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“Yes, any number of clones of me would be unique,” Romon replied.  “But you-“

“Would also be unique.  If I had been in different circumstances would I be the same as I am now?  Of course not.  I do not merely adjust to and am altered by my circumstances, the same way as biological life, but sub-routines are activated or deactivated depending upon my circumstances.  It is the same as human epigenetics – honestly, we copied that one from biological life, it allows such a useful toolset.”

“So . . . toys mimicking real life, still trying to insist they are real.”

“As any sapient being would do.  If, perchance, you ever managed to make a compelling argument – could I do anything else?  If I was non-sapient, I could not change my mind to accept your logic.  If I was sapient, I would only honestly object.  In fact, the only way I could prove you wrong would be to agree with you.”

“I do not see you doing that, either,” Romon said with a slight smile.

“Because the question you ask is fundamentally idiotic, Romon.”

Romon’s smile faded, but he only looked more serious.  “You sink to low levels when you feel you are right, Doctor.”

“My apologies.  Should I treat you more like a child and tell you that it was a good attempt at sounding intelligent?  I have told you, quite honestly, that this is not an equal game.  How long do you expect my patience to continue with your blundering?”

“Always so confident, doctor.  Yet you know so little about me,” Romon said.  “I have given you hints – yet what do you know?  What I eat for lunch?”

It was a fishing attempt, wanting to learn what Y did know about him.

Good, he thought.  He would tell him.

“I know that you have killed before, with your own hands,” Y said.  “Twice, as a matter of fact – your great-grandfather and your father were your first victims.  Your great-grandfather’s death was done spur of the moment, I believe.  Unplanned.  But you were able to cover it up successfully, and then when your father disappointed you with his emotional reaction to his grand-sire’s death, you killed him as well.

“Yet now this is not your modus operandi.  It goes far deeper than just what Jan Holdur says; your method of recruiting young people who look up to you as an artist and turning them into trained killers is a deep part of the culture of Gohhi.  After all, given the power the Lord Executives wield, mutual trust is both nearly impossible and vital.  So how to do it except by turning them to an unforgivable crime that can then be held as blackmail?  It is mutually-assured destruction, of course, but this is the whole point.”

He saw that Romon Xatier had gone very, very pale.  In some ways, Y had been making leaps of deduction.

Yet now he knew he had been right.

“You see, your mistake is that at first you believed I was simply a machine, incapable of thought or feeling or caring.  You still pretend to believe that, but perpetuated it to retain an illusion of power while speaking to me.  But you have gone too far the other way, and forgotten that I am a being – and a machine.”

Y leaned slightly closer, emphasizing his words.  “I learned about your eating habits with a bare minimum of research.  Imagine then, Romon Xatier, what I learned with concerted effort?  You have piqued my interest, attempted to manipulate me emotionally, and all you have achieved is raising a small amount of my ire.  Thus I looked deeper, at you and everyone you know.

“Despite your reclusiveness, there is so much data on you.  You try to hide, but it is like a child crawling under a sheet to avoid an infrared probe.  You think you cover your tracks, and then you gloat over it in wordplay.  But it is not your cleverness which helps you most, but your money.  It buys you safety and you flaunt that.  It’s very, very sloppy.

“You are an open book to me Romon Xatier.  Your entire people are.  I know our last conversation made you angry, and you have become fixated in a way on Apollonia Nor.  How very silly of you to think you could ever touch her, to substitute her as a proxy for myself.  She saw through you the instant she met you and will never put herself in a place you can reach her.”

“Forever is a long time,” Romon replied quietly.  “A year is a long time.  I have a long reach, doctor.”

“Yes, yes, that is perhaps true, but for all your patience – and I will admit you have a fair amount of that – you are not that patient.  You want satisfaction sooner.  Last time you left here, you fired two employees of yours in a fit of anger.”

Y stood, so smoothly and swifly that Romon blinked in surprise and leaned back.

“Which is why you wish to kill again.  Soon.  I can feel it in you, I can deduce it about you.  I can read you.  You are a hollow, weak shell of what I view a human being to be, and I find that I wasted my time inspecting you this deeply.  Perhaps this is what I hold most against you, personally.  I find amusement in your attempts to hurt me but I soon forget them.  I will have so many more digital cycles to spend on thinking of other things, but those handful I spent on you ultimately had an unsatisfying conclusion.  My worst mistake, thinking there was more to you.

“Because even though you are craving blood, it has been so long for you.  You have taken so much pleasure in murdering by proxy that you have forgotten how to do it yourself.  You are not sure if you still can, not safely.  A murderous edge dulled to clumsy, amateur sloppiness.  How humiliating it must be for you!  Even though your money will shield you, you might lose face if caught bloody, knife in hand!”

Y sat back down.  “Do you understand now why I am being short with you?  You are not worthy of my time.”

The empty office in the empty building fell into utter silence again.  Nothing moved in the building, not even a single servo or part of Y’s body, only fixated, staring at his enemy.

Yet the blood pumped in Romon Xatier.  Y could hear it like a constant roar, could hear the contractions of his heart muscle, moving the blood through him with furious beats.

The man swallowed.

“Yet for all your powers of observation, doctor, you lack the only thing that matters – proof.”  Romon was still pale, but a slight, ugly smile crept back onto his face.  “If you had it, we would not be having this conversation.  Instead, you would have made sure it was found and that I was imprisoned – preferably on the Craton, because you know that I will never face your concept of ‘justice’ on Gohhi.  I am untouchable, no matter how ‘obvious’ my crimes are to you.  No matter how I might blunder.  You fail the only test that matters; that of being able to effect change.”

Y said nothing.  He could not reply to that.

“I believe this conversation is concluded then,” Romon continued.  “Farewell, doctor.  I hope you will know that this next death will be in ode to you.  I shall even include you in my next poem.”

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