- i wrote this story for three reasons: 1, so I could have Sawtooth call Squarewave "[]W", 2, because I wanted to write a robot saying "zot", and 3, because of one of the few things Homestuck and TF2 have in common: a Texan engineer who loves hats.
CHAPTER ONE
AUDITORY OUTPUT
It started with a beep.
A muffled, staccato sound that seemed to emit not from Squarewave's speakers, as most sound did, but from deep within his chassis.
Dirk didn't pay it too much attention at first. He was, after all, a terribly busy guy, both on Earth and on Prospit, and tearing apart one of his brothers just to fix a beep that was only mildly irritating was not high on his 'to do' list.
But slowly, over months and months, the beep became louder, faster, and then, one day, Squarewave has having trouble moving.
he would be fine, and then, beep, suddenly he had no control over his arm. Or he'd be walking, and then, beep, he'd fall down all the stairs. All of them. The stairs in particular were becoming a problem, was well; they were hard on his joints and plates.
The beeping and the movement were alarming, and Dirk promised to look into it. But something always caught his attention first: killing people on Prospit, changing the bulb in the hall, running for groceries (which could take days), developing a waterproof robot...
Squarewave was patient. His memory files told him Dirk was doing the best he could, and would get around to fixing the problem as soon as he had time. So Squarewave didn't let his cables get in a tangle over it. Not even when his voice started failing.
It was early in the morning when Dirk decided to finally do something. He was in the kitchen, teaching Brobot how to make pancakes, when Squarewave, who was watching from the kitchen island, said, "What's the beep point in learning how to beep cook if zot- if we can't beep eat anything?"
As a response, Brobot flipped a pancake behind him, performing a small fistpump when it landed on Squarewave's head.
"What's wrong with your voice, Square?" Dirk asked, pouring more batter onto the pan. "Is that 'zot' thing new?"
"No, it's been happ-zot- happening for a beep while now," Squarewave said, tearing the pancake into tiny shreds. "I beep don't zot- don't think it's beep a problem, like beep it hasn't zot- hasn't been getting beep worse or anything."
Brobot shot Dirk a look, or what would have been a look if he had had actual eyes. Really he just turned his head to the side a little, tilting it down as he did. It was a gesture he'd seen humans do before, and had been practicing it. He felt a shiver of electric pleasure that he had pulled it off perfectly.
"All right," Dirk said, returning the look. "We'll open you up and take a look around after breakfast."
"Of beep course," Squarewave said brightly. "Breakfast is beep the most important zot- important meal of beep the day. Beep you wouldn't zot-wouldn't beep want to zot- to try to zot- try to fix beep something on an empty zot- zot zot- an empty zot- empty stomach. Beep."
Dirk threw down his spatula and flipped off the stove, then grabbed Squarewave's arm and dragged him into his bedroom-turned-workshop without a word.
"Okay now I'm beep blind."
Dirk threw down his screwdriver, frustrated. He had been working on Squarewave for three hours, and had only managed to make things worse. Not only had the beep been getting louder and the 'zot's closer together, now, apparantly, Squarewave couldn't see anything.
"Oh, I'm zot- I'm good. Beep I can see zot- I can see now."
Great. Selective blindness.
Dirk's room was ablaze with light. The scorching sun was reflecting off the water and into his room, turning everything a sort of burnished gold color. He and Squarewave were sitting on the floor, tools surrounding them like a minefield. Squarewave wasn't so sure he would be able to stand up, if Dirk wanted him to, because he had been trying to move his legs for kind of a while now, but to no avail.
Dirk was behind him, hands deep inside his chassis, grease and oil and mild electrical burns decorating his arms from fingertip to sleeve, and he had already come to terms with the fact that he had managed to ruin yet another shirt. He was more concerned about his brother, anyway; he had never seen such malfunctions before.
[]W said Sawtooth, who had been watching passively. He was speaking in the language he shared with Squarewave, one made up of robotic sounds that always reminded Dirk of an old Speak-&-Spell. (4|~ )0#/ ;7 #;|| 83 4|5;"%7
Squarewave nodded, and Dirk thought he heard something rattling around inside the 'bot's skull.
);5\ 94/ )0 4/^7%;/" Squarewave said, his voice sort of tinny.
Dirk ignored their exchange, biting the inside of his cheek nervously as he disconnected two cables and bound them together with copper wire. "Anything different?" he asked.
"ZOT- wow, you've beep fixed me! It's zot- it's a miracle, D!" Squarewave said, excitedly throwing his arms around. Or maybe he wasn't doing it on purpose.
"Okay, that's the best I can do," Dirk sighed, sealing Squarewave's back panel and pulling himself to his feet. Stretching, he felt his back crack in at least three places, and vowed to start doing yoga at sunrise again. It wouldn't do to have his own body fail. "I don't know how to fix you, Square, so I'm going to take you to see Mr. Conagher. He'll have some ideas."
"Oh boy! Road beep zot- trip!" Squarewave craned his neck joints backwards to view his creator. "Also I beep can't get zot- get up."
Sawtooth helped his brother up, while Dirk threw together a plan, as well as a bag for the trip. Mr. Conagher owned a repair shop out near Bee Cave, which was a day's ride at least. Dirk hoped the water, rising at least a quarter-mile a year, hadn't managed to reach the old workshop yet.
The next day, after some sunrise yoga on the roof, as promised, Dirk was packed and ready to go. He had rigged a harness-type ordeal onto the back of his rocket board, so Squarewave could safely malfunction all he wanted. Dirk would have liked to take everyone, but he didn't have room or time to make room, so he regretfully left Sawtooth home, to take over in his absence. He brought Lil' Cal, of course, and Brobot, because the trip was usually fraught with at least one sort of peril and he would need backup if he was going to get Squarewave home safe.
A quick I'm-sorry-I would-take-you-if-I-could upgrade for Sawtooth, and they were on their way.
The day was hot and dry and very bright; below, the surface of the water looked like a sheet white linen to Dirk, as they sped over it much faster than a car. Looking down, he soon saw where the water ended. First there were waves, huge, crashing waves that broke against the sand. Then there was amlost two miles of just sand, peppered here and there with a dead jellyfish, a cow skeleton, a sinkhole, and, more than anything, mountains of trash. After that, the roads would fade into existance, though a lot of them were in bad shape, and the only cars Dirk saw were in ditches or pulled to the side of the road or on fire. They were flying with the wind, so there was little turbulance, and that, paired with the risky speeds Dirk had been flying at, made the journey much shorter than usual.
The garage was a sad little thing, looking more like a heap of scrap metal than anything until you saw the door. The inside wasn't much better, as the walls were covered with peeling wallpaper and dusty posters, the floor was gritty with layers of oil spills on sawdust, and the counter was piled high with all sorts of bolts and screws and wire cuttings.
The person behind the counter was not Mr. Conagher.
"Howdy, y'all!" she said, hesitating only slightly upon seeing Dirk's entourage.
Dirk struggled under the weight of Squarewave, who had yet to regain use of his legs. He found a sad little folding chair in the corner, and set his brother there, with Lil' Cal in his lap to gaurd him. He made sure they were both comfortable before confronting the person who he was not the man he was looking for.
She was a wide woman with red hair piled up on top of her head and streaks of oil across her face. She was wearing what Dirk was used to seeing Mr. Conagher in, a dirty set of overalls and a blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, with a nametag. But instead of Dell, this woman's name appeared to be Rosie.
"How can I help you, young man?" She asked in an outrageous Texan accent, peering down at Dirk. She was quite tall.
"Is Mr. Conagher here?" Dirk asked, trying not to sound anxious. Anxious + short = little kid.
"No, I'm afraid he's not," she said brightly. "Now, how's about you tell me what you need fixin'?"
"When will he be back?"
She frowned at this, but only for a moment. "Well, I'm afraid he won't be back a'tall, 's'far's I know. He's gone and found himself a new job, an' went and hired me in his stead! I assure you, I'm every bit as skilled as that old boot was, even better, I daresay, so if you've got a car, or... something..." she trailed off, eyeing Dirk's baggy pants and pointy shades and spiky, windblown hair. "Well, I s'pose you're a mite young to be drivin', but what do I know?"
"What, indeed," Dirk said, becoming agitated. "Where can I find him?"
"Now, see here, young man," she said, clearly irritated. "What Mr. Conagher does is none'a my business, and less my concern. My name is Rosie, I am an engineer, and I would be happy to look at your car, if you have one. If not, I must ask you politely to please get outta my shop!"
Brobot stepped forward then, one hand on his sword, and Rosie jumped back, one hand on her breast.
"What have you-" she started, but Dirk had no patience left.
"Ma'am," he said, slipping into that old accent he hated, "frankly, you're crazy if you think anyone around here has a car anymore. Take a look around, it's pretty obvious. If Mr. Conagher left this place, it was probably for survival, and not for your personal gain. That there is my brother. His name is Squarewave. He needs help. We have come to speak to Mr. Conagher, and I am not leaving until you tell me where he is. If you don't, I'm afraid I may have to use force, and I don't want to do that. So. I'm going to ask again, where can I find Mr. Conagher?"
Rosie patted her hair with one shaking hand, eyes locked on Brobot's sword. "Well, I... I don't know where he is now, all I know is, he got a job offer in New Mexico a few months ago, and last I heard that's where he was headed. If you don't mind me saying, I'm sure I wouldn't mind having a look of my own at your, uh, brother, there..."
"Thank you, no," Dirk said, already outside.
"Well, that's that, then," Dirk said, pacing the hard dirt outside the garage. "We have to got to New Mexico. Now."
The sun was beating down on them, reflecting brilliantly off of Brobot and Squarewave. Brobot flicked a scorpion off of Squarewave's hat, while the paraplegic robot struggled to free himself from the straps of the harness Dirk had rigged for him. Cal watched passively from Dirk's side.
"But zot- but you didn't pack beep enough zot- enough food or beep water or any-zot- anything for a beep trip that long," Squarewave protested, optic apertures moving, working to find stimulation. Brobot nodded, clearly agreeing.
"It doesn't matter," Dirk said. "You keep getting worse, and we need to figure out what's wrong with you as soon as possible. We're leaving now. B, send a message to Saw, tell him what's up."
"No way!" Squarewave said, his voice becoming crackly like an old record. "That's beep a stupid zot- stupid reason, you're zot- you-zot- you're going to beep get zot- get yourself zot- yourself zot- your-zot- you-zot- zot-" He fell silent.
"Yeah, we're going," Dirk said, slinging Cal over his shoulder. "The longer we wait, the worse you get. I intend to find him before you fall apart altogether."
Brobot hunched his shoulders, like he was bristling, but he climbed on the board, and before long they were off again.
In an hour, the ride was not quite as pleasant. The wind was cold higher up, and the air was dry and dusty. It was too dangerous to risk zoning out on Prospit while flying, and Squarewave didn't regain his voice that day, so all Dirk had to distract him from his worrying was Cal.
Dirk told anyone who asked that Cal was just a puppet, just something he had always had, like Roxy and her cat. But the truth was, Cal was the closest thing Dirk had to real family. The robots he had built; he still remembered drawing up his first plans for Squarewave when he was ten. He hadn't known what he was doing back then, he just remembered having piles and piles of parts and no friends. He remembered Squarewave was originally supposed to be sort of like a tea-serving doll. But then Dirk had wanted someone to try out his rhymes on. That was a long time ago.
Nothing has changed, has it?
A very long time.
You call six years a long time? Try a thousand, you ignorant sack of puke.
Dirk flew, and the sun and the heat and the dry desert sand stretched out forever.
New Mexico was vast and dry and there was no water. Dirk had thought he would be prepared for that, but the absence of water made him feel empty, like he had misplaced his shades.
There wasn't eve a faint glimmer on the horizon, like there had been in Bee Cave, and the heat-induced mirages only made him homesick. It even made him a little paranoid; more than once he caught himself wondering if the mirage was real, if the water had risen impossibly in the hours he had been gone, if Sawtooth were only a sculpture of rust, now, the apartment long since lost underwater.
It was this thought more than anything that kept him going, flying recklessly and eating little, landing only once or twice in the twenty-eight hours it had taken to fly there. Brobot was constantly trying to deter him, make sure he slept and ate and drank water, but Dirk was half-mad with the fear of losing even one of his brothers, and so set his most trustworthy brother to his easiest setting, to the point where a hand placed on his forehead could easily deter the robot an arm's length away.
They flew. And when they were well within New Mexico's border, Dirk let himself worry about another thing: how on Earth was he going to find one man in all of America, mostly unmolested by the ocean as it still was?
This problem became the least prominent on his list of worries when, an hour away from the nearest anything, his rocket board broke down.
He had never flown it so long or so hard before, and realized, as it started to glide on fumes alone, that he probably should have given that some thought. He told this to Brobot, who only shook his head and leaned over the side, perhaps calculating the minutes they had left to live. They were flying very high up, and that fact may have saved Dirk's life, for, as they started to fall, the fear suddenly caught up with him. The adrenaline that hit him like a trident to the chest was enough to cause him a shortage of breath, something he already had been experiencing for some time, due to the thin oxygen he was already breathing. Panic beginning to set in, he did what any human deprived of oxygen would do: he fainted.
And he fell.