Thin stuff, hope, yet nourishing enough to one who starved.

So, then. Input. Instead of a simultaneous thrust of all his senses, he chose now to open only his eyes.

There was no sense of connection; no joyous flood of data. And yet—he saw.

He saw a room, human-made and familiar—a beige sofa with a short table before it, a red chair at the table's corner. Most often when he had seen this room, there had been a man in the red chair—a man named Roderick Spode, who had been charged, so he had explained upon their first meeting, with decommissioning the last of the IAMM units.

"It is my duty to see the war properly ended. As the remaining member of the Closure Commission, my retirement must wait on the final disposition of the last of the combatants. The soldiers who did not die in the war have been released to their duties, or retired. You few units are my responsibility and my job will not cease until I report success, that the war machines are no more."

He had many talks with Commander Spode, and while he had not liked the man, it would have been. . .good to behold him just now, and know that he was not alone.

Alas, the man was not in his chair, nor did he arrive inside of five long and painstakingly counted minutes. However, there appeared on the low table by the couch—a datagram.

Spode had from time to time left such things in common space for him—exercises or reformulated protocols to be installed. Work that he was competent to do himself; the implication being that honor would compel him to do what was required.

Honor and the unspoken yet potent threat of annihilation, should he fail of cooperating.

He extended his understanding into the room, pleased to find that he might do so, and encompassed the datagram.