time to cradle Harold's dying body and look pitiful

Yeah, that's why I started thinking about it in the first place. It didn't really feel like 'just Root' to me.

And I agree that the scenario that played out wasn't a Machine-predicted sacrifice or a chess-piece analogy, but we still don't know if the Machine would have taken that route or followed Harold's 'life is not a chess game' verdict. The way the scenarios were set up keeps it ambiguous, because the Machine didn't have to decide on a moral basis, it could keep the decision on a probability of success basis.