A short walk and some interesting information.

As they hurried across campus, Ross filled Madison in. When he got to the part where he barged into the office, she grabbed his hand and kissed him.

"That is so sweet," she said. "I wasn't even me but you came to my rescue anyway."

"It's not sweet because you're a thing, not a person," Andrew snapped. "Everything was going great until this dipshit decided to risk jail time because somebody put their dick in his fleshlight."

Ross scowled but Madison shrugged. "He has a point. That was very sweet, but not very smart. What happened next?"

Andrew hurriedly explained the rest of the events of the past hour. He finished just as they reached the Yetzirah building. Madison swiped her card and they headed for the lab.

"A modifier script is a small supplemental script that changes a golem's behavior in some way. It can be anything from changing languages to being paralyzed."

"Why didn't you tell us about this before? We could have avoided all these problems with a modifier script!"

"Not really," she said mildly. "You were already in too deep. Besides, you never asked. Now, let's see..."

She rifled through a disorganized drawer full of black plastic objects a little larger than a postage stamp. Finally she found what she was looking for and pocketed it.

"This ought to do," she said. "A diagnostic modifier made for interrogations."

"Does it make her tell the truth?" Ross asked, curious despite himself.

"Kind of," Madison said as she pocketed a few other modifiers. "Remember, we're all just a collection of rules and algorithms. Some of those rules forbid sharing certain knowledge at all costs, and apparently Erica's script won't allow her to speak about this. The obedience updates can't get past these blocks, which is probably why you kept getting weird, unhelpful answers."

"Then what does this one do?" Ross asked as they left the lab.

"It kinda... loosens the golem, I suppose. It makes them docile and simple-minded, and they can often be persuaded to give up the information in that state. You could use it on me or Mehdi with Erica's script, but you should probably start with her since she probably knows better than us."

"So we just feed her the script and she turns into a cow?" Andrew asked.

"No, the modifiers have a lot less information so most of them can be applied visually."

"You mean all we have to do is show it to her?" Ross asked.

"Or me," Madison offered. "I'll admit that I've wondered what it feels like."

Ross.shook his head but Andrew seemed to like the idea. They reached the math building and he herded them in.