But what if, they say, what if there is a kinder world, a, a softer world, where Gamma did not take those few, scant steps towards Beta; what if, in that selfsame world, the algorithm responsible for Beta's targeting system was scrambled, damaged in the fight. W-what if, they continue, what if that glitching algorithm caused Beta's last, fatal shots to fire harmlessly off to one side, fizzling out in the open sky?
In short: what if Gamma didn't move and Beta missed?
oOoOo
At its base level, the universe is made up of mathematics. And since mathematics is made up of an endless weave of patterns, all tightly-wound and neatly clicking together, it can therefore be stated that, by extension, the universe is made up of patterns.
This was a fact that E-102 Gamma knew to be true with a certainty that only statistics and indeed, mathematics, could provide; maths and patterns were the source code of the universe, chugging quietly away in the background, similar to the mechanics housed within his chest. Thanks to them, the universe was, and would continue to be, right up until the equation was complete, when every last decimal had been carried, and the final stars had burnt out into little more than cosmic dust.
Now, although equations on their own were solid, firm things, the basis of everything true with their results easily trusted, Gamma had also seen evidence pointing to this fact of the universe during his travels; it manifested itself in nature, like an interesting by-product of the universe's gears moving and turning. A cosmic grease, if you will. In the hollow of an old tree he'd quietly observed the interlocking hexagons of a honeycomb, hundreds of capped cells filled with the rich, sweet honey that organics so adored. Bees had crawled and buzzed over his chassis, their humming wings making tiny vibrations against the metal, suspicious of the strange, hard creature; they'd already narrowly avoided having their treasures ravaged by a bear, so what new threat was this? Their stingers had glanced harmlessly off Gamma's steel body, and once he'd finished internally cataloguing the data about the hive, he'd wandered away, leaving the bees in peace.
Down by Emerald Coast, where the air was filled with Dimethyl sulfide particles, Gamma had found the hard carapace remains of a sea-dwelling organic that'd been washed ashore: a nautilus. He'd run an optic over the red-and-white patterned shell - a Fibonacci spiral given solid form. Like everything else on the beach - including Gamma's feet - it had a fine covering of sand, and then much to his surprise, had cracked open, his blunted hand far too clumsy to handle such a delicate and brittle thing. Much to his interest, inside the shell was a series of chambers, all neatly divided according to the mathematics of nature. Eventually he'd quietly replaced the shell upon the sand, leaving it - along with a series of wedge-shaped footprints - for the next being to find.
On one occasion, whilst he had been quietly calculating and composing the quickest route to Delta's location, standing half-hidden in the bushes, a monarch butterfly had dizzily fluttered down and alighted on the corner of Gamma's downward-pointing gun. Curious, he hoisted his weapon upwards to better observe, but the disturbed butterfly hastily lifted off, fluttering away to a nearby branch. He watched as it wandered about and settled, opening and closing its wings. With a level of care that felt somehow unnecessary, Gamma engaged his scope, and observed the insect. He took note of the dark latticework on the dorsal side of wings, the way the pattern mirrored itself perfectly; he took in the vibrant orange, and the white spots on the dark rim. Then, as suddenly as it'd arrived, the butterfly lifted off and flew away.
It hadn't ended there. No matter where he'd travelled in his quest, Gamma had come across patterns: leaves bore delicate little skeletal patterns on their undersides, trailing from bole to tip; trees were shot through with patterns of concentric rings, each one a testament to another year's survival; even certain felid organics bore striped patterns that carefully curved across their faces, limbs, and backs. There was no escaping the truth: patterns made up the world.
And so, being someone who lived in the world, in turn Gamma found that those patterns had applied to him and Beta as well.
They had both been brought online, and had fought - their guns flashing white-hot as they strafed and circled and leapt, the air filled with the sound of crashing metal and sizzling gunfire – and Beta had been defeated.
There was a certain logic to it, Gamma reasoned, though something about this particular logic felt wrong, as if tar were gumming up his gears. Though Beta was the more advanced of the pair - his armour thicker, his weight greater, an entirely different arrangement of mechanics underneath his casing, with twice the firepower - he'd been the older model, so therefore it was natural that Gamma, the newer model, had bested him. Gamma had paused as he reached that conclusion, halfway through cutting a trail across the Egg Carrier's deck. That felt like the correct outcome of that logical pathway, but something about the conclusion didn't sit quite right, like some factor or decimal had been forgotten. He ran it through his processor again, for good measure, got the same result, and still his gears felt sticky and slow.
It was a feeling he would quickly become familiar with, whilst undertaking his duties for Dr. Eggman. It'd arisen again as he'd fired a point-blank blast into Delta's central processor; had sat heavily within him as he'd watched a swallow flit out from Epsilon's broken remains; was a constant companion as he'd strafed around Zeta, pumping him full of gunfire until he'd exploded into a mess of jagged, white-hot metal. But despite the sensation, after each battle Gamma couldn't deny that there was a certain feeling of… correctness, for lack of a better term. He had done his self-assigned task. He had saved them. But that did not make the other feeling, the wrong feeling, abate.
With the shattered of parts of Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta laying in his wake, reduced to nothing more than scrap metal, the pattern had swung into play one more, ready to be completed.
He and Beta had met once more aboard the Egg Carrier, and had fought - their guns flashing white-hot as they strafed and circled and leapt, the air filled with the sound of crashing metal and sizzling gunfire – and Beta had been defeated.
Damaged and sparking, Gamma watched as Beta convulsed and spasmed on the deck, his processor glitching, going haywire as it shut down, sending his whole body into a frenzy of half-baked movement. A whole host of diagnostics and warning messages clamoured for Gamma's attention, almost screaming at him over the state of his own body, but he ignored them, temporarily sealing them under a data-lock.
Should he approach? Gamma wondered. Some vague idea of close proximity briefly sparked through Gamma's own CPU and he started to move, then paused mid-step, unable to articulate why. Why did he want to be near Beta, broken and thrashing? Why did the sight of Beta give rise to that old sensation, the one that made like his innards were coated in slowly-setting lead? He wanted to be near Beta so that he could... help him, perhaps? No, that wasn't it; Beta was obviously shutting down, and there was little that, he, Gamma could do for him. Then why? He... he wanted Beta to see that he, Gamma was nearby. He wanted Beta to know that he wasn't alone as he went offline. But what did a close proximity have to do with anything? Gamma's head spun a full 360-degrees as he tried to process this. A strange feeling of tension sat within him, as if all the pistons within him were trying to pull apart; it was more than likely considering the battle he'd just been through.
'I do not understand,' thought Gamma.
Strange impulses and urges that acted beyond the walls of coding and logic, ones that felt like gaps and glitches warred within him. Was this what that little pink organic, Amy, had meant by feelings? Now that he examined them, Gamma realised that they'd been there, present throughout his whole journey, even there upon activation! Some feeling, some emotion bloomed within him, a slow, gaping sensation, as if his chest casing was nothing but an empty void. He stumbled backwards, his bent foot-wheel snapping off with a shearing noise as he stepped heavily on it, causing him to list sharply to one side. His head spun again.
CA-CRACK!
Gamma jolted out of his reverie as a searing blast of twin gunfire blitzed past him, near enough and hot enough to strip the paint from his chassis. There lay Beta, his guns smoking, his single shuttered optic fixed on Gamma. There was no expression, no emotion in them, but in that split second, something passed between the two robots. Yet another new feeling arose in Gamma, code help him, and like the rest he couldn't name it; it was some weaker, more fluid sensation of sluggish gears, but equally potent, locked on and triggered solely by the sight of Beta. His older friend had always been a silent figure, one who'd never been given the gift of a voice box, and now, at his end, he was trying to communicate something. Gamma took a step forward, his path decided: he would go to Beta, then-
Beta spasmed, once, twice-
And exploded.
White light engulfed the scene, and had he been an organic, Gamma would have thrown up a hand to protect his optics. But he wasn't, and so he didn't. As the light faded, the small shadow of a flicky cutting through it, E-102 Gamma stood, a solid statue. Slowly, his joints creaking, he turned, and began to limp away.
Too late. Too late.
The mission, the one he'd assigned himself as he tore himself from Dr. Eggman's grip, was now successfully completed. But if that was the case, why did his inner mechanics feel so tarred? Why did it feel like he had failed?
Gamma's processor felt awhirl with a great many things: with data, with what he had just seen, and most confusing of all, with those glitch-like emotions. Code within, now that he'd been made aware of them, he found was riddled with them! How could he process such things? How could he categorise things which had no form or clear purpose, and which felt like, for all intents and purposes, errors?
He could focus on that later. For now, he would attend to the facts and data that were solid. Shuttering the confusing mess to one side, Gamma turned his attention to the diagnostics that he'd been ignoring before in favour of Beta. He sparked, his body spasming slightly, as the emotions tried to bubble back up from where he repressed them.
"No. No," said Gamma, bringing his only hand to his processor, as if he could somehow physically press them down.
These emotions must truly be related to viruses, if they way they wriggled and rebelled was any indication. With some great force of will, Gamma ignored them, focusing his CPU on the data to come.
He disengaged the lock, and was promptly greeted by a flood of information surging through him.
Oh.
For a split second, Gamma paused, halting mid-step as the information poured through him. He'd known he was badly damaged – a broken organic could have seen that – but the full extent was so much worse than he'd predicted. Diagnostics and warning signs ticked by in an endless stream behind his optics, with everything from status reports to lists of broken components steadily presenting themselves one by one.
As he resumed limping away from the few scraps of charred metal that'd once been Beta, he flicked through them, carefully cataloguing them based a number of factors such as severity, and whether they impaired his movement. He could still move, which was positive, but his metal joints scraped and grated with every step, restricting that movement and further wearing them out. The metal making up his chassis was bent and dented, sheared through in several places, and thanks to it, not all of his mechanics were running smoothly. A chorus of grinding accompanied him as he walked. Whilst organics would clap their paws over their audials at such a discordant sound, it didn't bother Gamma. What did grasp his attention however, was the data relating to his core. It housed his power source, and up until now, had been putting out a stable reading. It was a steady, vital lifeline, constant and reliable; even during his fights with the rest of the E-Series line it'd stayed strong and stalwart. Now it was glitching all over the place, sharply dipping up and down; worse, there was a strange fluttering sensation within his chest, as if something once long-dormant had awoken.
All these factors combined into one outcome.
"Shutdown is imminent," intoned Gamma.
Well, if that was the case, then so be it. Organics tended to have a strange reaction to shutdown, a scrambling, scrabbling sense of self-preservation that really revved up whenever the threat of going permanently offline was a possibility. Gamma could understand that; a similar thing – not instinct, but a numerical thing coded into his data – had driven him during his mission, especially when he'd faced off against his friends in battle. It was dual-layered, the base being made up of solid, sensible commands like Do not walk off cliffs, and Do not look down the barrel of your own gun, and Do not stand in the Egg Carrier's furnace, along with endless others. In contrast, the second layer had been a highly-complex thing, reading and reacting to the data about the environment around him. It knitted endless little snakes of code into composite forms, similar to the lengthy textile work that an organic might wear around their neck in times of low temperature. It'd been especially active during the battles with his friends, furiously weaving away the errant code. To have fallen before his task had been completed had always been a possibility, floating around at the edges of his processor, waxing and waning from moment to moment and entirely measured in numbers; now there was a greater chance of him shutting down, now there was a greater chance of his success. Time and time again he had defied those odds, determined to fulfil his duty, and in a way, that too had been a form of his self-preservation, born from the second layer. Now, in the present, it whispered to Gamma of his demise with statistics that could not be ignored.
What separated him from the organics however - a chasm that was made up of a great many things - was that the organics appeared to have a strange emotional reaction to the thought of shutdown, layered atop their sense of self-preservation. Shutdown was something they wished to avoid, yes, but there was some extra code running within them that drove them into a state of frenzy. It manifested itself in a curious number of ways: dilated pupils, muscles locking up as their entire chassis was racked with spasms, loud alarm calls, the discharging of extraneous fluids that either appeared as a sheen on the skin or were forcefully expelled elsewhere if they were wild. As with many things on his journey, Gamma had not fully understood this reaction.
Even now, trudging across the Egg Carrier with his own shutdown looming before him, he still did not understand it. He was going to go offline, permanently. His task had been done. His mission was complete. That was all there was to it. Had he been an organic, emotions hard-wired into him from the start, perhaps he too, might have reacted in the way they did. But there was the rub, the key difference: at the end of the day, he was robotic. Damaged, corrupted, and filled with a confusing slurry of emotions, but very much robotic.
I do not wish to die!
Gamma shuddered as a sudden spark-like sensation, one that made him feel like he was out in the open with a jammed gun, shot through him. In that split-second, a multitude of danger signs flared behind his optics; his shattered scope creakily flipped down over one optic; his gun hoisted into position with a rough, scraping sound, ready to fire. Then, as suddenly as it'd flared, the sensation subsided.
Trundling to a halt, Gamma pressed a hand to his processor once more. His gun arm drooped whilst his scope roughly folded away with a grating sound. The fluttering in his chest grew more frenzied, as if in response. What was that? Another emotion? A sudden thought occurred to him, two pieces of data linking together to form a possibility. Was this what the organics felt when faced with shutdown? What a sharp spike of an emotion! It'd felt similar to the feeling of Epsilon's guns trained on him, similar to the sight of Beta being disassembled, and made him feel like all his delicate circuitry and wiring were on display and were completely undefended.
A frantic beeping noise drew Gamma's attention once more to his diagnostics. Vital signs dropping. Core output at 15 percent.
Time was running out. Why was he still here, wasting precious minutes aboard the Egg Carrier, computing every little feeling that racked his body? Oh, what an illogicial, illogical mess this was. He needed to leave, and fast.
He, he would not, could not stay here. Dr. Eggman, creator, former master, and present enemy, had a canny, cunning mind, one that was as tightly coiled and carefully ticking as a well-wound clock. Strange, even though that was the truth, Gamma found that he did not particularly like to admit it. Still, he knew with a certainty that if here were to cease functioning here, then his parts would be put to use in bringing another new robot to life. It was a truth, a certainty, one that Gamma had seen with his own optics and then wished he hadn't. Consider it his final act of rebellion, but he would not allow such a thing to come to pass.
Standing at the edge of the Egg Carrier, where the deck met open sky with a simple small barrier to divide the two, Gamma surveyed his diagnostics once more. In his current state, changing modes into his flight configuration was impossible. The predicted outcome of attempting such a thing would be that he would shear in half. Ah, but his jet booster still functioned! In fact, it was the only part of him that seemed able to function at an output of above 50%, even if that output was 50.05137%.
Spluttering and coughing, the booster roared to life, belching out a plume of black smoke. Haltingly at first, then with a steady power, Gamma rose into the air, the deck dropping away from his feet. Oddly enough, the fluttering within his chest calmed a little, as if the action soothed it somehow.
Destintion? prompted Gamma's internal navigator, flickering to life at the possibility of a long journey. Gamma quietly computed this. Did a destination really matter? After all, he could simply fly until his power reserves were depleted, and then let himself drop. Let Eggman try building something out of that. But no, something about that possibility felt unsatisfactory.
Destination? the navigator prompted again, flicking through archived images of places that Gamma had travelled through on his journey. Each one passed by behind his optics, a tiny snapshotted square of a place in his past, though most of the pictures were now corrupted, sections distorted by blocky glitches. The white beaches of Emerald Coast, the searing heat of Red Mountain, the metropolitan Station Square, the rugged cliffs of Windy Valley, the dense vegetation of Mystic Ruins-
"Affirmative," said Gamma. He couldn't exactly tell why, but looking at the distorted image of the thick, rich plant life, populated with many wild organics made something within him… sing, for lack of a better term. Like for a split-second, all his motors and mechanisms, his wiring and circuitry, were functioning at peak capacity.
Destination: Mystic Ruins. Setting co-ordinates… Co-ordinates set, announced the navigator.
With a burst of flame, a flare of light, and trailing smoke, E-102 Gamma sailed away from both the Egg Carrier, and the shattered history that lay strewn about its deck. He was going offline, yes, that was a certainty. But he would go offline surrounded by nature and its endless patterns.
Although the journey was not particular long, it passed by Gamma in a haze. With every passing moment, his power levels fluctuated, steadily wavering and dropping, the readings looking like a set of descending stairs. Shortly into his journey the fluttering started up again, and grew stronger by the minute. Processing and computing thoughts became increasingly difficult as parts of his CPU shut down, piece by piece, in order to conserve energy. He could no longer move his fingers or feet, and whether it was because power to them had been cut, the circuits had finally burnt out, or any the array of various chain drives, pistons, and assorted mechanics that controlled them had snapped or otherwise stopped working, he didn't know.
At some point he found himself on the ground, tilted backwards with shrubbery supporting his back, whilst two cheese plants dappled shade across him. How had he gotten there? The fractured fragments of his navigation system assured him that he was in Mystic Ruins, then broke, snapping out of existence with a sudden finality. Gamma lay there, and listened to the sound of birdsong that filled the air. The fluttering sensation in his chest was now the only thing he felt, the only thing in the world that was solid and real.
"…r. Robo…?"
Query?
"…Mr. Robot?"
It took Gamma a moment to place the sound; wasn't that the little pink… thing? The one that'd…. something about a bird…? She'd said they were friends. He mentally reached for the name, but the file was corrupted, holding it out of his reach just like his brothers now were.
"Mr. Robot!"
Oh, his archival memory must be glitching, playing a fragment from it on loop. It was completely illogical for her to be here.
That must be it. Nothing more than an echo of the past.
With his audials filled with the endless network and pattern sounds of the living jungle around him, plant life cushioning his back, and his optics filled with the sight of nature, E-102 Gamma felt himself relax.
And with a fading whir of mechanics, and a final clunk of gears, he let go.
01110011 01101111 0010000001110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00111111
'Hope' is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
01101001 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100100 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01100010 01100101 01110011 01110100
And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that's gone astray, and is lost.
01101001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101100 00100000 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 01110011
oOoOo
…
….
…..
INITIALISING STARTUP PROCEDURE…
E-SERIES ROBOT
DESIGNATION: E-102 Γ "GAMMA"
CONFIGURING…
UPDATING DATA BANKS…
UPDATING…
UPDATING…
UPDATE COMPLETE
POWER OUTPUT INITIALISING
INITIALISING…
INITIALISING….
INITIALISATION COMPLETE
CONFIGUARTION COMPLETE
STARTUP PROCEDURE COMPLETE
BOOTING UP IN 3…
2…
1...
E-102 Gamma came online, his vision flaring to life, to the sight of a small, well-furnished room. It was a warmly-lit place, with both design and furnishing indicating it to be an organic's dwelling. A window on the opposite wall let in a dusty beam of sunlight, and nearby, an old wooden table, its surface worn to a comfortable smoothness, was littered with tools and trinkets, along with several mugs. Scattered around the room were various piles of assorted machinery parts, many of them balanced haphazardly. Finally, standing directly in front of him were two small organics, both peering up at him. A strange sensation flooded through Gamma, one that was akin to being zapped with a voltage far too high for him to withstand. It was one he'd felt before, when he'd found himself in an unknown location with the orange member of the tachyglossidae family.
"Oh. An emotion," he said, almost without processing, then spun his head. An emotion?
There came a sudden squeal of laughter, and something collided with Gamma's chest; he staggered back a step, all too late remembering the broken wheel on his foot and-
Stabilised, his balance righted. The wheel, the one that'd snapped clean off, that'd probably saved him from being shot to pieces by Beta, it was… fixed?
"Oh, I knew you'd make it, Mr. Robot!" spoke a familiar voice from his chest.
Gamma peered downwards, and met the gaze of – a pink organic, class: Mammalia, family: Erinaceidae, designation: – Amy, clinging to his chassis like it was the only solid thing left in the world.
Filled with that strange emotion, and unable to process what exactly was happening, Gamma simply continued to stare. Still, it wasn't like he could do otherwise, not possessing the squashing, stretchable face of an organic with its complex armature of musculature underneath. He flicked through the memory section of his archive and was greeted with a great mass of scraps of information, the clean, orderly remains of what'd once been corrupted data. Everything up to his fight with Beta was fine, but the period afterwards was shot through with holes until it was little more than fragments. Badly damaged and on the verge of breaking, he'd left the Egg Carrier, had somehow ended up in Mystic Ruins, and-?
"C'mon Amy, I need to take a look at him." A new voice broke into Gamma's computing; he turned his attention to its owner.
A fox with twin tails – Order: Mammalia, class: Canidae, designation unknown – bustled over to Gamma, a tiny, computer-like device in hand. Something within Gamma, a sensation of familiarity, tugged in him at the sight of the fox. The next second the catalogue of his memory offered up the answer.
"You were present," intoned Gamma, his gaze locked on the fox. "Upon the Egg Carrier's deck, with the one designated 'Sonic'."
"Oh, you remember!" said the fox. "That's a good sign that your memory's working correctly." He looked at the small device, then at Gamma, his brow wrinkling in thought as he did so. "I wasn't sure if it was too corrupted to be recovered."
"This is Tails," said Amy, gesturing to the fox. "He's the one who fixed you! And I'm…"
"Amy," finished Gamma.
"Yeah, that's right!" exclaimed Amy, beaming. "Amy Rose, to be specific, but everyone just calls me Amy."
"And," Tails said, his eyes drawn back to the device, "your schematics say that you're called..." He trailed off, staring intently at his work. Whether it was because he was merely computing the answer in his head, or was expecting a response, Gamma couldn't tell. The strange, social rules of the organics were a complex, unpredictable weave of an algorithm, one that was constantly updating and changing; how could he even begin to categorise and process it? He answered anyway, a habit dictated by his code.
"Designation: E-102 Gamma. Model Line: E-Series," recited Gamma, shifting from foot to foot and testing the movement as he did so.
"So that's your name, huh?" said Amy. She swayed from side to side, almost mirroring his actions, whilst looking him up and down. "Yeah, it suits you. Nice to meet you, Gamma!"
Gamma blankly stared down at Amy. What was she talking about? The data stored within his archival memory clearly proved otherwise. "Incorrect. This is not our first encounter."
At that, Amy did a strange thing with her optics, rolling them so they moved in a short, curving arc. She blew out a breath, hands on hips, the corners of her mouth lifting. She addressed him, her finger wagging.
"This might not be the first time we've met, but it's the first time we've ever been properly introduced. Now we both know each other's names!" she said. The next second her face dropped as she continued. "I didn't even think that Eggman named you properly..."
A silence lapsed.
Gamma gave his head another spin, the movement smooth and practised. So, he'd been repaired. An unexpected development, especially when the last pieces of his memory had him preparing for shutdown. Curious, he dove into his schematics and two sets greeted him; his old, familiar specs that bore the Eggman Empire's logo in the corner, and a second, new set that'd recently been uploaded. On the new set, in place of the caricature of his creator's head, there was a different logo, one consisting of a pair of twin fox tails. He flicked through, comparing and contrasting the two; mostly they were the same, with a few minor changes here and there to help movement, or to be more energy efficient, and the like. But when he came to his power source, Gamma found it to be a completely different setup.
"My power source," he said. "It has been altered."
Somewhere between Tails' introduction and Gamma's introspection, the little fox had started to circle the robot, glancing at his device and muttering to himself as he worked. At the sound of Gamma's voice, Tails looked up.
"Oh, yeah! Sorry, I had to completely gut and replace that. Eggman's organic batteries, y'know?" He shook his head, tutting. "Nasty things."
"Organic?"
"Yeah!" Amy piped up. She looked up past Gamma at something near the ceiling, before calling out. "Come on, it's okay, he won't hurt you."
Three flickies swooped down from behind him, each a different colour, trilling and circling Gamma's head, before alighting on the table. The blue one that Amy had designated 'Birdy', was familiar to him, but the other two, one who bore a pink colouration to their feathers, the other bearing a cream colouration, were not.
"I do not underst-" began Gamma, then suddenly fell silent as the pieces lined up and understanding dawned. Organic batteries. The fluttering within his chest. Although diagnostics and output had been meticulously detailed in his old specs, the information on his core had always been deliberately vague, never really specific in what it was that functioned as his power source. Code within, why had he not computed it before? It was a logical, obvious pathway; all the other members of his production line bore dormant animals within them, woken and released upon shutdown, so it was only correct that the same should apply to him. Something about the thought of one of the tiny, defenceless organics being trapped within him as he broke down caused a strange feeling to flare weakly within Gamma on the bird's behalf – the one akin to being unarmed and out in the open. "Which one was… within?"
With a quick flap of their wings, the pink flicky lifted off the table. It soared through the air to where Gamma stood, fluttered briefly in front of his optics, and then alighted upon one of his pauldrons. He swivelled his processor to look.
"This one?" asked Gamma.
Amy nodded. "I've been calling her 'Pinko'." At the sound of her name, the little bird trilled out a cheery few short notes. As if responding to Pinko's vocalisation, the cream-coloured bird chirruped too. "And that's Chirpy!"
"Pinko. Chirpy." As Gamma spoke, looking from one to the other, he neatly slotted their names into his archive of events; missing pieces aside, there was a clear, coherent path to it all. Still, there was something that didn't add up, an order of events that did not click together correctly. They bore an unexplained gap, like a sequence of gears missing a vital cog.
"How did you locate me?" he asked.
"I decided to go home with my friend Big," said Amy. She picked up Chripy, and with a care born from having a body of flesh and bone, carefully cradled him in her hands. "I wanted to see where he lived. I mean, the jungle? How exotic! So there we were, walking through Mystic Ruins' jungle, when Big spots something in the bushes. Says it isn't 'a forest friend'. And it turned out to be you! Boy, I was so surprised!" Her eyes flicked over Gamma's form, travelling from point to point, as if comparing how he looked now to his appearance in her memory.
"Big carried you here," interjected Tails, the first thing he'd said for a while. He was wide-eyed, his voice hitting an unusual high pitch; Gamma hazarded that there was some sort of information being conveyed by these two traits, but he had no clue as to what. "Hefted you about like it was nothing! Anyway," the little fox put down the device, and clapped his hands together, "everything looks like it's functioning correctly, but I just need you to run through a few motion tests, check calibrations, that sort of thing. Would you mind?"
Though he was free, beholden to no-one, there was something comfortable about being given a series of commands to carry out. "Aye-aye."
"Okay, so first if you could walk to the other side of the room and back..."
Gamma thumped across the room, Pinko still perched on his pauldron, the wooden floorboards creaking at the movement. There was a correct, well-oiled smoothness to his actions, one that he hadn't felt since he came online for the very first time.
"Okay, that's great! Now, if you could rotate your body thirty-six degrees to the left..."
As Tails continued to call out directions, Gamma dutifully ran through them. As he did so, he mused. Tails was most conscientious, as he'd seen fit to give him a fresh coat of paint and a polish, in addition to the set of major repairs that'd been carried out. What power Tails had in his paws, to leave his chassis shining and free from dents! It almost felt like time had rewound, back through the days and hours to that moment when his vision had first flickered to life within the Egg Carrier. Gamma had come online in a pristine condition, and it'd lasted for all of five minutes and thirty-two seconds before he'd gone through the heat and fire of the training course and had subsequently been set against Beta in combat. Afterwards, as the two robots dutifully stood and listened as their creator addressed them, Gamma noted that Eggman hadn't seemed to care about either his or Beta's mildly-battered appearances. But then again, Gamma hadn't cared either; as long as he functioned correctly, his appearance was of little consequence.
Eggman was a strange one, and the data Gamma had on him was contradictory in many ways. There was a certain quality to the man, one that meant all his creations were sent out into the world looking spick and span, and through this, the man derived a boost, for lack of a better term, to himself. A boost of what, Gamma did not know, as his data was insufficient, and he had spent little time before now computing such a thing. He processed it now.
Vanity, Gamma realised. Eggman was vain, a trait which his internal dictionary described as 'having excessive belief in one's own appearance, abilities, qualities, and attributes.' So in short, the entire thing fell into the category of 'complex organic emotions'. That appeared to be the category that most things fell in to these days, and Gamma felt a brief twitch run through him, like a stone had been caught between the prongs of his foot. Wonderful. Another emotion.
Putting that aside, although Eggman had complex emotions relating to how his creations initially looked, once they were activated and performing their duties? Then his emotions were cut off, and he didn't display any of his former emotional reaction to their appearance. This, like many other things, did not make sense. Bah, why was he wasting processing power on this?
Gamma gave his head a quick spin, as if he could somehow dislodge the data relating to Eggman's feelings.
"Huh? It everything okay?" asked Tails.
All too late Gamma remembered that he was in the middle of a performance test. He halted from where he'd been rotating an arm.
"Affirmative. I was computing."
"Computing what?" piped up Amy.
Though it was a query, and one that Gamma's coding dictated that he answer, he didn't want to. "Data irrelevant."
"Whaddya mean 'data irrelevant?" Amy's eyes narrowed slightly.
"You sure?" said Tails, at the same time. "I don't want you to have any underlying glitches hiding in there."
"It is of no importance," said Gamma. Then, struck with a sudden spark of inspiration, he added: "My apologies."
It was a thing that organics said sometimes, when they had done a task which displeased another, and was a phrase that that Gamma had overheard several times whilst at the train station. True to form, it appeared to smooth things over, and the test resumed, although Tails made Gamma repeat the rotation of his arms several times, just to make sure that it wasn't interfering with the wiring to his central processor.
As he ran through the motions, Gamma couldn't help but query himself. What was next? He'd been activated and had operated for Eggman, going from task to task, carrying out his creator's will. Then he'd operated for the purpose of freeing his friends, with little regards for anything else. What now? Had Tails repaired him with the intent to have him perform in the fox's service? Was the emblem on his new specs mark of an intended claim, or was it merely the fox's signature, proof of his work?
He had been prepared to go offline, but here he was, active and operating.
Everything within the world had a reason for happening, so what was the reason for him being saved?
oOoOo
CA-CRACK!
Far away, down at the end of the promontory that functioned as a runway outside Tails' workshop, the last of a series of small wooden targets exploded into splinters. With a whirr of machinery Gamma lowered his gun, smoke gently drifting from the barrel, and clicked his scope away.
Polite applause greeted him, another organic custom that was slightly perplexing, but according to his archive apparently indicated approval or celebration. Behind him stood Amy and Tails, the orange-red light of sunset dappling over them.
As he spun to face the source of the noise, Tails bustled up to Gamma.
"Well, I'd say we're done here!" He patted Gamma on the arm, the noise a dull, metallic thump-thump. "You're free to go!"
"Go?" said Gamma.
"Yeah, wherever you want to!" A silence stretched out, and Gamma watched as the little fox's expression twisted through several different stages, before he began to shift from foot to foot.
"You will not stake your claim?" asked Gamma.
"Cl- wait, did you think I simply fixed you because I wanted to make you mine?"
"Affirmative."
"What? No!" exclaimed Tails, his two tails fluffing out in surprise. "I fixed you because Amy asked. And it was a nice challenge. Gotta show that Eggman what's what, yeah?" he added as an afterthought.
By that point, Amy had joined them. "Yeah, Gamma! You're a person; you don't belong to anyone! We saved you because you were hurt, not because we wanted you to owe us something." She grabbed his hand, peering up at him with large eyes. "Everyone's life is precious, no matter what they are."
"Oh."
Life is precious? Gamma ran that statement through his CPU several times, analysing it over and over. In the background, the organic-robotic chasm yawned at him. Life is… precious. Yes, to an organic, it would be. All went through a period of growth and learning in order to achieve their final form, and whilst in their younger, weaker forms, not all survived. Success was never guaranteed. Furthermore, when injured, they couldn't simply replace the part that was damaged, no, they often had to go through a lengthy healing process, and sometimes that wasn't enough, either. If he, Gamma, lost an arm, then it would be inconvenient for a while, but the damage would not cause him to enter shutdown. But if an organic lost an arm, and if they did not perform sufficient repairs in time, then they potentially could go offline. Furthermore, even with repairs, the arm might not function correctly again! Gamma had to conclude that the statement was correct: life was precious, and organics had to protect it.
Robotic life one the other hand... Well, to start with, most of his kin did not think of themselves as being 'alive'. 'Alive' was an organic term, filled with muscles and bones and flesh and cells and vegetation, eternally seething and growing in new ways. Robots existed. They did not go through the same processes as the organics; he and his brothers had all sprung into the world fully-formed, with all the knowledge that Eggman decided they'd need already uploaded into their CPUs. If broken, they could be fixed in a matter of hours or days, and if badly broken, a matter of weeks or even months, as opposed to the months or years that it'd always take an organic. He himself was an example of this, brought back from the brink of shutdown!
Yet there was a certain freedom to the lives of organics. Certainly, they were bound in biological ways that he was not, ruled by the wants and needs of their bodies, but they did not live solely from task to task. They lived simply because they were there, making an endless multitude of choices in the process, implanting them into everything in their lives, and seemingly changing their lives on a whim.
For a robot, there was only assigned task after assigned task until you could function no longer, and then the emptiness of shutdown, whilst your parts where divided up and reused. It was a useful existence, to be sure, but one that was somehow limited, when compared to the vibrant, confusing scuffling of organics.
Technically, E-102 Gamma's existence had run its course, from coming online, to almost shutting down; yet Amy, Tails, and even Big, had looked at him with their organic viewpoints, meat and bone looking at metal and wires, and had come to the conclusion that his existence, his life was precious, that he should continue to exist, not because they wanted him to accomplish some future task, but simply because he should continue to live.
His gears felt like they were stuttering. They weren't – it would have been indicative of a major problem if they were – but they felt that way nonetheless. Another emotion, wreaking havoc.
Everyone's life is precious.
"Gamma?" Amy's voice broke into his computing. "I dunno if you've got other things to do, but how about you stay with me a while? I can help teach you about the non-Eggman parts of the world, and introduce you to our friends. None of us have ever been friends with an Eggman robot before, and certain people-"
"Knuckles," cut in Tails, his tone flat.
"-Might attack you without knowing that you're good."
Out of the corner of Gamma's optic, he spotted Tails giving a tired-looking nod, one that held a wealth of experience behind it.
Gamma considered this, thankful for the diversion. He didn't have an immediate task that required his attention, and the lack left him with a strange feeling of emptiness. In addition, he was sorely lacking in data when it came to the world that the organics had designated 'civilized'. Perhaps this could be his new task, albeit a temporary one, to learn more about the world that Amy and her 'friends' inhabited? At the very least, it would be prudent to have a new area that functioned as a 'base'.
"So? How about it?" asked Amy.
"Affirmative. I shall accompany you, and gather the data you impart," said Gamma.
"Great! Okay, so, here's lesson one. Before we go, there's something you need to say to Tails. You know, to be polite! Do you know what it is?" Amy looked at him expectantly.
Gamma stared, racking his archive for stored memories of organic interactions as he tried to compute the answer. He rapidly flicked through possibility after possibility, archival memory after archival memory, but nothing presented itself. Was it 'Goodbye'? That was some sort of codeword between organics, indicating that the present social exchange was over and they were ready to depart and go their separate ways. Ah, that must be it!
Gamma turned, and fixing his emerald-green gaze upon Tails, stated: "Goodbye."
"No, no, that's not it!" said Amy "Well, it's close! I mean, you do say it when you're going to leave someone, so good guess, especially for your first try. But the answer I was thinking of was 'thank you'."
"Thank you?" parroted Gamma.
Amy nodded. "Tails spent a lot of time fixing you, and when someone has done something nice for you, big or small, it's good to say 'thank you' to them. That way they know that you've appreciated what you've done for them, and so they feel good too," she explained.
"Explanation acknowledged," intoned Gamma. This 'thank you' appeared to be a way of keeping social harmony high between organics, similar to how engine oil kept things well-lubricated. He carefully stored the new data away, then turned to Tails once more.
Tails rubbed the back of his neck. "Really, it's okay Gamma, you don't have to-"
"Thank you. The workmanship of the one designated 'Tails' is superior to that of Eggman's," said Gamma forcefully.
"Oh, er, you're welcome?" said Tails. "And… thanks?" He chuckled nervously.
"Not a bad first attempt!" Amy winked. "C'mon, soon we'll have you interacting with people like a pro!"
oOoOo
It was a group of five that made its way to the train station at Mystic Ruins. Amy walked alongside Gamma, chattering away incessantly, her mind and mouth hopping from subject to subject like a bird hopping between branches. Above, Birdy, Pinko, and Chirpy fluttered around each other, swooping, diving, and creating patterns in the air. Gamma watched them quietly, taking note of the mottled markings that seeped along the edges of their wings. Mathematics plotted their trajectory and flight paths, and the end result was a pattern. Fancy that. A warm feeling filled Gamma, one that was entirely unrelated to his temperature, both external and internal – again, he'd checked. But this feeling felt greater than that, that it not only encompassed him, but spread out into everything around him, subsuming the planet itself and moving on to the solar system and entire swathe of cosmos beyond, until all were linked within this feeling. For one simple, shining moment, Gamma felt that the universe was good; it was not running correctly and filled with many things that he did not understand or have the data to understand, but it existed, weaving its endless pattern, filled with a multitude of creatures who were each weaving the patterns of their lives, and it was good.
Upon reaching the station, the three flickies flew around in much of the same way as they'd done on the way there, but Amy somehow interpreted it as 'goodbye'.
"You three have your own home to return to, dontcha?" she said.
She looked at Gamma expectantly and mouthed 'goodbye' at him. What was this? Was she saying goodbye to him? Did the lack of volume signify something? No, she wouldn't extend an invitation only to tell him goodbye, as that didn't fit the social rules that had been laid out so far. So, that left…
"Goodbye," said Gamma, addressing Pinko, Chirpy, and Birdy. "Thank you for your power. Goodbye."
It was admittedly strange to watch something that'd once been one of your components fly away, but then again, Pinko had never really been a part built for him in the same way that his, say, legs were. She was merely borrowed, a bird sleeping in a metal shell.
From there they'd ridden the train together, the sky outside darkening from orange, to pink, to purple, before finally settling on navy. Here and there, clusters of pinpricks of light shone in the darkness, far-off evidence of organic nests and dwellings. Amy grew quiet, staring out of the window at the scenery rushing past, and Gamma found it a thankful respite in which he could properly catalogue the literal stream of conscious that she'd spewed at him. It was a difficult task, sorting through and determining what was genuine advice and instruction from what was simple chatter. There were few other passengers aboard their carriage – a pair of sleepy tourists quietly muttering to one another about some ruins as they tried not to power down; a girl with a heavy rucksack reading a book, pausing occasionally to gaze out of the window; a boy wearing a strange pair of cup-like items over his ears, bobbing his head to an unknown pattern as he flicked through a magazine – and so Gamma was spared the usual brief collection of stares he attracted whenever he rode the train. Slowly the train emptied, stop by stop, until only Gamma, Amy, and the girl were left.
"Say, Gamma, I've been wondering," said Amy. Unlike her earlier fast-paced chatting, she spoke slowly, haltingly. "What happened to you? The last I saw of you, you were flying away from the Egg Carrier, and then the next time I see you, you're almost dead in the jungle. How did you get like that?"
Ah, the endless curiosity of organics. Still, Amy's query made sense: she had divulged an unspecified amount of data at him, so now it was his turn to do the same. Exchange of data was one of the primary conduits between robots, and it was a refreshing, safe haven. Gamma prepared to speak, then stopped. A strange sense of anticipation, dark, foreboding, and one that automatically put him in mind of sluggish, tar-gummed gears, hovered about at the back of his CPU. Like it was waiting for the command that would execute it, a hidden code that was wrapped up in his speech.
Too late Gamma realised he should have queried Tails about these 'feelings', but now, trapped on a train that was chugging towards Station Square, it was too late. He could not, would not let emotions get in the way, wriggling and running and ruining his computing! Ignoring the warning-that-wasn't-a-warning, he ploughed ahead.
"E-Series line: E-101 Beta. E-102 Gamma. E-103 Delta. E-104 Epsilon. E-105 Zeta. Former status of units Delta, Epsilon, and Zeta: banished for mission failure. Former status of unit Beta: subject to upgrade due to mission failure. Former mission of unit Gamma: Save friends from the tyranny of Eggman, and liberate the organic batteries within. Units E-103 to E-105: Liberation successful. Damage sustained by unit E-102: Minimal. Unit E-101: Liberation successful. Damage sustained by unit E-102: Severe. Choice of shutdown location: Mystic Ruins. Data recall complete," Gamma finished, then looked at Amy. Strange. He felt broken, recalling the data, with that old, familiar feeling of heavy-setting lead coating his mechanics, except now there were blades hidden within the mess. Except-
Oh no. This felt far worse than before.
For a minute or two Amy was silent, her brows creasing and eyes flicking around without really focusing as she processed and translated his answer. A silence stretched out in the carriage, broken only by the rhythmic clacking of the wheels.
"Oh." When she finally spoke, Amy's voice was quiet, and to Gamma's optics, she suddenly appeared very small. "So you guys were like… siblings?"
It was an apt comparison when processed, Gamma reasoned, desperately trying to ignore the false feeling of faulty mechanics that seeped through him, threatening to overwhelm. Siblings were merely organic versions of a production line, the two mirroring and staring at one another across the organic-robotic divide.
Despite feeling so damaged already, something within Gamma felt like it was breaking anew as he answered, and for a split second he felt his vocaliser would glitch. "Affirmative."
"And you killed them to save them and free the animals, is that it?"
"Affirmative." The feeling intensified, and now he was definitely breaking, he was breaking, he was breaking, but he wasn't breaking because his data never lied, but he felt horrible nonetheless, pulled in two different directions-
"That's… That's so horrible! I hate Eggman!" Amy cried, her face contorting into an unpleasant expression. "Was there nothing else you could do to save them? Weren't they good, too?" There was a spark in her eyes, some enquiring, expectant note, and somehow it resonated with the emotions inside Gamma, amplifying them and making him feel even worse.
"Negative." Amy's face fell, and Gamma continued. "There was no other w-y-wa-ay." This time his vocaliser really did glitch, the final words fragmenting and crackling into overlapping pieces.
He was merely stating factual data! It should not hurt so! Something within him suddenly broke, ghostly emotions overrunning and overriding everything, virus-like tendrils attacking him. Gamma shook, his whole body shuddering and trembling, rattling away like a teakettle full of marbles; a sudden, scuffling thumping of feet indicated that the girl had fled the carriage, rucksack in tow-
This was how Beta looked before he exploded, flitted through his CPU, fresh new damage to his mechanisms.
A resounding CLUNK rang out as Gamma's legs folded up beneath him and he hit the floor, halfway configured into roller mode. His processor swung around to face Amy.
"Why?" he asked. "Why do I feel defective? Why does it hurt?"
Amy's hand flew to her half-open mouth. "Oh, Gamma." She leaned over and suddenly wrapped her arms around him in an action that was a draping sort of hug. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry. It's gonna be okay. I shouldn't have pried."
That- that was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong-
"Y-o-yu-ou are not at fault," said Gamma, trying to regain some semblance of control though clear, undeniable facts. "It is only a data exchange - but it should not be this way!" His vocaliser rose to a crescendo, almost an organic wail.
"I know, I know," murmured Amy. "It's okay. It's gonna be okay."
She held him until his shuddering petered out, the emotions within him quietening. Gamma didn't know why, but something about the action was soothing, helping banish the accursed virus-like emotions within him back into their box. He almost felt like his old self, except that the inside of him felt like it'd been given a ghostly scouring.
"You feeling better?" she murmured.
"Affirmative," said Gamma.
The next second Amy hopped out of her seat, and brushing her skirt beneath her, kneeled on the scuffed floor next to him.
Looking at Amy, Gamma knew that he needed to sort out this emotional problem now, before any more time elapsed. He might not have that the foresight to query Tails about it, but Amy was an organic, and furthermore, she was the one who first introduced him to the concept of emotions. Therefore her information and data on it might be the most valuable and well-researched. No. It would be, he was certain of it.
Still…
Gamma was all-too aware that he was heading into unknown territory. Emotions and talking about emotions were very much the dominion of organics, influencing them in ways both subtle and not, and otherwise ruling their lives. In his optics, emotions were like their programming language, telling them how they should function in a way that they understood. And that had been such an unpleasant attack, for lack of a better word. He would have to choose his words with care, lest he disturb something within him again.
"Amy," he said. "I… I have a query."
"What is it?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. There was something almost cautious and delicate about her right now. It put Gamma in mind of a sparrow carefully settling over her eggs.
"I have come to the conclusion that I possess that which you have designated 'feelings'. Analysing my data shows that I have been in possession of them for a significant amount of time. However, these 'feelings' and 'emotions' I have experienced are," he paused, searching for the correct term, "bad. Incorrect. They make me feel like I am breaking, broken, or faulty. Conclusion: emotions are bad. What is your data on the subject?"
"Oh, Gamma," sighed Amy. She looked up out of the window, a sharp profile against the sunset, then back to him. "Not all emotions are bad. I mean, some of them will make you feel bad, yeah, but that doesn't mean they're bad in themselves. They're just trying to tell you something." Amy looked down at her clasped hands, nestled in her lap.
"I do not understand," said Gamma. "Throughout my initial period of being online, the majority of emotions subjected to me were ones designated 'bad'. Conclusion: the majority of emotions are negative."
"Oh, but don't you see!" Amy leaned closer. "Working for Eggman, with no real freedom of your own, having to kill your own family?" Her voice dropped, her eyes downcast. "That's a really sad life, Gamma. It's no wonder that you would only feel negative emotions."
For a moment there was silence, broken only by the clack of the wheels and faint whirring of Gamma's mechanics as the pair of them processed this. He had to admit that there seemed to be a certain organic-based logic to Amy's words, each part of the theory neatly clicking into place with the next. A sudden, soft touch on the back of his hand jolted him out of his musings. Amy, her tiny hand resting atop his, smiled up at him. There was a certain softness to her expression.
"Your old life might have been sad, but you've got a new start now. Your life's your own, and you can do anything you want with it! And that includes being happy. But," she continued, "I don't think you know how to recognise it. If you've only ever been focusing on and, er, 'cataloguing' the 'bad' emotions, then you might not realise or understand when you're experiencing a positive emotion, like happiness, or hope, or amusement. Surely you must have had a moment where you felt something nice?"
Gamma spun his head as he computed this. Something nice, something 'nice'… But what was nice? Nice, nice, nice…
As he computed, images of nature slowly unfolded in Gamma's processor; trees taking root and towering in the sky, bees humming through the air with their parcels of pollen; a nautilus swum through the deep, protected by a beautiful, mathematical shell; butterflies alighted and lifted off, their wings being tiny snatches of patterns in the air; three flickies swooped in the light of sunset-
Ah!
Gamma snatched the answer in an iron grip.
"When proceeding to the Mystic Ruins station, I 'felt' something. In observing the flickies and the mathematically-based patterns of their flight, I experienced a moment where, though contrary to my data, I 'felt' that I was connected to everything in the universe, and it was connected to my form, and though there were errors, everything within the universe was good. Your conclusion?" finished Gamma.
"That was happiness," said Amy, with a smile. "You were feeling happy."
"Happiness," he intoned. It had been such a shining circuit of a moment, and as he remembered it, a faint flush of that feeling – happiness - brushed through him.
"See? You can feel nice things Gamma. You just have to learn how to recognise them."
Clunking and whirring, Gamma rose, configuring back into his normal mode as he did so. "I understand. Thank you for both your assistance and data."
Brushing off her skirt, Amy climbed back into her seat. "Hey, you're welcome! We all have to learn how to deal with emotions sometime. It's a part of growing up, I guess."
There was a pause as Gamma considered his next words. When he finally spoke, he found his tone halting, almost uncertain. Odd. "Do you ever experience the emotions designated 'negative'?"
Much to Gamma's – emotion later designated - surprise, a halting, staccato hiccupping sound burst out from Amy, as the corners of her mouth lifted, and the edges of her eyes crinkled. Laughter, Gamma's data banks helpfully informed him. Amy was laughing. It was a soft sound, one that reminded him of the murmur of a river over rocks.
"Oh, Gamma, of course I do!" said Amy. "When my friends and I are fighting that evil old Eggman, it's hard not to feel angry at him and his schemes. And I always feel sad when Sonic leaves, racing off to some new adventure, because he's my friend, and I'll miss him. I know I've got other friends, but it gets kinda lonely without him around, y'know? Oh, and when Birdy and I were being chased by that big robot, Zero? I was so scared! But I also felt angry that time, too. Some of it was at myself, for not being able to protect myself, but most of it was directed at Zero for trying to take Birdy!" She leaned back in her seat, swinging her legs a little. "Everyone experiences emotions, Gamma, both good and bad. It's normal! But if you just bottle up some emotions, or force yourself to feel others, you'll get sick. Well, non-robot people get sick," Amy added. "But I don't think bottling things up would make you feel very good either."
Thanks to this new data from Amy, it was clear that a re-evaluation was in order. Perhaps these emotions, while still virus-like in manner, were not solely bad after all? Gamma spun his head. He would have to gather more data in order to be certain of such a thing, and that would require him to keep operating…
A small fleck of what Amy had determined was 'happiness' lit up inside him. Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing after all.
The steady clack-CLACK of the wheels sang out a pattern, as bathed in sunset, the string of carriages clattered onwards, towards a new life.
As it was with everything else in the universe, Gamma found that life with organics was an endless, repeating mathematically-based pattern. Whereas he and his other kin measured time in terms of progress – for example: now he had arrived at Red Mountain; now he was traversing the searing caverns, his temperature gauge steadily ticking higher and higher; now the minor signal he'd been following had switched to a major one, so Epsilon was near and Gamma was closing in on his target – organics were directly tied to the interchanging interplay of light and dark. They lived their lives bound to its rhythm, and thought little of it. The organics who self-classified themselves as 'people' - typically exhibiting shared traits such as an upright posture, the use of tools, the use of a various number of cross-species languages, and adornment of their bodies with various materials for protection – well, they spent one half of the day-night cycle in a form of stasis, recharging. Most of them selected the 'night' portion to do this in, their biology better suited to take advantage of the daylight hours.
Amy was no exception to this.
On the first night post-repair, Gamma had found himself standing within the slightly cramped confines of Amy's flat, his processor almost brushing the ceiling. Amy stood before him, gesturing to a shut door. For the previous fifteen minutes, she'd been giving him a tour of her home.
"And this," she finished, "is my bedroom. Usually I don't allow boys in here, but I'll make an exception for you!"
She went in, beckoning Gamma to follow. He ducked through the doorway into the room, and at this point the action was already a well-practised one; organic design meant that home-fitted doorways were too low for him. With an exhaled rush of air, Amy leapt and forcefully flopped down onto the bed.
"It's comfy!" she said, the words muffled through copious layers of duvet. She flipped over, the action half-roll, half-spring. "Can't get to sleep if you're not comfy!" Then, remembering who she was talking to, she hastily added: "Well, I can't."
Sleep, as it turned out, was essential to the organics, and formed one of many 'beats' to their day. Gamma had soon found that there were five main 'beats' and three minor 'beats' to the pattern of Amy's life, when things were, as she'd put it, 'at peace'. It drummed out like so: Boot up, refuel, [BLANK], refuel, [BLANK], refuel, [BLANK], recharge mode/sleep. The five main beats, which mainly consisted of refuelling, were solid things, integral if an organic wished to continue functioning correctly. The other three were taken up with tasks and activities, interchangeable ones that varied from day to day.
Most days Amy went out into Station Square, either performing errands or visiting friends. Except it wasn't the same Station Square as the one Gamma had stored in his archives. He had made this discovery on that first night, when, with a slow squeal of breaks and a hiss of pneumatics, the train had drawn to a halt; as Gamma stepped outside, feet clunking against stone and passing from the well-lit train station into darkness and the grubby light of street lamps, a great mass of shadowy, skeletal scaffolding had greeted him, clinging to buildings like an offline spider. Buildings had loomed in the murky half-light, silhouettes transformed into odd shapes.
"Don't worry, it looks worse than it is," Amy had said, popping up beside him. "Still..." she'd sighed, hands on hips. "Perfect Chaos sure made a mess of everything. But pretty soon it'll be all back to normal!" She'd begun walking. "Of course, we've all been helping out; that's why it took so long to fix you. Most days Tails was out here, fixing something or another, and so he could only really take a look at you during his spare time."
Judging from the timestamp on the last memory in his archive – a 5.7 second shot of vegetation-boarded sky – when compared with the date that his internal clock was showing, Gamma had found that Amy's statement was correct - a period of several months had passed by. This too, went into his archive of events, and it was an entirely logical and acceptable break; he was only one being – a being who could survive in stasis over an extended period of time - whereas Station Square was home to many organics with their fragile, fragile lives.
As they'd headed through the darkened city with Amy in the lead, they'd cut a winding, zig-zag of a route that'd incorporated odd shortcuts and cut through alleyways, a path no doubt borne from the combination of both experience and the mind of an organic. In a way, it'd almost been like being back aboard the Egg Carrier: there was such an abundance of metal coating everything, and when combined with both the streetlights and beams of passing cars that cut through the gloom with a sharp, stark contrast, it'd lent the air an industrial quality, making it almost feel like the two places had been blended into one. Everywhere they went, Amy had chattered away, pointing out buildings and relating little stories, another endless stream of unfiltered and uncategorised information.
"-And over there is where Sonic – did I mention he was Super at this point? This is where he first shot up inside Perfect Chaos and clocked him in the face! Ooh, and this bakery is super nice; they do this fresh cheesy bread on Tuesdays - but you have to get there quick – oh, but you probably don't eat what we eat, do you? Still, it's nice just to have a little walk early in the morning, before the city's really woken up; sometimes I'll go jogging and then finish off with something from that bakery, but- Oh! You see that building over there? The one with all the glass windows? The repairs on that just finished yesterday; it was one of the first to be damaged; Perfect Chaos didn't even have to hit it! They just screamed and it all shattered! Even at a distance it felt like my poor ears were going to burst! I mean, I guess that just showed how powerful Choas was, y'know? Eggman really shouldn't have been messing with it, but that's M.O. in a nutshell; anyway-"
And so on, for the entire trip until they'd reached Amy's flat, at which point it'd then segued into the smaller tour.
This had proved to be indicative of what life with Amy would be like; it was a factual statement to say that it was… an experience. She'd made a particular point of introducing him to all her friends, and they were an eclectic bunch, to say the least, each one exuberant in their own organic way. Sure enough, a predicted, the one designated 'Knuckles' had tried to pick a fight with Gamma, and his manner afterwards indicated a vague distrust.
"He's always like that!" Amy had stated with a roll of her eyes. "Nice guy, but being alone on that island all the time can't be good for him."
The one designated 'Sonic', meanwhile, seemed to hold no acrimonious feelings towards Gamma, despite their former clash on opposing sides. He'd called Gamma 'rustbucket' in what Amy had later explained was an affectionate way, which didn't really make sense to Gamma, but he'd accepted it anyway.
Time passed, and despite his lack of a 'proper' task, Gamma found there was a certain peace to his days, as he gradually gathered more data and gained a greater understanding of emotions. At night when he entered recharge mode - a looming, half-lit shape in Amy's living room - he dreamed in binary, long strings and patterns of numbers knitting and weaving together into people, places, and shapes; stray memories leaking out from his archives, coiling and curling into a different form, but always with the same – and only - result each time. Sometimes he dreamed of the others of his line, now classified as his brothers. Sometimes these dreams were pleasant. Sometimes they weren't.
During the daylight hours Gamma would occasionally go to the local parks and simply sit, watching that particular slice of nature that'd survived urbanisation. Under his watchful optics, species emerged and became known to him, each bearing their own classification: wood pigeon, fox, peacock butterfly, bumblebee, pied wagtail, adder; patterned wings and painted scales. The mathematics of the universe given form. Gradually he travelled further afield, heading back to the wild, hidden places in the world, watching nature in its endless variations.
But as time passed, there was something, a fragment, which lodged within his processor, one that would not be neatly filed away.
Eggman was still out there. Eggman, unrelenting virus that attacked the world indiscriminately. Gamma had managed to save his immediate brothers, but he had been aboard Eggman's vessel, with its vast array of robots; he knew what the man was like. Sooner or later he would concoct more plans within his mind, would rise up again…
Would create more robots.
Gamma could go after these new creations, but something in the task wasn't quite focused enough, like salvaging data after a virus has been through, as opposed to deleting the virus itself.
No, if he was to accomplish anything, then he would have to fight against Eggman himself…
Gamma spent a long afternoon processing this, running it through his CPU until the sides gleamed to a fine, sharpened point.
A week later, when Amy burst into the room, wild-eyed and clamouring about Sonic being arrested, and c'mon Gamma, we've gotta go break him outta jail!, the task was clear in Gamma's CPU as they headed out, Amy clinging to his back as he flew across the sea.
He would protect the world, and the organic nature that dwelled within it, from Eggman's schemes, and would eliminate Eggman.
This was his new task.
He would fulfil it, and he would live to see the world beyond that day, with his new friends.
oOoOoOoOo
AN: *Rogue voice* Long time no see!
Anyone who knows me will know that E-102 Gamma is my 5eva love, ultimate fave, precious son etc. etc., and I've had this AU headcanon in my head for years where Gamma doesn't die and instead gets given a non-animal battery, and so he gets to go on all the other Sonic adventures, hooray, hooray. :D And now it finally exists as this fic!
The title is taken from the song 'The Other Castle' by Jim Guthrie, which sorta functions as the fic's theme. That, and 'Lullaby for a Solider' by Maggie Siff; it's nice, go check it out!
The first piece of poetry is from 'Hope is the thing with feathers' by Emily Dickinson, and the second piece is taken from 'The Enkindled Spring' by D.H. Lawrence.
Because is a bugger who won't let you copy and paste, here's a translation of the binary:
1. So this is it?
2. I did my best
3. I am coming, friends