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

THE BIG O:

ACT 34

OUR LITTLE GIRL HAS GROWN UP

Chapter Ten: Memory Lane

Roger's brain was on fire. He couldn't hear his own scream over the buzzing noise that assaulted his senses. He was falling, but in what direction he couldn't tell. Suddenly, his senses returned with a vividness and clarity he didn't expect.

"Endangered species?" the old man who was tied to his chair flinched. "What do you mean by that?" He thought about it for a moment. "Oh yes, I see what you mean. You're implying that aside of Paradigm City and a few towns there isn't much of humanity left aren't you?"

"Such a true intellectual," his squat captor smiled condescendingly. "That's right. There isn't very many of you stupid apes to go around. That's why They set aside this land for you. To prevent you from going extinct, They've allowed you to thrive undisturbed in your natural environment, a corrupt decadent city."

"Then it's time I face my fears right now!" Roger declared as he turned and opened the curtains to reveal the black megadeus in the distance getting closer. "Big O!" he shouted as he walked out onto the balcony. "If you don't think that you're complete without me, I'm willing to give myself up right now! Stop where you are and I'll let you have me!" He spread his arms wide but black megadeus' only reply was to continue to thunder towards him. "Didn't you hear me?" Roger spoke into his watch. "I said that if you spare the others I'll merge with you! I'll let myself be part of a machine!"

Dorothy joined him on the balcony. "Roger…"

"I mean it, Big O!" Roger growled. "Stop right where you are or I won't be your domineus!" When the megadeus continued forward without slowing, he pulled a large pistol out of his pocket. "I warn you…!"

"Roger, that isn't…"

But Roger was ignoring her. "Stop right there, Big O!" he commanded as he put the barrel of the gun against his own temple. "Stop right there or I'll blow my brains out! You'll have no domineus!" he cried. "You'll be incomplete forever, is that what you want?"

Roger jumped to his feet and grasped Dorothy by the shoulders. "Dorothy!" he cried. "Get a hold of yourself! You are Dorothy Wayneright and nobody can take that away from you! Red Destiny is dead! She can't control you! Fight it!"

Dorothy's body jerked in Roger's hands as if she was struggling against an unknown foe. It was as if she were struggling for control of her limbs against some malevolent force. "R-raw…jer…" she stammered. "R-roger… I… love… you…!" Her hands glided up his body to his shoulders.

Roger gasped. "Dorothy I…" He never got a chance to finish because Dorothy lifted him off his feet and threw him over the side of the catwalk.

"Angel!" Roger shouted at the ghostly robot heading for them. "Memories are very precious to people's lives! They give us the opportunity to prove to ourselves that we exist! And if we lose them, we have an unrelenting feeling of uncertainty!" Big O's spectral twin continued to plod forward, as buildings and landmarks vanished in its wake. "You must listen to me!" he insisted. "The humans that are living now in the present are made up of more than their memories of the past!" The negotiator walked out of Big O's cockpit to address the phantasmal megadeus that plodded towards them.

"I myself don't even know who I am!" he declared from his perch on Big O's collar, his arms gesturing to emphasize the sincerity of his confession. "I don't have a single solitary memory about myself, but I don't believe that anyone took them from me. I most likely erased them of my own free will. I was the one who made that choice. I made it for myself, so I could live in the present and in the future! Because I must go on believing there is a me!"

It wasn't working. The colossal phantasm continued to thunder towards them. There wasn't very much of the city left. Soon there would be nothing at all.

"Angel!" he called in the most apologetic voice that he could muster. "I know that I will never lose the you that is now a part of my memories! The you that met me, and the conviction you had for what you felt you needed to do! The you that loved yourself more than anyone else ever could! I'll never forget this woman named Angel, who once loved herself, but was filled with such doubt." He spread his arms wide, ready to sacrifice himself to the nonexistence that Angel's nihilistic despair had condemned all of mankind to. "You must stop denying your own existence," he implored. "You have to live as a human being!"

Roger, Angel, and Gordon were on a sound stage, full of cameras and monitors and props. There was a mock-up of the interior of a clapboard cabin, complete with wood-burning stove, bubbling cooking pot, and fake painted mountains behind the windows. "Roger Smith," the old man gasped in sudden recognition. Gordon reached into the sweatband of his straw hat and pulled out a torn bit of paper. It was the other half of the torn photo. When he put the two halves together, it showed a younger Gordon Rosewater shaking hands with Roger Smith.

Roger's eyes widened in surprise. "How is that possible?"

"Long ago I hired you," Gordon said, "No, I hired a Roger Smith who had memories to conduct negotiations for me. I said that if it's true about this world, if it's one enormous stage, then we're just merely actors playing out our roles on it. We don't need to have any memories. But I've always wondered why can't there be those who can change their roles?" He looked up at Roger. "I wanted that person to negotiate with the one who directed this world."

"You mean to tell me I had memories?" Roger asked.

Alan Gabriel was Big Duo's pilot. He had hundreds of green cables connecting his body to Big Duo's controls. "Oh, I must say, this DOES feel good!" the man cyborg announced cheerfully. "I haven't felt anything quite like this since I decided to quit being a total human! My body, my nerves! They've all been tied directly into Big Duo! Big Duo itself is my very own body!"

In the cockpit of Big O, Roger narrowed his eyes. "You'd go that far? Well, you have it backwards. That incomplete megadeus has control of YOU."

"What?" Alan gasped.

"An incomplete megadeus seeks out a domineus," Roger calmly continued. "You're just being used as a device to activate it. That's exactly why your master stole Dorothy, isn't it?"

The hanger that contained the massive megadeus known as Big O was filled with brick red scorpion robots. Roger had managed to get Norman to an empty catwalk but one of the robots had "Dorothy!" Roger cried.

The dainty android was suspended in the pincer on the tail of a scorpion robot that was propelling itself upward with some kind of rockets installed in its hull. "I am what I am. I am not like you Roger," Dorothy announced in a quiet apology. "I will always have the same body and the same heart."

"What are you talking about?" Roger cried in a hoarse voice. "Don't give up! All right Big O!" The massive megadeus moved a gunmetal black arm as it reached out to intercept the scorpion robot before it escaped with its prize. "Dorothy!" Roger shouted. "You can get away! As strong as you are you can break free! You have to take control of your own destiny…!"

Dorothy seemed surprised, as if she had never considered that possibility before. Or was it an emotional response because this was goodbye?

"DOROTHY…!" Roger cried as the scorpion robot took her out of a hole in the roof to disappear into the sky.

"Shhh!" Gordon Rosewater put his finger to his mouth. "Why are you so obsessed with something that's intangible? If something doesn't exist here and now, it would be the same as if it never existed in the first place, wouldn't you say?"

Roger sat down on the wooden porch steps in defeat. "Now I see your thinking is what's kept you happy," he muttered. "However, I just can't... No, it's not just me. The foundations of who we believe ourselves to be are being shaken because of these pieces of memories that show up in fragments... and so, I wanna know. I wanna know about my memories."

Two foreign megadueses approached from the sea as a third rose in front of the two. Roger held his bleeding arm as he sat in Big O's cockpit as the control ring lowered down over him. "We have choices," he said. "Some people like to stand in the rain without an umbrella. That's what it means to live free. Uh?"

Dorothy jumped down next to Roger's left arm and laid her hand on the top part of the left joystick. She was going to be his left arm, serving at his side until the end.

"Big O!" Roger shouted. "Showtime!"

In the darkened train tunnel, Roger faced the cowled teenage girl who held him at gunpoint. In the darkness, he couldn't see her face with that blood red hood on her head, but from the light of his flashlight he could clearly see the automatic pistol she had pointed at him.

"Androids aren't supposed to be capable of harming humans," he announced defiantly. "Are you different?"

"I am doing as commanded," she reported in an unnatural yet eerily familiar voice. "From the instant I came into being those orders have rung in my ears, so I followed them. It was a natural a thing to do as opening an umbrella in the rain."

"'R' stands for red," Roger growled. "What's the 'D'?"

"That's what being commanded means."

"Death?" he guessed. "Devil? Dark?"

"Destiny!" she announced.

"Destiny?"

"Who commands you Roger Smith?" she demanded.

"No one commands me!" he retorted.

"Then why do you pilot It?"

"Are you talking about the megadeus?"

"They are the Sacred Chariots of Mankind," she said dangerously. "Those who pilot them are intended to be commanded. If you admit that you are not, then you must perish!"

Roger threw his flashlight spinning through the air. It hit her in the face and the tunnel was lit by the muzzle flash of her gunshot.

Big Duo was a wreck but somehow still managed to climb out of the crater and pathetically reach towards the Paradigm Company's main headquarters despite not having a head, an arm or a pilot. The red megadeus' pilot was a hideous gargoyle whose charred face was wrapped in bandages. "You don't need a master? Schwartzwald asked. "Or do they choose their master? Do we control them, or do they control us, Roger Smith?" From inside the crimson cockpit of Big O, Roger Smith didn't have an answer.

Roger used the slender cord and grappling hook on his watch to swing from the cockpit of Big O to the faceless head of Dorothy One. "Dorothy! Dorothy hold on! Unh!" he grunted as he managed to reach the android girl entangled in the cables that hooked her up to the seven story anthropomorphic lobster robot. The poor girl's hands were clasped in prayer and her eyes were closed. She looked like she was praying. "Dorothy! Come on, snap out of it!" He grunted as he pulled cables loose from her. "You're Dorothy Wayneright! Just be who you are!"

Dorothy's eyes opened. "Raw. Jer." She had turned his name into a plea.

Roger put his arms around her and pulled with all his might.

"Why did you drag me back to this place?" Roger asked.

"Why did you abandon it?" Gordon Rosewater retorted as he loosed the tie on his business suit. "You can't possibly expect me to run the whole show by myself, do you? I'm too old."

"Is that what this is about?" Roger exhaled as he sat in a couch next to the old man's chair. "Looking for a successor?"

"Yes. What can I say? I'm getting too old," Gordon admitted. "I'm forgetting things. I don't have the same pep I used to. I can't run everything anymore. You knew this day would come. It's time for you to step up, Roger Smith."

"I told you before," Roger said. "I want no part of it. Just erase my memories of the past and let me live my life."

"Roger, think of what you're saying," Gordon pleaded. "There is no one else. It's got to be you. Everyone else is either a mindless sheep or a power mad fool. Who am I going to leave in charge of things? Alex? Vera? They're both fanatics who will run humanity into the ground if we let them."

"Why don't you put Alex Rosewater in charge of the Paradigm Company and Vera Ronstadt in charge of the Union and with luck they'll both kill each other?" Roger asked flippantly. "With them out of the way it will be win-win."

"This is nothing to joke about, Roger," Gordon said. "You've seen how authority can be abused! Not even I could resist it! You are the only one I completely trust."

"That's because you know I don't want it," Roger muttered.

"That's because you know the cost of accepting!" Gordon nodded. "Nobody else does. Nobody else who has the stomach for it! There's nobody else I can trust with absolute power over what's left of humanity. No one!"

"Split it up then," Roger suggested. "A division of power. A system of checks and balances. No single person in charge of everything."

Roger was in a huge semicircular futuristic chamber where a man sat in a circular chair behind a control panel that bristled with buttons and flashing colored lights.

"Welcome to the Union," the man nodded in satisfaction. "Gone is the nightmarish dystopia that is Paradigm City, where capitalism and poverty takes the place of order and freedom. Here in the Union, everyone is equal, and the will of the people is absolute! Unlike the corrupt city of Paradigm, where a man without capital is a man without choices, here we give you a choice."

"What if I don't want the choice you've given me?" Roger quipped.

"You can do what you want," the bearded man shrugged, "as long as it's what the majority wants."

"What if it's not what the majority wants?" Roger challenged.

"You don't want to be the lone wolf, Mister Smith," the little man shook his head condescendingly. "You really don't. Society cannot exist as a collection of separate individuals. The unified collective is civilization. Unorganized individuals are anarchy. We are a unified collective."

"If wanted to be remain part of a group I would have stayed with the Military Police. I've had enough of this," Roger shook his head. "I'm leaving!"

"Haven't you yet realized that there isn't any way out?" the little man said in mild amusement. "Now then, let's get on to business. Why did you resign anyway?"

"I've got nothing to say to you!" Roger cried. "Do you hear me? Nothing!"

"Now be reasonable, Mister Smith," the man in the circular chair gently scolded. "It's just a matter of time. Sooner or later you'll tell me. Sooner or later you'll want to. Let's make a deal. You cooperate, tell us what we want to know, and this can be a very nice place. You may even be given a position of authority."

"I will not make any deals with you!" Roger snarled. "I've resigned. I quit. I walked out, d'you hear me? I've had it! I'm not going to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!"

"Really?" the bearded man in the chair feigned surprise.

"Yes," Roger asserted. "I'm a free human being. I'm getting out of here."

Roger's father looked away from his teenaged son. "Roger, promise me that you won't make the same mistakes that I did," the older man sighed. "I lost my family when I was young and it threw me into a dark cave that I couldn't get out of. Thank God your mother managed to talk some sense into me. I've been lucky having you boys around, but you're my youngest. It's too late for Damien, but I want you to promise me that you won't become the same man I did. Find a nice girl and settle down and make damn sure that if you have any children they won't have to grow up without their parents."

"What are you talkin' about?" a teenaged Roger protested. "You were a hero!"

"I wouldn't wish that life on my worst enemy," his father said as he turned to reveal the sorrowful look on his face. "Promise me no matter what you'll take control of your destiny and just be who you are. I let my childhood memories rule me for too long. It took your mother to teach me something late in life that I hope you learn early: People aren't ruled by their memories. We have choices. That's what it means to be a free human being."

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

Next: I Wouldn't Bet On It