***ANAD detects acoustic indicators for stress in Major Winger’s voice patterns…parsing ‘stress’ (n. pressure, strain, anxiety, tension)…ANAD detects skin conductance levels rising, primary indicators for non-optimal neural patterns in main processor…re-evaluating recent actions…ANAD resets and initializes Stage 1 config buffers…Major Winger advise ANAD of proper config and actions***
Winger shook his head. The problem with using ANAD swarms as troopers was that you didn’t have anything to yell at…it was hard to get a readable reaction from such a trooper. In nog school, when the drill instructor got in your face, he could see your lips quiver and the sweat bead up on your forehead. When an ANAD swarm needed an ass-chewing, what could you really see? A cloud of bots drifting around…you might as well yell at the dust motes in the corner.
Winger felt like he had just swatted a loyal old dog on the behind. It was high time to take this horse by the reins. “ANAD, assume config state one, right now. You’re coming with me.”
The swarm didn’t exactly wag its tail but there was a noticeable brightening and the outer edges of the formation seem to sharpen. Winger tapped on his comm clip and hailed Chris Calderon.
“CEC, meet me aboard Trident, in five minutes. Utility deck. I want to run full diagnostics on ANAD…the master assembler. There’s some weird crap going on with these bots and I want to make sure we’ve got a fully functional assembler system.”
“Right away, Skipper,” came the reply.
Winger and the bot swarm headed out to the central gangway and went down one level.
The Utility deck had a small containment lab, basically a tiny cubicle, to run tests on ANAD systems. Winger met Calderon there.
“Okay, ANAD…in you go,” Winger told the swarm. “Master assembler and all replicants: config for capture and containment.”
The swarm brightened along its edges, flaring briefly like a summer sunset.