"Preliminary studies of the Irregular Virus have shown it to be most resistant to exogenous alteration, though it remains itself highly adaptable. No two instances of the affliction have presented the same; like the organic malady of the same name, the virus simply slithers into a host, subtly alters key components of their core operations, and propagates until the host is consumed. This, my friends, is the nature of the beast we have chosen to slay!"
-Recorded testimony of Dr. Doppler at the World Trial, 21XX
Chapter Two
Prodrome
Quint glanced back and forth at the ruined landscape.
An unpleasant feeling activated his emotional response subroutines and tripped off a cascade effect throughout the rest of his positronic neural pathways. Circuit by circuit, the android perceived a mixed response of sorrow and culpability with idiopathic origin.
Guilt.
My fault? Did I do this?
Troubled, he ran a self-diagnostic and performed a rapid parsing of his short-term memory buffers. Disturbingly little remained in his cache to help guide his assessment; his arrival in this place was preceded only by shadowy corrupt memory files that occasionally yielded some clear images. A more comprehensive scan of his long-term memory files was even less helpful; the files had been locked and placed behind savagely efficient firewalls.
Okay—no use in trying to square one. Quint took a long look at his surroundings; perhaps they could generate some clue as to his situation.
Here and there, treeborgs clawed at the sky, denuded of their photovoltaic leaves. The ground and trees alike sported scorch marks in apparently random patterns. A low hill, capped by a broken wall and what might have been the foundations of a small house, squatted in the middle of his field of vision. Around its base clustered the shattered husks of innumerable small robots, likewise blackened.
Quint reached up to scratch his head; it was a human gesture he had seen that denoted puzzlement. Despite the void in his memory banks, his compulsion to emulate human behavior kept too firm a grasp on his foundational programming to release him from the reflexive desire to perform such actions.
His hand met with unexpected resistance. His fingers had expected to feel synthetic hair too perfectly replicated to be distinguished from its organic counterpart. Instead, questing digits found themselves touching a metal V-shaped crest attached to the forehead aspect of a smooth metal helmet.
My helmet shouldn't have a crest like that. Whence the thought had originated Quint could not determine—perhaps from behind one of the firewalls. He attempted to verify the origin signature for aberrancy, but found nothing alarming in its content other than its unexpected appearance.
Something else that had been confusing him suddenly became clear; the wavelength of light he perceived had been altered by the addition of a filter over his optic sensors. Dropping his hand from the unexpected crest over his forehead, he felt a visor extending from the brow of his helmet to the bridge of his nose.
Curious.
Nearly microscopic servomotors adjusted the convexity of his optical lens, and he performed a quick long-range visual sweep of the area. No footprints or marks of vehicles scarred the ground—not even his own. That means I must have teleported here—or been teleported by a stationary unit.
Seeing no logical alternative, Quint chose a direction and began to walk.
Tokyo, Japan
The doorbell's chime was incongruous in the morning quiet.
Though the Light household occupied an area technically within the Tokyo megalopolis, the inexpressibly precious acre of green had been surrounded by sonic dampeners so that the noise of the untold millions going about their business would not intrude upon the genius of its residents.
Roll looked up from the circuit board in her hand. "That's odd. Dr. Light's shuttle to the turboport isn't due here for another half an hour."
Across the breakfast table, Snap and his two daughters—Bess and Julie—shifted curiously in their seats. Roll noted that Bess in particular seemed particularly squirmy this morning. The young Australian girl always looked somewhat ill-at-ease in her school uniform, but today Roll found herself considering the use of a colloquialism she had recently discovered in her reading: "ants in the pants."
A moment passed in silence. Snap cleared his throat. "Shouldn't one of us answer it?"
Roll shook her head, noting with detached interest how the slanting sunlight reflected from the golden microfibers that made up her tresses. "No need. Eddie will answer. If our visitor is truly a guest and not just another media jackal, we'll know soon."
"Fair enough," Snap replied, and returned his attention to breakfast.
Roll eyed the three humans curiously, attempting to assess their enthusiasm for the fare laid before them by subtle visual cues. Organic behavior continued to fascinate her; human behavior in particular held her interest the most.
In her attempts to better comprehend and emulate humans, she had taken on a number of duties around the house and the LighTech production factories here in Japan. Teleporting to work each day to supervise the research, development and production of LighTech's robots, she found some sense of accomplishment in the way she had begun to truly blend with the human workers.
A brainstorm of hers on returning from work one day had been to prepare food for her human family. It had been her observation that human beings engaged in a large amount of their emotional bonding during mealtimes. The more she had puzzled over this phenomenon, the more she had noticed that human beings would often conduct all manner of social or business networking while eating as well.
Why exactly this should be she had not yet fully worked out. One of her stronger theories was that on an instinctive level, human beings who consumed food in close proximity to one another somehow identified each other as members of the same pack, and thus grew more and more predisposed to look upon each other as partners rather than rivals in the search for shelter, food and mates. That such an atavism should still hold true after hundreds of millennia astounded her, and she had shared her revelation with Dr. Light.
Rather than the amusement she had expected him to evince, the aging roboticist had nodded and suggested that she study this matter further, if she felt that it drew her closer to a more comprehensive understanding of humanity.
Today marked the third month since she had begun her socioculinary experiment, and she had opted for something simple: omelets served with diced bacon and avocado, lightly seasoned with paprika. While Dr. Light had not yet risen to eat, Roll always made sure that breakfast was ready before Bess and Julie left for school.
The silence was pregnant. The sound of Eddie's trundling robotic feet receded down the hallway towards the front door. Roll smiled at the Angelwood family.
"How are the eggs?" she asked lightly.
A stab of disappointment ran through her as Snap's shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly. He blinked twice, rapidly. Already, prior experience warned her that the next words to come out of his mouth would be either a half-truth designed to obfuscate his actual feelings, or an outright falsehood. Given his recent discomfort in discussing his plans to move away, she calculated a high probability for the latter possibility.
All three answered at once.
"Great!" Bess's answer never varied; Roll admired the child's loyalty despite the obvious lie.
"Fine," Julie replied neutrally.
"Good job," Snap answered. His tone was oddly hollow, and Roll could tell that he noticed as well. He winced slightly and set down his fork. "I'm sorry, Roll—"
Roll smiled. "It's all right, you guys. I realize that cooking is as much an intuitive art as it is a logical process. I'll never learn if you keep trying to spare my feelings." She added a shrug for effect. "Besides, as an android, my feelings are not as complex as yours; I have no ego to wound."
Now it was the Australian expatriate's turn to smile. "I'm rememberin' an incident a few months ago involvin' shrimp tempura that makes me think otherwise."
Chagrin caused Roll's synthskin to redden just a shade—another spontaneously generated anthropomimetic reaction from her self-modifying emotive algorithms.
"Also," Julie observed, pointing at Roll with a fork still partially loaded with eggs, "You blush. That seems like a 'complex feeling.'"
"You're avoiding the issue," Roll answered firmly. She had seen this before; Julie in particular seemed fascinated by attempts to provoke a spontaneous emotional response from her android housemate. Sometimes the teenager would purposely goad Roll to try to distract her from a sensitive topic.
"Don't get angry with me," Julie replied with a nonchalant air that confirmed Roll's hypothesis. She absently noted that the gibe had indeed produced the desired effect; her annoyance subroutines had already activated in response to the sullen teen. She made her mouth a straight line.
"My emotional state aside, I would appreciate some feedback on my culinary experimentation." The android woman's tone brooked no argument.
Snap shared a look with his daughters and sighed, "It isn't the eggs, Roll. Although truth be told, they're a little . . . grainy."
Probability matrices expanded and collapsed in Roll's positronic brain. A maze of logic gates flared to life and darkened sequentially as likelihoods were organized and ruled out in turn, until a short list remained. Roll took a breath and chose the one at the top of the list as the greatest statistical probability.
"You're leaving soon, aren't you?"
Snap started guiltily. Bess and Julie simultaneously discovered that their school uniforms had acquired barely perceptible wrinkles that needed immediate smoothing.
"Let's talk about your gritty eggs," Snap suggested.
"A moment ago, they were just 'grainy,'" Roll protested.
The Australian shrugged. "A moment ago, I figured that talking about your eggs would be more awkward than anything else you could bring up." A surprising devil-may-care smile flashed across his features. "The situation has just changed."
"A move now would be an illogical waste of resou—"
Snap waved the female android to silence. "None of that, now. The decision's been made. Got nothin' to do with logic, an' you know it." He spread his hands.
"If you say 'A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do' a certain man will eat this tablecloth," Roll snarled, bunching the checkered cloth in both fists.
Snap froze in mid-position. "Wouldn't think of it."
"Am I interrupting?" A woman's clipped voice chirped from behind Roll.
"Absolutely," the android answered without turning around. She slowly rose, her hands pressed flat against the surface of the table. Half leaning forward, she said flatly, "This is not finished."
"Oh, yes it is," Snap replied. To the woman behind Roll he said, "It's not an interruption at all. Thank you as always for a lovely breakfast, Roll." He stood and brushed crumbs from his hands.
Reluctantly, almost as an afterthought, he said, "This is an order. Don't bring this up again."
A robot must obey all commands.
Her Priority One module sent a searing ripple throughout all other operating systems. Gyroscopic sensors—momentarily interrupted by the invocation of the Third Law of Robotics—reasserted themselves. To outside eyes, Roll trembled with anger.
Something foul and Japanese that she hoped the children could not yet understand growled out of Roll's mouth. Judging by the way Julie's eyes widened, the android woman calculated a high probability that she had just committed what she had heard termed a faux pas. However, as the girls stood to follow their father out the door, neither called attention to it.
Julie muttered an indistinct "Later."
Bess waved timidly, her eyes drowning in sympathy.
The woman cleared her throat, and Roll felt a spike of data feedback she had come to identify as irritation. She activated a dampening routine to bring her emotional response under control and stood straight. Taking a deep breath, she turned around.
"I'm here to speak with Dr. Thomas Light," the woman said.
Everything about her bespoke professional brusqueness. Roll noted the pinched lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that indicated a habitual scowl, and a slight paleness at her knuckles where capillary pressure could not overcome the intensity with which she squeezed the sides of her datacard. Her blond hair was combed straight, jutting at a knife-sharp angle to her collar.
Though Roll was no expert on human fashion, she judged this woman to be intentionally projecting a severe image. Dressed entirely in shades of navy, the only hint of color about her was the flashing LED half-camouflaged beneath a button of her suit jacket—where most business people kept the tiny power indicator for their nanophones.
"He's busy packing for the trip to Geneva," Roll answered. She hoped she didn't sound testy. "Who may I say is calling?"
"You may say nothing," the woman answered placidly. "You will take me to Dr. Light."
Something began to heat up in lateral sector of her emotion module. Roll ignored the queue of alarm messages that appeared in her safety diagnostic display. A host of acerbic responses formulated themselves in her verbal matrix, ranging from crude scatological metaphor to sophisticated Wilde-like double entendre.
Concluding that any of these responses would only deepen discord, she discarded them—although not permanently. Some of the more creative offerings she filed away in her sarcasm submenu for future use.
"Please be seated in the living room," she answered. "If you tell me your name, I will inform Dr. Light of your presence. However, he is not in the habit of receiving guests in his private chambers." She was rather proud that she managed to avoid yelling.
The woman's face darkened. Even as she predicted the inevitable, Roll mused to herself that this was a woman who expected obedience: one who was unaccustomed to being questioned.
"Take me to Dr. Light. And do not speak to me again," the woman ordered, her tone arctic.
Torn between rage, shame and the invincible directive to obey, Roll turned and left the kitchen, heading towards her father's room. The woman's footsteps followed her confidently.
Fifteen microseconds into the first step of her involuntary journey, it occurred to Roll that this visitor might mean harm to Dr. Light. Though no such indications had been forthcoming, it would do no harm to be cautious. Since discourse had been preemptively countermanded, Roll activated a remote link to several hundred databases in hopes of discovering the identity of her tormentor.
It took almost five seconds of searching; the woman's profile had been painstakingly hidden between behind layers of dead-end shadow-identities and nearly hack-proof firewalls. Only a few types of people had both the capital and the need to protect their own identities so rigorously.
Maria Eve, 36 years old, was a senior executive from the LighTech Board of Directors, and according to internal company chatter, a favorite for the position of CEO in the future. Since Dr. Light was still the main shareholder in the company he had founded decades ago as well as the primary force behind most of the company's product, he was still the de facto leader of the corporation.
Why would a senior exec fly here all the way from Redmond?
After leading the executive through an intentionally rambling and circuitous route to Dr. Light's room, all the while taking care to step firmly with each foot so that noise was maximized, Roll stopped at the door to her adoptive father's room and knocked lightly on the door. Behind it, she could hear John Coltrane.
Jazz. He always listens to Jazz when he's worried.
"Roll?" the reply came within. Dr. Light's footsteps approached. "Open the door, it's all right. I'm changed and I've nearly finished pack—" The roboticist cut himself short as he opened the door and noticed Roll's accompaniment.
Dressed comfortably in khakis, loafers and a short-sleeved button shirt, the world-renowned scientist looked more like he was about to go on vacation than to the most important trial of his life. His suitcase, however, was crammed with design specs and datacards detailing his latest ideas for the next set of industrial robot masters.
"Ah. So that's why you stomped about and didn't just activate the door servos yourself. Music off." The saxophone in the background wended into silence at his command, and he crossed his arms. "You might have just come upstairs and told me we had company."
"She ordered me not to speak to her and to take her right to you," Roll answered.
"Did she." Light's reply was not a question. Eyebrows still the dark color of the scientist's youth drew together. "I'll speak with our unmannerly guest, Roll. Would you please go check to see what she's done to Eddie?"
Roll nodded. "Sure."
"Are you okay?"
With a venomous glance at the woman, she said sweetly, "I cannot tell."
What a waste, she thought as she stormed down the stairs. I'll be she's never even seen the play. She quickened her pace, unsettled.If this detestable woman had treated her with such disregard, she worried that perhaps she had ordered Eddie to walk into traffic for his temerity in stopping her at the door.
The thought almost stopped her short. Why on earth would I worry over such a thing? Even if she ordered him, Eddie couldn't do that to himself; the Second Law would preserve him. Nevertheless, the strange aberrant thought circled about in her prefrontal circuitry.
Why would she develop such a faulty hypothesis? How could so do so? Her logic and personality modules had been designed so that such aberrations should be impossible; though she might behave in ways that mimicked human emotion, her own internal processes were dictated first and foremost by calculation.
. . . weren't they?
Awhirl in a tempest of confusion and conflicting error messages, Roll finally found Eddie walking in a complicated pattern of loops and backswitches near the edge of the Light manor. Numbly, she told him, "It's all right, Eddie. Dr. Light says you can go back to the house and wait by the door again. Recharge if you need to."
She could have sworn that the little red fliptop gazed at her gratefully before trundling back towards the domed house.
What the hell is wrong with me?
Her footsteps took her around the grounds for several minutes while she ran repeated diagnostics on herself. The results were contradictory and frustrating; she would need to power down for a full systemic diagnostic sweep. It would mean she'd need to forgo some personal conversation with Dr. Light that she had planned for before he left, but it couldn't be helped. If her internal programming was breaking down, she needed to know immediately.
Her pace quickened; now that she had a course of action, she intended to waste no time. Through the front door, the living room, and down the stairs to Dr. Light's massive lab she marched. The huge neurodynamic IBM computer that covered the south wall blinked to life as she entered.
"Diagnostic mode," she ordered.
The supercomputer accessed the necessary programs and indicated standby. Roll opened her white stasis pod and kicked off her shoes. Before lying down on the white cushioning inside, she scribbled a hasty note so that Dr. Light would not trouble himself over her and miss his flight.
Minor aberrancy. Going into stasis for diagnostic. I'll call you when I wake up. Good luck at the trial. Let me know if you need anything.
With that she lay down, pulled closed the hatch and glanced over at her still-sleeping android brother.
"Well," she said aloud. "I guess it runs in the family."
The lights dimmed as the lab concluded that nobody was home to work, and shadows swathed the sleeping android twins.
Tokyo, Japan
"This is as unexpected as it is presumptuous," Thomas Light began.
"Your equipment was malfunctioning," Maria Eve calmly replied. "So I circumvented it."
Light seethed inwardly. "A call would have been more appropriate, and would not have violated Roll's autonomy."
Maria Eve tilted her head slightly. "I still don't understand why a certified genius would bother personifying his machines." She shrugged. "Eccentricities aside, this is an off-the-record visit. The board determined that an untraceable conversation would be better." Ticking off the names on her fingers, continued. "Sennet, Yamusho, Shirow Cybernetics, U.S. Robotics and Genesis Systems have all been investing heavily in corporate espionage since last year's incident."
Liar.
Quantum-entangled communications made eavesdropping impossible; since the messages literally appeared across any distance instantaneously, they had no path, and could not be intercepted. Whatever the woman was playing at, her mention of corporate spies was nothing but a smokescreen.
"Go on." Light put his hands in his pockets.
"I have here a list of taboo subjects according to the Board of Directors. You are recommended to steer clear of these topics during the trial if at all possible. We don't want your appearance to have any negative effects on second-quarter earnings."
Light frowned. "Why don't you simply assign somebody to follow me around and make sure I don't say the wrong thing?"
"We have." The executive smoothed a nonexistent hair behind her ear. "You'll meet him in Geneva. Mr. Post has already been apprised of our preferences."
Dr. Light picked up his suitcase and slung a carry-on bag across his shoulder. "I believe my lawyer's job is to represent me and to aid me answering the charges the UE has brought—not to pander to the desires of a corporation."
Brown eyes fixed on Dr. Light's blue. "The board has already discussed this. Be certain that we have not encouraged Mr. Post to pursue any course which would compromise the integrity of the proceedings."
Light waved towards the door. "We can continue this conversation downstairs." Thoughtfully, he added, "Why do you care? I'm sure the board has already conceived several contingencies to divorce the LighTech brand from my personal image if I'm convicted."
That seemed to shake her; he had hit on something that the board had not wanted him to know. After a brief pause, she conceded. "That is true. But our analysts have determined that stocks would benefit more from a favorable ruling than any contingencies we have put into place."
Folding her arms across her chest and letting the datacard dangle from two fingers, the executive tried a different approach. "I'll be blunt," she started.
"You've been blunt enough already," Light replied. "Perhaps you should just try being honest." As the woman opened her mouth for a rejoinder, he interrupted. "Recall that I'm not one of your corporate subordinates, Ms. Eve; I'm the founder of this company. Should I choose to drive it into the ground by selling all my stock to the board of Sennet Robotics, I'll do so in a heartbeat."
Her mouth worked silently as she blanched, then colored.
"You surprise me, Dr. Light," she said at last. "I had always heard that you were temperamental, but I never imagined that you would be slighted by my treatment of your . . . housekeepers."
He waved a hand to shut off the power in the kitchen. "If memory serves, imagination is not in surplus at board meetings."
"You need not antagonize me," she replied. Dr. Light found himself wishing that Roll were here to witness their guest's discomfort. "Believe it or not, the Board is on your side."
"Very well. Explain why you have really come to visit me in person, Ms. Eve."
She took a few precise steps to the kitchen table, now dappled in the midmorning light. "Do you recognize the name Edward Mears?"
Dr. Light pondered for a moment.
Mears. Timothy Merrin. Jacob Mearing. General Mears.
"Is he perchance a military man?" Light asked.
Maria nodded. "A general. In point of fact, he was the ranking officer in the task force that dropped the bomb on Dr. Wily's fortress and brought your soldier-robot back home."
Light felt his teeth clench at her casual dismissal of Rock, but let it pass. That was an image he himself had worked hard to maintain for the sake of the world's morale. No need to take offense that that woman had bought into the hype he had so strenuously worked to project. "So he was; I recall now."
"He'll be present at your trial," Maria continued. "For the past six months, he's been very assiduously and very quietly attempting to obtain funding for the Advanced Robosoldier Program in the United States."
A throbbing sensation mounted behind the roboticist's blue eyes.
No. Does he think we worked for nothing?
A voice he barely recognized as his own growled, "Idiocy. Damn lunacy!" His pulse hammered with anger. "You know my feelings about this. Will and I—" he stopped himself. "There is nothing to be gained from the mindless manufacture of killing machines. The world nearly blew itself to hell last time it forgot that bit of advice."
The lady arched an eyebrow. "It might interest you know, then, that he has been pushing very hard—although again, quietly—for the publication of your work. Specifically, he has spearheaded an initiative to declare Rockman public property rather than the property of LighTech, Inc."
"There are a number of problems with that statement, Ms. Eve, which I do not currently have time to address. I will be contacting the Board of Directors very soon; we can continue this conversation then." Dr. Light took a deep breath to steady his nerves.
His unwanted guest silently preceded him to the door. Before crossing the threshold, she turned to face him one last time. "We both want the same thing, Dr. Light."
"I very much doubt that."
"We do. Both the Board and yourself are committed to keeping the technology that made Rockman possible strictly proprietary." She ventured a smile—an expression she clearly had little practice in forming. "The list of subjects to avoid has been linked to your nanophone. Please review it before your arrival in Geneva. Our contact will meet you there, along with Mr. Post."
Thomas Light stood for a moment longer on his doorstep, his morning ruined.
"Kruppa," he ordered of his nanophone implant.
Palma, Spain
Consuela Alvarez hated her job.
Sunday had once been her family day: the precious hours during the week when she could visit with her lito and lita. None of the rest of her family had survived the revolución. As it was, her lito could only move around with the aid of a wheelchair. His friends urged him to accept the UE's offer of bionic legs, but he spat in their faces.
Literally, sometimes.
Grandpa Vargas—her only remaining grandfather, now—was a man hardened by his years of war and of toil at the steel mill. Bow-backed and claw-handed, the pinprick gleam in the old steel-worker's eyes showed a soul embittered and paranoid, even before the Robot War that had crippled society six months ago.
"Cabron! Why should I wish to replace my legs with such abominations?" Fermín Vargas' voice was a rasp of leather against spite. "Is it not enough that the machines took my stride from me, that now I should seek to make myself one of them?" When her grandfather grew so angry, he would launch into a tirade. Consuela's lita often joked that her husband had been born a century too late; he should have been a revolutionary beside Francisco Franco.
Consuela loved him. Though abuelo Alvarez—a sculptor and a gentle man—had treated her with love and tenderness, Consuela had always preferred the honest irascibility of her maternal grandfather, even as a little girl. It was his flinty stubbornness that had spared him and his wife from the fate the rest of her family had suffered. His refusal to buy domestic robots had, in the end, been his salvation.
The nightmares that day had spawned would haunt her until her death. She had been working in Palma when Dr. Wily's infamous ultimatum spread across the globe. Her first indication that the world had changed forever had been when her nanophone implant chirped in her left ear; her family knew not to call her during work hours. After all, he work with the patients was a delicate process.
The noises that had squalled from the microscopic earpiece had been too horrible to endure. Her mother and father called her name desperately. Besides that, the only words she could distinguish were "Don't come home . . . dangerous . . . love you!" A grinding, chattering cacophony that had been building in the background swallowed them up, then. Occasionally, she could hear horrifying screams rising above the noise of household robots intent on murder—like a drowning man briefly breaking the surface of his suffocating tomb to gasp vainly for air.
So she had hidden.
Inside one of the maximum-security isolation cubes she had huddled numb with panic, until the UE peacekeeping troops had arrived and told her that the riots were over. A man in a drab uniform had cautiously opened the door to her self-imposed prison, his face sagging with relief when she stood from behind her makeshift fortress of tables and chairs to get a better view of him.
"Gracias a Dios! I am so tired of opening doors to find only corpses!"
Her parents' house had been a grisly display when she finally summoned the courage to investigate. Not only had the rampaging automatons murdered her parents and the guests who had been visiting for dinner, they had even killed the pets. That had shattered Consuela's carefully-cultivated façade of professionalism.
Since then, she had been unable to function as a normal human being. Her quality of work declined as she withdrew from her patients and her coworkers more with each sunset. The slightest little thing would set her to weeping now, or to inexplicable storms of rage or bouts of melancholy. She could not look at a kitten without feeling nauseated.
She cleaned the house herself, and sold it the following week to a group of shell-shocked university students who had fled from robots in the Netherlands, and didn't stop until they hit the ocean.
As if here were any safer. Consuela had snorted with disdain.
Now she lived in an apartment built like a bank vault, only a mile away from her grandparents' old house. Every Sunday she visited them and they took walks, or went to the hollies, or simply sat at home and read to one another while dinner simmered in the kitchen.
At least, until two months ago, when her regular sponsor, Dr. Soliz, had abruptly taken a sabbatical. Reassigned to Dr. Javier Delgato, she now found that her schedule included Sunday visits for speech therapy. The beginning of her day included an hour-long appointment every week with the man she hated most in the world—the man whose madness and caprice had taken her parents from her and made a parody of her emotional stability.
Dr. Wily's neural regeneration therapy was administered every Wednesday. By Saturday afternoons, his mental state had begun to degrade once again. Although each treatment drew him closer to normalcy, Sundays were always taxing.
She hated his stutter, hated his wide-eyed frustration as he struggled to form words he had known only two days ago, hated his hang-dog expressions when she chided him, hated his juvenile pouting, hated his contrition.
That galled her the most. How dare he feel sorry for what he had done! This man had no right to take her anger from her—yet every time she worked with him, patiently endured his broken, stumbling syllables as he wrestled with his scrambled brain, she felt sorry for him. She had only broached the topic of his mechanically-potentiated megalomania once. His eyes had glossed over with a sheen of unshed tears, and his jaw trembled.
"Ms. Alvarez," he had managed, "I can never apologize enough for what I have done. I am so sorry."
It had taken him almost a minute to get the words properly formed and out of his mouth—a long, uncomfortable minute, made all the more unbearable by his stubborn refusal to be conquered by his self-inflicted disability. Consuela had silently let him labor through his awkward apology, arms crossed tightly and lips pressed together. But he had persisted—it was clearly too important for him to let the matter drop halfway through.
Against all expectation, the man was sorry.
And Consuela hated him for it more and more every day.
The security guards at the entrance to Dr. Wily's concentric prison ran her retina scan silently and waved her through. Consuela bit her lip; now even the hired thugs wouldn't speak to her. Evidently, "Crazy Consuela" and her irrational, emotional outbursts had made a name for herself amongst the staff. Already thick-set and awkward, the nickname her coworkers now muttered behind her back chipped away at her self-confidence even more effectively than her nasal laugh and large hands.
The doors hissed open.
Dr. Wily sat in the middle of a cluster of hundreds of Rubik's cubes, glancing feverishly back and forth between them. As usual, the pattern and arrangement of the multicolored cubes was seemingly nonsensical—if any order existed, it was only in the mind of a man whose brain had been resequenced at the molecular level by his abuse of restricted teleport technology.
"Good morning, Dr. Wily," Consuela said, walking towards him briskly. "It's time for your speech therapy lesson."
The German prisoner spared her a brief glance before gesturing silently and helplessly at the groupings of toys. Consuela sighed and scrutinized them. Eight main nodes circled about Dr. Wily, interlinked by "threads" of the cubes. To Consuela, it seemed that the old man sat at the center of a colorful spider web.
"Do you think you can tell me what this means?" Consuela asked. She restrained herself from tapping her stylus against the datapad in her hand. "You've been awfully busy with this."
Wily frowned and pointed at a cluster off to his left. "This . . . floque? Nawt my sun. Sue . . . tzu . . . too mennie jeersss."
The Basque speech therapist pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. "Dr. Wily, let's start with having a seat over at the table, okay?"
Dr. Wily nodded vigorously. "Hoe-key."
Better, she grudgingly admitted. His neologisms are getting closer and closer to actual words.
Wily gestured to the one-person bench at the table silently. Consuela shook her head. "No, thank you. I prefer to stand. Have a seat, Dr. Wily."
"Can you tell me what this is?" she asked, tapping the screen of her datacard. It obligingly projected a hologram of a toothbrush, rotating slowly in the air.
Dr. Wily's brow wrinkled. "Strocktery. Stookbury. Storkbrunch. Torque wrench." His jaw worked and his eyes glinted. Consuela noted jugular vein distention as he forced himself to concentrate. "Torchbruth. Toothbrush." Triumph lit his face, turning his features fierce. "Toothbrush!"
"Good," Consuela answered tonelessly. She hoped her lack of expressed approval would discourage him. Sure enough, his victorious expression crumpled into something akin to a slapped toddler. "How about this?"
An image of a wagon replaced the toothbrush.
Dr. Wily didn't hesitate. "Dragon."
"Dragon," Consuela repeated flatly. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Wily answered. "Dragon over Saint George. Naturally, the dragon slows his approach. He fears the spear, and his scales pale with wear and tear. You see? Never the Cyclops, only the dragon. Because concomitant use of polysaccharides only serve to ruin dental hygiene, and flying lizard is better than a handful of pebbles, don't you concur? Never so clear. Never so clear! A dragon, of course! Dragon—wagon. That is a wagon."
Consuela felt her eyes widen. "That's . . . that's quite a mouthful, Dr. Wily."
The criminal ducked his head in a childish display of embarrassment. "My apologies for the loutburst. I meant to stray: that is a wagon."
"Correct," she answered.
The display changed again, this time showing a pencil.
"Stencil," Dr. Wily ventured. "No, that's incorrect. Wasistden los? It's an instrument for biting. Lighting. Writing. You hold it in your haaaaaand, and twist it about the pppapier. Makes its marks from bread. Stein. Nein. Lead." His eyes widened, and his gaze flicked towards the Rubik's cubes. "Lead. Of course. Simple!"
Consuela tapped and scribbled furiously on her datacard. MildBroca'sandWernicke'saphasia; circumlocution; marked improvement.
"Ms. Alvarez?"
Consuela glanced up. Dr. Wily looked forlorn.
"I must cube. Progif ny lewdness. Wivoud cube, muffin macht ziker."
She glanced between Wily's beseeching gaze and the cubes. Inspiration coursed through her with an almost tangible jolt. The cubes—whatever he's doing with them, it helps him concentrate!
"Go ahead," she answered. She struggled to maintain a calm mask. Her heart raced. If she could somehow make progress in unraveling his obsession with the cubes—progress that Dr. Delgato and a team of Swiss mathematicians had thus far failed to make—she might regain some of the respect she had lost.
No more "Crazy Consuela."
Dr. Wily eagerly bolted back to his web of blocks and hastily began to rearrange them, twisting their faces with a manic intensity that Consuela had rarely noted in him. All the while, he muttered to himself. She strained to hear his words, afraid to move closer or even lean forward, lest the criminal suddenly grow wary of her surveillance.
It's like a safari, she suddenly thought, and had to restrain herself from giggling at the incongruous thought. She focused herself on Wily's speech. At first, it was the incomprehensible "word salad" she expected to hear from a patient who had sustained damage to Wernicke's area. However, as he continued to work, he gradually began to speak more lucidly, occasionally slipping into his native German.
"Spleen production without bubbles. Not the lead, the bubbles, so that the deep becomes homely. Cozy. Zimmer. Low-yield discourages predation. No kraken, no dragon! Simple. But even with the lead, a mere lunatic leopard leaps." He hurriedly placed several of the cubes in a complicated pattern, considered their arrangement, and changed the position of a few.
"There. A suitable framework, I suppose. Point zero zero. Perfect! Thermodynamics aside, the quandary is quantum." He slapped his palm to his forehead, and Consuela nearly rolled her eyes. Even with his brain jumbled, the mad scientist retained his cartoonish mannerisms. "Quantum? Natürlich! MarkdreiamBlau. Bitterness compounded endlessly leads to madness, and thus retribution! Oh, Tom!"
He swung his arms wide and turned towards Consuela. Upon noticing her, he jerked, as if he had been slapped.
A crafty light crept into his gaze, and he tilted his head slightly. Consuela felt a chill run down her spine, and she prepared to activate the emergency signal that would call the guards. However, Wily made no move towards her; rather he sat down in the circle again and smiled.
"Thank you, Ms. Alvarez. I feel much better." He spread his hands. "You know, the Chinese consider eight a lucky number."
"Is that so?"
The German doctor nodded. "I have it on the best authority."
"Dr. Wily, I would like to know what you were just speaking about," Consuela said. She felt shaken—as if she had just witnessed something very important. Part of her shivered and wailed and begged to hide behind the table where images of her bloodied family could not find her, but she squared her shoulders. "You sounded clearer than I have ever heard you."
"Much clearer," Wily agreed. "I'd be happy to tell you, my dear. But just now, I feel a bit fatigued. I believe that all that brain-work has run me dry."
No. I need this break.
"Time is of the essence, Dr. Wily," Consuela replied. "Dr. Delgato must have told you that the key to rehabilitation is in complete honesty."
"He says a lot of things," the old man snapped peevishly. "But how does he expect me to make progress when the therapy doesn't stick? He doesn't even understand about—"
He stopped abruptly and looked over his shoulder. An angry cast settled about his features, and Consuela cursed his mercurial temperament—not for the first time. An accusatory tone suddenly shadowing his syllables, he leaned forward and demanded, "Do you have any children of your own, Ms. Alvarez? No," he interrupted as she opened her mouth to reply, "of course not."
She could feel herself blanching in anger. Her fingers pressed rainbow-colored distortion into the screen of her datacard, leaving bruises like oil slicks on the nanocrystal display. In her short time working at the asylum, none of the other prisoners had yet stooped to ridicule of her physical appearance. Worse than his slight, though, was his offhanded delivery.
"If you had lost family, you might understand my pain," he continued. "My son—but never mind. They say the cure for empty nest syndrome—"
Consuela's patience snapped.
"I have lost family," she snarled. The datacard made a crick in protest as her fingers punched through its display and the paper-thin flexible electronics beneath. "Six months ago, cabron!" She took a steadying breath. "We are finished today, Dr. Wily."
He stood. "May I see Tom?"
The request blindsided her. "Wh-what?"
"I haven't had a visitor once. I've been good. I would like to speak with Tom."
Dr. Thomas Light. That's right—they were supposedly friends before the revolt. Consuela felt something nasty and triumphant begin to seep between the cracks of her fractured self-composure. Spite soothed her frayed nerves, and for the first time since her parents' murder, she began to feel some measure of solidity.
"I assume you mean Dr. Light," she answered, her tone gelid.
"Tom," Dr. Wily nodded. Already his expression had begun to revert to its childlike baseline. For all the world behaving like a boy asking if his friend could come over to play, he asked, "Clay I see him?"
She smiled, sure to reveal as many teeth as possible. "I'm afraid not, Dr. Wily. He's scheduled to be in Geneva this week. For his trial."
The effect could not have been more pleasing.
"What? Why?" His brow wrinkled as he thought furiously. "Not his halt!" He gesticulated lamely. An ugly sense of satisfaction settled into the middle of the speech therapist's chest as Wily's consternation grew. "No pun cold fee! My trial! Why?"
"We are finished today," Consuela repeated, and turned her back on the now-raving criminal. His babbling anguish devolved even further as the doors hissed open and Consuela left him with his miserable distress.
A final wail threaded its way through the closing door. Strong for the first time in months, Consuela's steps were firm as she strode from the condemned man's high-tech isolation cell. A clear path had finally blazed brightly through her morass of dread and indecision.
The League would be happy to finally have access to the man that had ruined them.
Tokyo, Japan
Yoshi Inafune leaned back in his plush office chair and stretched his legs.
The chair adjusted itself accordingly to his shift in weight distribution, whisper-quiet. His massive office—decorated here and there with robotics memorabilia too precious even for his museum—glittered in the slanting evening light. He glanced at the shining cityscape below—or in some rare cases—level with his window, and sighed appreciatively.
While many of his administrative staff now subscribed to the Western tradition of taking at least Sunday off from work, Inafune had never been comfortable with the notion; life was too short to waste on idleness. Of course, some days—like today—were worthy of an hour of relaxation. As a concession to his good mood, the Japanese tycoon walked across his palatial office to a mahogany chest—real mahogany—and withdrew from its depths a small, flat bottle of extremely expensive bourbon.
Pouring a small amount into a faceted crystal glass, he took a deep breath and rocked back on his heels.
"Enjoying yourself, Yoshi?"
The billionaire nearly dropped his glass as he spun towards the source of the voice. Standing in the doorway of his office—how had he bypassed all the security measures?—was an imposing figure in an old-fashioned greatcoat. His hair sprouted from the sides of his head in two grey shocks, meeting his shaggy beard and moustaches. Inafune nearly did a double-take, the image was so incongruous with the man's otherwise fastidious appearance. His sunglasses, slacks, shoes and watch were all of the highest quality; as a connoisseur of the finer things in life, Inafune was an excellent judge of such things.
Yakuza? It was the first thought that leaped to Inafune's startled mind. Although he had steered clear of the organized crime that was so intertwined with his country's economics, he had always feared a visit from a member of a "chivalrous organization" miffed by his steadfast refusal to play ball. He fought to keep his gaze from straying towards the hidden compartment in his desk.
Play it cool. He cleared his throat. "It's been a good day," he replied. Struggling to look nonchalant, he began to saunter towards his desk. "I was just about to have some bourbon in celebration. Perhaps we might have a drink together, and discuss whatever issue is of such importance that you went to all the trouble of disabling my security systems?"
"Oh, they're not disabled," the man replied, with a grin made all the more brilliant by its contrast with the round, dark spectacles perched on his nose. "They just can't see me."
"A neat trick," Inafune said, not entirely disapprovingly. "Do you work for the government?"
That seemed to sour the stranger's attitude. "Oh, no. I find that governments continually disappoint one so."
Inafune sat at his desk, and a feeling of relief flooded through him. Safe.
The man smiled again. "Are you going to ask my name? Or have you decided to shoot me with that magnificent firearm hidden in your desk?"
"Neither," Inafune replied, mastering his surprise. He leaned forward and took a deep breath. The atmosphere in the room had changed. The situation was no longer a threat to his personal safety; now he was involved in a business discussion, unless his instincts had misguided him.
And they so rarely did.
"Then you have either already guessed my identity, or you are waiting for me to drink some of your fabulous imported bourbon." The man swept his sunglasses from his face by a fine silver chain that dangled from the right lens. "I'm more of a wine man, myself, but I see no reason to spurn such gracious hospitality." Yoshi narrowed his eyes as he studied the man. Something . . .
Strong Grecian features and healthy bronzed skin weathered by age made for a distinct profile, even hidden beneath the beard and moustache that the businessman now guessed were grown deliberately for their dynamic, striking appearance. Though he had been engrossed with the early development of his business empire when he had last seen the man on holovid, the resemblance was unmistakable.
"Xanthos." Inafune made sure to pronounce the name with care, conscious of the Japanese tendency to slur dental fricatives. "Now I'm truly embarrassed that I almost shot you."
The enigmantic multibillionaire philanthropist had nearly single-handed funded the Second Rainbow initiative responsible for pulling the planet back from the brink of the biological and nuclear oblivion that humanity had decreed for it in the third World War. Since his famous tribunal, Olivier Xanthos had retreated into roaming hermitage; his only notable contact with civilization was through the X Foundation, which he had quietly established to carry on the spirit of the now-defunct Second Rainbow.
"Don't be embarrassed," he answered, pouring himself a modest helping of bourbon. "The price of a dramatic entrance is the occasional misunderstanding. With guns. Speaking of which, would you mind?"
Inafune stood and bowed slightly. "Not at all." Waving his hand over a concealed sensor in his desk, he activated the released mechanism that opened the hidden compartment. Cushioned in velvet-covered memory foam, the drawer popped open, revealing the weapon within. Plated in chrome, hooped in flat crystalline rings down the barrel, and accented with indicator lights in all colors and bands of bright gold, it looked like something from an ancient Flash Gordon serial.
Xanthos whistled. "Is that a Marlin custom original?"
Inafune nodded proudly. "Only three like it in the world."
Sixteen years ago, when the world trembled beneath the threat of the world-killing Epoch comet, the best and brightest had come together to develop technology that would destroy the celestial menace. An early, unsanctioned effort by disenfranchised scientists had been an "atom laser" that concentrated matter in synchronous quantum phase and projected it in a focused stream towards its target.
Though the technology had never seen widespread use, a few weapons developers had experimented with prototype "ray guns." An eccentric gunsmith named Marlin had been famous for his artistic, dynamic designs, and had produced a handful of ray guns for enthusiastic collectors. Inafune had spent his second million on this one.
"It's a bit of an anachronism, you might say," he smirked. Pleased with his understatement, he lifted the weapon reverently from its cradle and proffered it with both hands.
An inscrutable look passed across his unexpected visitor's face. "I mean no disrespect," the Greek said carefully. "I have held enough weapons in my lifetime, and made a promise to somebody important that I would never hold a gun again. But it is truly impressive. You have a rare treasure there."
"I understand," Inafune replied, unruffled. He carefully placed the weapon back into its drawer and pushed it closed. "So, Mr. X, what can this humble one do for you?"
Mr. X removed his coat and tossed it unceremoniously across the arm of a nearby chair. Sitting carelessly, he gazed at his host with an unnerving, piercing quality. "Actually, I'm here to discuss what you've already done," he answered.
Inafune took a languid sip of his bourbon. This was a game at which he excelled. "Do go on."
Xanthos sighed, then chuckled. "You will think me an unmannered barbarian, no doubt, but I will be direct; the labyrinthine approach to diplomacy and business favored by your countrymen is beyond my grasp."
That elicited a smile. Trying to put me off-guard. "What irony that a Greek should be unfamiliar with Byzantine business practices."
Xanthos slapped the arm of his chair with a bark of laughter. "Ha! Very good! But I will not be dissuaded by your charming wit. Mr. Inafune, you have made several donations to the X Foundation over the past several months, with the express direction that a certain percentage be set aside for Dr. Wily's rehabilitative therapy at Palma." The Greek philanthropist rested his bushy chin on his fist.
Ah.
"I'm actually surprised that the Foundation didn't ask me about this earlier," Inafune replied. "Especially considering my request for anonymity."
Xanthos shrugged. "Everybody who donates to the Foundation is 'Mr. X' to the beneficiaries. Anonymous benefactors are not so noteworthy; it's part of what we're known for."
"True," the tycoon answered. "But it's an open secret that every time 'Mr. X' contributes to a cause, it's just as likely to be the work of a third-party as it is yourself."
"More likely, actually."
"And I would wager that large corporations or public figures such as myself take pains to leave an easily-followed data trail so that the media can 'discover' the selfless 'anonymous' contributions they've made to a cause." Inafune leaned forward. "But as your research no doubt shows, I actually went to some trouble to secure actual anonymity for myself in this transaction."
The namesake of the X Foundation nodded. "Indeed."
"You're worried that my interest in robotics and history may be somehow connected with a nefarious plot to help Dr. Wily escape from prison," Inafune said, "or that there is some other hidden agenda at work here."
Mr. X shook his head. "Nefarious plots are bad business, Mr. Inafune, and I believe you to be a consummate businessman. No, I'm not even worried about a hidden agenda; if there wasn't one of those, you wouldn't be much of a businessman."
"Then what?"
"Mr. Inafune, I've been watching you for some time," Xanthos answered. He took another sip of his bourbon, nearly finishing it. "You are shrewd in your dealings, but you avoid the stain of criminal contacts too often necessary to succeed in your world. Your demeanor suggests the enthusiasm of a child tempered with the wisdom of a septuagenarian. You haggled like a Yankee trader over the land your Robot Museum now occupies, but you spent a million dollars without a second thought today on Professor Harry May's Alpha robot."
Inafune grinned rakishly. "Hey, that robot was quite a sensation in 1934."
"You are an enigma, Mr. Inafune," Xanthos continued. "So I want to know, what is your interest in Dr. Wily?"
"I'm afraid I don't have a suitably enigmatic answer for you, Mr. Xanthos," Inafune replied. "The truth is that I feel somewhat guilty about going to business school and becoming embarrassingly rich at a time when other, more responsible men were creating public domain robots to change the world. I have a lot of money, no children, no surviving family, and an interest in robots that goes back to my childhood."
"Dr. Wily was a hero, Mr. X. A fallen hero now, but a hero nonetheless. The public may have forgotten that he literally saved the world, but I haven't." His expression darkened. "I have friends who were injured during the Robot War. I myself escaped injury, although the damage done to my businesses was extensive. The Dr. Wily that loosed his mechanical army to conquer the world is not the man that I grew up idolizing."
Yoshi Inafune looked his guest square in the eyes. "I want that man back. The world needs that man back. Dr. Light and Rockman are a shining beacon of the best our world has to offer, but the shadow that Dr. Wily's fall has created will forever darken their greatness unless he comes back to us."
"I hope that you understand this."
His guest sat silently for a long moment. Then, in a single graceful movement, he rose from his chair and swept up his greatcoat. "I have enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Inafune," he said. "This has been an illuminating conversation."
"A moment, please, before you leave."
Mr. X paused, his arms threaded partway through the sleeves of his long, dark coat. "Yes?"
Inafune stood. "Why not just make a call? This conversation could have been conducted just as easily over televid."
Olivier Xanthos raised a single eyebrow. "Why, that's simple. I felt that a conversation in person would be much more revealing."
He opened the door to the hallway. "I wanted to see if you were like me, Mr. Inafune."
Unknown
Quint sifted through the rubble of the house.
Strewn about the low hill, the wreckage of a thousand robots shone dully in the grey light. An acrid odor that his olfactory sensor package identified as the smoky residue leftover from the incineration of organic material pervaded the air. Near the base of the hill, a set of old-fashioned railroad tracks stretched into the distance.
And all around the spoiled preserve, a ruined city bled smoke and clawed the sky with twisted, splintered iron beams that had once supported spacescrapers and massive antennae. Here and there, the watery light caught the shattered surface of broken glass dome that might have capped a tower or housed a metropolitan garden.
None of that mattered to Quint—at least not in comparison to his recent findings.
Side by side in front of him where he knelt, a group of blackened skulls in varying sizes grinned hollowly at him. They had been outside the house, grouped together—at a considerable distance from the bony structures Quint had identified as the remains of their bodies. Staring hard at the morbid display before him, feelings bumped up against the edge of his consciousness. Like moths against frosted glass, they made shapes maddeningly vague but evocative of something he knew to be utterly crucial.
One thing only was clear to him, and grew clearer with every femtosecond.
This was his fault. Somehow, he had caused this.
Gauntleted hands clenched into fists, and his teeth ground. Somewhere out there, the killers were at large. By some leap of intuition he could not fully explain, the green-armored robot knew that the destruction of this house and the city that surrounded it were inextricably linked; one had led to the other.
Failure. I'm a failure. Bitterness and self-recrimination welled up within him.
The murderers were out there somewhere. All he had to do was find them, and . . .
And then what? The thought nagged at him.
It doesn't matter. I'll know when I find them; then I can make things right.
Quint tramped to the bottom of the hill and stood upon the train tracks. With a long backward glance at the house, he sighed.
The past is inflexible. Only the future can be altered.
Quint focused his gaze down the tracks into the treeborg-shadowed woods and made his decision. He pace sure, he strode towards the mechanized forest.
He would make things right. He had to.
Geneva, Switzerland
Thomas Xavier Light smoothed his hair and straightened his suit jacket for the third time.
The Palais de Nations hulked before him, its pillared stone exterior massive and irrefragable. The grey-white stone gleamed from the ministrations of countless maintenance 'bots. The massive lawn—real grass, not synthturf—pooled about it in verdant tones. Here and there, the indignant squawk of a peafowl rose above the muted hum of the sonic dampeners surrounding the grounds. Half a mile behind him Lake Geneva glittered, a crystalline twin to the cerulean shades above it. Hovercars made noiseless by the invisible sound-refuting curtain glided gracefully through the roboticist's periphery.
A miracle. Dr. Light was no stranger to Geneva, but every time he visited, he felt a swell of pride. This had been a wasteland mere decades ago. The proud edifice that the League of Nations had ordered built in the 1920's had—like so many important historical sites—been a casualty of the third World War. In those first insane months, nuclear fire raked the world and soulless warbots marched through the rubble, dealing death and pain. The artificial topography humanity had imposed upon the world rapidly crumbled.
As all things must, the war eventually ended. No definitive victory by one side over another heralded peace. Instead, like an exhausted trauma victim, the war eventually bled itself to death; the drain of resources necessary to continue the mindless violence exsanguinated nations. When the survivors finally stopped to gasp for breath, they realized they were suffocating. Mass deforestation had threatened to wipe out the planet's oxygen supply. Air, water and soil—once thought to be limitless—had all been squandered or befouled by the shortsighted rage that gripped humanity.
Once the Second Rainbow had finally given mankind the impetus it needed to restore itself, one of Dr. Light's first projects had been to help in the restoration of many of the world's architectural icons. His pride curdled somewhat. He and Will had helped to reverse the damage, or to reconstruct buildings entirely. Geneva had been a particular challenge; its beautiful lake scorched to a poisoned crater and the streets melted to glassy slag by savage nuclear spite.
It had taken less than a month for the robots that Light and Wily had created under the council's supervision to restore the city, brick by brick, and to neutralize the toxic hell that choked the soil and moiled the waters. Light could still clearly picture Wily's enraptured face framed by wild black hair as he gazed on their unfolding triumph.
"Mein Gott, Thomas! We'll build cities in a day! We can actually save it!"
Something hard boiled under Dr. Light's sternum.
"Excuse me, doctor." Diction smooth and polished as a mirror—and equally as revealing of the man behind the voice—signaled the arrival of Terrance Post. Neither slim nor stout, a man in his early forties with short, mud-colored hair and a constant expression that could only be described as neutral, Terrance Post was a perfect stereotype of his profession. In a word: nondescript.
Dr. Light turned to greet his legal defender. "Mr. Post."
"Terrance, please," the lawyer protested without a hint of persistence. "How was your flight?"
"Tense," Dr. Light answered. "To tell the truth, I'd rather be en route to Houston. The Robotics Trade Show begins tomorrow."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Post replied. "Before we go in, I think we should review our strategy. Also, we're scheduled to meet a representative of the LighTech Board of Directors in a few minutes."
Dr. Light sighed, feeling far older than his years. "You know, I'm too young to have hair this white," he muttered.
"Did you review the list of subjects the Board wishes you to avoid?" his lawyer asked.
Light nodded with a bitter smirk. "It seems the only thing they want me to answer are my name, age and profession. Just about everything else has been blacklisted."
The lawyer motioned precisely towards a gleaming white bench near the edge of the lawn. "My plan is to focus on your stellar record of global service, to minimize the role you played in the creation of the Robot Masters, and to emphasize the role played by your soldier robot in ending the military control of Dr. Wily."
Light frowned and turned his gaze back towards the lake. "And how exactly do you plan to 'minimize' the role I played in making the Robot Masters? Between Will and myself it was almost a perfect half-and-half split. In fact, with the contributions by Rock and Roll, who were primarily my creations, the percentage shifts more in my favor."
Now it was the lawyer's turn to frown. "I'd advise against saying so in court."
"Look," the doctor said, "I think the facts speak for themselves without any need to spin them one way or another. Judge Heinrickson has a well-deserved reputation for clear-headedness and objectivity. For God's sake, he presided over Olivier's trial. Any attempt to cloud the facts with subjectivity will only make things worse for us."
A small fliptop 'droid wandered towards them and offered refreshments and brochures. Light noted with a grin that it had been painted bright yellow, with a smiley face printed on its round lid. The stylized "L" embossed on its back was barely visible.
"There," he said, pointing. "That's my legacy, Mr. Post. Robots that assist people and make life easier so that they can go about the business of living and repairing a planet they almost destroyed." Even though he wasn't thirsty, he took a bottle of Coke from the fliptop's storage compartment and let it scan his thumbprint for payment.
Mr. Post nodded distractedly, and touched his left ear. After a moment, he announced, "Our contact is here." Standing, he indicated a heavyset man in his thirties, dressed in an expensive tweed suit and fanning himself with a hat. A flock of tiny servbots followed him, their helicopter-like blades spinning frantically.
The man patted down his blond hair and reached a pudgy hand towards Dr. Light. "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dr. Light. I'm the liaison from the Board of Directors. Name's Cheever. Peter Cheever."
"Mr. Cheever," Dr. Light shook his hand with mixed emotions. "You're a bit different than I expected."
"That's what most people say," the big man replied cheerfully. "I know the Board sent you a list of things not to talk about, but I'm not here to be a babysitter. I'm just here to clarify why that's all necessary, and to act as an additional advocate at your trial."
"Advocate?" Dr. Light and Terrance Post's voices were nearly in unison.
"You've never even met me before," Light protested. "How can you advocate for me?"
"Get out of here, you damn buzzards!" Cheever waved in annoyance at the swarm of servbots and jammed his hat on his head. "Go find me a drink or something!" He turned his attention back to the pair he had come to meet. "Well, to be honest, I'm more interested in keeping your name clear for the investors who have LighTech stock, and making sure that the proprietary technology for your little warrior-buddy stays that way."
"Rock is a lab assistant," the roboticist said lightly. "I anticipate that he'll ask me to remove his combat upgrades soon, and then he can return to the duties and the lifestyle for which he was initially designed."
"Whatever you choose to do with your property isn't my concern," Cheever answered. "I just want to make sure that you don't say anything that will damage the LighTech brand, or land you in an international prison like your former partner." He leaned forward. "Have you been briefed on the situation with Mears?"
Light fought to keep from wrinkling his nose; the man was positively malodorous with sweat. "Yes. For some reason, Maria Eve felt it necessary to make a personal visit to my house and tell me."
"Good," Cheever smiled. "You know he'll be gunning for the publication of the Rockman schematics and O/S. Now I know that you have some . . . eccentric ideas about the personification and autonomy of your own domestic hardware, so let me make this clear."
He held up a finger for emphasis. "If you play that card in court, Mears is going to jump on it and cite the public domain clause. Because Rockman acted in the general public interest and upon public property, he can be construed as having no reasonable expectation of privacy. And since he discharged weapons on international soil, General Mears will cite UE agreements pertaining to full disclosure of methods used once the state of emergency has passed."
Light ground his teeth.
"Normally," Cheever continued, "that would simply mean turning over general technical specifications so that the beneficiary nations could assess any potential environmental damage. However, in Rockman's case, his weapons systems cannot legally be considered discrete from his overall structure. The general will push hard for full-body schematics."
Terrance Post nodded during the large man's explanation, affirming the conclusions. In the distance, Light could faintly hear a chorus of indignant binary chirping, punctuated by lower-pitched interrogative noises.
"So," the liaison finished cheerfully. "Personal feelings aside, don't go spouting any of your noble talk of self-awareness or synthetic rights, okay? If you actually believe in any of that, you'll need to pretend that Rockman is simply a piece of machinery doing what it was told to do. Otherwise, the UE military branch has a good, strong case for confiscating him and making a whole line of mechanical soldiers out of him."
The flight of servbots returned, balancing a large bottle of Coke between six of them, and Cheever happily snatched it from them, creating an eddy of miniature whirling blades and wide, surprised photoreceptors.
Thomas Light ran a hand through his hair with a weary sigh. "Perfect."
Tokyo, Japan
A status indicator pinged in the darkness.
Roll opened her eyes and slowly pushed the hatch of her stasis pod open. On the southern wall, the huge IBM computer scrolled through dozens of holographic displays, tracing the neural pathways of her positronic brain.
Her mood much cooler, the female android stood and put her shoes back on. In the corner, the remote-controlled duplicate drone of Rock slumped in its own stasis clamps. Not needing the sophisticated refresh and recharge cycle of true androids, it didn't rate a full pod.
Irrationally angry at the sight of it, she snatched a dust-repellant drape from a nearby work table—cluttered with datacards, pens and paper—and tossed it over the offending proxy. She turned away, repressing the urge to stick her tongue out at it.
She walked to the computer and sat down. Scrolling through the various displays and diagnostic reports, she grew increasingly frustrated. All reports agreed that there were no dangerous variances. Her conduction pathways had increased, changed and rerouted themselves several million times since her activation a year ago, but that was an expected effect of her heuristic programming.
"This doesn't make sense," she muttered to herself.
Of course, neither does saying that aloud.
Why was her emotional response program producing aberrant thoughts unfiltered by her main logic module? She had seen emotional, almost erratic behavior in Rock during the Robot War, but he had been under stress not foreseen by his original programming. And he had been under the influence of that horrible virus.
By contrast, the massive neurodynamic computer confirmed that she was in optimal condition, despite her unease.
I don't feel broken. Is it all in my mind? She almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of that thought. If it is in my mind, then there's an error, and we're back to squaring one—why wouldn't that appear in diagnostic scans?
Dr. Light might be able to help her, but he was in Geneva by now, where she had been forbidden to go. Besides, the last thing she wanted was to distract him with this when he had the trial to occupy him.
Forbidden. Irritation washed over her. Lately, it seemed that she had been defined more by her limits than her potential; she couldn't stop Snap and his family from leaving, she couldn't throw out an obnoxious uninvited visitor, and she couldn't understand these strange thoughts. She couldn't even make omelets properly!
Rock would understand. She trudged miserably over to his stasis pod and looked at her twin brother's face through the plasteel window.
"Oh, Rock," she whispered. "Wake up."
Hawk-blue eyes snapped open for the first time in six months, and focused on her.