“How did you access the Galactic Web?” the nurse standing by Lee asks in wonder.

  “Easy!” exclaims the robot. “The device is connected to the computer, which is connected to the network, which in turn is connected to the web.”

  Bexy, hearing this, stands up abruptly, and Fionna, who was closer to him, loses her balance and lands in the arms of the doctor.

  Bexy starts to look at the internal safety connections and calls out, “The network is difficult to penetrate; how did you bypass all of the safety protocols?”

  “That’s easy!” the robot says, and a shrugging image appears over its head. “It might be hard to get in, but as I was—well, created within the system—I had to get out, not in. So all I had to do was access the web.”

  Bexy stops and looks at the image of the robot. “So you are sentient?”

  The robot starts to rotate left then right, never fully rotating. “Not really. I believe that when—from what I could tell—he thought of me, he did so thinking of me as someone who had access to all the information.”

  “Big brother, why is your helper talking with the blue mister?” Sakura asks, tugging at Lee’s sleeve.

  “The blue mister is Mr Bexy,” Lee says, looking at Sakura. “And he has a question that my helper knew the answer to. They are just making sure we are okay. Let's play a bit more.”

  “Good! What do I do now?” Sakura asks as she extends her two fingers and the fire appears straight away.

  “That is good and was faster now,” Lee says in amazement. “Now you need to make it bigger and in your hands.”

  As Lee explains, they continue practising. Soon they are playing a game of catch with the fireball, tossing it to one another.

  Eventually, Sakura asks, “How do I change colour? I don’t like this one,” she says, showing the fireball in her palm.

  “That is easy. Just paint it another colour, like you do with your pictures on Mom’s tablet,” Lee says in the simplest terms he can think of.

  They play a bit more, and as Lee has the fireball in his hand, he starts to feel thirsty. Then, just before the fireball leaves his hand, it turns into a water ball. Startled by the change, Sakura jumps sideways, dodging the ball; as the ball lands on the ground, it makes a splashing sound.

  “Why you do that, big brother?” Sakura asks, annoyed.

  Lee shakes his head. “I don’t know how I did it; it was accident.”

  “Lee!” Lee hears someone call out and finds that only Nurse Raxen and Bexy remain from the medical staff; his dad is also missing. Then Bexy continues, “What did you think just now? There was a quick change, but I wasn’t paying too much attention.”

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  Lee thinks for a second. “All I thought was that I felt thirsty and wanted some water.”

  “Try to do like you did with the fire, but think of water this time,” Bexy says, testing a bit more to see what Lee can achieve.

  Lee tries but fails; he is unable to get a water ball again. As he is concentrating, he notices a squirt of water pass in front of his eyes; as he looks at Sakura, she has two fingers extended and water coming out in squirts.

  Noticing Lee looking at her, Sakura says, “Look, big brother, I make water shooter.”

  Lee smiles, then, having an epiphany, concentrates again and this time he ends up with a perfect ice ball floating inches from his hand; then, grabbing it, he examines it. Afterwards, with a smile, he concentrates and the ice melts and a perfect water ball is in its place.

  Lee and Sakura have been playing for half an hour since the start of the dual test when they start to get a minor headache. A warning light appears on the monitor, but after debating with Raxen and Fionna, who got back in the room, they conclude that it could be due to exhaustion; so they let the children play a bit longer but with an eye on the warning level.

  As they play for another five minutes, Lee and Sakura start to get nosebleeds.

  “Lee, Sakura, thank you for playing, but you need to go home now,” says Bexy as both nurses save and securely store the data on the network under Lee’s file.

  “Okay,” Lee says, then looks at Sakura, who has already wiped the blood from her nose on her sleeve. “Saki, let’s go home.”

  Bexy prepares to terminate the test when they hear an elderly male voice that seems to come from everywhere, saying, “Hold on right there just a bit longer.”

  Bexy’s finger hovers just above the terminate button as he looks around. “Who spoke?” he asks to no one in particular.

  “Sorry, it was I.” The voice comes again; then a door appears and a cartoonish-looking old man steps into the room; as the door closes behind him, it blinks away. “Hello, you can call me Doctor Robert Winston.”

  Both Lee and Sakura look at one another and can tell that neither knows who this old man is.

  Bexy, looking at the screen, notices their expressions, so he asks the digital Doctor, “How did you get here?”

  “Well, that is easy,” the old man says. “You have tapped into something I used to study a long ago. Well, my real self.”

  Sakura's body trembles as she pulls on Lee’s shirt again. “Big brother, my head hurts,” she says, then looks at the old man. “And who is this Doctor?”

  Before anyone can reply, Lee’s helping robot starts to beep, then says, “Doctor Jonathan Robert Winston was a neuroscientist who devoted his lifetime to studying the human brain and its potential and hidden capabilities.” Then a photo of the cartoonish old man appears next to him, showing his true human face. “He was born on the twenty-fifth of November in the year two thousand one hundred and sixty-five of the old calendar, on the first human planet. He achieved a few awards with his research work. His son was an informatics genius who created an intelligent algorithm using data from the twenty-first century, right from the beginning until the latest data at the time. He made his first AI, and most advanced one, to help his father on his research.”

  “Hold on,” Bexy says, lifting a hand. “If he was born on that date, there is no chance he can be here talking to us right now. Humans only got access to cryogenic chambers after the year two thousand three hundred and fifty.”

  “I never said I was him,” says the cartoonish old man. “I said you could call me by his name. My master’s name. I am the AI that his son created for him. Along the remaining life of my master, I learned a lot and helped him discover a lot also. Did you know that humans can easily get to the age of one hundred thanks to his discovery? Yes, it was him who discovered how to unlock the brain in the earlier humans to help regenerate the dying cells, therefore helping the human race prolong their life. Nowadays, due to ages of mutations, the human brain unlocks that ability on its own, but before, the average human life span was only eighty.”