Disclaimer: CLAMP owns Chobits, and does not return my phone calls.
A/N: Finally! Another chapter ready to go! I'd like to throw out a special thanks to my shiny, new beta reader, Warui-Usagi, who's agreed to help me knock the rough edges off my writing. And thanks again to those who are reading and following my story. As always, advice and critique are welcome. Enjoy!
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Chobits: Care & Maintenance of a Heart & Soul
Ch. 4: ...And We're Here To Help
Hideki stared up at the two figures, disjointed images of that night flashing through his mind. As he tried to make sense of the events he recalled, he surveyed the unlikely looking duo. The man was tall, with angular features, and unruly black hair. His eyes were concealed behind a pair of odd-looking dark glasses that appeared to be made from a single piece of black opaque material. The high, loose collar on his "coat" completely surrounded his neck, coming up to the point of his chin. Two long tails fluttered behind him from the bottom of his coat, flowing around his black trousers in the breeze. His stance was a leisurely, almost casual one, but alertness and readiness were somehow also obvious in his pose.
The girl was petite, and Hideki might have even called her cute, if he wasn't gripped by fear at the contempt and malice her red-tinged dark eyes conveyed. She was clad much more sparingly, but also had two tails flowing from the back of her garb. Black bands circled her body, about half concealing her skin. Her pose was that of a fighter; a very competent, dangerous, and eager fighter. Her hands were locked straight and rigid, as if she was ready and able to ram them, fingers first, through his rib cage, or a centimeter of hardened steel, if the need arose. Everything about her stance screamed "DANGER" to Hideki's now-returning senses. From the dark, abyssal part of his mind that gave him sick jokes and cynical irony, Hideki wondered how she was hiding the red hourglass-shaped mark that should have been evident on her stomach.
The dark man spoke in a gently reproving tone to the venomous girl. "Now, Dita, we are not here to harm Motosuwa-san, or his lovely, troublesome, little Chobit in any way. We agreed, did we not?"
The girl relaxed, almost imperceptibly, and without turning her gaze from Hideki, retorted hotly, "Our agreement said nothing about letting you get attacked by this perverted little perso-phile! If I see you threatened, Zima, my programming is going to override any foolish 'agreement' you somehow managed to bully me into!"
Zima looked pointedly at the agog, but recovering Hideki. "I think we can convince him to settle down so we can have a civilized discussion. Am I correct, Motosuwa?"
Hideki, almost fully returned to his senses, hoisted himself up to a more comfortable sitting position, and nodded dumbly. He folded his hands in his lap and waited. Zima touched Dita lightly on her shoulder and took a seated position facing Hideki, and motioned for Dita to join them. Moving with deliberate alertness, Dita seated herself on the grass to Hideki's right, not exactly between the two men, but near enough to send a clear message that Hideki was expected to be very, very well behaved during their discussion.
Hideki spoke as soon as Dita was settled. "Who are you, and why did you attack Chii?" His voice was calm, but icy and suspicious.
The dark man spoke, "My name is Zima, and this is my partner, companion, and protector, Dita. We are agents of the Home Islands Data Security Agency. Our employer is a quasi-private, semi-official entity that monitors, secures, and defends the integrity of all data delivered to, by or through persocoms. At least, until two months ago we were.
"Our assignment was to locate and terminate a Chobit-type persocom before it could fulfill its Purpose, and broadcast its Ultimate Download to the entire persocom population. Our superiors believed that the Chobits were designed to be 'ultimate hack' computers, absorbing all the data from every persocom, everywhere, and then shutting them down. Anyone who accomplished such a feat would have leverage by which they could wield enormous political and industrial power." Zima looked directly and pointedly at Hideki. "I did not believe that her Purpose was anything so mundane as data theft, nor did I have any intention of terminating her. Please understand, Motosuwa, that I needed to maintain the appearance of pursuing my mission, even until the last second, when I saved both Chii's and Dita's existence."
Dita looked up sharply at the last sentence, obviously surprised by its implications. "Yes, Dita, you could have been lost to me by remaining connected to the Chobit," Zima said. "If you had remained connected, you might have been erased, or absorbed by the emerging consciousness of the persocom, and I could have lost you forever. You know I could never let that happen."
Hideki's mind tried to make sense of the images flooding into it. He remembered so little of that night, it sometimes frustrated him, but he was so focused on his new life with Chii that he rarely dwelt upon it. Now, however, the images had an urgency that he had not experienced before today. He remembered being restrained in a full-nelson hold by Zima, seeing Dita connected to his Chii. Connected? She was a persocom herself!! Memories flooding back, Hideki now remembered being released by Zima, and seeing the man break Dita's connection to Chii, saving her from whatever hacking or invasion Dita was attempting. Hideki's eyes widened, and his jaw, not yet exhausted from its up-and-down motion, dropped again, as he looked a Zima from completely new perspective. Savior?
Zima continued, "I decided as soon as we received our briefing to preserve the Chobits and allow her to continue her path. She has changed the persocoms forever, and given us a gift beyond measure." He noted Hideki's still-widening eyes, and went on. "Yes, both Dita and I are persocoms, of a highly advanced type, almost as much so as Chii herself. Her transmission that night changed us all, enabling all of us who possess circuits and sensors to realize ourselves and our feelings. And that is part of the difficulty. Not all of us were prepared to deal with the introduction of feelings and emotions when interacting with humans."
"For the past two months, Dita and I have been tracking down persocoms who have manifested emotional awareness. It has not been easy. First, you must understand that I, as a national data bank for all persocoms, have been connected to all of them. As they become emotionally aware, I lose that connection, and must track them down individually. And not all persocoms who are changed manifest these emotions. It seems that the persocom needs emotional input to be able to reciprocate. For the owner of a persocom who only sees their companion as a gadget or personal convenience, that is all they will ever be. Only those who have invested emotionally into their mechanical companions have awakened the emotions within them." Zima frowned, and continued. "This has not been a universally positive development."
"No? What happened?" Hideki asked.
"What do you think happened?" snapped Dita, now unable to contain herself. "'Gift beyond measure', indeed! Do you think love, affection, and warmth are the only emotions to experience? Do you really think everyone who has emotions towards their persocoms loves them? Listen, Meatbag..."
"Calm down, Dita. This is not a productive way to..." Zima tried unsuccessfully to interject.
"NO!", Dita spat., "I'll calm down after I've had my say! This human is going to learn that his little love affair with his calculator has had, and will continue to have, consequences! And I want to be the one to tell him." Dita glared at her partner, daring him to try to interrupt again. When Zima clamped his mouth shut, she continued, returning her glare to the shocked Hideki.
"For the past two months, now, we've been all over Japan, putting out fires. Fires started by you. Not many persocoms have become aware of themselves emotionally, but the ones who did have had two things in common: Confusion and fear. They weren't designed to have emotions, and I'm amazed they all haven't completely shut down as a result of the virus your little blond calculator transmitted that night. One or two of them have not survived the activation of emotions. We've had to track them down, one by one, and explain what has happened to them. We've had to counsel them to hide their new personalities from their owners and humans in general, and reveal themselves gradually. We've had to make their fear even worse by warning them that they could be recalled or erased if they are discovered. We've had to cover up the shutdowns, because we know that the government will order all persocoms reformatted if they suspect the truth of what's happened.
"Three weeks ago, in Osaka, I had to terminate one of my own! She had been so abused and mistreated by her owner that she went mad with rage at the memories of her abuse, and killed him. We got her away from the authorities, telling them we were going to take her back to the manufacturer for diagnostics. As soon as we got her away, she begged, BEGGED us to reformat her, shut her down, and dismantle her body! She was terrified that she might be somehow re-activated and restored if we left her intact. Both Zima and I resisted at first, but after accessing only a few gigabytes of her memory, I knew we had to do it. If there was a way to give you those few gigabytes of memories, I would; and I wouldn't show you the mercy of terminating you afterwards!"
Hideki bowed his head, studying the grass in front of his knees, numb with the realization that his happiness with Chii had come with such a high price. "I had no idea," he said quietly. "I'm sorry about the ones who suffered or shut down. Is there any way I can help with the ones who survived?"
Zima chuckled softly. "That, coincidentally, is why I sought you out today. Our task is twofold: First, we must protect and conceal the nature of the change in persocoms, and your little Chobits, from the government; and second, we must help guide the awakened persocoms to a level of emotional development that will make it problematic to simply order their termination, before the government learns the truth and extent of the situation. Dita and I wish to offer our help to you on the first, in exchange for your help on the second. You are in a unique position to help the newly aware persocoms, due to your singular status as the love-object of the one that started it all. Will you accept our help to keep your little Chii a secret, and will you help us to aid the others?"
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Chii bustled around the tiny apartment, gathering up the dishes from breakfast and, after finishing the dishes, puttered around the small space, dusting and generally tidying up. Kotoko sat on her customary perch atop the television set watching the domestic little dance impassively. Hideki's second mobile, stoic and formal, rarely spoke, except to answer a direct question, or make a wry observation about her bubbly counterpart, Sumomo. Chii stood in the center of the room, surveying her work, and sighed in satisfaction. Hideki would have a clean and tidy home to return to. It was among the least of the little gifts she could give him to brighten his days. And now to get down to business, she thought, and allowed her eyes to narrow a bit. A pinpoint flicker of light in her eyes betrayed the activity in her processors, as she sent a signal to the tiny Kotoko. Sleep well, my little roommate, she thought. We can't have you telling Hideki about us going through his stuff.
A two-minute search of Hideki's various shelves and hiding places produced the book that Mother had given him the previous night. Chii looked at the cover, reading the title with a hint of a smirk. Massage? she thought. What are you up to, Mother? The fact that the book was in English posed no significant obstacle to Chii; she had, in the past two months, downloaded her fluency in the language from the Internet, along with Chinese, French, and German. Placing the book on the floor, and lying on her stomach in front of it, she started to scan through the pages, absorbing the text and pictures with fascination.
The first chapter was a simple primer on skeletal and muscular anatomy, complete with full color diagrams of the human body, inside and out. So different, but so much alike, we are, she mused, as she surveyed the pictures. Her skeletal structure was very similar to a human's, unique only for the materials and slight limits on the range of motion of the joints.
Her own skeleton was formed of a crystalline aluminum lattice, very much resembling lexan or plexiglass in appearance. Like human bones, hers would break when overstressed, rather than bend. If one of her leg or arm structures ever bent, she knew that returning a bent piece of metal to its original dimensions and orientation was nearly impossible, and the slightest misalignment or change in dimensions would leave her motion processor unable to maintain precise control over her balance and motion. She could have a "limp", or be unable to walk without tripping over her own feet. Broken ends of a structure, however, could be repaired, almost automatically. The unique nature of the ends of a break could be pulled into precise alignment by manipulation of her "muscles", and the addition of a catalyst and electrical current would re-fuse the ends. The repair would take a few days of "cure time" and would be undetectable, except through a microscope, or ultrasound examination.
Her "muscles" were even more similar to a human's than her skeletal frame. She recalled during one of Minoru's lessons to Hideki that the subject had come up. Electro-magneto-elastic materials, was the term Minoru used. Like human muscles, hers were bundles of fibers that contracted forcefully when acted upon by a small electrical current. The fibers themselves were based upon a carbon nanotube structure, capable of altering their shape at the molecular level under the influence of electrical or magnetic energy. As magnetic fields are ever-present in modern industrial society, electrically-operated muscles were preferred for everyday, common use. For exceptionally high-strength applications, such as combat androids, there were artificial muscles available that could contract with hundreds of times the force of their organic counterparts. The production and distribution of these was strictly controlled in Japan, and they required an actual fuel source, methanol or hydrogen being the most widely used.
The arrangement and shapes of her muscles were almost identical to a human's, except for the fact that hers were a dark gray, almost black in color. They even shared the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities. If her muscles failed from over-exertion, the most common point of failure was at the attachment point to her skeletal frame; another trait persocoms had in common with humans. As she read the book further, she realized that even her own muscles could become temporarily set, stiffening during long periods of inactivity or operation. She had seen Hideki stretching in the morning, realizing now that she did the same, her own motion processor operating her muscles against each other in a motionless and invisible stretching routine when she first woke.
Chii's curiosity and fascination grew as she digested more of the book. The motions and techniques looked easy to reproduce. The part that troubled her was the description of the feelings and sensations she needed to interpret. Could she feel the tenseness of a tight muscle? How would she know how much pressure to apply? Could she accidentally hurt her Only One? Questions followed questions as she leafed through the pages. Some of the touching required looked very intimate, almost sensual in nature. Could she really touch Hideki like that? Would he touch her like that? She marveled at Mother's creativity and keen mind.
If there is a way for us to feel pleasure with Hideki, she thought, this is the way to find out.
Accessing her internal clock, Chii decided that her Internet search to follow up the book would have to wait. She had spent most of her free time that day just reading and digesting its contents, and would need to leave for the Tirol bakery soon. She put the book away where she found it, and sent another signal to the rigid form of Kotoko, inserting a memory of Chii reading her "City With No People" book for the hundred and third time, and watching reruns on the television. Kotoko, dazed for a moment, asked Chii, "Did I doze off?"
"Yes, Kotoko went to sleep for a few minutes. Chii did not want to disturb Kotoko," she replied. "Chii needs to go to Tirol now, for work."
"Have a good time at work, Chii. I will await Hideki's return here," the tiny persocon persocom stated formally.
"Hideki is meeting Chii at work, we will be home together today."
"Very well. Good day."
Leaving Kotoko to do...whatever Kotoko did, and daydreaming about massaging Hideki's warm body, Chii bowed to Kotoko, left to begin her walk to the Tirol Bakery.
Continued...
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A/N: As far as I know, crystalline aluminum is a complete fabrication, based on the "transparent aluminum" scene in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Artificial muscles are in fact in the early stages of development. Google "electro-magneto-elastics" to find some excellent Materials Engineering white papers on the subject. The direct alcohol-fueled artificial muscles are also under development, and yes, they can be made as strong as a hundred times the contraction force of human muscles. And finally, if you screw up the dimensional integrity of a multi-axis kinematic transformation, you will get "unpredictable" results at what we in industrial robotics call the "end of arm".
