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"That ball is Scrapper?"
Someone in the crowd couldn't process what they were seeing.
"Apparently so."
A few people had pulled up the livestream on their phones. The drone footage showed the same iron sphere rolling across the test field, trailing dust, spinning in wide circles with a momentum that seemed inexhaustible.
The chat was still detonating. Between the all-caps reactions and the memes, someone had already clipped the ball-mode transformation and set it to music. It had thirty thousand views in four minutes.
"How did it become a sphere?"
Nobody had an answer. A forty-foot humanoid machine had just folded itself into a rolling ball at full speed, and the people who'd watched it happen in person were no closer to understanding the mechanics than the people watching through a screen.
Kyle and the research team arrived at the test field, gasping, soaked in sweat.
"It actually did it," Kyle said between breaths. He stared at the sphere rolling in lazy circles, carving tracks into the grass. "He told us it could do this. Months ago. We all thought it was a stretch goal. Something for next year, or the year after."
"We haven't even finished studying the first-generation technology," one of the researchers said. "And he's already implemented the complete vision."
Inside the cockpit, Ryan checked his energy reserves. Ninety-four percent. He'd been running at full power for roughly six minutes. The math tracked perfectly with his calculations. Two hours of continuous full-power operation.
He made a mental note to have someone else pilot Scrapper for a full endurance test later. He needed a data point from a different operator, someone who wasn't him, to validate the runtime under standard neural load conditions.
Calloway and Ward arrived on foot, both breathing harder than they'd admit. Calloway looked at the rolling sphere and stood very still for about ten seconds.
A student nearby explained what had happened.
The ball was Scrapper. It had transformed.
Calloway didn't know whether to celebrate or cry.
The project had just produced its most significant result yet. Energy independence. Full mobility. Mode transformation. Even if the project wasn't directly under MIT's banner, having it on campus was a massive institutional win.
But the path Scrapper had taken from the workshop to the test field was a trail of destruction. Cracked pavement. Torn-up pathways. Demolished fencing. The repair bill was going to be substantial.
And if every test produced this kind of collateral damage...
MIT genuinely could not afford it.
Calloway briefly considered whether he should have charged admission to the spectators. Shook the thought off. He had standards.
Ryan brought Scrapper out of ball mode. The crowd watched the reverse transformation: limbs unfolding, torso straightening, the sphere expanding back into a standing humanoid, shedding clumps of dirt and grass as the armor plates separated.
"Incredible," someone whispered.
Ryan walked Scrapper back toward the workshop. The crowd parted instinctively, then fell in behind the mech like a procession, following at a respectful distance. From above, Chloe's drone captured the image: a black giant striding across a university campus, trailed by hundreds of tiny figures.
The technicians swarmed Scrapper the moment it re-entered the workshop. Ryan climbed out to find Calloway waiting.
The president's expression was a complicated mixture of pride, exasperation, and the specific anxiety of a man calculating repair costs in real time.
"You," Calloway said. Then stopped. Started again. "You could have warned me."
Ryan maintained a look of innocent confusion. "I told you last night there would be a surprise."
Ward intervened with a mild scolding. "You could have at least stayed on the designated pathways. The damage to the roads alone is going to cost a fortune."
Calloway jumped on this. "Road repairs come out of the project budget."
"Of course," Ryan said. Then, with the timing of a professional negotiator: "Just as soon as the supplementary funding from our agreement is processed."
Calloway stiffened.
"Scrapper ran untethered for at least fifteen minutes today," Ryan continued. "Well above the ten-minute threshold we agreed on. The terms of our arrangement are satisfied."
"I'm aware."
"Wonderful. So once that ten million hits the account, we'll have the road repairs covered. Until then..." Ryan spread his hands apologetically. "We're a bit short on cash. This upgrade cycle consumed most of the existing budget. Patricia, what's our current balance?"
Patricia, who had been standing nearby with the neutral expression of someone who'd learned to stay out of the crossfire, answered carefully: "The upgrade components totaled approximately eleven million dollars."
She did not say the budget was empty. She said the upgrades cost eleven million. There was a difference, and Ryan had coached her on exactly how much to reveal.
Calloway understood the implication. If he delayed the supplementary funding, the road stayed broken. If the road stayed broken, it was his problem, not Ryan's.
"Your funding will be processed," Calloway said stiffly. "As agreed."
"Thank you, President Calloway. And may I suggest, for future reference, that the footpath damage could actually become a campus attraction? People will want to see where Scrapper walked. You could put up informational plaques. Maybe a small gift shop."
Calloway stared at him.
Ward pulled Ryan away before the conversation got worse.
As Calloway walked back toward the administration building, a thought crossed his mind unbidden.
Maybe I should have charged admission after all.
He shook his head.
No. MIT has standards.
...Don't we?