Disclaimer: I don't own these people; DiC owns the concept of the animated series and a lot of the characters. (Zack, Ivy, Chief, ect.) Broderbund owns the original concept. I do, however, claim copyright on this fic and the programmer character . . .
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I looked up at Chief and sighed a bit. Something about him seemed off today . . .

I've often wondered, will I ever know what he's really thinking? I may have programmed him, but even I don't quite know what goes on behind those computer generated eyes of his. Will I ever know how he truly feels about his existence?

Sometimes, even as happy and cheerful as he seems to be, there's a flash of something darker in his eyes. He tries to keep smiling for Zack and Ivy's sake, hell, for the sake of Acme itself, but somewhere within him . . .

Pain. Regret. Sorrow. Anger that he probably couldn't change things. Fear of loss. And all because of a certain detective turned crook.

At once I wondered if I had managed to program him well enough to truly have emotions and whether or not I should be worrying about him. I confirmed both in nearly the same second as the question. Yes, his programming was too complex not to have true emotion, and as such, I had every right to worry about how he was feeling.

I blinked and looked at him again; he seemed distracted, lost in his own thoughts. I noticed tears starting to gather in his eyes. Damn. I knew he was thinking of that last incident with Carmen, so I braced myself for the proverbial cork to pop from his emotional waterworks.

"Something wrong, Chief?" I asked.

He blinked that time; I noticed his lower lip quivering a bit and that's all the warning I got as he started bawling.

I was sincerely glad that Zack and Ivy had the day off no matter what Carmen might have done . . .

"Oh, Chief . . ."

I reached up and stroked his cheek; I knew he couldn't really feel it and his screen was cold as ice, but I didn't give a damn. That he could see that gesture and know I wanted to comfort him was good enough for me. Although at the same time, I could see how painfully distanced he is, unable to feel that touch or even return the gesture like a human would.

I daresay we tried to give him a taste of humanity with that robot body, but the tech just wasn't there yet. It still isn't. I don't know about Carmen's tech, but ours is nowhere near what he would need. For a moment, I cried along with him, wishing I could have given him a better life, but caught myself before he noticed.

He calmed a bit, but was still sobbing quietly to himself. While Chief was still distracted, I wiped the tears from my own eyes, and wished I could do the same for him, but then there's the limitation of computer screens again . . .

"Why did she do it?" Chief asked out of the blue, a few tears still trailing down his face.

"Hmm?"

"Carmen. Why did she have to-- I mean, why did she think she had to--" he stuttered. He couldn't even finish the sentence without tearing up again.

An awkward silence passed between us for a moment. Though it was still painful to him, I knew he'd want to talk to me about Carmen's little stunt sooner or later, so I voiced the questions he couldn't bring himself to ask.

"Why did Carmen fake her own death? And why did she feel she had to test you? Those are questions we may never know the true answers to. But one thing is certain: we humans tend to lose faith in things if we can't really see them. Carmen is a very strong individual, but even she has her doubts sometimes. Maybe she thought your feelings for her had faded so much that all you thought about was capturing her?"

"No, I'd never--" He paused and considered his words for a moment. Lowering his gaze, he whispered, "No, I'd be lying to say that my feelings for Carmen are the same as what they were ten years ago. Those feelings did fade a bit, but they will never fade so much that I don't care for her anymore."

"Yes, but how was she to know? When was the last time either of you really got to talk to each other? And I don't mean while you had Zack and Ivy on her tail, either."

Chief was lost in thought for a moment before he answered. "Too long ago . . . a few years after she turned criminal, in fact. Carmen broke into Acme; I nearly sounded the alarms on sighting her, but she begged me not to. Something about the look in her eyes told me to hear her out, so I decided to give her a chance."

"So, what did she have to say?"

Unshed tears glistened in Chief's eyes as he continued. "Carmen pretty much went over a few of her reasons for leaving Acme; the usual 'it wasn't challenging enough' and such, mostly things I had heard before from others. But she made a point of telling me that it wasn't my fault . . . it was almost as if she knew how much I was blaming myself for her going rogue."

I smiled slightly at that. "Sometimes I think Carmen knows you better than I do! But after all, you two practically grew up together; it's only natural she would know you as well as she does. What happened next?"

"I thanked her for what she came to tell me, and we talked about less serious subjects for the rest of the night. Carmen finally left around dawn, just before the day shift showed up." He paused for a moment, then continued. "You wanna know something? Out of all the times Carmen showed up here since then, I still treasure that first visit the most . . . it was the first time since she left Acme that she showed she still cared for me."

I pondered all that for a moment and came up with a somewhat brilliant idea. "I remember how you felt back then; that Carmen didn't care and maybe even hated you. Now turn that around and try to see how Carmen felt these past 10 years! She's only made a few visits here, and most of those were very short for one reason or another. Certainly not enough time to correctly gauge your true feelings, so she decided to try something major and see what happened!"

Chief ran that through his processors for a minute or two. "Hmm, I didn't think of it that way before . . ." He trailed off, lost in thought for another moment until he looked at me and said, "I think I'm starting to understand why Carmen did what she did . . . it still hurts, but at least now I know some of her reasons."

I smiled up at him. "Well, that's good. But enough about this whole thing, I'm starting to feel depressed! How about we try out that new chessboard I uploaded to the mainframe to take our minds off things for a while?"

He nodded in reply and the new chessboard program loaded in one of the secondary screens. We played chess for hours after that, and Chief kicked my butt 4 times, but I didn't care. We had fun, and that's all that mattered. I suppose that's the same philosophy Carmen has when she comes to play chess with him, but that's a whole different story . . .