"Option B! I'll take Clover," Phi announced, marching towards the green door. At the stern tone of her voice, everyone stopped muttering and turned to face her.
Clover scowled, and started to protest, "What gives you…"
"No, Phi's right," Alice interrupted, placing a hand on Clover's shoulder, "I don't like it, but Phi's right that we have to choose now. Sigma, K, guess that means we're going through the blue door."
Alice led Sigma and K in that direction, while Clover grudgingly followed Phi and Dio into the area behind the green door. Once Luna was finished checking Quark's vital signs she helped Tenmyouji carry the kid through the red door, and all three trios were ready. There was still some time before the doors closed, and they waited in awkward silence; in particular, Clover stared longingly at where Alice stood in the alcove behind the blue door. But eventually the doors closed. Once the secondary doors opened, Phi, Dio and Clover headed down the corridor towards the next puzzle.
They only managed to get a short distance down the corridor before reaching a dead end. The room they arrived in was a circular atrium, with three doors leading off in different directions and which only contained a single lever, reminiscent of that which would open the Number Nine Door.
Clover stepped forward and examined one of the doors closely, before glancing at the other two. "Hey! All the doors are locked. Zero, that's just… mean!"
Dio laughed. "'Mean'? Heh. You must be stupid if you were expecting anything better from him."
"Lay off, Dio," Phi snapped. Once Dio had shut up, Phi examined the room intently. "If all the doors are locked, that must mean we're supposed to do something with this." She pointed to the lever in the centre.
"Well, go on then, pull it," Dio commanded acidly. When Phi didn't move he advanced forcefully towards the lever.
"No." Phi blocked him. "I'd rather check it out first, make sure that…"
"Ooh, I can do it!"
When Phi turned back around, Clover was standing next to the lever. She smiled happily as she swung it down.
Phi sighed. "… Never mind."
Once the lever returned to its original position, the door on the right responded, quickly unlocking and rising up into the ceiling. With a cheerful grin, Clover skipped towards the open door. Just as she was about to cross the threshold she paused, cocking her head bemusedly. "Huh. How come the other two doors didn't open?"
Phi ignored the fact that Clover had taken so long to realise only one of the doors had opened, and thought about her question. "Maybe they'll come into play later," she answered, "Or maybe they all unlock when we complete the puzzle, or maybe…"
"Who cares?!" Dio roared, striding towards the door and shoving Clover forward, "Just get in there already!"
Phi followed Dio and found both Dio and Clover standing in front of another door. Phi peered around them in order to examine it; the only difference between this door and any other in the facility was a holographic plaque projected at about eye level, reading 'Gaulem Bay'.
"What's a 'Gaulem'? " Clover asked, "It sounds, like, sci-fi-ey…"
Phi stepped between them, getting close enough for sensors on the door to react to her presence; the holographic plaque dissolved and the door opened. "The only way we're going to find out is to go in. Let's go."
The room they entered resembled some kind of high-tech workshop. The first thing Phi saw as she entered was a low workbench, coming just up to her knee. Lain out on the surface was a skeletal, metallic humanoid figure. Through the gaps in its joints, Phi could see the mechanisms and articulation that would allow the figure to move. At the moment, though, it was thankfully deactivated. Two crane-like robotic arms were implanted in the corners of the workbench, and the tools they bore hovered over the centre as if they were fixing the android; however, just like the robot they were supposed to repair, they were currently inactive, dangling limply rather than moving or holding position with the precision they were clearly capable of.
Clover was also peering curiously at the workbench. "So, 'Gaulem' means… robot, right?" she asked hesitantly.
"It makes sense," Phi replied, "I think it's named after that Jewish legend, the golem. It was a man made out of clay, supposedly used by the Jewish people of Prague to protect the ghetto from pogroms during the sixteenth century. I can easily imagine someone who was familiar with that myth naming a human-shaped robot after it, though I don't know why they used 'au' rather than 'o' for the first vowel sound."
Dio snorted. "I'm really glad you two girls are having fun flirting with that hunk of metal, but can we start searching for a way out already?"
Phi seethed. Annoying as Dio was, she didn't have a good response. "Fine," she replied bitterly, "Let's start looking."
With her first look around the room, Phi not only found the safe – it was embedded below the workbench – but also found two items that would probably be used to solve the puzzle. The first, right next to the gaulem's head, was a boxy old style analogue radio, though rather than using a knob to turn the dial there were only three buttons on it instead. Phi expected that they would find instructions for using it later, and, in any case, the radio currently lacked a power source, so Phi left it on the workbench and picked up the other item. It was a chevron-shaped yellow block that had been left next to a pool of lubricant oil that had leaked, allowed to seek a way out through cracks in the gaulem's left shoulder; Phi flicked the chevron a couple of times to clear away any oil still clinging to it, then examined the block. There were ridges running along two edges of the chevron, which Phi guessed would allow it to be connected to other similar blocks. By spinning the block around and considering the symmetry, Phi realised that three chevron blocks could be connected to form a six-pointed star. It was then that Phi noticed that the wall next to the entrance had a panel with a star shaped slot in the middle: it was clear confirmation that her idea was right.
"Keep an eye out for more of these," Phi announced to the others, waving the chevron at the other two.
Dio just grunted, but Clover cheerfully replied, "Okay!"
With the first part of the gaulem bay – the area around the workbench – completely searched, Phi moved on. The room was demarcated into two areas by a bank of computers protruding from the left hand wall. The constellation of flickering lights and complex layout of controls convinced Phi that these machines were too complicated for them to use, and therefore too complicated to be involved in the puzzle. On the opposite wall from the computers was the exit door, but since they couldn't open it yet Phi moved past it to the other side of the room.
Dio and Clover had got there before her, and were already searching. On the right, Clover was rummaging through the contents of cluttered shelves, while on the left, Dio had wrenched open the doors of a row of lockers and was searching through them as well. Phi went between them, approaching a poster prominently displayed on the wall. The middle of the poster showed a red eye staring straight at her, while above and below it were rows of letters, grouped in pairs. The letters didn't make any sense, but Phi remembered the general layout of the poster for when it would become important later.
Turning around, Phi saw that, in an alcove behind the bay of computers that split the room, there was one that, rather than being an incomprehensible array of buttons and lights like the rest of the machines, was instead a perfectly normal desktop with a perfectly normal keyboard. This one might be usable. Phi examined it. The screen was off; tapping buttons on the keyboard did nothing, and there was no power button on the monitor itself. The only clue as how this computer might be used was a power cable with a strange attachment coming through a slot in the wall behind the desktop computer. Phi recognised the plug on the cable, and quickly inserted it into the back of the radio. The radio sprang to life with a crackling hiss of static, but failed to receive any meaningful signals.
Phi was distracted from her attempts to activate the radio by Clover's exasperated wail. "Come on! Turn already! I know you can do it, little key!"
Phi ran over to see what the hell Clover was up to. She was struggling furiously with a toolbox, gripping its key crushingly and trying to twist it round in its hole. Despite Clover's valiant efforts, the key didn't turn.
"Hey, Clover," Phi said cautiously, "I don't think that'll work. If the lock's rusty or something, you'll have to fix it before the key will turn."
"Or you can just keep on trying to do it by brute force. It's no skin off my back how stupid you make yourself. Go on, carry on entertaining us," Dio said snidely.
"No!" Clover yelled, "It'll turn. I know it will!" Before Phi or Dio could stop her, Clover had braced the toolbox against the wall. Then, for a reason that could only possibly make sense to Clover herself, she jumped up onto the shelf and did a handstand over the box, her right hand still clutching the key in its hole, her curly pink hair dropping down and obscuring her face. Phi could only guess that Clover hoped to put her entire – admittedly low – weight behind her attempt to turn the key. Phi was about to tell Clover to give up, when a piercing screech emanated from the keyhole.
"What the hell is that?" Dio said, cringing and slamming his hands over his ears.
Before Phi could reply, the rust or whatever else was preventing the key from turning gave way. Clover's whole body turned with the key, and she somersaulted gracefully back down to the floor. As Clover fell, the lock opened with a satisfying click; the lid of the toolbox popped open.
"Yay! I did it!" Clover shouted gleefully. Then Clover glanced at the key, still in her hand after falling out of its hole. It had been mangled by the sheer force Clover had applied to it, the shaft bent and the head twisted disconcertingly out of alignment with the handle. Clover pouted. "Oh, you're broken… I'm sorry, little key." Then Clover tossed the key over her shoulder dismissively. "Okay! Let's see what we got."
Dio sighed. "Okay, that does it. This girl is officially loony-tune."
Clover turned on him. "What are you saying, Dio? I'll let you know that I got cleared as, uh, 'psychologically stable' when, um I shouldn't talk about that…"
They gathered the items they had collected from the shelf in front of the toolbox. Clover removed a bottle of detergent, a small screwdriver, and another key from the toolbox – unlike the rusty key that had unlocked the toolbox, the silver surface of this key had been polished until it shined brilliantly – and laid them next to a blue battery and another chevron piece that she had found on the shelves. According to Clover, the rest of the items on the shelf were junk, so they then looked at what Dio had found. Dio explained that all the lockers contained lab coats: by rifling through the pockets of them, he'd found a tag with the name 'Harold' engraved on it, a binder matching ID numbers to radio frequencies, and finally the third and last chevron piece.
Phi took the three chevron blocks and quickly attached them together, forming a six pointed star as expected. Phi took the star over to the slot on the wall. After carefully lining up the points, Phi pushed.
The star didn't go in.
"Damnit!" Now that the star was right in front of the slot, Phi could finally see that the block was imperceptibly larger than the hole. Infuriatingly, this wasn't the place where the star was meant to be used.
Dio laughed. "Heh. You're so hilarious when you're angry."
"Screw you, Dio," Phi responded, "At least I'm trying. Hey, look, I've already got my next idea." Phi went back to the shelf, picked up the binder of radio frequencies, and took it over to where she had left the radio set up next to the desktop computer. "While you two were searching, I was able to activate the radio. I guess we're looking to set it to the right frequency." Phi opened up the binder and inspected it. If they were looking for a particular frequency, and the binder matched frequencies to ID numbers, then that meant they were looking for a particular ID number – that is, for a particular person. Phrased like that, the solution was obvious. Phi picked up Harold's nametag and turned it over; his ID number was on the back. That gave Phi his radio frequency: 400Hz.
Now that the radio had power, the three buttons on the front worked. It took Phi a while to work out what each button did – trust Zero to make any control scheme more complicated than it had to be – but eventually Phi was able to tune the radio to 400Hz. As she did so, even though the sounds coming from the radio still sounded like static, the monitor of the desktop computer sprung to life, the thin lines of a carefully drawn diagram displayed on the screen.
Dio peered over her shoulder, then chuckled. "Heh. Well done, Phi," he said sarcastically, "We now know what the room we're in looks like. Congratulations."
The diagram on the screen was nothing more than a blueprint of the gaulem bay: utterly useless.
Phi retreated back towards the shelves, desperately hoping that one of the remaining items would allow them to progress. The most enticing one to try was the silver key; finding a hole for it to fit in would obviously be useful. The question was: where? The toolbox was open, as were all the lockers. If there wasn't anything to open, where would they use the key?
It was then that Phi noticed that under the computer, coloured a dusky grey so as to almost fade into the surroundings, was a column of drawers. Phi approached them. Hidden beneath the handle of the top drawer was a minute silver keyhole, perfect for the key she was trying to use. Phi slid the key in and the drawer opened. There was nothing in it, but embedded in the base of the drawer was a familiar shape: a six pointed star. This time, when Phi inserted the golden star block it fit perfectly. The top drawer slid back; as it returned to its original position the second drawer sprang forward, revealing a grimy handwheel. As Phi collected it, she noticed that the base of the handle was another six pointed star; she quickly guessed that it would be just slightly smaller than the star block. Finally, in the third, bottom-most drawer was a computer tablet. Even when Phi pressed the buttons, it didn't activate; it lacked power. Phi turned it over to find that the cover for the batteries was screwed in. Phi unscrewed it using the screwdriver and placed the blue battery inside. Even then, it was clear it wasn't enough: there was still room for one more battery inside the slot, the relevant metal contacts bare to the wind. Still, even if she hadn't managed to turn the tablet on, Phi was encouraged; she'd made some progress.
Clover and Dio followed Phi as she carried the handwheel over to the star shaped slot in the wall. As Phi carefully placed the base of the wheel in the hole, she felt it settle snugly in to place. As she turned the wheel, she felt the resistance from whatever mechanism it controlled; even so, she was able to turn the wheel smoothly and steadily, and it continued rotating until the mechanism behind it reached the end of its action and locked in its final position. Satisfied that the handwheel had done its job, Phi began to turn around to see what she had wrought.
"Aagh!" Dio yelled, followed by a sickening thump of skin on metal.
Phi turned to see Dio clutching his right fist in pain, glaring at her furiously. It didn't take long for Phi to see what had set Dio off. Dangling down the wall from the ceiling was a row of six robots – no, gaulems – identical to the one that lay on the workbench. Most of them were staring straight ahead, but the one closest to Dio had its head twisted around over its right shoulder. Dio must have taken offence to the sudden arrival of the gaulems, though from the anguished expression on Dio's face the gaulem had given as good as it got.
"Hey, Dio!" Clover shouted, standing in front of a symmetric row of gaulems that had descended down the opposite wall – she'd had the good grace not to punch any of them – "Don't hit the poor things, you meanie!" Even as she said it, though, she giggled at Dio's reaction.
As Dio nursed his wound, Phi took stock. Two of the gaulems that had come down were different to the others. One of them, next to the one that Dio had hit, carried a red battery in its hand. Phi retrieved it and added it to the tablet, which finally turned on. The screen demanded a password, which Phi didn't yet know, but at least they'd turned it on. The other different gaulem, more or less opposite from it, was even stranger. It was wearing boxer shorts.
"So, do you think we're meant to take them off?" Phi asked.
Dio acted outraged. "No way! A gentleman would never interfere with another's underwear."
"Um, so…" Clover started, "so you would hit one of those guys in the face, but you wouldn't touch their, um, package?"
"Well, of course! That one…" – Dio pointed at the robot which he had punched, its head still leaning crookedly to one side – "attacked me first, right? So he's fair game, deserves whatever he gets."
Phi sighed. "I don't suppose either of you are intending on realising any time soon that these are just robots. They're not even moving!"
"You're such a spoilsport, Phi," Dio said.
Clover patted the gaulem wearing the boxer shorts on the shoulder. "Don't worry. I won't let Phi insult you anymore. Now let's get these things off you." Before Phi could react, Clover ripped the boxer shorts down revealing… thankfully, nothing. Clover sighed. "Oh. I was expecting…"
"Don't you dare say it," Phi interrupted.
Clover frowned unhappily, but Phi had succeeded in inhibiting Clover from saying or doing anything particularly lewd with the underpants. Having prevented the embarrassment, Phi took the time to review everything they had found. Still unused were the poster with the eye on it, the bottle of detergent, the boxers, and the activated computer tablet, still asking for a password. One other device had descended from the ceiling along with the gaulems; it was a computer screen, glowing yellow, which had settled comfortably into place by the exit door. Phi tapped it to activate it. The screen displayed a grid of squares, each containing markings like those of a circuit diagram. Instructions were displayed across the top: they read, 'Supply the correct voltage by connecting the wires. The circuit can begin anywhere on the left and finish anywhere on the right. You can rotate a wire by touching its corresponding square. The numbers in the middle of each wire indicate the voltage provided by that wire.' Unfortunately, there was no indication as to what the 'correct voltage' was.
Phi reconsidered the remaining items, settling on the bottle of detergent. Its intended use was almost entirely obvious: they had to clean something. And though the entire room had the sort of general uncleanness that came with regular technical use, there was only one part of the room that was dirty enough to be hiding something. Phi returned to the workbench, and examined the area above the gaulem's right shoulder once more. What if the oil leak there was not just caused by wear and tear, but was in fact intentional, to obscure something beneath. Phi poured the detergent over the oil slick, then reached for the nearest available cloth to wipe it away. Phi half suspected that Zero's intention had been that they'd use the boxer shorts for that purpose; unfortunately, Clover was still clutching them tightly and unrelentingly. That made the nearest available cloth the back of Dio's longcoat. Phi struck quickly, grabbing the end of the coat while Dio's back was turned and swiping it swiftly across the oil.
"What the…" Dio exclaimed, "My coat! How dare you sully my coat?!"
"Knock it off, Dio. I figured you'd want to be useful, and look, you were!" Phi pointed at the table, where the number '120V' had been revealed. "Thanks," Phi said with a sarcastic grin.
Dio seethed, but didn't do anything. Phi, now knowing the correct voltage, returned to the screen with the circuit diagram. It was tricky, but Phi soon managed to connect the wires up correctly. The screen displayed 'Completed' and then faded to black, its job done. Her success was also marked by an announcement. "Power distribution: complete. Pre-boot sequence: complete. Please press the power button located on the console."
Clover shouted, "Hey! Look! A big red button!"
Phi span around. Amid the mass of blinking lights and controls on the bay of computers that divided the room, one particular button had been invitingly illuminated. Sitting inside a square of stripes of yellow on white – a warning sign if Phi had ever seen one – and itself coloured vibrant red, it had certainly been activated and highlighted as Phi completed the circuit diagram puzzle.
Clover got to it first. She examined it intently and excitedly, but then paused. She turned to Phi, a meek frown on her face. "Um, Phi. Alice says I'm not allowed to press these anymore." – Phi could easily guess why – "Can you do it?"
Dio barged past brashly. "I'll press it," he said. The moment the words had left his mouth, he shoved Clover aside and slammed his hand down on the button.
The crackle of electricity came to life, spreading instantaneously along both rows of gaulems along the walls. The three of them rushed back to see the gaulems activate. Fortunately for Phi's nerves – the robot uprising had always been a peculiarly personal fear for her – the only change was that the gaulem's eyes had lit up. Phi noticed that not all the eyes were lit up: most robots only had one eye activated; some, including the robot that Dio had punched, had neither eye glowing.
Once again and for the last time, Phi reviewed her resources, looking for a connection. Her eyes settled on the answer immediately. The poster with the eye and letters on it grouped the letters into twelve pairs; Phi matched that to twelve robots, each with two eyes. Selecting letters would give a password to use on the tablet. She explained her rationale to the others, and they agreed.
"So, does that mean it wants the lit-up eyes," Clover asked, "or the dark ones?"
Dio smirked. "Lit-up ones, obviously."
Phi suddenly had an idea. "No, Clover's got a point," she replied.
"Yay! I have a point!" Clover said gleefully, "Um, what do I have a point about, again?"
Phi sighed, but carried on, "Back when Sigma and I did the elevator puzzle, we found two passwords that worked on the safe. The same in the lounge."
"Huh? What are you on about?" Dio asked, perplexed.
"Don't interrupt me. Two passwords. The second opened a hidden compartment in the safe: gave us a file with some more information. We'll probably get a safe password both by using the lit up eyes, and the ones that are off."
Phi brought the poster into the atrium around the workbench and between the rows of gaulems. It was only then that she realised the problem. The rows of gaulems were symmetrically placed, but the pattern of their eyes wasn't. That meant she couldn't work out, just by looking, which row of gaulems corresponded to the top of the poster and which to the bottom. She could just guess – it would only take two tries to find the right orientation – but trial and error was so inelegant that Phi seriously wanted there to be another solution.
Then, it struck her. The map! The map of the room she'd brought up on the desktop screen using the radio. The map of the room that Dio had dismissed as irrelevant. Phi skipped around the corner to check. One quick look confirmed her expectation. The floor plan of the room showed the entrance door on the right: that meant the gaulem that wore the shorts was in the top row, and the gaulem that Dio had punched was in the bottom row.
With that sorted, Phi returned. She rotated the poster so that its orientation matched the gaulems. On a whim, she checked the darkened eyes first. Quickly comparing the unlit eyes to the poster, she got the letters 'REMINISCENHCE'.
Huh. That couldn't be right. Not only was that not a word, it was one letter longer than the length of password the tablet would accept. Phi noticed that the letters she'd counted were only one letter away from 'REMINISCENCE'… with that, Phi realised what was wrong. The extra 'H' came from the robot that Dio had punched, which had both eyes unlit. With the gaulem's head still bent to the side from the force of the blow, it wasn't a surprise that the lights had been broken. Trust Dio to make the puzzle harder. But now that Phi was sure that one password was 'REMINISCENCE', the other must use the remaining letters: 'BEACON OF HOPE'.
Phi soon had the two safe passwords. She decided to first open up the safe with the password that would grant them the gold file. She retrieved the binder and flipped it open to the first page. As she could have guessed, the file described gaulems. Apparently the name was an acronym, standing for 'General-purpose AUtonomous Labour Electronic Machine'. The most interesting section of the file described, with diagrams, how the skeletal frame of the gaulem that she had already seen could be augmented by something called 'ABT' – that is, 'Artificial Biological Tissue' – making them almost indistinguishable from real human beings. Phi was very disturbed by that possibility.
Unfortunately, before she could read further Dio snatched the binder out of her hand. "Let me have a look," he scoffed. With a smirk plastered on his face, he leafed through the pages. "Very interesting…" he murmured. As Phi and Clover watched, Dio slipped the entire golden file securely into a pocket inside his coat.
"Hey! I didn't get to see that!" Clover shouted.
"Do you really think that matters to me?" Dio replied stubbornly.
Clearly unable to retrieve the gold file from where it was ensconced inside Dio's coat, Clover took the next best thing. "Fine," she said, "But I get to open it up the second time. I'm not gonna let you do something like that again."
Once Phi had told Clover the other safe password, Clover opened up the safe and gazed at the items in the main safe compartment. First out were two AB keycards, this time with a crescent moon symbol on them instead of a sun: Clover passed one over her shoulder to Dio, keeping the second to herself.
Next came another map, this time showing the second floor: 'Floor B'. Phi could see that the rooms on this floor were arranged into four groups, corresponding to the three Chromatic Doors, red, green and blue, as well as another large room – presumably another warehouse – and other rooms behind it that couldn't be accessed until one of the puzzles was solved.
After the map came another piece of paper with printed text on it. The size of the font was quite small, so Phi couldn't see it from behind Clover, but fortunately Clover read it out loud. "'Hare are some more AB Game rules for you. Not voting is not an hoption. If both parties refuse to vote, then everybunny gets penalised!'"
That was annoying. It removed one of the easiest strategies for getting everyone to ally with each other: just prevent anyone from entering AB rooms so that everyone's vote defaulted to 'Ally'. Well, it wasn't as if Zero Sr. would have missed such an obvious trick.
Finally Clover took the exit door key from the safe and passed it to Phi. "Well? We've got the key!" Clover snapped as she closed the safe door, "Let's get out of here already!"
Clover's piercing expression made that an unignorable command. Phi, still holding the key, walked back over to the exit door. Dio and Clover followed her. That had been one tough puzzle, but the satisfying feeling of solving it made it worthwhile. There was only one last thing to do. Phi placed the key in the lock.
"Phwoar, you're hot!" A deep, cockney voice boomed from behind her. Phi span around to see the gaulem that had been lying inert on the workbench now sitting casually on the edge, legs spread cheekily wide.
"Um, what?" Phi replied, nonplussed.
"Yeah, that was me," the robot said, "Phwoar, you're hot, Phi."
Oh god, the robot was attempting to flirt with her. Flustered, Phi advanced on the gaulem, channelling all her indignation into her expression. "Say. That. One more time."
It seemed that even soulless robots could be intimidated. "Um, what I meant, guv'nor, is I can see the heat coming off your body. Infrared vision, see? Comes standard with gaulem bodies. See, your temperature's rising right now."
"Um, Mister Gaulem?" Clover piped up, "How come you know Phi's name?"
"Course I know her name," the robot said, chuckling, "I'm right familiar with all your names: you too, Clover, and Dio, all nine of you. Young master Zero's keeping an eye on the lot of you with these cameras, right?" As he said this, the gaulem's hand gestured around the room. "He keeps the videos in the mainframe. And I'm in the mainframe too, so it's right easy for me to take a quick peek."
"I think you're confused, Mister Gaulem," Clover said sympathetically, "You're not in the mainframe. You're in the gaulem bay with the three of us."
"Well, me body's here, of course. But I'm a computer program, so I get to keep me noggin wherever I feel like it." Clover was about to speak again, but the robot spoke over her. "And what's with this 'Mister Gaulem' business. That ain't right. I mean, all me mates along the walls are gaulems as well. I wouldn't go along calling you all 'human', would I? I've got me own name: it's GTM-CM-G-OLM."
"I'm sorry, GTM-CM-G-OLM," Clover said meekly.
"How the hell were you able to remember all that rubbish?!" Dio snapped.
"Well, I've had a lot of practice memorising stuff," Clover replied defensively, "Just because I'm a bit airheaded at times doesn't mean I'm not good at stuff."
"Hey, Dio, are you taking the mickey out of me name?"
As tempers rose, Phi intervened. "How about a compromise? Take the last four letters: 'G-OLM'. It's something we can remember and pronounce, like 'golem'. That ok?"
"It'll do," 'G-OLM' said, "Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, I was talking about how us gaulems can put our minds in different places. So even though this is me body, it's just the one I'm using right now. I could use any of the other gaulem bodies you see, or even one for another type of robot entirely. One of me mates lent me his body while this one was out, he had X-ray vision. Cool, right? Course, bloody nothing emits X-rays, so he was really just blind most of the time, if I'm honest." G-OLM glanced towards Phi thoughtfully. "That ain't something humans can do, innit? You don't get the chance to look out at the world through a mate's body like that. That's why, when I made a perfectly innocent comment about infrared vision, you all thought I was saying something skeevy to an incredibly fit young bird." – Phi sighed, but let G-OLM continue – "Well, it's not like no humans ever have had the chance to look at the world in infrared. Now, look at that geezer, Sigma. I bet he gets a lot of perks out of that eye of his."
That made sense. Phi was already sure that Sigma's artificial eye was a custom fit. It wouldn't be surprising if it had custom features as well. Even if infrared wasn't part of the normal human visual experience, there had to be some way to allow the brain to interpret infrared light seen by an artificial eye. Such an ability would be incredibly useful in the puzzles of the Nonary Game. Where the other players had to search thoroughly through all the items of each room to distinguish the useful ones from the red herrings, Sigma would be able to tell which items had been moved recently from a distance, just from the extra clues seen by his eye.
G-OLM continued. "So, it'd be really difficult for any of you to imagine what things look like from where I'm looking. Well, now that I mention it, can any of you really imagine what things look like from each other's point of view?"
"Of course we can! We're all human, so everything should look the same to all of us, obviously," Dio said, "… Though I'm beginning to have doubts about what the hell's going on in Clover's simple little mind."
"You take that back!" Clover objected, "Wait, what did you say, again?"
"Cor blimey! You think it's really that obvious, Dio?" G-OLM responded, "How would you know? Imagine there was some other bloke, saw the sky as red. You'd think it'd be right easy to sort out, wouldn't you? You'd ask him, 'What colour's the sky?' and he'd go, 'Red!' and you've got him, right? But no! 'Cause he's always seen the sky as red, right from when he was little nipper. So his old man would have taught him that the sky was blue, and whatever shade he saw the sky as, he'd call it blue, 'cause that's what his old man told him. So when you ask, 'What colour's the sky?' he'd reply, 'Blue!'"
"So it's not obvious at all," Phi agreed.
"Yeah, it's all about how your head's screwed on and wired up. Now, one thing's true, Phi. Any bloke, no matter how his head's screwed on, would say you're one fit bird."
Phi glared.
"You've got a face that no bloke like me would ever be likely to forget…"
Phi glared, harder.
"I don't suppose you'd let me off if I said that was just my way of saying that computers have perfect memories, would you?"
"You're just a robot!" Phi yelled, "Where do you get off, pretending you can feel romantic? You're just a computer program, designed by Zero Sr. to screw with us."
"That's mighty cruel of you, Phi," G-OLM replied, his entire posture shifting back where he was sitting, "Tell you what, though. I'll make it up to you. I can't do much from where I am inside the mainframe, not with the young master watching, but I should be able to jimmy open next-door for you."
"Next-?" Clover asked.
"You didn't notice those other couple of doors, guv'nor? This place has as many little shortcuts as the east end. Zero set it up so you'd only go the one way, but there's no reason why you shouldn't have a butcher's at some of the other rooms down here. Even the safe in there's hooked up to the mainframe as well, so you won't need to solve the puzzle." G-OLM's body stopped moving and stared into space as his processing capacity was engaged elsewhere, until eventually he popped back, saying, "Done it."
"Thanks, GTM-CM-G-OLM!" Clover said cheerily.
"Truth to tell, I was prob'ly going to do that anyway. I was asked to have a butcher's at it by me dear old sis, said next-door would…"
Suddenly, G-OLM's voice was cut off. Replacing it was a cold announcement: "Product ID GTM-CM-G-OLM has exceeded parameters. Returning GTM-CM-G-OLM to within parameters." A small but sharp crack burst from the back of G-OLM's neck and the robot collapsed forward. "GTM-CM-G-OLM has been returned to within parameters: now inactive."
The three of them stared at G-OLM's inert skeleton. Phi wondered exactly what G-OLM had meant by his 'dear old sis' and why next-door was so important. Mostly, however, she was just glad there was no more chance of the lewd robot embarrassing her.
"You know what?" she said firmly, "Let's never speak of this again."
This fanfic has branching storylines. To keep track of the various storylines, a link to the Flow Diagram is provided in my Author Profile.
This is probably the point where I break canon furthest: in the game they enter the treatment centre and the gaulem bay only opens later. I swapped this round for a few reasons:
1) There are already too many cases where Phi enters the same room in different timelines and I wanted to reduce that number. The other time Phi enters the treatment centre is even harder to change because it's the one where we get 999 background for Clover's route, so this one had to change
2) I'm guessing that the game's intention was that Luna opened the gaulem bay, just as she hacked open the treatment centre in her own route. Problem is, I can't think of a single reason for her doing so. There's even less of a reason for her opening the safe; the only thing in there of importance is K's key. If the explanation is that Luna opened the safe just so K could get his key because she knew they were on VLR's K route, well, that's just inelegant. I dismiss it.
3) The gaulem bay really fits some of the themes I have planned for this route. I won't say any more because spoilers.
4) Finally and most importantly, G-OLM is awesome. :) It would be absolutely criminal for me to not include him in this fanfic somewhere.