Prequel

Epilogue Three

Atom's Siblings

I can't recall Dr. Ochanomizu ever being happier since the day that he brought Atom home to live with him. My supervisor had often been a grumpy old man having to deal with Dr. Tenma, who while he was a genius, was also the most cold hearted bastard I've ever met.

Ochanomizu has never been regarded as the expert on robots as he should be. He's always had to stand in the shadow of Tenma, and even now that the evil genius is in hiding someplace and my boss is now in charge of the entire Institute, he's still being compared to Tenma. How unfair! It was Ochanomizu that designed and built my robot pet and loyal assistant Momo. Of course I did make a few changes in Momo's AI to suit my own tastes, I also have a degree in Robotology!

Ochanomizu was able to repair one of the Nora nannybots that Tenma had left deactivated in the storeroom. One of them may have even been the very same one that had tended to his real son Tobio. In the beginning Atom was quite a handful and neither of us could watch him full time. Not that Nora was up to the task either! The very first day that he had been activated, Atom fearlessly crawled out onto the roof and was playing Tarzan outside of the Institutes buildings. He managed to fall and rediscovered his ability to fly, which had the police busy all day!

The idea to enroll Atom in school with human children was one of the best decisions that Ochanomizu ever made for the boy robot. I could see how happy he was to interact with the kids his same equivalent age. Yet, something still appeared to be missing.

A few month's less than a year after Atom was reborn, Inspector Tawashi and I were exploring the burn out remains of Tenma's house. The city wanted to either have it torn down, or repaired, as it was an eyesore. Nothing had been done with it because the police had kept it listed as a crime scene. With Dr. Tenma still on the loose, and the house having become an attractive nuisance with the local teenagers, the police decided to go through the place once more to gather evidence before tuning the house over to the city to do whatever they wanted to with it.

I discovered several family photographs among the ruins, including one of Tobio and a younger girl who looked like she was his sister. I showed that photo to Dr. Ochanomizu, and he knew right away who she was.

"That's Urania, Tobio's younger sister." he told me. "She was my goddaughter as Tobio was my godson. She's a very tragic story. Hoshie Tenma ran away from Uma, and took Urania with her. Dr. Tenma hired a detective to get her back, and eventually got a court order giving him sole custody of the girl. Inspector Tawashi found them, but in her flight, Hoshie and Urania were killed in a traffic accident with a street railway train."

I shed a few tears thinking about that while I held the photograph. A thought suddenly crossed my mind.
"Doesn't Atom have Tobio's memories?" I asked.

"Yes he does, though most of them are highly suppressed. Why?" Ochanomizu replied.

"Well the thought occurred to me that Atom could benefit from having a little brother or sister to look after." I suggested.

"You know, that reminds me. Dr. Tenma started to design a robot in the image of Urania as a replacement for her, but he never built it. I think I know where the blueprints for it are."

We entered what had been the burnt out advanced robotics laboratory that Dr. Tenma had tried to set on fire. All of Tenma's hard drawings that hadn't been burned or damaged in the blaze, were now stored in the back room, which had not been damaged. Ochanomizu went though several filing cabinets before finding a capped rolled tube which contained several sheets of large drafting paper.

"Ah ha!" He exclaimed "I've found them!"

He unrolled the drawings on a desk and we both examined them. The plans were at least 80% complete, there were more than enough details to work out the rest of the design.

"What isn't described here can be figured out by examining Atom's blueprints, for which I have at least 95% of the details." He said.

Ochanomizu spent the next few months working in the laboratory building the robot that would become Atom's little sister, Uran. He based her AI on Atom's, and I helped tweak it a bit to add the feminine touch. Uran was designed to have the mentality of a seven to eight year old female human child. I wondered if seeing her would trigger any of Tobio's memories of Urania in Atom. I hoped that the love that the little boy had for his sister would also be present in Atom.

One year to the day that Atom had been reactivated, we had a birthday party for him. Dr. Ochanomizu brought a large box into his house and had a ribbon and bow tied around it for a gift wrap. I thought it a strange way to give someone a new sibling, but Ochanomizu always had a flare for the dramatic. Atom could have used his x-ray vision to see into the box, but being a boy at heart, he also loved surprises. As soon as he pulled the ribbon off and raised the lid of the box he was thrown backwards as his new sister leaped into his arms to give him a hug. She still didn't know her strength, which was just about half of Atom's 100,000 horse power.

The very first thing that Uran wanted to do was to explore the world and get in trouble. She dragged Atom all over Metro City that day, and I think he almost wished that she didn't exist by day's end! However shortly after that one of the local thugs spotted Uran and used her innocence against her, to kidnap her and hold her for ransom. Not a very good idea, you don't want to incur Atom's wrath! Atom searched the city for her, and brought the criminals to justice. He and Uran have been bonded as close siblings ever since.

I hadn't realized that Atom wasn't the first kokoro AI robot that Tenma had ever built. He actually had built a failed prototype years earlier. I also hadn't realized that it had been Tobio's idea. The sub-basement of the Institute of Science was a huge junkyard full of failed projects that for one reason or another were never scrapped, but rather held onto 'just in case'. About two years after taking over as director, I discovered a computer inventory listing of what might be down there. One of the items was marked as belonging to a Tobio Tenma. That peaked my curiosity.

Yuko, Atom and myself ended up spelunking in the lower level of the store rooms. It was a good idea to bring Atom along because most of the lights down there no longer worked and he used his eye searchlights so we could see our way around. My predecessor obviously had no map making skills because the computer listings were totally inaccurate, and bore no relationship to reality in describing the layout of the catacombs we found ourselves in. I do not exaggerate when I say that the lower sub-basement of the Institute looks like something out of a description written by Edgar Allen Poe!

We finally found the area in which items from the desired time frame would have been placed into storage. Atom's excellent eyesight enabled him to locate the crate in question without having to move several dozen of them out of the way first. There wasn't any room to open the box down in the crypt, so Atom hoisted it onto his shoulders and carried it back to the elevators and we brought it back upstairs with us.

Now in the laboratory, I started to look for a crowbar to pry open the wooden crate. Atom's curiosity was operating at a more hyper level than mine, and he didn't need any tools to open the box, he simply grabbed at each board with his fingers and pulled them apart. Looking in the box, Atom reacted as if he had seen a ghost. As soon as I got my first glance at the contents I could see why.

Lying in the box was a partially disassembled robot. It looked slightly macabre as its head had been removed and was sitting between its hands, IE: the robot was holding its own head. I surmised this had been done to fit it inside a smaller box. Other than its height, nearly a full head taller than Atom, the robot could have been his twin brother. The two pointy cowlicks on the top of its head were longer and thinner than Atom's, and it had a cobalt blue band around its waist where Atom's is green. I examined the robots head, and using a finger to pull one eye open found that it had cobalt blue eyes, where Atom's are dark brown.

Yuko and I spent the next week reassembling and reactivating the robot. Yuko had first downloaded the AI from the robot and pointed out to me several errors in the coding. I could see how Tenma's software had improved from the time he built this robot to when Atom had been assembled, and it was a simple matter to repair the bad subroutines.

Atom was on hand when we first brought his 'brother' to life.

"Hello, and welcome back!" I said. "Do you have a name?"

The robot took a few minutes to stabilize before answering.

"Hello, my name is Cobalt. Where is my brother?"

Atom smiled and and introduced himself.

"High brother Cobalt, my name is Atom."

I really expected Cobalt to question Atom and ask about Tobio, but he didn't. Maybe he had lost that part of his memory, or he simply accepted that things had changed since he had last been activated, I really don't know. Cobalt was never as, well, perfect as Atom was. He did have a certain charm to him, and was just as lovable. Atom and Cobalt bonded instantly. Uran accepted her new brother, but she didn't adore him as she did Atom. Still, all three of them got along very well. We now had quite a family.

I wasn't always happy being the youngest sibling. Both Atom and Cobalt were my older brothers, Atom was actually the middle one since Cobalt was technically older, even though he was reactivated last. I don't know how many times I bugged Dr. Ochanomizu for a younger brother or sister, but he wouldn't listen to me. I guess he thought that the three of use were quite enough, and he had better things to do than build more robots. Of course when money was involved he changed his mind.

It seemed that in some small country in Europe a royal family wanted a child. They wanted to adopt because they couldn't have kids of their own. I guess Atom and I must have been in the news and they read about us, because they wanted a robot child just like me or Atom. Only, they wanted a baby version of one of us! I think they must have been crazy.

Anyway, I remember Doctor Ochanomizu getting this important looking letter on some expensive stationary from this place, and before I knew it, he was busy in the laboratory for weeks on end. I had no idea what he was doing, until he invited Atom, Cobalt, and myself into the lab to show off what he had done. OMG! I couldn't believe what I saw. There was this cutest little baby robot that looked like Atomu Ani! Ochanmizu had him wrapped in swaddling cloth, he looked just like Swe-Pea! He had this cutest little cowlick sticking up in the back of his head!

I held out my arms wanting to hold him, and Ochanomizu made the mistake of letting me. I looked into his big brown eyes and knew I wanted him as my baby brother.

"What's his name?" I asked.

"The royal family will give him one. I made him under a contract with a king and queen who wanted to adopt a baby. They asked for a robot and hired the Institute of Science and a few other robot experts to build them a baby. They'll chose which one they want." Ochanomizu explained.

"Well I hope they DON'T want him because I do." I whined. "And I'm calling him Chi-Tan!"

Both Ochanomizu and Atom face palmed. I pulled my lower eyelids down with my pinkie's at them.

Well to make a long story short, Chi-Tan got in a bit of trouble. The worst of it was when he crawled over to the queen while she was bent over talking to me, and he reached up and GOOSED HER! Boy did she JUMP! That did it, she picked a different robot baby and we were stuck with Chi-Tan.

BTW, don't tell anybody, but I taught Chi-Tan that goose trick!