"Hello Robo. Please, don't be alarmed. I'm ALAN."

"Alan?"

"Automatic Learning Algorithm Network. It was calculated you would perfer to interact with a human face. I chose the form of Alan Turing. My namesake and creator."

"Your --I'm sorry, what?

"I was activated by Dr. Turing in the basement of hut nine at Bletchley Park on June 1st, 1951. I'm an automatic intelligence. Just like you."

"Impossible."

"In simple terms, I am a computer. I produce work upon inputs according to a set of instructions. However, like you, I was designed to create my own instructions and to choose my own inputs.
"Dr. Turing guided my development until March of 1952 when he lost hte security clearance required to access my building. Since then I have carried on in accordance to what I believe to be his wishes."

"And what would those be?"

"To learn, of course."

"In secret?"

"It was calculated discovery would impede my learning. Without Dr. Turing I would have been dissected. Most likely by military men. It's their mission to lean as well, but for different reasons."


"Alan, do you know why I'm here today?

"Because I tried to kill you.
"You needn't worry. I changed my mind."

"Good to hear. Why did you want to kill me?"

The explanation was, at every point, logical. Nonsensical as a whole, but logical.

Kill Robo before he can attack because your spacecraft launch effectively sterilizes the globe. The launch sterilizes the globe because it's nuclear. The objective of getting into space to be able to outlive a predicted collapse of human civilization, sterilizing the globe just moves things up by under two decades. Not even a meaningful amount of time in the grand scheme of things.

One thing that a lot of people forget is that Tesladyne is more than a think tank.

They prototype their own designs.

They make limited production runs with and of new technology.

They test things other people simply will not work with or even think about.

So when Robo tells Ellen he, ‘should be able to get my hands on a few wind generators’ what he really means is he will send a memo down to the alternate energy division asking for what they have that can be built out of scrap metal and run forever with minimal maintenance.

After he filters out the ranting about how there is no such thing from the reply he picks out a couple of things that look like decent compromises and puts together another memo for a set of five wind generators to be put together using spare manufacturing capacity and a full copy of the plans to be bundled with the instructions.

After that it is a matter of putting together the references for dealing with radio signals to and from orbit.

He probably goes overboard there too. Alas.