Disclaimer: Mega Man and associated characters and situations are copyright Capcom.

Thomas Light-PhD in robotics, PhD in cybernetics, repeat Nobel laureate, acclaimed inventor, titan of industry, technology pioneer, warrior for peace—was weary.

He had every right to be. There was, of course, that exhaustive/exhausting list of accomplishments. There was also age. He'd lived a full life, and was quickly approaching what most people would call "elderly". And he'd suffered more than any two normal people: suffered betrayal and fear, pain and loss.

Yet he felt another layer of tiredness there beyond any of it.

His body ached. He was tired all the time these days. He couldn't be bothered to eat. His famously portly belly was shrinking day by day. Even the simplest tasks left him winded. There wasn't pain, which bothered him more than if there was. And he couldn't seem to kick this cough.

Maybe, he thought idly to himself, if the doctor would prescribe him something for the cough, he'd feel more like himself.

He knew better. The real reason he felt so weary wasn't the presence of any physical sensation. Quite the opposite. Part of him was missing, and no doctor could restore it.

His heart still beat a little faster when the doctor entered the room. His face was set in the not-grim-but-terribly-professional expression common to members of his calling. "Dr. Light?" he said.

"Yes," Thomas confirmed.

"We'd like to get some chest X-rays done now."

Dr. Light frowned. "Chest x-rays? For a cough?"

The doctor's expression was fixed as if in stone. "We think it's not just a cough."

It was a chill November day, the sort people associate with the misery of winter, but which doesn't have the good sense to wait until winter to happen. The wind was biting, the sky gloomy and overcast. Combined with the natural shade from the carefully manicured trees, the weather made visiting the cemetery a more unpleasant experience than usual.

That counted double for old men with ailments of the lungs. Yet nothing would have kept Thomas away.

In the car behind Thomas was a folder the doctor had given him. Inside were copies of the chest x-rays with the insidious white splotches in both lungs. Inside was a prognosis written in unerringly formal language. Inside was the symptoms list. It had taken Thomas little effort to memorize the contents of that last; it was only with hindsight that he realized how long he'd lived with the condition.

Shortness of breath, with or without exertion. Persistent coughing, eventually including sputum and blood. Fatigue. Night sweats. Chills. Loss of appetite. Weight loss. (Thomas grinned grimly; that last one was taking its time to fully affect him.) End state: pulmonary collapse, leading to death. Best case scenario: 12-18 months. Worst case scenario: 6 months.

He'd been to the cemetery before, and at times, he'd contemplated his own mortality. He was an intellectual, so he'd wrestled with the concept of death in intellectual terms. By his standards he was a winner. He may have been a biological dead end, but he'd still contributed greatly to humanity. His inventions had improved mankind's lot immensely. His influence would be carried on long after his passing, both directly through his successors at Light Labs, and indirectly through the changes his technologies had wrought to society. His legacy was secure.

Perhaps too secure, he thought with a frown. The new generation of roboticists seemed content to duplicate or tweak things Thomas had already invented rather than innovating. Even his subordinates at Light Labs seemed only too happy to mark time while they waited for the master's next breakthrough. Regardless, he'd achieved as much as any man could hope to achieve.

And all of that seemed insignificant next to the yawning void that pulled in every happy thought and achievement and good memory.

The marker was small. Thomas had wanted an actual grave, but that had been asking too much. The custodian of the cemetery had been remarkably close-minded on the subject. Thomas had insisted, but in the end the custodian had called in a lawyer, and the lawyer had asked some uncomfortable questions about heavy metals leeching and groundwater deposits and toxin leaks. It had been too hard to fight, so Thomas had settled for the marker.

He'd buried Rock on his own land, on his own terms, and anyone who objected to that could go to Hell.

The marker wasn't really for Rock, anyway. An old speaker had once said that the true purpose of cemeteries was for the living. It was a place where the living went to dedicate themselves to the missions the dead had left behind. Thomas remembered the words well. He'd memorized them in school as a child. They rang false to him now.

Sons were supposed to outlive their fathers.

What burden of Rock's could Thomas pick up now, so late in his own life?

Finish off Dr. Wily, maybe, assuming he hadn't bought a farm of his own in that last stupendous explosion? No. After so many wars Thomas had actually lost count of them, he wanted nothing more than to be done with his longtime rival. Others could take up that fight, if Wily was still alive at all. Thomas couldn't stand the notion, illogical though it might have been, that it was his feud with Wily that had ultimately killed his son.

He remembered Rock's sincerity, his need to do something about Wily's crimes. He would have gone anyway, Thomas knew. He was compelled.

Thomas' thoughts coalesced around the notion. Compelled… that was the word, wasn't it? Thomas looked on the grave as if for the first time. He remembered Rock's enthusiasm, his unfailing exuberance, his unabashed love for Thomas and Roll alike. He truly was everything a father could have asked out of a son. And why shouldn't he be? Thomas had built him to be just that.

Thomas sucked in a breath of the cold fall air. Rock had been so perfect because anything less would have been a failure on Thomas' part. Even Rock's sacrifice was cheapened by its predetermination. Fuses burned out to protect circuits, but there was nothing heroic about it. They were merely doing what they were designed to do. All those qualities that made Rock so endearing were nothing more than a projection of Thomas' will. They weren't Rock's own.

Thomas sank to his knees before the marker. He felt that endless showers couldn't remove this feeling of intense uncleanness. "I cheated you," he said to the stone. "Even the best of you was never really yours. Please forgive me."

A cold wind swept across the grounds. It cut right through Thomas' jacket; he shivered, which shook his lungs, which induced a spasm of coughing. It was several seconds before Thomas was able to collect himself and stand. It was hard work, harder than it should have been. For a moment the exertion demanded his attention. When he was standing again, he felt the emptiness return.

All of a sudden he felt unworthy of his own son. Rock and Roll had been his family. They'd cared for him, surprised him, chastised him on occasion when he deserved it, maybe even loved him—but never in any unsafe way, never outside their original parameters. The strings were light and almost invisible, but they were strings all the same.

That was one of the first critiques of his work, now that he stopped to think about it. He was a man playing with dolls—albeit extremely sophisticated dolls. Funny how long it had taken that criticism to reach him, and how only now could he admit that there may have been a point there.

Would he have noticed if Rock were still alive? If Rock were there to distract him from the point, whose growth seemed to belie the predetermination of his fate? Was it only because Thomas had been forced into self-reflection by Rock's demise to truly understand how he'd shackled his son so? His blindness scared him almost as much as the casual way in which he'd forced his will upon his children.

And in the end, it was his will that had led to his son's death. The basic goodness he'd programmed into Rock—clumsily, unwittingly, without full knowledge of the consequences—had pushed Rock to defeat Wily whatever the cost to himself. It would be callous to suggest the world could burn if it meant keeping Rock alive… but if Rock had no choice in the matter, if, as Thomas was beginning to believe, he'd acted out of Thomas' commands, then Thomas had killed his son as assuredly as if he'd pulled the trigger himself.

He understood, then, what he had to do. That was the burden he would have to take up when he left. He had to do right by his son. He had to cut the strings.

Thomas had received copious love from his robot children. He was unworthy of it because he'd left them no alternative; it was stolen love, undeserved. He would repay that debt. He would pass on to others the love he'd taken.

There wasn't much time left for him in this world, but if he could, he would summon up one final act of genius—and create a robot who could love because it chose to do so.

With his dying breath, he would make robots human.

"Oh, Dr. Light!"

Roll bit her bottom lip. Thomas was sure it would have quivered if she hadn't. "I was starting to worry about you," she continued. "You took much longer than I expected."

"Being on time's never been my strength, daughter, you know that."

Roll flinched at the word. "I know, but this was still unusual. Did the appointment really take that long?"

"No, I dilly-dallied on the way home."

She took his coat from him, as always, and hung it up in the hall closet. She lingered there, turned away from him, while he doffed his shoes and started into the house. He felt her absence after only a few steps. Usually she was right on his heels. "Roll?"

"Sorry," she said tremulously. "I… well, what did the doctor say?"

He couldn't face her. He'd spent the trip home from the cemetery thinking about how to tell her and hadn't come up with anything. He took a breath—and immediately began coughing. She rushed to his side to support him with her deceptively strong frame. "Sorry to trouble you," he said.

Her face contorted with emotion as she fought her tears. "You're dying, aren't you?" She looked at his face. Even though he said nothing, she saw something that confirmed her fears for her. "You are! You're dying! You were always too busy to go to the doctor's, too wrapped up in some project, and now… and now…"

"I wasn't thinking about how it would affect you," he said with a sigh. "I didn't think it mattered, not when I was so old already."

She pushed away from him. "Didn't think it—of course it mattered! You're everything to me and R… and now you're going to die!" She took a sharp, nasal breath—purely for effect, an exquisitely programmed display of emotion for a robot that didn't need to breathe. "I've already lost Rock, and now you're leaving me. I'll be all alone… all alone…"

Thomas saw the strings again. The way he'd programmed poor Roll had defined her identity entirely in terms of family. If family went away, she simply couldn't function—it was like trying to climb air.

As Thomas looked into her eyes, he knew that she understood that fact, and it terrified her. He sighed again. "No, Roll. You won't."

She looked up at him in surprise and hope. Her impossibly cute face beamed at him. He felt his heartstrings go twang. "Come here," he said, opening his arms for her. She ran into his embrace. When she leaned her head into his chest, his still-agile fingers found a small panel where neck met skull—a panel she was programmed not to know was there.

She frowned. "What's tha—"

He patted her unmoving form and closed his eyes. "Good night, Roll. I didn't deserve you. I'll try to make it up to you. I certainly won't torture you by making you watch me die."

Disentangling himself from the inert robot, he headed for his office. Roll wasn't the only thing he'd need to shut down. He needed to turn over control of Light Labs… order supplies to ensure his private lab was fully stocked… update his will…

It was time to withdraw from worldly affairs. He no longer had time to waste with anyone else. There was no telling how long this project might end up taking. He could afford no distractions.

Dr. Wily had shown Thomas the virtues of reclusion, and Thomas was never too proud to imitate others.

Outside the lab, the chill mountain air was getting colder by the day. Animals were gorging themselves to prepare for the harsh months ahead. Only the hardy pines seemed unmoved by the relentless march of seasons.

Inside the lab, none of that existed.

The lab had begun life as a mountain retreat in an age when such things were fashionable. It was well appointed as a luxury spot for that unique class of rich person who thinks nature is best appreciated from a helicopter. Sometime after Light Labs became flush with cash, and after the first few Wily Wars showed that robotics weren't exactly ushering in utopia, Thomas had quietly purchased the place, just in case. He wasn't sure "just in case" what, but he had gone to some lengths to make it suitable for long-term habitation for one of his interests. The wine cellar had been the first to go, converted into combination long-term storage and generator housing, but it wasn't the last.

Thomas' foresight always seemed to alternate between scarily prophetic and utterly blind. Setting up a private lab had to fall into the former category. Now he could turn those resources into this last, desperate project.

Thomas felt the pressure building up on him. He did not relish it. He'd completed tasks under time crunches before, usually in response to Dr. Wily. Those instances had usually been responding to specific challenges, compensating for dangers Rock had encountered as Mega Man. In contrast, Rock, Roll, the Robot Masters—all of his major projects had been far more constrained by budget than time. This project, in contrast, had no budget limits—not with a lifetime of savings and the full power of Light Labs behind him. But time… oh, time…

He was tempted to start with Rock's final Mega Man design and work from there. It was a hazardous proposition, he knew, possibly a trap. It would be too easy to accept Rock's limits, when really he hoped this new creation to be something far more. Leaning on Rock would constrain his thinking.

There wasn't much in the way of avoiding it, though. Starting from absolute zero would take much too long. So, with some hesitance, and more than a small feeling of grave robbery, Thomas lifted a few of Rock's design concepts as starting points.

After an hour or so, he felt he'd made enough progress that he needed to save his work. The file name prompt gave him pause. For all his mechanical aptitude, he had issues with names. That was why his luckless robotic children had been saddled with such a weak pun for names. He'd bowed to Wily's naming conventions for the Robot Masters because he could come up with nothing better.

Wily wasn't here to help him this time. He hadn't really thought about a name to this point; he hadn't needed one. There was nothing in his mind to confuse it with.

He sat back and stared at his keyboard as if waiting for it to tell him something. His eyes wandered. Well… there was that…

He could always use a placeholder and come back to a finished name later, after he'd thought about it. Yes, that made sense.

He typed in the letter 'X' and hit "Save".

To be continued...