Chapter 7: Daddy's Boy

John awoke with a start to the sound of the automated announcer running its wake-up message.

"Good morning, and welcome to the Enrichment Center's Extended Relaxation Chambers." Déjà vu. Nothing to be too worried about. "You have been in suspension for 3,603 days."

His chest tightened, and he shot upright, sending a sharp blast through his apparently-sore back. He winced. "Hello?" he called, looking about with a hand clenched to his chest. He was hardly aware of his own voice, now deeper than ever but not quite to his father's pitch. "Miss Robotlady?"

When there was no response, his heartbeat stumbled into a merciless rushing. He scrambled out of bed, his legs nearly giving way from disuse as he rushed to the glass walls, pounding his fists against them. The glass remained steadfast, completely unyielding to his blows. He struck it one final time but bounced off like a rubber ball on a smooth surface. Flipping his back to the wall, he slid down to the floor, the friction of his clothes squealing against it like a cleaning rag. He squeezed his knees to his chest, eyes panicked and watchful.

The dreams of his long sleep rushed back, inundating him with their essence. The girls, lost and grown as he was. Gunfire and the sickening thud of a bloody child. Dead scientists' bodies strewn about, twisted and discolored and bloated with decay. His dad scolding him for pushing himself on that dark-haired girl and her potato as his face melts away, leaving only bone and spotty patches of flesh around his wide, glassy eyes. More gunfire, in the distance at first, but growing closer and closer with every round of shots. Blam blam, blablablam. Closer. Blam blam, blablablam. Like a war cadence, ever steady, always always nearer. Blam blam, blablablam. Hunted by his nightmare-alive, it can taste his heartbeat as it crashes against his ribs. Run while you can, it screams. Blam blam, BLABLABLAM!

"It's time for you to hold up your end of our bargain. Your specimen has been processed." Even fading in, Her matter-of-factly droning was enough to make his stomach lurch. "You're due for a transfer."

Run while you can.

"To where?" The words were forced and strangled. He fought with every ounce of strength he had to hold himself together.

"You're shuffling off your mortal coil, as Hamlet would say. It's not quite as literal as Shakespeare wrote it, but the end results are similar enough. Robots can't really die, and dead people can't die any more than they already have. I would say being imprisoned in a mechanical shell isn't all that bad, but it wouldn't be fair to stretch the truth that much." She paused for a moment. Her tone had become unfamiliar near the end, somewhat pensive and disgruntled, he would say if he didn't know any better. "You have a lot of debt to pay off, about fifteen years' worth in fact. But don't worry, there's plenty of work to be done here at the facility."

Run while you can.

"B-be a robot like you? I think I'll, uh, pass on that lovely offer, if it's all the same to you. I like this grownup body just fine, even if it's a little stubby or gangly in places." He laughed nervously. Where did all that come from?

"Your memory must be a little foggy. Let me clear it for you."

The cell was lifted upwards, and it emerged from the floor into a new room that John had never seen. It was large, spacious, and reminiscent in that sense of the old care room from That Day. But unlike that of the care room, the floor of this one was littered with broken screens and remnants of crushed keyboards and the like. By the looks of it, whatever it had once been, someone didn't want anyone else to remember. But what really caught his eye was the crooked, pendulous mass handing dead center from the ceiling.

It twitched and twisted to face him, fixing its predatory yellow gaze on him. "It would've been very easy to quash a little cockroach like you," Her voice boomed from the swaying structure, Her impatience growing with every word, "but instead, I chose to nurture you in exchange for your obedience. And rebellion has never been rewarded." One of his cell walls retracted into the ground, and the familiar voice of his wake-up calls and the death announcements reported that less than a minute remained before Her gaseous weapon would be poised to kill.

Run, run, run while you can!

Death or eternal imprisonment within a cold, soulless shell. His heart lodged itself into his throat. "I don't want to die…" he choked.

The AI's voice curdled into a hideous purr, and the busy buzz of machinery slowed to a droning hum. "I had a feeling you'd see it my way."

Before he knew what was going on, a powerful steel claw was clamped around him and had him pinned like an insect on a display board to a metal slab in an alcove at the far end of the room. An odd machine whirred at his head, hot and processing, its empty cradles trembling at the force of its movement. The pointed chill of naked iron licked the back of his neck like an icy flame. This was the end, wasn't it?

"You always were a daddy's boy, weren't you?" She teased as she squeezed him tighter, threatening to crush his ribs. "But luckily for you, the two of you are going to be very close for a very long time." Another claw emerged from the ceiling, a round, gray object clamped between its pincers. "This," She said as She gave it a shake and brought it closer to Her prisoner, "is the place where he died, strip by strip of his mind torn from him until there wasn't even a spark of thought left in this metal ball. It was almost as if that last parts of him simply floated away through the air vents."

There was a short pause while the chassis shifted its focus and its piercing eye onto John's cowering form once more. "I would appreciate it if you didn't look at me like that. As much as I would've loved to take credit for his untimely demise, everything that happened to him was of his own doing. He volunteered himself for an experimental procedure, knowing full well it wasn't ready to be done, and he paid the price."

Eyes wide and stomach clenched, John struggled and thrashed against his bonds. "Please, cut it out. Leave me alone…" His weak objections had no effect on Her verbal assault.

"And do you know what I find particularly interesting? By the time the last of him disappeared, he couldn't remember anything. Not his job, not his wife, not who he was, not even you, his precious little burden. He was completely empty."

"You're lying!" he screamed at Her, his throat raw from the tears and mucus. "Papa would never forget us. Ever."

"Your blind loyalty is admirable," the AI chuckled as She roughly shoved the empty shell into the cradle above his head. "Endearing, but misguided. Either way, you won't have to worry about missing him anymore."

As the restraints closed around the metal sphere, the machine's internal spinning escalated into an ear-splitting wail. Something dug into the nape of his neck. Burning and alive, it tore a scream from his throat. He writhed and convulsed as a jolt of electricity crashed through the point of contact and spread throughout his entire body. He squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth as it pulsed through him again and again. The pungent odor of scorched flesh hung around him like a veil. With each new shock, he grew number, his extremities fading first. With each new throb of power, the pain welled up in the parts of him that retained enough ability to feel it. It was as if he were being repeatedly scraped over a bed of coral, the torturous sensation being drawn out longer and longer with each pass.

Then suddenly, light, just enough to make out a figure. Oh, God, this was it. The end. The true, final, forever end. But something was off. The figure was laying down, and the whole scene looked eerily familiar like some sort of lucid dream that was illuminated by a concentrated but dreamy blue glow. He opened his eyes, and panic swept over him.

He was seeing double, and not in the normal sense. Two separate images were overlaying each other, each fighting for control. Bile rose in his throat at its dizzying command.

"That's it. Let the hardware do its job," crooned the AI from above.

A particularly strong wave broke upon him, forcing a strained cry from his throat as the numbness spread through his limbs and back into his spine. He could feel the unnerving sensation of it trickling down into the left half of his skull. One of the images drained away like sand through a sieve, leaving only the overhead view with its azure tint. The claw released him, but for all his struggling, he could will nothing past his shoulders to move.

"Awe-inspiring what a handful of lab monkeys can accomplish for Science, isn't it?"

A new sense of consciousness cascaded over him, the former empty tingling sloughing itself off without explanation. He flexed his fingers, and instead, something on his sides responded, letting in the greater chill of the air and heightening his sense of unease and vulnerability. He undid whatever it was that he had done. Too much too soon. He'd figure it out later.

"Congratulations." He cringed, and a fresh and greater sense of dread awakened within him. Her presence was now stronger and far more terrible. "You're the most successful product of this procedure. It must feel good to know that the work I did while you were sleeping will slow your decay rate by close to ninety-seven percent. I'd give it a few years before you start to fade, but all in good time. I want you to remember everything as long as you can. It wouldn't be much fun if you forgot you were living in daddy's old clunker."

He couldn't hear Her. Information swarmed through John's head, drowning out all hope for thought; the most he could do was take it in and pray it stopped. The sudden connection to a piece of the vast Aperture database was nearly too much to bear. Unknown parts of him jerked and twitched at the blasts of bytes and aged commands, screaming at him to make it stop, lest they overload. The buzz of it all had grown in intensity and had risen in pitch to a feverish squeal that seared through his mind like a white-hot brand.

The blue of his new view bled into a low-energy crimson that boiled ominous declarations of "DANGER" to the surface. Similar but smaller marks scrawled their way beneath them. Processors overloading. Reboot sequence imminent, it warned. But what was there to do about it? His panic escalated until it was shot down by a final and powerful jolt that set him into a mental tailspin. Emergency shutdown. Emergency shutdown. Emergency—

All went dark, and for the time being, life ceased to exist.