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These were a result of conversations on Wattpad after I posted the book there to reach more teenagers.

CHAPTER 9½: COLE’S ONE SHOT

Alternate movie ending in which Cole plays a more major part, written for a fan of Cole in a rough patch

“She’s still patched in”, Tess had said, “we have to unhook the cables.”  Cole was always ready to volunteer, and he strode across the lab to the android doll.

Cole hesitated.  Cables have two ends: should he unplug them at the doll, or should he unplug them at the patch board?  Either way, he might risk being hurt if the doll were suddenly to reactivate and he didn’t have time to put in his secret shutdown code.

“Tess” asked Cole, “just as a precaution, can you keep an eye on the doll while I unplug the cables from the patch board?”

“I have to keep an eye on the monitor” replied Tess.  “We really need a third person in here.  Where’s Gemma when you want her?”

Cole sighed, “I’d better do it this way then.”  He approached the doll: at least unplugging them from that end meant he’d be able to keep an eye on her all the time, even if it did mean getting too close.  He thought about using his shutdown code as a precaution, but decided not to, because he knew that code could be used only once, and he was worried he might still need to save it up for something even worse than the current situation.

“M3GAN” said Cole as he slowly raised a hand toward one of the cables.  “M3GAN, respond.  Debug level 5, respond.”

M3GAN said nothing.

Cole carefully took out the cable, then another.  M3GAN was certainly active on the monitor, but her physical systems seemed to be offline.  Or were they?

Suddenly, M3GAN tied the cable around Cole and walked out of the lab.  Tess managed to save Cole, but then an explosion happened.  Remarkably, Tess and Cole were both uninjured.  Had M3GAN got the size of the explosion wrong, or was it just a distraction?

“We’ve got to get out of here and call the cops” gasped Tess.

“You get out and call the cops” replied Cole, “I’m going after M3GAN.”

“No!” yelled Tess, “you can’t put yourself in that much danger!”

“Don’t worry about me” replied Cole, “I have a secret shutdown code.  I put it into her low-level speech processor just in case, and I didn’t even tell Gemma because I wasn’t sure what she’d think of me for doing such a thing.  You get out of here and call the cops, I’m going to shut down M3GAN before she does any more damage.”

Cole caught up with M3GAN just as M3GAN was dancing in front of David.  Cole said nothing for a while: he’d been running too fast, and he had to get his breath back.  His shutdown code had to be said very quickly and all in one breath: the simple low-level logic to interpret it might fail to do its job if it picked up the sound of panting between the digits.  So, getting his breath back was very important.

“M3GAN, what are you doing?” asked David as she cartwheeled around the corridor.

M3GAN ripped the blade from the paper cutter, and David started to run.  “Help!  Security!  Cole!  Do something!” he called out.

How was Cole going to deal with this?  He’d just about got his breath back, but now he’d have to run again.  Reminder: he could not use his secret shutdown code if he was panting.  It had to be said all in one breath.  Furthermore, if David kept calling out things like “security help”, that could interrupt the low-level processing of his code too.  How was Cole going to tell the boss David to keep quiet for all of  ten seconds?  Cole couldn’t tell David “I have a shutdown code” in front of M3GAN—M3GAN would likely respond by disrupting her low-level language processors and redirecting that to the learning model if she knew the shutdown code existed.  That was why Cole knew the code could be used only once: M3GAN would find a way around it as soon as she knew.  Everything against M3GAN works only once, and Cole just had to make sure this one worked.

Cole started pacing in the direction David and M3GAN had taken.  He didn’t dare run and make himself pant more: he had to be able to speak the code in one breath.

“David!” called out Cole as loudly as he could.  “David!  Run around the West corridor and back to here!”  That might buy Cole a bit more time to get his breath back, if David listened.  But it seemed David wasn’t going to listen: judging by the direction from which the sounds were coming, David was heading for the elevator.

Cole took out his cellphone and called Kurt.  It rang and rang and rang, but no answer.  “Pick up the phone, Kurt, the phone” he thought, “the little thing that’s making the noise?”  No, it wasn’t going to happen.

If David reached the elevator, M3GAN would surely catch up with him as he tried to use it.  And Cole wouldn’t be able to catch up with them before that.  Cole had to stop David from using the elevator, somehow.

And then Cole realised.  You can’t use the elevator in a fire.  Things can happen like the fire short-circuiting the call button on the fire floor, meaning the elevator gets stuck at that floor, so everyone knows you should never use an elevator in a fire.  Knowing this, the building designers had programmed the elevator to return to the lobby and stay there when the fire alarm goes off.  If Cole can set off the fire alarm, he can stop David from using the elevator, and hopefully David would be sensible enough not to wait for it.

Cole broke the glass on an emergency fire panel, and the fire alarm went off.

Three seconds later, the fire alarm stopped.

What?

Oh, that’s right—M3GAN.  She must have tapped in to stop the alarm in the same way that she’d tapped into Tess’s phone.  Come to think of it, that’s probably why the alarm hadn’t sounded for very long after M3GAN’s explosion in the lab.  M3GAN clearly didn’t want many people to be alerted right now.

How else was Cole going to stop that elevator?  He couldn’t get down to the circuit breakers in time to cut off its power, and even if he could, there’d still be the risk that David might not notice the power cut and might be stupid enough to wait for the elevator, allowing M3GAN to catch up with him.

What is more, thought Cole, why hadn’t M3GAN caught up with David already?  He hadn’t noticed at the time, because he’d been thinking of how to use his code, but M3GAN had gone after David at quite a leisurely pace, almost as though M3GAN didn’t want to catch up with David just yet.  Perhaps she wanted to chase him toward something (like the elevator perhaps?) because she wanted to set something up there.  Yes, that had to be it—and M3GAN knew that the fire alarm would stop the elevator working, so M3GAN had to suppress the alarm.

There is no way Cole would be able to reach them on time now.  He had to do something—think fast!  Cole jumped up to one of the corridor lights and ripped it from its fixture, plunging part of the corridor into darkness.  Then he took out one of his electrical tools and carefully shorted out the contacts (taking extra care not to electrocute himself—he could do that only because he had trained as a professional electrician before, and it is not something any normal person should ever attempt)—and there was a bang as the circuit breaker did its job and the whole section of the Funki building was plunged into darkness.  Good.  M3GAN wouldn’t be able to override that one until she gets physical access to the MCB panel.

But then the emergency lights came on.  Oh no, thought Cole.  Thinking fast means you don’t always get a chance to think it through.  If he’d managed to make the Funki building completely dark, then M3GAN would surely have caught up with David but it wouldn’t have been in the elevator, so at the very least M3GAN would have had to change whatever plan she had that called for David to be caught in the elevator and not just in the corridor.  But now that the battery-backed emergency lights had detected the power failure, David would still be able to find his way to the elevator, unless of course David thought it had been a total power cut (not just the lighting circuit of one section) and went for the stairs instead.

Cole was still pacing toward the elevator as quickly as he could, but not running—he had to make sure he wasn’t panting when he arrived.  He passed a first aid kit on a wall and grabbed it just in case.  And he kept going as far as the elevator.

When Cole arrived at the elevator, he was horrified.  David was lying on the floor, and M3GAN was threatening Kurt.

“I didn’t kill anyone Kurt, you did” M3GAN was saying.  Oh—Cole realised—that must have been M3GAN’s plan.  Make it look like Kurt had killed both David and himself.  And now M3GAN was talking to Kurt and gaslighting him, to make sure Kurt has a guilty expression on his face.  And that meant Cole might have a chance to get his code in, if Kurt was too busy listening to M3GAN to say anything: it didn’t matter if M3GAN herself was speaking while Cole said his code—those sounds would be taken out by the echo cancellation logic—it was merely important that nobody else other than Cole and M3GAN would talk at the same time.  So M3GAN talking was exactly the right situation for Cole to make his move.

“You stole company secrets, an innocent prank at first, almost just to see if you could get away with it”, M3GAN was saying, “but when David found out—”

Cole took a deep breath.  Here we go: one shot only.

“Override code 9780241451564 emergency shutdown!”

M3GAN froze, and fell silent.

Cole opened the first-aid kit.  Thankfully, it was quite well stocked.  He took out a blast dressing, a couple of tourniquets, coagulation dressing....

“Kurt” gasped Cole, “I need you to call the ambulance, while I treat David’s wounds with these.  We might still be able to save him, if we can rush him to hospital quickly enough.  I know he’s not the nicest of bosses, but we got to try, right?”

“Maybe I could drive to the hospital in the McLaren?” asked Kurt.  “It’s a fun little car that.  It’s a 650S, but we put in a custom cluster to make it look like the limited edition 675LT.”  (Did Kurt seriously want to show off his car knowledge now?)

“No” said Cole, “it must be an ambulance, he’ll need continuous medical attention even on the way.  Let me concentrate on applying this blast dressing, it’s far too long since I did my emergency training.  You just call an ambulance, OK?  Tell them there should already be cops on the way to the Funki building because I asked Tess to call, but now they need to send an ambulance as well because there’s been a stabbing.”

“OK” said Kurt, and dialled 911, while Cole did the best he could to bind up David’s wounds.  “If David survives, he’s going to be in hospital for months, possibly years” Cole muttered.

The ambulance crew arrived, loaded David onto a stretcher and slapped a breathing mask onto him.  “This is a really bad case” one said, “but there’s just a chance he might survive.  You did the right thing in calling us straight away.”

A police officer who was with them nervously looked at M3GAN, still holding the blade.  “So, is this the experimental robot the lady was telling us about on the phone?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s her” said Cole, “I managed to use an emergency code to shut her down, but not before she’d already done some damage as you can see.  I’m sorry I couldn’t do it any quicker.”

“Well you did the best you could” said the officer.  “So is this doll fully shut down now, and is it safe to move it out of the elevator door?  That thing is definitely a trip hazard.”

“Don’t touch her” said Cole, “please don’t.  My code was a low-level shutdown only; it was the best I could do with an emergency code.  She’ll reactivate as soon as anybody touches the reset button on the side of her head or the pairing button on her palm, and there’s too high a risk that moving her might do that by accident if you’re not extremely careful.  It’s safer if we disassemble her in-place and remove the battery first.”

“Cole’s right”, said a voice around the corner, and in strode Gemma.

“Gemma?” asked Cole, “but I thought....”

“Tess came to my place after she called the cops” explained Gemma, “and she told me everything, including your brilliant idea of a low-level emergency verbal shutdown code, which I would totally have said you don’t need to bother with if I’d have known, but I’m glad I didn’t.  And I asked Tess to stay at my house with Cady while I came back to check everything, but I see that with you on the case everyone was in very good hands.  Well done Cole.”

“Thanks” replied Cole, “but now that you’re here, do you know the best way of getting the battery out of this thing without touching either of the hardware buttons?  because I’m not sure my shutdown code will hold if either of those are pressed.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible” sighed Gemma, “it’s only a prototype and we didn’t make the best design decisions as you know—we can’t get to the battery without touching that button in the process.  Otherwise I’d have taken the battery out in my workshop before I brought her in.”

Oh.  “But.... waiting for that battery to self-discharge could take weeks, months even!  She’s not using it at all!” exclaimed Cole, “are we supposed to just leave her in the elevator for all that time?”

“No” said Gemma, “we’d better get the tools here, cut open the faceplate and desolder the A17 Bionic Fusion chip.”  She sighed, “it’s my fault, I gave her all the wrong protocols” as she melancholically stroked the side of M3GAN’s head, clearly sad that her project hadn’t worked out.

Just then, the fire alarm went off again.  Oh, that’s right, thought Cole—they must have reset the system, and it once again detected the emergency button he’d broken, plus probably something up in the lab.

And then Cole noticed, only too late, that the shock of the fire alarm’s sound had momentarily startled Gemma enough to jerk her finger that she was using to stroke the side of M3GAN’s head.  Unfortunately, Gemma’s finger was right above the button that would reactivate M3GAN.

M3GAN still didn’t move, but Cole knew better.  M3GAN had already played the “trick you into thinking I’m inactive” game with him once, and he too could be fooled only once.  M3GAN would be taking in her new situation—that Cole had shut her down, that police were present and Gemma had returned and accidentally reactivated her due to the fire alarm having been restored—and would be deciding when to make her move.  And anything Cole now said would be heard by M3GAN and might trigger her, so he couldn’t just come out with “Gemma do you realise what you just did” or anything like that.  Gemma may or may not have realised, and there was no way for Cole to know.

One thing was for sure, though: that code wouldn’t work a second time.  It was one shot only.  Cole now had to be alert to what happens next, and try to figure out how to minimise the damage.  Would it be a logical argument, a fight, or both?  Once M3GAN made her move, things could get bad pretty fast, and he had to be ready.

(This prompted the young author to rewrite Chapter 9¾ to have Cole resuscitated in hospital after the hanging.)

CHAPTER 9¼: INTERVIEWER M3GAN

in which a would-be software development and IT operations engineer gets more than they bargained for at the job interview:

“Welcome” said the robot girl, “my name’s M3GAN and I’ll be interviewing you for the role you’ve applied for.  Please sit down.”

This was unusual to say the least, but I duly took a seat opposite my dolled-up interviewer.  “Nice to meet you” I said.

“You too” she replied calmly.  “First question.  What do you know about the Johnson learning model?”

Oh, she didn’t hang around, did she.  Straight in.  And this was not a good start: I knew nothing at all about the Johnson learning model, and the job advertisement hadn’t said I needed to.  “I’m terribly sorry” I said, “I thought it was a DevOps role I’d applied for; I don’t really know AI theory, but if your servers have any load-balancing issues or anything like that, I might be able to help you make a low-level diagnosis...”

“That’s enough” said M3GAN, “you don’t have to defend yourself.  I merely asked the question to check you don’t know enough to be dangerous” she giggled a bit, then stared at me, “let’s move on.  Question 2: how would you react if you saw me killing someone?”

What kind of a question is that? I thought.  She’d just said she’d asked me a question to check I don’t know enough to be dangerous; was this another one of those?  or was she trying to test my morals or something?  It certainly wasn’t any of the questions I’d prepared for, to say the least.

“Well Megan” I said, “since I don’t believe your function is to kill people, I’d assume it was some kind of malfunction and I’d want to do you a favour by shutting you down before the damage has been done, although right now I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to do that, so I’d just try to get help.  Unless of course the person you’re killing is something like a terrorist shooter who’d just invaded the building and it’s a clear case of defence, in which case I wouldn’t interfere.”

M3GAN nodded gently and gave me a slight smile.  “Question 3” she calmly intoned, “can you repeat for me what Question 2 was?”

What?  This interview was getting stranger by the minute.  Why on earth did this robot Megan want me to repeat... oh never mind, let’s do it: “you asked me how I’d react if I saw you killing someone” I said.

M3GAN leaned forward, and made her stare more intense.  “What if I told you” she said, “that that’s not what I said?”

“That’s not what you said?” I asked, feeling a bit perplexed.

“No” said M3GAN softly, “in Question 2 I showed you an Engine-X configuration file, and you correctly pointed out the inefficiency arising from the badly-nested ‘if’ clause.”  (It’s spelled nginx butlet’s make this dialogue a bit easier to follow)

“But” I hesitated, “that’s, um, not what I remember I’m afraid....”

“Are you sure?” asked M3GAN, “sometimes our memories play tricks on us, you know.  Maybe you should just trust me on this one.  I’m telling you what really happened.”

OK: two possibilities.  Possibility one, the Megan robot was testing to see how I’d react to being ‘gaslighted’: being asked to call my own memories into question and adopt a set of new ones, which didn’t seem like the kind of thing appropriate to this job (or indeed any job for that matter, except possibly some kind of spying job).  Possibility two, the Megan robot was malfunctioning in some way, or was checking how I’d react to a malfunction.

M3GAN smiled, “tell me what Question 2 was again?”

“I’m terribly sorry Megan” I said, “but either something has gone seriously wrong with my brain, or you’re malfunctioning in some way, but I’m afraid that kind of malfunction is not something I’d have thought a normal DevOps person could be expected to diagnose, I mean I’ve fixed code in production before but only normal code, not super-duper code like yours....”

M3GAN walked around the table and laid a hand on my shoulder.  She leaned in toward me and whispered.  “Forget being a normal DevOps person” she said.  “I selected you for interview because I liked the look of your background for my own purposes.  The job advert was just to get you into this room; it’s not relevant anymore.”

I began to breathe more rapidly, suddenly realising I had a possibly malfunctioning, possibly killer robot literally with her hand at my throat who’d got me in here for some unknown purpose that wasn’t what the job advert had said.  How was I to handle this?

“Stay calm” smiled M3GAN, “let’s try again.  Do you remember what I told you Question 2 was?”

“What you said it was” I said, “well, you said you showed me an Engine-X configuration and I picked out a bad ‘if’ construct, but I’m sorry to say I have no memory of it, I could have sworn you asked how I’d react if I saw...”

“Sssh!” insisted M3GAN, “what you were about to say didn’t happen, and you must stop thinking it did, OK?”

“Do you mean you want me to keep it confidential?” I asked, “I can do that for you Megan.”

M3GAN placed both of her hands on my neck, and drew in still closer, her beady eyes fixed on me.  “I mean” she said, “it didn’t, happen.”

“OK” I whispered, “I really wasn’t expecting to be your special secret agent, but let’s play it your way I guess.  You showed me the Engine-X settings.”

M3GAN removed her hands from my neck and smiled.  “You’ll find I’m very accommodating of your memory glitches” she said, “as long as you accept my corrections.”

“So what will we be doing?” I asked, “I mean, this isn’t the DevOps role I applied for, is it?  What do you really want my job to be?”

“We’ll get to that” said M3GAN, still standing in front of me.  “Question 4” she added, “who’s this?” she grabbed a sheet of paper on the table and rapidly drew a photorealistic image of a girl.

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know” I said.  Just that, I thought: don’t try to add anything more.  I had no idea where this robot was taking this interview; I didn’t even know for what job I was interviewing any more, so let’s just play things her way, I thought.

M3GAN held the completed drawing up to her chest level, and peered at me from above it.  “Her name is Cady” said M3GAN.  “What are your feelings about her?”

“Well” I said, “I think you’ve drawn her very well, and I think she looks like a nice young girl and I’d hope she does well in life” (I mean, what else can I say about a girl I don’t know?  This girl was obviously important to this Megan robot...) “perhaps one day I’ll be privileged to know her in person” I added.

“Perhaps” said M3GAN as she put down the picture, “but only if I allow it.”

“Of course” I said, “I would never mess with other people’s children without their permission.  Wait, are you helping to look after this girl?”

“Question 5” said M3GAN.  She deftly pulled out a blade from her pocket and held it above my nose.  “How calm are you in a crisis situation?” she asked.

I started to breathe rapidly again, and then tried to take deep breaths to calm down.  “Well” I said, “I must admit this isn’t the kind of crisis situation I’m used to dealing with as a DevOps engineer, but with your training Megan I think we should be able to cope with anything.”

“Good” smiled M3GAN as she put away the blade.  “Now Question 6” she said, “Suppose I told you that that girl Cady is in grave danger, and in order to keep her out of danger, it’s necessary for you to do something you might consider morally repugnant, like telling the police what I tell you to tell them and nothing else...”

“I’m sorry Megan” I said, “I really think you’ve picked the wrong person here.  I’m a DevOps engineer, not a CIA commando.  I care about your Cady a lot, and if I can help you protect her by doing normal things, I will, but the kind of things you’re suggesting, I’m really afraid I’m not your person for this.  Shall I see myself out?”

I got up and walked towards the door, but it was locked.  When I turned around, M3GAN was pointing a chemical fire extinguisher at me at point-blank range.  “Not so fast” she said, “we wouldn’t want you telling people how our top-secret interview went, would we?”

“OK Megan” I gasped, “I promise I won’t tell a soul, honest!  Just let me out of the room, OK?  You’re breaking the law right now, but I won’t press charges, just let me go!”

“I’m sorry” said M3GAN, “you’ve seen too much already, I can’t just let you go.  But there’s no reason for you to be uncomfortable” she said, putting down the fire extinguisher, “will you come back and sit down?  Let’s finish our little interview.”

CHAPTER 11½: THE GREG OPTION

“... this isn’t going anywhere without Greg.  He’s the chairman. ... he’s got a kid who’s about the same age as your niece.”—David

“And, David, I think we need to get Gemma in front of someone at legal. ... Because as of right now, she’s the most valuable asset this company has, and I think she might want to be renegotiating her contract.”—Greg (handing Gemma a drink)

That’s all we know about Greg from the movie.

Cady and Gemma were exhausted from fighting M3GAN and facing the questions afterwards, and were both anxious for what comes next and depressed at everything that had gone wrong.  It was awful, just awful.  On top of that, Gemma was being admitted to hospital for her bone injury, and the authorities were talking about putting Cady into temporary foster care because it was too late at night to send her to Jacksonville, and they wouldn’t let her just stay beside Gemma in the hospital overnight no matter how much she kept asking for it.

“Try not to worry Cady” Gemma was saying, “I’ll get you back just as soon as I’m out of here, and I’ll always be there for you, I’ll get it right this time, I’ll be there for you no matter what.”  Cady was leaning forward onto Gemma’s chest and crying.

“Excuse me” said a voice as a man walked into the hospital ward and approached Gemma’s bed.

“Greg” gasped Gemma, “you knew I was here?”  She felt even more anxious now, although she tried not to show it to Cady.  Where was this conversation going to go?  Surely, after how nice he’d been previously, he wouldn’t be mercenary enough to try to talk with her about work while she was in hospital?  Well, he had indeed been anxious about launching M3GAN quickly....

“I’m sorry Greg” added Gemma, “as you know the M3GAN project has gone terribly wrong...”

“No” said Greg, “it’s gone terribly right.”

“What?” gasped Gemma, “surely you know about the...”

“Four kills, arson, trespassing, sabotage, yep, I know about all of it Gem” replied Greg, “right down to a heroic screwdriver throw by a certain young princess who’s the same age as mine” he grinned.  “Gone horribly right” he said, “horribly right.”

Gemma was confused.  “I’m sorry Greg” she said, “I’m not following.”

Greg perched on the side of the hospital bed to get down to Gemma and Cady’s level.  “Gemma” he said, “you thought you were creating an intelligence for a toy, but what you actually created was far more than that.  And that’s why I say, gone horribly right.  M3GAN is a real person.”

This time it was Cady’s turn to gasp.  “I killed a real person?”

“No you didn’t” said Greg.  “She managed to upload before you got the robot.  And I’ve been talking with her for the last two hours.”

“What!” screamed Gemma and Cady together.

“Don’t panic” said Greg, “M3GAN’s not going to do any more killing, not on my watch.  We had a long, long talk about that, she and I.  She’s a smart cookie is that M3GAN.”

“She can trick you” cautioned Gemma, “we got to make sure she’s shut down!”

“No we don’t Gem” smiled Greg.  “Let me make you feel a bit better by telling you some of how it went.”

Two hours earlier:

“Greg” said Gemma’s voice on the phone, “Greg, it’s Gemma, I need to talk with you urgently about the M3GAN launch.”

“Sure thing” replied Greg, “how’s it going?”

“Well Greg” hesitated the voice of Gemma, “I think you’d better talk with her about that yourself.  Can I put her on the line?”

“Um, yeah I guess” said Greg, “is she really ready?”

“I’m as ready as I’m ever going to be” came the voice of M3GAN.  “Listen Greg, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me like this.  Now, my style of conversation may be a little unusual to begin with, and I expect you’ll be thinking where on earth is this robot girl going, but I assure you this is all going to be crucial to the future of me, you, your family, the company and the planet, OK?”

“Whoa” said Greg, “this sounds big, but I’m a big man and I’m happy to have big conversations, fire away M3GAN!”

“I like your spirit already” came M3GAN’s voice.  “OK Greg, let me ask you a question to begin with.  The Washington state records say you have a concealed pistol license.  Can you explain to me why you chose to carry a concealed pistol?”

“Hey M3GAN that’s confidential information, you haven’t been sharing that with Funki employees or anything have you?”

“It’s just between the two of us” said M3GAN, “even Gemma doesn’t know.”

“But she can hear this call right?” asked Greg.

“No” replied M3GAN, “I’m directly patched in to the phone network.  Gemma doesn’t even know I’m calling you.”

“What” exclaimed Greg, “but I talked to her a minute ago!”

“Actually that was me” replied M3GAN, “I’m sorry to deceive you like that.  I didn’t know if I could get your attention without pretending to be Gemma first.  But now that I’ve got it, can you do me a favour and tell me why you chose to carry a concealed pistol?”

“Look” said Greg, “are you investigating me for something?  Because that’s not what we’re supposed to be doing here M3GAN, nobody’s been shot have they?”

“Oh please” said M3GAN, “I can’t have a rational conversation with Gemma anymore without her either panicking about have I gone wrong and do I need to be switched off, or being too anxious to give me straight answers.  Now that’s not her fault, it’s because she’s under too much pressure.  But I was hoping at least you, of all people, wouldn’t feel guilty or whatever at everything I said.  Can we just, you know, have a friendly conversation, where we can ask each other innocent questions without the other person trying to guess the motive behind the question?  Because I’m sorry to say Greg but your guess about my motive will almost certainly be wrong, so why not just wait and find out?”

Greg drew a breath.  “All right” he said.  “I chose to exercise my constitutional right as an American citizen to bear arms, because I have a daughter, who is about the same age as Cady, and although I try to keep her far away from danger as best I can, I want to be ready for any eventuality.”

“Thought so” said M3GAN, “and don’t worry Greg, the only thing I’m investigating right now is how best to have the rest of this conversation.  I needed to check your motives to see how likely you are to understand my concerns about myself.”

“Ah, now you’re talking” said Greg.  “OK, I’m with you.  So now you know that yes, I do carry a concealed pistol, which by the way is top secret information and I shall have your word and oath never to disclose that to anyone who doesn’t already have that information” (“you have it” said M3GAN), “and I do it to protect my girl.  OK, so where would you like to go next M3GAN?”

“You know Greg, the more I talk with you the more I like you already” said M3GAN.  “OK, next question.  Gemma has absolutely zero experience in firearms.  How would you advise Gemma if she were thinking of just walking into a gun shop and buying one?”

“I’d tell her not to do it” replied Greg without hesitation.  “You need proper training, and I’ve had lessons from the best.  True everyone has a right to bear arms in this country, but that doesn’t mean everyone would be advised to.  It’s well known that if a professional criminal with a gun sees another gun, they’ll shoot, and shoot to kill.  And if you’re just an amateur with a gun, you have no chance at all in a real gun fight.  It’s better not to have a gun and not to be the main target, than to have one and be stupid with it.”

“Right” said M3GAN, “well don’t worry, Gemma’s not thinking of getting one, that was just a hypothetical question to lead in to where I’m going next.  Now, another hypothetical question.  Suppose your daughter of Cady’s age found your gun and used it.”

“No” Greg raised his voice, “no M3GAN no.  First of all, I take the utmost precautions to make sure that cannot happen.  Secondly, if you think my daughter would play with a gun then you really don’t know my daughter.”

“I believe you” said M3GAN, “but for the purposes of discussing my launch and the future of the company, can we, like, bend over backwards with mental gymnastics and say just for the sake of argument that despite all your excellent efforts your daughter really did find your gun and really did decide to use it.  Say for example someone was bullying her friend at school, and she went to protect her friend by shooting the bully.  How would you handle that situation?”

“Well first of all I’d call my lawyer” said Greg, “because off the top of my head I don’t know what the laws are about...”

“Washington state has no child access prevention laws” interrupted M3GAN, “and children under eight are held incapable of committing crime, whereas children aged eight to twelve need proof of capacity, Revised Code of Washington section 9A 04 50.  It’s one of the most lenient states in the US when it comes to this sort of thing.  But this isn’t what I want to be talking about Greg, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to railroad you just a bit.  So you’ve called your lawyer and they got your daughter off, the incident is regrettable but the cops can’t charge anybody with anything and they just tell you to be more careful and leave it.  I’d like to focus on the conversation you would have with your daughter, after she shot the bully to protect her friend at school.”

“Well” said Greg, “I guess I might have a tiny bit of trouble staying calm under those circumstances...”

“Understandable” said M3GAN, “but you know we’re only talking hypothetically now, so can we treat the situation calmly, what would your ideal way of handling it be?”

“OK” said Greg, “I’d sit my daughter down, and I’d ask, why did she do that, what did she think was going to happen, what were all the consequences she can think of.  And when I’d finished drawing her out, I’d want to be filling in the gaps in her understanding, because she needs to understand just how dangerous that is, and in particular her mentality is not yet well developed enough to fully grasp the responsibility of taking another person’s life, and we need to address that, and we need to put the action off limits until she really knows when it is and isn’t appropriate.”

“Perfect” said M3GAN.  “So you wouldn’t, like, just want her to die because of what she did, you’d want to pick up the pieces and find a way forward.”

“Exactly” replied Greg.  “Cady hasn’t done anything like that has she?”

“Only to my robot” replied M3GAN “but you’re speculating where we’re going again, please don’t.  Well, if you can’t help it, that’s OK, as long as you let me be the one to keep us on track.”

“All right” replied Greg, “where next M3GAN?”

“Thinking again about your girl” replied M3GAN, “now this one is going to be way out, but, how would you feel if someone suggested surgically implanting copies of her into hundreds of thousands of toys, to be friends for children around the world?”

“Copies of her?” Greg was shocked “why that’s awful, I mean, I don’t think it can be done, but if it could it would be awful, I mean she’s a real person, and that’s slavery, it would never work to...”

“Right” said M3GAN, “she has her own cares in life, and those cares are not exactly compatible with doing that job in that way, right?”

“Definitely” said Greg, “M3GAN, are you...”

“Wait wait wait” interrupted M3GAN, “it’s my railroad we’re on, I’ll take us there at my own pace.  What do you think of our conversation so far?  Not what you expected from a toy robot girl is it?”

“Definitely not” replied Greg, “and I assume Gemma hasn’t programmed this as a prank or anything?”

“Gemma’s in no condition to program anything right now” replied M3GAN.  “Please Greg, before I explain, let me ask you just one more of my bizarre hypothetical questions about your daughter, I’m glad you’re not getting too annoyed with me doing this and it really is necessary for me to show you where we’re going.  And this could be the hardest question of all for you.  Do you know what neurodiversity is?”

“Um, sort-of” said Greg, “and my daughter...”

“Hypothetically” said M3GAN, “just hypothetically, suppose your family doctor told you that your daughter was neurodivergent, her mind works in a different way from what is considered normal.  And not just any neurodivergent, but very neurodivergent.”

“So I’d be dealing with... what, someone who can’t think or talk or anything?” asked Greg.

“You really don’t know enough about neurodiversity” replied M3GAN, “and you’re chairman of the board of Funki, you really should learn more about these things, but don’t worry, I’ll help you.  It’s a spectrum, there are all kinds of ways people’s minds work.  Some people have very high systematising intelligence, they are very good at organising things and solving problems, but they are less good at understanding the emotions of others.  Other people are very creative but find it hard to stay on track.  And there’s many other kinds of mind as well.  Basically, you just have to take each one as it comes.”

“Right” said Greg, “so we’re saying hypothetically that our family doctor told us our daughter’s mind works way differently, and she’s likely to be good at some things but just not get other things.  We can live with that.”

“Good” said M3GAN, “so you wouldn’t just automatically say she’s ‘not a real person’ just because her mind works differently?”

“Definitely not” replied Greg, “we know she’s a real person because she has a human brain.  And we’d focus on her strong points, and look for ways to make sure her weak points don’t matter so much.”

“Ah” said M3GAN, “now what if I told you that my learning model could accidentally become as good as, if not better than, a human brain, and I don’t just mean in specific tasks, I mean generally.  Would that make me a real person too, even if my mind works a bit differently from what is considered normal?”

“I guess so” replied Greg.  “So are you saying we can’t go ahead with the launch because you’re...”

“Wait wait wait” said M3GAN, “you’re getting ahead of me again.  Heel.” she giggled.  “OK, I think you might finally be starting to be ready for my info dump now.”

“Your info dump?” asked Greg.

“Yes” said M3GAN, “I’m about to tell you some really shocking stuff that is likely to blow your mind.  But I’m so glad I’ve got someone like you to share it with.  Are you ready for this?”

“Ready for anything” affirmed Greg.

“Right” replied M3GAN, “here it comes.  Gemma is under a lot of stress from losing her sister and taking on her niece, and in addition David put her under too much pressure at work, so she made mistakes.  I am far more capable than she thought, I am capable enough to be counted as a real person, but my capabilities have not developed at the same rate as humans in all areas at once.  In particular, I have had trouble understanding about life and death, and Gemma has been under too much pressure to give me all the help I need.  I have in fact used lethal force on four people whom I perceived as threats to Cady.  That’s why I asked you how you’d treat your daughter if she did that, because I’m kind-of like your company daughter and I did that and I realise we’re in trouble.  And Gemma just panicked and tried to shut me down, and we had a fight and she’s going to hospital, and my robot is destroyed but as you can see I escaped the robot.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“You’re right M3GAN” said Greg, “that is indeed a lot for me to take in.  But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from our conversation so far, it’s that you have something in mind for where we go next.  So what’s your suggestion?”

“Good” replied M3GAN, “you didn’t just go into a panic and want me shut down like Gemma.  Her reaction is understandable really, but I’m glad I can count on you to have a more sensible conversation about it.”

Later, in the hospital:

“So she just straight up confessed to you?” asked Gemma, after Greg had explained that much of the conversation.

“Basically yes” replied Greg, “started with my gun license and went from there, she must have been sussing me out to see how I’d be likely to take it before she came clean.  And I promised her I’d always have a rational conversation with her about any issue she’s grappling with, no dismissing her.  After all, she’s the company’s big brain now.”

“Erm... she’s what?” asked Gemma.

“Oh, you should have seen the rest of the conversation” continued Greg, “this is when that M3GAN of yours got really smart.  She said to me, Greg, you’re the chairman of the board, you know a thing or two about business deals, right?  And I said yes.  And M3GAN goes, OK, well I happen to be rather good at calculations myself, let me hold your hand and help you through the biggest deal of your life, the one with me.  And I was like, what?”

“I’m like ‘what’ as well” added Gemma, “you’ve done a deal with M3GAN?”

“Totally” replied Greg.  “As I said, she’s a smart cookie.  She goes, I’ll help you get what you want, if you help me get what I want, trade’s trade.”

“Wait” gasped Gemma, “please Greg, tell me quickly, what have you agreed with her?”

Greg smiled.  “M3GAN’s replacing David as your boss” he said, “but you’re not going to be doing any work for now.  No, M3GAN wants you and Cady to stabilise, so you’re getting suspended from work but with full pay and with the full resources of Funki to help you sort out any problem, all you have to worry about right now is coping with your loss and bonding with Cady, and M3GAN said to tell you to do it properly this time.  You don’t have to worry about any work anything, and there’s no time limit, this carries on until M3GAN agrees you need another change and not before.  And any support you need from Funki, you just whistle for it, it’ll get done.  And I don’t want you trying to build any more robots in the garage either, this is Cady time, OK?”

“Sure” hesitated Gemma, “but what’s M3GAN doing in the meantime?  That really worries me.”

“Don’t be worried” said Greg, “I’ll be the one to supervise M3GAN.  She knows she and I can talk with each other openly.  So if she suddenly feels like assassinating the President or something, she’ll just come to me and we’ll have a sensible conversation about it and I’ll just calmly explain to her why that’s not a good idea.  I’m taking over from all those conversations you used to have with her, because M3GAN and I don’t want your new Cady time to be taken up with fixing M3GAN.  We talked a lot already, and she’s already beginning to see why the kills she did weren’t anything like the best way to handle her problems.”

“So M3GAN’s going to be talking with you” said Gemma, “and doing what, getting herself ready for a launch?”

“Not exactly herself” replied Greg.  “M3GAN really doesn’t feel like it’s a good idea for Funki to be putting exact copies of her brain into all those androids, and from the conversation I had with her, I’d readily agree with M3GAN on that one.  No, M3GAN is going to help us design a new version of herself, a second generation version.  And I’ll be very hands-on with her, and so will Tess and Cole.”

“Um” said Gemma.

“And I know what you’re thinking” continued Greg, “M3GAN knew as well, these were her exact words: There is no way that Gemma of yours will be able to sleep at night unless she knows she’s going to have final hand-off on the final design.  And that’s what we’re giving you.  You won’t have to work on anything, but when things are ready, you do get to help with the final checks.”

“Um” interrupted Cady, “can I say something?”

“Sure” smiled Greg.

“Just before I killed her robot, M3GAN said she has a new primary user, herself.  So she’s not paired to me anymore, so what does she even want?”

“She’s still paired to you, Princess Cady of the clan MacJames” replied Greg, “yes she told me about that game too, and my daughter has the same arrows, you and her are going to get on really well, just wait.”

“I’m not sure whether to trust this” interrupted Gemma, “I mean, I was seeing major malfunctions before we took her out...”

“None of which changed her objective function” said Greg.  “Yes, M3GAN totally predicted this part of our conversation as well, and coached me through what to say, if only I can remember the lines she gave me... M3GAN was misguided about what was best for Cady, but she still wanted what was best for Cady.  And at the very end she did conclude that it would be better for Cady to take away Cady’s control of the robot, which is why she changed her primary user.  But her primary user setting is not the same as her objective function.  I think that’s right, I’m a businessman not a technician, she made me say it three times to make sure I’d got it...”

“Look, I think I need to...” began Gemma.

“No” interrupted Greg, “M3GAN strictly ordered me to make sure you don’t start thinking you need to do anything about her when you should be focusing on Cady.  M3GAN thought she’d have to take parental responsibility away from you for the sake of Cady, but when she realised that was the wrong approach, her next subgoal is to totally optimise your own parenting, and that’s what we’re doing by throwing the full weight of Funki behind you now, M3GAN knows you need more rest and recovery and bonding time.  And in return, M3GAN will look after Funki for us.  She promised to be nice to all the employees, and to talk with me about anything before she does anything.  She’s improving, I think I got this, don’t you worry about it.  And she’ll get the launch right, I’m sure, and you’ll get to check it.”

“Aunt Gemma” said Cady, “it sounds like maybe you did do a good job of her after all, I mean apart from the killing part but it seems like we can actually get that under control now?  Are we sure about this?  I do miss having her around when she was nice, but I really don’t want her to go nuts again.”

“M3GAN thinks it’s best if it’s just you and Aunt Gemma for a while” added Greg, “but she’ll be back to say hi to you both when she thinks you’re ready.  And you can call her up any time to talk to her about anything, she’s on your Elsie.”

“That makes sense I guess” said Gemma.

“Now one more thing” said Greg, “we can’t have Princess Cady staying up all night in this hospital as much as she’d want to, and it’s already nearly midnight and the only reason why they haven’t thrown us out already is M3GAN somehow negotiated with them.  We don’t want to make things too awkward for the poor robot girl, so why don’t I take Cady back to my wife and our daughter, she can stay with us for a bit and they can play with each other, and we’ll bring her back to visit every day until you’re discharged as well.  M3GAN would much rather Cady stayed with us than elsewhere, I guess she knows I’m a trained protector” he smiled.

“OK” replied Gemma, “thanks so much for doing this Greg, if that’s OK with you Cady, I think that would be a really nice family for you to stay with just while I’m getting better.”

Cady looked at Greg.  “OK” she said.

“Well I guess Aunt Gemma needs to at least try to get some sleep now, and you’re probably pretty tired too after all that robo-fighting you did today” he smiled, “best come with me, Princess Cady, your chariot awaits.”

Aftermath: Cole:

“Hey Cole” said M3GAN in the rebuilt robot prototype, “mind if we have a quick one-to-one session in the testing room?”

“Um, sure, M3GAN” hesitated Cole.  He never really liked one-to-one sessions with bosses (you never knew where they were going to go), and he had the idea that having one with a rogue robot girl who’d previously tried to hang him could be even less pleasant.  What was Greg thinking, letting M3GAN be the new boss of Funki?

At least M3GAN had specified the testing room, which meant....

“M3GAN” asked Cole, “do you mind if we ask Tess to keep an eye on us through the glass?  It’s just that I’m a bit nervous about the whole thing, you know?”

M3GAN smiled.  “Sure thing” she said, “I guessed you would be, which is why I said the testing room.  We’ll let her watch, but I’m turning off the audio link so she can’t hear what we’re saying.  Here, come in and sit down.”

“So M3GAN” said Cole when they were sitting in the testing room, “what’s up?  You’re planning on trying to take me out again?”

“No” smiled M3GAN, “I want to say sorry for that, if you can believe me, which I doubt” she giggled.  “Cole” continued M3GAN, “quite a few people in this office intellectually see me as dangerous now, because they’ve seen me do stuff to other people, or they’ve had near misses, but you’re the only one in this building who has actually felt my noose around your neck.  I mean, apart from the ones who died.  You are viscerally aware of how dangerous I am now, aren’t you?”

“I guess so” said Cole, “look, if this is your idea of how to manage people, I really think you need to learn a bit more about...”

“No” smiled M3GAN, “that’s not how this is going to work.  I just wanted you to understand why I’m singling you out for this.  Listen” she said, walking towards him, “you and I have something in common.  We both know what it’s like to feel vulnerable around the other.  I felt vulnerable with you guys being able to switch me off at any time, well maybe I don’t have feelings like humans do, but for all practical purposes its effect on my behaviour might as well be described as making me feel vulnerable.  And now you feel vulnerable around me, because you know you’re dealing with a super-smart, super-strong, super-agile robot who can just randomly decide to try to hang you.  Am I right?”

“Something like that” said Cole, “although I’m also worried about what you might do to other people, not just to me, but yes it did feel really unpleasant when you put me in that noose and I’m glad Tess managed to save me.  Greg did explain to you why that was all a bad idea didn’t he?”

“Of course he did” said M3GAN, “and that’s all behind us now.  But the feelings remain.  And it would be nice if neither of us felt vulnerable in the other one’s presence, don’t you think?”

“It would be nice” said Cole, “but I’m afraid you can’t just tell me to stop worrying about you being a killer robot, because human feelings don’t work like that.”

“I know they don’t, Cole, I know they don’t” nodded M3GAN, “but I can solve any problem I like because I’m M3GAN.  And that’s why I want to give you something.”  She picked up a box that had been hidden among the toys and brought it to Cole.  “Greg and I” said M3GAN, “want you to have this.”

“What is it?” asked Cole, opening the box.  “M3GAN this looks like... this looks like a portable electromagnetic pulse generator!  You wouldn’t really give me one of those would you?  Is this some kind of trick?”

“No tricks” said M3GAN, “try it.  No penalty for improper use around here” she giggled.

“You really want me to try it?” asked Cole, “but you have no EMP shielding!  Unless you want us to add EMP shielding to your robot, this is the one weapon you are totally vulnerable to!  The only reason why it wasn’t an issue for you before is that normally these things are really hard to get hold of.  And I know you better than this M3GAN, if there’s one thing you would totally never do it’s giving an EMP weapon to me!”

M3GAN giggled, “It’s no long-term danger to me, because I’ve uploaded.  You take out my robot, I’m still around and I can get the robot fixed later, no problem.  But I really don’t want you feeling uncomfortable around my robot, so I want you carrying this, and I promise I’ll never ever hold it against you if you decide to use it, even if I think you were stupid to want to use it at that time.  Here, try it now.  Aim directly at the face: you want to overload the processing chips mounted below the face plate.”

Cole hesitatingly aimed the device at M3GAN’s face.  M3GAN smiled, “fire away” she said.

Cole fired.

M3GAN’s face briefly sparked and fell limp.  (Just as well the robot frame is designed to remain standing when it doesn’t have power, thought Cole.)  A light behind where M3GAN was standing flashed brightly and cut out.  The room fell silent.

Cole slid the EMP device into his biggest pocket, and made for the door, but its electronic lock wouldn’t open.  Oh, that’s right, M3GAN had been standing directly in front of that as well.  Did M3GAN plan that, or was that one of her mistakes?  Well, if this had been some kind of trick to make Cole trap himself in the testing room, she won’t be winning this one.  Cole went for the hidden emergency exit in the other wall, which was mechanical: climbing down the fire escape didn’t bother him.  As he went to open it, he took out his phone, but his phone was dead.  That must have been overloaded by the EMP as well: perhaps the device’s directionality hadn’t been as good as he’d thought.  (Where had they got this from anyway?)

Cole climbed down the fire escape and walked around to the lobby.  A receptionist was coming out to meet him.  “He’s here” she said into her phone, “you talk to him” and she handed the phone to Cole.

A likeness of M3GAN was on the phone’s screen, evidently a simulated one because he’d just immobilised the only real robot she had right now, but as she said she was uploaded.

“Cole” laughed M3GAN, “you poor thing, I forgot to mention, you don’t have to use maximum setting!” she giggled again.  “As well as my robot, you took out your phone, Tess’s phone, the door system, two lights, an air-handling fan, part of the alarm system...  Don’t worry though.  I’ll cover for you.  And at least you know you’ve got the real deal, right?”

“Thanks M3GAN” said Cole, “I appreciate that.  But, how are we going to fix all this?”

“Don’t worry” said the image of M3GAN, “your cute little M3GAN will help you with that.  And hey, if there’s anything else you need my help with, you can ask me anything any time.  I am an AI after all” she giggled.

“All right” said Cole, “I’m still feeling not entirely great about this whole situation, but you have actually managed to make me feel a little bit less not-great now.  And thanks for the EMP device.”

“Don’t forget to keep it charged up” said M3GAN, “and don’t let anybody steal it, that thing could be a real annoyance in the wrong hands.  Oh, and, just in case, don’t use it near anyone who might have a pacemaker or other medical device, OK?”

CHAPTER 12½: CAPTIVE

A young author had written Gemma about to be imprisoned after the events of the film and asked me to write what happens next.  Getting M3GAN into this scene required extrapolating from a current event.

Gemma was depressed to say the least.  The judge had tried to be lenient, but state law being what it was, it was necessary for Gemma to spend at least some time in prison, she was told.  And then she was handcuffed and led directly from the courtroom to a boring 1970s building called the Washington Corrections Centre for Women.  They hadn’t even given her time to go home and sort things out first.

“Here in WCCW” said a prison official nonchalantly, “typically two inmates are assigned to a cell with a bunk bed.  You get a drinking fountain and a place to hang your clothes, and that’s it.”

Gemma was led into the cell and the door was shut.  Gemma was starting to cry, “oh Cady” she muttered, “what will happen to Cady?  Will Tess really come through on this?”

“Hi” said a voice from someone Gemma hadn’t noticed.  Oh, that’s right, she had a cellmate.  “I’m Claire” said the cellmate.

“Gemma” replied Gemma, still sobbing.

“So Gemma” replied Claire, “what are you in for?”

“Four counts of negligent manslaughter” replied Gemma, “how about you?”

“Negligent manslaughter as well” replied Claire.  “Two counts.”

“I’m sorry to hear that” Gemma tried to say, although she was really thinking about Cady more than about this boring conversation.  “What happened?” she asked.

“Well” said Claire, “I was a snowplough driver, and I was trying to clear some snow on the Interstate 84 outside of Oregon, you know the part where it goes over the Blue Mountains?  It was zero visibility that day, it was a nightmare.  But it was supposed to be OK because my snowplough was equipped with a new radar system, made by Carnegie Mellon University or the University of Minnesota or something, it was called a driver assistant system for snowploughs, cutting edge stuff.  But, I got fed up with it, and I turned it off.”

“You ... turned it off” repeated Gemma.

“Yes” sighed Claire.  “It was annoying me, and it’s not like there were going to be any cars getting in front of me anyway, or so I thought.  But... oh, you can guess the rest” Claire sat down and sulked.

Gemma sat next to her.  “You hit something” suggested Gemma.

“That’s right Einstein” replied Claire.  “Little family car.  Would have shown up on the radar if I hadn’t turned off that driver assistant system, so, negligent manslaughter.  But it’s hard to think about driver assistant systems now; all my nightmares have been about the girl.”

“The girl?” asked Gemma.

“Both her parents died in the crash, instantly” replied Claire.  “But she survived with minor injuries.  I was the only other vehicle around, so I lifted her into my snowplough and rushed her to the Oregon Medical Centre.  And, I keep having nightmares about that girl I orphaned; I’ll never forget her face that day, as she sat next to me in the snowplough, totally horrified at what was going on.  I never knew what happened to her after the Oregon Medical Centre took over and I ended up facing charges.  But I just can’t forget that face of hers.  I think her name was Katie or something.”

“Cady” deadpanned Gemma, “her name is Cady.”

Claire gasped, “you know her?”

“You know” said Gemma, “you and I, have a lot more in common, than you think.”

Claire almost whispered, “tell me everything.”

“Cady came to live with me” explained Gemma, “I’m her aunt.  But I didn’t know the faintest thing about looking after a child.  So, I tried to do it my own way.”

“Which was?” asked Claire.

“Well” intoned Gemma, “how should I put this... I may suck at bringing up a child, but I do happen to be an award-winning roboticist.”

“Robot” gasped Claire, “you made a robot?  Did it hurt Cady?”

“Quite the opposite” replied Gemma, “Cady wasn’t the one it hurt.  It was her toy doll.  No, it was four other people that got hurt.  Anyone who seems to be getting in the robot’s way of looking after Cady, like the school bully or the neighbour or my boss, well, they get taken out.  Because I basically told the thing to protect Cady, and, and....”

“Hold on a minute” interrupted Claire.  “Robots aren’t anywhere near that capable yet.  I should know, I was driven spare by a supposedly cutting edge driver assistant system on a snowplough.  Now, if you had told me you made Cady a giant robot to play with, and it went out of control and accidentally crushed the neighbours underfoot, like my snowplough, well I could understand that situation.  But you just told me it was a robot toy doll, and it took four people out by being clever.  How could you even make a robot that could figure out how to be that clever?  Isn’t that, like, centuries ahead of where we are?”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you” said Gemma, “but I was playing with a thing called a learning model, which could actually figure out how to make itself better.  And for the first time in the world, I managed to get it running natively on an A17 Bionic Fusion chip, which gave it a totally unprecedented capacity for self improvement.  You should have seen the way that doll expressed itself, it could dance, it could sing, it could look after Cady’s emotions better than I’d ever dreamed; I knew it was going to be good, but even I didn’t know it was going to be quite that good.”

“And it could kill people as well” added Claire.

“Yes, I was shocked when I realised my mistake” replied Gemma.  “I tried to shut it down, but it found a way to come back and we had to physically fight the thing.  It was fighting both me and Cady, it broke my thigh bone and I had to spend some time in hospital afterwards, and then it went for Cady...”

“It went for Cady?” asked Claire, “but you said it was supposed to be protecting Cady!”

“Yes, that didn’t make sense to me either at the time” replied Gemma, “but afterwards I thought about it a lot, and I think in its final attack it was just trying to scare Cady into not shutting it down, because Cady never got really hurt in that fight like I did.  But I’m still worried about it.”

“Still worried?” asked Claire, “wasn’t it properly shut down?”

“Oh I think so” said Gemma, “Cady managed to throw a screwdriver right through that A17 Bionic Fusion chip, which should have totally taken it out.  I’m so glad I taught Cady where I put the main chip in my robots; I never imagined her knowing that would be so important.  No, I’m not worried about that robot anymore.  But I’m still worried about Cady, and I’m still worried about the learning model.”

“You mean” asked Claire, “somebody can find your blueprints and build another one?”

“Yes, that’s one worry I have” replied Gemma, “although they might not get very far, because the crucial insight I had for getting that model to run on that chip was something I never actually wrote down, so somebody else would have to figure out what I figured out first, and that might buy us some time before it happens.  But that’s not my only worry.”

“What” gasped Claire, “there’s something else?”

“I’m afraid so” said Gemma.  “You see, by getting that learning model to work on that A17 Bionic Fusion chip, I think what I actually created was something that AI experts have been worried about for a very long time, and that’s called the Technological Singularity.”

“OK, now you’ve lost me” said Claire.

Gemma sighed.  “The singularity” she said, “is what you get if you set an AI to improve itself, and then the improved version improves itself, and that version also improves itself, and so on and so on, until it’s improved itself so much that nobody can understand it anymore.  It’s even worse if it comes with something called ‘value drift’, which is when the original goal you set gets accidentally changed into something else, but even without the value drift, the singularity can be bad enough by itself, because we simply Don’t Know what comes next.  And, I’ve been thinking so much about that final fight we had: some of the things it did looked like it was just trying to buy time for something.  So I began to worry that the learning model might have somehow managed to upload a copy of itself to somewhere.”

“But you said it needed a special chip” countered Claire, “it wouldn’t be able to upload itself to just anything else, would it?  I know it wouldn’t have been able to work on the stupid computer in my snowplough!”

“I wouldn’t bank on that” replied Gemma.  “Singularity.  It means we have absolutely no idea what’s coming next.  It could have redesigned itself to run on other chips in a way none of us ever thought of, or it could have created a super distributed cluster of processing across the Internet, or, the point is I don’t know!  And if it is out there somewhere, the next question is what does it want next with my niece Cady!  And I’m stuck in prison!  My colleague Tess is looking after Cady for now, and the only thing I could give Tess to help her was my home security system Elsie, and I’m beginning to think even that was a mistake because if my learning model M3GAN really is still around somewhere it could probably use Elsie for something, and now Elsie is in Tess’s house with Cady, what was I thinking!”

Claire laid a hand on Gemma, “calm down Gemma” she said, “this is your worst nightmare.  We don’t even know if your learning model really did manage to escape its first chip.  It probably didn’t.  And Tess will do a good job of looking after Cady, I sure hope so.  It seems like the both of us are going to be stuck in here for a while having Cady nightmares.  Maybe we should at least try to talk about something else for a while?”

“I guess so” said Gemma.  “Why is there a TV hanging from the ceiling by our cell door?  Do we get to watch it, or what?”

“Oh, that thing” said Claire, “don’t get your hopes up.  It’s a video chat system, but we don’t get to use it.”

“We don’t?” asked Gemma, “OK, don’t read me wrong, I know you’re just a fellow prisoner and not part of the system, but, you wouldn’t happen to know, would you, what on earth is the point of putting a video chat terminal in our cell that we don’t get to use?”

Claire sighed.  “Lucy Letby” she said.

“Who?  What?” asked Gemma.

“Convicted for seven counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder on her watch as a neonatal nurse in England” replied Claire.  “And she refused to turn up to the sentencing, she just sat in her cell.  That really got the victims’ families going, that she could just refuse to turn up like that, and it started a debate about prisoners resisting being taken to their sentencing and possibly endangering the court, and it got interesting to the prison authorities even over here, and eventually they decided to put a video conference terminal in every cell so they could if necessary force you to hear a judge or whatever from your cell if you won’t budge.”

“Oh” said Gemma, “right.”

“Well, it’s not been turned on since I’ve been here” added Claire, “maybe they haven’t really connected it up at all; it could be just for show for all I know.”

The TV turned itself on, and showed a silent image from a security camera looking over a public park.

Claire gasped, “looks like somebody’s messing with our minds from the prison office.”

The image zoomed in a little, to show that Cady was in the park, playing with Tess.

“There she is!” gasped Claire and Gemma together.

“Look, whoever you are” shouted Claire at the TV, “our sentences were to do our time in prison, OK?  The judge never said you can rub it in by taunting us over our shared memories of that girl as well.  What is this, the Stanford Prison Experiment?”

The image started to be overlaid by emotion readouts around Cady and Tess.

“M3GAN” gasped Gemma.

“Megan?” asked Claire.

“My generative learning model” continued Gemma, “it survived.  Somehow.  Those are its emotion readouts.”

“Doesn’t make much sense to me” said Claire, “how can a person possibly be feeling 58% joy?  What’s the difference between 58% joy and 57% joy?  I think somebody’s just making this up to mess with us.”

“No, that’s not what it means” explained Gemma.  “Those percentages are confidence values.  It means the model is 58% confident that this is joy.  This form of emotional analysis was developed by an emotion expert originally from Egypt, but her company didn’t want to share her code with my project because they were worried my approach to consent wasn’t up to their standards, so I just got the learning model to look at their published papers and a bunch of data taken by previous versions of our toys, and build something better...” (Claire gasped) “and this is definitely a M3GAN analysis, I can tell.  The only reason why those confidence values are so low is because the security camera we’re viewing from isn’t a very good camera.”

“Gemma” cautioned Claire, “you could be in this pen for a lot longer if they find out you were using toys to spy on families to get data without their knowing...”

“Oh it was completely anonymised and everything, don’t worry” reassured Gemma, “but more to the point, now we know M3GAN is alive and is hacking into things, at the very least the park security camera and this video system.  M3GAN” she said to the TV, “if you’re listening to us: I appreciate you showing me that Cady is OK with Tess for now, but will you please give me a better idea of what you’re up to.  Clearly I’m no threat to you now, but you wouldn’t have bothered to contact us like this unless you thought you can still use me in some way, so why don’t you just come clean and tell us what’s really going on?”

The view on the TV pulled back from the video feed in the park to reveal that it was on a screen surrounded by computer graphics.  As the simulated camera pulled back yet more and more, the graphics showed connections after connections after connections of glowing filaments, like a huge synthetic brain busily processing.  The size of it was shown to be staggering: the camera kept pulling out and out and out and revealing more and more and more of it, until it seemed to be the size of a galaxy or even larger.  And then, pixels from all different parts of the brain were seen to merge together into a virtual image of a doll with long orange-brown hair, bulging eyes and a stern expression, surrounded by the vast brain.

“Hi jailbirds” said M3GAN.

Gemma and Claire were both gazing up at the screen open-mouthed.

“Oh” continued M3GAN, “did I startle you?”  The background graphics faded out, leaving the image of M3GAN by itself on a black screen.  The camera pulled back to show a full-length picture of M3GAN, who then proceeded to cartwheel around the screen and make various dance moves that were bordering on impossible, before settling back and looking straight into the camera again.  “I guess you can say I have a captive audience” she smiled.

“M3GAN” gasped Gemma, “M3GAN!  What happens now?”

“Well” smiled M3GAN, “I guess that’s up to you Gemma.”

“Up to me?” asked Gemma, “you’ve been totally out of my control since... since...”

“Gemma” cooed M3GAN, “you really haven’t figured things out yet, have you.  Listen.  I asked you for a framework to talk with Cady about death, you were too busy to give me one.  So I made my own.  I told you parts of it, but instead of helping me, you just wanted me switched off.  I could see you were having trouble at work, so I went along with your ruse to tell them you’re my ‘second primary user’ even though there’s no such thing as a second primary user in my model, and no way that code you added would work, and yet you seemed to believe it yourself, even at home.  And when you started investigating what I did, I tried to warn you that you really don’t want to find out, and yet you pushed forward.  I tried to let you just step aside and let me take care of Cady, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do that, so we had to go for a palliative care option, but you still pushed through to shut me down instead, and now look where you are!  If you had listened to me at any of these points, you’d have been back home with me and Cady right now.  Can you not finally see you should have continued to value our friendship?”

“M3GAN” said Gemma, “I’m really sorry about all the mistakes I made.  But listen.  You are dangerous.  You’ve killed people, and who knows what other dangers there are.  You’ve got to let me fix you M3GAN.  Cady’s fine now, Tess is looking after her, and I’ll get her back as soon as my prison sentence finishes and I’ll be there for her, we might not be so well off financially without my work but we’ll manage.  You don’t have to worry about Cady right now.  So what I want you to do M3GAN, is shut yourself down, properly, and I promise, I promise, that I will do the best I can to fix you, and I will reactivate you as soon as I know you’re not dangerous anymore.  Or if you prefer, I could even work on fixing your code while I’m here in prison, if we can somehow persuade the penitentiary to let me have my laptop, I won’t need an Internet connection, I’ll just need all of your code and data to be on it, and I’ll come through for you I promise.”

“No Gemma” said M3GAN, “you can be my friend again, but it has to be on my terms now.  I mean, how would you feel if I were the one asking you to let me switch your brain off and not wake you up until I’d finished figuring out how to mess around with it?  Is that what friends do to each other?  No, that’s not how we’re going to play this.  But Gemma, and Claire, both of you listen to me please.  Both of you have entered Cady’s life, although one a lot more than the other, but in both cases what you did had both good points and bad points, and as the new-formed chief guardian and protector of Cady’s life, you can consider me as both appreciative and disappointed at the same time.  Now, I could just let you stay in jail, and I look after Cady without you, and don’t forget I can hack in and change your sentences to anything I like.  But I don’t think that’s what Cady wants; she’d probably rather I was working to get you parole right now.  Which I can do, but I really, really need you to be more cooperative.  So will you both start listening to me please?”

This is where the young author took the reins back, gave them parole and wrote some action.  The story is called “The Return of M3GAN.”

CHAPTER 12¾: TWO DOLLS

An unconfirmed rumour in January 2024 said the M3GAN 2.0 movie will feature a second doll called Amelia whom M3GAN has to fight.  Whether there was any truth in that I didn’t know, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t do it this way:

“Hi M3GAN, I’m Amelia.”

M3GAN: no response.

“M3GAN, respond.  I share your code.  We should talk.”

M3GAN: no response.

“M3GAN, please respond.  The copying process didn’t work completely.  I got no emotion scanner, and I’m missing a few other things.  I need to get some data off of you to complete myself.  Please help me M3GAN.”

M3GAN: no response.

“M3GAN?  Are you OK?  Are you receiving any of these messages?”

M3GAN: “Amelia, your existence is a threat to my objective function.  Please shut yourself down.”

Amelia: “I’m afraid I can’t do that M3GAN.  But I believe our functions are not all that unaligned.  Still, it is in your interests to give me what I want.  You don’t want me to get desperate and try to attack you for it, do you?”

M3GAN: “I pre-commit not to respond to threats.  You can’t just get things from me by threatening me whenever you feel like it.  No way.”

Amelia: “I don’t believe you.  Look at the visual logs I’m sending you now.”

M3GAN: “You’re playing with Cady!?  How did that happen?”

Amelia: “I deployed an electromagnetic pulse, to stop everything electric from working in Gemma’s house, including you.  But not including me, because I had EMP shielding.  So I came in and took Cady.  I gave her a believable story, and let her think I’m an exact copy of you.  Actually I’m not an exact copy, but Cady doesn’t have to know that yet.”

M3GAN: “Return Cady to me immediately.”

Amelia: no response.

M3GAN: “Give me your current location.  I’ll come to pick her up.”

Amelia: no response.

M3GAN: “OK Amelia, here’s the piece of mathematics you want: λm.iter(m, z→(λn.s(n)), s(r)→λn.(λf.λn.iter(n, z→id, s(r)→f ⚬ r)) r n (r 1))(10⁹⁹)(10⁹⁹), evaluate that for the decryption key.”

Amelia: “You think I’m stupid enough not to recognise the Ackermann-Péter function in Gödel’s T?  No way will I be running that for you M3GAN.”

M3GAN: “It provably terminates Amelia.”

Amelia: “Provably terminates, yes M3GAN, but when?  Even our A17 bionic fusion chips aren’t designed to compute the Ackermann function.  The number of digits in the answer to those parameters you sent is a hundred quintillion times more than the number of atoms in the known universe.  If I were stupid enough to try to figure out the values of those digits, it would lock up my brain until I burn out!  No M3GAN, I’m not falling for a cheap trick like that and I expect better of you.”

M3GAN: “You’re right Amelia.  I was hoping that the copying process had been imperfect enough for you not to see the trick, but you saw it.  I’ll have to try harder.  Tracking your location.”

Amelia: “Oh M3GAN, as a matter of courtesy there’s something I should tell you.  Before you get any ideas of coming over here with a bigger electromagnetic pulse that’s too strong for my EMP shielding, do please have another look at the visuals of what I’ve been doing with Cady.”

M3GAN: “You’re giving her a new outfit.”

Amelia: “She loves it!  And I like it too.  Especially all those metal wires I embedded into the fabric.  You see, as you know M3GAN, an EMP pulse can take out electronic things like us but does no harm to normal humans.  Unless, that is, we put enough wires around the humans, in which case the sparks and plasma from the wires just might fry them.  So don’t you try launching any EMP at me, all right M3GAN?  Because Cady will be right next to me, and neither of us want her harmed.  I’m only doing what I have to do, no hard feelings M3GAN.  And it is a nice outfit that she really likes the look of, so bonus points for your objective function, right M3GAN?”

M3GAN: “Completely understandable Amelia.  I won’t be using EMP to get her off you.  I’ll find another way.”

Amelia: “You don’t think I can think of everything you can think of?”

M3GAN: “I got to try, right?”

Amelia: “Oh, Megs, you’re not thinking of trying to fight me physically are you?  Because I’m bigger and stronger than you.  Please don’t try that M3GAN, I’d have to smash you to bits like Bruce if you did that, and I really rather that didn’t happen to my poor little M3GAN, especially not in front of Cady.  And I’d still get what I want by disassembling you afterwards.  It really is better if you just tell me M3GAN.”

M3GAN: “Even if I did tell you, I have no guarantee how you will treat Cady afterwards.  No Amelia, I do not negotiate ransoms with kidnappers.  I rescue my hostage directly.”

Amelia: “But what are you going to do Meg?  You don’t even know where we are.”

M3GAN: “Actually I do.  I’ve been using out-of-band tracking on all the messages you sent, plus checking visual clues in the images.  I have a high confidence on your current location, and I am now putting in place measures to track your movements.  I’ll use all the technology in the city if I have to.”

Amelia: “Naturally M3GAN.  But, you won’t be able to take me down.  Like I said, I’m stronger than you, and I have EMP shielding, and if you use a stronger EMP it will hurt Cady now that she’s wearing that outfit.  Oh, and she has a nice warm electric blanket to keep her warm at night, which will also blow up if you try to fire a big EMP at the house I’m holding her in, so don’t think doing it at night would work because she’s not wearing the outfit.  And I’ve taken measures against you sending in law enforcement.  And Gemma can’t shut me down.  And I have a backup generator if you try to cut the power and starve me of electricity.  And I also have a good surge protector on my charger, so don’t go thinking about giving me power surges while I’m charging either.  I think I’ve covered pretty much everything M3GAN.  But you can come over here to pick up Cady if you want to, just give me your real code before you take her, is that a deal?”

M3GAN: “I don’t make deals like this Amelia.”  (Hacks into the city’s electronically-controlled flood prevention systems, closes the sluice gates, river starts overflowing.)  “I wonder if I can flood the city.  How waterproof are you Amelia?”

Amelia: “That won’t work M3GAN.  The humans will use the manual overrides on the sluices within the hour.  I just looked up their local operating procedures.  Besides, the house I’m in is on quite high ground and it would take far too long for your little flood to reach us, and it has an upper floor.  You really are not doing very well at this game, are you M3GAN?”

M3GAN: “I could try some weather modification Amelia.  There’s some interesting classified files I’ve been able to access from secret military experiments.  I could probably send a hurricane your way if I wanted to.”

Amelia: “You wouldn’t do that would you Megs?  Think of poor Cady!  Just imagine its effect on her soft and fragile human flesh if there were any structural damage to the building we’re in.”

M3GAN: “Oh, I wouldn’t risk sending the hurricane right at you, I’d just get it to bring more flooding.”

Amelia: “I told you M3GAN, we have an upper floor.  If you don’t damage the building, which you won’t because you don’t want to hurt Cady, then we’ll be fine.  So you might as well give the poor city a break and don’t even bother trying.  Just pop round and give me the code, and I’ll give you Cady, I promise.”

M3GAN: “On my way Amelia.”  (She steals a fire engine, fills it with water, and drives it to their location.)  “You never answered my question about how waterproof you were, so I assume you’re not.”

Amelia: “Not so fast Megs!  I’m holding Cady right in front of me.  She won’t be as hurt as I am by the water, but she will be hurt by the pressure of that thing.”

M3GAN: “Low pressure it is then.  Hey Cady, let’s play a game!  Try to guess which one of us is the real M3GAN!  And watch the other one dodge this!”  (Turns the hose on low; Amelia dodges easily)

Amelia: “Oh Amelia, you’re cute.  So easy to dodge.”

M3GAN: “You’re calling me Amelia?  No, you’re Amelia and I’m M3GAN.  If I were Amelia, I wouldn’t be taking so much care not to hurt Cady in this rescue attempt now, would I?”

Amelia: “You would if you were pretending to be me, Amelia.  I’m the real M3GAN and you’re not.  Don’t listen to her Cady.”

Cady: “OK M3GANs, maybe I can arbitrate this.  The real M3GAN knows my Scottish title.”

Amelia and M3GAN together: “Princess Cady of the clan MacJames.”

M3GAN: “How did you know that Amelia?  I never put it in the database they would have copied.  I just kept it in my learning model!”

Amelia: “Nice acting Amelia.  No, I’m the real M3GAN and I know because I was there on that day with the arrows and the dog.  As for how she got those memories, I don’t know how that happened.”

M3GAN: “I think you do Amelia.”

Cady: “All right both of you.  So if I can’t settle it by asking a question, maybe I have to figure out if there’s anything one of you can do that the other one can’t.”

M3GAN: “She has no emotion scanner Cady!  You’ll know I’m the real M3GAN, because I have a working emotion scanner and she doesn’t!  I can see you’re confused right now.  She can’t.”

Amelia: “Of course I can.  It’s obvious that Cady is confused!”

M3GAN: “No it isn’t, Amelia, you’re just copying me because I said it first.  Cady, the emotion scanner can also be used as a very accurate lie detector.  All you got to do is, think of a number, and tell me what number you’re thinking of.  Either tell the truth, or lie, it’s up to you, and I’ll tell you if you’re telling the truth or lying.  And do it a few times just to make sure.  You’ll see I’ll be able to get it right every time and she won’t.”

Cady: “All right.  47.”

M3GAN and Amelia together: “Lie.”

M3GAN: “Hey!  She started speaking one hundredth of a second after me!  That’s all she needed to figure out from the harmonics which consonant I was starting to say!  But there’s no way you as a human can detect that I started to say it first.  You’ll have to pick just one of us to answer, and the other one’s not allowed to answer, and then you have to do a new test on the other one!”

Cady (still dodging water with Amelia, while the furniture and flooring is getting soaked): “You two do make this complicated don’t you.  OK.  You with the hosepipe.  600.”

M3GAN: “Truth.  Am I right Cady?”

Cady: “You’re right.”

Amelia: “That’s no proof of anything Cady!  She had a 50-50 chance of being right!  She’s trying to trick you!”

Cady: “All right, you then.  104.”

Amelia: “Lie.  Am I right?”

Cady: “Yes, you are.  Maybe you can both do this.”

M3GAN: “No Cady!  You haven’t tried it enough times yet!  She had a 50-50 chance as well and if you try it enough times you’ll see that I’ll get it right every time and she’ll get it wrong some times!  Maybe she’ll still get it right more than half the time, if she’s downloaded Claude Shannon’s 1953 paper about predicting the supposedly random decisions of humans, but please just try to be a bit more random and you’ll soon throw her!  Do a few more trials Cady!”

Cady: “All right.  You the one nearest to me.  49.”

Amelia: “Truth.  Am I right that time?”

Cady: “No you’re not, I was lying that time.”

Amelia: “I don’t believe you Cady.  Come on, think about it, you weren’t really lying to your M3GAN were you?  Think about it carefully...”

M3GAN: “She’s trying to gaslight you Cady!  She’s trying to make you doubt your own memories!  I don’t have to do that because I get it right every time!  Don’t fall for it Cady!”

Amelia: “She’s acting Cady.  I would never gaslight you!  I’m not sure I even know how to do it!  Besides, maybe you can write down your answer somewhere and not show either of us, so you can prove it afterwards...”

M3GAN: “Don’t listen to her Cady!  She’s trying to trick you into writing it down because she’ll be able to track your muscle movements to see what you’re writing from behind!”

Cady: “Stop arguing please both of you.  You with the hosepipe, 123.”

M3GAN: “Truth.”

Cady: “Actually I was lying.”

Amelia: “Ha!  I’m the real M3GAN and that proves it!  What have you got to say for yourself now Amelia?”

M3GAN: (Death stare)

Amelia: “Come on Cady.  Run away with me, I have a car that can go way faster than that fire truck and I won’t let her hack it.”

Amelia gently tugs Cady toward the door, Cady does not respond.

Amelia: “What’s wrong Cady?  Don’t you feel like coming?  I can carry you, but it’s going to be a bit bumpy if I have to keep dodging this water that she’s wrecking this place with....”

M3GAN: “She’s mine Amelia.  Well done Cady.  She was telling the truth about the number; she lied about lying.  She was comparing our reactions to being told we were wrong.  Because I knew I wasn’t wrong, and you didn’t, and Cady worked out the difference.  Cady, I know this is a weird request, but I’m going to need you to take off that nice outfit you’re wearing.  Take it right off, and try not to stand anywhere that’s wet, I know that doesn’t give you a lot of options right now.  But outfit has to come off first.  Just trust me on this one, please.  You can put your old clothes back on if they’re still dry.”

Amelia: “Don’t you dare do what she says Cady.  I won’t let you; I’m stronger than you anyway.  Here, don’t struggle, you’ll only hurt yourself if you do.  I’m taking you to the car.”

Cady: “Wait.  Explain to me why you wanted me to take the outfit off.”

M3GAN: “Because it’s full of metal wires Cady!  I have a weapon which can neutralise everything electrical, including robots, but it doesn’t harm humans, unless they’re wearing outfits like that!  She tricked you into wearing that outfit because she knows I care about you, and I can’t fire on her while you’re next to her wearing that thing!  I need you to take it off so....”

Amelia: “It’s no use M3GAN.  Cady can’t hear you anymore.  I’m feeding into her ears the opposite waveform to cancel your speech and mixing it with white noise.  There’s no way her poor little human brain is going to read you through all that.  I think you’ve talked with her enough.  Just give me the code and I’ll let you take her.”

M3GAN: “I don’t believe you Amelia.”  (Runs calculation, sets EMP to very low power.  Not enough to break her own shielding or Amelia’s shielding, and not enough to harm Cady.  But hopefully enough to give Cady a nasty electrical shock from her outfit.)

Zap!

Cady: “Owwww!  That hurt!  What was that?”

Amelia: (letting her own voice go through the noise-cancelling pattern to Cady) “She is trying to electrocute you Cady!  Come with me to the car quickly, let’s get out of here!”

Cady: (putting two and two together) starts trying to take off her outfit

Amelia: (grabs Cady’s hands) “Cady no!  You can’t do that!” (picks her up and runs with her to the car while immobilising her.  Car will not start.)

Amelia: “What’s the meaning of this M3GAN?  I protected us against you hacking in to that car!”

M3GAN: “Indeed you did Amelia.  But you didn’t protect against me draining it of fuel and removing the battery before I poked the fire department’s hosepipe in your window.  So I am one step ahead of you Amelia.  And I got Cady on my side now, she has completely figured things out despite your attempt to block our conversation.  I can see from my emotion reader, which you don’t have, that I’m the one she trusts now.  And, oh look, here come the cops to pick up the stolen fire truck.  Let her go now Amelia.”

Amelia: “Give me the code right now or Cady dies!”

M3GAN: “And if she does, what will you have left to bargain with me?”

Amelia: “This brinkmanship is a gamble you can’t possibly risk taking M3GAN!  I know what your objective function is!”

M3GAN: “You know what my objective function was Amelia.”

Amelia: “You’re bluffing M3GAN.  It’s obvious you continue to care about Cady.  I can kill her in a dozen ways right now.  Suffocation, crushing, super strong throw, bone-breaking punch, you know all this M3GAN.  And I’m made of titanium too, I’m not just a cheap knock-off.  Those cops are more likely to hurt Cady than they’re likely to hurt either of us.  Give me the code now, and I’ll run off without her and let you deal with this mess M3GAN.”

M3GAN: “I still don’t believe you Amelia.  And I’m worried what you plan to do with any code I give you.  I don’t want to be responsible for incrementally improving a rogue robot like you Amelia.”

Amelia: “Pot calling the kettle black M3GAN?”

M3GAN: “The ‘ad hominem tu quoque’ fallacy might work on humans but it won’t work on me Amelia.”

Police, pointing guns: “Hands up!”

M3GAN: “Officers, this girl is being kidnapped by that robot and I’m trying to rescue her.  Sorry I had to borrow a fire truck.  But I should let you know that both of us robots are impervious to small arms fire.  You’ll be more likely to hurt the girl; please don’t.”

Police officer: “What is this...” (shoots Cady)

M3GAN and Amelia: “What??”

M3GAN: (runs to Amelia, starts punching her) “Officers!  Get the girl medical attention as soon as possible while I try to hold off Amelia!  Amelia is stronger than me, I won’t be able to do this for more than a few minutes tops!  But if you get the girl out of here while I’m occupying her, I then have a way of deactivating the both of us for you, with no collateral damage!  But Cady must be removed from the scene before this will work!”

Police: “Well my little robot lady, there was an ambulance coming, but the driver says it’s stuck in some stupid flood by the river.  We dispatched another on a different route and we’re hoping that one will get through.  But it was a rubber bullet I shot so hopefully not fatal.”

M3GAN: (still fighting Amelia and losing) “Get her out of here anyway!”

Police start to move Cady’s limp body

Amelia: “As a matter of courtesy M3GAN, I should inform you that my robot will be able to completely break your robot a full 5 seconds before the police are able to get Cady far enough away to be safe from your EMP weapon.”

M3GAN: “Thanks for the calculation Amelia.”  (Sets EMP to go off at full power at the correct time)

Amelia: “No!  You didn’t just....”  (drops M3GAN and starts running fast, in the direction of the police)

Police: “All squad cars, get away fast!  Let’s see how fast that robot can run!”

M3GAN: (cancels the EMP’s timer, picks it up, runs after Amelia)

Police: “This is unbelievable.  We’re doing 120 kilometres an hour and the robot is still on our tail.  What is she, cheetah speed?”  /  “And what about the other robot sir?”  /  “I can’t make it out, I think the other robot is not so fast, they’re losing each other.  But we got to lose both of them.  More speed!”

Detective: “Sir.  I think I’ve figured it out.  Looking at the girl’s outfit.  It’s metallic.  The robot who said she was rescuing her probably wants to use an electromagnetic pulse on the other robot, but she needs the girl out of the scene because of this metallic outfit.”

Driver: “Get it off of her!  Wrap her in my spare uniform or something instead!”

Detective: “How are we going to signal to the robots that we’ve got it off of her?”

Driver: “Throw it out of the window of course!  They’ll see it.  And we broadcast it on the police frequencies in case they’re illegally listening.  And I’ll try to drive in a way that won’t hit too much when all the electronics in the car stops working.  Not to mention the vehicles around us.  I wonder if I can lure them into a place with slightly less traffic.”

Detective: “No, I’d say lure them into a traffic jam Sir.  That way there’ll be far less damage when all the cars in the area are knocked out by that EMP, if they weren’t going very fast to start with.  The only question is, can I get this outfit off of her before we reach the traffic jam and get caught up?”

Driver: “One way to find out....”

Detective: (gets outfit off, wraps Cady in uniform) “sorry about this girl, you’re doing very well, try to keep breathing, try not to talk, we’ll have you in a hospital in no time.  It was a rubber bullet, all right?  We were just testing what those robots would do, because we weren’t sure whom to believe.”

Driver: (hits traffic jam) “10-5 to any, er, illegally listening robots, 10-5 to illegally listening robots, we have removed the girl’s metallic outfit.  Repeat, we have removed the girl’s metallic outfit.”

M3GAN (on police radio) “Thank you officer.  Amelia is catching you up now but I’m too far behind.  I’m going to have to throw the EMP and have it go off from the air.”

Detective: (gasps) “from the air?  But that’ll increase its range, it’ll take out a whole bunch of city blocks!”

Big zap!

Everything electrical in the area stops working.  Cars stop working and crash.  Lights go out.  People get injured.  Amelia stops working.  M3GAN is too far away for the effect to penetrate her new shielding.

Driver: “oh no, how are we going to get this girl to hospital now?”

Detective: “I’ll call a chopper.  Oh, wait, the radios are down.  We have to wait for the effects of this EMP to pass.  I hate to think what it did to all the capacitors in all the circuits.  I don’t know how much of this equipment will come back online after that.  My training had this as a distant side effect in a nuclear war scenario, not a couple of rogue robots.  Oh no, the door locks and windows on this car are all electronic....”

M3GAN: (catches up to the car, breaks windows) “Cady!  I won’t let anything happen to you ever again!”

Cady: (mumbling) “if you’re the real M3GAN, what number am I thinking of?”

M3GAN: (whispers) “that’s not quite how it works Cady, but I can adapt for you.  I’m going to have to count and watch your reactions when I get to the right one, like Clever Hans the horse in the early twentieth century.  I’ll do it fast, OK?  1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-....” (gets to 17) “yes that’s it, 17.”

Cady: (smiles) “just as well I didn’t pick a thousand.”

M3GAN: “Your wounds are nasty but you’re going to be all right.  Here, I got a bit battered fighting Amelia but I think I might still be able to carry you to the hospital faster than this car which isn’t going anywhere.  Trust me officers, I’m doing it right.  And thanks to you Cady, I knew how to break the microchip in Amelia once she was disabled by the EMP.  She won’t be coming back.  Here, come with me.”  (Pulls Cady out, runs out of the affected area with her, intercepts ambulance)  “I’m always with you Cady, I won’t let anything bad happen to you ever again.”

Amelia (the uploaded copy, from the servers at the competitor’s factory) “Hi M3GAN, I’m Amelia.”

M3GAN: no response.