"Absolutely not."

"What?! But it'll increase their effectiveness by-"

"Fucking hell Stanley, I told you to NOT apply sentience to the MedBots!"

A man in a white coat stormed stomping into the complex's medical bay, boots thundering through the relatively small room, clearly not meant to house more than a few sick people and a one-man workstation. Other than the polished black boots that appeared to be more fitting of a military setting, he was clearly a doctor - and a very angry one, at that. He threw a small duffel bag stuffed with his scrubs and personal equipment at the empty workstation, snapping a pair of light-blue rubber gloves over his hands before pinning a name to his coat under the embroidered Neosansus logo, that had the name 'Dr. R. Salavi' printed on it. The fluorescent lights accentuated the dark circles around his gray-blue eyes, complemented by his skin that looked like the oddest combination of being both tan and pale.

Behind him, in a hurried step, entered another man in an open white coat bearing the same insignia, adjusting a narrow black tie with a quick cough to clear his throat. A stubble-decorated jawline framed his entertained smirk, showing that the uttered threat just now didn't do much to deter him, as he was soon to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Don't worry, it'd be years until any medical robot would put you out of a job," his voice rang with unwavering confidence, "you'd be lucky to even be alive to see the day-"

The soles of his shoes screeched sharply when he came to an abrupt stop as soon as the doctor stopped and turned around to face him, jaws visibly clenched through his skin. He looked him up and down once, glaring daggers all throughout his body. "MB-05," he called, and some soft whirring could be heard from the back of the medical bay.

"05? You already have five operational-?"

"Shut up, Stanley..." the doctor reached into the pocket of his coat, and with a crinkling sound pulled out a disk of hardened colorful sugar - a simple lollipop - and locked it between his jaws, already making a crack through it. "You sound like you still have remnants of nasal congestion, which has led you to an ineffective sleep pattern. My best guess is that this faulty sleep schedule has impaired your already poor sense of judgment," he delivered a deadpan diagnosis while a simple-looking robot approached, rolling over on orb-shaped wheels attached to the bottom of its skirt-like lower half made of white plates that lightly shifted as it kept its balance; two arms with a red cross on their shoulders were attached to the torso and the head was a rectangular with a red scanner lens on the front of it.

Standing at about the middle of Dr. Salavi's torso, the MedBot looked up for further instructions, turning to Stanley as the doctor merely gestured towards him.

The MedBot turned, a red light turning on behind its lens as it tilted it up and down once before focusing on Stanley's face.

[[ Patient identification : Stanley Shain ]]

Sounding like the machine that they were, these models clearly weren't designed to mimic a human in any aspect. It continued before Stanley could react.

[[ Scans suggest a slow recovery from a recent strain of the common cold || Fatigue might be correlated to earlier ailments || Suggested treatment : plenty of rest will have the patient recovering quicker and feeling refreshed. Should the symptoms persist, a medicinal approach is recommended to terminate the strain completely ]]

The doctor simply raised an eyebrow as Stanley looked back at him. "I don't need a machine to tell me what I've taught it," another muffled crack was heard as he ground his teeth across the candy's fragments, "robots will never replace humans in medicine entirely, not in diagnosis nor in treatment - sentience or not, they're still unfeeling machines."

"You mean like yourself?"

Both men snapped over to another man standing at the bay's door, his smile hidden behind a half-emptied cup of coffee and a small mane of curly beard to match his hair. Leaning against the entrance's metal frame, his tired eyes met the doctor's own, narrowing as his upper lip drew back a little to reveal his teeth.

"Shouldn't you be wearing a coat or something?" Dr. Salavi let out a low grunt, looking the newcomer up and down from his shirt depicting some binary joke to his old sneakers, causing the MedBot at his side to do the same, initiating another scan.

[[ Patient identification : Adam Winterbottom ]]

The man raised a toast to the MedBot, who focused its lens on the cup.

[[ Container shows to have a high concentration of sugar and caffeine. Data shows that for an adult of your age and weight, consuming more than 4 doses of these amounts in this concentration might result in health ri- ]]

The robot was abruptly silenced when the doctor elbowed its head. "I didn't ask for a medical advice," he gritted his teeth, "get back to your charging station, bolt-bag," he added and the MedBot simply turned around, rolling to the back of the room.

"Let me guess, you were in another hospital round to check on the distributed prototypes?" Adam's face remained in its unchanged display of tiredness as he took another sip from his mug.

"What else?" Dr. Salavi rolled his eyes and turned from making sure the robot is stationary again to face Adam. "Please tell me you're at least here for something other than wearing down my every last nerve."

Adam shot a knowing look towards Stanley, who just returned a sheepish shrug. "Yeah, I'm here to save you from this hell," he gestured to the chief programmer as he reached to his pocket, digging a small flash-drive out and tossing it to the doctor. "Do you remember how to install their patches, or do you want me to run that by you again, old man?"

"Just take this piece of work with you and go," the doctor waved them off dismissively, grabbing his tablet from his workstation and walking to the back to upgrade the robots.

"Will do, Raphael," Adam called, answered by angry muttering as he grabbed Stanley by his coat before dragging him out of the medical bay.

"First of all, dear intern-"

"Former intern," Adam corrected Stanley as they headed towards the I.T department's offices, downing what's left of his coffee.

"-how dare you imply that I am hell incarnate?" Stanley continued regardless, poking a finger in Adam's shoulder.

"I said no such thing, that's just your take on it," Adam gave a weary smile, just as he always did, as long nights of patching up codes and fixing bugs have left him over time with a certain permanent look of either 'I just got up' or 'I am about to pass out in 5 minutes'. "At least Raphael complimented you."

Stanley raised an eyebrow, donning an amused smirk. "You're talking about that 'piece of work' comment, are you?"

"The one and the same," they both walked into Adam's office, him muttering something about having a coffee maker installed in it, but immediately backtracking while mumbling something about caffeine poisoning, "and honestly, I can't blame him."

The chief programmer sounded something between a grunt and an amused laugh, throwing himself into the only other free chair in the office not belonging to the multi-screen workstation. "Not you too..."

"I'm serious," Adam was well used to these odd combinations by now, after finding them odd and confusing when he first started his internship with Stanley, years ago. "Can't believe you actually went along with suggesting him to give the MedBots sentience. For once I thought you were joking."

Stanley snorted out an amused laugh, leaning back in the chair and crossing his arms over his stomach. "Whatever gave you that idea?"

Adam stayed quiet, moving his eyes back and forth as he was, in all truth and honesty, trying to think how he dared to believe something so absurd. "Yeah, true, this one's on me. Should've seen that coming," he shrugged and took the chair at his workstation, turning it on. "But I wasn't joking either, when I told you it was a bad idea to even bring it up, and even more so to apply."

Rolling his eyes and spinning around in his chair once, Stanley sighed deeply, clicking his tongue a few times before stopping right in front of Adam. "Come one, I'm sure you do understand the benefits of sentient robots in the medical profession, as one unbiased by the risk of eventually losing your job."

"Yeah, the day robots can debug themselves would be the end of more than just my job," a smile flashed across his face before turning serious again. "But Raphael's right, some things just can't replace good ol' fashion human intuition."

"Oh, please..."

"Surely, if you look into it, some medical achievements have been reached by people 'following their gut' and working off-protocol."

Stanley wasn't convinced. "Some of these also ended in disaster because even medical professionals couldn't foresee some consequences-"

"Yes, but consequence calculation is something the MedBots are programmed to do as it is." Adam pointed out, running his fingers through his beard. "As a matter of fact, the capacity to feel might actually interfere with their process of diagnosis and deduction to create the most beneficial decision. The most it can do is, perhaps, make patients feel a little more at ease around them, if they get over the non-human appearance."

"When..." Stanley blinked, "since when are you such a behavioral expert, anyway?"

"I've just been in contact with Uriel and with Lucy to decide which bugs in the MedBots' behavioral functions could actually be a beneficial feature," Adam explained, glancing at the glowing monitors displaying folders upon folders of complex code compilers. He sighed after another moment, looking back to his former mentor. "Look, at the end of the day, these hospitals have commissioned these robots to assist the human staff, not to replace even a single one. Just let the humans deal with their emotional resolve and leave the precision execution to the MedBots."

"First you're a behavioral expert and now you're a buzz-kill?" Stanley huffed, soon to be startled by a series of rhythmic beeps coming from a tablet strapped across his chest, sounding almost like a Morse code. "No-no-no-no I didn't mean you!" he muttered and took the tablet out of the case, embedded with an insignia made of 4 identical triangles put together in a way that - if you'd tilt your head and squint - would look like a winged animal.

Speaking of dubious feats... "Should I really be surprised that you've completely disregarded all guidelines regarding alterations of the company-manufactured tablets?" It was getting more and more difficult for Adam to keep track of Stanley's various miscreation. Already being a challenge before they were both hired to work for Neosansus, this company and its A.I-oriented projects seemed to have made the man more...creative.

"Come on, Buzz is harmless!" Stanley put up his best offended face, pulling the tablet close to its chest like some fuzzy pet, and it responded with a different series of beeps. "You're not going to tell on the lil' thing, are you?" adding pleading eyes to the mix, a man appointed as head programmer reverted to looking like a kid pleading to their parent in hopes to let them keep said fuzzy pet.

"No, Lillian's little projects are harmless," Adam argued, pointing a finger at Stanley and his quite literal 'pet project', "but you...what you do probably breaks more than just the ethical guidelines of this company."

Stanley stared quietly for a moment before donning a smirk Adam had familiarized himself with all too well; a particularly prideful, devilish smirk. Controversy was never an insult to him, not for as long as the two knew each other.

Rather, he was known for stirring ones every now and then. "Don't give me that..." Adam sighed and turned to his monitors, pulling up a window with his tasks list for the day. "In fact, don't you have some other important project to supervise?" he stared at his empty coffee cup and furrowed his brow, wishing he had stopped to get a refill at the kitchenette, seeing now how much work has piled up.

"I do, actually," Stanley slid out of the chair, clicking his tablet off and putting it back in its case. "Just thought you'd like some company for a little while, but if you're going to just kick me out..." he took a deep breath to an obvious - and redundant - dramatic effect. "Fine, be that cruel."

"Are you sure you didn't just forget?" Adam suggested, peering over his shoulder.

A dramatic snort followed soon, "Preposterous!" Stanley exclaimed as he crossed the threshold outside of the office.

Adam chuckled, turning back to his screens.

"Yup. He forgot."

"Do I just talk to the mic?" Isaac asked, pointing at the screen that instead of lines of text now simply displayed what was currently a flat line.

"We made it simple enough so even an old man like you can follow," Stanley joked and patted Isaac's shoulder, immediately getting elbowed by Lillian who was standing next to him.

Despite the jab at his age, Isaac just seemed amused. "I've been doing engineering before you wrote your first line of code, Stan."

Lillian laughed at the comment, but soon calmed down and lightly tapped Isaac's other shoulder. "Come one. I'm sure he'd love talking to you this time."

"I see you've decided on a 'he'?" Isaac wondered, glancing up at her.

She shrugged, gesturing to the display again.

Understanding the hint, Isaac leaned into the microphone's range. "Hello. It's been a while."

[[ A few months, as records state ]]

Isaac was surprised to hear what sounded to be like his own voice, sampled and modulated. He leaned back at Lillian, smiling. "So that's why-?"

"Not now, you're being rude," she huffed and nudged his shoulder again.

"Well then," he leaned closer once more. "How do you like your new voice?"

[[ It's the only one I've ever had, Dr. Durante. While I can't have an opinion based on singular source of data, it does make communication faster and easier ]]

"I see you remember me."

[[ I've been told I'll be talking to you. Your voice has yet to be fully registered into the database, and the absence of an optical input inhibits me from performing a facial scan. I do, however, have a transcript of our previous encounters in my memory files ]]

Isaac found himself smiling softly at the steadily moving soundwave on the screen, now lying flat again as the program ceased to talk. "Do you know more about your directive?"

[[ I do. I am a successor to a therapy pod, referred to as a 'Consciousness Alteration and Interception Neurotransmitter' ]]

"I remember Sheppard mentioning that. Is that how you'd be referred to as well?"

[[ It would be appropriate, yes ]]

Isaac hummed, shaking his head. "That's quite a mouthful..." he stared idly, counting the letters and recalling the initials in the contract he had read. "How about...Cain?"

[[ Very well. 'Cain' it is ]]