid the kidnappers might track me down and try again."

"And aren't you afraid, Professor Turing?"

He looked upon his friend with surprise. "What? Me? I kicked those bad guys' butts. They better be the ones who are afraid of me!"

The dean concentrated on her papers, to keep from grinning at the professor's bravado. "Well, like I said," she said, "these things don't come easy. Security is a concern, both for your safety and for others. If an entity of a foreign government can orchestrate a simultaneous attack on two of our tenured professors, while they're off campus on official business, I fear for every one of us. Our families, our students and our staff."

Turing addressed the room as a whole. "And you think that by giving up—by quitting and caving in—that this sort of behavior reflects on us in a positive way? As a center of cutting edge research? Of being brave scientists, and taking risks? Who will sponsor our next innovation, if we give in and give up easily?"

The provost chose to take over. "Professor Turing, we're not giving up. We're moving this project along, on to its next phase. It no longer belongs just to you. It's not even you and Professor Cortez. CalTech is also involved, and they are far from pleased that, as soon as they gave their research to us, we lost it and compromised the results."

He spoke more pointedly, about something Turing knew. "It seems, in fact, that not only did we lose the Intell500 they gave us, but also the prototype they sent along with it, preventing both them and us from doing further research and testing."

Eugene knew what was being inferred. While he was away in Washington D.C., both the original CalTech Intell500 and its prototype were sent to his lab, for retrofitting with Carolin. Without anyone's permission, Carolin kept the original, and sent the prototype to New York City, to perform at her cancelled TED Talk.

How Carolin managed to make the switch, and hide the fact that she had installed the original device on herself, was a mystery of biblical proportion. But nothing she did, or what others did to her, surprised Eugene anymore.

He took an aggressive stand. "This is my project we're talking about, Provost Posner. My Carolin. I've devoted my career to her, and we're just now seeing the results that I've always envisioned we would. It works. She no longer locks up, nor does it break down, or freeze and fail to perform. It will not disappoint."

He became animated, as he sensed he wasn't gaining support. "I don't see why I have to say 'Oh! Now I'm done with this! Go ahead and take her away.' It's my project. She's mine. I'll decide when I'm done."

The man who seemed to be Haskins boss took his turn at addressing the table. "A significant portion of your success came at the behest of DARPA. We provided the android shell, and its supporting software and hardware. Our team of engineers have spent many hours in your lab, refining your technique, and bringing the Project to a point where this success can be claimed.

"It's our project too, Professor Turing. We want our contribution to be taken to a secure facility, where things like theft and mismanagement won't occur again."

"Excuse me," Turing said politely to the man. "We haven't been introduced."

The man seemed unwiling to give up his name, so Dean Dayne did it for him.

"He is Mr. Roberts."

Turing made a display of showing contempt for Haskin's superior to Provost Posner. "I hope we can come to an agreement, where we believe the government is also capable of experiencing theft and mismanagement."

Dean Dayne stepped in with authority, to bring the meeting back to a civil tone. "Eugene," she began. "The government wants their property to be returned. You know they have the right to make such a request. Now they'll take what you've been given, and whatever improvements you've made, and reverse engineer the rest, until they achieve the same success as you already have."

"It won't be Carolin," he grumbled.

"No. But it will be enough. They'll get the Project to do what they want, with or without your help. With your help, you get some say-so. And credit for what you've accomplished.

"Without your help, you get nothing. And that's the way it will be."