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Due to a memory malfunction, he believes himself to be the real Button Gwinnett, the second governor of Georgia as well as a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. He is currently leading the security robots in the basement of the National Archives.
Stealing Independence: Button Gwinnett has verbal control over all the robots in the National Archives and addresses them with motivational messages as the Lone Wanderer progresses through the basement levels and gets closer to his quarters. When initiating dialogue with him, he will call the player's character a "redcoat", and claim that they are surrounded by redcoats.
The Robotics Expert perk will open up an extensive additional dialog sequence but prevents you from later accessing his tour guide information that will help you answer the lobby terminal quiz.
This perk will give the Lone Wanderer the option to reset him to factory defaults but his backup code is corrupt and it fails leaving you with the option of shutdown or returning to the previous state. He can not be ordered back to his maintenance bay.
You can sneak past him to pick the hard lock and enter the robot maintenance chamber where you find his private maintenance receptacle and control terminal. However, his wireless control link is down so there is no way to recall him into receptacle for deactivation, reprogramming or transfer to the BACKUP001 protectron.
Unlike the other protectrons, Button Gwinnett's voice sounds human. He speaks with a colonial accent.
The Lone Wanderer can also find his wig in the corner of the room Button Gwinnett is guarding. Strangely, the wig he is currently wearing can't be looted, even if the robot is destroyed.
If you can convince him that you are Thomas Jefferson, he says at the end of the dialogue to give his regards to "Sally". Sally Hemings was a slave owned by Jefferson with whom he had a sexual relationship.
He will still believe you're Thomas Jefferson even if your player character is female.
If you help Button Gwinnett by telling him the war is over, he will actually salute.
Destroying him will cause you to lose Karma, while disabling him does not affect your Karma.
If you follow the entire false Thomas Jefferson dialogue to where he shuts himself down, you can then destroy him with no karma penalty.
The maintenance terminal near Button's pod mentions previous problems with memory malfunctions, referred to as memory leaks. This causes his tour guide and reenactment subroutines to meld together and caused him to believe he is the real, human, Button Gwinnet who lives in the late 1700s. Telling him it is 2277 and that he is a robot will cause Button to adamantly deny it and get somewhat frustrated with the Lone Wanderer.
If you choose to help him make a copy of the Declaration of Independence and go to Arlington Library to retrieve ink, the directions he will give you if asked are completely irrelevant, citing nonexistent landmarks such as a bell-tower and a fish market.
Due to Button's memory faults he will continually refer to the player as a "redcoat spy" until convinced otherwise.
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