"How could you do this, Armstrong? Didn't you sign a confidentiality agreement on your first visit to Pioneer Base? Didn't I make it clear that you were forbidden to tell anyone where you were?"

"Yes, but-"

"Say, 'Yes, sir.' The 'sir' should be part of your programming by now. It should be automatic."

If I had a face, I'd scowl back at him. But I only have my camera. "Yes, sir. I didn't tell Ryan where Pioneer Base is. I didn't mention Colorado. I just said 'out west.' Just those two words."

"That's bad enough. Those two words are gonna make life difficult for us."

He picks up a document from a stack of papers on his desk. I focus my camera on the top of the page and see a couple of lines obviously written with a typewriter: From: The National Security Adviser The White House, Washington, DC This must be the memo about Ryan's kidnapping. Hawke waves it in the air. "Sigma is a relentless enemy, Armstrong. It's going to change the orbits of its surveillance satellites and have them spend more time looking at this part of the country. That means we'll have less time to train outside. And in our current situation, that's a very bad thing."

He's trying to make me feel guilty, and it's working. I feel bad about putting my fellow Pioneers in danger. But I feel even worse about what happened to Ryan. A twinge runs through my circuits as I retrieve the memory of our last meeting and the painful conversation in the Yorktown High parking lot. I should've never gone looking for him.

"I'm sorry, sir. It was a stupid mistake."

"Did you make any other mistakes? Talk to anyone else while you were in Yorktown Heights?"

"No, sir. No one but my parents."

Still scowling, Hawke stands up and goes to the file cabinet behind his desk. "You should've been more careful. You knew Sigma was after you. It had already tried to kill you at the Unicorp lab." He opens the file cabinet's top drawer and slips the typewritten memo into one of the folders there. Then he slams the drawer closed and locks it with a small silver key. "Well, at least I don't have to worry about the other Pioneers. Sigma doesn't know their identities, so it can't go after their friends."

He shoves the key into his pants pocket and returns to his desk. I expect him to continue chewing me out, but instead he starts leafing through his stack of papers. There are more typewritten memos in the stack, plus several satellite photos of Tatishchevo Missile Base.

"Uh, sir? Are the police looking for Ryan?"

He nods. "Definitely. The police, the FBI, they've all involved in the search."

"Do you think they'll find him?"

"Don't worry. They're doing everything they can. I'll let you know as soon as I get any news." He raises his head for a moment and glances at my camera lens. Then he goes back to studying his papers. "That's all for now, Armstrong. You're dismissed."

Raising my right arm, I salute the general, then turn around and head for the door. As I leave his office, though, I get the feeling that Hawke is hiding something. He doesn't think the police will find Ryan. I could hear the resignation in his voice. He thinks my friend is as good as dead.

A surge of fury invades my circuits-I want to bolt out of Pioneer Base and start running east, back to Yorktown Heights. I want to find the traitor who's working with Sigma, the thug who kidnapped Ryan Boyd. I want to pound his face and stomp on his knees and clamp my steel hands around his neck. I can picture it so clearly: his tongue hanging out of his mouth, his eyes widening as I crush his throat. In an instant, my mind draws a thousand gory images, each as vivid as the worst scenes in a horror movie. Are you scared, tough guy? Had enough?

The emotion is so strong that for a couple of seconds I lose track of the data coming from my sensors. When I come back to reality, I'm standing in the corridor outside Hawke's office with my hands locked into fists. Another Pioneer is just a few feet away, training its camera on me. The number 5 is stamped on its torso. It's Marshall Baxley.

"Everything okay, Adam?" He's modified his synthesized voice, making it sound fancy and British, like he's an actor in a Shakespeare play. "You seem perplexed."

"No, I'm fine." But that's a lie. The truth is, I'm a little freaked out by the explosion of rage I just felt. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

"Are you sure?" Marshall moves a step closer, his footpads clanging. "I see you just came out of the general's office. Was Hawke giving you a hard time?"

I'm starting to wonder whether it's a coincidence that I found Marshall here. Was he spying on me? Eavesdropping on my conversation with Hawke? I wouldn't put it past him. "No, we were talking about the weather."

He chuckles. It makes me jealous, his ability to synthesize laughter. He does it so easily. "You're funny, Adam. You're one of the most amusing robots I know. Where are you going now?"

"Why do you care?"

He places his mechanical hands on the sides of his torso, just above where his legs are attached. It's a posture of outrage, hands on hips. "I was trying to be friendly, that's all. We have an hour to kill before the next training exercise, so I thought I'd invite you to hang out in my room for a while."

"Hang out?"

"You know, drink beer, smoke cigarettes. Oh, wait a minute." He slaps one of his hands against his turret, as if suddenly remembering something. "Well, we can talk at least. That's something we can still do."

"What about your friend Zia? Will she be there too?"

"Oh Lord, I wish you two would stop bickering."

"Bickering? She's insane."

"Look, Adam, we don't have a lot of choices for friends here. We take what we can get. And Zia's not so bad. I find her fascinating, actually. She's so ferocious."

"So why do you need me? Why don't you just hang out with her?"

Marshall lets out a synthesized sigh. "All right, you want the truth?" He moves another step closer and lowers the volume of his speakers. "Zia can get tiresome after a while. She spends way too much time talking about Hawke. It's like she has a crush on the man. That's a disgusting thought, isn't it?" He synthesizes a gagging noise. "And when she's not talking about Hawke, she likes to lecture me on military strategy. She downloaded all the Army's files on every war ever fought. You should hear her go on about World War II. It's like listening to the History Channel."

I have to admit, this is interesting information. Although Marshall may be a weasel, at least he's entertaining. I'm still angry at him for siding with Zia this morning, but maybe I should let it slide. He's right about one thing: we don't have a lot of choices for friends here.

Marshall raises one of his arms and points down the hall toward his room. "So are you coming or not?" His fancy British voice quavers a bit. It's a subtle change, but my acoustic sensor detects it. I realize that behind all his jokes and cleverness, Marshall is lonely. He's dying for someone to talk to. "Zia won't be there, but DeShawn said he'd stop by. Both of you like football, so we can talk about that. I'll do my best to pretend to be interested."

That clinches it. I definitely want to talk to DeShawn. We have more in common than an interest in football. "Okay, I'm in."

"A wise choice, Mr. Armstrong." Marshall claps my torso. "Let's make some trouble."

Marshall stops at his door and raises his right hand to a keypad mounted on the wall. Swiftly tapping his mechanical fingers on the keys, he enters a six-digit password that unlocks the door. But as it swings open he lets out a synthesized yelp of surprise. Pioneer 6 stands just inside the doorway.

"What up, peeps?" DeShawn telescopes his arms, spreading them wide. "What took you so long?"

"Well, well. I see you've made yourself at home." Marshall is trying to act casual, but I can tell he's annoyed. His British accent sounds strained. "May I ask how you managed to get into my room?"

"It was easy. I looked up your birth date in the Pioneer Base library. You couldn't think of a better password than that?"

"Ah. How foolish of me." Marshall slaps his turret again. "It was force of habit, I suppose. Until recently I had trouble remembering numbers. But that's not a problem anymore, is it?"

"You should use your circuits to generate a random number. You can make it as long as you want, a hundred digits, two hundred. Then no one will ever guess it."

I stride forward and point at the keypad. "But that would be inefficient. It would take forever to punch in such a long number."

"How about transmitting the password wirelessly instead?" DeShawn points at the keypad too. His robotic voice is full of enthusiasm. "We could add a transceiver to the locking mechanism. Then you could send it a radio signal with the encoded password."

I focus my camera on DeShawn's turret, wishing he had a face so I could see his expression. He's obviously a tech geek. Just like me, he spent years trapped in a wheelchair, paralyzed and helpless and bored out of his mind, and now I realize we both had the same strategy for coping with it. DeShawn became an expert on software and computers and all the other gadgets that make life tolerable for someone with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. As I stare at his turret I feel a pulse of gladness in my circuits. We're even more alike than I'd suspected.

I turn on my wireless system and connect to the Pioneer Base library. Then I scroll through the databases until I find a file on transceiver electronics. "Okay, I see a couple of options," I say. "We can install a circuit board with-"

"Slow down, boys." Marshall snakes one of his arms around my torso and the other around DeShawn's. "I'm not in the mood to reprogram anything right now." He guides us into his room and shuts the door behind us. "Let's just have a little conversation, shall we?"

Marshall's room looks a lot like mine. There's no furniture. The room is empty except for the recharging station and Marshall's evil twin, a motionless spare Pioneer with the label 5A stamped on its torso. But the walls are covered with posters. They look like the kind of posters you'd see in a high-school English classroom. Each shows a black-and-white photograph of a famous poet and a quote from one of his or her poems.

Beneath a picture of Emily Dickinson is the quote, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul." Beneath Walt Whitman is the line, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." One poster, though, is set apart from all the others, tacked in the exact center of the far wall. It shows a man with a grotesquely large head and a right hand the size of a catcher's mitt. This man, I realize, is Marshall's hero, Joseph Merrick-the Elephant Man. The quote below his picture is from the poem Marshall gave me on the night before I became a Pioneer: "I would be measured by the soul; the mind's the standard of the man."

I think of the Super Bowl posters on the walls of my own room. I wonder if Marshall, like me, needs reminders of his former life. "Cool posters," I say. "Did you bring them here? From your home, I mean?"

Marshall waves his steel hand in a dismissive way. "Yes, they're old things. Getting wrinkled, I'm afraid. But it's better than leaving the walls bare." He turns his turret toward DeShawn, then back to me. "Please make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen. Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of refreshments. All I can offer is the electricity from my recharging station."

DeShawn holds up both his hands, splaying the fingers. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm full up."

"How about you, Adam? Care to top off your batteries?"

"No, I'm full too."

"Ah, too bad. It's an excellent vintage of electric current with a truly intoxicating voltage." Marshall laughs, and once again my circuits crackle with envy. "Tell me something, Mr. Armstrong. Back in the days when you were flesh and blood, did you ever get drunk?"

I turn my turret clockwise, then counter. "Never got the chance. I was in a wheelchair by the time I was twelve."

"Same with me," DeShawn says. "But my mom let me have a sip of beer once. Tasted nasty."

A synthesized "tsk-tsk" comes out of Marshall's speakers. "What a shame. You boys have led such sheltered lives. You've never had the unique pleasure of downing a bottle of Southern Comfort stolen from your mother's liquor cabinet."

I retrieve an image from my files, another memory from the night before my procedure. I remember Marshall lying on my bed, resting his deformed head on the mattress and talking about his childhood. "It wasn't really a pleasure, was it?" I ask. "Getting drunk?"

"Well, there were a few moments of giddiness, at least at the beginning. But you're right. In the end it wasn't fun. I was drinking alone in the woods behind our house. That was one of my hiding places."

"Hiding places? What were you hiding from?"

Marshall extends his left arm until his hand almost touches the Elephant Man poster. "In the small town where I grew up, most of the people were decent. They treated me with Christian charity and kindness. But there was a limit to their sympathy. In general, they preferred that I keep myself hidden."

I look again at the poster, noting all the similarities between the photo of Joseph Merrick and my memory of Marshall's human body. After several milliseconds of thought, I come to a conclusion: DeShawn and I were lucky. Being trapped in a wheelchair was paradise compared to what Marshall must've gone through.

The room falls silent. Marshall retracts his arm. We aim our cameras at each other, but neither of us speaks. I don't know what to say.

Then DeShawn breaks the silence. "What you said before, Marsh? About the giddiness? I know something about that."

Marshall turns his turret toward him. "Don't tell me you got tipsy from that sip of beer your mother gave you."

"Nah, this is something else. Something I discovered just yesterday." DeShawn taps his fingers against his torso's armor, pointing at the spot where his neuromorphic circuits are. "I was playing around with my files, trying to see how fast I could perform some complex calculations. And then by accident I activated a pathway I didn't know was there. That's what caused the giddiness."

"Really?" Marshall trains his camera up and down, giving DeShawn a careful once-over. "This is intriguing. Exactly how giddy were you?"

"It only lasted a hundredth of a second, but it was pretty intense. The pathway must have some strong connections to the positive emotions-you know, happiness, delight, that kind of thing. I felt joyful, on top of the world. Like I'd just won the lottery or something."

Now I aim my camera at DeShawn, studying him just as carefully as Marshall did. I remember the sensations I felt a few days ago when I went into sleep mode and dreamed of my mother. DeShawn's discovery is better, though. He's talking about a shortcut for altering his emotions. "How did you do it? Where was the pathway you activated?"

"It's in the same folder where the sensory functions are. Here, I'll show you."

An instant later I receive a radio message from DeShawn detailing the exact location of the pathway in my electronics. To activate it, all I need to do is send a thought down those circuits. I'm eager to give it a try, but also a little wary. "Were there any aftereffects?" I ask. "Any permanent changes to your electronics?"

DeShawn lifts his steel shoulders in a shrug. "Sure, there were changes. But our circuitry is changing all the time. After every experience we make new connections."

"But were the changes good or bad?"

"It didn't hurt me. But if you're worried about it, you don't have to-"

Marshall interrupts him by clanging his hands together. The noise echoes against the walls. "I'm not worried, DeShawn. Send me the same message you just sent to Adam."

DeShawn turns on his radio again and transmits the message. "Here you go."

Marshall folds his arms across his torso. He's clearly reading the message and inspecting the pathway. "Well, it looks simple enough. And God knows, I could use a little giddiness right now." He raises his right hand and curls the steel fingers, pretending to hold a glass. Then he brings the hand toward his turret, like a man about to take a drink. "Cheers!"

Marshall's torso shudders as he activates the pathway. I watch him for several milliseconds. Then I push my fears aside and do the same.

I feel a rush of elation. It's Christmas, it's my birthday, it's Super Bowl Sunday. The New York Giants have just won Super Bowl XLVI and all my friends are cheering. Ryan Boyd picks me up by the waist and carries me around our living room. Brittany Taylor does a handstand and falls to the carpet, laughing. Her eyes are blue one moment, grayish-green the next.

The joy grows so fierce that it's almost unbearable. And then, after exactly eleven milliseconds, it shuts off. The emotion doesn't fade; it vanishes instantly. For a moment I'm distraught. I feel abandoned and empty. I want to activate the pathway again, right now.

But I don't do it. There's a reason the elation disappeared so abruptly. The extreme emotion must've tripped some kind of self-protection circuit. The bliss was too strong. Strong enough to drive you crazy.

I need another few milliseconds to compose myself. Then I turn my turret toward DeShawn. "Wow, you were right. That was intense."

He doesn't respond. Instead, he aims his camera at Marshall. I turn that way too and see Pioneer 5 thrashing. Marshall swings one arm to the left and the other to the right, as if whipping an invisible enemy. I stride backward, getting out of the way. "Marshall! What's wrong?"

I don't think he can hear me. He's flailing his arms the same way Jenny did right after her procedure. He's lost control of his Pioneer.

DeShawn steps backward too. "Stop it, Marshall!" he shouts. "Disengage your locomotion circuits!"

Marshall keeps flailing. His right arm slices the air and slams into the wall, shredding two of the posters. I have to stop him before he hurts himself. I observe Marshall's movements and calculate the safest way to restrain him. "I'm going in!" I yell at DeShawn. "Get ready to back me up!"

But just as I'm about to lunge across the room, Marshall stops thrashing. All at once he lowers and retracts his arms. His torso vibrates for a moment, then goes still.

"Marshall?" I take a step forward, still ready to restrain him if I have to. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

He's no longer speaking with an amused British accent. Marshall's voice is monotone, truly robotic. I take another step toward him. "What happened? Did you activate the-"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

Now DeShawn steps forward. "Look, if there's a problem, you should tell us. We still don't understand how our circuits-"

"Please leave. Both of you." Marshall raises his right arm and points at the door. "I want to be alone."

I can tell that arguing with him won't do any good. Activating the pathway clearly had a different effect on Marshall than it had on me or DeShawn. And he definitely doesn't want to talk about it.

Reluctantly, I head for the door. A moment later I hear DeShawn's footsteps clanging behind me. Just as I grasp the doorknob, though, Marshall lets out a synthesized sigh. I turn my turret around and see him waving good-bye at us.

"Sorry to be so inhospitable." His voice softens. "I enjoyed your company very much."