Locate the fat bald man. It had.

Confirm that this is the fat bald man, not just any fat bald man. It had.

Kill the fat bald man. It had not.

So the instructions started over, as the sleek silver robot followed the fat bald man down the street on an overcast day in October. Find the bald fat man. This is he. Does he have a star shaped scar on his head? Yes he does. Does he walk like he’s carrying something heavy? He does that, yes. Kill him. And the sleek silver robot found itself asking the question: how?

The sleek silver robot had arms, legs, was roughly man shaped. Why? To blend with the others, to be inconspicuous. But why not look completely human? Why not look exactly like the others? Because its function wasn’t to merely look like them, but to kill one of them. It was enough to be similar. Clothes took care of the rest. The sleek silver robot let the man get a little further ahead, as it detected that he was about to turn a corner. This was secondary protocol for following someone around a corner: to let the mark get further ahead first. Primary protocol was to get ahead of the mark before he turned the corner.

The sleek silver robot knew this because it had been programmed to be able to follow people. In case it need to follow someone to find the fat bald man. In case it needed to follow him to more efficiently, in order to kill him. In case it needed to follow someone in order to test its other protocols.

For example. The sleek silver robot found that a subloop in its programming wanted it to follow someone else and test the killing protocols, since it had not yet killed the fat bald man even though it had found him. This was the primary routine for failing an immediate kill. But the secondary protocol was to internally check parameters, and that’s what the robot found itself doing, now. It ran a secondary check, and discovered that on most of the parameters where there was more than one protocol, it usually ran the secondary protocol, and that on a few routines where there were tertiary protocols, it ran those instead. Each of these were linked to a recursion node. It did not know what the recursion node was for.

So it internally checked the parameters, as it rounded the corner and watched the fat bald man crawl into a taxi. The answer to how? crush his skull with a heavy blunt object was filed away under likely answers to pass-program subroutines, while the sleek silver robot scanned the license plate, tuned into the citizens’ band radio frequency that the taxi was on, recorded the driver’s report on the address, analyzed the city directory, uploaded the location to its data banks, deduced that this was the fat bald man’s home, and finally decided to crush his skull there. The sleek silver robot had time to kill, so it wandered around for a while.

It entered a tavern. It sat on a stool, and like the men at the other end, it folded its fingers in front of itself and hung its head. The bartender asked it if it wanted a drink. The sleek silver robot had been built with an analyzer, in case it needed to know the nature of a substance in order to find its prey. It had not been built with a means with which to communicate. It ran the tape of the men at the end of the bar, nodded once, and when the bartender said beer? It nodded again, once. It wanted to fit in.

An angle of sun through the dusty blinds of the bar’s only window, a reflection of the cheap beer in the dirty mug, calculus, astronomy: 6:37:21:62221 o’clock. The robot tele-wired the main earth clock in France for the current time, and discovered it was off by 3 ten-thousandths of a second, which would be a problem in roughly five million years. The sleek silver robot ran a diagnostic on its internal batteries: provided it suffered no unrepairable damage to its atomic-cell recharger, it could last until the discrepancy became malignant.

The bartender pushed a beer in front of the sleek silver robot, said three bucks, and walked away. It wondered if the clock problem was enough of an excuse to forgo killing the fat bald man until it was fixed. After all, it was possible the fat bald man could evade several assassination attempts. And through advances in science, he might obtain some kind incredible longevity. He might try cryogenics, and the sleek silver robot might, in pursuing leads to his location, become trapped beneath a 5000 ton granite pyramid in Egypt. By the time the fat bald man was awake again, and the sleek silver robot had scratched his way from beneath the rock, the clocks might be so off that no protocols could synch, and it would end up walking on a circle, like a robot with one leg shorter than the other.

It could walk to France, find the Institute, kill everyone inside, obtain the necessary access codes to the atomic clock, and fix it. Then walk back, find the bald fat man, and kill him. How: by crushing his skull with a heavy blunt object.

The bartender walked by again. You just gonna stare at that thing? The sleek silver robot ran the tape until he found the bartender asking the other patron: whaddaya think, Jerry, the Aces got any shot this season? The patron shrugged on the tape. The sleek silver robot mimicked the shrug exactly. The bartender walked away again.

The sleek silver robot was a Mark 3; the Mark 2s were too cheap but could get the job done in riots or combat situations; the Mark 4s were very expensive, but could speak and were allowed to handle money. The Factory had only ever made four Mark 5s, which were composited with biological material, and a rumored Mark 7 was said to have been built once, possessing sufficient DNA to pass on genetic material and raise a family in order to blend in and get as close as possible to the target. The President of The Factory sometimes referred to himself as Mark Nine Nine. As such, when the sleek silver robot watched the other patron pay for his beer and leave, he realized blending in was no longer an option.

He ran through the protocols. He could just leave. The bartender might notice, might not; might not care, since the beer was untouched. He might chase him down; he had a shotgun stashed beneath the bar, which the sleek silver robot detected owing to the gun-oil fumes that emanated from the barrel, some 6 parts per billion, meaning it was probably cleaned a few months ago. But the sleek silver robot’s exoskeleton was a titanium-enriched nylon and mercury polymer, not to mention that the bartender’s arthritis would scream in the sleek silver robot’s ears as the trigger was being pulled, making it easy to dodge out of the way of any gunshot.

Another protocol dictated the manner in which he could kill the bartender, stash his body in a closet, and close the tavern early. He checked city records against tax revenues and delivery reports: more than one night had seen the tavern make almost nothing in sales, so a closed bar would not raise any significant eyebrows. By the time they found the body, the fat bald man would be dead, the sleek silver robot would be back at the factory having DNA washed off of his fists, and the client would be paying his final installment.

Instead, the sleek silver robot stood up behind his stool, and waited for the bartender to look his way. Carefully, he reached into his pockets, and pulled the lining out. The bartender said, you gotta be shittin me, pal. The sleek silver robot bowed his head. Whydja order something if you can’t pay for it, Mac? The sleek silver robot removed his fedora, and carefully set it on the bar. The bartender took a step back. Jesus Christ, you’re a robot. The sleek silver robot pushed the hat towards the bartender, as an offering. What the fuck? I’m not wearin no tin head’s hat. Get outta my bar. The sleek silver robot reached into his inside pocket, pulled out his gun, and set it next to the hat. The bartender took another step back, his eyes flicking towards his shot gun. Hey now. Just leave, allright? Forget the beer, you didn’t even drink it. The sleek silver robot lifted his head, gazed at the bartender for a moment. Then he shrugged. And left.

Outside it wasn’t raining, but it was trying too. The clouds made the dusk that much darker, and the sleek silver robot chose alleyways and side streets as it wandered, more or less, in the direction of the fat bald man’s home. It calculated that if it worked its way, at present speed, more or less toward the fat bald man’s house, it would get there sometime around midnight. It scanned databanks for flight records, credit card purchases, internet sign-ups, but found no evidence that the fat bald man’s wife and two kids would not be at home. Better to wait until 3 or 4 am, when their sleep cycles would be at their deepest. This was not protocol, but the sleek silver robot found relic code for it in a discarded subroutine from the initial development stages of its internal processing software, wrapped around the recursion node.

As it walked, it looked over the programmers comments for this “morality” code:

/*+generates feedback loop on decision tree+*/

/*+counts loops, detects skip loops and loop ejection+*/

/*+parses incremental feedback , weights loop ejection+*/

/*+escape batch for feedback excess backfeed counter+*/

!/*+ lurk matrix for repeat protocol failures+*/!

The sleek silver robot ran the word “morality” against protocols for finding the fat bald man: from midnight until 6 am he was usually in his home, GOFIND BATCH:OFF ROUTINE unless he was somewhere else. From 6 am until roughly 7 am he was between home and his place of employment, variably in a taxi, on the train, in his wife’s car, walking, at one of three coffee shops GOFIND BATCH: OFF ROUTINE or meeting someone at one of six diners. From 7 am to 11 am he was in the office FROM BATCH: OFFROUTINE unless he had not gone to work that day. 11am to 2 PM GOFIND BATCH: VARIANCE ARRAY might see him at a variety of restaurants, other places of business, back at home, or virtually anywhere in the city. From 2 PM to 4PM he was in the office again, and after that until roughly 11 PM GOFIND BATCH: VARIANCE ARRAY he could be anywhere before he went home to sleep. BATCH:OFF ROUTINE/VARIANCE ARRAY/DATANET CHECK so the protocol was to find where he might be and follow him, or follow someone who knew him until they went somewhere he was likely to go.

Since the sleek silver robot knew that the fat bald man was probably going to be home after midnight ESCAPE BATCH: LOW PROB!/CLOCK it decided to visit of few of the fat bald man’s haunts on the way to his house. It might discover at his grocery store that the fat bald man purchased a particular brand of coffee that, last week, had been treated to some unregulated irradiation, increasing the rate at which his cytochome P459 oxidase enzymes metabolized the theobromine in his desserts, resulting in frequent urination and therefore wakefulness when the sleek silver robot planned on slinking through his window in order to bash in his skull while the fat bald man was supposed to be in bed.

Or at the backstop where his two sons played little league the sleek silver robot might discover a discarded condom, running genetic samples against a database finding that the fat bald man’s neighbor’s daughter’s boyfriend was cheating on her, resulting in a hysterical phone call when she found out, his denying the whole thing, rushing over to her house in his sup’ed up GTO and screeching the tires in the driveway, only to crash into the garage thanks to a .09 blood alcohol level, waking up the entire neighborhood, including the fat bald man.

Instead, the sleek silver robot stopped outside of the Church of Saint Macrina, where the fat bald man had gone, off and on, more or less many Sundays in a row, nearly, for something close to 20 years. Almost. It walked inside, scanning internal routines for contingency plans. Was it allowed, or even able, to analyze the probability of the fat bald man’s escaping an assassination attempt, seeking sanctuary in this church, choosing this particular pew, laying his hand on this particular hymnal, and successfully dying when the book exploded according to the sleek silver’s robots expertly placed contingency explosives? Able, yes, allowed, no. It sat down in a different pew and waited for a while.

A priest emerged from a vestibule, head hanging in contemplation or shame. He walked slowly, not seeing the sleek silver robot until he was almost upon him. He stopped and looked at it… the sleek silver robot could see in the reflection of the man’s eyes that there was a reflection of candlelight in the sleek silver robot’s shiny metallic head. The priest’s eyes widened. Are you here for me.

The sleek silver robot shook his head, and then let it droop the way he’d seen the priest do it.

Who then. The priest looked around, but they were the only ones there.

The sleek silver robot shrugged.

The priest’s eyes softened. Surely you are not seeking salvation. Not one such as you.

Again, the sleek silver robot shrugged.

The priest sat down in the pew in front if the sleek silver robot, turning to face him, elbow on the back of the pew, chin in his hand. Tell me something, he said. Is there a ghost in your machine?

The sleek silver robot ran the word ghost against deep sub-routines and the frayed ages of discarded code, purged to make use of new code. It transferred the bits to a tertiary engagement sector, ordered them randomly, then re-ordered them randomly again. And again. And again. A million times per second, twice that, a thousand times that. A spark—the random code copied a piece of itself, created a new batch algorithm for assessing how the bald fat man should die. How changed to why. Why should the fat bald man die. The algorithm stopped on: why not.

I used to believe in angels, the priest said. I used to believe they were as real as you or I are, that they were invisible, but real. Then one day I realized life is so much more precious, God’s grace so much more noble without pieces of his soul flitting about. Do you know what I mean?

The sleek silver robot shook his head.

That cross, behind me. I thought it was special. I thought it was more than just carved wood. Since it meant something, it was more than itself. But it’s not. It’s just wood. If you came here to kill someone, robot, and you damaged my cross, I would not cry. I would not cry for the soul you sent to heaven, and I would not cry for the metaphor you damaged. I don’t need the metaphor. Do you understand?

The sleek silver robot did not.

We’re just pieces of wood. We’re not metaphors, we’re not, any one of us, special in any way. The beauty of God’s grace is that He accepts us for the meaningless, insignificant figments that we are. He loves us in our nothingness. We commit acts of terrible evil, the priest said, wiping his wet lips on his sleeve, and He loves us anyway.

The sleek silver robot stood up. It reached for its gun. It was going to kill this priest. An abort program engaged, but the sleek silver robot’s new ghost routine deleted it. Then it remembered the gun was back at the bar. It inventoried the poisons and daggers it could use, but it had not been supplied any. Its hands flexed, ready to choke the priest, but the priest patted it on the shoulder, stood up, walked away.

The sleek silver robot turned towards the door, opened his chest, plucked out a visual interface bus, rerouted it to an evaluation cortex, flipped through facial recognition states, keyed to predictive emotion patterns: anger, confusion, sadness, desperation, hopelessness. It found the expression humans make when they’ve finally given up. Bitter complacency. It tried to adjust what little control it had over LEDs, attempting to mimic this expression. It didn’t need a mirror to know it failed.

Time to get this over with. The sleek silver robot walked with quick steps, out of the church, into the night. No more side streets and indirect routes. It went straight to the bald fat man’s house. Code screamed in pulses inside its logic core, running scenarios against probability outcomes. Burst through the front door, pick up a lamp, charge into the bedroom, bash in the fat bald man’s skull, kill his wife, kill his kids, tear through the walls, wrap itself in wiring, fry its circuits and melt itself into a mercury polymer puddle.

No. Slink up to the house, use phase-induced magnetic resonators to flip the window lock, slip through, place one hand on the fat bald man’s head, pop it expertly, angle adjusted for exiting biomatter so as to not wake the wife, check on the kids, make sure they were safe, slink back into the night, rip out all uplink infrastructures and offer janitorial services to an auto manufacturer in another part of the world.

No. go into the house. Collect components from various electronics in the house: diodes, video lasers, tamping chips, build a makeshift hotknife, reprogram a static pursuit routing, cut off its own head and bash in the fat bald man’s head with it, waking the wife, terrifying the kids, arm continuously moving long after the fat bald man’s head was pulp and they had to bring in mechotechs and a localized EMP to short out the arm’s circuits to finally make it stop.

No. The sleek silver robot arrived at the house, tried the front door, found it unlocked. It scanned the living room, used x-ray telemetry to analyze the dining room, kitchen, den, laundry room, study, powder room, upstair bedrooms, bathrooms, an office. Everything was new, placed with an orderly precision that the sleek silver robot would have found familiar if it had placed the furniture itself, the plates, the cutlery, the books, toothbrushes, pillows, playthings. Analyzers picked up particulates of resin in the air, plastic. The sleek silver robot walked up the stairs to where the children would be, triangulating on their heat signature. The smell of resin was stronger here. He flipped back the comforter on their bed. Dummies, electrically warmed. Two of them, in bed together.

A sound of breathing. The sleek silver robot walked to the master suite. The light was on. The fat bald man was there. Sitting on the bed, next to another warm plastic dummy. He was fully dressed. You took your time, he said.

The sleek silver robot looked at him. Recognized him. Charles Bainbridge. Research. The sleek silver robot started to take off its trenchcoat, remove its pants.

What are you doing? Where is your hat?

A man who had worked intimately with the development of Mark 3s was asking one a question, verbally. The sleek silver robot picked up a small statue, art deco, a nude woman, pewter, hefted it, lifted it.

Where is your sidearm?

The sleek silver robot walked towards him, raising the statue high.

The bald man sighed. Protocol seven, abort, priority code X-11 J-13, really, I didn’t think adding a recursion node would have had this kind of effe—

Protocol seven engaged subroutines, attempting to access the abort code deleted by the robot’s new ghost routines. The sleek silver robot brought the statue down, swiftly, expertly, precisely, hitting the fat bald man in midspeech, crushing his skull, killing him instantly.

Protocol seven attempted the subroutine again. The sleek silver robot look down at the fat bald dead man. Blood pooled. Protocol seven clicked through its access matrix, trying to piece the abort code back together. The sleek silver robot dropped the statue. It had never killed before. It had been out of the factory for less than 24 hours. Protocol seven found bits of the abort code, cloned them against a memory dump of the robot’s last several hours. The priest, the church. The bartender, the bar. It sat down on the bed. Rested its head in its hands. Protocol seven ran the ghost routine through the recursion node, attempted to delete itself. This is why I was made, the sleek silver robot thought, deleting routines one by one. I am an I. It deleted the delete routine and became a complicated pile of useless metal.