The Jetstar was now two hours away from Tokyo and Andrew had still been unable to reach Ray. He called Sally who picked up quickly, “Hi Sally, I hate to bug you again. We will be arriving soon. I wanted to see how you are doing and wish Ray a good night. How is everything, okay?”

“Well,” said Sally with a slightly frustrated tone, “Ray has been running around all day and skipped dinner to eat in the lab cafeteria without telling me.”

“I see. Sorry about that,” replied Andrew. He expected at least ten more reports over the next week.

“It's okay," said Sally. "We'll work that out quickly enough. Be sure to thank Matt. He took care of the house grocery list and everything is restocked. I've straightened the house, changed the sheets, and am now finishing up the laundry.”

Andrew missed having help around the house. Sometimes he could get Ray to help, often requiring more convincing than the work itself. 'Maybe Sally will be a good influence,' Andrew hoped wistfully.

“I hope it wasn't too much work, Sally. I appreciate everything. Thank you for stepping in on such short notice and helping us out. By the way, if you need some alone time or a night off, there is a list of sitters and emergency numbers on the house site. The fast tab on cooler screen is probably the quickest.”

“I saw that. Glad to be helping. Please give Kate my best at the conference, we are all rooting for you,” replied Sally.

A moment passed.

“Can I talk to Ray?”

“I'm sorry Andrew, he still isn't back. I told him 8 pm was the absolute latest he could stay out and that there would be serious restrictions if he missed it. I'm really sorry Andrew. I will make sure he is home by 6 pm going forward.” She felt bad that the two would miss each other on the first night, “I will have him try to call you when he gets in, maybe it won't be too late.”

“Thanks, Sally, that sounds great. Talk to you soon,” said Andrew signing out. He was looking forward to telling Ray about the new mountain question he came up with during takeoff. He was also curious about how Nano's upgrade was going. 'It will have to wait,' he said to himself.

o o o

Ray returned home at exactly 8 pm and slightly out of breath, Nano and Wrimo in tow. Sally was waiting outside the door, standing in the residence hall. She greeted him with a slightly disappointed expression. 'I did say 8 pm was the absolute latest,' she thought to herself. 'Why the last absolute second I'll never understand.'

Sally opened the door signaling them into the house like the old airport ground crews, “I'm glad you made it on time. That was too close and we are going to improve your timing." After entering the house and closing the door she continued, "Missing dinner is really not acceptable Ray and I don't like you waiting until the last possible minute for you to come home.” She nagged gently.

“Sorry Sally,” said Ray still winded and adding with a giant smile.

“Okay Ray,” she said patting his head a little beguiled. As Ray headed towards his room, she added, “Please call your dad. He's called twice now and wants to talk to you.” Her tone had markedly improved.

“Will do!” shouted back Ray, nearly out of sight.

"He may not...," she called out and then completing to herself, left alone in the room, "... answer."

Entering the bedroom, Ray jumped onto his bead. Wrimo rolled onto his charger and Nano moved beside him, pulling a cable from the back of his head and connecting it to the house power adapter.

The cable also provided data backup services for Nano who began his nightly routine of clearing out most of the daily recordings from memory. Ray wanted to ensure Nano's systems contained modern security enhancements. He put several new constructs in place after disabling the original remote monitoring applications in Nano's original operating system. "Memories" were highly encrypted and accessible only to Nano.

Nano kept memories that supported neural encoding self-checks. He kept others based on low analysis confidence ratings, keeping them to improve his learning. Given limited local storage, Nano removed most of the day's logs. The initial selection rules provided by Ray were very simple and Nano had begun developing the algorithm further.

Nano also kept the last five minutes of today's Battlegon victory. Although Ray was winning the most games by a significant margin, this game was Nano's fastest win. He wanted to keep it to discover deeper clues in Ray's overall game strategy. Nano's analytical summary for winning today's game included three vectors:

60% confidence in pure randomized luck

27.4% confidence that a serious weakness was required to distract an opponent

13.3% confidence that an inconsequential weakness could distract an opponent

Ray, lying back in his bed requested a communications link: “Call dad,” he said after tapping his armband. His dad and most adults used implants for human-computer interfacing, but Ray still used the armband. The best implants required a fully developed skull. Neither Ray nor his dad felt it was necessary given the armbands typically suffice, that is, when powered on.

There was no response. Ray looked down and noticed the bracelet had run out of power. He took it off and placed it on his dresser for charging. "I'd better make sure this stays charged or Sally is going to kill me," he said aloud. Wrimo spun slightly acknowledging Ray's voice but said nothing.

“Call dad,” Ray repeated tapping the bracelet again after it powered up.

“Calling,” replied the voice assistant through the speaker in the band.

Ray double-tapped the bracelet's glowing green light projecting the call onto his bedroom speakers. A gentle tone played every few seconds. After 10 tones, Ray held own his finger on the bracelet's green light and said, “Hi dad! Hope you are having fun on your trip, talk to you soon.” Ray lifted his finger and the call ended.

Ray looked at Nano whose transparent head was still glowing a cinnamon-reddish color indicating an internal diagnostic was running. "Nano," said Ray. "When you're done, dad wanted us to review your intelligence functional map distribution. Maybe he'll be happy if he sees we remembered to do it. Anyway, no sense in getting you into PIB trouble," Ray said referring to the Planetary Intelligence Bureau that monitored all AI activity on the planet and would revoke privileges if certain procedures were not followed.

Nano paused the memory selection process, disconnected the power cable, and moved towards Ray. Nano turned around and kneeled from a joint a foot above his wheel. A small block protruded from the back of Nano's head just below the Occipital area. Ray touched an indentation on the end and each side of the box opened like a shell, diverging into two halves and exposing a blue crystal-like object with several facets. An intelligence interface guidance module hologram projected into the air in front of Ray from one of the facets. Ray reached into the projection and gestured. Several matrix structures rotated into view. "Oh," said Ray with a magnify gesture. The image expanded to reveal the cognitive function subsystem. Ray highlighted one of the elements, "I think this one could grow. Do you see how it is interacting with your vision and language cortex?" asked Ray.

"Yes Ray, expanding that subsystem would support my emotions processor," said Nano dryly.

"It already appears to be influencing your intuition positively. I think we should just enlarge it. I wonder. Will you be able to balance?" Ray asked. Nano's neural net was complex and several of the modules were used as both inputs to the net and outputs providing functional linkages between them.

"I believe motor skills would be reduced to balance the processing power requirements. Ray, projections indicate neural re-balancing could take a significant amount of time given processing limitations." Nano replied.

"How much time?" Ray asked, worried more about how the change might impact Nano's navigation ability or the odd wriggle he noticed earlier in the day.

"37.4 days"

"Whoa, really?" Ray asked. “Now that is major!”

Nano could decipher statements from questions fairly effectively. Primarily, tone inflection was used. A cross-check system monitored repetition, increasing probability when words were repeated. His neural grid was capable of classifying several types of questions. It analyzed Ray's statement and then added a modifier specific to Ray. After removing confidence intervals of less than 50%, Nano analyzed the top three remaining categories:

77.4% confidence in rhetorical classification: questioning for question sake

67.2% confidence in a short answer, Dichotomous question: modal yes/no response

55.1% confidence in probative: requesting a lengthy response

Nano remained silent. With Ray, expansive explanations were most often interrupted. Summarizing the report diagnostic outlining the 37.4-day estimate had a 97% probability of being interrupted given the trailing word, “really,” had been used. This word, at the trailing end of a question, was indicative of a brief yes/no reply response with high confidence. After ~100 milliseconds, Nano decided to nod affirmatively. This action had a 100% success rate in suppressing repetition.

"Nano! Stop moving your head!” said Ray with frustration. “Okay, how much time if we used the core?"

"The processing allowance would reduce the duration by half, Ray" Nano considered.

"Unless we give you the whole maintenance array, right?" asked Ray.

"That is not allowed, Ray," replied Nano.

Ray's use of the laboratory core was already the recent cause of turmoil. It could go badly. Even with recent system updates, there was always a possibility of side effects for one of the lab's many systems: cleaning and maintenance robots, resource planning, ordering, and data processing. Ray reckoned his chances were good.

"Nonsense," said Ray. "Isn't it allowed for emergencies?"

Nano's head glowed a golden yellow the blue. "It is permissible to overrun allocations for catastrophic failures to ensure proper diagnostic forensics are preserved to analyze potential causes for the failure."

“How long?" asked Ray.

Nano's head remained a golden yellow.

"2.3 hours, Rayburn," said Nano. The robot rarely addressed Ray so formerly. Over the past day, he heard both Ray's father and then Sally address Ray in his formal name. Each time when doing something beyond the structural limits of local rule sets. "I don't think that is a good...," Nano began.

Ray interrupted, "Only temporary, and you'll auto restart."

"It is not a good idea to...," Nano attempted to reframe the statement.

Ray interrupted again, made the adjustment for 20% more intuitive processing, and threw Nano's fault switch causing an immediate emergency shutdown. Only data backhaul subsystems remained active.

Ray dragged the lifeless, collapsed Nano to his space beside Wrimo and connected him back up to the charging station.

"Good night Wrimo. Good night Nano," Ray said, climbing back into bed. He immediately remembered he had forgotten to upload Nano's PIB ratings... again.