[first lines]
Puzzlehead: The Anti-Federalists and the Luddites forced the closure of all biomechanical laboratories and began replacing them with fertility clinics. Funding ceased for everything not directly related to re-population. Quite ironic now that I think about it. Walter managed to salvage most of the equipment that wasn't nailed down. The most important of which was D-I-amdac, a brain scanner, which he used to scan his own brain to provide the blueprint for the neuro-net map of my artificially intelligent mind.
Walter: [upstairs preparing a meal]
Puzzlehead: During the initial burn-in, programming 24-hours a day for several days at a time,
[groans and cries over intercom]
Puzzlehead: it was painful. I would get exhausted. But he was impatient and wanted to give me all the information he thought most relevant to my primary human development.
Walter: [leaning over him on the gurney] There there my little Puzzlehead, you've made me very proud. Everything's going to be alright now. That's a good boy. You can rest now.
Puzzlehead: I became an interactive humanoid life form, with sensory faculties that enabled me to be a conscious being with emotions. Enormous cognitive capacity, and no sense of mortality. A robot, created in the image - or self-image - of Walter.
