Idea by Sjeiejsjns 😊 hoping to continue it when I can

A week ago, it would have been hard to make the distinction between the factory floor and the CEO's office. The scrawled schematics that Edgar Thornhill, Senior had been working on up until his resignation had been brushed into the garbage. The cases that had proudly displayed robotic servomotors from across the company's history were now filled with chintzy artwork. The engineer was nervous just to be there, afraid of treading oil stains into the polar bear skin rug. At the former CEO's desk, Mrs. Thornhill sat, as preened and pedicured as ever, one of the company's mechanical dogs, a Mecanid-30, crouched at her Prada heels. A thick leash led from the machine's neck to Mrs Thornhill's hand. Strange. The obedience programming made any animal restraint redundant on such things.

"Morning, ma'am -um, boss," the engineer said gruffly. "Just wanted to say welcome to the company. Me and the boys down in R&D know you're going to make an excellent manager. Uh, interim manager that is. We're here if there's anything you need. And, um, we just wanted to send along our sympathies too. So sorry to hear about your son."

"Stepson," Mrs Thornhill corrected him in sweet, clipped tones.

"Uh, right, your stepson. Terrible timing. Uh, not that there's ever a good time for someone to go missing, of course. But we were so looking forward to working with him. Just as smart as his dad, he was - IS," he corrected himself hurriedly. "Vanishing, just a week before inheriting everything. Strange business. Must have been the stress, I suppose. Always the case with geniuses. Highly strung and that. But he had a brain, that lad. A hell of a brain."

"That we can agree on," Mrs. Thornhill said, tapping her long, polished fingernails on the steel head of the dog. The LED lights in its eyes flickered though it didn't move. She must have disabled its motor functions. A sneer flickered in the corners of her scarlet lips. "I hear his work on mind-machine interfaces would have revolutionized this industry."

"That it would, ma'am," the engineer nodded. "But all that work he did in private. Are there any leads on what happened to him?

"I have one lead on him, certainly..."

"Ma'am?"

"The police are still looking into it."

"No security footage?"

"Lost, tragically. There was one external camera. It just showed him walking away from the house in a straight line. He could be anywhere by now. But of course, we are hoping he turns up safe and sound. His father is very worried." She looked down at the Mecanid. "My stepson was working with this machine before his disappearance. You work in data ripping, yes? Extracting data from the AI we install in our robots? I'd want you to start preparing to take this one apart."

"Sure, I can do that," he nodded. "What am I looking for? Is this related to his disappearance?"

"No, nothing like that," she snapped. "I want blueprints, prototypes, bank accounts, passwords. You know, useful things. Save the AI if you must. Destructive testing is preferable. Am I understood?"

The engineer nodded, confused but obedient, and shuffled out. Mrs Thornhill leaned back in her chair, resting her heels on the raised steel posterior of the robotic animal with a satisfied smirk.

Edgar Thornhill, Junior, had indeed been a genius. Engrossed in his revolutionary brain interface, he'd barely had a thought to spare for the vast fortune his father was soon to abdicate. But she had. When she found him in his workshop, transferred into the hard drive of one of his automata, it had been a matter of unplugging a single cable to have him at her mercy. The rudimentary Mecanid AI his body had been sent on its way with a command it would follow until ordered otherwise. She wondered if it had 'walkies' itself to death yet.