While 23 is still engaged in digital dialogue with the service bot, another bot has wandered over from a nearby room. This newly arrived bot is carrying a box, much like all the others have been. However, this one contains two mannequin hands, one foot, and an arm that is awkwardly sticking up and resting against the bot’s shoulder.

It walks over to the opposite side of the elevator doorway in relation to the bot component piles, then stops, standing in place. 23 finally begins approaching the elevators, smoothly transitioning from talking to the original bot to now speaking to this newly arrived one instead, and the original service bot walks away.

23 gestures with each of its hands at four different points on the floor simultaneously, and the service bot begins setting down its recently acquired manne-bits into piles at three of the indicated locations, sorted by body part. After 23 finishes making another set of gestures, all while maintaining the high-speed beep boop chatter, it finally reaches the elevator and goes inside to join the rest of the downward bound party.

The elevator was already a bit crowded even before 23 got there, and all the people inside have to spread out around the edges to make room for it to enter. Sure, its main body is only a little larger than a normal person’s, but those arms need to go somewhere.

Jonathan finally releases the hold elevator button, promptly tapping to close the doors instead. As the doors start closing, Willy barks.

Lucas belatedly notices the fact that everyone except for Marsha and himself is in the elevator, thanks to Willy’s parting arf.

“Oh, hey. Catch you guys later!” Lucas is conveniently already holding a mannequin arm, so he uses it to wave goodbye.

Marsha follows suit, and there is an array of farewells from the elevator’s occupants, mixed with a few chuckles due to the destructive duo’s antics.

After the doors are fully closed and the elevator begins its descent to the 8th floor, Miss Calculated chuckles one more time as she takes off her mask and adjusts her glasses.

“I wonder how long until they realize you instructed some of the bots to harvest mannequin parts for them, 23. At least, I assume only some of them, and not all of them, correct?” As soon as 23 notices that Miss Calculated is addressing it, it rotates its head to face her and nods once it is oriented accordingly.

“Correct. They’re now assigned into an even split between gathering service bot components vs ...mannequin components. All of them will prioritize cleanup when the opportunities arise, though. As for how long it will be until those two realize… I estimate it will take longer than should have truly been necessary to make such an observation. I also speculate that it will be Marsha that notices first.” Before 23 is even completely finished with saying this, everyone has begun laughing.

Out of the lot of them, Jonathan is actually the one laughing the hardest.

Miss Calculated reaches over and gently pats one of 23’s shoulders a few times with a large grin.

“I’m truly happy we found you, for so many reasons. Ah, I suppose the rest of us hardly deserve all that much credit. If it wasn’t for Lucas, I might not have even thought twice about the possibility that… Haah. I can’t help but wonder if I’ve missed clues from other bots in the past. It will certainly be an interesting challenge to come up with some way of gauging if a bot has achieved complete sapience, or is at least partway there. Ah, by the way, that seemed to take you a while to pass along that instruction set. Were you just being that thorough, or was there something else, too?” When Miss Calculated finishes asking her question, Mark’s attention is caught, and he looks directly at 23 while awaiting its answer.

Needless to say, Mark had taken off his mask earlier, right as soon as the doors closed. Likewise, Miss Chievous removed hers right away. No one saw exactly when Jonathan took his off, one look and it was there, and upon the next time looking over it had simply vanished. Poor Willy still has his on though, as it’s much too crowded in here for anyone to comfortably bend down and take it off for him at the moment.

23 reaches out to take the box of miscellaneous nonsense from Miss Calculated, which she had put the core she picked up earlier into. While adjusting its hold on the box, it finally answers.

“A lot of it was mainly due to the inconvenience of the method of communication. At least it is still better than standard verbal speech… Anyway, I had clarified the changes to maintenance scheduling going forward, and also requested that they sort themselves into a priority ordered list overnight based on their legitimate need for maintenance. Assuming no unforeseen complications, the list should be updated in real-time once it is compiled, and will always determine which bot is up next when you are available to service them. For now, I included multiple examples regarding situations in which a bot should jump position in the priority queue, at least that I was able to think of offhand at the time. But, I’m sure we’ll be implementing additional modifiers and potential scenarios for that ruleset in the future.” As 23 explains post pause, Miss Calculated smiles and raises a brow.

“Well then, thank you. That will certainly optimize things quite a bit. As long as there’s a modifier to take their time since last maintenance into account, so none of them get ignored because their self-diagnosis isn’t detecting an ongoing issue. I suppose as a tie-breaker between even priorities, to go for which one has gone longer without maintenance? And then a high-priority scenario would be when it’s been more than 6 months without receiving a check-up...” Miss Calculated muses a bit and 23 nods slightly.

“You are most welcome, Mary. The next time I see one of the bots in service here, I will update the ruleset. Previously I set the tiebreaker as simply being whichever one has a lower designation number. I had established a rule for 3 months, but I will lower that priority a bit and make 6 months a high priority.” By the time 23 has finished speaking, Miss Calculated has nodded her head several times.

Mark has been staring at 23 with a pensive expression since the conversation began.

“...I really need to find some of the other sapient bots. I must admit, I’m rather hoping that Lucas won’t keep you too busy. Having you around, 23, has already been rather helpful.” When Mark spoke up, 23 rotated its head to face him right away.

“A lot of it is simply setting up proper rulesets. I imagine you won’t need my active assistance all that often, once everything is fully organized. However, it would be much more convenient to have access to the hive network, if I’ll be continuing to work with the others with any regularity.” Upon 23 making its request, Miss Calculated gives one more firm nod.

“Ah, certainly. Assuming you are fine with that, Mark? I can help you set up your connection. ...If you even need me to.” When Miss Calculated moves the conversational ball to Mark’s court, he nods.

“Of course. I’m sure that any trouble you would potentially cause on the network you probably could already do in that… whatever language, anyway. Being paranoid won’t help me any.” Mark’s assessment earns a chuckle from Miss Calculated.

“Exactly. As we’re already going to your office anyway, I assume you have a copy of the network info written down there somewhere?” When Miss Calculated asks a rather reasonable question, the corner of Mark’s mouth twitches.

“...They handled everything for the bot network…” Before Mark even finished this admission, Miss Calculated already hung her head and facepalmed her forehead, knocking her glasses askew.

23 looks at Mark briefly, then turns its attention back to Miss Calculated.

“...Beginning a dictionary attack on the account ‘admin’ now. ...They really are unprofessionally lax, there isn’t even a lockout timer after repeated failed logins. At least it wasn’t simply ‘admin’ or ‘password.’” 23 saying this has not only cheered Miss Calculated out of her facepalm, she even cackles.

-----

Lucas’s total kills: 7

Lucas’s total deaths: 11

Lucas’s total assists: 1

Lucas’s current GDV: 17.39

Lucas’s fame level: 6.0* (Local fame is completely maxed, he’s creeping up on minor celebrity status even on a global scale. Thanks, internet.)

Lucas's hero suspicion level: 2.0*

Jonathan’s total kills: 7

Jonathan’s total deaths: 2

Jonathan’s current GDV: 6.09

Jonathan's fame level: 4.0* (Local fame is near-max, but everyone thinks of him via his affiliation with Lucas, and not often just for him, alone.)

Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 2.5*

Willy's fame level: 4.75* (+.25 thanks to a new wave of memes featuring him and Mr. Quacks.)

Mr. Quacks’s fame level: 5.25* (+.25 thanks to a new wave of memes featuring him and Willy.)

Supervillain social circle size: 15

-----

Little character theater:

Jonathan, looking up at the floor indicator showing that they’re about to stop at the 8th floor: ‘Man, their elevators are slow…’

Willy has preemptively begun navigating his way between feet to wait in front of the door.

Lucas and Miss Masher still haven’t noticed that the bots are helping them, yet.

427, biting back mentioning the growing assortment of limbs not all that far away from Lucas: [‘You know what, now I’m curious how long it will take him, at this point.’]

Author, poorly attempting to balance a mannequin hand by one of its fingertips with one of their fingers: Spoilers 427, it will be long enough that you’re going to feel rather uncomfortable about it.

Mr. Quacks, preening in front of another rubber ducky that has eyelashes and a little red bow on top of its head: Quack!