Buffy Season I Episode Guide: I. Robot--You. Jane

Cartona, Italy. 1418. A horned demon known as Moloch the Corrupter mesmerizes a young man before snapping his neck. A group of monks, led by Thelonius, cast a spell that traps Moloch in a large book. As Moloch is pulled into the book, lines of words appear on the pages. There he will stay until someone reads the words aloud. The monks place the book in a box and seal it.

Sunnydale, California. 1997. The school's computer science teacher, Ms. Calendar, and several of her students are scanning books onto the web. Among these students are Fritz, Dave, and Willow. Giles, Buffy, and Xander are helping out by collecting books for them to scan. Buffy opens a wooden crate and finds the same book that Moloch was trapped in. She tosses it in the pile with the rest of the books to be scanned. Later that night, Willow scans the pages of the book, not realizing that the words are disappearing off the pages as she scans them. As she turns away, the words, "Where am I?" appear on the monitor.

Several days later, Buffy notices that Willow is acting different. Willow tells her that she met a guy online named Malcolm whom she really likes. This concerns Buffy, so she asks Dave for some help. He warns her to stay away from Willow. After school, Buffy follows Dave while wearing a coat and sunglasses to disguise herself. She tracks him all the way to a computer research facility, which, as Xander later informs her, has been closed down for quite a while. On the contrary, the place seems to be fully operational. Back at the library, Buffy and Xander make plans to break into the facility and find out what is going on.

In the computer classroom, Willow chats with Malcolm on the computer. During their conversation, Malcolm mentions Buffy's expulsion from her last high school. This troubles Willow, since she never told Malcolm about it. Concerned, she abruptly ends the chat and shuts the computer off. Later in the day, Buffy meets up with Dave, who tells her that Willow is looking for her. Dave tells Buffy that Willow is waiting in the girls' locker room. What she doesn't know is that Fritz is waiting inside. He has rigged up a ripped electrical wire on the shower floor. As Buffy enters the locker room, Fritz turns on the shower and leaves. Buffy thinks Willow is in the shower, so she enters the shower stall. Suddenly, Dave reappears and warns Buffy to get out. Buffy jumps out, but is jolted by the electrified water just as her toes leave the floor. She flies out of the shower stall, smoke spewing from her shoes. Dave runs back to the computer lab and tells Moloch that he won't follow his orders anymore. Moloch responds by typing up a suicide letter for Dave. Fritz is also waiting in the room, ready to kill Dave.

Buffy finds Dave's body hanging in the lab, the suicide note taped to his chest. Giles, who has found the blank book that once contained Moloch, discovers that Moloch was released into the computer when Willow scanned the book. Making the connection that Malcolm is really Moloch, Buffy and Xander race her to her house to warn her. They are too late, however, as Fritz has already knocked her out with chloroform and brought her to CRD, the research facility. There, Willow discovers that Moloch resides in a robotic body. He snaps Fritz's neck and invites Willow to join him at her side. She refuses, so Malcolm prepares to kill her the same way he did Fritz. Before he snaps her neck, he is interrupted by a strange disorientation . Buffy and Xander charge into the room and fight off Moloch. Earlier, at the library, Giles informs Ms. Calendar of the demon let loose on the internet. She tells him that she was already aware of it. To Giles's surprise, Ms. Calendar reveals that she is a Technopagan who studies the occult with modern day techniques. In an attempt to trap Moloch in the book from which he came, they recant the same spell that the monks used back in Italy. It works, causing the disorientation that overcomes Moloch, but instead of returning Moloch to the book, he is trapped in his robot body. Enraged at this, he attacks Buffy, Xander, and Willow. After Xander and Willow go down, Buffy tricks Moloch into punching an electrical box. This short-circuits him, and his body explodes.

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