Amundsen scrolled all the way to the top of the page to start reading from the beginning. He didn't know if he had the time to spare, but he knew that he had missed something, and the programming required greater scrutiny.
Gakupo slowly turned his head to look around. The effort it took to move was enormous, but he knew that if he was going to escape somehow, he would need to do it at least somewhat under his own power.
Or, what little power he had left.
Gakupo managed to look over his shoulder and he noticed a large window that showed Gakupo a scary, overgrown backyard with a dark, murky pond and eerie moss covered trees.
He would have turned his head back to watch the doctor scanning his programming, but something odd caught his eye. Gakupo looked closer at the window, and he noticed that it was not all made of the same glass. There was a rectangle of glass which reflected the light from the doctor's computer around its edges. Gakupo even saw a long, ornate door handle, like the ones used in stores.
"THAT must be the back way out of here! Gakupo realized as he allowed his head to swing limply forward and let his chin rest on his chest. He no longer wanted to move, it was too much effort. He almost wanted to doze off, but the image of Luka looking nervously over her shoulder kept him alert and awake.
Gakupo tried to breathe deeply and calmly. He tried to clear his mind of everything but Luka. He knew that she would be the driving force for his escape. He knew that she would be the sole source of power, if he could only focus on her.
"So, are you a consummate couple?" Amundsen asked suddenly startling Gakupo.
"What?"
"Are you a couple? You and the uh… the pink one." He asked grasping at the air as if trying to catch his thoughts like flittering moths.
"Luka?"
"That's it!"
"…Yes." Gakupo answered hesitantly.
"Mm," Amundsen responded passionately. "It's good to be in love. Enjoy it."
Gakupo said nothing. What could he say? He tried to clear his mind again and he decided to focus on the night on the hill with Luka.
It had been so cold, but his body had felt so hot. She was wearing a coarse nightgown, but she had felt so smooth. The night had been dark, but the lights shone so brightly. He remembered watching the colors dance off her pale face and thinking of Leia, woman of lies.
She was a work of art, the statue of a goddess, but she was so simple and earthy and real. It made his heart ache.
Gakupo closed his eyes and opened them again. It felt as though he had a little more control over his body than before.
Amundsen sighed. "…hurts."
Gakupo listened curiously, full of wonder.
"Being in love hurts sometimes. Enjoy it." Amundsen remarked cryptically.
Gakupo wondered if Amundsen was trying to make a point based on a life experience, or if he was just a little bit crazy.
Truthfully, at the moment he was both. He was finished analyzing Gakupo's programing for the last time, and he now knew the samurai so well that if he tossed a ball at him, he could tell what hand Gakupo would catch it with.
But he still couldn't find what he was searching for.
Amundsen felt his chest quiver and he briefly wondered if he was going to start laughing, or crying. He waited but nothing came except a small grin.
He was sitting in his lab, looking at a multi-million dollar robot that he had stolen, with its owner coming to take it back by force. He was sixty-four years old with a simple dream, which now he knew might never come true.
And it was all because he couldn't find the programming.
Amundsen was no fool. He knew that the end of life was approaching. "This little stunt," He warned himself "counts as your mid-life crisis. Nothing else."
"This little stunt." Amundsen grimaced. How in the world had it gotten this far? This wasn't like him at all.
In fact it seemed more like the script from a bad suspense novel than reality. How had Amundsen come to play the desperate villain?
It had all happened so fast. One moment it was just a passing thought, with no more worth than a daydream. Now he was sitting here across from Gakupo while Master crept through the halls of his house, plotting his demise.
Amundsen scrolled back up the page on Gakupo's programming until he found the motor and motion chunk of programming. He highlighted four lines that had been squeezed in between lines for movement and he deleted them.
"What…did you…do?" Gakupo stuttered horrified. He watched as the blue letters disappeared from his body forever and his breath caught in his chest. "A piece of him had just disappeared!" He realized.
"I've deleted my virus." Amundsen said opening a search engine. "I call it 'Juniper' fondly. Its effects are remarkable, better than I had hoped; but as soon as I synch you to my computer, you should be free to move about.
"As a show of courtesy, would you please refrain from killing me when you can move? I would really appreciate it."
Gakupo was astonished. He realized that Amundsen would really let him leave, no strings attached.
"Just one thing." Amundsen added. "When you see your Master, tell her to leave me alone."
Amundsen picked up a small child's toy off the floor and held it out away from his body studying it. It was a female frog with yellow yarn hair and pink lipstick. Amundsen thought it was positively grotesque.
"Tonight has been full of disappointments. I only have one hope left, but if this fails as well, tell her to let an old man die as he lived. Alone."
Amundsen began typing words into the search engine, which re-scanned Gakupo's programming looking for phrases with those key words.
He typed in "Happy."
The computer came up with song lyrics, but nothing else.
He typed in "Sad."
The computer came up with the title of a book: "Why do rain clouds make me sad?" But nothing else.
Amundsen typed in "dreams" and he found a poem which he thought suited him:
"The king of dreams
sits on his throne,
He's never asleep,
He's never alone."
He also found a flood of song lyrics which he scanned through quickly, but nothing else.
Amundsen paused a moment typing in the words he really wanted to find, but before he could steady his trembling fingertips something crashed against his back window.
Something strong.
"Lazarus Tobias Amundsen!" Master shouted full of rage. "Open this goddamn door!"
Amundsen's blood turned to ice. "No." he told himself. "It can't be."
Gakupo turned and peered over his shoulder. With a rush of relief he saw Luka, standing at the window while Master and Gumi took turns smashing against the glass.
Luka caught Gakupo's eye and she felt a surge of power. Not only was he alive, but he was right there. She could have reached out to touch him, if not for the glass in between them.
Amundsen realized that the fans were unreliable. They hadn't even slowed down the Master. He shouted at the window "FINE! YOU'RE HERE! BUT YOU CAN'T GET IN, THE GLASS IS BULLET PROOF!"
Master looked at the frame of the door and Amundsen whispered. "You're just going to have to let me finish." It had been so long since he'd spoken to anyone; his voice was hoarse and irritated from the strain of shouting.
Master laughed and waved Amundsen over to the glass. He took a single step forward, but he refused to walk past Gakupo.
Master leaned in close to the glass and spoke in a low tone: "Yes, you've really outdone yourself this time Amundsen, you've made a fortress that is virtually impenetrable, but I'll tell you what…
"The hinges to this door are on the outside." Master said with an evil gleam in her eyes.
Amundsen quickly scanned the glass door for the hinges. It was true. They were outside with Master.
"What, what, what, what are you going to do Nicolai?"" Amundsen said reaching up nervously to fix his glasses which had fallen down the brim of his nose.
Master pulled a hammer out of her pocket. She had forgotten to put it away when she left the house, but she as glad it had come in handy. With a mighty battle cry she swung the hammer with all of her might on the small roll of metal above her head, which gave a shattering "CLA-ANG"
Amundsen cried out in surprise. He knew that there were only two hinges and in mere moments she would have them both off. With one blow she had already disfigured the top hinge into a crinkled, crumpled piece of splitting metal; just barely hanging together.
Amundsen jumped back to his keyboard and tried to steady his shaking hands, but he couldn't focus over the ringing of metal.
"CLA-ANG, CLA-ANG, CLA-ANG"
He tried to type but his fingers kept missing the keys. One of his cuts re-opened and spilled dark blood all over the keys, obscuring the letters and making it hard to see.
"kovr, lobe, lovr…" Amundsen was at his wit's end. He brushed the keys off with his sleeve and finally got the right word: "Love."
Gakupo's screen lit up with countless lyrics to hundreds of songs, but Amundsen rolled through them quickly.
Luka mouthed words to Gakupo through the glass. Gakupo read her lips carefully. "Are you hurt?"
Gakupo mouthed back "No… nice…man." But Luka looked confused. She didn't understand, she thought she had read wrong.
"What?" She mouthed back as Master put her full weight into the hammer's final swing on the bottom hinge.
"Hoaaaaah!" she cried as the hammer hit, then knocked off the last hinge. The twisted piece of battered metal fell of and bounced away into the yard out of sight.
Gumi kicked the door and it swung open backwards before totally falling to the floor with a massive clatter.
Amundsen looked around in total panic. He needed something…Anything to give him a chance!
Anything to get him out with her!
He spotted the shaft of a knife sticking out of a book. He'd put it there to hold his place, but now he pulled it out sending the pile of books toppling to the floor.
He leapt over to Gakupo and turned the chair towards Master with what felt like the last of his strength. Before she could take more than a breath he had pressed the knife against Gakupo's cheek and bellowed out an inhuman word, sounding like the maniac she probably already took him for.
Amundsen began to wonder if maybe he was, just a little bit crazy.