Rogers squinted. “Why would you ever need to know such a thing?”

“Can’t just let the boobies run around, sir,” Tunger said seriously. “Can’t do that at all.”

Rogers felt like perhaps there was some real, sage advice in that statement, but he couldn’t figure it out at all. He just nodded slowly. “I suppose you can’t, at that. Well, at least if there’s ever a jailbreak in the zoo and the AIGCS has to hunt them down, we’ll know what they’re capable of.”

“Sir!” Tunger said, scandalized.

“I’m only kidding,” Rogers said. “I’m curious what you found out by looking at the, uh, manual.”

“Absolutely nothing, sir.”

Rogers rubbed his eyes again. Damn, but he was tired. “Right. Well I hope you found it personally fulfilling anyway.”

He looked up at the droids all standing perfectly still, their blue eyes shining back at him like a little constellation through the expanse of the massive training room.

“I suppose a little target practice wouldn’t hurt,” Rogers said. “I’ll have to figure out how to get them to fire weapons sometime, I guess. Let’s take a look.”

Taking the control pad in his hands and unlocking it, he was presented with the maze of unlabeled green buttons again. If the orange button was a sort of speaking command button, the green buttons must be able to do things without him talking into the device. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so easy to confuse these buckets of bolts, Freudian Chip or no. For droids, they did seem rather stupid.

Rogers figured he’d start with the top left, and tapped the screen to engage the first green button. Instantly, the screen shifted to a display of what appeared to be the training room. A thick silver outline traced the edges of the room, and he could see each droid represented as a blue dot in perfect formation.

“Hey, Oh One,” he said. “How does this thing know where we are?”

“Each member of the AIGCS is equipped with a spatial radar system that allows for an instantaneous analysis of the geographical space in which we are located,” Oh One droned.

“That makes sense. Let’s see here.”

Rogers tapped the position where Oh One was standing and dragged his finger forward. In response to his movement, Oh One took a step forward.

“Hey!” Rogers said. “It worked!”

Corporal Tunger clapped. “Hurruh!”

Rogers shot him a look.

“I mean, hooray!”

It took a few tries and not a few crashes, but eventually Rogers was able to use the command pad to manipulate the movement of the whole squadron and direct them toward the shooting range in the back of the room. He followed them, Tunger in tow, but gave himself a wide berth after the first time one of the hulking beasts ran into him and knocked him completely over.

“This isn’t so hard at all,” Rogers said. Despite his aspirations to be the worst AIGCS commander in the history of the MPF—which technically he already was, in addition to being the best AIGCS commander in the history of the MPF—he couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of excitement at doing something properly. He was a slacker of professional quality, but he still had pride.