“I’m not sure how long I can keep this up,” Deet shouted over his incredibly, incredibly annoying noise. “I may kill myself.”

“I may kill you,” Rogers muttered.

Klein, surprisingly, considering his earlier response to stress, seemed unconcerned. He slowly put down his sandwich and looked at Rogers.

“Lieutenant,” he said, loudly, though his face showed no effort from shouting. “What the hell is your droid doing and how do we make him stop doing it?”

“Admiral,” Rogers said, moving closer. The only way they could hear each other was if they kept their faces about three inches away from each other, and Rogers could smell a distinct and unpleasant mixture of mayonnaise and aftershave. “I need you to listen. The entire fleet is in jeopardy and we need your help.”

Klein didn’t interrupt him as Rogers related absolutely everything he knew about the droids, their impending takeover, and the role that Klein must play for their counterattack to work properly. When he finished, Rogers was out of breath and his ears were ringing.

“Alright,” Klein said.

Rogers blinked. “Really? That’s it? You’ll do it?”

Klein shook his head. “No, but it sounds like a perfect job for my executive officer.”

For a moment, Rogers thought he was about to go In the Zone again. That moment when something snapped inside of him, and all of a sudden he became a different person, someone who could move effortlessly through any social situation, steal a watch off a man for whom time was as important as blood, and make a horse think it was a zebra with a little paint. Then he realized that, no, it wasn’t Zone time at all. It was the point at which one becomes so frustrated, so annoyed, so desperately done with it all that murder suddenly looks like a viable option.

But, since Rogers wasn’t very good with violence, he instead reached forward, grabbed the Toastmasters certificate off the wall, and threw it to the floor. He followed with a sweeping arm gesture that knocked just about every notepad and book off the admiral’s desk. For good measure, he made one of those really dramatic, wordless roar sounds.

Klein’s reaction was much as he anticipated.

“What have you done?” the admiral shrieked, jumping out of his chair and putting his hands on the sides of his head.

“Do you see this?” Rogers said, gesturing grandly. “This is what’s going to happen to your fleet if you don’t take the huge amounts of stupid out of your ears and set it aside for ten minutes. I need your codes to erase the droids’ memories, and that means I need your biometrics to come with me to the communications bay with Deet so we can stop these over-technical tin cans from taking over the ship and waging an unexpectedly sentient war against humanity with our own ships !”

Klein looked like he was about to hyperventilate. He made several feeble attempts to bend down and pick up a pen to start writing something but couldn’t seem to figure out what to write. For a moment, he stood up straight, put his hand on his heart, and took a deep breath to begin a pep talk, but his chest deflated like a balloon.