Author's note: Chapter Four! Yay!
Phoenix Fire
Chapter Four
Nine hours later, everyone in the Wakeman household was up and refreshed after a good night's sleep (or Sleep Mode, as the case may be). Nora and Brad ate pancakes for breakfast, while Jenny enjoyed a can of motor oil. After breakfast, Jenny quickly washed the dishes, then the trio went down into the lab.
"XJ Ni-yun, last night, after you left, I realized something," Nora began.
"What is it, Mom?" Jenny asked.
"Well, you see, there's something I've been hiding from you. When I first conceptualized you, I wasn't thinking about saving the planet at all. In fact, I was quite angry at the world."
"Why?" Jenny and Brad asked in unison.
"Because, I was hurt by losing the one thing that was closest to me." Nora pulled down on a nearby storage hook, and the entire section of wall slid away, revealing a secret room. All three walked in slowly, with Nora in the lead. In the center of the room, doused in ambient light, was a girl suspended inside a glass tube. She was floating in some unknown liquid, her hair and dress billowing as bubbles traveled to the top of the tube. Upon closer inspection, Jenny saw that the girl was very pale, and had dark blue hair that seemed to reach just past her shoulder blades. Out of the corner of her eye, Jenny could see that Brad was openly staring at the girl, and that his eyes were glazed over, just like Sheldon Lee's did whenever she was around. For a moment, Jenny felt envy rear its ugly head, and wished once again that she could be human. She turned her attention back to the girl's face.
"Mom...she looks like...like me. If I were human, that is." In fact, Jenny was absolutely correct. Jenny's facial features, though robotic in design, were very similar to this girl's, if not slightly more polygonal.
"XJ Ni-yun, this young lady's name is Jennifer. Eight years ago, she suffered a horrible accident, which almost killed her. A few months after the accident, her body had healed, but the doctors suspected that she had experienced irreversible head trauma. She was completely braindead. They wanted to take her off of life support, so that she would die; however, I had recently built a stasis machine, which is what you see here." She guestured to the room. "It is designed to allow someone who has a disease or injury, such as Jennifer, to be 'frozen' in time until their problem has a cure or a solution. In this case, Jennifer was to be put in stasis until such time as her brain trauma could be fixed, and her life restored."
"Mom, how do you know Jennifer?"
Nora choked back a sob. "Jennifer was...is...my daughter."
Jenny stumbled backwards. "Are you...serious? This is your daughter?"
Brad pointed to a small plaque on the tube. He read: "Jennifer Marie Wakeman. Born: January 23, 2005. Entered Stasis: August 15, 2021."
"Eight years ago..." Jenny whispered. She turned to Nora. "Why are you showing me this?"
"Because, the day I designed your schematics was the third anniversary of her accident. I created you to look like her. I thought...I thought that if I had a robot version of her, if I made you, that you would replace her. But I was wrong. I ended up making you just like One through Eight, in order to save the wrold, because I couldn't stand to look at you. Every day you grew more like her, and you still are. I have to put a stop to it."
"Mom, you're scaring me." Jenny was still a little worriedabout being put into permanent Sleep Mode.
"No, no, I'm not going to decommission you." She led Brad and Jenny to the far corner of the stasis room, where a large machine rested. "This machine transfers information from a computer into the synapses of the human mind. If my theory is correct, I may be able to give you what you've always wanted, and get my daughter back at the same time."
"You mean, I could be human? I could be your real daughter, and not just a robot?" Nora nodded.
"Wow, so Jenny's actually going to be Jenny!" Brad said excitedly. "Just wait, Jen, there's so much I'm going to have to teach you about being human!"
"Can we do it now, Mom?" Jenny asked.
"Absolutely not!" Jenny flinched at Nora's sharp tone. "First, we must build a replacement. I believe I will give the new Global Protection Unit some upgrades, however. They were meant for you, but with the fire damages I wasn't sure if they would fit any longer."
"Can I help, Mom?" Jenny asked.
"I'll help, too," Brad offered.
"All right, then. Well, the sooner we get started, the sooner we'll be done."
"Yes!" Jenny and Brad shouted.
Ten hours later, they had pulled up Jenny's original blueprints. Rather than creating a whole new design, they had decided to just make a few alterations to the XJ-9 model. Soon, they were hard at work. Every once in a while, Jenny would stare longingly at the wall hiding the stasis room, thinking about what it would be like to be human. Whenever Brad caught her doing so, he would give her a reassuring smile and a wink. These moments would make Jenny blush slightly, not only because she was being caught, but because she thought Brad looked so handsome when he winked.