Level VII, the conclusion

Royal Technician Lombar’s image flickered to life on the screen.

“I have some good news for you, Jon,” he said. “Remember our conversation about L7?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Yes I do.”

“OK, remember how you said that he was being overprotective of you? How, because of the First Law, he would compute the odds of your survival and then take steps to remove you from that situation if the results of his calculations proved too great of a risk to your survival?”

Of course I remembered that conversation.

“Yes, I do remember that,” I answered. “Of course.”

“Well then you’ll love to hear this, Laseron Astrotechnology Hectagroup just released Service Pack 1 for its Level VII Intelligence Modules. You can download it right off the InterN.E.T and install it on L7!” Lombarr said excitedly. “The patch includes an update on their Fundamental Law Hardwire Chip so they don’t do that anymore.”

“That’s funny,” I replied. “So I wasn’t the only one having this issue, huh?”

“Yeah, evidently, the Level VII’s have been warping science vessels away from the space anomalies that their crews were trying to study and keeping Space Patrol vessels from engaging criminals in high speed pursuit. But now you don’t have to worry about that, isn’t that great?”

“Ah, you might say that,” I answered. “But it really doesn’t matter any more.”

“What do you mean? What happened to your Level VII?”

“I strapped him to a torpedo and fired him into Hacknor’s sun.”

Lombarr’s jaw dropped and his image starred at me in silence for several minutes.

“Oh ha ha ha!” he finally laughed. “That’s funny, you guys and your action hero lines. You’re too much.”