Great days for science. For Ivan Pritchard, not so much. Narang shook her head and headed for the conference room.

“Morning, all,” Narang said as she came through the door. A chorus of morning’s drifted back. She grabbed a cup of tea and sat down at the head of the table. “So, what do we have?”

Dr. Samuelson, seated to her left, spoke first, around a mouthful of doughnut. “There’s no doubt that Ivan Pritchard, as a biological entity, is gone. The Ivan Pritchard in isolation is one hundred percent nanites. So I think any question of ‘curing’ him has to be put to rest. There is no him left.”

Dr. Narang nodded then looked to the next person around the table. Dr. Noelia Sandoval had a faraway look in her eyes as she began her report.

“Ivan’s internal structure is amazing. It’s got a frame—I hesitate to call it a skeleton, since it only superficially resembles the human skeletal system—and something that performs the function of muscles although, again, only generally similar in placement and function to the human equivalent.”

“Why have a skeleton and muscles at all?” Dr. Nakamura asked. “Why not just morph into whatever posture he wants?”

“Too slow, for one thing,” Sandoval answered. “Plus, I don’t think it would look natural. And that appears to be very important to whatever converted Ivan.”

“Explain, please,” Narang said.

“Well, the entity, A.I., whatever, converted Ivan in such a way that he is shaped like a human being. He can smile, his biceps bulges when he flexes his arm, you can see quadriceps outlines on his thighs. Remember the day we first saw him, as he walked off the elevator? He looked and behaved completely human, except for the metal skin. Why? There is absolutely no reason to slavishly emulate the human form like that, unless it is an explicit requirement. Again, why?”

“You have a theory, Dr. Sandoval?”

“Just speculation, Dr. Narang, but I think the whole purpose of the transformation assumes some degree of continuing to deal with the natives. If he wasn’t quite human-like, if he fell into the uncanny valley of looks or behavior, it could be counterproductive.”

“So,” Narang mused, “it’s a marketing thing?”

Sandoval grinned. “I wouldn’t have put it like that, but yes.”

“That’s just freaky,” Nakamura muttered.

“Hell,” Samuelson interjected, “that’s not the freakiest part by a considerable margin.”

All heads turned to look at him. Samuelson waved a pastry for emphasis. “You’ve read the report of the original incident. How long was that artifact there? A hundred years? A thousand? A million? There is a very good chance that when the artifact was created, human beings as a species didn’t exist. For that matter, apes might not have split off from the Old World monkeys yet.