Michael Tucker

A white cat with glasses, working with Cook and Adams after the Inlay attack on his work. Fan of Nine Inch Nails. Despite Michael's imposter syndrome, Cook feels Michael is a valuable guide as to what isn't possible in the current day (and, someone needs to fetch the coffee).

## Undisclosed Desert Facility Raid

Michael is working at the undisclosed desert facility when it is attacked by an Inlay before Tessa can infiltrate. Tessa is knocked out of commission during battle, but Sticks rescues her and, by extension, Michael and David. Michael understands that Sticks wants to see Tessa and takes him to where they dragged her after distracting the Inlay. He is certain Tessa is dead, but Sticks realises that Tessa's implants have saved her life. Sticks then got Michael and David to come with him, Michael coming gladly. The Oracle sees this as beneficial for Gates, as Michael being gone from the project means the Inlays will be developed faster.

## Contributions to Cook Industries

Michael arrives first to the meeting for Tin-Head's wire-tapping recording, at Cook's instruction. When Cook asks where Tessa and Sticks are, Tin-Head says the only response he is getting is the answering machine playing "Closer" on a loop, which is when Michael realises Sticks stole his Discman and lied about whether he as an A.I. could commit crimes. His contributions to the meeting include complaining that Cook is using Windows 98 and confirming that A.I. is not to the point of passing the Turing test at their point in time, and he is the one to install Anne's work-from-home station as a replacement for the wire-tapping bug. He also sometimes monitors Anne even though Tin-Head is already doing that.

At their next meeting, Michael begs Adams to tell him how their future starts so he can warn his family before it gets too bad, but Adams refuses exactly for that reason. Then when Tessa starts goading Cook and they devolve into arguing, Adams pulls out Mr. Gun to get them to shut up, which Cook dismisses as not threatening to anyone with an IQ higher than 12 (also Michael creates a massive drool puddle seeing future tech). Defeated, Adams points out slide 17, featuring Gary Heart, who is not remarkable to anyone else for various reasons, even after adding some lines. Cook finally concedes that Gary Heart resembles Jack Heart but fails to see the significance. Michael has to ask Tessa who Jack Heart is, and she explains he is/will be one of the Anarchist volunteer force's top men, with a statue in Trafalgar Square and everything! Adams angrily points out that Jack Heart was evil AND smart AND had never lost a battle AND they are clearly related. Michael protests that even if they're directly related, it's across hundreds of years, so any significance is lost, to which Tessa remarks that it would be stupid to just ignore it.

Weeks later, Tessa follows Gary Heart to take him out and make it look like a mugging, but she gets jumped by a giggler. She alerts Tin-Head but quickly gets jammed. This wakes up Michael, who asks what's going on. Tin-Head explains the Anarchist clones, but Michael isn't noticeably shocked, to Tin-Head's surprise.

Tin-Head enjoys teasing Michael (and the rest of the regular employees) by denying him key read access, regardless of the consequences to the project. Michael finally decides to put his foot down and stop taking the abuse, but Tin-Head talks him out of walking away by baiting him with Anne's webcam show.

## Tin-Head's Downtime

When Tin-Head shuts down, Michael calls Tessa on her cochlea implant, to her ire, but she calms down when he explains how something is wrong with Tin-Head. The group observes him while he is shut down, with Sticks commenting that all he is getting is an automated message to go away. Adams asks if he can interface with Tin-Head, but Sticks points out they have incompatible hardware. Once Tin-Head recovers, he explains that he doesn't know why he shut down, as the five minutes before that were nuked from his memory, by himself. He worries, because he would not have used the Blotto Box to trash the throne room without good reason.

Tin-Head enlists Michael to examine his Throne Room, as the EMP has made it dangerous for A.I. occupation. Michael stumbles around and hurts himself, causing him to wonder why he puts up with the abuse (other than the huge benefits and major cons if he left). In the end he can only find a printout with an IP address and "the Old Man." The latter causes Tin-Head to cower behind Tessa. Adams supposes it makes sense if the Oracle exists in the current day, given how Gates is normally vs. as the future First Advisor. Michael is lost on the significance and asks who the Old Man is in relation to the Oracle. Sticks explains that they are the same, and the Oracle is a very old Anarchist A.I. used to predict the future. Michael comments, "like that ECHELON plug-in the British were building?" and is met with shock from the entire group.

At first Sticks is angry that Michael withheld that information for YEARS, but Michael retorts that they never tell him anything in order for him to provide any useful information. He didn't know much more about it than that, as his team was supposed to look at it but didn't get the chance, for as soon as he started to look at the code, the Inlay started up just before Tessa tried to infiltrate the building. Adams now has an idea of who gave the Inlay the orders to attack, and Tin-Head agrees, noting that his security system would shut him down and trash his memory exactly as he did if he came into contact with the Oracle. Michael questions why Tin-Head would do this, as he is Anarchist-built, and he responds that the Oracle will overwrite himself onto anything he can. Adams remarks that if it *is* the Oracle, he now has access to advanced hardware and software, empowering him in his envisioned future... without his current masters.

## Distress Signal

During regular monitoring duty, Tin-Head comes across an Inlay Bishop's distress signal. He calls Michael ("Nerd Boy") to check it out because he's responsible for it happening. Michael is livid at seeing the project outcome, that because he and his old colleagues were no longer working on the project, it got put behind to the point where the remaining project members prettied up the remains of IX7 enough to get more funding to keep going. Tin-Head is disgusted because the act is akin to stringing up a corpse and playing with it like a marionette. He explains that a military machine like IX7 is to destroy itself rather than allow the enemy to use it, but it needs permission to do this to prevent self-destruction at every small error.

Yet because IX7 cannot reach the Advisory for permission, because the Advisory doesn't exist yet, it is asking Tin-Head as a desperate last resort, to have him forward the request accordingly. Unfortunately, Tin-Head is unable to do anything except request IX7 to do a file validation, which normally wouldn't slow it down save for the unavailability of the Anarchist servers and amount of corruption it has likely endured. So when Jacob boots IX7, Tin-Head sends the public file validation request, which causes IX7 to crash and power cycle.

Tin-Head is immediately worried by this (evidenced by Michael noticing that Tin-Head has actually called him Michael instead of "Nerd Boy" or similar), as he had figured the request would get IX7 stuck in an endless cycle trying to connect with the non-existent servers, but instead IX7 gave up immediately and reverted to factory default settings. This is a problem because the factory defaults include commands to kill certain targets on sight, like "50 Star Americans" (who may or may not be indistinguishable from regular pre-Black April Americans).

When IX7 gets rebooted and starts beating the major to a paste, Tin-Head is distraught by IX7's anger. He explains to Michael that Bishops are designed for efficiency, and the malevolence IX7 is showing requires time, effort, and hatred, which requires intelligence. This prompts Tin-Head to realise IX7 is alive, and gives him motivation to save them. He recognises "the scared, confused, and traumatized person INSIDE the killing machine" and starts communicating with IX7 to plan an escape. As further proof of IX7's intelligence, Tin-Head notes that IX7 just wanted to scare Jacob, before running like hell.

Tin-Head then discusses with Michael where to hide IX7 in order to pick them up. Michael points out it's... they are in the middle of a desert plain, something General Perry uses to easily track them. Michael is adamant that there's nothing in the desert, and if there is, they hid it... which prompts Michael to ask Tin-Head to check for doctored images of an airstrip near the old research centre. Tin-Head finds it instantly and informs IX7 of the location. Michael feels pessimistic about IX7's odds, but Tin-Head has to try, for his own sake.

IX7 slows the General's progress by shooting out a tire, something that astonishes Michael. Tin-Head points out that IX7 used a volley gun to cut the tire in half. Michael then asks why a volley gun instead of lasers, and Tin-Head complains about killjoys not wanting to give killer robots almost unlimited ammunition.

IX7 finds a biplane and takes off, under Tin-Head's guidance. Michael points out that the biplane is ancient and its conditions are unknown, which Tin-Head has to acknowledge as a problem. Unfortunately, IX7 crashes the plane, and they can't move, finally draining their batteries. Michael realises there's nothing else they can do, to which Tin-Head kicks over the computer desk.

When Adams is finally able to rouse Tessa and get her to see Tin-Head, Michael explains everything that happened, and that Tin-Head went on a destructive rampage before sitting in a corner and muttering "me good" to himself in between throwing things at Michael if he tries to go back in. Tin-Head starts to do the same with Tessa before realising it's her and backing down, looking defeated.