On Corrin, the robot’s villa followed a similar pattern to that of its counterpart on Earth, with both habitat and laboratory complexes designed by the creative mind of Erasmus. The slave pens behind the tall house were enclosed by high sandstone walls and wrought-iron gates, all topped by electro-barbs and energy-spike fields.

It felt very much like home to him. Erasmus looked forward to beginning work.

The enclosures teemed with humanity, nearly a thousand sweating bodies performing exercise routines beneath a red-giant sun that filled the sky like a huge bloodstain. It was a sweltering afternoon, but the slaves did not rest or complain, knowing that the robots would only punish them if they did.

The erudite thinking machine observed their daily routines from a bell tower on the south quadrant of his property, a favorite spot of his. Down in a pen, two old men collapsed under the glaring heat, and one of their downtrodden companions rushed to help them up. Thus, Erasmus counted three punishable infractions: the two who faltered and the good samaritan. Reasons were of no importance.

Erasmus had noted that the slaves grew increasingly agitated when he did not respond to their transgressions with immediate discipline. He found it amusing to let the anticipation and fear grow within them, and then note how agitation caused them to make even more mistakes. Human behavior was the same on Corrin as on Earth, and he was glad to continue his experiments and studies without interruption.

He pressed a button, causing automatic weapons to fire capriciously into one of the pens, killing or injuring dozens of slaves. Confused and panicked, the survivors tried to get away, but had nowhere to run. The fences were high and electrified. Some of the captives pushed their fellows in front of them for protection, while others played dead or hid under bodies. He continued to fire, but this time aimed so that he didn’t hit any more of them.

Yes, it was very gratifying to be continuing his research once more. He still had so much to learn.

An hour passed with no more gunfire, and people began to move around again, more cautiously than before. They pushed the bodies to one side and huddled together, not realizing what was going on. Some of them became openly defiant, shouting in the direction of the automatic weapons and waving their fists. With careful settings, Erasmus shot their arms off, one by one, and watched the victims writhe on the ground. Even the bravest humans could be reduced to bleeding, blithering fools.

“I see you are playing with your toys again,” the Corrin-Omnius said, from a viewing screen to the left of Erasmus in the bell tower.

“Everything I do is for a purpose,” Erasmus said. “I am learning more and more.”

The Corrin-Omnius did not know how badly the robot’s wager and the loyalty test had turned out with his counterpart on Earth. Erasmus had learned a significant lesson from the wildfire of rebellion he had inadvertently fostered, but the data had raised a host of new questions. He did not want the evermind to engage in a full-scale war of eradication, committing genocide against all human captives on the Synchronized Worlds— even if he had to discreetly keep certain subsets of information to himself.

Even if he had to lie.

A fascinating prospect. Erasmus was not accustomed to thinking in such terms.

The main gate swung open, and robotic guards removed the bodies of the dead and injured, then prodded a new group of slaves into the pens. One of the newcomers, a large sallow-skinned man, whirled abruptly and tackled the nearest robot, clawing at the structural fibers and trying to disrupt the protected neurelectric circuitry. Bloodying his fingers to break a seal, the slave grabbed a handful of mobility components, causing the robot to stagger. Two other robots fell on the man, and in a macabre burlesque of what the slave had done, one of them slammed steel fingers into his chest, cracking through skin, cartilage, and the sternum to rip his heart out.

“They are no more than stupid animals,” Omnius said, derisively.

“Animals cannot plot, scheme, and deceive,” Erasmus said. “These slaves no longer seem so complacent. I detect seeds of rebellion, even here.”

“No revolt could ever succeed on Corrin,” said the voice of Omnius.

“One can never know everything, dear Omnius— not even you. And that is why we must remain eternally curious. While I can estimate crowd behavior to a reasonable extent, I cannot consistently predict what any given human will do next. This is a supreme challenge.”

“It is self-evident that humans are a mass of contradictions. No model can reliably explain their behavior.”

Erasmus gazed down at the slave pens. “Still, they are our enemies, and we must understand them. Only in that way can we assure our dominance.”

The robot felt a strange surge in his sensory simulators. Anger? Frustration? On impulse, he ripped a small tympanic bell out of its housing in the tower and hurled it against the floor with a discordant clang. He found the sound . . . unsettling.

“Why did you damage that bell?” Omnius asked. “I have never seen you commit so unusual an act before.”

Erasmus further assessed his feelings. He had seen humans do such things, releasing pent-up emotions in the form of a tantrum. From his perspective, though, he felt no sense of satisfaction. “It was . . . just one of my experiments.”

Erasmus still had much to learn in his quest to absorb the essence of human nature, which he hoped to use as a springboard from which machine sophistication would rise even higher, reaching the zenith of existence. He gripped the tower railing with powerful, steely fingers, breaking off a chunk and letting it tumble to the pavement below. “I shall explain it to you later.”

After observing his slaves for another moment, he turned back to the screen. “It would not be wise to exterminate all humans. Instead, through more intense subjugation methods, we could break their willingness and ability to resist.”

The evermind, always enjoying the debate with Erasmus, delighted in catching a flaw. “But if we do that, Erasmus, are we not changing the fundamental character of the humans you wish to study? Is the observer not affecting the experiment?”

“An observer always affects the experiment. But I would rather change the subjects than destroy them. I will make my own decisions with respect to my humans here on Corrin.”

Omnius finally said, “I do not understand you any more than I understand humans.”

“I know that, Omnius. It will always be your weakness.”

The robot looked fondly down at his enslaved humans as his guards carried off the corpses and the injured. Erasmus thought of all the wonderful things he had learned from this species . . . and how much more he could discover, if granted the opportunity. Their collective lives were balanced on a tightrope over a dark, bottomless chasm, and Erasmus stood with them. He would not give them up easily.

On the bright side, he saw that in his absence, two more sets of twins had been born. As always, the possibilities were endless.