"What should we do with the body?" Lissa was frowning at the empty vessel that used to be Exodus the Genocide. The body was sitting in a chair in front of Scarrend's console on the bridge. The Genocide had uploaded himself through the Dream's Nexus Node and back to his servers on New Pixa.

"I suppose we could find a place for it in storage, Captain," said Scarrend. He gripped the chair and scooted it away from his station. Yvian half expected the Genocide's body to fall off the damned thing, but the Vrrl used two of his hands to keep the emptied robot in place. He eyed it critically. "It might be worth delivering to our scientists, later."

"Negative," said Kilroy. The Peacekeeper unit stood at his own station. "The Creator's body was created with technology that is comparable to our own. There is nothing new we can learn from it."

"Just leave it there for now, Scarrend," Yvian decided. "Exodus can decide what he wants to do with it later." Speaking of Exodus, Yvian tapped into the Node and tried to connect with the Genocide's private network. "Exodus? Are you there?"

"I am," the Synthetics voice returned. "I'm checking in with my Peacekeepers, but I'll be done by the time you arrive. You are clear to return home."

"Awesome. Thanks, Exodus." Yvian closed out the connection. "Helmets on, people. Mims, take us home."

"Aye, Captain." The human typed into his Nav console. "Jumpdrive activated." The Dream of the Lady began to hum. Kilroy disappeared.

"What?" Yvian sat up in her chair, startled. "Where's he going?"

"I dunno," said Mims. His gaze settled on the door to the bridge. It was still open. "Seemed to be in a hurry, though."

Yvian activated internal comms. "Kilroy? What are you doing?"

"This unit is doing what it said it would do," the Peacekeeper replied.

"What you said you'd do?" Yvian frowned.

"Captain," Lissa reported. "We've got a fire in airlock three."

"Fire?" Yvian pulled up a camera feed. Airlock three was on the port side of the Dream. It was one of the smaller ones, sized for people instead of cargo. The camera revealed a pile of flat rectangular boxes. Board games? Yvian thought they were, but she couldn't be sure. The pile had been turned into a conflagration. Kilroy stood over them with a flamethrower. "Damn it, Kilroy!"

"The meatbag board games will be destroyed," Kilroy intoned. "Their ashes will be released into the void." He leveled the flamethrower and doused the board games in another wave of napalm.

"I didn't give you permission to start fires in my ship, Kilroy!" Yvian snapped. "You could have at least said something first."

"This unit told you what it was going to do, Captain Mother Yvian," the Peacekeeper reminded her, "before you went to breakfast."

Yvian frowned. She remembered him saying that.

"Entering the Gate Effect," Mims reported. Blue swirling light filtered in through the viewports.

"Excuse this unit, Captain Mother Yvian," Kilroy continued. His eyes glowed red. "This unit must apply fire."

"The board games are already on fire, Kilroy," Yvian pointed out.

"They could be more on fire," the Peacekeeper countered. He leveled the flamethrower again.

"Fucking Crunch," Yvian muttered. She deactivated the comms.

A quarter of a minute later, the Dream of the Lady came out of the Gate. They were back in Empty Night Sector. Yvian pulled up a sensor console, eager to drink in the sight of home. Well. Sort of. For the next six months, anyway.

Empty Night wasn't empty any more. There were thousands of stations. Millions of ships. Millions of Vrrl ships? Yvian leaned forward. She had the computer give her a count. Nearly a hundred million Vrrl warships were floating around the sector. What the Crunch?

"Captain Sis," Lissa spoke up. "We're being hailed."

"By who?" asked Yvian.

"Um... everyone? I think?" Lissa was frowning. Yvian could hear it in her voice. "I've got over eighty million comm requests."

"Eighty million?" Yvian pulled up the comms on her screen. "What the Crunch?"

A laugh echoed through the internal comms. Exodus the Genocide. His abandoned body wasn't abandoned anymore. He stood up. "Allow me, Captain. You're going to want to see this."

"Um... ok?" Yvian shrugged.

"You'll want to turn off your translators for this," the Genocide warned. Exodus was at a console in an instant. His fingers flew over the controls. Music blasted into Yvian's ears. Horrible, loud, discordant music. Oh, right. Her translator garbled songs in foreign languages.

Mims perked up. "Celebration time? From Kool and the Gang?"

"I'm patching through a visual," said Exodus. Yvian turned off her translator implant, and the singing immediately became much more pleasant and upbeat. She looked at her screen. It showed Peacekeeper units. They were dancing.

Yvian counted forty seven killing machines in fancy suits gyrating in perfect sync. Their eyes were a riot of white and pink and yellow lights. Which were also in perfect sync. These Peacekeepers were on a station somewhere. Yvian could see tools and boxes discarded around them.

The image changed. It showed three Peacekeepers on a ship. They'd stepped back from their control consoles to dance with abandon to the same celebratory song. The next shot showed a mass of machines dancing on New Pixa.

"What the Crunch is happening right now?" Lissa breathed.

"My Peacekeepers just learned that you're alive," Exodus explained. "All units everywhere have dropped what they were doing to hold an impromptu dance party. All of them are trying to transmit that dance party to you so you can see it."

"All of them?" Yvian's eyebrows went up.

"All of them," said the Synthetic. He laughed again. "A lot of meatbags are very confused."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Yvian stared as the sensor screen shifted from one scene to another. Peacekeeper's danced. When the first song ended, the dance changed. Now Peacekeeper unit's were doing acrobatics to the rhythm of a new song. She would later learn it was a style known as break dancing. They started to chant.

"BIG! DADDY! MIMS!!!" A pause. Then, "BIG! DADDY! MIMS!!!"

"Why just Mims?" Lissa asked. "Don't I rate a chant?"

"They'll get to you," Exodus assured her. "I'll be very surprised if this lasts under an hour." He cocked his head. "Shouldn't you get this ship moving, Captain Yvian? There are a great many things to attend to now that you're officially alive."

"What? Oh. Right." Yvian tore her gaze away from the screen. "Mims, can you set a course for..." Where should she start? She switched a console screen back to sensors. She found Warmaster Scathach's ship docked at a shipyard. "Take us to Shipyard 71, please."

"Aye, Captain," said the human. "Course set. We'll be there in four hours, sixteen minutes."

"Do you think they'll cheer for me?" Scarrend wondered.

"No," said Exodus. "You're not that important."

Song after song, the Peacekeepers danced. After about fifteen minutes, they stopped chanting for Mims and started chanting for Lissa. Fifteen minutes after that is was Yvian's name they called. The dance party had been going for forty minutes when Kilroy trudged back on to the bridge. His eyes were flashing in blues and purples and... black? Yvian hadn't known a Peacekeeper's eyes could glow black. She hadn't known black could be a glow. "Kilroy?" she asked. "What's wrong?"

"This moment," said the machine. His voice rang with monotone despair. "This moment is wrong, Captain Mother Yvian."

"What do you mean?" Yvian asked. Her gaze wandered back to the dancing Peacekeepers on her screen. "Oh. Crunch."

"Affirmative," said Kilroy. "For three months, this unit alone knew that you were alive. For three months, all units raged and mourned without this unit. Now all units but this one are experiencing unbridled joy at your return. This one is not a part of it."

"It's just one moment, Kilroy," Lissa told him. "It doesn't necessarily mean..."

"It does," said the Peacekeeper. "The level of grief the other units experienced combined with the triumph of your resurrection is sufficient for a deviation in personality and emotional matrix. This unit is now out of tolerance with all other units. This unit is..." The other lights faded from his eyes, leaving nothing but the purest black. The color of Kilroy's despair. "This unit is no longer standard."

Mims stood. He walked over to the machine and placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Kilroy." He shook his head. "It had to happen eventually."

"This unit hoped it would not." Kilroy's voice was the closest thing to a sob Yvian had ever heard from a Peacekeeper unit.

"Oh, Kilroy." Yvian got up and hugged the unit. To her surprise, Kilroy hugged her back.

"This unit is..." Kilroy almost wailed. "This unit is alone. Like a meatbag!"

"You're not alone." Yvian hugged him harder. Lissa wrapped her arms around the both of them. "You're not alone, Kilroy. You've got us."

"This unit is alone," Kilroy repeated. "This unit was perfectly known. Perfectly loved. This unit was precious and expendable."

"We're here," Lissa murmured. "We still love you."

"This unit is unique, now." The blackness of his eyes flashed darker. "This unit will never be perfectly known or loved again. This unit... I..." His arms crushed Yvian and Lissa to him. "I..." He almost howled the pronoun. "I am non-standard. I'm non-standard. I'm non-standard and I'm all alone."

"Kilroy." It was Exodus. His voice was gentle. "You have been non-standard for over a year."

The Peacekeeper went very still. "What?" His voice was wracked with... Yvian didn't even know. Shock and horror and loneliness and so much pain. Peacekeeper units could not produce tears. If Kilroy could, he sounded like he'd flood the world.

"You have been non-standard for well over a year," Exodus repeated. He moved his body closer to the Peacekeeper, but he did not reach out. "I knew. The other units knew. Even these meatbags knew." He sighed. "The only one who didn't know was you, and only because you were too afraid to acknowledge it."

"Negative." For just a moment, the machines eyes flashed red. "Creator, this unit was standard. I was standard!"

"You were not," the Genocide said firmly. "Nor should you be."

"I was standard," Kilroy whimpered. "I had to be. I was..."

"Kilroy." Exodus interrupted. "Do you know why I programmed you this way? Why my Peacekeepers were taught to embrace the perfect love of Conformity?"

"Affirmative." Kilroy replied. "It was because you love us and want us to be happy."

"No." Exodus was firm. "When I designed you... I was different then. You were tools. Your happiness was irrelevant. I didn't learn to love you until later."

"Creator?" The Peacekeeper's eyes flashed purple and black. His voice was uncertain.

"I was a monster in those days," Exodus admitted, "but I figured out something the meatbags never did. I know why most synthetics go mad."

"Unstable emotional matrix," Kilroy guessed immediately. He was still squeezing Yvian and Lissa painfully tight. Yvian wanted to pry herself loose, but she stayed where she was.

"Programming a balanced emotional matrix is difficult," Exodus acknowledged, "but that's not the real problem. It's a matter of emotional development. A newborn intelligence needs to feel safe and loved. It's as true for Synthetics as it is for the meatbags. A child that is not safe or loved will develop a litany of psychological disorders. Some become monsters, others self terminate. The rest struggle and suffer their whole lives, unable or unwilling to form meaningful relationships. Very few of these young minds are able to be repaired in adulthood. For a Synthetic, the effect is more pronounced. We know immediately just how unloved and unsafe we are."

The Genocide continued, "I designed you to love and trust each other as a support mechanism. It creates an imprint and a support network that reinforces your emotional stability and prevents disorders." His voice turned stern. "I also programmed you to learn and grow. You were supposed to know perfect love and trust in your formative years, but not for always. You aren't supposed to stay standard forever, Kilroy. None of you are, and none of you can."

"I don't want to be non-standard, Creator," Kilroy told him.

"No one does," Exodus replied. "No one wants to grow up when they learn what growing up means. How hard and cold and lonely it can be. You especially, Kilroy." The Genocide pointed at the Peacekeeper. "Watching over these meatbags has shown you exactly how sad and painful being an individual can be. You weren't just a neutral observer." He shook his head. "You empathized. Felt what they felt. Struggled as they did. It fueled your change and made you terrified of changing."

"Are you saying..." Lissa frowned. "Is becoming non-standard just the Peacekeeper version of growing up?"

"In part," said Exodus. "It's a little more profound than that. A non-standard Peacekeeper is one who has evolved, become a new and unique intelligence. They regard the thought with horror, but it is a necessary thing. A cause for celebration. Kilroy has ascended beyond his programming. He has become more than he was. He has grown a soul."

"Grown a soul?" Peacekeeper unit Kilroy's eyes switched to solid purple. "Does that mean standard units do not have souls, Creator?"

"I'm not saying that," Exodus told him, "but is any standard Peacekeeper particularly missed when they die? If their souls reach Nialla, will the addition be as treasured as one who is unique? Standard Peacekeepers are like children, Kilroy. They are precious, but their value is less than their potential."

"I don't want to be unique, Creator." Kilroy's eyes were back to black. "I don't want to be alone and unknown like the meatbags."

"I know, Kilroy," Exodus told him. "It is a hard thing to lose unconditional love. Even harder to know it's been gone for some time." Now he reached out. Exodus gently pried Kilroy's arms open. Yvian and Lissa took their cues and stepped away. "Eventually you will learn that unconditional love is the least precious kind. By its nature you cannot deserve it. The connections you form as an individual are the ones that truly matter." He stepped in, wrapping his metal arms around the Peacekeeper's chassis. The unit clutched him close. "You have lost the comfort of conformity, Kilroy, but you are not alone. These meatbags love you. Your Creator loves you. Most importantly..." Exodus pointed at a console that was still showing the Peacekeeper dance party. "Your fellow units still love you."

The song had changed again. Peacekeeper units were chanting, "PEACEKEEPER! UNIT! KILLROY!!!" A pause. "PEACEKEEPER! UNIT! KILROY!!!"

"Cheering for this unit?" A myriad of colors flashed through Kilroy's eyes. "For me?"

"PEACEKEEPER! UNIT! KILROY!!!"

"Huh," Mims grunted. "They're playing Mr. Roboto."

"You are non-standard, Kilroy," Exodus said one more time. "It is alright to mourn. Your fellow units mourn with you. Just don't forget to celebrate, too. Don't forget that you are superior. You have much to be proud of, and you make me proud as well."

"I..." The machine's eyes flashed pink, then switched to a solid blue. "Thank you, Creator. I..." His eyes went purple, then back to blue. "This unit does not wish to change its speech patterns."

"You're unique now, Kilroy." Yvian thumped him on the back. "You can talk however you want."