"At first, all his speech was very clearly machine generated," Martin said, tugging at a pillow. Color had begun to enter his face. He’d done it with his scratching at the touchscreen, and with his bed, and with the medical support gear he was using, wired into his flesh beneath the pajamas. "Just a verbal prosthetic for a canine brain. Very halting, very...gimmicky. It took ten years for the wiring to sink in, to fully integrate. But now speech is simply a part of him. Sometimes I catch him talking to himself."