I forced myself that next dinner to ask Ted about the progress of his stun gun experiments on the robotic parts we retrieved and reactivated, much to his surprise. He'd been working with Sheila and Hanna daily on this project as if it were the most urgent mission and a possible attack imminent. My silence and indifference to their work on this subject had over the weeks struck a strange confusion in all, yet all of them unable to brooch this reticence on my part and my question immediately broke the ice. They all breathed a deep sigh of relief and our friendships cemented again.

In part it was their own deep preoccupation in this preparation for war that had caused their silence and my own, as if I were too troubled to inquire into the matter. It was as if we were too good friends, never to interrupt silences, almost the trances I fell into at our round tables, while the rest gabbled away about the scenarios of upcoming battles. Only a few times in the last three weeks had I invited Hanna or Sarah to join me at the bedside of Juliet, to examine her like nurses and make some minor adjustments in the wiring around her hips and which they'd though might improve her sensory improvements. One was a chip which they'd recovered from the dismembered parts of one of the crushed robots, still intact, and which significantly improved the movements of her legs.

But both Hanna and Sarah were confused at the loving glances which we exchanged each morning at our first greetings. When they weren't there I would always kiss her on the lips. When they entered the room with me, she only received my smile, as warm as any kiss, and they, being women, easily understood this. Yet both of them were too shy or discreet creatures to mention this to Ted or anyone else. It was feminine discretion at its best.

But after this brief question, which I perceived as a breath of relief, I spoke up again and redoubled their troubled minds and everyone's consternation.

I addressed Ted in no uncertain tone of voice that I was still in charge of this outfit, and that all experiments with weapons of destruction were to stop immediately, that this lab would be shut down and a new and far better one set up. We would set out, the four of us, and acquire a whole new set of equipment from all the most advanced laboratories to the south, as far as San Francisco or San Diego if necessary.

Our mission was about to take a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. My plan was to learn how to graft living human skin tissue to robotic, titanium arms and torsos. The Japanese had already made significant progress in this field, and we could improve upon it. My plan was to humanize the robots, with Juliet as our first example. This idea was never deemed possible, never considered, and the mouths of everyone at the table were agape again and speechless. But in all their minds it was as if a bright new star had appeared in the sky, the star of Bethlehem.

After a few minutes of dazed silence, the questions began to fly. Only Hanna had an inkling of this development which her beautiful face revealed in a beaming smile, which I reciprocated.

Then I spoke: "I'm sick of death. I'm sick of hiding. We are all on a path of continuing both. Juliet has taught me something. Looking for days into that gaping hole from the shell which should have been a woman's womb I came to an epiphany. I'd like to make it one".

Again, a long pregnant pause ensued, as such a crazy idea touched their consciousness.

"Why fight as two alien beings when we can combine ourselves. You know the first battle came out with 99.999 per cent of the human race destroyed. I would call that a defeat and not a scenario for a second shot. There are a few hundred of us left, and probably a few dozen of our robotic enemies. I'm not including the disintegrating hives that they've built, control centers but deeply flawed and doomed to destruction over the next few decades as their power sources fail and their lights go out permanently".

" This is our moment to negotiate a truce, to integrate, to combine, and we'll make concessions on both sides, to become one species".

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