Nicholas found Michael sitting outside in the sunshine on the edge of the dock.  He was tracing figures of eight into his temple with his thumb nail, looking more out of it than he had done over the last fourteen hours.  Nicholas dropped down to sit beside him, it had been a while since he’d just sat out here, just taken stock of the life he was living.

“Bonnie needs to disconnect the CPU, she can’t fix it where it is.”
Michael didn’t look at his friend.  “If you disconnect that box, I’ll lose him.”
Nicholas nodded.  Michael wasn’t just talking about the tenuous link he currently held to his partner.  He meant it in the very real sense.  If they severed that final connection between the part of Kitt that was residing in Karr’s CPU and the AI’s own CPU, memories - all of his memories, everything that had built up over the years to make Kitt into who he had become - would be taken from him.  Simply re-linking the two would never be enough.  “It’s a risk.”
Michael turned his head and rested his gaze on Nicholas.  “Too high a risk.”
“There’s another way.”

Michael’s eyebrows rose.  “Why the hesitation?”
Nicholas sighed.  “Okay.  There are three components Kitt needs to… be who he is; memory, data disks and processors.  The memory, the disks, they’re okay, they’re in that CPU and they can just as easily be taken out and put somewhere else.”
“Right….”
“The processors are the part we can’t just replicate.  The neural nets have to be exactly configured to match the patterns that make up what is Kitt.”
“I dread to think where you’re going with this.”
Nicholas rubbed his hands together.  “I have a friend who has… a project.  She’s been working on it for a long time.  She’s known as ‘Swan’, she’s a robotics expert and she’s created a ‘human’ form.  I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard a lot about it.  She’s tried to test it but Artificial Intelligence is a different field and she hasn’t been having much luck finding a test subject.”

Steepling his fingers under his chin, Michael looked away.  “You want to offer my… you want to offer Kitt up as a guinea pig?”
“We have to get Kitt out of Karr’s CPU and housed somewhere temporarily permanent.”
“Temporarily permanent?”
“At the moment Bonnie can’t disconnect the CPU to fix it.  We have to put Kitt somewhere - all of his systems together in the same place.”
“But a… robot?  Nick, can I just… it’s not just an AI you’re talking about here, you know that.”
“I know.”  The other’s tone was surprisingly gentle.  “Believe me, I wouldn’t be suggesting this if I could think of another way.  Kitt’s own CPU is uninhabitable.  If it hadn’t been for the advanced state of the link, if he hadn’t been able to jump to you, he’d be dead.”

Michael sighed.  “I want to meet her.  I want to see the robot.  And I want to talk to Kitt.”
“Yes to one and two… the third - any suggestions?”
“He’s in Karr’s CPU.”
“Only… only the essence of him.  The hardware, the link, the connection to the voice box, it’s all back in the damaged CPU.”  Michael pinched the bridge of his nose.  He wished he could get a hold on the electronics.  Bonnie had so often tried to explain but to no avail.  He got the basics, but the link was an added complication.  “You could talk to him through Karr.  I know it’s not the best thing, but from Karr’s explanation, his only communication with Kitt at the moment is in binary, he’d have to translate for you.”
“Binary?”
“It’s ones….”
Michael held up one hand.  “I know what binary is.  I thought they were linked.”
“Like all the rest of the hardware, their link is back in Kitt’s CPU.”
“My only way to talk to my own partner is through Karr.”  He shook his head.  “Who did this?”
“We’re working on it.  The substance in the sprinkler system was Tarasine.”
Michael rubbed his face.  “Oh, God….  The experiments.”
“Jennifer’s a possibility.  Let’s sort Kitt out, okay?  Karr and I’ll deal with the other.”
“They were after Kitt, not me.  They got me out of the car.  Who the hell would do that?”

*

“I will relay everything exactly as you state it,” Karr promised Michael.  He was sitting in the dark cabin of the Stealth, unhappy about this but understanding it was the only way.  He’d met Swan - she’d arrived an hour ago.  He’d seen the robot, if he could call it that.  It looked so human, lying in the back of the van she’d driven over in.  All sorts of electronic equipment had been unloaded and she was currently setting up a temporary lab across the other side of the warehouse floor.

She was an unusual woman, he’d commented to Nicholas.  The man knew some unusual people.  She was tall, blonde, a figure that had turned the heads of Michael and Nicholas and even Bonnie, though possibly for a totally different reason.  And yet Bonnie was the one helping her set up, Bonnie was the one who understood every word that Swan said.

Michael was still far from understanding exactly what was going to happen.  But however much Nicholas trusted that it would work, Michael wasn’t about to let anyone do anything without first explaining it to Kitt.
“Karr… how is he?”
“Terrified.”
Michael nodded.  Of course he was.  “Tell him… I’m here, I love him.”  He tried to keep the emotion from his voice.  Since the attack he’d gone from having Kitt swamping his mind blotting out everything else, feeling nothing but his partner’s presence, to the barest of touches, the whisper of a connection.  The silence in his mind was cold and empty.

There was a second before Karr spoke again.  “He has asked me to inform you that… the feeling is mutual.”
Michael smiled to himself, wiping the moisture from his eyes.  “Does he know about the transfer they’re suggesting?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his reaction?”
“Fear.  He is… desperate to be close to you again.”
“Yeah?”  Another smile.  “Well that feeling’s mutual too.  The robot thing - is he okay with it?”

‘kitt, the transfer, do you agree to it?’
‘is there another way?’
‘no, sorry, they have to repair your cpu’
‘it’s not permanent?’
‘no, they will transfer you back, you have my word’
‘then I agree’

“He is far from all right with it, Michael, but he accepts that there is no other way.”
Michael’s eyebrows rose.  He couldn’t remember Karr calling him anything but ‘Knight’ before now.  “Right.  I guess we do it then.”
“You are concerned.”
“Of course I’m concerned.”  It came out harsher than he’d meant it to.  “Sorry.  Headache.”
“No apology necessary.  I know what it is like to lose the link.”
“Right.  Thanks, Karr.”  He didn’t need to clarify what for.

*

Nicholas folded his arms on top of the storage cabinet next to where Michael was standing watching the proceedings.  “You okay?”
Michael shook his head, not taking his eyes from the scene before him, from the cables connecting Karr, Kitt, and Swan’s robot - or android as she apparently preferred - and the wires that sent the telemetry back to the monitors.
“You think I’m using this situation.”
Michael started picking at the paint on cabinet.  “You know the answer to that.”
“If I thought this was risking Kitt in any way I wouldn’t be letting her do it.”
“But how’s he gonna react, Nick?  He’s spent his life in one… system.  How the hell is he going to understand this?”  He waved a hand in the direction of the android now lying on a workbench in the centre of the organised chaos.
“As far as he’ll be concerned, it’s another system, just like the one he left.”
“Except for the link to me, the link to Karr, the wheels, the engine….  God, Nick, what are we doing?”

Nicholas stepped away.  He could only ask the same questions.  At the start he’d contacted Swan out of a need to do something for Kitt.  Only he and Karr really knew the precarious situation the AI had been in, balanced between Karr’s CPU and the ravaged remains of his own.  Karr had to take every precaution not to overload his own circuits.  He’d had to carefully monitor his own broadcasting to Nicholas in case he should hurt his partner with that same overload.

But Michael wasn’t the only one with reservations, or the only one to question Nicholas’ motivations.  Karr, despite knowing the urgency of getting his brother out of his CPU, had the same concerns regarding Kitt’s ability to cope with such a different type of system.  And he knew for certain why Nicholas was pushing Swan’s project.
<He is right>
<I know, I know>
<Kitt is my brother>
<I won’t let him be harmed>
<You don’t know what will happen>
<It’s a couple of days, enough for Bonnie to get the CPU fixed.  That’s all>
<Enough for Swan to get her test results>
<Michael knows the score.  Kitt knows.  I’ve not lied to them.  I wouldn’t risk him>
That, at least, Karr knew to be true.  Nicholas had touched Kitt in the past, seen the beauty of the AI’s presence, the gentle innocence corrupted by once trusted friends.  He would never risk that presence, that soul.  And yet he couldn’t pretend to Karr that his motives were completely altruistic.
<Is he all right?>
<He’s scared, Nicholas, as I would be>