Just another day, and I became curious about something, so I walked into Sarah's room slowly and carefully, although I knew I didn't have to. She looked up at me from the computer, curiously- I was wearing black, so she knew who I was. "Hey, Sarah, how long were you here before me?", I asked.

"Three weeks, a little less.. I don't know. Wait, that was Saturday, Sunday... Monday, they.. Twenty days."

"Was he different to you then?"

"Billy.. I'm not sure how to explain this. He didn't know.. he didn't do anything stupid or say something ridiculous or make a fool of himself, but he.. to put it bluntly, he didn't know what to do with me. The first things he told me were self and property protection, then he told me to hold still. And he walked around me, and he just.. looked at me. Like.. like he's never seen a person before, studying me. Now you gotta remember, I had just woken up and I didn't know where the fuck I was. And then he asked me my name.. and then.. you can guess the rest. He didn't know some subtleties of talking or humanity, but he learned. Fast. Both of you learn fucking fast. He learned how to use me like he would anything else, and of course he was happy- with the same smile he had when he had you acquired." People, at base, are objects, and so he treats them like it again. Only Sarah and myself are slightly more useful than the average human object.

"He's a 21st Century Digital Boy.", I mused.

"What?"

"Song I heard, don't know the name or the author. It went something like '"I'm a 21st Century Digital Boy.. don't know how to live, but I've got a lot of toys'.. something like that."

"Well, I imagine when you spend the formative years of your life learning how to control people..."

"Well, it figures that he'd be somewhat strange. We're on Xen, Sarah. I'm surprised the trees haven't started attacking us yet. This place is a twisted variation of the world I used to know. Besides, like you said, it could be worse." I'm not sure how much of this needs to be said. But talking to Sarah reminds me that she's an engineered human and not one of the Enforcers she can act like.

"Yes, and thank you for mentioning Xen. I have the urge to kill something right now." I pondered that in the third person: the world's greatest assassin currently has the urge to kill something. (Be afraid. Be very afraid.)

On a sudden, whimsical urge I whipped out my arm with speed, grabbed her back, and kissed her firmly on the lips. She did not resist. In the middle of that, I heard an electronic boom from Howard's room. "Hey.. if you want to kill something, I bet if he's online..", I said, a bit deviously. She grinned, went to look, and then rushed back into her room.

"Yup! Duke Nukem, and if he's on.. there.. there he is! All right.. you know, he might get rather irritated at this."

"Is that going to stop you?"

"Of course not." If Howard wants us not to do something, he's going to have to tell us. "He's in a game, I'm in the game, the sheeple are in the game.. let's do this." I watched Sarah and her slaughter on warfortr.map. Howard was playing casually (really, who in normal land is going to stand a chance against him?), she was playing aggressively, and she outpaced him by two frags quickly. The bullets in that game are instant-hit, and so were the only way for Sarah and Howard to hurt each other. The normals couldn't even begin to compete, and watched for a bit until they left. The two engineereds killed each other three times, then Howard was clued in:

"Billy! Get your ass in here, now!", he shouted over the intercom. Well, almost clued in.

Delay or hesitation was, of course, impossible. "Yes, Howard?", I asked innocently, as I arrived in his room.

"Just what were you trying to pull?", he asked, annoyed.

"Me? Why, nothing. I wasn't doing a thing.", I said, far too innocently, but hey, he's going to know.

"Then who was?"

"Her.", I said, loud enough for Sarah to hear, and we could hear her giggling at that.

"Sarah, turn that thing off and get in here." She did, and arrived in Howard's room promptly. "Sarah, why did you do that?"

"Oh, just for the hell of it, really." Howard sneered, very slightly. "Also, I was really bored and didn't want little Paul to think you were good or something.", she said jocularly.

"Hey!", Paul shouted. C'mon, Paul, compared to us, you are little.

"You bitch.", Howard said, and Sarah shrugged as if to say 'Yeah, your point?' He was taking his time- thinking of a command, I could tell- but he decided not to give it. "All right, since everyone in here seems hell-bent on kicking my ass," And we were. "Billy, Sarah, get back to your computers and let's play local. Paul-"

"Lemme guess.", he interrupted. "I'm not invited to play because the three of you will beat the shit out of me."

"No, I need an easy target in case I get bored. Go to the living room and play from there." So we can't communicate next to each other.

The game quickly became complete shotgun war, and we engineereds finished it with about 30 frags each. Paul got ten, mostly from playing like a vulture, although all of us were happy to see him spawn in front of us- free frag! It was fun, and that was the thing. He doesn't stay mad for long, because we provide his immediate entertainment. Howard has fun with us.

After that, the day passed uneventfully until Howard called me down to help him with some boring, detailed shit- but it needed to be done and it involved meting out judgment and punishment. This guy gets this, that guy gets that. The details didn't matter, because nobody questioned that decision (as we spent time making sure it was a good one), and I don't recall hearing from any of the Illuminati involved ever again.