Beyond The Circuit

Love knows no bounds…

Notes: For the purposes of this story, Shirren is the PS3 Wren and Forren is the PS4 Wren. There are loads of different translations but these are the ones I picked. Forgive me if they're not completely correct.

Disclaimer: I don't own Shirren, Forren, Demi, Zelan or Algol, Sega does.

Chapter I ~ An Unexpected Visitor

Zelan Space Station, in the solar system Algol. Many years had passed since it had effectively fulfilled its duty, keeping the climate control systems of Motavia and Dezolis under control. Now, they were returning to pre-Mother Brain levels.

Time had passed so quickly for the people on the planets. Lifetimes had passed, slowly people were adapting to the climate change, but up above the skies, there were two beings that had watched every second of it.

How long had it been? Precisely 302 years since Chaz Ashley, and company, Forren and Demi included, neutralized the Profound Darkness beneath the crust of Motavia.

Since then, Forren and Demi had been aboard Zelan, but there was very little they could do to slow the climate change. Motavia was returning to the state it had been in before Mother Brain, the desert world where progress was slow. The humans would adapt eventually, just as they had done in the days of Alis Landale, the first Protector of Algol. Before Mother Brain had ever been conceived, and long before Forren's story began.

There was a strange atmosphere between Forren and Demi. The humans who had built them had installed their personality traits into the androids, and they argued quite a lot. They were trapped together for years on end, with nothing to do, watching with frustrated sensors at the planets crumbling beneath them, the systems of the humans no longer sustaining their artificial climate.

Back to the day at hand. This day was like no other in the 302 years and 51 days since Chaz's victory.

Zelan had a visitor.

It was an unidentified ship, in very bad shape. Zelan's scanners indicated that no human would be able to survive on the ship, as life support had failed, but something or someone was controlling it. It could merely have been an AI ship, sent from one of the planets with supplies, which had gone off course, but something was suspicious about this ship.

For starters, the design was distinctly Palman. Palman ships hadn't been seen in the system since the destruction of Palma. Motavian and Dezolizian ships had their own style, even if Palmans constructed them.

Secondly, there was no response to the repeated attempts to hail the ship.

It was irregular to say the least. Forren and Demi decided to investigate, so they took their weapons and headed down to the docking area.

The ship limped in, barely able to dock. Then it was silent. Forren and Demi stood, guns poised, waiting for a response from the ship. When none came, they moved closer.

A giant bang came from inside the ship. Forren and Demi stood on alert, and noticed a large dent in the hull of the ship. Then another, and another. Someone was punching their way through the door. Finally, it parted way with the ship, and a figure stood there, sparks flying from inside the ship.

Forren poised his gun.

"Freeze!" Forren yelled at the figure. "Identify yourself!"

The figure stepped into the light. He was the same build as Forren; with the same look, the same hair, everything was the same. A Wren type.

"We appear to have two Wrens," Demi said, stating the obvious as usual.

The new Wren spoke.

"I am Shirren de-designation 386, from an aban-doned ship that left Palma before Mother Brain, designation Alisa III. All other life on the ship has cea-sed to function. My duty is to inform the Algol people that all ships that esca-ped from Palma have been hunted down and destro-yed by Dark Force, and Dark Force was co-contained and sealed once more upon A-Alisa III."

Sparks flew from Shirren, his hair was mangled, some missing, and there had been damage to his face. Yet still he looked human, scarily so, as if this is what Man had created when playing with life, Forren thought.

Forren, almost entranced - if an android could be that way-, stepped slowly towards this new, alien Wren. He knew he was not alone in his design, but he had always thought he was the last Wren-type alive. It reminded him of his synthetic origins, that once, Palmans had made many like himself to fight in wars and die without any real purpose, useless dolls to be played with as their owners pleased. Even he had one purpose only – to ensure that the climate control systems worked properly on the two remaining planets. Now that that duty was over, he knew that he had no use at all. Demi had told him to live, but Forren always felt chained to the fact that he could not live as the Palmans could, that he would never be able to understand their emotions - even though he had some of his own - or live close to them. He would watch children grow old and die in his almost eternal lifetime. It was almost like a curse, living forever as an almost-human creature that could never make it that one last step. It hurt him, playing with his memory banks and occasionally confusing him as to whether he was alive or dead. He knew the truth – he was neither. Never truly alive without people, yet never dead without ceasing to exist.

In the quarter of a second it took Forren to process these electrical impulses - thoughts – the strange yet all-too familiar Shirren raised his gun.

"Sta-ay ba-ck," he commanded, barely working; yet still sticking to some command in his neural net like he was in the middle of a battlefield.

"Shirren," Forren began, "This is a space station. It has no military functions whatsoever. Please put down your gun."

Please. Forren realised he'd picked up a few too many of those human traits in over 100 years of existence. They weren't going to do him much good here – human etiquette was about as likely to work on an android as Spark would on an organic monster.

Forren's logic circuits had to rewrite the map a little when Shirren complied, throwing his rifle to the ground.

"I-it's be-en one thou-ou-ousand years sin-ce I s-aw-aw another Wr-en," Shirren said, as he collapsed to the metal floor of the landing bay.

*^*^*

"What's his status?" Forren asked Demi over the intercom.

"A few Repair Kits here and there helped, but this arm is 85% useless," Demi replied, "There's no way to get replacement parts for an android this old."

"Let him have mine," Forren said.

"That's highly illogical of you, Forren," Demi replied, "Don't be silly. This Wren's never going to live as long as you will, so it would be a waste to sacrifice your arm. Besides, the wiring is slightly different. You're a different model, made to look more human. It's strange; nowadays Palmans have gone back to the synthetic look to divide themselves from androids once again." Demi observed.

Forren turned around in his seat up at the main control deck of Zelan, and rested his head upon his arms, a trait he'd picked up from the Palmans. He didn't know what had caused him to be concerned about Shirren; maybe it was the unexpectedness of seeing another of his own kind when he thought they were all gone. He didn't know what was happening, but he was feeling something he hadn't felt since the days of Chaz and Rune and their adventure to save Algol. Something that he'd put aside as merely being the limit of his own mechanical body, the result of having no soul.

He was feeling caring emotions for the first time in two hundred years. Worry – fear that Shirren wouldn't make it and that he would never be able to understand anything about his own kind, anything about any other kind, fear that he would be left alone upon this space station forever with the naïve and all-too familiar Demi by his side every day, continuing duties that no longer mattered to those on the ground. Fear of losing something that was beginning to matter to him more than Demi had in 300 years.