Week 8 – UDC 7 - Disco!

Mistakes

Sargent Parks was used to the odd and the strange. After all, he was a police officer and didn't end up Sargent and watch commander of a police precinct by accident. There'd been work involved. So when he'd come on duty that night to find a strangely empty arrest log, it struck him as odd. More than odd… peculiar. They hadn't had a log that empty in four or five years!

Then their lone cyborg officer entered through the doors, opened his mouth in greeting, and it was explained in ten seconds flat to the strains of 20th century disco music.

Corrections

Robo spiked into a computer terminal after three attempts at speaking failed him, and Parks stood by as words (and a lot of gibberish symbols one would not normally use in polite conversation) started pouring across the screen: "Something wrong! Can't %)#(*$ arrest anyone with #(#*$& disco music coming out! Started mid-morning!"

Parks blinked. "Mid-morning?"

"Thought it would #*(#&$^ pass!"

"Oh." Parks considered the options. On the one hand, they'd needed something funny for a while, on the other… it really wasn't good to have someone with a grip of four hundred foot pounds this upset. "Why don't we go and see Charlie, and see if we can't get you talking normally, then."

Prank

Gadget watched from behind the booking desk as her adopted father led Robo back to the tech room, and couldn't stop grinning. Her tweak of the programming when Charlie had let her help had worked! A little too well, actually, given that Robo was more upset than she'd ever seen him, but it had worked!

She allowed herself another minute of grinning like a maniac before finding a non-obvious place to hide while Charlie fixed it. After all, if they couldn't find her and she had the alibi of doing her homework when they finally did, how could they suspect?

Sabotage

When he finally found the error, it was in a line of code meant for receiving radio wave transmissions. Charlie frowned and sat back. "That's strange."

"What is?" Parks asked.

"He's receiving radio wave transmissions from a radio station, and this other line of code is making it-"

"Broadcast vocally every time he tries to talk?"

Charlie paused. "Well yes."

A line of text appeared on the screen in front of him: "Can you just fix the #*&%$( thing?!"

Charlie smirked and nodded to the impatient cyborg. "Of course. Is there a radio station you'd rather be broadcasting?" The glare he received was worth it.

Revenge

For the next several weeks, Parks would catch Gadget grinning madly every time Robo stormed into the precinct house with another perpetrator, and had a good idea of just who might have inadvertently changed the lines of code, had the opportunity, and a likely motive. Charlie wouldn't have dared do it, but Gadget… she was young and mischievous, and had a history of lying before Robo had set her straight.

Finally, after one particularly hectic night, he sat down and looked at her seriously. "Your secret is safe with me."

Gadget blinked at him over her dinner. "Huh?"

"He'd never believe it was you, and no one got hurt. He was just really annoyed. Good prank."

She seemed to deflate. "People could have gotten hurt?"

"Yes. But no one did."

"I won't do it again, Sarge."

"Good."