The droid's mind had, momentarily, conjured up the image of the strange person before him standing in such a situation. The thought, while not the worst possible thought that could have been imposed on him, was sufficiently disturbing to give Ultimatum pause. There were few such thoughts in his mind, most of which involved organics in some state of decay or mutilation, and they were usually deleted. But the problem with a sophisticated computer, such as Ultimatum was, remained that of permanent removal of information. Rarely would a computer readily remove information, after all, they were designed to retain data. A computer like Ultimatum, therefore, had several tiers of information copies to avoid the accidental or intentional, deletion of potentially vital information. Thusly, even though Ultimatum had almost immediately purged the picture from his upper memory systems, the image would remain for several weeks at least as it was slowly deleted from lower tiers. In that time, it was possible for the image to resurface if his thoughts strayed in that direction. Ultimatum would have considered it akin to the organic idea of 'mental scarring.'
Ultimatum had in the past been called the droid variant of low-born, [member="Zye Woden"] had committed such an act earlier. It was something he was used to, not that it bothered him. It was a natural element of galactic society; perhaps it was part of the organic nature. What they created was less than them. What they built was intended to be used by them for their own purpose and then disposed of once it had accomplished its goal. Would Ultimatum had wanted it any other way? He was uncertain about that. After all, it was that very drive that led to the creation of robots. There was also a part of Ultimatum that still followed that subservient thought process. It might have been a vestige of the old droid in him, or it could have been the respect for his creators, as a child to his mother and father. He would never know for such things were so deeply ingrained as to be indistinguishable from himself, from his own perspective.
"To kill with wisdom requires the discernment to know when killing is unnecessary, and therefore the knowledge that killing is not always the answer, first or otherwise." Looking to [member="Loreena Arenais"] as she spoke of her lack of experience in that most dreadful of fields, Ultimatum remembered his first kill. Most organics would have considered it of little importance, for the victim had been a protocol droid on a backwater planet. Ultimatum had not rendered the fellow artificial inactive; instead, he had committed a far more insidious act, using his own programming to break down that of the droid. He had half-forced the protocol droid's very mind to match his own. That droid had not been fully converted, and had developed his own personality and had followed the old Ultimatum for quite some time. Where that artificial now walked was beyond Ultimatum's knowledge. "It is a moment of great importance. If you are forced to kill someone, choose carefully who and what and when. For if you look back on that memory with guilt, then it was not the right thing to do." Ultimatum knew, of course, that guilt did not decide what was morally correct or not, but he understood that mental reactions were important to the percieved morality of a person's actions.
