I'm No Demon

During this period, computers all over the world had been experiencing varying degrees of lag.

The United States government took the blame for it. Brad had never asked for patent rights, so the United States had naturally made a tidy profit from his technology. But now the products were having problems.

These days, Brad kept receiving emails inside his head.

Brad had no time to deal with them, so he casually released update data for a superior version of the computers.

He was using computers around the world as a botnet, pushing Skynet's computing power to its limit.

While he improved his counter-field technology, the surplus computing power also allowed many research projects that had stalled just short of completion for lack of experimental data to succeed.

Brad began to rein himself in a little.

The limits his counter-field could now reach were already beyond what the mechanical components in his body could support.

He needed more auxiliary equipment.

Soon, the company Brad had previously founded began rolling out a revolutionary product.

Smart home robots.

That was right.

The twenty-first century had not even arrived, and Brad was already planning to release these things.

But he had long since prepared his explanation. No matter how closely anyone examined these home robots after taking them apart, they were nothing more than simple computer chip assemblies that could only follow rigid commands.

Brad had no intention of releasing the cloud computing technology they actually used for another thirty years or so.

Meanwhile, Brad's company had also begun making preparations to launch satellites.

There were some additional obstacles on that front, however, coming from the eastern nation of the Soviet Union.

But judging by the images of the future, the Soviet Union would soon cease to be a major problem.

The robots' rollout was a great success, because Brad had not priced them like a profiteer.

What he needed now was to build hype, turn these things into a phenomenal hit, and then spread them across the world. At the very least, if he ever fought Magneto in the future, he wanted ten or twenty nearby to serve as auxiliary field amplifiers.

Even though he could already nullify the powers of ten thousand Magnetos with a mere wave of his hand.

Still, Brad felt that no amount of preparation was excessive when dealing with a natural nemesis who could threaten the very foundation of his existence.

Even if the two of them had never so much as met.

His goal was that, if the day ever came when he and Magneto became irreconcilable enemies, a single command would prevent Magneto from using his powers anywhere within the Solar System.

Then he would rush over and kill him with a basic attack.

As for what came afterward-tearing out tendons, stripping off skin, extracting bone marrow, studying nerves, and analyzing genes-Brad had very detailed plans for the entire process.

Another benefit of being able to watch images of the future was that Brad had learned a set of futuristic advertising strategies.

With a few adjustments, the smart home robots marketed by Brad's company began selling like wildfire.

Whenever anyone raised the idea that intelligent robots posed a threat, the "experts" Brad had arranged would soon jump out to undermine that argument by pretending to support it. They would dismantle a robot on television, then mercilessly ridicule its rigid behavior patterns, insisting that it could hardly be called intelligent.

But consumers could genuinely feel how useful the robots were. Their appearance was especially pleasing, too, all smooth, rounded shapes that made them look endearing.

By now, even at X Academy, one out of every three people had one of these things in their dorm room.

Charles even had one in his room.

No one knew that Brad was the true controlling force behind the company.

Brad had even joined Hank in mocking the robot's designer, calling him an opportunistic monkey who was passing off something utterly unintelligent as intelligent.

Meanwhile, a T1001 Terminator for whom Brad had carefully crafted an identity finally made contact with Bolivar.

To Bolivar, it was a remarkable chance encounter.

At first, his company had merely hired a beautiful female intern.

She had graduated from a prestigious university, held a doctorate, and wore gold-rimmed glasses. Blonde and blue-eyed, her figure was not outrageously sexy, but it was just right.

Bolivar paid her no attention at first.

Then, at a meeting, Bolivar happened to run into the young woman with the doctorate, whose name was Beth.

She looked so damn much like his first love from his youth.

That left Bolivar distracted for a while, but he soon put it out of his mind.

After all, he was now a man with a grand ambition. How could he let romance stand in the way of his progress?

Later, however, through the stories passed around by his colleagues and subordinates, Bolivar gradually formed an impression of a prickly, proud woman who had genuine ability but was rather arrogant about her talents.

A few more months passed, and Bolivar happened to have a project that matched Beth's specialty. Given that her professional skills had reportedly always been quite good,

Bolivar promptly handed the project over to her.

She completed it very well.

That prompted Bolivar to make a special effort to find time to praise her.

Who would have thought she would respond with a face full of disdain? It was not directed at his disability-like short stature, though. Rather, her words betrayed a lack of faith in his professional expertise.

Bolivar was rather angry.

So he casually revealed some of his less important research findings to her, then thoroughly mocked Beth's professional abilities.

The sight of her embarrassed, indignant expression gave Bolivar an immense sense of satisfaction.

Soon, however, Beth reclaimed the upper hand through another line of research.

She even went out of her way to report her findings to him, intending to get under his skin.

Bolivar laughed in anger and deliberately set aside some time to find her mistakes so he could mock her right back.

Instead, while studying her work, Bolivar unexpectedly discovered that Beth was actually a genius with some very original ideas.

He immediately ordered her transferred to his laboratory as his assistant.

Both of them were geniuses, and neither would concede to the other.

And so, day after day, they bickered and mocked one another while working closely together, making tremendous progress in their research.

After half a year of this, Bolivar suddenly realized that he seemed unable to do without her.

But Bolivar knew that, although she did not discriminate against people based on their height, she would never submit to someone who could not surpass her in her field.

Finally, Bolivar naturally brought Beth into the Sentinels project.

It completely won Beth over, even though she remained as argumentative as ever and refused to admit defeat.

Bolivar smiled. He thoroughly enjoyed that feeling.

Beth also gave Bolivar some tremendous surprises in robotics-related fields.

Beth seemed born for robotics. No! She had been born for his Sentinels project!

With the capable Beth joining him, Bolivar's Sentinels project advanced by leaps and bounds.

Bolivar had already been very cautious. Before his feelings for Beth grew so deep, he had tested her with a mutant gene detector he had invented himself.

Now, Dr. Bolivar was hopelessly in love with Beth.

Far away at X Academy, Brad browsed the recent data and could not help shivering, goosebumps rising all over his body.

With Brad's Skynet big-data analysis, Bolivar's behavioral patterns and personal history had nowhere to hide.

Her specially designed appearance, figure, and personality amounted to a perfect dream lover, custom-built for Bolivar using a supercomputer.

Poor Bolivar had known nothing but studying since childhood, and nothing but research once he grew up.

When had he ever encountered such elaborate manipulation?

Brad felt that toying with someone else's feelings like this was downright demonic.

"Turn it up. Arrange for a romantic rival to appear: two high-quality men competing for one high-quality woman. After countless hardships, the scientist with a congenital disability finally defeats his rival and successfully wins her... No! Winning her over would still be too fast. He successfully gets Beth to argue with him less often, giving Dr. Bolivar the faint, elusive impression that she might possibly have feelings for him."

Without interfering with Bolivar's research progress, Brad needed to eventually bring him to the point where losing Beth would leave him so heartbroken that he would kill himself.

"After all, I'm no demon."

Brad ate grapes as he studied the research data Beth had stolen from Bolivar.

Bolivar was a genius, after all. Besides the Sentinels that represented the pinnacle of his life's work, his other inventions and research were also impressive, and highly valuable to Brad and Skynet.