WINDSTORMchapter3
"That's ok. Now help me out with this thing. Right. Trunks...will you please fetch me that cable? No, the one that's on the table in the corner. Yes, that yellow one...owww, my poor eyes. That's it. Now we should be able to...No, no, no! What are you doing? If you set it this way, you will break the...Bulma-sama, are you alright? Oh, good..."
Bulma took off her magnifying glasses. She was exhausted.
"Bulma-sama, you shouldn't be working so hard. You still aren't completely healed." Amrita told her.
"Oh, Amrita, stop babbling. You speak like you were the one responsible for my accident. I've been through much worse things than this, and I survived all the times. If i lived through the age of the cyborgs, then so I can do now...Ouch!"
"Amrita is right, mom. Now you be good and sit down, and we're going on with the work. C'mon"
Trunks added, taking his mother's shoulders and gently guiding her to a chair.
"If you survive the jinzouningen and then die with excessive work then I'll say you've been very silly, mom."
"Shut up! It's me who decides what to do with myself, and if I say I can go on, then you don't have to worry about me! I'll bet I can still go on the whole after...ouch! Oh, I surrender. Yes, maybe you're right. But there are so many people in need, and so much work to be done... don't forget that Capsule Corporation is the only firm left on Earth that produces certain kinds of items. Maybe I should hire some workmen, but I wonder who would pay them then. If we had just one senzu, then I would heal straight away, and maybe I could work much harder. Oh, someone is ringing at the door. Let me go open" answered Bulma.
Despite the protests of Amrita and her son, who were on the point of arguing for who of the two would go instead of her, Bulma hurried upstairs .
She enjoyed walking now that she could do it without crutches.
When she reappeared she was followed by a woman with long, dark-chestnut hair tied in two ponytails, delicious baby-blue eyes and sports clothes: Trunks didn't know her, but anyone who lived in the alternative timeline he had created would have recognized her as Videl, the daughter of Mr.Satan.
"Guess who" Bulma said happily. "Videl! She came here to see how I was."
"Hi everybody" Videl greeted happily, showing her most cheering smile.
Everyone smiled back at her: Videl was a lovely girl, also in this timeline. And a lucky one too, for her father was still alive, even though he had retired from fighting years ago for fear of being prompted to challenge the cyborgs.
Despite this, there was a person that she missed more than everything, one that she would give anything to get back from death...but that was impossible, she knew. What she had to do now was to carry on and to show the world that she could be tougher than life, when life was tough, and happier than anybody else when there was a reason to be happy.
"And I see you're working again on a new project. Always working so hard, aren't you, Bulma-sama? I think you should take more rest, I don't know, maybe leave for an holiday.Trunks, tell her too, 'cause she won't listen to me. She deserves it, ne?"
Bulma blushed and frowned, but said nothing.
"And Amrita! How are you?" The two girls hugged one another, laughing.
"I'm ok!" said Amrita. "And guess what! I've finished it!" Enthusiastic like a child, she grabbed Videl's wrist and dragged her to a corner, where a small basket covered with a blanket was.
"Actually, it shouldn't need the blanket, but I put it there to make everything more real. It's sleeping now, but we will wake it up. Hey, mister, get up!"
"Really?Will you show it to me?Oh...WOW!"
Videl uttered little screams in delight. Something very small was peering from under the blanket, something with curious, mischievous eyes and trembling whiskers...a kitty! But it was a kitty much Amrita style, although at first sight nobody would have told it was completely artificial.
He behaved exactly the same way of a timid, clumsy kitty that's learning to walk.
"Oh, Amrita, it's delicious! And look the way it moves! It cannot even stand on its legs, it's's so
tender! And it's meowing!"
"Yes, I thought that would be nice to add. You have to communicate with the world if you want to learn. Stroke it if you want, that will do it good."
"Oh, can I?Is it true what Bulma says? That it has to learn everything, little by little?"
"Yes" Bulma answered. "Artificial beings endowed with a neural net cannot possibly be born with programmed knowledges like old-style androids used to do. You can set some instinctual behaviour
in reacting to determinate events or enviromental conditions, like it is for living beings, but that's all. All the rest it will have to learn by itself little by little, like real puppies and children do. Including how to walk, as you can see. The result should be an intelligence mostly similar to the natural one, which means that it will be able to gain new knowledges and abilities...and if we are lucky, it could even start to think. Or to do something resembling thought, anyway. Connect events spontaneously and so on.I didn't agree with Amrita when she first decided to try out this experiment, but I have to admitt that the results are um, well...interesting."
"Which implies that...we will have to educate it, I suppose!"
"Yes...like it was a child!We can try to teach it everything...who knows, one day our little experiment might even learn to read!" Everybody laughed; the thought of the kitty on a news paper seemed most unlikely and decidedly ridiculous.
Bulma smiled. She was proud of her pupil now, even though she found wise not to admitt that in front of her, so she should feel challenged to achieve even more spectacular results. With her beautiful mind, who knew where Amrita could get some day.
"How did you solve the body problem?" asked Trunks.
"Ah, the body problem, yes. Nano-machines. Incredibly small mechanisms and circuits that can reproduce themselves and repair on their own. They can form bodies that work similarly to those of living organisms in evrerything, not to talk about all the other things you can do with them!They're so small that they can repair a damaged body part from the inside. That helped me also with the neural net problem, because I was afraid that it would occupy too much space if we made it with traditional circuits. This way I could put in it many more connections than I hoped to, so maybe my creature won't be too stupid... I have to thank your mother for finding out, I would never have solved the problem without her."
"And...what's the name you gave this little jewel?"
"Um, I don't know. For the moment I just go by calling it RoboKoNeko, like it was called in the projects. You know, I thought it was premature to give it a name when it still hasn't developed any personality of its own at all. We could call it Tiger and find ourselves with an incredibly fearful animal that can't hunt a fly, or Romeo, and see it behave like a female cat and adopt kitties...everything could happen!"
"That seems fun" commented Bulma.
And so it was that RoboKoNeko kept the name it would bear for the rest of its life.
~ * ~
Videl was nervous. She was always nervous when she was about to do something she had never tried before.
"That's ok, relax. It's all about concentration, haven't I told you? It's not the same as being tense:"
"I don't know, Trunks. I feel like even if I should be able to lift off the ground just a few inches, I'd hurt myself very bad when I fall down."
Videl chewed her lower lip with a worried look on her face. This was just the beginning of her first lesson, and she already regretted having ever asked to Trunks to teach her how to fly. She was sure it would end up in utter disaster.
"Never mind, Videl. ChiChi's told me you are an exceptionally skilled fighter, even to be a girl. Your father's given you good lessons, hasn't he?"
Mr. Satan was the well-known and beloved former wrestling world champion, but, Trunks thought smiling to himself, would he ever have the courage to challenge Cell? Oh, well, now that it came into his mind he had...Hum, probably the Mr.Satan of this timeline was somehow wiser, judging by the way he had carefully avoided confronting with the cyborgs.
"First, what do you mean, 'to be a girl'? Can't girls fight? And second, I'll tell you a secret, my father is not as good at fighting as everybody thinks out there. He taught me the basis of fighting, but it was someone else who made me really improve. It was him who first promised he'd teach me how to fly, many years ago." All of a sudden her expression turned dark. "But he never could."
"Why? Did he go away?" Trunks immediately regretted being so naive. Wrong question.
"He's dead. Killed by the cyborgs." Videl answered sadly, giving confirmation to Trunks' suspect.
Trunks bit his toungue hard. "My big bad mouth" he thought.
"Videl, I'm...I'm sorry. Forgive me, I'm an idiot."
"Nevermind. You couldn't know that."
"I should have. Everybody's lost someone. I have too."
"Nevermind I said. That was a long time ago."
"So it was for me, but it still hurts."
"Nevermind."
Meantime Videl had finished her heating exercises, and started exchanging some tentative blows with Trunks, who warded them off with no effort. He found it almost difficult to restrain his strength with her, because whoever had taught her martial arts had done a really good job.
"Let's talk about you instead, Trunks. I never knew your family was so well-acquainted with ChiChi."
"Well, she was the wife of my mother's best friend. And my best friend's mother, too." All of a sudden the painful memories stung him once again. Gohan...
Videl widened her eyes in complete surprise. "You mean...you mean you knew Son Gohan!?"
Trunks looked even more startled than she was. "Gohan! You're asking me if I knew Gohan! You're asking me if I knew the best friend I ever had! You're asking me if i knew my martial arts teacher, the only one who would talk to me about my father, the man who filled me up in hope for a better world and urged me to make it real!"
"Oh" Videl just said. "So you do, you really do know Gohan." Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were flooded with tears. Then she did a thing that Trunks didn't expect, and that left him staring in amazement. She embraced him with an arm around his neck and "Come over here, my friend." And, saying so, she drew Trunks close to herself and kissed him on the cheek. Then she started telling him the story.
"He was my boyfriend. From the age of sixteen to I don't know, maybe six months before he died. He had become too obsessioned with killing the cyborgs in the end, but...but...we always remained good friends. When ChiChi told me he'd died, I...I..."
She was no longer holding back tears, that flowed freely on her cheeks and down her neck.
"Oh, Trunks, I've been waiting for so long to meet someone else who had known him! You don't even know how I miss him!" she yelled.
Trunks embraced her, caressing her arms to make her quiet. He had started crying too, unable to restrain himself, and who cared if the whole world saw him. He had finally found a new friend, and that was worth all the tears in the world.
"That's ok. Now help me out with this thing. Right. Trunks...will you please fetch me that cable? No, the one that's on the table in the corner. Yes, that yellow one...owww, my poor eyes. That's it. Now we should be able to...No, no, no! What are you doing? If you set it this way, you will break the...Bulma-sama, are you alright? Oh, good..."
Bulma took off her magnifying glasses. She was exhausted.
"Bulma-sama, you shouldn't be working so hard. You still aren't completely healed." Amrita told her.
"Oh, Amrita, stop babbling. You speak like you were the one responsible for my accident. I've been through much worse things than this, and I survived all the times. If i lived through the age of the cyborgs, then so I can do now...Ouch!"
"Amrita is right, mom. Now you be good and sit down, and we're going on with the work. C'mon"
Trunks added, taking his mother's shoulders and gently guiding her to a chair.
"If you survive the jinzouningen and then die with excessive work then I'll say you've been very silly, mom."
"Shut up! It's me who decides what to do with myself, and if I say I can go on, then you don't have to worry about me! I'll bet I can still go on the whole after...ouch! Oh, I surrender. Yes, maybe you're right. But there are so many people in need, and so much work to be done... don't forget that Capsule Corporation is the only firm left on Earth that produces certain kinds of items. Maybe I should hire some workmen, but I wonder who would pay them then. If we had just one senzu, then I would heal straight away, and maybe I could work much harder. Oh, someone is ringing at the door. Let me go open" answered Bulma.
Despite the protests of Amrita and her son, who were on the point of arguing for who of the two would go instead of her, Bulma hurried upstairs .
She enjoyed walking now that she could do it without crutches.
When she reappeared she was followed by a woman with long, dark-chestnut hair tied in two ponytails, delicious baby-blue eyes and sports clothes: Trunks didn't know her, but anyone who lived in the alternative timeline he had created would have recognized her as Videl, the daughter of Mr.Satan.
"Guess who" Bulma said happily. "Videl! She came here to see how I was."
"Hi everybody" Videl greeted happily, showing her most cheering smile.
Everyone smiled back at her: Videl was a lovely girl, also in this timeline. And a lucky one too, for her father was still alive, even though he had retired from fighting years ago for fear of being prompted to challenge the cyborgs.
Despite this, there was a person that she missed more than everything, one that she would give anything to get back from death...but that was impossible, she knew. What she had to do now was to carry on and to show the world that she could be tougher than life, when life was tough, and happier than anybody else when there was a reason to be happy.
"And I see you're working again on a new project. Always working so hard, aren't you, Bulma-sama? I think you should take more rest, I don't know, maybe leave for an holiday.Trunks, tell her too, 'cause she won't listen to me. She deserves it, ne?"
Bulma blushed and frowned, but said nothing.
"And Amrita! How are you?" The two girls hugged one another, laughing.
"I'm ok!" said Amrita. "And guess what! I've finished it!" Enthusiastic like a child, she grabbed Videl's wrist and dragged her to a corner, where a small basket covered with a blanket was.
"Actually, it shouldn't need the blanket, but I put it there to make everything more real. It's sleeping now, but we will wake it up. Hey, mister, get up!"
"Really?Will you show it to me?Oh...WOW!"
Videl uttered little screams in delight. Something very small was peering from under the blanket, something with curious, mischievous eyes and trembling whiskers...a kitty! But it was a kitty much Amrita style, although at first sight nobody would have told it was completely artificial.
He behaved exactly the same way of a timid, clumsy kitty that's learning to walk.
"Oh, Amrita, it's delicious! And look the way it moves! It cannot even stand on its legs, it's's so
tender! And it's meowing!"
"Yes, I thought that would be nice to add. You have to communicate with the world if you want to learn. Stroke it if you want, that will do it good."
"Oh, can I?Is it true what Bulma says? That it has to learn everything, little by little?"
"Yes" Bulma answered. "Artificial beings endowed with a neural net cannot possibly be born with programmed knowledges like old-style androids used to do. You can set some instinctual behaviour
in reacting to determinate events or enviromental conditions, like it is for living beings, but that's all. All the rest it will have to learn by itself little by little, like real puppies and children do. Including how to walk, as you can see. The result should be an intelligence mostly similar to the natural one, which means that it will be able to gain new knowledges and abilities...and if we are lucky, it could even start to think. Or to do something resembling thought, anyway. Connect events spontaneously and so on.I didn't agree with Amrita when she first decided to try out this experiment, but I have to admitt that the results are um, well...interesting."
"Which implies that...we will have to educate it, I suppose!"
"Yes...like it was a child!We can try to teach it everything...who knows, one day our little experiment might even learn to read!" Everybody laughed; the thought of the kitty on a news paper seemed most unlikely and decidedly ridiculous.
Bulma smiled. She was proud of her pupil now, even though she found wise not to admitt that in front of her, so she should feel challenged to achieve even more spectacular results. With her beautiful mind, who knew where Amrita could get some day.
"How did you solve the body problem?" asked Trunks.
"Ah, the body problem, yes. Nano-machines. Incredibly small mechanisms and circuits that can reproduce themselves and repair on their own. They can form bodies that work similarly to those of living organisms in evrerything, not to talk about all the other things you can do with them!They're so small that they can repair a damaged body part from the inside. That helped me also with the neural net problem, because I was afraid that it would occupy too much space if we made it with traditional circuits. This way I could put in it many more connections than I hoped to, so maybe my creature won't be too stupid... I have to thank your mother for finding out, I would never have solved the problem without her."
"And...what's the name you gave this little jewel?"
"Um, I don't know. For the moment I just go by calling it RoboKoNeko, like it was called in the projects. You know, I thought it was premature to give it a name when it still hasn't developed any personality of its own at all. We could call it Tiger and find ourselves with an incredibly fearful animal that can't hunt a fly, or Romeo, and see it behave like a female cat and adopt kitties...everything could happen!"
"That seems fun" commented Bulma.
And so it was that RoboKoNeko kept the name it would bear for the rest of its life.
~ * ~
Videl was nervous. She was always nervous when she was about to do something she had never tried before.
"That's ok, relax. It's all about concentration, haven't I told you? It's not the same as being tense:"
"I don't know, Trunks. I feel like even if I should be able to lift off the ground just a few inches, I'd hurt myself very bad when I fall down."
Videl chewed her lower lip with a worried look on her face. This was just the beginning of her first lesson, and she already regretted having ever asked to Trunks to teach her how to fly. She was sure it would end up in utter disaster.
"Never mind, Videl. ChiChi's told me you are an exceptionally skilled fighter, even to be a girl. Your father's given you good lessons, hasn't he?"
Mr. Satan was the well-known and beloved former wrestling world champion, but, Trunks thought smiling to himself, would he ever have the courage to challenge Cell? Oh, well, now that it came into his mind he had...Hum, probably the Mr.Satan of this timeline was somehow wiser, judging by the way he had carefully avoided confronting with the cyborgs.
"First, what do you mean, 'to be a girl'? Can't girls fight? And second, I'll tell you a secret, my father is not as good at fighting as everybody thinks out there. He taught me the basis of fighting, but it was someone else who made me really improve. It was him who first promised he'd teach me how to fly, many years ago." All of a sudden her expression turned dark. "But he never could."
"Why? Did he go away?" Trunks immediately regretted being so naive. Wrong question.
"He's dead. Killed by the cyborgs." Videl answered sadly, giving confirmation to Trunks' suspect.
Trunks bit his toungue hard. "My big bad mouth" he thought.
"Videl, I'm...I'm sorry. Forgive me, I'm an idiot."
"Nevermind. You couldn't know that."
"I should have. Everybody's lost someone. I have too."
"Nevermind I said. That was a long time ago."
"So it was for me, but it still hurts."
"Nevermind."
Meantime Videl had finished her heating exercises, and started exchanging some tentative blows with Trunks, who warded them off with no effort. He found it almost difficult to restrain his strength with her, because whoever had taught her martial arts had done a really good job.
"Let's talk about you instead, Trunks. I never knew your family was so well-acquainted with ChiChi."
"Well, she was the wife of my mother's best friend. And my best friend's mother, too." All of a sudden the painful memories stung him once again. Gohan...
Videl widened her eyes in complete surprise. "You mean...you mean you knew Son Gohan!?"
Trunks looked even more startled than she was. "Gohan! You're asking me if I knew Gohan! You're asking me if I knew the best friend I ever had! You're asking me if i knew my martial arts teacher, the only one who would talk to me about my father, the man who filled me up in hope for a better world and urged me to make it real!"
"Oh" Videl just said. "So you do, you really do know Gohan." Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were flooded with tears. Then she did a thing that Trunks didn't expect, and that left him staring in amazement. She embraced him with an arm around his neck and "Come over here, my friend." And, saying so, she drew Trunks close to herself and kissed him on the cheek. Then she started telling him the story.
"He was my boyfriend. From the age of sixteen to I don't know, maybe six months before he died. He had become too obsessioned with killing the cyborgs in the end, but...but...we always remained good friends. When ChiChi told me he'd died, I...I..."
She was no longer holding back tears, that flowed freely on her cheeks and down her neck.
"Oh, Trunks, I've been waiting for so long to meet someone else who had known him! You don't even know how I miss him!" she yelled.
Trunks embraced her, caressing her arms to make her quiet. He had started crying too, unable to restrain himself, and who cared if the whole world saw him. He had finally found a new friend, and that was worth all the tears in the world.