+J.M.J.+
TITLE: Mechas, Marzipan, and Mouse Kings
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: G (Mild fantasy violence in this chapter)
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Clair discovers more surprises -- not so pleasant -- under the Christmas tree...
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. (If I did, there would be a TV series of it on HBO)
NOTES: This was the hardest chapter to write so far, mostly because I had a hard time trying to figure out how to reconfigure the battle of the toy soldiers and the army of the Mouse-King. But then Joshua Falken gave me a great idea...
@ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` --
Chapter Three -- Under the Christmas Tree
Uncle Allen stayed for about an hour and a half before Ms. Plum insisted he should head home and get some rest. He looked more and more tired as the evening went on, and Clair feared he might be coming down with something.
After he'd left, the party wound down. Some folks left early, heading for midnight Mass, others simply headed home. But the whole time, Clair kept the little nutcracker Mecha within arm's reach, though she was careful not to keep looking at it.
But too soon, the last guests had departed and Tony and James and Gussie set to work cleaning up the parlor: gathering up the torn wrapping paper and the dishes, clearing the table, switching out the room lights.
Clair was tempted to bring the little nutcracker Mecha to bed with her, but that seemed too little-kiddish, so she set him down under the tree, between the box with Fritz's tin soldier Supertoys and the box that Tessia had eyed suspiciously.
"I'm just going to bed," she said. "But I'll be back in the morning."
"I will be waiting here for you," the nutcracker repleid. "Perhaps, if you gave me your email address and password, I could check your messages for you?"
"Well, we'll take care of that in the morning," she said, patting his shoulder.
"Clair? It's late and we have to be up for church tomorrow," Dad called from the stairs.
"I'm coming," Clair called back. "I'm just saying good night to my Mecha." With that she headed for the stairs.
"You really like that funny-looking little guy," Dad said, smiling.
"Yeah. He's like someone who looks clumsy but who's really very nice and smart," she said.
"I thought you'd like him and I thought you'd say that."
"You knew what Uncle Allen was giving me?" she asked.
"Well, I had a hand in it," he admitted. "He wanted some young people about you age to test the prototypes of this new line of companion Mechas. I thought you'd like to help, and I hoped you liked the nutcracker design."
"You mean I'm testing a new model?" The idea sounded exciting, but quite a few doubts and questions came into her head.
"I knew you wanted a companion Mecha, and since we were testing this new line, I put in a word for you. Your Uncle Allen chose you personally. He trusts you."
"I won't have to give him back, will I?" she asked.
"Not unless something goes hopelessly wrong with him, but I doubt that will happen." He patted her shoulder. "Come on, it's late. We'll talk more about it in the morning."
She went up to her room, closed the door, changed into her nightgown and crawled into bed. But of course she couldn't fall asleep. The kid who can't sleep on Christmas eve, she thought, with a groan. I thought I was past that...
She couldn't help trying to think up a name for the little nutcracker Mecha. Nutcracker didn't quite cut it: too obvious. There had to be a better name. Prince Charming was too dumb and he really wasn't charming to look at -- though she thought he was.
She hit on the name Prince Siegfried, and it sounded like such a good name she just had to share it with him right away. She slid out from under the bedclothes, put on her bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed out of the room, past her parent's bedroom, and down the stairs.
James had shut off the lights on the Christmas tree, but the moonlight glowed on the ornaments and the lights. Even in the gloom, the stars and snowflakes near the ceiling sparkled and the tree shimmered faintly.
She knelt down on the floor in the shadows beneath the tree. Something rustled. She looked over and saw that the moonlight had pooled around the little nutcracker Mecha.
"There you are," she said, reaching for him.
He turned his head toward her. "Didn't you say you were going to bed?" he asked.
She picked him up and held her in her lap."I know, I did, but I couldn't sleep because I was thinking of a name for you... and I wanted to know if you needed one."
"I have a model number, but I need to be given a name. You need to give it to me," he said.
She took him to the couch and sat down, curling her legs up under her. "I just thought of it before I came down," she said. "How would you like the name Prince Siegfried?"
The little Mecha tilted his head. "In which case, that is my name," he declared. "And a fine noble name it is."
"I hoped you'd like it, or it would fit you at least," she said.
"And it fits me well, for I have been chosen to be a prince among Mechas," Prince Siegfried replied.
What did that mean? she wondered to herself. "Well, you're certainly gallant and polite enough to be a prince," she said.
"Indeed, I have been given that nature, but I would gladly serve you as well," he said.
That sounded strange coming from a Mecha...
She nestled back on the couch, holding Prince Siegfried on her lap, watching the moonlight sparkle on the tree and on the snowflakes overhead.
The antique wind-up clock on the mantlepiece whirred preparing to chime. Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Midnight. She was just about to get up and take Prince Siegfried with her upstairs, when she heard a rustle in the shadows at the back of the room. Something thumped under the tree.
She heard a sliding sound like a lid of a box rising. That couldn't be the antique soldier Supertoys, could it? She'd heard Supertoys behaving a little oddly if they weren't being used, but most of them went into a kind of wait state.
She sat up, holding onto Prince Siegfried.
Something moved out of the shadows, coming close to the foot of the couch. She looked up to see Uncle Allen standing over her, looking down at her.
"Uncle Allen!" she said. "W-what are you doing here? I thought you'd left."
"I've just had a few important words with Ms. Plum about your Mecha, so I came back here" he said. "We have reasons to suspect that your little companion model may be carrying some important code, a kind of code that can be spread from one Mecha to another."
"That sounds like a virus," Clair said, worried now.
"It isn't really, as far as we know. We aren't exactly sure what this code will do when your Mecha comes into contact with other Mechas, but it's already had some strange effects in some Mechas."
"How did this happen?" she asked.
"We think there's a group of Mecha freedom fighters who hid this code on the Cybertronics server to protect it, keep the ARM from getting ahold of it. That's why the ARM came after us this year.... But I'm afraid if we're going to track this code, you'll have to give that Mecha back to us."
She tightened her grip on Prince Siegfried. "But I've only just received him," she said, trying not to argue.
"I know, but we have to protect him and you. That security breach when I was attacked... The ARM was after that code just as much as it was after me, and they seemed to have uploaded some dangerous code onto the server. That's the code that contaminated the Operation Mutant Strikeforce units. That's why we launched the recall."
"So what does that have to do with my Mecha?"
"We're not sure what's going to happen to those two code strands when they come in contact," Uncle Allen said.
"I can't let you have him," she said.
"Please, Clair, don't make this hard for us. We don't know what's going to happen, or if we can keep any of that code contained," he said, holding out his hand to take the little Mecha.
"I can't do that," she said, rising from the couch.
He came up to her and took Prince Siegfried from her hand. The Mecha poked his hand with the little sword that hung from his belt. Uncle Allen cried out more in pain than surprise and, clutching at his injured hand, lost his grip on Prince Siegfried.
Clair expected the Mecha to smash to the floor, but a change came over him in mid-air: he seemed to be dropping to the floor on purpose, his body ... growing before her very eyes, so that he seemed just to step down from the air.
She wasn't sure what happened next. But suddenly the walls of the room seemed to expand. She wasn't sure if everything around her and Uncle Allen was growing, or if they were shrinking to the size of Supertoys. Even the Christmas tree seemed to grow before her eyes, up to the roof, breaking through, letting in more moonlight.
The box that Tessia had regarded with suspicion loomed up, as tall as a room. Something peirced the side of the cardboard: a long sword with a curved, barbed blade. It turned and sliced a hole in the side of the box, then retracted.
The panel cut out thus popped open. Shadowy figures scuttled out of the hole, slipping into the shadows. What *were* they?! she wondered. From the little she could see, they looked like people, but their heads looked like the heads of animals, rats or something just as nasty.
She looked around her, trying to see where they went, and looking for Uncle Allen and Prince Siegfried. But they had vanished.
The shadows rippled and rustled with the creatures. She heard the rattle of swords and strange voices croaking at each other.
Where was Prince Siegfried?! She looked about her, looking for him, but she could see no sign of him anywhere. But something was rattling and clinking inside the box of old-fashioned soldiers, which had begun to rock back and forth. She hastened toward it, hoping to find Prince Siegfried.
Suddenly the box the creatures had crawled out of blew open and something stood up from it, head and shoulders taller than she and twice as wide, a bulky monstrosity in a floor-sweeping black cloak, a lumpy-looking gilt crown on its rat head, its small eyes glittering evilly as it looked down at her.
The creature curled its lips back from its snaggled yellow fangs. "Ah, ye mus' be t' young miss what's fallin' fawr a tin-head," it snarled, with a vile grin.
"Get away from me, you rat!" she roared, backing away from it.
"Why? We wuz only just stharted t' get acquointed, y' an' I," the Rat-King said, in a sneering, mock-gentle voice.
She realized the creatures with the rat heads had slunk from the shadows and were closing in around them. She turned and tried to break free from the ring of swords, but the Rat-King grabbed her shoulder.
"Siegfried!" she screamed.
"So ye'd seek *THAHT* cray-thure's protheckshun, hey?" the Rat-King sneered.
The box containing the old-fashioned toy soldiers suddenly tipped over, the Supertoys charging out, armed with swords and small guns.
Prince Siegfried rushed from their midst to the head of the column. "Save Clair! Protect the girl who named me!" he cried. "CHAAAARRRGGE!" He pointed his sword straight into the horde of mutant Supertoys.
"Finish 'em off!" the Rat-King called to his minions.
With a loud cry, the Supertoys charged at the Rat-Mutants, firing into the horde and locking swords with them.
"Ye want her, Mech-Prince? Come an' get her!" The Rat-King challenged, holding Clair up by the back of her nightgown.
The Mutants outnumbered the Supertoys, but their ranks were more disordered, no match for the Supertoys. They started to fall back, routed by the toy soldiers. But the Rat King stood his ground. As Prince Siegfried rushed at him, the Rat King switched his long tail, trying to trip up the Mecha Prince before he got close.
"You leave him alone, you big bully!" Clair roared, kicking the Rat King in the face, right between the eyes.
"Here! Whatcher do *THAHT* fawr?!" the Rat King snapped. But in his confusion, as she kicked him again -- harder -- he didn't notice Prince Siegfried charging at him, his sword levelled, aiming the point right at the Rat King's fat tummy.
"YAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!" the Rat King screamed, letting go of Clair so suddenly that she fell to the floor. He staggered back, the sword ripping from him, spilling out stuffing and metal parts. He twitched for a moment, his long tail flailing out, knocking Prince Siegfried to the floor, then lay still.
Clair sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. She turned toward the place where Prince Siegfried had fallen...
To be continued...
TITLE: Mechas, Marzipan, and Mouse Kings
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: G (Mild fantasy violence in this chapter)
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Clair discovers more surprises -- not so pleasant -- under the Christmas tree...
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. (If I did, there would be a TV series of it on HBO)
NOTES: This was the hardest chapter to write so far, mostly because I had a hard time trying to figure out how to reconfigure the battle of the toy soldiers and the army of the Mouse-King. But then Joshua Falken gave me a great idea...
@ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` -- @ -- ` --
Chapter Three -- Under the Christmas Tree
Uncle Allen stayed for about an hour and a half before Ms. Plum insisted he should head home and get some rest. He looked more and more tired as the evening went on, and Clair feared he might be coming down with something.
After he'd left, the party wound down. Some folks left early, heading for midnight Mass, others simply headed home. But the whole time, Clair kept the little nutcracker Mecha within arm's reach, though she was careful not to keep looking at it.
But too soon, the last guests had departed and Tony and James and Gussie set to work cleaning up the parlor: gathering up the torn wrapping paper and the dishes, clearing the table, switching out the room lights.
Clair was tempted to bring the little nutcracker Mecha to bed with her, but that seemed too little-kiddish, so she set him down under the tree, between the box with Fritz's tin soldier Supertoys and the box that Tessia had eyed suspiciously.
"I'm just going to bed," she said. "But I'll be back in the morning."
"I will be waiting here for you," the nutcracker repleid. "Perhaps, if you gave me your email address and password, I could check your messages for you?"
"Well, we'll take care of that in the morning," she said, patting his shoulder.
"Clair? It's late and we have to be up for church tomorrow," Dad called from the stairs.
"I'm coming," Clair called back. "I'm just saying good night to my Mecha." With that she headed for the stairs.
"You really like that funny-looking little guy," Dad said, smiling.
"Yeah. He's like someone who looks clumsy but who's really very nice and smart," she said.
"I thought you'd like him and I thought you'd say that."
"You knew what Uncle Allen was giving me?" she asked.
"Well, I had a hand in it," he admitted. "He wanted some young people about you age to test the prototypes of this new line of companion Mechas. I thought you'd like to help, and I hoped you liked the nutcracker design."
"You mean I'm testing a new model?" The idea sounded exciting, but quite a few doubts and questions came into her head.
"I knew you wanted a companion Mecha, and since we were testing this new line, I put in a word for you. Your Uncle Allen chose you personally. He trusts you."
"I won't have to give him back, will I?" she asked.
"Not unless something goes hopelessly wrong with him, but I doubt that will happen." He patted her shoulder. "Come on, it's late. We'll talk more about it in the morning."
She went up to her room, closed the door, changed into her nightgown and crawled into bed. But of course she couldn't fall asleep. The kid who can't sleep on Christmas eve, she thought, with a groan. I thought I was past that...
She couldn't help trying to think up a name for the little nutcracker Mecha. Nutcracker didn't quite cut it: too obvious. There had to be a better name. Prince Charming was too dumb and he really wasn't charming to look at -- though she thought he was.
She hit on the name Prince Siegfried, and it sounded like such a good name she just had to share it with him right away. She slid out from under the bedclothes, put on her bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed out of the room, past her parent's bedroom, and down the stairs.
James had shut off the lights on the Christmas tree, but the moonlight glowed on the ornaments and the lights. Even in the gloom, the stars and snowflakes near the ceiling sparkled and the tree shimmered faintly.
She knelt down on the floor in the shadows beneath the tree. Something rustled. She looked over and saw that the moonlight had pooled around the little nutcracker Mecha.
"There you are," she said, reaching for him.
He turned his head toward her. "Didn't you say you were going to bed?" he asked.
She picked him up and held her in her lap."I know, I did, but I couldn't sleep because I was thinking of a name for you... and I wanted to know if you needed one."
"I have a model number, but I need to be given a name. You need to give it to me," he said.
She took him to the couch and sat down, curling her legs up under her. "I just thought of it before I came down," she said. "How would you like the name Prince Siegfried?"
The little Mecha tilted his head. "In which case, that is my name," he declared. "And a fine noble name it is."
"I hoped you'd like it, or it would fit you at least," she said.
"And it fits me well, for I have been chosen to be a prince among Mechas," Prince Siegfried replied.
What did that mean? she wondered to herself. "Well, you're certainly gallant and polite enough to be a prince," she said.
"Indeed, I have been given that nature, but I would gladly serve you as well," he said.
That sounded strange coming from a Mecha...
She nestled back on the couch, holding Prince Siegfried on her lap, watching the moonlight sparkle on the tree and on the snowflakes overhead.
The antique wind-up clock on the mantlepiece whirred preparing to chime. Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Dingg.... Midnight. She was just about to get up and take Prince Siegfried with her upstairs, when she heard a rustle in the shadows at the back of the room. Something thumped under the tree.
She heard a sliding sound like a lid of a box rising. That couldn't be the antique soldier Supertoys, could it? She'd heard Supertoys behaving a little oddly if they weren't being used, but most of them went into a kind of wait state.
She sat up, holding onto Prince Siegfried.
Something moved out of the shadows, coming close to the foot of the couch. She looked up to see Uncle Allen standing over her, looking down at her.
"Uncle Allen!" she said. "W-what are you doing here? I thought you'd left."
"I've just had a few important words with Ms. Plum about your Mecha, so I came back here" he said. "We have reasons to suspect that your little companion model may be carrying some important code, a kind of code that can be spread from one Mecha to another."
"That sounds like a virus," Clair said, worried now.
"It isn't really, as far as we know. We aren't exactly sure what this code will do when your Mecha comes into contact with other Mechas, but it's already had some strange effects in some Mechas."
"How did this happen?" she asked.
"We think there's a group of Mecha freedom fighters who hid this code on the Cybertronics server to protect it, keep the ARM from getting ahold of it. That's why the ARM came after us this year.... But I'm afraid if we're going to track this code, you'll have to give that Mecha back to us."
She tightened her grip on Prince Siegfried. "But I've only just received him," she said, trying not to argue.
"I know, but we have to protect him and you. That security breach when I was attacked... The ARM was after that code just as much as it was after me, and they seemed to have uploaded some dangerous code onto the server. That's the code that contaminated the Operation Mutant Strikeforce units. That's why we launched the recall."
"So what does that have to do with my Mecha?"
"We're not sure what's going to happen to those two code strands when they come in contact," Uncle Allen said.
"I can't let you have him," she said.
"Please, Clair, don't make this hard for us. We don't know what's going to happen, or if we can keep any of that code contained," he said, holding out his hand to take the little Mecha.
"I can't do that," she said, rising from the couch.
He came up to her and took Prince Siegfried from her hand. The Mecha poked his hand with the little sword that hung from his belt. Uncle Allen cried out more in pain than surprise and, clutching at his injured hand, lost his grip on Prince Siegfried.
Clair expected the Mecha to smash to the floor, but a change came over him in mid-air: he seemed to be dropping to the floor on purpose, his body ... growing before her very eyes, so that he seemed just to step down from the air.
She wasn't sure what happened next. But suddenly the walls of the room seemed to expand. She wasn't sure if everything around her and Uncle Allen was growing, or if they were shrinking to the size of Supertoys. Even the Christmas tree seemed to grow before her eyes, up to the roof, breaking through, letting in more moonlight.
The box that Tessia had regarded with suspicion loomed up, as tall as a room. Something peirced the side of the cardboard: a long sword with a curved, barbed blade. It turned and sliced a hole in the side of the box, then retracted.
The panel cut out thus popped open. Shadowy figures scuttled out of the hole, slipping into the shadows. What *were* they?! she wondered. From the little she could see, they looked like people, but their heads looked like the heads of animals, rats or something just as nasty.
She looked around her, trying to see where they went, and looking for Uncle Allen and Prince Siegfried. But they had vanished.
The shadows rippled and rustled with the creatures. She heard the rattle of swords and strange voices croaking at each other.
Where was Prince Siegfried?! She looked about her, looking for him, but she could see no sign of him anywhere. But something was rattling and clinking inside the box of old-fashioned soldiers, which had begun to rock back and forth. She hastened toward it, hoping to find Prince Siegfried.
Suddenly the box the creatures had crawled out of blew open and something stood up from it, head and shoulders taller than she and twice as wide, a bulky monstrosity in a floor-sweeping black cloak, a lumpy-looking gilt crown on its rat head, its small eyes glittering evilly as it looked down at her.
The creature curled its lips back from its snaggled yellow fangs. "Ah, ye mus' be t' young miss what's fallin' fawr a tin-head," it snarled, with a vile grin.
"Get away from me, you rat!" she roared, backing away from it.
"Why? We wuz only just stharted t' get acquointed, y' an' I," the Rat-King said, in a sneering, mock-gentle voice.
She realized the creatures with the rat heads had slunk from the shadows and were closing in around them. She turned and tried to break free from the ring of swords, but the Rat-King grabbed her shoulder.
"Siegfried!" she screamed.
"So ye'd seek *THAHT* cray-thure's protheckshun, hey?" the Rat-King sneered.
The box containing the old-fashioned toy soldiers suddenly tipped over, the Supertoys charging out, armed with swords and small guns.
Prince Siegfried rushed from their midst to the head of the column. "Save Clair! Protect the girl who named me!" he cried. "CHAAAARRRGGE!" He pointed his sword straight into the horde of mutant Supertoys.
"Finish 'em off!" the Rat-King called to his minions.
With a loud cry, the Supertoys charged at the Rat-Mutants, firing into the horde and locking swords with them.
"Ye want her, Mech-Prince? Come an' get her!" The Rat-King challenged, holding Clair up by the back of her nightgown.
The Mutants outnumbered the Supertoys, but their ranks were more disordered, no match for the Supertoys. They started to fall back, routed by the toy soldiers. But the Rat King stood his ground. As Prince Siegfried rushed at him, the Rat King switched his long tail, trying to trip up the Mecha Prince before he got close.
"You leave him alone, you big bully!" Clair roared, kicking the Rat King in the face, right between the eyes.
"Here! Whatcher do *THAHT* fawr?!" the Rat King snapped. But in his confusion, as she kicked him again -- harder -- he didn't notice Prince Siegfried charging at him, his sword levelled, aiming the point right at the Rat King's fat tummy.
"YAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!" the Rat King screamed, letting go of Clair so suddenly that she fell to the floor. He staggered back, the sword ripping from him, spilling out stuffing and metal parts. He twitched for a moment, his long tail flailing out, knocking Prince Siegfried to the floor, then lay still.
Clair sat up, pushing her hair out of her face. She turned toward the place where Prince Siegfried had fallen...
To be continued...