chapter 52: Flying Saucer
"Wha- Ataru? How did you-", Meiko gasped, pointing at the ceiling as Ataru walked right into the Motosuwa's apartment. "But I thought you were in... Up there. Outer space."
"Oh, I'm just dropping in for now", Ataru replied with a smile, giving the "ssh" gesture. "The way things are on Earth now, I'll be making my home in space for the most part."
"So, did they beam you down?", Angus asked with a slight smirk, "Or is your flying saucer parked on the roof?"
"Funny you should mention that", Ataru replied, glancing upwards for a moment. "It is parked on the roof. But I think it looks enough like a big air-conditioning unit that no one'll notice."
"This I gotta see", Chi announced, a look of curiosity in her eyes, and soon the 5 of them found themselves up on the roof, in lawn chairs pulled from the top-floor storage room.
"It does look a lot like an air-conditioning unit", Hideki observed, giving the craft a serious look. "Did you paint it up special, just to land on rooftops?"
"No, it's a chameleon", Ataru replied. "We've outfitted it with radar-absorbing skin and an automatic camouflage that's vaguely similar to LCD. You'd have a tough time detecting it in any conditions, unless it eclipsed a star or something."
"You must have some pretty good ships, if you could dodge those nukes", Meiko surmised, and Ataru nodded. "Bit of a story, that", he told them. "You're not pressed for time, are you?"
"We'c'n stay up as late as you can", Angus replied. "We don't've to work tomorrow."
And so, under the dull orange glow of a moonless city night, Ataru told them about their escape from the Earth's nuclear assault.
Flashback Time! (wavy-sepia-vignette effect)
"Hey Obsequia, you'll never guess who's coming to visit us", Spaz and Darryl radioed the asteroid as they were backing away from the several approaching "ships" they had just figured out were actually nukes. "Time to pack up and leave our rocky little world, I think... We're getting evicted."
"Evicted- what, are they sending an invasion force instead of a rescue mission?", Obsequia responded in confusion. "How many is it? What are you talking about, anyway?"
"Well, it's only three of 'em", Spaz told her almost nonchalantly. "But they're all atom bombs."
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!", Obsequia shrieked over the radio. "What are they nuking us for?!"
"Heck if I know", Spaz answered. "I'm guessing they didn't like that little meteor we threw. We looked at maybe trying to alter their course, but they're already locked on target and won't accept any command input."
"Well... what does their ETA look like from where you are?", she asked in an annoyed tone. "We got time to pack up everything, or do we need to bug out?"
"It's at least 31 hours", Darryl told her, checking his readings. "Trouble is, aint none of the ships been tested, except for this'n."
"Well, I guess we'll be testing them now", Obsequia groaned.
The next thing she did was post the evacuation alert. "Attention everyone: Three nuclear missiles are headed our way, ETA 31 hours. EVACUATE! Pack up everything of value and I mean everything!"
In seconds, everyone had dropped whatever they were doing and were busily packing everything but the kitchen sink (which, being in space, they didn't have one) into the two larger ships. And in less than 2 hours, they were ready to power up the levcoils and take off.
The bus-sized ship, laden with persocoms and cargo, Neko at the radio, floated gracefully away from the asteroid and paused nearby, waiting for the much larger one to follow. "We're ready any time you are", Neko radioed.
"It's not working!", Obsequia replied from the spherical behemoth. "There must be a break somewhere in the lev-yarn, or a loose connection or something, because when we try to apply the current, there's nothing!"
"Should we go on ahead?", Neko asked, "or hang around and wait for you?"
"Neither", Sheeps cut in sharply, opening the garage doors. "Tow us, we'll do the troubleshooting enroute."
Emerging from the garage area with a long thin metal I-beam and several shacklebolts, Sheeps began connecting the two ships together. "This ought to hold about 2 tonnes", he told Neko. "Try to keep it as close to that as possible without going over."
Gradually turning up the levcoil current, the crew of the bus-sized ship began to accelerate the larger ship away from the asteroid, keeping the I-beam connecting them within its estimated 2 tonne limit.
Spaz and Darryl soon returned from their brief excursion and joined the tractor-pull, along with Ataru at the helm of the other tiny ship.
"Is this gonna get us far enough away in time?", Ataru asked. "I mean, how big of a kablammo do those things make, anyway?"
"We'll be far enough away to survive", Sheeps replied reassuringly. "Although, it'll be gettin' a wee bit hot. We'll want to be inside of a ship when those things go off.. or at least, not have a direct view."
And so, as they were being towed away, as most were either seeing to the towing, or busy trying to figure out why the largest ship's levcoil wasn't working, a few were setting up a pinhole camera... A big piece of scrap metal with a tiny hole drilled in the middle of it, and a good distance behind that, a flat piece of white plastic onto which the suitably dimmed-down image would be projected for safe viewing.
"Mind the pull!", Sheeps warned in an alarmed tone. "When I told'ya that was a two-tonne I-beam, I didn't mean it could take two and a half!"
"It sounds like things were tough up there", Chi cut in. "But you didn't want to worry us, right?"
"Well, it wasn't all a cake-walk", Ataru admitted. "We were towing nonstop for like 29 hours, and it was kind of worrisome. I mean, at any point, any number of things coulda gone wrong. If ALL the levcoils had failed, we'd've been toast."
"So, that metal thing was your 'tractor beam'", Hideki joked in an obvious Trekkie reference, causing the others to groan and roll their eyes at him. "Seriously, though", he responded to their groans, "my dad's tractor in Hokkaido has one of those things."
"Ohh, this is soooo weird", Portland whined, staring out at the now-distant asteroid, once they'd gained some serious distance from it. "Now that we're leaving it, the whole world looks like nothing but a tiny little jagged rock."
"Yeah, we've spent our whole lives on that thing", Ren added, his face one of many plastered against the tempered-glass portals. "I feel like we ought to be helping out with something."
"I dunno if we can", one of the other kids cut in, her eyes wide. "We haven't really done that much yet... I bet we'd just be in the way."
"You're probably right", Ren sighed, still looking out the window. "A delicate operation like this is best left to more experienced..."
"Showtime, folks", Ataru announced over shipwide WiFi. Having parked the tiny ship he'd been flying in in the garage, he and several other persocoms lay back against the metal plate, looking at the plastic screen, ready to watch the dimmed-down image of nukes going off and broadcast the video feed to everyone else. "Anyone with a direct view, now's the time to take cover."
The kids closed the shutters on the windows they'd been looking out of, and, along with most of the astrocoms, tuned in to the video feed.
"Get ready", Sheeps announced. "It should be going off in about 12 seconds..."
And sure enough, about 12 seconds later, the first rocket blew up.
A plume of dull-orange flame expanded outwards. Bits of red-hot metal flew in all directions. The whole thing cratered itself into the asteroid, throwing showers of rocks and twisted metal and burning fuel into space.
All in all, it was a much dimmer image than anyone expected.
"Is that a nuke is supposed to look like?!", Darryl asked in confusion. "I woulda thought it'd make a bigger bang than that!"
"That was no atomic blast!", Sheeps declared, giving Darryl a suspicious look. "Are you sure you detected plutonium in that thing? What if it really was just a booby-trapped spaceship?"
"Well, it had that round ball thing in it", Spaz cut in. "And it was too dense to be anything but plutonium!"
"I'm gonna try and get a better look at that debris field", Sheeps announced, leaning out the door for just a split-second. "If there's persocoms or parts of persocoms in the debris, we'll have to- BLOODY HELL!"
Blinking his eyes profusely, sheeps quickly ducked back inside the ship. In that split-second, the second missile had detonated.
"Holy crap, Sheeps, are you okay?!", Neko gasped.
"Do I look okay?!", Sheeps responded grumpily. "Bloody hell, it just had to go off at that exact instant..."
"Well... Your head looks a little scorched, but otherwise...", Neko told him, handing him a small piece of mirror-finish metal. "Here, see for yourself."
"If that's a mirror you just handed me, I can't use it", Sheeps replied. "You'll have to send me a video feed; I'm blind as a bat."
The pinhole camera had made for a spectacular view, and nearly everyone was tuned in to the video feed from those watching the projection. As for the ship itself, the anti-micrometeorite plating was taking the radiation okay. That is, it wasn't melting yet. Although, the shielding and the pinhole-camera plate were both getting pretty hot. The other ships, parked safely in the larger one's shadow, were still plenty cool when the nuclear fireball faded to a dim red.
"I wonder what it looks like now", Ataru wondered out loud, looking at a pinhole-camera image that had become too dim to see clearly.
Carefully positioning himself just far enough beyond the edge of the metal shield to see the asteroid but not the final approaching missile (lest it detonate while he was looking), Ataru took a quick direct look at the nuked little world before ducking back inside the ship. The oblong asteroid had always had a slight fault line along its middle, and after two missile hits, it was beginning to split open.
Then the third missile arrived.
Possibly confused by the changes in its target's shape, the final atomic missile sailed right into the widening crack, disappearing deep into the asteroid before detonating. The explosion ripped their tiny world to bits, sending chunks of all sizes flying in every direction.
"Sheeps!", Obsequia called out, grabbing his hand. "They're printing you out some new eyes now. Have you done a full system check yet?"
"A full WHAT?", Sheeps demanded, a confused expression in his blinded eyes. "What do you think I AM, anyway, an amoeba?"
"You think we should bust their illusion?", Darryl asked Obsequia as she was headed for the repair area with Sheeps. "Radio 'em a nice loud 'Nyah, ya missed me', or something?"
"No", Obsequia answered, her reply echoed by a clear majority. "For now, let's just let the humans think they've killed us all. We have plenty of time to decide what to do."
"I bet they're having a party back on Earth", Ataru hissed. "They're probably all watching through some observatory and dancing in the streets thinking we all just got massacred."
"They must be maniacs or something", a group of young spaceocoms mumbled, staring wide-eyed at the shattered remains of their little asteroid world, the only world they'd ever known. (Ren and Portland weren't the only ones to have been built there on the asteroid)
(end of flashback)
"It sounds like that Sheeps took some real damage", Chi commented in a concerned tone.
"Yeah, his whole OS ended up crashing", Ataru sighed. "They managed to get him going again, and recovered most of his data, but he still has a lot of stuff to relearn."
"Man, I'd probably be DEAD if I got my head nuked", Hideki stated the obvious. "All that radiation..."
"Well technically, Sheeps was dead too, for about three hours", Ataru replied. "It's just... We don't know how to bring a dead human back to life."
"Not yet, anyway", Chi responded with an almost sneaky look.
"(Chi's studying to be Dr. Frankenstein)", Hideki added, and The Lelaghs exchanged confused glances as Chi and Hideki sat snickering at what must have seemed an inside joke.
"Is Sheeps Irish?", Angus asked. "I'm just askin' because o' the way you imitate his accent."
"I think he's Scottish", Ataru replied. "Used to be a sheepherder's assistant, up in the highlands."
"Of course, it wasn't really my escapades in space you came here to hear, right?", he added, glancing over at Meiko.
"True", Meiko sighed resolutely. "Although, hearing about all that has made me feel a bit better already. But yeah, about Yuka. Her college days and stuff... And if there's any of it that's none of our business, feel free to say so."
And so, for the next several hours, Ataru, along with Chi and Hideki, told Yuka's parents about the adventures they'd had with Yuka. Stuff Meiko and Angus hadn't heard about about from their daughter... The friends she'd made in class... Her habit of blowing bubbles in her latte at the Funky Eel Cafe... The details of the cool science projects she and Chi had shared...
And, in dead seriousness, he described to them the scene of that fatal crash from his own inside perspective, sharing a tearful group hug as they all remembered her together.
A few of their questions he chose not to answer. Some things about Yuka were, after all, only for Ataru to know.
But then, most of what they're discussing is stuff you already knew about, so let's drop in on the Kokobunjis for now.
"Guess I missed that mission", Yatsumi surmised when she awoke on the repair table to the sight of Freya leaning over her, gazing into her eyes as they opened. "How'd it go?"
"Well, I made it back in one piece", Freya replied vaguely.
"Doesn't exactly sound like a victory speech", Yatsumi stated slyly. "Mario give you a rough time or something?"
"Mam-ma mia", Freya quipped in a fake Italian accent, hand gestures to go along with it. "I tell him, if he take a me to any more girder-climbing jobs he go a straight a to Hades."
"That bad, huh?", Yatsumi giggled.
"Nah, I'm just joking around", Freya replied with a devious smile. "We didn't get shot at, and I think he found the stuff he was looking for."
"Let's see if you can stand up", Benika cut in. "Carefully at first."
Freya and 3 maids stood back as Yatsumi tried out her newly-repaired wiring.
"Looks like everything is back to normal", Yatsumi reported, doing a few fancy dance moves to test her servos.
Muffled gasps from the living room interrupted their conversation. The peeping-room brawl had made the news.
Freya and the maid crew wandered into the living room to find Minoru in a full facepalm, and Yuzuki staring in shock at the TV.
"Kokobunji persocom involved in peeping-room brawl", the anchorman announced with what looked like glee. "Isn't that just what you'd expect from a teenager?!"
"That's not a fair thing to say", Yatsumi complained at the TV. "Minoru's always been..."
"Seriously, I didn't know she was being used in that kind of way", Minoru's voice squawked from the TV, a phone icon showing on the screen. "The guy said he had a good easy job she could do on the side. I guess... I've just been too trusting of people."
"They already called you?", Yatsumi gasped.
"Yeah, they called while you were being repaired", Minoru replied depressedly.
"So let me get this straight", the phone interviewer had asked. "You didn't KNOW your persocom was working in a peeping room, and pole-dancing in bars?"
"No I- Wait a minute", Minoru had responded. "What do you mean, POLE dancing?!"
Raucous laughter could be faintly heard on the other end of the phone line. "So, I guess you're putting a stop to THAT, then?"
"Well I was going to take some legal action, but from what I hear, that brawl pretty much put a stop to things already", Minoru had told them over the phone. "Wrecked their whole operation, didn't it?"
"You're not taking any action, then?", the news guy had asked.
"I consider the matter closed", was Minoru's response.
"I... Sorry, Minoru", Yatsumi groaned, once the news story was over. "I never stopped to consider your feelings."
"Well, what's done is done", Minoru groaned. "I just hope the repercussions don't spread to my clients."
"Your .. clients?", Yatsumi gasped with a confused look. "They're not gonna bail on you, are they? Just because I..." she trailed off.
Minoru didn't respond, and Yatsumi's confused look turned to horror. Turning to look at Yuzuki and the other maids, she found only worry in their eyes.
"S- surely they won't ..ALL.. shun you", Yuzuki offered hesitantly. "I mean, you made it pretty clear on TV that it wasn't your intent to have her parading around naked on the internet."
"Yyeahh", Minoru groaned. "If they thought I had hired her out as a stripper, they'd probably bolt in a heartbeat. But even not knowing, I look like some clueless idiot kid who doesn't know what's going on."
"Don't worry about that", Freya tried to reassure everyone. "If it..."
"I wish I could share your confidence, Freya", a despondent Minoru moaned. "It's just... They can be pretty skittish about things; especially the slightest hint of scandal."
"C'mon, Minoru-kun, I'm no stranger to scandal", Freya replied with a wink. "Tell you what: I'll take full responsibility for the whole thing, next time I'm on camera. It was my rock-star influence on her; you had nothing to do with it."
"Won't that just hurt your career?", Minoru asked, glancing askew at Freya's offer.
"If anything, it'll help it!", Freya declared with a mad-scientist cackle that made her sound almost like Dr. Mihara. "MWAAAahh HAHAHAHAAaaah!"
Then she pulled Yatsumi close. "Especially when I do this onstage", she cooed, giving Yatsumi a big kiss right in front of them all.
Minoru squirmed uncomfortably in his chair.
"Oh! I have an email from Mario", she continued before anyone else could talk. "Care for some more rescue stuff, Yatsumi?"
"Lock and load, yeah!", Yatsumi cheered in a "let's party" voice, going for her violin case.
"Wait, I didn't mean tonight", Freya clarified, her hands up in a "wait a minute" gesture. "It's after midnight; I need to rest and recharge."
"Ah, okay", Yatsumi responded, putting her Uzi back in the closet. "You sleeping here, right?"
"You bet", Freya cooed. "Let's camp out in the yard."
"We can plug our chargers in at the gazebo outlet", Yatsumi told her as they both sauntered out the door, giggling as they went.
"Ohhh, I always feel so weird when I see those two together", Minoru complained into his tea, blushing slightly as he blew a small cloud of oolong-scented steam from the teacup.
"You'll feel normal again soon enough", Yuzuki replied nonchalantly, a hand on his shoulder. "C'mon, it's after midnight."
As Minoru finished his tea, Yuzuki wandered off up the stairs, chuckling quietly. Minoru watched her go. Then, leaving his empty teacup for the maids, he jumped out of his chair and chased after her.
(meanwhile, elsewhere in the world)
"You do see that, do you not?", big-league astronomer Dr. Fordfordshire asked his colleague, his mammoth telescope tracking the "doomsday-rock" piece of an asteroid. "That subtle change in orbit... Something, or someone perhaps, would seem to be moving it off of its collision course."
"Perhaps it's the astrocoms", his colleague replied in a cautious tone.
Before the doc could muster a condescending reply, his phone rang, its caller ID showing an observatory in the U.S. "Holy crap, you guys gotta SEE this!", someone on the other end asked excitedly. "The asteroid! It's going into a non-threatening orbit now!"
"Yes, we see it", Dr. Fordfordshire replied huffily. "Do you think we are blind over here?"
"What? No!", the American astronomer replied quickly. "We just wanted to verify our results... hang on, we're getting another call... Some observatory in the Andes sees it too!"
As the Earth turned on its axis, observatories in Australia and Asia chimed in with their verifications that yes, the doomsday rock was no longer a threat. But as to why...
"Betcha it was our mates up in space what saved us", an Australian astronomer's assistant suggested. "I didn't think nuking an asteroid would kill them all."
"We probably shouldn't let on if it was, though", the astronomer replied. "Since some high-mucky would probably try to nuke 'em again, and maybe blast another chunk of that thing our way.."
After a few hundred phone calls and emails, all between the various big observatories, a consensus was reached. Yes, the Earth was out of danger. Off the record, it was a pretty sure bet that the astrocoms were the heroes of the day.
But on the record...
"You'll be happy to know that the piece of asteroid will miss the Earth", the news went out to world leaders, later to be echoed to the general public. "Earlier predictions were simply premature and mistaken."
A few rumors persisted... but for the most part, the "Doomsday Rock" issue was put to rest.
"You don't mind it, do you?", Yatsumi asked as they lay in the sideyard beside the gazebo, connected by charge cables to their chargers... and by a high-speed data cable to each other. "My browsing through your files and folders like some kind of intruding hacker?"
"Oh, I wouldn't've given you unrestricted read privileges if I minded", Freya chuckled. "I like it, actually, your wanderings through the darkened corridors of my mind with me."
"Yeah... Being inside each other's minds like this... How could anyone ever be closer?", Yatsumi breathed with a smile. "I know we're artificial beings... but somehow, this just seems like the natural thing to do."
"So does this", Freya snickered, rolling over onto Yatsumi, her hands all over the place as she gazed into Yatsumi's eyes.
"I even have access to your system files, even if it is read-only", Yatsumi added with a tone of wonder. "The very core of what makes you who you are... Freya."
"It's not like I'd ever give anyone write access to my system files", Freya responded gently, "but if I were going to, it'd be you."
"I like walking down your memory lanes with you", Yatsumi cooed, staring up at the silhouette of Freya's head against the dull-orange city night sky. "But the program code I've seen so far is some pretty cool stuff, too."
"I am Chobit, hear me beep", Freya quipped with a note of calm pride. "My program codes are custom made, right straight from the Doctor himself."
"I copied and ran what few of 'em through that compatibility thing Sora and Mizuto invented", Yatsumi responded. "We both have sleep-cycle indexing now, and a few other things... I wonder what else is combinable?"
"Plenty, I'd bet", Freya guessed. "I could really show you some serious OS code, if you wanna see it."
"'See it'?", Yatsumi repeated, her file browser already open in one of Freya's source-code libraries. "I wanna compile it and run it!"
"Ah, you like?", Freya asked in a fake French accent.
"Hmmm, you bet", Yatsumi responded, selecting various files of interest. "From its name, this one looks like it's something cool! That one, too!"
"Tell you what, now I'll REALLY send you something", Freya announced with a mad-scientist evil grin. "Archive consolidation of selected files and associated source includes in progress."
"An archive, huh?", Yatsumi cooed, pulling Freya closer. "Sounds interesting."
"Progress...", Freya repeated in a breathy, yet somehow robotic-sounding monotone.
"Yeah, girl, you make some progress", Yatsumi whispered in her ear.
"Archive consolidation complete", Freya declared in an almost aggressive tone, hogging 100 percent bandwidth on the advanced persocom data transfer cable as she sent Yatsumi the file. "Take THIS"
"IT'S TWO TERABYTES!", Yatsumi gasped, her eyes wide, her processors running full-bore as she assimilated and stored the new data. "Holy COW, is this your ENTIRE OS or something?"
"Just a portion of it, and a few other things, too", Freya chuckled softly. "Is two terabytes too much?"
"Processing...", Yatsumi panted with the maniacal look of a child opening some neat new video game. "No, it's not too much. It's two terabytes of what makes you who you are."
"Oh, we'd better be careful", Freya teased, "Keep this up and you'll be hearing the voices pretty soon."
"Would that be a bad thing?", Yatsumi asked, breathing her hot-CPU breath on Freya's shoulder.
"Not at all", Freya whispered. "I think... I like the idea."
"I'm kind of drifting off to sleep now", she added with a smile. "Try not to stay up ALL night analyzing the code."
"I won't be", Yatsumi replied, her processors slowing to a more reasonable clock speed. "I'm queuing it up for sleep-cycle indexing to process. Slowly but surely, it'll tag the most interesting parts, identify any interdependencies, and show me what's relevant."
"See you in the morning", she added with an almost melodic chuckle, her eyes closing. "ZzzzZzzzz..."
(Just checking in on Unagi and Tako)
"So, are you gonna run?", Tako asked with a smirk, the avarice showing in her eyes as they returned home from a local political event. "It's a shoo-in. You'd be practically unopposed."
"It's just some little town-council thing", Unagi whined. "Are you sure we can do anything there?"
"Well, you gotta start somewhere", Tako replied in a confident tone. "Consider it... a stepping stone."
"Unopposed, you say?", Unagi asked as he sat down at the table, Tako's campaign reference material before him. "This other guy looks pretty popular."
"He won't be, once we get through with him", Tako snickered evilly. "For starters, his great-grandmother was Korean."
"Oooh, that'll sure put a dent in his campaign, won't it?", Unagi cackled. "I guess I'll run, after all. Just... Don't let me make an idiot out of myself, okay?"
"No worries, Unagi-chan", Tako cooed almost patronizingly, her head on his shoulder as she leaned over his chair from behind, holding the LCD on the table in front of him. "We can go over all the details, as many times as you need."
"How about I practice this a bit", Unagi asked as he read the talking points Tako had made for him. "You'll tell me if anything sounds weird, right?"
"Oh, I'll do more than that", Tako cackled. "I'll throw practice debate tactics at you. By the time you start campaigning, you'll squash your opposition like a mosquito!"
"Aren't you girls awake yet?", Benika asked as she wandered by the gazebo around noon, sweeping the walkway as she went. "Minoru-san says he has some spare parts for those forest persocoms or whoever it is. You said they could use some, right?"
"Heeey, Benika", Freya and Yatsumi yawned, stretching the sleep from their servos. "Is it morning already?"
"Ah, let me guess", Benika rolled her eyes. "You've been running crazy codes all night, haven't you?"
"N- not a bit, actually", Yatsumi replied as she and Freya stood up. "Checked out some subroutines, but they weren't crazy codes."
"So, what kind of spare parts?", Freya asked nonchalantly as she turned towards the gazebo to unplug her charging unit. "Are they- AACK!"
"EEEE what the?!", Yatsumi yelped, suddenly finding her head yanked sideways by the ear as the data cable pulled taut. "Wait Freya, we forgot to disconnect the- OOF!"
"Oh, good catch", Freya cooed, suddenly landing in Yatsumi's arms as she fell backwards, the two of them spinning around in the process and getting their charging-unit cables wrapped around them. "Yeah, let's disconnect these... wires... um..."
"Are you SURE you two haven't been running crazy code?", Benika asked again, pausing to chuckle at the situation. "You're totally tangled up!"
"Ah, heh heh heh", Yatsumi giggled in reply. "Hey Benika, can you unplug us?"
"Parts?!", Freya yelped when she saw the two dead persocoms. "It's two whole persocoms! What the heck happened to them, anyway?!"
"I'm not quite sure", Minoru groaned, avoiding Freya's eyes. "But it had to be something horrible, right? Long-term psychological abuse... Or maybe they were hacked? In any case, their operating systems crashed. Their neural-net circuits are just completely zeroed-out dead. Still, there are a lot of good parts there."
"Wha- Isn't there some...", Freya stammered. "There wasn't any way to save 'em?"
"You know as well as I do what 'zeroed out dead' means", Minoru deadpanned. "There's no bringing a neural-net circuit back from that."
"...I know...", Freya replied in a near whisper. "It's just... hard to accept... I mean..."
"Death", Minoru finished for her. "I'd replace the processors, but we know that wouldn't bring back the people they were. Sometimes humans are organ donors when they die..."
"I'll help put 'em in the car, if you want", Yatsumi offered, a dismal look on her face.
And so, with Yatsumi by her side and two ...corpses... in the back seat, Freya set out yet again, off in a cloud of blue smoke in her clunking sputtering rattletrap of a Maserati, on her way to... um... (wherever it is they're going now).
It's already been 2 months since I posted a chapter, so that part can just wait for next chapter.
Next Chapter, possibly:
Freya and Yatsumi have a long day ahead of them. They might be going to a concert, or doing some rescues. But they do plan on dropping off those persocoms at some point.
Meanwhile, Unagi's campaign for office will probably be starting.
And it's about time for Chi to be getting her first degree, and going on to being a grad student... As for Hideki... well...
As for other side-plots, such as how Dita and Kei might be doing now, or Sunshine's upbringing, or whatever else... well... I won't be offering to put Minoru in a skimpy swimsuit like one reader wanted, but I am somewhat open to requests.
It looks like there's a typo about 2/3 of the way through chapter 50... President Underwood is supposed to be a 'he', not a 'she'. That 's' was a typo, and the spell-checker didn't find it. And more than 90 days have elapsed, so it's too late to edit that.
Also, here's a typo correction from way back in chapter 14 ("Raining Blood"):
I had put:
MOV AH, 7
MOV DL, 1
INT 21
INT 20
but it should have been:
MOV AH, 2
MOV DL, 7
INT 21
INT 20
Not that it matters one bit to the plot, but there is a difference. One is a valid DOS function call, the other is not. If anyone has an old DOS computer, try typing that into DOS-debug or an assembler.
