Do Robots Get Electric Earaches?
A Lost in Space FanFiction
"And then there is that!" Don West exclaimed, pointing up and out of the Jupiter's hub.
John Robinson glanced up from the reports he was skimming to follow the pointing finger and the accusing gaze. It was fairly obvious what had earned the mechanics ire. There was a pattern of scuff marks running nearly perfectly perpendicular to the tracks that guided the doors. Nothing that passed frequently through the Jupiter should have been tall enough to make those marks. Still, John glanced at the younger man with an amused smile.
"Do they compromise the safety of the hub?" he asked.
"Not yet," Don muttered as he shifted the wrench under his arm. "It's the principle of the thing. This ship takes enough of a beating as is. There's no reason for anyone to be deliberately, and you know it's deliberate, marking up my pretty…"
Don's rant trailed off as he turned and stomped down the corridor towards whatever else needed his attention at the moment. John indulged in a short huff of amusement and turned back to his reports. He made his way to the central table and found a relatively clear space to set the hot drink Watanabe called tea. John was secure in his belief that no one other than the xenobiologist needed to know what it actually was. But it was hot and savory and gave his free hand something to do while he read the day's scouting reports. John winced as he eased down into the chair and heaved a sigh as he took a moment to just breathe. Then he shook his head and started reading.
The silence was soon enough interrupted by a very familiar heavy tread. John felt a smile pull at his lips and glanced over to nod at Robot. However the tall form didn't even look at him as he stalked past the window, swirling face focused intently in front of him. John frowned and set his drink down again. He followed Robot with his eyes. Robot wasn't running, but he was moving slightly faster than the careful tread he normally used to navigate the too small spaces of the Jupiter. John twisted in his seat to keep the clearly agitated Robot in view. However his ribs protested and he grunted and turned back, choosing instead to carefully stand up.
By the time John was on his feet Robot had reached the door and turned into the hub. However instead of coming in Robot stopped in the doorway and turned, pressing his armored spine against the jamb. John watched as Robot arched back and then stretched up until his head was brushing the marks that had Don so confused. John chuckled softly to himself.
The sound caught Robot's attention and he started, glancing over at John. John's smile faded as he stared into Robot's face. The sparking pink lights that danced against the deep blue were not something John had seen often, only when Robot was distressed. Robot seemed to be reading John as well and glanced away as if to hide his agitation.
"What's wrong Big Guy?" John asked.
Robot turned back to him and his face danced in a complex pattern. It started with a pure white statement, then danced though a pale orange threat analysis, finally settling back into the pink sparks that seemed to indicate some sort of distress. John quirked his lips into a rueful smile and walked towards Robot.
"Come on Big Guy," he said. "You are going to have to give me a little more than that."
Robot hesitated and then flexed back down to his normal height. He gave John a dismissive wave that was anything but unclear. It's fine. Don't worry. I'm fine. John snorted and reached out to touch Robot's arm as the newest member of his family turned to leave the hub. Not a grip. Nothing that would make Robot feel restrained or controlled. Just a request. A request Robot instantly respected, stopping and turning his now carefully controlled face of white stars to politely look down at John.
"No dice Big Guy," John said.
Robot tilted his head to the side.
"That," John said, indicating the scuffs on the doorjamb, "has been going on awhile and it's started driving our friendly neighborhood mechanic up the wall."
Robot's face flickered in surprise and glanced around.
"Metaphorically," John explained. "Now, what's this about?"
Robot flexed his shoulder plating and shifted his feet uneasily, glancing around the Jupiter.
"Don's in the garage," John offered. "Otherwise it's just you and me. I came up here to get some quiet for my reports."
Robot pulsed his face in agreement and his glances changed slightly to the wandering pattern that he used when trying to express concepts more complex than yes, no, and something is trying to kill us. Finally he simply locked gazes with John and reached up to tap the crest of his armored head. John felt his gut clench with the frustrating guilt of his own helplessness. It was never easy to look at the consequences of his failure to protect his.
"Let's have a look at it," John said, stepping back further into the hub and beckoning Robot to follow him.
Robot hesitated again but obeyed. John glanced around and braced himself to climb up on the chair.
"Need to get a little altitude," he muttered.
It still wasn't quite enough and Robot ducked his head and crouched a little to present the damaged armor to the human. John reached up and gently took the warm plates on either side of the wound. He felt Robot's plating twitch under the touch. His stomach tightened with fury but he held himself in check. Robot needed medical attention, not a sailor's vengeful curses. He lightly brushed his thumb over the scuffs made by the outer ring of the drill and Robot suddenly went unnaturally still.
"Did that hurt Big Guy?" John asked.
"No," Robot quickly, too quickly assured him.
"Uncomfortable at all?" John tried again.
"No," Robot repeated.
"Oversensitive?" John asked.
There was a moment of hesitation and then Robot nodded firmly. John grunted and gently traced his fingertips over the damaged plates. There were fresh scuffs on top of the deeper grooves the drill had left. John glanced with a wry smile at the matching marks on the doorjamb.
"They're warmer than the surrounding plating," he observed. "That would be normal for a human. Is it for you?"
There was another nod.
"This way?" John asked, gently guiding the movement as he looked down into the hole.
Robot's head easily followed the direction of his hands as John played the light of the hub ring this way and that. Thick cables seemed to be filling the base and thin, spider-web filaments were growing, dream-catcher style around the edge of the hole. However for every filament that stretched successfully to another point on the circle there were dozens that had snapped and now wafted with every breath of air that struck them, flicking back against the taught lines.
"That's gotta itch," John said with a sympathetic grunt.
He shifted his feet to get a better angle and felt his heel slip off the edge of the chair. He reacted easily enough and Robot had caught his elbow to steady him almost before he had slipped. However the sudden movement sent a stab of pain through his side. John grimaced but bit back any sound. Robot was gently but firmly pulling down at his elbow with the clear intent of getting him off the chair. John rolled his eyes and stepped down.
"You need to stop that," John said indicating the scuffed patch on the door. "Even if it doesn't damage the door it's preventing your head from healing."
Robot nodded in understanding but the frustrated pink sparks still danced across his face. John chuckled and reached out to touch Robot's arm.
"Hey," he said softly. "When Penny was a kid she got her head closed in a door. We had to keep her from scratching at the stitches for a while. Put socks on her hands…"
Robot was starting at him intently now, complex concepts flashing across his face with just a hint of the red patterns of threat analysis in the background. John suddenly stopped talking as he ran up against the all too familiar wall of their language barrier. He sighed and gestured at Robot's head.
"We need to do something about that," John said.
Robot stared at him inscrutably for a long moment before throwing up his hands in a frustrated gesture and giving up on whatever he'd been trying to communicate a moment before to pulse a simple yes.
"Since you're not using your hands socks won't do much good," John said with a thoughtful frown. "I don't suppose you'd let one of the actual doctors-"
"No!" Robot said firmly his face dancing with red.
John nodded. He understood. Still-
"There's only so much I'm good for Big Guy," John said. "It would help if you could trust someone other than a sailor to look at you."
Robot's face went inscrutable again and John sighed. But a moment later, without breaking their gaze, Robot's hand came up and prodded him deliberately at a very specific spot on his rib cage. John cursed as stars exploded in his vision and he clutched at his side. When his vision cleared Robot was staring him with his arms actually crossed in a near perfect imitation of Maureen's 'oh really' look. John gave a short bark of laughter and straightened.
"Okay," he said through gritted teeth. "So I'm not the best example of trusting doctors. But a hole in the head is a far cry from a few cracked ribs."
Robot continued to stare at him impassively, arms still crossed.
"Do you have any bright ideas?" John asked as he rotated his shoulders slowly.
Robot uncrossed his arms and his face danced in a slow but complicated display. He was working something out and John waited with what he hoped was patience. Finally Robot lifted a hand hesitantly and held it out to John. John glanced between it and the lights a few times, arching his eyebrows. Robot's shoulders heaved in what would have been a sigh of frustration in a human and his fingers flexed. Suddenly his face brightened in something that was almost a yes and he stepped into John's personal space.
John couldn't hide a defensive cringe at that and Robot hesitated, one finger raised almost to John's chin. John took a deep breath and nodded. He wasn't going to hold Robot's reasonable unease with human doctors against the big guy. He figured Robot wasn't going to hold his own defensive instincts against him. Robot reached up and carefully touched his forehead beside the old injury that was almost a scar. John flinched again but then held himself still. Robot carefully traced the laceration, not touching the center, several times and then backed off, looking down at John expectantly again.
"Yeah," John said with a sigh. "That gives me nothing."
Robot tilted his head again and reached out to gently grasp John's wrist.
"Okay?" John said, squinting up at Robot.
Robot lifted his hand up, and up until John was grunting with the painful stretch. Robot immediately released his hand with lights of distress dancing in with the pink stars.
"I'm fine," John assured him.
Robot didn't look like he believed that in the least, but he suddenly crouched and then knelt even as he took John's wrist back. Robot lifted the hand again and this time easily placed it next to the injury. John could feel the warm plates and see the anticipation in Robot's face. Robot reached up again and gently traced slow circles around the laceration on John's head. John suddenly understood and chuckled.
"I don't think getting me to do the actual scratching gets around the no scratching rule," John said.
Robot pulled their hands together in front of them and pointedly pressed the tips of their fingers together. John blinked and then nodded thoughtfully.
"I probably couldn't do much damage as long as I stay away from the filaments," John admitted. "Even those are pretty strong compared to human skin. To do any damage in the first place you had to use the strongest part of the ship."
He experimentally ran his thumb over the abrasions around the wound. Robot stilled and then leaned into the touch. John grunted a bit as the shift in weight pushed his arm sideways and Robot pulled back in concern.
"It's fine," John assured him. "We just can't do this standing up and I've got an idea."
John scooped up his reports and his drink from the table and walked over to the bench. Robot followed him curiously, the pink sparks still dancing in his face.
"See Judy," John began, "well, all the kids really, went through a stage where they were constantly getting earaches. It seemed like one or the other of them would be down with one every other night."
John shifted someone's coat out of the way and sat down on the bench. He set the reports and the drink out of the way and patted his thigh invitingly.
"It just needed a little peroxide of course," John explained. "But the important part of the treatment was where they got to lay their heads on my lap and I'd massage around the ear."
He could see Robot running the calculations behind that globe, figuring out how much weight to put where, how to fold his body. John let him work it out and simply waited. After several moments of consideration Robot knelt and crossed his arms on the bench beside John. He rested his chin gingerly on John's lap and shifted around a bit. It was significantly more weight than John remembered from when the kids were small, but it probably wouldn't be enough to actually put his leg to sleep. Robot looked somewhat awkwardly hunched but it was hard to tell when someone had that many joints.
"Comfy?" John asked.
Robot pulsed his face once and John dropped his hand to rest beside the injury. Robot flinched visibly.
"Sorry!" John said, quickly lifting his hand but Robot followed the gesture with his head and peered up at him with dense white swaths of light swirling across his face, interspaced with the pink sparks.
John carefully replaced his hand and Robot let his head drop back into John's lap. John began the careful circling motion with his index and middle fingers that had soothed the children. Robot's neck flexed, and then relaxed against him and soon the pink sparks began to fade. The ever present subtle movements in Robot's armor began to grow slower and his spines relaxed against his back. John smiled down at the signs of relaxation as his hands fell into the well remembered rhythm. The white light in Robot's face was growing less dense, changing from something like dense fog to patterns of stars. The pink sparks were gone entirely. John glanced down at the filaments. His touch hadn't disturbed any and he made a mental note of the pattern so he could make sure fresh ones were growing.
"Will had the most," John mused thoughtfully.
The lights shifted distinctly at that.
"Earaches," John explained and then figured that probably didn't mean much to Robot. "It's an infection in the ear. Nothing serious usually, but hurts like the dickens, and the ear is one of those places germs get in to the human body. Sensors are always a tactical weakness like that. So when the kids came down with them I'd just get a towel and some peroxide. I'd put the towel down on my lap and they'd lie down just like this-"
He glanced in consternation at the hunched form taking up most of the bench with his elbows alone and kneeling on the floor.
"Sort of like this," John amended. "But more sideways on the couch. But you know how small Will is, was."
John stared off into the distance now. The story, the talking was part of the distraction, part of the cure. A thousand memories flooded him at how familiar this whole situation was. How many times had Judy, Penny, Will, even Maureen laid here and accepted what was perhaps the only medical care he knew how to apply?
"Will barely weighed anything at all," John went on. "It worried me sometimes. Sometimes it felt like he would just blow away some day. But when he was there on my lap, when I could feel the warmth of him, the weight of him, no matter how little it was, he just felt more real, more solid. You're only supposed to let the peroxide soak for a minute, but sometimes I'd start telling him stories and we'd sit there for what seemed like hours."
John fell silent and his eyes glistened.
"One winter I was home for Thanksgiving," he went on. "It was a hard winter, long and cold. All three came down with earaches at once while we were at Grandma's. They all woke up not long after they'd gone to bed crying. Maureen was out in the barn doing something or the other to the plumbing so I got everything ready myself. I was taking care of Will first but Penny was clearly in a lot of pain. So Judy decides that she's more than old enough to take care of her sister. And she got out the towel, and got Penny on her lap. She spilled a lot more peroxide than what actually got in Penny's ear but-"
John sniffed and choked out a laugh.
"Better be careful," he said. "Salt water works just as well for human earaches but I doubt it'll do that hole in your head any good."
He glanced down at Robot's face and felt a tiny flicker of unease. Robot was staring into the distance. The white stars danced in a constantly shifting figure-eight that filled his entire face from crown to chin. John wondered why this face would make him nervous. Then recalled the last time Robot had shown it, right before-
"Judy did real good," John went on quickly, glancing away.
Robot shifted slightly on his lap, as if he somehow felt the turn of his thoughts. John felt an oddly sharp stab of guilt and forcefully dismissed the darker memory in favor of one that smelled of a fireplace, the soft ozone of peroxide, and Grandma's cookies.
"Then she showed Penny how to do it for her," he went on, easily falling into the power of the older, stronger memory. "Never was more peroxide spilled to less effect but the job got done. Then they came over and sat at my feet until I was done with Will."
His voice broke here and he brushed his free arm across his eyes.
"Maureen came in just before I was done and wanted to put them back to bed," John went on. "But Judy insisted that the first dose didn't take and that even if it didn't hurt now, they would relapse if Daddy didn't do it right. So, so I did."
He finished softly and stared out across a slightly blurrier than usual hab, his fingers now lightly tracing a broad figure-eight around the injury on Robot's crown. A sudden but muffled sniffle came from around a corner, followed by the sound of a nosey mechanic getting back to work. John glanced down at Robot, who showed showed no sign of moving, and reached over to take a drink of the questionable tea. His throat clear he picked up the report he had been reading and began sorting though the scouts' reports of boredom, monotony, and the occasionally useful item. He was nearly done when Robot shifted slightly and lifted one arm just enough to pull the report down into his line of sight. John figured that was fair and they finished reading the report together. The soft glow of Robot's figure-eight reflected back up at him from the tablet and for some reason it no longer reminded John of anything but firewood, ozone, and cookies.