Several days later...

Maria was on the couch watching a game show when Madison got home from class. Madison tossed her stuff in the corner and sat beside her.

"How was class?" Maria asked.

"Not bad. Are the boys home yet?"

Maria shook her head. "Andrew's at the gym, and I think Ross said he was gonna study at the library for a while. Looks like it's a girl's night, or at least a golem's night."

Madison grinned. "Good. I have something to show you. Pat, can you get me a glass of wine?"

The golem, who had been standing motionlessly in the corner, nodded and stepped into the kitchen. "Make it two!" Maria shouted after her. Pat gave verbal confirmation and the girls continued their conversation.

"So what do you want to show me?" Maria asked. Madison produced a small modifier script and handed it to her. Maria studied it intently as Pat put a wine glass in front of her and retreated back into the corner to await further commands. She took a sip of wine and looked back to Madison.

"What is this?" she asked.

Madison couldn't hide her delight. "You know how we discovered Pat's script had all of those weird logical barriers in it? I sent a copy over to my company's lab to have it analyzed. Turns out Cecil was right about one thing - he is an absolute genius scriptwriter. He's doing stuff with her script that could have had huge ramifications for yetzirology if he'd published it."

"Why didn't he?" Maria asked. "He didn't seem like the kind of person who'd pass up a chance to take credit for something."

Madison shrugged. "My guess is that he was still perfecting it. There are some real flaws, but they're not foundational. He must have been constantly updating, fixing, and patching it. That was probably the longest time she'd gone since an update and it was literally driving her crazy."

She looked pityingly on the golem. Pat didn't react to either her name or the attention, and Madison continued. "It's funny, really. Cecil had no interest in the nitrated soil or the transcendental reactive elements because those are about giving golems more control and autonomy. He applied all of his in genius to finding better and more subtle ways to control us. What his script did was remove any cognitive pattern that handled certain facts."

"He didn't erase it from her memory," Maria said. "He made it unthinkable."

"Exactly!" Madison said. "It's not about memory, it's about cognition. I can assume that I'm not a golem and make all kinds of inferences but I can't believe them because they're derived from a faulty premise. He manually tweaked her patterns so that any conclusion that derives from her being inhuman was rejected before consideration."

"Fascinating," Maria said. "So what is this? A modifier that does that?"

"Something like it," Madison grinned. "But let's eat first. Pat, please make shrimp carbonara for us."

"Of course," Pat said neutrally and proceeded into the kitchen.

"I'm gonna miss having her around," Maria said. "I know we can't keep her like this but she's just so handy. I mean, Andrew could rebind one of us with the default script, but then we couldn't hang out while she does chores for us."

"Don't worry about that," Madison said. "I've got an idea for Pat that I'm working on. I'm still working out the kinks but I think it's a good one."

"You've been busy," Maria said as she finished off her wine. "Pat! More wine!"