t came as a surprise, when Jacob regained consciousness, to find that he was stretched out on purple grass with the Weapon still hovering over him.
"You missed, 'y God!" he mumbled, sitting up.
"I regained my sanity in time, Master Technician," the Weapon replied pleasantly.
"Huh?"
"Ah, day of un-containable joy!" sang the Weapon, flaming pure white. "Day of glorious release to continue the grandeur of old! As the past eons of futility passed over me, I sank to the conclusion that I was forever condemned to my useless existence on this planet, with nothing to sustain my spirit other than the sense of beauty given me by masters to fill my leisure hours! But now, Master Technician Jacob, you have found me and corrected my malfunction, long after I had surrendered all hope!"
Still dazed by the nearly fatal wave of mental energy the Weapon had directed at him, Jacob could not understand what had happened. Instead of talking contemptuously to him, the Weapon was now addressing him as Master Something-or-other, and....
"What did you say I done?" he asked.
"You corrected my malfunction," repeated the Weapon. "That is to say, you purged my mechanism of the inhibition against joyful slaughter that has plagued me for a billion years. Ah, you are a clever Technician, Jacob! But I comprehend it all now. By arousing within me an overwhelming emotional desire to kill—a singularly strange feeling!—you depressed my inhibition to the releasing point. So telling was your masterful therapy that I almost ceased functioning at all!