The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Bandai Visual, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network.

THE BIG O:

ACT 32

SEIZE THE DAY

Chapter Three: Back Where It Began

"Roger?" Dorothy's small pale hand touched the shoulder of the man lying in bed. "Wake up. You're having a nightmare. Are you all right?"


Roger's eyes popped open. "Dorothy!" he cried. "You're alive!" He put his arms around her and pulled her down to him. "You're alive! Thank God! I'm sorry! I'm sorry I never told you!" He hugged her as he repeatedly kissed her face. It was a good thing that Dorothy didn't have a sense of taste because Roger hadn't brushed his teeth yet. "Thank God! It was all a dream! It was all a…" he stopped, suddenly self-conscious and looked at her emotionless expression. "What are you doing here?" he growled as he pushed her away.

"You were screaming," Dorothy told him. "You were in bed screaming my name."

"Like that's ever gonna happen," a blushing Roger shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He rose from the bed and walked out clutching his pillow.


Breakfast time was awkward, so Roger hid behind his newspaper.

"It's rude to read the newspaper at the table," Dorothy said in her calm voice.

Roger stared at her as if she just told him that she was going to strap a bomb to her body and jump off the roof. "Don't leave the house!" he hissed in a hoarse whisper. "I don't care if the building's on fire! Don't leave the house! You can hide in the basement."

"Roger are you all right?" the redhead asked him. "You're acting very strange."

"I uh… haven't been sleeping well," he stammered. "All I need is a good night's sleep and I'll be right as rain."

"Is something going on that you're not telling me?" Dorothy asked.

"No!" Roger snapped before rubbing his forehead. "No," he hissed as he tried to make his voice sound normal. "I'm fine. I just had a really bad dream that's all. It happens sometimes."

"It's been happening a lot lately," Dorothy commented. "I'm starting to see why you stay up so late."

"I'm just not getting enough sleep that's all," he assured her. "That nightmare really shook me up."

"What was it about?" Dorothy asked.

"What?"

"What was it about?" Dorothy repeated. "What happened in your dream that upset you so much?"

"It's ah… personal," Roger blushed. "I don't want to talk about it. I just want to forget it. Put it behind me. It never happened anyway."

"I see," Dorothy sipped her tea while watching Roger poke at his food. He may have been shoveling food in his mouth to avoid talking but at least he was eating. When he seemed to lose interest in his meal Dorothy spoke again. "Was I in it?"

"Were you in what?" Roger muttered.

"Was I in your dream?" Dorothy asked.

"No," he said as he sipped his coffee. "No you weren't in it." He forced the rest of his breakfast down in order to avoid talking.

"I see," Dorothy said as she refilled her teacup. She put in a lump of sugar and slowly stirred. "Then why were you shouting my name?"

"I wasn't shouting your name," Roger muttered.

"Yes you were," Dorothy said. "You were screaming it. I thought something was attacking you. Then I heard you say 'Dorothy don't leave me'. I want to assure you that I am not going anywhere Roger Smith. I don't have anywhere else to go."

"Thanks," he smiled ruefully at her. "It's nice to hear."

"Why were you shouting my name if I wasn't in your dream?" Dorothy asked.

"I dunno, I must have been uh… looking for you…" Roger stammered.

"Why were you looking for me?" Dorothy asked. "It must have been urgent."

"Uh… it was," Roger nodded. "It was very important."

"Why?"

Roger resisted the urge to slam his head against the table. "I dunno. It was a dream. Dreams don't always make sense, do they? They're just… dreams. Don't you ever dream?"

"I dream all the time Roger," Dorothy said, "but never when I'm asleep."

"Really?" Roger smiled, grateful for the chance to ask her some personal questions for once. "You don't dream when you're asleep? Never? Why not?"

"When I sleep my system reboots and runs a full diagnostic," she replies. "My thoughts are a chaotic jumble during that time and I can't really remember it."

"Oh," Roger nodded. "But you dream during the day? What about?"

"Living my life to the fullest," Dorothy replied. "Experiencing the world and finding my place in it. Exploring the capabilities and limitations of R Dorothy Wayneright. For example, I often wonder how different I am from the Dorothy Wayneright I was modeled after. Am I merely an imitation or something unique? Am I a person or a collection of programs and subroutines? Am I capable of love or simply curious?"

"Nothing like the big questions," Roger joked weakly before taking a sip of coffee.

"Would it be possible for the two of us to fall in love and would our love last?" Dorothy continued.

Roger choked and spit his coffee out in a fine spray.

"If a megadeus fell in the tunnels under the city and no one was there to hear it, would it make a sound?" Dorothy said. "I dream about a lot of things."

"Y-yeah," Roger nodded weakly as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. "So do I."

Norman entered the dining room carrying a silver serving tray. "Master Roger, there's a young lady downstairs waiting for you in the ground floor parlor," he said as he placed Roger's dishes and coffee cup on the tray.

"You let her in?" Roger asked. "Without my permission?"

"Yes sir," Norman smiled. "She matches the criteria as per your instructions."

"Time to make myself presentable," Roger smiled at the dour girl across the table.


Soon Roger was impeccable in his black slacks, black shoes, a black tie bisected by a gray stripe, and a crisp white shirt covered by a black polo jacket. "I make it a habit to only allow beautiful young ladies to enter my house without permission," he smiled as he entered the downstairs parlor before he did a double take. "What the..? Angel!"

"Hello Mister Negotiator," the curvaceous blonde in the pink jacket greeted him. "I was wondering if you were doing anything today. I was hoping to go apartment hunting and then we could have a picnic later."

"I um… have a lot to do right now," Roger rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. "Would you take a rain check?"

"Go," Dorothy said as she entered the room from behind him. "Spend the day with Angel. It will be good for you. You've cut yourself off from your fellow human beings and its making you crazy."

"Dorothy!" Roger gasped. "Are you okay with this?"

"Of course I am," Dorothy said without batting an eye. "You need to get out more. You need to see your friends. You need to go on a date. You'll go insane if you cut yourself off from the world anymore. Right now Angel is the best thing for you."

"Isn't she sweet?" Angel's smile was radiant. "Look Roger, your big sister is giving us her blessing!"

"You're sure about this?" Roger asked. "I mean, you aren't jealous?"

"Roger I'm an android," Dorothy's neutral tone was almost condescending. "I don't experience emotions the way you do. I wasn't programmed for feelings like that. Go. Go with Angel. When you come back maybe you'll be yourself again."

"Okay," he said as Angel took his arm and escorted him to the door. "If you say so… You're sure you're okay with this?"

"You're losing your mind being cooped up in here," Dorothy told him. "You haven't been accepting any clients ever since we returned from Electric City. You need a diversion. Go."


Roger didn't know why he was in the passenger seat of Angel's pink car. Dorothy shooed him out the door before he had a chance to think. He was never comfortable out of the driver's seat. He glanced over at Angel. The gorgeous blonde was surprisingly relaxed and confident, much closer to the woman he knew before Union's Agent Twelve came to town. She chatted about their shared experiences, the weather, and people they both knew.

"Dorothy really is very sweet," Angel said as they passed two prostitutes wearing fur coats standing on a street corner. "She really is devoted to you. And she makes me laugh. Have the two of you ever gotten close?"

"As close as a guy can get to an emotionless android," Roger shrugged as the car passed over a metal plate in the road that clanged when they went over it . "I've been a perfect gentleman if that's what's you mean."

"Have you ever told her you love her?" Angel asked.

"Of course," Roger blushed. "She's like a daughter to me."

"Like a daughter?" Angel smiled slyly.

"Or a sister," Roger frowned. "Maybe a cousin."

"A kissing cousin?" the blonde teased.

"Whatever she is, she's family," Roger pulled at his collar. "Why? You want to go on a date with her or something?"

Angel laughed. "I'll settle for going on a date with you, Roger Smith."

"Good," Roger winked. "I was getting jealous for a minute there. So… Angel," he cleared his throat uncomfortably. "What have you been doing lately? A lot must have happened since I saw you last."

"Just getting my life in order," Angel smiled. "What about you Mister Negotiator?"

"Thought about investing in dream research, had it blow up in my face," Roger shrugged. "Negotiated for some developers before that. Nothing big."

"You don't seem to be in the mood to help me househunt," Angel said as her car passed a building with a horrific gargoyle hanging from the roof. "So why did you get in the car with me? Or do you do anything your little android tells you?"

"I've got… questions," Roger admitted. "What happened the day Alex Rosewater attacked the city with Big Fau?" Roger asked, "and what did Gordon Rosewater show you after I left you? Did he really take you six hundred and sixty-six floors below the city and show you a control room that could control the ghost of a megadeus called Big Venus? Is this entire city just one giant puppet show? What happened that night, and what happened forty years ago?"

"That's not what you want to know," Angel teased. "You want to know if you're human or not. You want to know if you're real."

"I assumed the questions were related," Roger huffed.

"Very well," Angel nodded. "If you really want to know I might as well take you to where the life of Roger the Negotiator began."


Dorothy walked into the large hanger in the center of the building. Most of the floors or the white tower that Roger lived in was hollowed out to make room for the humungous black robot known as the megadeus, the robot that Roger called the Big O. The megadeus was an ungainly metal giant towering over fifty feet tall. Two vaguely humanoid legs supported its barrel shaped body. The enormous arms of the megadeus were in reality massive piledrivers with huge mechanical hands instead of chisels. The head of Big O was an impassive face that was dwarfed by the megadeus' humungous body. The megadeus' face was topped by a red crystalline crown and the top of its chest was covered by a red collar that concealed the cockpit where Roger controlled the massive robot.

"Please," the little android said as she stood on the catwalk before the massive robot's impassive face. "Don't go away. Roger needs you. Don't abandon him. Please, this isn't your fault. I don't know what you're hiding from Roger but it doesn't matter. Roger needs you. Please help him."


"Here we are," Angel said as her pink car pulled up in front of a large boarded up three story gray brick school building.

"This… place," Roger said as he and Angel got out of the car. "I know it. This is the building where you gave me Gordon Rosewater's book." This was the building he found after Ellen Waite was murdered and he met Angel wearing a red hooded cloak. This was the building that twisted memories told him Gordon Rosewater implanted Memories into children with shaved heads.

Roger walked past the deserted lobby and made his way through a dusty and rubble filled hall the back of the building. His progressed was blocked by a wall the he didn't think belonged there. Plaster had fallen off it to reveal bare concrete blocks. A section of the floor in front of it was filled in with concrete as if sealing off a stairway that once led to the basement.

"Here you go," Angel handed him a large two handed sledgehammer. "Have fun. Good luck finding your past and all."

"You want to tell me what's behind this wall, Angel?" Roger asked as he took a set of safety goggles out of his coat and put them on.

"You know what's behind this wall," Angel said as she turned and walked away.

The concrete blocks weren't reinforced and shattered easily under his blows. At last he knocked a hole big enough to step through. On the other side was a checkered floor and red tinged walls. He set down the sledgehammer and took a flashlight out his pocket and examined his surroundings. A checkerboard pattern was on the walls of a large sunken chamber.

Visions of baldheaded children stared back at Roger as he examined his surroundings, followed by visions of men in surgical gowns. An old man, Gordon Rosewater smiled in a fatherly fashion at him, but Roger must have been shorter than he was now or have been sitting down. He felt himself seated, being wheeled around, was he in a wheelchair? A wheelchair that was taking him to a strange apparatus that looked like it belonged in an optometrist's office or a dental surgery lab. He was seated in front of the apparatus with everything pointed at him. He peered into the hooded viewer and saw… a barcode…

"Back where it all began… eh Mister Negotiator?" a masculine voice brought Roger out of his memories.

"Who's there?" Roger shined his light around but with no power and no windows in this room it was as black as a coal mine in here.

"Did you forget me already, Mister Negotiator?" A shadowy figure emerged from the darkness. His face was bandaged like a mummy, but he was Roger's height and build and wearing a long coat. "But you wanted to forget me, didn't you Mister Negotiator? You wanted to forget all about me! You can't blame me for everything you know. You can't erase me and pretend like I never existed!"

"Michael Seebach!" Roger cried. "How did you get out? I thought you were locked up at Riker's Island!"

"Fool!" the bandaged faced man growled. "That's not my name!"

"Schwartzwald then!" Roger said as he assumed a fighting stance. "Whatever you call yourself you aren't going to get at the Truth by denying who you are!"

"That's ironic coming from you!" his adversary laughed. "You did everything you could to deny who you are!"

"I know who I am," Roger snarled. "I'm Roger Smith, the negotiator."

"No," his foe shook his bandaged head. "That's just what you've told yourself. But that's not who you are."

"How would you know?" Roger growled.

"I know better than anyone!" the apparition said while tearing the bandages off his face. "I know who Roger Smith really is? Who else would know if not me?"

Roger gasped and staggered backwards. The man who tore the bandages off his head looked exactly like Roger Smith himself, right down to his unique eyebrows!


On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:

Next: Standing In the Rain