Alice had only ever seen one Mechanical Intelligence in her life, a test unit during her basic training. That had been a Generation One system, crude and ugly within its crenelated heat sinks. It had been capable of tremendous feats of computation, but had no real personality. This model was more compact, its twisted coral form that of a Generation Two model, the real deal. It was held in place by a huge hexagonal vice. As Alice watched, the ends of the vice rotated with slow, inevitable force, driving the billions of nanoscopic rods, pulleys, and cogs inside its difference engines. The MI lay submerged in a tank of pink liquid that in turn sat within in a glass capsule filled with a white mist. The capsule’s exterior was covered by a layer of thick ice; waves of cold emanated from it. Behind the printers and MI, a series of racks ran to the far wall. Each contained a reprinted Klichka within a translucent bag of green oxygenated gel.