A/N – And thus Part Two is now complete. I have been totally floored by the response to this story, and I'd like to thank everybody again, especially all of my reviewers. I knew this story was going to be long, but I didn't expect it to hit 90K words … believe me, I'll never write anything this long again. Hopefully, you're not too ticked off at me over the last chapter. Just have a little patience, and Part Three should get under way in a couple of weeks.

Also, if you aren't already, you really need to be reading Deadeye1's fic. The guy can flat-out write, and he's hilarious. Show the brother a little love.

Escape From Paradise

A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic

Chapter Eighteen – The Price of Freedom

It was turning into a complete three-ring circus, even by Tremorton standards. In a town that had grown a bit blasé about extraordinary events – you could only get excited about giant invisible eyeballs and muck monster attacks so many times, after all – it really took something spectacular to bring everything to a screeching halt, especially on a Saturday night. It took something like … the half-mile long Cluster spacecraft carrier that was slowly gliding over downtown.

A global panic had nearly broken out when the carrier had burst out of hyperspace only minutes earlier, catching the world's defenses by surprise. Rapid-reaction teams had scrambled into motion for what seemed sure to be an alien attack … but after a few hasty exchanges over the radio, an amazing tale began to unfold. The ship claimed to be filled with escaping human slaves, and it was requesting emergency landing clearance. Military operations instantly switched over into emergency response mode. Helicopters from the Army and GNN alike joined the hovercars of Skyway Patrol, as they escorted the giant insect-shaped ship to a landing at a municipal park on the edge of the city. They circled watchfully overhead as National Guard units cordoned off an area around the carrier, struggled to maintain safety and order. Wild rumors were already spreading through the city; rumors that the high school students who had been abducted two days ago were among the ones onboard the ship.

Anxious parents had raced across town at breakneck speed to get to the park, but perhaps none of them were as frustrated as Dr. Nora Wakeman. She fought her way through a sea of swinging elbows to reach the police line surrounding the grounded ship, and gave a blistering earful to anyone foolish enough to challenge her right to be on the scene. After all, she was an expert on alien spaceships, she was a world-renown authority on the Cluster, and she had a daughter that was forty-eight hours past her curfew. And as she took umbrage with a 400-pound SWAT officer for his rude behavior and his ignorance of scientific procedure, the hatches on the carrier unlocked with a loud crack, and swung wide open.

To everyone's amazement, hundreds of gaunt, disheveled, but elated humans poured out of the Cluster ship, overcome with joy to finally be back on Earth. They stumbled off the ramps and fell to the ground, kissing the dirt and running their fingers through real green grass. They ran into the happy crowd, shouting with excitement, shaking hands and swapping kisses with complete strangers. Some of them exchanged grinning salutes with generals and admirals in the welcoming party. Some of them limped to waiting ambulances and paramedics.

Then the high school students came out, and Mrs. Wakeman was nearly trampled into the earth by a stampede of parents rushing to embrace their sons and daughters. She got to her feet and brushed a few clods of soil from her yellow lab coat – grumbling to herself about the unwashed masses and their lack of respect for members of the scientific community – when she saw XJ-9 dragging her feet down the ramp, seemingly not in any hurry to leave the giant ship.

"XJ-9! XJ-9! Finally!" The doctor ran towards her robotic daughter with a exasperated gasp, and gave her a quick once-over. "Are you undamaged? Is your neural network intact? And just where in the name of Sir Isaac Blessed Newton have you been for the past two days?

"Mom! Oh, Mom … are you ever a sight for sore circuits!" Jenny dropped to her knees, and flung her arms around her mother's neck with a crushing grip – nothing wrong with her hydraulics, Mrs. Wakeman moaned to herself as she felt her vertebrae cracking – then sat on her heels, with an incredibly weary expression on her face. "Mom, we were kidnapped and taken to Cluster Prime and …"

"Cluster Prime!" the doctor shouted excitedly. "So the stories were accurate! Oh, how extraordinary! Our knowledge of the Cluster homeworld is so woefully incomplete! XJ-9, do you know what this means? You are the very first robot to go to Cluster Prime and safely return! XJ-9, we must get you back to the lab at once for a thorough diagnostic and a complete debriefing. I want to hear every …"

Then Mrs. Wakeman paused, and noticed something strange about her daughter for the first time. She seemed distracted, as if her mind was a million miles away … and her eyes were filled with an unbelievable sadness. It was always a difficult task to decipher a teenager's intricate web of moods, and more difficult still to calculate the proper response to them. But when the three thousand other escapees from the ship were dancing around like it was Mardi Gras, it was a statistically safe assumption that XJ-9 should have been happy as well. "XJ-9, what is the matter? Are you sure you're alright? Eh … do you need a fresh oil filter, dear?"

"No, I'm fine, Mom," she moped, sounding completely unconvincing. "I'm just fine."

"XJ-9, I don't understand," said a baffled Mrs. Wakeman, straightening her glasses. "You've just become the very first robot ever to escape the Cluster; you've saved your little classmates and three thousand humans from a lifetime of slavery, and brought them back to their homes and families. You've stolen an entire starship filled with the very latest in Cluster technology; the potential for scientific and research breakthroughs boggles the mind! You foiled another one of Vexus' evil plans to assimilate you and conquer the Earth … XJ-9, you should be ecstatic! I appreciate that this must have been a trying ordeal for you … but everything is all right now!"

Jenny's eyes dropped into her chest, and her pigtails sunk to her shoulders, with a soft whine like a lonely gate swinging in a cold winter wind. A single tear trickled down her rounded cheek.

Mrs. Wakeman tugged at the collar of her black turtleneck. "Umm … isn't it?"

Jenny slumped forward onto the desk and twisted her face towards the window, staring at the steady patter of raindrops falling from a featureless, slate-gray sky. The bright yellow school buses, now emptied of their passengers, splashed away from the curb and idled roughly at the intersection, belching clouds of diesel while they waited for commuters to let them make left-hand turns. She heard the clomp of boots behind her as the classroom slowly filled up with rain-soaked teenagers, still shaking water from their jackets and their umbrellas, mumbling their typical chorus of Monday morning woe. Jenny quietly watched them slide into their respective desks and effortlessly self-assemble into the usual cliques, chatting excitedly amongst themselves as they pulled out their textbooks and prepared for class.

Just another normal, dismal Monday morning.

But Jenny couldn't help but let her mind drift this morning. As she watched the familiar faces take their seats – the familiar pink, fleshy faces – her imagination algorithms activated, and she wondered what it would have been like to come in on a Monday morning and sit down in a room full of robots. Cute robot guys with chrome-plated smiles and shiny servos, robot girls to gossip with and study with … and hang out at the mall with, shopping for new antennas …

It would have been awesome, she thought to herself, as she pulled her textbook out of her backpack. She deployed a sharpener from her hand, and started getting her pencils ready for class. It would have been really awesome …

"Hey Jen, you sure got in here early today." A stack of notebooks dropped on the desk to her left with a melodramatic thud, and she turned to see Brad's smirking face, with his trademark coppery spiked hair drooping over his forehead like overcooked spaghetti. She'd been so lost in thought that she hadn't even noticed him walk in the room; how he was able to manufacture a smile on a morning like this was beyond her ability to calculate. But as always, her best friend was a welcome relief from the isolation imposed upon her by the collective neglect of the group. He grabbed a fistful of pencils from his own desk, and borrowed her sharpener, knowing that she wouldn't mind. "Any particular reason? Or are you just that eager to get back to the noble pursuit of education?"

Normally a stupid wise-crack would be good for at least a giggle out of her, or at least an eye-roll. Not today. "Sometimes when it rains hard like this, I get in early so I can polish the water off and spray on some Rust-Away … and, y'know, I'd just as soon not have anyone watching me do it."

Brad frowned in sympathy, knowing what she meant by that innocent comment. It was just one more little routine that reminded Jenny of just how different she was from everyone else. And it really seemed to be weighing heavily on her today. He instantly realized that his usual repertoire of cheer-her-up goofy jokes wasn't going to be appropriate this dreary morning. Yesterday, she had been more depressed than he could ever remember seeing her, and she didn't seem much better now.

"I caught the news on TV this morning before I headed out," he said, in a more serious tone. "They were talking to a bunch of big-shot military guys over at the park where we landed. They say that between the ship we brought back, and spilling the beans about Vexus' big invasion plans, we might have saved the planet Earth! And they were interviewing some of the slaves that came back with us, and they were all talking about how happy they were to be home. Jenny, you're a hero."

"Sure," she squeaked, trying to smile. "That's pretty much what my job is."

"… And they were saying that the invasion probably wouldn't happen now, since the Cluster's main military base got wiped out by nanobots …"

Brad stopped himself, and swallowed hard, glancing at the single empty desk in the back row.

"Has anyone seen him yet this morning?"

Jenny's shoulders sagged, and she shook her head with a pained whirr. "I tried to call him a dozen times yesterday, but he wouldn't answer. His parents said that he hasn't left his bedroom. Brad, I … I think he blames himself for …"

Her voice drifted off, unable to bring herself to finish the sentence. Brad place a consoling hand on her shoulder, and tried to look her in the eyes. "Look, we don't know what happened to Allison. Maybe she survived. Maybe she's all right, somehow …"

"She sacrificed herself, Brad," said Jenny, on the verge of tears. "She finally had the chance to live a life of freedom, and do anything she wanted to do instead of taking orders from the Cluster. And she gave it all up … so that we could get back home and be free ourselves." Jenny closed her eyes reverently, remembering her first robot girl-friend. "She's more of a hero than I'll ever be."

"Jen … I don't know what to say." Brad slid his hand down to her arm, feeling stupid that he couldn't conjure up the right words to make Jenny feel better. Maybe she just needed someone to feel lousy with right now. Some things just couldn't be fixed with words, apparently.

"And the worst of it is, I'm not sure if anyone even knows what Allison did for them."

A feminine voice coughed to get their attention.

"Um … maybe I could help do something about that."

Jenny and Brad looked up to see a blonde girl turned around in the seat in front of them, and recognized that it was Chloe, the attractive freshman who had been trying to gain Brad's interest over the past few weeks. Jenny was well aware of her efforts to go to the prom with Brad – heck, most of the girls in the school were aware – and a brief flash of anger flared in her processors, mixed with something that might have been jealousy. But before she had a chance to say anything harsh, she noticed something odd about Chloe's demeanor; her posture, her downcast eyes, the way she was nervously fidgeting with her hands. Her usual vapid indifference was gone; now she had the appearance of a criminal hoping for leniency before her judge and jury. If she'd had a tail, it would have been tucked between her legs.

Jenny was even more surprised by the venom in Brad's words. "Yeah, right – what do you care about a robot, anyway? After all, it's not like they have any real feelings, right?"

Chloe winced from the verbal blow, and Jenny was surprised to see a flash of shame on the face of the popular girl. She wondered if she should actually apologize for Brad's remark … but Chloe raised her hand, and continued in an apologetic voice.

"I guess I deserved that," she gulped. "Jenny, I … I've said a lot of junk over the past week … that kinda seems pretty stupid now." She took a deep breath to steady herself, and went on. "Look, umm … everything got a little crazy on Saturday after we got back home, and I never really got a chance to say thank you for saving our lives. If it wasn't for you and your robot friends, we'd still be collared up in that … that horrible factory." Chloe shivered at the mention of the Cluster slave labor factory, and subconsciously rubbed her neck, remembering the feel of cold steel against her skin.

"You're welcome," said Jenny, taking hold of Chloe's hand. She could tell that the girl was feeling awkward and nervous … and more amazingly, she seemed to be sincere.

Chloe seemed to zone out for a moment. "I'm sorry, just thinking about that planet … I never imagined a place so horrible could exist."

"It wasn't all horrible," Jenny sighed.

The blonde arched a confused eyebrow, giving Brad a chance to jump back into the conversation. "That city was filled with zillions of robot girls and guys, Chloe. Imagine Tremorton filled robots like Jenny – then multiply it by a thousand. And there were parades and dances and festivals and beauty salons, and tons of incredible, amazingly cool stuff – all just for robots."

"Wow," gulped Chloe. "I guess that's what the Cluster is supposed to be – some kind of paradise for robots, right? Just like that robot queen Vexus said? I'm … I'm surprised you didn't stay there."

A faint smile came to Jenny's face. "I'd be lying if I said that the thought hadn't crossed my circuits. And it was awfully cool to be around other robots for a change. But even if I had wanted to stay on Cluster Prime, it wouldn't have been the right thing to do. I could never be happy knowing that humans had to suffer so that I could live in paradise. After all, protecting humans is what I was built for."

"But the other robot girl wasn't built to protect humans," said Chloe. "Why … why did she help us?"

Jenny felt a shudder run through her wiring, and she fought to hold herself together. "Allison finally learned the truth about the Cluster … she found out the truth about her home, and about humans, and about the queen. She learned that Vexus wants to enslave every being in the galaxy, whether its brain is made of soft tissue, or silicon. And she decided that was wrong. She said … it was the first real decision she had ever made in her life." Jenny closed her eyes, and remembered the look of pride on her friend's face as she had said those words.

"Maybe you could tell me some more about 'Allison' … at lunch."

Jenny titled her head in surprise, and Chloe explained. "Jenny, I write for the school paper, and a bunch of us were talking on the phone yesterday. We thought it might be a good idea to do a story on how our class escaped … and everyone knows about how you fought off a thousand spaceships, and how we were all carried around inside the belly of a giant silver android. But everyone's curious about the third robot that saved us. Every robot we saw on Cluster Prime was ugly and evil, and treated us horribly. Then along comes this 'Allison', and all of the sudden she's standing up to the evil robot queen and helping us escape! Even though it meant …" She dropped her head, overwhelmed by the magnitude of Allison's sacrifice. "Anyway … I was wondering if you could tell me some more about her? I'd … I'd really like to know more about her."

It was a small thing, but it filled Jenny with the first glow of joy she'd felt in days. Allison had said that she finally had a chance to do something important with her life. And she was more right than she would ever know. Because of her selfless act, dozens of kids at Tremorton High – and no doubt, thousands of freed human slaves and their families – had a very different opinion about robots now. It would take some time for the story to spread, friend to friend, brother to brother, parent to child. It would take some time, but maybe people would come to appreciate what a simple robot girl had done, when she finally had a chance to make her own choice. After the Omni-droid attack last week, a wave of poison had spread over the Earth virtually overnight, painting all robots in a monstrous light. This could be a big step towards repairing the damage. This could be a step towards the day when robots and humans could live together in peace, laughing and hootin' it up …

"A story in the paper sounds great," Jenny said with a big smile. "And I think Allison would have really liked it too. But there's really one more robot you should talk to …"

She glanced behind her, and saw that the desk was still empty.

"… although I don't think you'll get a chance today," she frowned.

Their attention was diverted to the front of the room, as the rotund form of Mr. Snitzenburg waddled in, wiping his eyeglasses with his tie. A dozen hushed conversations began to break apart as the students abandoned all hope for a cancelled class, and turned around to prepare for another exciting journey into the world of geometric proofs. "I'm sorry for the delay," said the teacher, fighting with the sleeves of his overcoat, "but in this town, the intelligence of the drivers seems to be inversely proportional to the rainfall measurement. Heh, heh … inversely proportional … see, that's a little math humor."

Jenny, and the twenty-eight other students, collectively rolled their eyes. Yeesh. Things were definitely getting back to normal.

"Pull out your textbooks, and turn to the beginning of Chapter Thirty-one, people," he said, as he shook the moisture from his briefcase. "We've already a lot of class time, and we need to get ourselves back on track!" He bunched up his overcoat, and closed the classroom door to hang it on the hook …

When a hand slapped around the edge of the door, holding it open.

A silver-green, metallic hand.

The door creaked open, and an audible gasp washed over the room. Drew slowly staggered into the class with his backpack, looking like a walking silver scarecrow. He turned a haggard face up to the teacher, his striped metal hair hanging off the sides of his face like wild tree moss … but eerily, said nothing at all.

The geometry teacher seemed a bit startled, but quickly waved him to his seat. "Glad you could join us, Mr. Nabholtz. Get to your desk, please, class is starting."

As long as Jenny and Brad had known him, they had never seen Drew look as horrible as he did right now. His silvery surface tone was gone, replaced by a mottled mixture of drab grays; the shininess was replaced with a cracked texture that made him look as if he were made of old brittle chalk. His electric green stripes were a dull, dirty olive, as if streaks of mold were growing along his body. A trail of moist gray dust flaked off behind him as he slushed towards the back of the class, seeming to shrink smaller and smaller with every step he took. His sunken eyes were fixed on a point in space six inches in front of his feet; he made eye contact with nobody, as if the effort of returning a simple greeting would shatter him like a stained glass window. Finally, with a sickly gurgle, he crawled behind his desk with the enthusiasm of a man climbing into an electric chair.

Nobody said a word as the class got underway, but most of the kids were staring at Drew, half-expecting to see him dissolve into a metallic puddle and flow away. As Chloe had said, the kids had been talking, and they could only imagine what was going through those nano-computers right now …

"Drew! Psst! Drew!" Brad waved frantically at him, hissing in a loud whisper. "Chapter Thirty-one. Hey man … are you all right?"

Drew creaked his head upwards and glanced at Jenny and Brad through a curtain of pale green hair, but there was no sadness in his face. In fact, there wasn't a trace of any emotion at all in his face. He looked like a wooden automaton, like a someone whose soul had been sucked from his body and left in the ditch to die. He gave them a weak, silent, unconvincing nod, and then heaved his backpack onto his desk, fishing for his geometry textbook …

And as he slid his books out, there was a glint of something metallic. A small, round object came out of his backpack and fell to the floor with a sharp clank, then started to roll away …

It bumped against Chloe's foot, and she reached down to pick up … a thin metallic disk, about the size of a large coaster, with a smooth, mirrored surface.

"Hey, cool," she said, running her fingers over the polished metal. "What's this thing do?"

A few curious heads turned, and Drew lifted his eyes to the object in Chloe's hand … and gasped in horror. He lunged forward in a panic, desperate to stop Chloe before …

Suddenly the metallic disk glowed with a faint white light … and to Chloe's amazement, a bright image leapt out of the mirrored surface, a moving picture complete with sound. The picture flickered briefly, but the sounds of music and laughter were already discernable in the background. Everyone in the classroom stopped to gaze upon the tiny wonder Chloe held in her hands. And a moment later, the wavy image resolved itself into an excellent hologram of two teenage robots. A silver-green boy, and a lavender-and-white girl. It was the holo-disk that Drew and Allison had made together at the photo booth, back at Festival Square, only three short days ago.

Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth upon seeing Allison again, even as a hologram. Drew and Allison were laughing and giggling and acting like fools, jostling for position in front of the holo-camera. Drew looked like his normal silver-green self … no, he looked better than that. His face beamed with a smile like the noonday sun. "So what are we supposed to do in here?" he laughed, mugging for the camera.

"It's a photo booth, dummy," laughed Allison, poking Drew in the ribs. "See, that little thing right there is called a ca-me-ra. It's all very technical! Now hold still, the booth is going to shrink us so our picture will fit on the memory disk. If you're not a good boy, then you stay shrunk."

And they joked back and forth with increasingly terrible groaners, laughing and poking and shooting electric glances into each other's eyes. Then they decided to see who could make the other blush the worst. An embarrassing exchange of double-entendres flew back and forth, and Drew seemed to have the upper hand, as Allison's face glowed a brilliant violet. Then she surprised him by flinging her arms around his chest and pinching a blob of nanobots, causing his face to flash a near-solid green from the neck up. Delighted in her victory, she flung her arms into the air, and he laughed in mock protest, shouting that she was a big, cute cheater …

"Mr. Nabholtz," said the teacher. "Mr. Nabholtz? Please turn that off. It's time for class."

Drew's arm groaned and stretched out to take the silly momento from Chloe's hand, and brought it back to his own desk. He held it in his grey, ashen palms, and stared down at the image of two young robots in love, laughing without a care in the world. The sound of Allison's voice echoed through his memory banks like a beautiful song, and already she seemed like something that happened years ago, like something from a wonderful dream. With a little pressure from his fingers he paused the image, and the sound was muted, leaving a perfect 3-D picture of the most beautiful girl in the universe, with her arms wrapped around the luckiest guy in the universe. Her violet hair-foil flew wildly behind her face, and her deep, warm eyes seemed to stare right through him, even now …

He raised a finger to the robot girl's cheek, wishing her could speak to her, wishing that he could hold her in his arms just one more time … but the finger passed right through the image, as if it were painted on a dissolving fog. She seemed so real, hanging right in front of his eyes. She seemed real … but she was only a beautiful ghost.

Drew cradled the holo-disk in his hands and closed his eyes, looking like he might dissolve into powdery gravel, and pressed another spot on the bottom of the metallic circle. The image dissolved into a flurry of forgotten light, and he spoke with a low, trembling voice …

"Good-bye, Ally."

The students slowly turned their attentions back to the front of the room. Soon the only sound in the classroom was the shuffling of textbooks, the scratching of chalk, the beat of raindrops against the windowpanes – and the sound of synthesized teardrops streaming down a gray, chalky face, spattering into the pages of a geometry text.

THE END of Part Two

Three Days to Cluster Dawn