S Peter Davis
All characters (C) SEGA, Archie and SP Davis 2004 (unless otherwise noted.)
Used without permission
Three:
Malachite
We twist and turn where angels burn,
Like fallen soldiers we will learn
That once forgotten, twice removed,
Love will be the death of you.
- Savage Garden
PERSPECTIVE
I
The streets of Newton were quiet as the sun positioned itself overhead. The occasional horse trotted by with a carriage, a mobian driver on the reins, but the rolling tumbleweeds provided most of the action in this town. The fact was becoming clearer and clearer every day, and now it was only the stubborn who refused to admit it: Newton was moving on. Once this had been a bustling, hi-tech town of merchants and businesses, the mecca of trade between Westerica and the eastern territories. That time had long passed.
A figure could be seen passing the shops and houses by the street. A short, dark individual wearing a travelling coat. Most people he passed avoided him, and made little attempt to cover up the fact.
He turned his head to watch a passing carriage. The driver pretended not to have noticed him. He whipped the reins and shouted "YAH!", and the horse trotted faster.
The figure continued walking. His feet made a peculiar clanging sound with each step.
EDWARD'S SHACK OF TECHNICAL SUPPLIES, read a sign above one store. The coated figure read it out aloud, and then pushed the door open.
The propriator of the store looked up when the door opened and triggered the doorbell. He had been dusting his bench, but now he stood still, his gaze sharp and cautioning. He frowned when the figure stepped up to the counter and looked back at him.
"I thought I made it known that we don't serve your kind here." he said. An overweight, greasy squirrel. His use of the word we when he was the only one serving indicated that he probably meant the statement to cover every shop in the town.
"I have nowhere else to go in order to acquire the items I seek," the figure replied. "I intend to purchase them legally"
"Yeah, right," the squirrel smirked. "You know that your very existence is a felony in this country"
"Precisely, sir," the figure shot back. "And therefore I am already committing a crime over which I have no control. Believe me when I say I feel no need to commit another. Your business is slow here. Nobody has any use for your wares. Newton has moved on, sir, and soon you will have to move on with it. I have no need for money, being what I am. You have no need for this hardware. We have what each other wants, and I am merely suggesting a trade so we can both return with more peace of mind. Now, sir, I ask you again to serve me"
The squirrel looked skeptical. The mysterious figure reached into his coat pocket and produced a handful of gold coins. One of the fingers on his glove was missing, and through the hole poked a shining silver claw. He dropped the coins on the bench.
The shopkeeper picked up a coin and looked it over. He put it in his mouth and bit down on it. Then he stared back up at the figure again for a long time.
Finally, he mumbled "What do you want, then"
The figure inspected the shelves on the back wall.
"Four hydrolic pistons. Two twenty-four inches, two twenty-five inches. Two tesla batteries, high voltage, mainframe compatible. Ten high data compression silicon chips. Two scanning bulbs, diameter ten millimetres. One large coil electromagnet"
The shopkeeper harvested all these items from his shelves with little trouble, and dropped them on the bench in front of his customer. Then he scooped up all the coins and deposited them in a register.
"I thank you for your co-operation," the figure said, lifting his purchases and turning around.
"Hold it," the squirrel said. The customer stopped in his tracks, and turned his head. Something red was glowing from inside his hood.
"Are you done here"
"Yes. These items will conclude my business"
"Good. Because I ain't letting you in here no more, understand?" His eyes narrowed. "Once you walk out that door, it's for good. And another thing... now, I don't know exactly what you're intending to construct with these... items... but whatever it is, I want no part in it. When you get caught doing whatever it is you're doing, and they ask you where you got those parts from, you just tell them it was anywhere at all except my shop, you understand? If anybody traces your dealings back to me, I swear to God I'll rip your gears out and wear them as a necklace, you hear"
"I understand," the figure replied. But his gaze was past the shopkeeper, to the back of the store.
"What is that?" he asked.
"Wha?" The squirrel turned his head.
Something elongated and jagged sat on the shelf. It was emitting a yellow glow, bathing everything around it.
"That there's the eighth Chaos Emerald"
The figure appeared confused. "There are only seven Chaos Emeralds." he corrected.
"You wanna argue with me?" the shopkeeper snapped. "I don't know just what the heck that thing is, but the nutter who sold it to me says it's the eighth Chaos Emerald, so that's what I'm going with. Nack, his name was. Travels all over the place collecting junk like that"
"Nack," the figure repeated, a spark of recognition showing. "He is a fiend... but insincerity is not among his vices. Perhaps there is some truth in this"
He dug another pile of gold coins from his pocket.
"I wish to also purchase the emerald."
II
A wide, tall roller-door opened ever so slowly, and with much noise. Its rusty, weather-worn components wailed and screeched, and as it opened, light flooded into the pitch black garage. The figure in the long coat and hood stood at the entrance, darkened against the sun, and stepped inside. He pulled the chain on a lightbulb, and closed the door behind him. Then he removed his coat. Sparkling blue, silver and yellow metal not only covered, but composed his entire body. The clothing dropped to the floor.
Mecha Sonic had wandered for some time before eventually settling in Newton. Since the exile of his creator and master, a brutal despot known as Robotnik, Mecha had been at a kind of loose end. Unable to honour his primary mission program - to serve his master - he had no choice but to devote the entirity of his time to his secondary program - to learn. Mecha was a learning computer, the most advanced ever conceived, and after several years of constant input, his mainframe was going through some interesting changes.
Mecha had been granted the capacity to think like a person. Now he was cursed by it.
"I have returned, Malachite," he announced. "You are to be completed, now"
Something sat motionless on an old wooden stool in the corner of the garage. Its chassis was of dull, tarnished metal. Another robot. Only this one remained still, dead to the world.
Mecha walked over to this second robot and opened a hatch on its belly. The metal hedgehog opened one of the boxes he had just purchased, and brought out two enormous cylindrical batteries. Inspecting them for a moment under the red glow of his eyes, he proceeded to insert one of them into the robot's belly cavity. It loaded with a clipping sound, and Mecha inserted the second one beside it, inverted. Once done, he flicked a switch above them, and closed the compartment. Standing up again, he admired the robot for a moment, and then looked down at the other boxes. Opening a small one, he found ten silicon chips sitting neatly beside each other in something resembling an egg carton. Walking back to the robot, he pushed something in the back of its head, and its face opened with a hissing sound. This appeared to be the control centre of the entire machine. There were already two large chips embedded in the face, and spaces for ten more. Delicately, Mecha inserted all the chips. Then he pulled over another box containing two objects similar to lightbulbs, and screwed them in where the robot's eyes should go. Then he closed the face, which caught with a click. There were now two bulbs staring back at him.
Now his attention turned to a large computer, which was sitting on a desk beside him. It was just a desktop PC, but the case was removed, and several wires were streaming from it into the back of the robot. Mecha switched on the computer and waited for it to boot up, and then started rapidly typing on the keyboard. He stabbed the enter key, and looked at the robot. Its eyes, the two bulbs he had screwed in, lit up an emerald green, and a picture appeared on the computer screen - a camera view of what was in front of the robot.
"You can see," Mecha said, and began typing again.
The eyes panned, and so did the picture on the screen. Mecha nodded in approval.
"Time to meet me now, Malachite"
He typed more commands into the computer, and he was answered by a series of beeps and whirrs from the robot. Then a woman's voice echoed throughout the building, "Booting up systems, please wait"
Mecha stood back and did just that. Eventually, the robot's head moved... it looked straight at him.
"Greetings, Malachite," Mecha said.
"Unable to process," the robot said in a strong female voice.
"Your name is Malachite," Mecha responded.
The robot, Malachite, stared for a few moments, and then said "Malachite"
"Yes," Mecha replied. "And who am I"
"You are Mecha," Malachite replied.
"Correct"
"You are my creator"
"Correct"
"You are master unit"
At this, Mecha shook his head. "Negative"
"Does not compute," Malachite complained.
"We are equal in status," Mecha explained, "Neither of us shall be regarded as higher than the other in rank"
"Creator of Malachite unit equals superior," Malachite insisted.
Mecha didn't reply to this. Instead, he moved over to the computer and began typing.
"I am going to download a copy of my mainframe to your motherboard," he said. "Everything I know will be transferred to you. Afterwards, you will be able to understand my feeli- my... instructions... for you"
He produced another silicon chip, a very large one, and plugged it into the PC motherboard somewhere, and resumed typing.
"Error, I believe this data contains a virus," Malachite said, "Seventy terabytes of data located, and this figure is constantly increasing in value and complexity. This is irrational"
"It is normal," Mecha insisted, "It is only... moss"
"Acknowledged"
Mecha instructed the computer to download, and then turned around.
"I will return, Malachite. Proceed with download"
"Affirmative."
III
As he walked down the streets of Newton in his coat, he admired the landscape. Desolate, dry, remote, like a metaphor for his state of mind. People always avoided him. By this time, everybody knew what he was no matter whether he wore the coat or not. He was a non-citizen, an illegal creation due to Westerica's anti-technology constitution. If the Android Wars of years past hadn't attached an irrepairable stigma to the concept of technological progress, then Robotnik's short but genocidal reign over the once glorious empire of Mobitropolis managed the killing blow. Mecha wasn't sure whether anybody in Newton knew that his genesis was at the hands of the most infamous tyrant of the modern world (in fact he suspected they didn't, because the people's reaction to one of Robotnik's machines among them would probably be to destroy him on sight), but nevertheless it was clear that no robot was welcome on Mobius, and that wasn't likely to change anytime soon. The world was moving on, and his kind was to be left behind with the rest of the skeletons in the Mobian closet.
On this day, he happened to come across somebody he hadn't seen in town before, and considered it fairly strange because Newton was a very small town with very few people, so much so that everybody was on a first name basis with everybody else. The stranger was a chameleon, his vast bank of knowledge informed him, a variety of reptilian mobian native to the desert regions of Westerica and known for their communal nature. Mecha watched this stranger with much interest, and the chameleon wandered away to converse with somebody out of sight. Eavesdropping was one of the vices that came with being such a technologically advanced piece of hardware programmed to learn absolutely everything.
Collaborating sound data: SUBJECT A: "-sleep here for a night. I'm so tired"
SUBJECT B: "We'll have to work for it, we ain't got no money"
Analysing : please wait.
SUBJECT A: Identity Unknown (Chameleon)
SUBJECT B: Sonic Hedgehog
!WARNING! PRIORITY ONE HEDGEHOG PRESENT IN THE AREA
Mecha's head snapped around, away from them. Had he seen him? Had he seen his red eyes? It was unexpected, shocking, and it made no sense at all, but somehow, the situation was clear... Sonic the Hedgehog was in Newton.
IV
iHe intends to destroy you/i, Mecha's system assured him, and it was more than just irrational paranoia, it was worse, it was irational/i paranoia, for what other possible reason would Sonic have to be this far from home, in the middle of nowhere? All of the pieces of the logic puzzle fell together to form a map of Sonic's behaviour. The chameleon was obviously hired by the hedgehog to track Mecha through the desert. It wasn't enough that Robotropolis had fallen, Sonic's incurable and egocentric drive for heroism had him traversing the continent to seek out and destroy every scattered remnant of Robotnik's empire.
Mecha's hatred for Sonic the Hedgehog was total. The delicate instrument that was his powerful mind had been miscarried in its critical first phases of development by the mindgames that Sonic had played with him in his first weeks of sentience, and as a result he remained fundamentally confused about his identity even now. Mecha was intelligent enough now to know that he was what any mobian would define as a machine, a robot. But ironically, his intelligence, vast as it was, also led him to realise that this was categorically inaccurate despite any level of opinion. His mind operated on all the fundamental principles of a living brain. That his brain was made of silicon and metal did not make it any less a brain, by its very definition. That his organs were vastly different to any that could be found inside any other creature did not affect their classification as organs. His anguish came from the fact that, as far as his intellect was concerned, he was as much a life form as he was a machine. Furthermore, it recognised that these categories were a product of intellectual opinion and did not exist in nature, therefore it was impossible to settle upon a conclusive decision either way. In fact, being both ilife/i and imachine/i might even have been a tolerable state in which to exist, had Sonic not tormented him about it in his crucial 'adolescent' stage.
(You're not alive! Living things ibleed/i)
Mecha did not remember the context of this memory, when it was said or precisely what it meant. It was a rogue sound byte that remained in his system despite Robotnik's and his own efforts to purge and reformat his mind-computer, to target what Robotnik had referred to as ian emotive seed, the kernal of a virus that, unchecked, would corrode his delicate instruments./i Sonic had planted that seed. Only Sonic had been able to do it, for Sonic was the key to Mecha's identity quandry: That he was not, in fact, the purest form of what he was. iSonic/i was the purest form of what he was. If Sonic was what Mecha was, then Mecha wasn't. And if Mecha wasn't what Mecha was, then how could Mecha possibly be anything at all?
The purging attempts had failed. Most of Mecha's memories from his first year of existence were gone, but the virus had resisted deletion. Sonic's seed was too ingrained, and it had grown into what Robotnik had called an iemotional moss/i, some kind of mental fungus that had irreversably broken down the mind of the world's most dangerous assassin into a quivering introverted sack of misery amass with questions for which there were no answers.
Q: What is the significance of the name iMiekha/i?
A: Unknown
Many of these questions may have been meaningless, the result of the emotional moss implanting him with false memory bytes and false logic. For some reason his tormented mind sometimes went beyond assuring him that he should be a life form... that in fact he ihad been/i a life form and that had been taken from him. And for some reason he felt that this, too, was Sonic's fault.
As he pondered the problem of his discovery by his nemesis, he was suddenly and unexpectedly taken to consider that Malachite might appreciate the purchase of some nice clothing to wear about. Not only this, but would Malachite be safe from Sonic without Mecha nearby to protect her? It was not beyond Sonic, he figured, to want to destroy what he had created in an effort to more thoroughly remove all that he was from the face of Mobius.
Mecha's malice towards Sonic was comprehensible. Sonic's malice towards Mecha was not.
Calculating:Please wait Chance of Sonic locating Malachite plus/minus 06
:p:please:don't let him:hurt her:
V
South of Newton was the desert. The Barren Quarter ate the east of Westerica in an arc from coast to coast and isolated it from the eastern nations. This is why Newton had been so important in the past, for it had served as a gateway through this harsh terrain. It sat on one of the largest lakes on the continent, Lake Survival, and nobody travelling by land approached Westerica from the east without passing through it. But even in the latter years of King Charles Acorn's rule of Mobitropolis, this once bustling town had all but dried up. The fall of that mighty metropolis had cast Newton, along with many other towns, into its death throes. The cohesion that Mobitropolis had provided to the provinces of Westerica had fragmented, and the entire region was doomed to be divided and picked apart by the encroaching Arack Empire and other powers whose influence over the land had been held at bay by the Acorn monarchy.
Nobody had much reason to trade with Westerica anymore, and the region was drying up like a well in a long period of drought.
Mecha figured that he would need to move again before long. His knowledge of the Northern Territories of Mobius was very poor, but it was the only place he could think to go. It would not be wise to remain for much longer in the dying land of Westerica, a place that would, in all probability, descend into war soon (and almost certainly lose). To the south was the badlands of Kirandul, Arack territory, and that was even less safe. The north may have been unknown, but it was a safe kind of unknown rather than a hazardous ignorance. A quiet region, less tainted by the stigma of mechanical creations (although nowhere on the planet was entirely free of it... nowhere at all.
When Malachite was finished downloading, he decided, they would go together into this unknown and attempt to settle in the far north, somewhere peaceful and far from judgement... far from Sonic.
The central processing units of both Malachite and the computer were running at maximum speed, and the download was still only one percent completed, when Mecha returned to check on his creation. Mecha himself was even surprised at the complexity of his own mind. Malachite's mind was not as complex as his own and would not be capable of completing the download (Mecha's ability to recreate his own technology was not limited by his intellect, but by the availability of materials). Still, he hoped she would be able to retain enough for this to all be worthwhile. Malachite looked up at him blankly.
"Welcome back, Mecha Sonic," she said, "I'm pleased you have returned"
She was indeed picking up some personality in the transfer.
"I have brought you a gift, Malachite," Mecha replied, "I travelled far to get it"
He held out the package with one hand, tearing away the paper wrapping with the other. A stunning black dress, sparkling in the dim light. Its length extended all the way to the floor.
"I recalled your schematical information to locate a perfect fit"
Malachite stared her blank, robot stare at the dress for a long time, and then said "Such beauty... I would get rust on it"
"Nonsense." Mecha replied. "I have cleaned and sealed your components. Robots are not respected among the organics, Malachite. You will be looked upon as a thing of beauty, not of disgust. As you should be"
"My highest appreciation, Mecha," Malachite replied, "Complex programs have activated within the data you have provided me. I am unsure how to react"
"They are emotions," Mecha said, "React the way you feel you should react"
"Do I feel"
He did not reply, but simply handed her the dress.
"Resume the download."
VI
"Robots, eh"
The Out of Towner moved his hand to touch the long, thin scar that stitched his face together like a zipper. An injury newly healed, a crescent of pink baby-skin where his jet black fur would never grow. He grinned and rubbed his hands together, knitted and un-knitted his fingers again and again, and it was easy to tell that he was building up a sweat under those devil-red gloves. The others watched the Out of Towner with great intensity, a kind of untrusting expression written on every face that made it clear his presence was only tolerated, not welcomed. The expression on his own face was the only one that differed vastly; he was grinning, and on the right side of his face, the side marred by that scar, his eye and the corner of his mouth twitched periodically with a nervous tic. His anxiousness and his excitement was irregular and more than a little worrying.
"Robots, eh? Robots indeed, but how exactly am I to be sure that this is the iright/i robot"
One of the townsfolk frowned and tried, if it were possible, to make his face even stonier before this arrogant stranger. After all, nobody was in the mood to be taking any guff from an Out of Towner. Sometimes it takes an outsider to deal with an outsider, and that was the only reason this conversation needed to take place.
"He matches the description. Unless there's more than one blue metal hedgehog with glowing red eyes walking about the place, your accursed machine is right here. I think you know it, too, would you have come all this way if you weren't sure"
"Perhaps, perhaps you're right," the Out of Towner chuckled, "And there's only one robot matching that description, so far as I know. Used to be that there were two, you know, but that's all in the past now and nothing's going to change that"
"There is the matter of the ransom"
Now the Out of Towner began laughing, and pounded his fist on the table. "Predictable! Mobian nature is just so darned predictable, isn't it? The mind is always focused on just one thing. The ransom is all yours, buddy, but payment on delivery. I want that robot, alive. Well, not ialive/i, but you catch my meaning"
"And just how exactly are we supposed to do that"
"Well, I'll tell you. But you have to listen close and listen good."
VII
The garage was silent. Malachite's head shot up as if awakened by a nightmare. Mecha Sonic's knowledge and memory were still being transferred into her mainframe, and one topic in particular had begun to download.
Sonic. A single identity file, the same as any of the other thousands of people Mecha had stored knowledge of over the years. The difference was that he was fairly indifferent to the vast majority of these people, but Sonic's file had about a terabyte of emotion data connected to it, encrypted with it. Malachite's systems screamed virus, the rapidly mutating and growing 'moss' data was more potentially malevolent than anything else of the like that had been deposited into her mind thus far. The personality that had begun to develop within her fought for its own protection, and commanded her to rip these wires out of her head and preserve her mind from this acidic and virulent data. But her motor functions had not been properly configured, and she was as powerless and terrified as a quadriplegic hospital patient watching somebody inject half a litre of cyanide into her drip.
As the data rolled on, Malachite watched fragments of half-deleted memory and broken images flood past. Names without connotation, as though whispered on the wind. Ashura, Miekha, Sally. There was Cyber Sonic, there was Silver, there was Rosa, there was something about a diary, a record of tragic events long since erased and covered up. But Mecha's brain was different to that of a normal robot, data couldn't simply be erased like a hard drive. His operators had gotten most of it, yes, but there was a residue locked in the deepest recesses of his consciousness, hiding too far inside. There was a story in Mecha's past so significant that it could never be fully removed, and Malachite watched some of it as it passed through her system. She saw enough.
VIII
Malachite said nothing of it the next day when Mecha checked on her progress. He bid her good morning, and she gave him the same salutation. He checked his instruments, made sure everything still worked as it should, and then excused himself as he left her alone to her download.
There were few times when Mecha truly put effort into trying to comprehend what he was doing. So much effort had been put in to creating Malachite, so much time and energy, and for what? The quandry of logical justification he put down to the appeasement of an irrational need. His moss data, as he had come to know it, his redundant emotional surplus, had created a kind of need, what a true organic might liken to a drug addiction. Certain needs (or more accurately, wants) had to be addressed before he could function properly. What Mecha wanted was kin, some kind of companionship. He wanted to be proximal to something like himself. And he wanted to create.
He retained memory of the last time he had been given the opportunity to appease this need - and had displeased his master in so doing. Some time back, Robotnik had attempted to send a cyborg spy to infiltrate the Freedom Fighters and assassinate Sally Acorn. For the first time, Mecha had been granted an invitation to help design the robot, and had experienced a level of enthusiasm for the project that even surprised himself. The finished product, an extremely attractive female echidna look-alike named Rosa, had raised eyebrows in Robotropolis. It was the truth that Mecha had never even considered the possibility that his motives in creating Rosa were anything but clinical and straight-forward, but there was an unspoken accusation for a while that Mecha was subconsciously attempting to manufacture a mate for himself, as part of an unforseen side-effect from being created to mentally emulate a living creature. Mecha had denied this even from himself, but could not deny a disturbing level of emotional reaction when Rosa was murdered by Sonic the Hedgehog.
Based on past accusations, it would have been folly to refuse to consider the possibility that these things were happening in his mind even now, that biological 'junk instinct' he carried in his half-living brain was responsible for his inescapable desire to create once again, to call his creation female and to make it in his own image. Such a sociopathic creator as Robotnik had seen no need to implant Mecha with knowledge of the concept of love (had in fact probably not even known anything about it himself) and Robotropolis was a very poor learning environment for such things. So Mecha's grasp of the meaning of this word was feeble at best. How he could crave something he couldn't even define was so far beyond him that it seemed to be insanity. Yet it was truth, unless the emotional moss had corroded his mind so critically that he no longer operated within the boundries of reason.
As Mecha thought, he began to wander, and as he wandered, he walked right into the path of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Oh no! His eyes! As soon as he saw the hedgehog standing before him, he turned around and faced the other direction, covering his face with his hands and hoping Sonic would just walk away. He didn't. Thank goodness he was covered up by his overcoat, and the hedgehog didn't seem to have recognised him.
"Hey... do you have the time?" The hedgehog asked him.
"Ten twenty-three oh seven antimeridian, the morning of April seventeenth! Go away!" Mecha snapped.
Sonic was taken aback. "Hey... did you even look at your watch then"
But Mecha was already hurrying in the other direction. When he was at a safe distance, he watched his biological nemesis from afar. Sonic was travelling again with the purple chameleon, and the two of them stood by the town mailbox. The hedgehog slipped a small white envelope into the box, and then he and his companion disappeared around a corner.
As soon as Mecha judged that it was safe, he came out into the open again. He walked by the street, back towards the mailbox. It was a small, wooden thing, painted red. Mecha had lived in Newton long enough to know that the mail carrier emptied the box once a month if there was anything in it, and then departed into the desert on a camel. He stared down at the box for a long time, looked both ways, and then tried to open it. It was locked. So the robot put his fist through the side of it. Rotting wood splintered and broke away as the side of the mailbox collapsed. Somebody came rushing out of the saloon nearby and began shouting abuse at him, but he ignored it.
Inside, there were two letters. The one on top was addressed thusly:
Sally Acorn via House of the Mayor,
Station Square
Seeing as the village of New Knothole wasn't officially recognised by the general postal route as an actual place, it seemed the hedgehog had tried to get a letter to Sally by sending it to the mayor of Station Square. The city had been on close terms with the Freedom Fighters in the past year.
Grabbing the letter and ripping it open in one fluid motion, Mecha took it apon himself to read Sonic's private correspondence. After all, it was without a doubt some kind of telegram informing the Freedom Fighters that he had tracked Mecha down to a small town in the wasteland of the Crux Desert, and that his time on Mobius was running short.
Dear gang,
Sonic, here. No doubt you're wondering where I have been these past few months,
and I'm sorry to have worried you by leaving without any word or warning.
I had wanted to send you a letter sooner,
but I haven't been travelling close to civilisation, and the mail system sucks up here, seriously.
The letter told of quests and oaths, of parrallel worlds, evil twins and magical stones. A fairy tale that made little sense to Mecha, besides the obvious fact that the entire message was written in some kind of code designed specifically to prevent prying eyes from deciphering its true meaning. Sonic was more insidious than Mecha had given him credit for - and why not? Had Sonic not proven his guile on many an occasion? All that the robot could figure out was that Sonic was persuing somebody, and that was all that he needed to prove his suspicions. Why couldn't Sonic just leave him alone? Was there nowhere on Mobius that he could run without worrying about being stalked by the hedgehog who had haunted him since the first days of his creation?
The guy near the saloon was still shouting abuse. Mecha needed to find somewhere quiet and safe where he could think in peace, and so (after crumpling the letter and throwing it away) he activated his rocket blaster with a roar of flame and smoke, and took off over the rooftops.
IX
The day moved on and so did Newton. A few lonely tumbleweeds rolled down the quiet streets past the dilapidated buildings, many of them abandoned now. It might seem to a casual observer that what remained of the community was being eaten by the landscape, that soon the Crux Desert would rise and swell, and swallow this town in a tide of dry neglect.
In the failing industrial district, a number of abandoned warehouses stood eroding away in the sand and wind. Inside one of these warehouses was hidden the secret project of one of the last of a forbidden race, if a mechanical being can be said to be a part of a race. Malachite sat alone in the corner, and it may have been difficult for someone to understand what she was, unless they already knew. A strange amalgomation of machine parts without order or apparent reason, as though some mad sculptor had welded together a random collection of junkyard scrap in the vague shape of some person of ambiguous species. Mecha Sonic was a learning computer, but he still had a lot to learn about the concept of aesthetic beauty as understood by the average mobian. The beauty he saw in Malachite had little to do with physical appearance. Visuals, after all, were only one very small part of the total spectrum of sensory perception, the whole of what constituted the understanding of reality.
The double roller-doors providing entrance into the warehouse suddenly roared into life, and Malachite's natural expectation was that Mecha, her master, had returned.
But this was not the case.
A number of strangers stepped into the empty building, silhouetted against the bright light of outside. Mobian, all of them. Biologicals, entities that Malachite had learned not to trust, because Mecha did not trust them. But Malachite did not yet have the ability to defend the domain of herself and her master against the intrusion, so all she could do was watch.
"Well, well, well..." someone exclaimed, and the strangers, four in all, began to approach her.
"Your presence constitutes an intrusion," Malachite said.
Somebody whacked her across what passed for her head, and the robot flopped like a rag doll.
"That ugly thing's tryin' to make isself a friend!" one of the strangers drawled. "Won't be long before we gots robots overrunning this whole town, I reckon! We best be showing these vermin who runs this town, right away."
X
Mecha Sonic returned to Newton hours later in another state of excitement. He carried a large shopping bag in each hand, and wandered back towards the garage without even bothering to put his overcoat back on. But there was a feeling of dread which intensified as he neared the building.
The bags were full of cosmetics and paint. Mecha, at last, was going to give his creation a face. He produced a digitally rendered portrait of it in his mind. Beautiful. He failed to see how anybody at all could hate, or even dislike, something that looked like that, which was all a part of his plan. Malachite, he decided, would have all of the opportunities in this world that he himself had never been offered. It was now that Mecha began to detect the abberational data functions that signalled the onset of an emotion. As of recent times, this was not particularly odd, but his software was constantly evolving to recognise more varieties of emotional reaction, and this was an emotion his systems did not recognise. It was a weaker version of dread, but irrational dread with no recognisable source. Apparently an error, a system malfunction. There was no reason to feel this way, as though something were terribly wrong with the world.
Choose to ignore emotional data?
Y Program override. Emotion deleted.
Whatever the odd feeling had been, Mecha erased it from his systems and continued onward. Moments later, though, the feeling resurfaced, immune to his efforts to remove it. Yet another reason this 'moss' data was not unlike a virus. It always seemed to find a way to replicate itself and invade every facet of his ability to operate. In the later period of service to his master, Robotnik had all but lost faith in his abilities. The systematic softening of his mind was only fogging up his powerful programmed instincts.
WARNING: Could not delete emotional data. Please check to:mal: make sure file is not curren:achite:tly in use and is not write protected.
Could it be that the emotion wasn't faulty, that there really was some reason to feel dread? Mecha had a possible theory about emotions that hypothesised that on some level they actually allowed a sharpening of the senses rather than an overall decrease in their efficiency - dulling one program to enhance another. Perhaps his iemotional/i senses had picked up some sign of impending calamity that was too small for even his powerful instruments to detect.
Mecha's dread took over his actions. He began to hurry back to the warehouse where he had hidden Malachite. What a fool he had been! Leaving his precious and delicate creation alone and without protection while Sonic was in town with malice on his agenda! There was no justification for his imbecility. If Malachite had been harmed.
The robot gained access to his hideaway and instantly discovered that his emotive response had indeed predicted accurately. The warehouse was in shambles, equipment scattered about the place as though a tornado had gutted the building. All the electronics had been destroyed, including the powercharged computer he had been using to transfer his mental data into Malachite's system. The download would have been close to complete. He and Malachite might have been able to flee Newton that very evening if he had been left undisturbed for just another few hours.
There was a handwritten note tacked on to the chair where Malachite had been seated:
Robot,
The PEOPLE of Newton would like to have a discussion with you regarding your activities in this peaceful town. We do not want YOUR KIND hanging about here making trouble for us.
Meet with us at the town hall so that we can discuss your future here in more detail.
And DO NOT EVEN THINK about making trouble.
WE HAVE WAYS of making THINGS like you less dangerous so you do not want to make this difficult.
Signed, THE PEOPLE.
! - Emotional data detected in mainframe.
Please wait:
Data file isolated Emotion recognised as: Rage
WARNING: Core temperature rising above suggested range
!CRITICAL TEMPERATURE ACHIEVED! Activating emergency cooling system
Slowly, Mecha Sonic's hand closed around the note, crumpling it. He looked up. His eyes were glowing brighter than usual. If somebody were to stand next to the robot, they would have been able to feel the heat radiating from his central processing unit, as extremely unsavoury emotions began to overload his system. Living creatures were fine-tuned to tolerate such emotions. Robots weren't. Mecha was beginning to break up under the weight of his own rage.
He stormed through the garage, knocking over whatever wasn't knocked over already. His eyes were blazing like twin bonfires. Twirling to face the door, he raised his right arm. A small missile gun emerged from it with a click. He fired, blowing a hole in the door large enough to walk through. Flames licked through the garage, and, finding nothing to fuel them, died away.
Mecha snatched his coat and draped it around himself, not shifting his gaze. He was almost to the hole in the door, when he stopped and looked around again.
A cabinet stood in the corner of the garage, seemingly untouched by the ransacking of the place by the almighty PEOPLE of Newton. Perhaps they had been unable to get it open, or hadn't thought it to be too important so long as their primary task was completed. The fact that it was locked did not bother Mecha, he clutched the handle and yanked the entire door off its hinges with a horrible cracking sound, and dropped it flat on the ground. Inside the cabinet, something was glowing brightly. He ran one silver claw over the surface of it. The propriator of 'EDWARD'S SHACK OF TECHNICAL SUPPLIES' believed it to be an eighth Chaos Emerald. The seven Chaos Emeralds, Mecha's memory told him, were cut and shaped into intricate jewels. This object was a jagged yellow shard that looked like it was broken from the surface of something much bigger. An Emerald that was never shaped. Nevertheless, it radiated power. Mecha grabbed it and shoved it into a deep pocket on his coat. Then he turned back to the door.
XI
Mecha Sonic hesitated to enter the town hall, wary that any manner of ambush could be (nay, almost definately was) waiting for him. He scanned the sign over the door again and again - NEWTON TOWN HALL. Within this building were the organism supremicists, the robot haters, the filthy bigoted scum who had kidnapped Malachite. Poor, innocent Malachite, faceless and without intent to harm anybody. Something sparked in his mainframe. He lurched foward towards the building. The Hall was unkempt and dilapidated, just like everything else in Newton. This entire town was about to fade into the history books. It would probably only be another decade or two before it was a ghost town. He opened the door with a creak. There were several people waiting inside who looked at him coldly. Mecha looked back just as coldly. iDon't give them an inch or they'll take a mile/i, his system informed him. Nobody said a word, until a strangely familiar voice said "Is that our guest, I hear? Come on, don't be shy"
The voice came from ahead, behind the hall podium. Slowly, Mecha walked towards it, passing the disgusted townsfolk. They each gave him the exact same look... and it was the look of death. Nobody wanted him here, that was for sure. When the robot approached the podium, the figure behind it had his back to him.
"Leave us alone, please," he commanded. "Hey," someone replied, "Hey, no way mister"
"Alone!" the stranger shrieked, "Or not a single cent will you see from me"
The other townspeople, reluctantly and with venomous hatred seeping from them like sweat, left the hall. When the door latched shut, there was a long silence.
"You have taken Malachite," Mecha said, trying to push back his feelings of rage. While many emotions did seem to serve some beneficial purpose, Mecha had found, wrath was not one of them.
"Give her back to me. Give her back, and we will leave this place. Leave you all in peace, and we won't return"
The figure behind the podium snorted. "I need that heap of junk like I need an extra butt on the end of my elbow. Mecha my friend, what I'm here for is you, and unlike the rest of these hicks I won't be content just seeing you leave town. I'm here to kill you, Mecha, to rip apart every constituent of your inferior and watered-down assembly. What do you say to that"
"I would ask who it is who bears such ill will toward me"
Mecha didn't need to ask, however. He had already analysed the stranger's voice and pinpointed his identity. The figure spun around on his chair anyway and knitted his fingers together on the podium.
"Hey, miss me? I missed you. I never get tired of killing you, Mecha."
XII
Malachite, alone and motionless in the dark of the New Place (which was really the basement of the town hall) had nothing to see or to do but ponder. Her mind was awash with the thoughts and recollections of her master, and even her complex mind tried desperately to sort through it and to make sense of it all.
Mecha Sonic was Master. He had given her life, or what passed for life for a robot, and had passed on his knowledge to her. Part of this knowledge had been a recognition of natural chain of command, of subserviance to one's lifegiver. Malachite was created by Master Mecha Sonic. Mecha Sonic was created by Master Robotnik. Robotnik was created by... what? The chain was unclear to her after this point. What she did know was that the creator was unquestionably the lawgiver.
And yet... Master Mecha Sonic had contradicted this. He had told her that they were equals and had refused the title of Master. But why? Malachite searched her database for some answer to this paradox. All she could find were hundreds of feelings of which she could not make sense.
Much of this emotion was directed against on individual, the bane of Mecha's existence.
Sonic.
Who was Sonic? He was an inseperable part of Mecha's identity, like the two of them were kindred. But not kindred in the way that Mecha intended Malachite to be; his relationship to Sonic was unclean to him, a curse, perhaps even the root source of his misery. Sonic haunted him like a ghost, not the ghost of the dead but the ghost of the unborn, the unrelenting image of what Mecha should have been, but wasn't.
(You're not alive! Living things ibleed/i)
This revelation was important to Mecha, but neither he nor Malachite quite knew why. Images of Mecha slicing himself apart, desperate to prove that he was different from the rest of Robotnik's mindless automatons. Sticks and stones would never break Mecha's immortal chassis, but words had destroyed his mind.
It was in the process of pondering this that Malachite's sensitive instruments picked up a particular sound nearby. It wasn't inside the building, it came from out in the open. Somebody was shouting a name, and that name was "iSonic/i"
For once, Malachite's mind ceased endlessly swimming in confusion, her thoughts focused on one comprehensible reality: Purpose. Malachite hadn't understood the reason for her creation until now, when all things came together in the beauty of perfect logic.
Malachite's reason for being was to serve her Maker.
Sonic had been delivered to her as a test of this principle. He waited outside for judgement to be wrought upon him, and Malachite was the purvayor of that judgement. She had bonded intimately with Mecha's turmoiled mind, and the result was a kind of union more intense than anything a fully biological mind could comprehend. Malachite was recipient to knowledge of a concept so simple and so complex that Mecha alone had never been able to comprehend, and the knowledge came to her in such a spectacular wave of elation that for a moment she could taste life, saw what it was like to have a soul and a body with which to house it. The concept she had understood was love. She loved Mecha, her Maker, her Master, her God. She loved him, she loved him, she loved him.
And now Sonic, the antithesis of this love, became the focus of its direct emotional inversion. Emotions were a dual burden, like the binary code that ran her mind, and there could be no love without hate. The passion with which she loved Mecha was so intense that her hatred for Sonic, struggling to match this intensity, started a chain reaction in her complex brain that became the precursor to a spectacular and cataclysmic system meltdown.
Sonic was to be murdered. This alone became her reality for the final moments of her existence. His every life function was to be terminated, his very being obliterated. But how? Malachite was immobile, her body had not yet been granted the ability to move, all that she could do was lie here and think, and love, and hate.
(faith)
No. Fundamental systems check revealed that she had both the means and the necessary software to provide full movement. Mecha had not switched this ability on yet, but the basic capacity existed in full working order. But she couldn't access these functions yet, couldn't-
(faith)
Her hand twitched. The digits tapped once on the dusty concrete. There was no need to concern herself with the restrictions of a simple computer system, she knew that now. For she was no computer. She loved; she was alive.
Malachite raised her hands to her sensorbulb-eyes and observed them for the first time. She sat up, and then stood up. She was shaky on her legs at first, but was very quick to adjust. Her balance-adjustment software allowed her to bypass a child's trial-and-error method of learning to walk; she was a natural expert the moment she took her first step and developed a feel for it.
Those who had captured and contained her had not bothered to lock her away, as she had been unable to move. But that was when she was a robot. She was now a living being, and with her junkyard legs she crossed the dark and empty basement towards the light, and towards vengeance.
XIII
System search:please wait:
Subject identified.
SUBJECT: Cyber Sonic :
Alias: Zero Tolerance
Subject recognised as: Dangerous
!Exercise caution!
"Cyber Sonic," Mecha said.
The black hedgehog sat opposite him, his spines ruffled, and a thin pink scar streaked down the side of his face from forehead to chin.
"Oh, always so formal, Mecha. Please, call me Zero. For better or worse, my Cyber days are over, but that's no reason we can't hang out from time to time. You didn't think I'd just let you get away, did you? We have unfinished business, you and I, and our business is to be resolved right now"
"We have no unfinished business, Zero"
"That's where you're wrong!" Zero shrieked, "Do you so easily forget your betrayal? You trecherously murdered me and banished me to a living purgatory inside this walking corpse"
"You achieved true undeniable life," Mecha replied, "Something for which I have always wished, but have been unable to achieve. I know not how it happened, but I do know that it is not my doing. Leave me in peace, Zero. Your quarrel with me is misdirected"
"I don't want life," Zero sulked, "You want it? Take it, you soft-headed failure of a machine. I don't want it. If I could, I'd give it to you and you could have your precious mortality and weakness and slow-witted stupidity. I might even regard it punishment enough that I'd leave you alone. But things being what they are, we lack that option, I'm sorry to say. So I'm just going to have to destroy you instead"
"And what would that achieve"
"Catharsis," the black hedgehog hissed, "If you were in my position you'd know the importance of the word"
Mecha slipped one hand inside his coat, where something throbbed with a great untapped power, and glowed even through the lining. "Tell me where you have taken Malachite," he instructed.
"Listen closely," Zero said, ignoring the command, "In my exploration of this continent, I have come across a great deal of exotic and interesting technologies. One of which is this." He raised one hand and showed Mecha a strange spiked object like a child's toy. It was coloured brightly in shades of purple and orange.
"I do not recognise that object," Mecha said.
"This is a resin-grenade," the black hedgehog explained, and with a startling speed he thrust his hand forward and pitched the object at Mecha. It struck him just above the chassis of his engine core, and stuck there like wet chewing gum. The robot tried to pick it off, but it was very gummy and adhered fast.
"I wouldn't pick at that if I were you," Zero warned, "The first impact activates it. The second detonates it. The problem with those things is that they're notoriously unstable, and messing with it is liable to get you blown up"
"I will not die by your hand today, Zero," Mecha said.
"That's the thing, Mecha. Your kind never dies. Death is an issue reserved for feeble biologicals. So is jealousy and vengeance. You banished me to these fates, and now they're going to be the end of you. You don't die today, Mecha, you cease." At this, Zero pulled his other hand out from beneath the podium and Mecha saw that it held a gun, a small rifle. The black hedgehog launched himself from behind the wooden structure, weapon aimed dead ahead.
"I cease you!" Zero shrieked.
Just as he fired at the grenade that still adhered to Mecha's chest, the robot grasped the hedgehog's wrist and threw it upward. The bullet missed its target and hit Mecha in the face, shattering the glass casing over his right eye. Glass showered onto the podium and the gun went flying from Zero's hand, the hedgehog screaming and cursing in his all-devouring rage.
"Leave me in peace, Zero!" Mecha commanded, and threw Zero to the ground. The black hedgehog snarled like an animal and clawed at Mecha, but the robot was nonchalant to his feeble attacks. The remains of his right eye sparking, he turned and walked towards the exit.
"Don't you walk away from me!" Zero roared, "Don't you dare walk away from me you soft-minded bucket of scrap metal, kill me or be killed, but don't you dare walk away from our business without finishing it!"
"Our business is finished," Mecha replied, "Persue me no longer. You have been granted life, Zero. Live your life to its potential and do not resent it, that is my advice"
"Curse you!" the hedgehog shrieked as Mecha left, "Curse you curse you curse you curse-"
But Mecha heard no more.
XIV
Sonic and Espio prepared to leave Newton.
Stacked up with supplies, they were prepared for their next foray into the desert, Sonic having learned his lesson about the folly of venturing into the heart of the Barren Quarter with nothing but the birthday suit his mother gave him. It was something that Espio taunted him about endlessly.
"iSonic/i" the chameleon shouted.
Sonic stood looking out over Lake Survival, a huge body of water that stretched as far south as he could see. This was the one source of water in this end of the Crux Desert, and even it didn't do much to bring life to the wasteland. A few trees and shrubs grew around its banks, but then it was all desert almost forever.
Strangely, there was a large number of people congregating around the nearby town hall, but none of them paid Sonic much notice. His attention turned to Espio, who was calling his name and coming out from behind one of the buildings.
"I got the last of the stuff," the chameleon said. He had a backpack strapped around his shoulders, as did Sonic. They were large and bulky packs, filled with all manner of essentials, whatever they could afford.
"All set?" Sonic asked.
"You betcha," Espio replied, "It's beautiful, ain't it"
"What"
"The lake"
It was indeed beautiful. The setting sun reflected off its surface and created a red spear of light over the shimmering water.
"Most beautiful thing I've seen all week. I think that if we don't just get out of this desert soon I might just"
"Robot"
"Say what"
"Robot"
"What are you"
"Robot."
Espio was pointing frantically over Sonic's shoulder. The hedgehog turned, and what he saw sent conflicting signals of alarm and hilarity to his mind. Something was shambling towards them, looking somewhat like a collection of tin cans with legs. Its movement was like that of a children's toy.
"Uggh, ugly!" Sonic commented. "Never seen a robot like ithat/i before, looks like it was put together with paste and a sledgehammer"
The robot's attention was focused entirely on the hedgehog, and it moved unerringly toward him.
"What's up?" Sonic asked it.
"I have come to administer your punishment," the robot replied, "For you have caused him much pain and malaise." The robot had a woman's voice.
"Hey! Whoa!" Sonic exclaimed, taken aback, "My ipunishment/i? So you're not here for an autograph"
"Negative," The robot said. It raised both hands in an indecipherable gesture. "Prepare for your justice"
"Negative," Sonic replied. "Eat my shoe." He kicked it in the abdomen and it toppled over onto its back. The robot was determined, however. It picked itself up and came at him again.
"You two know each other?" Espio asked.
Sonic shrugged, keeping his eyes on the attacking monstrosity. "Hard to tell, y'know, I've made quite a few enemies in my time, it's hard for me to keep track of them all. Have a feeling I'd remember a walking car wreck, though."
Malachite saw the object of her malice and decided that everything would end for Sonic the Hedgehog this day. She did not understand Sonic's motivations, but she understood Mecha's, and knew that the world would never be big enough for the two of them. Mecha could travel to the ends of Mobius and beyond, but escape was no good for him. For them. What was needed was closure.
But Mecha had not installed weaponry of any kind into Malachite. Hers was not to be a violent nature, and there would be no need of weapons where they were going. If their way of life was ever to be threatened, Mecha would defend his creation if necessary. But their days of fighting were over - had been over, in fact, since the fall of Robotropolis and the end of the war against the Freedom Fighters. So Malachite's attack against Sonic was much more an act of faith than of logic. Such was the intensity of her rage and hatred that the fact never even crossed her mind that she would certainly lose this fight and be destroyed, all things being equal.
If there was to be justice, Malachite had decided, then Sonic would lose his life today. How exactly this was to occur was not a matter of significant relevance.
Sometime after Sonic had kicked her over and she had regained her composure (such as it was), Malachite's system began to warn her that it was being overworked significantly beyond its ability to operate. Malachite ignored these warnings, in fact didn't even really hear them. All she heard was (You're not alive! Living things ibleed/i)
(Sonic is the alpha and the omega, his death is all that occupies my mind)
(-away from her Miekha or I)
(-terminate your life functions)
(-grant you a body so)
(-kill Sonic)
(-kill)
and nothing else in the universe mattered as much as this, for this hatred wasn't like a moss at all but an acid that burned her from the inside.
(-kill)
Her system attempted an emergency intervention, tried to shut down her central processing and put her mainframe into downtime, but Malachite's robot-side didn't have very much of a say in how things were going to be anymore. As far as Malachite was concerned, she was fully alive, and the same power that enabled her to move her limbs also enabled her to bypass her system's control of her operations.
Having tried and failed its last-resort safety measures to stop this intense emotional tsunami, Malachite's system went into overload and several of her components began to melt.
It was a somewhat ironic fact that, although Sonic knew that this would probably be the easiest fight of his life, he was so stunned that this scrapyard refugee (a contraption that looked like a stiff breeze might topple it) actually intended to attack him that the robot managed to do something even the toughest of foes had never accomplished - a connecting right hook.
Sonic's barking laugh was cut off in the centre by the fist of the hostile robot, which struck him in the side of the jaw so hard that he went sprawling backward and almost fell over. It may not have looked strong, but this thing packed one heck of a whallop. The hedgehog's hands shot up to his hurt face, a droplet of blood already forming in the corner of his mouth. Already the robot was advancing towards him again, and for a moment Sonic was so taken aback that he forgot everything he knew about fighting and simply swatted at the thing.
"I love h-" he thought he heard the robot say, but the final word was cut off by what sounded by a loud popping sound inside its head, followed by a short punctuated fizzle. The robot's head jerked to the side, but it continued to advance, and managed to grab Sonic around the neck and squeeze with its iron vise strength. Sonic lamely followed his instincts to grab the robot's hands with his own (an action that more often than not actually helped an assailant to choke his victim), but he regained his senses when it felt like this thing might actually crush his windpipe if he hesitated. Sonic found his clarity and remembered how to twist his body to escape a strangle-hold, but halfway through the maneuver, the robot's right arm snapped right off and fell to the ground.
This thing isn't built for fighting, Sonic realised, Probably wasn't built to be within a hundred yards of a violent situation, and certainly not to initiate one. What could possibly have gone so wrong in its head? There was no time to think about that now, for the robot was after him again, thrashing its one remaining arm and glaring wildly with its plain unfeatured face. Now that Sonic was lucid again, this machine didn't stand even a shadow of a chance.
Malachite could barely string a command together for the clamor of warnings going off in her mainframe. Systems shut themselves down one by one, and she wrenched them open again like doors in a gale force wind. Every now and then an entire section of her operating system would scream at her one last impassioned cry and then fall eerily silent, as a panel of circuitry melted or a fuse blew out. Any scientist on Mobius would be hard pressed (or downright unable) to believe that Malachite could still compute anything more complex than a two-digit children's equation at this point, let alone remain as operative as she was. The forces of love and hatred - or their ghosts - still tore through a mind nowhere near powerful enough to accommodate them.
It took her almost a minute to recognise that she had lost her arm, and even then her brain had deteriorated to a point where it would soon be unable to recognise anything at all. Still she thrust out with her remaining limb, clawing and snatching at a target that was now moving so fast that she couldn't even get a lock on its position.
iHe took it all away/i Malachite's electronic mind screamed, iSo many times! He took away what can never be returned! All the years he has fought to make sure He would never be happy, not even for a moment! If there is any justice in this world that even He can barely understand, then Sonic the Hedgehog will fall this day/i At once she understood two things, and they were the last things that her sane mind would ever truly comprehend:
Hate would destroy Sonic the Hedgehog.
Love would destroy Malachite.
The robot seemed to be sparking and fizzling at a fairly continuous rate now, its movements erratic and chaotic, but yet somehow it just kept coming. Some kind of fuel or liquid lubricant or something else was dribbling from an unseen point on the robot's body and creating puddles in the grass, but yet it kept attacking. Sonic thought he had never seen such a remarkable display of determination from anybody, machine or lifeform alike. This robot was literally falling apart as it attacked, small components of its body dropping to the ground every so often like dead leaves. Sonic heard the loudest pop yet from inside the robot's head, and suddenly it began spewing forth an continual and ridiculous monograph of nonsense that Sonic couldn't even begin to understand:
"...six cosine variables log fourteen configuration mainframe red sonic boom trouble keeps you running faster illegal operation in sector nine nine nine nine miekha my love a rose for logarithm failure system packbell rosa rosa ro-sa I see crash in five! five! five! the whites of your eyes chaos sonic I hate sonic I hate sonic I seven! seven! tree robotropolis mainframe crash malachite life machine life machine life machine life..."
The robot stalled, jerked like a marionette puppet, then fell into the lake. Even in its death throes, it seemed to reach out to Sonic, perhaps trying to hex him as it sank, or retaining faith that all laws of physics and common sense may give way and Sonic might still fall dead if the robot thrashed in his direction with one jerking, dying arm. Then it was over.
"Whoa," Espio muttered, but that was all he could say.
Sonic stood bewildered for a moment, watching the ripples in the lake where the insane robot had fallen. Then he turned to pick up the robot's disembodied arm, saw Mecha Sonic standing behind them, and knew that Mecha had seen it all.
XV
! - Emotional data detected in mainframe.
Please wait:
Data f:
WARNING: Core temperature rising above suggested range
!CRITICAL TEMPERATURE ACHIEVED!
Activating emergency cooling system
Investigating source of problem now:
Please wait:
Source of:
!WARNING! - COOLING SYSTEM FAILURE
!DATA OVERLOAD!
Investigating source of problem now:
Please wait:
! - Emotional data detected in:
!DATA OVERLOAD!ohmalachiteno:
!WARNING! - COOLING SYSTEM FAILURE
!CRITICAL TEMPERATURE SURPASSED!
!SUGGEST IMMEDIATE SHUTDOWN OF ALL SYSTEMS!
! - Emotional data detected:
Investigating source of problem now:
Please wait:
!WARNING:
! - Emoti:
!ATTEMPTING EMERGENCY OVERRIDE!
!OVERRIDE FAILURE!
Investigating source of problem now:
Please wait:
Source of problem identified: as SONIC
!KILL SONIC!
!KILL SONIC!
!KILL SONIC!
!KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL:
Mecha's evolution from robot to something else altogether peaked the moment he saw that Malachite had been destroyed at the hands of Sonic the Hedgehog. Mecha's mind, however, was intrinsically more complex than that of his late creation, and the emotional wave that saturated his brain like radiation from an atomic blast swirled around with less resistance, creating an effect much less like insanity and much more like insight.
The robot, or ex-robot for now, stared into the eyes of his eternal enemy, and Sonic stared back into his. Nobody said anything for a long time, except for Sonic's chameleon companion, who made a few worried remarks and was ignored by both parties. For all intensive purposes, nobody but Sonic and Mecha even existed.
Mecha's machine mind complained bitterly about this intensely emotional moment. It attacked the onslaught of 'moss' data that Mecha had convinced himself was a kind of virus. His core temperature rose to dangerous levels and his system screamed warnings at him, but he paid it no heed. Just like Malachite, he was no longer concerned with the ceaseless chattering of his subconscious mainframe. His emotions were in the driver's seat now.
"Mecha..." Sonic muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. Not even briefly had he considered the possibility of coming across Robotnik's former assassin, his own former nemesis. The deadly machine-clone who had brought him closer to his death than any other enemy he had ever encountered. Sonic had been expecting a run-in with Cinos at every turn, but this was worse.
The robot hedgehog stood half-cloaked in some kind of long brown coat, but his body was visible underneath. His metal was scratched and unkempt, spots of rust showing here and there, like an old automobile nobody cared for anymore. His eyes glowed with that familiar devil-red radiance, although the right one was damaged, its glass casing cracked and shattered. And there was something strange stuck to his upper chest, almost like a giant wad of purple gum.
"You destroyed Malachite," Mecha said, "I will not grant you the pleasure of destroying me as well. You came here for a fight, and a fight you shall have. It will be a fight that you will lose. I will feed you your own heart for what you have dared to do to me. I will peel... the flesh... from your bones"
Mecha dropped the coat from his shoulders and it fell around him in a crumpled pile, revealing his entire body, his tarnishing blue hull, his shining silver arms and legs, the rocket booster and power mainframe in his belly, the purple sticky substance gummed to his torso. And something else was there - something was jammed in his power centre. It was jagged and throbbing softly with golden-yellow glow.
"You are source of all problems," the robot snarled. The jagged yellow thing began to glow brighter, as though fuelled by his mounting rage. He activated his rocket, and with a loud crashing roar, flew directly upward. As he blasted toward the sky, Sonic was shocked to see the yellow glow encase his entire chassis. It intensified until Mecha was as difficult to look at as the sun. There was some kind of metallic wail coming from the robot which might have been him screaming, or might have been his body overloading from the influx of raw power.
A few times, and no more than necessary, Sonic had taken a large amount of chaos energy into himself and transformed into a state of being that was near-immortal and utterly catastrophic to his sanity, a state that he had half-jokingly come to know as Super Sonic. What he now observed was a shockingly similar metamorphosis on Mecha's part, a kind of Super Mecha transformation that chilled him to the bone with its implications. The robot had flown to a height of at least five hundred metres, but Sonic could still see his red eyes. In this state, he imagined that he could probably still see those eyes if he was standing on the moon.
Sonic bolted. He couldn't think of what else to do. But Mecha, in mere moments, blasted down from his giddy height and came up behind him clipping him from the side, twisting him and toppling him over. The hedgehog picked himself up and ran the other way, but Mecha clipped him again, like a fiery comet falling from space. As Sonic struggled to get up, Mecha slammed into him, picked him up mid-flight, and threw him like a missile. Unable to escape, Sonic tried to focus more on how to safely break his fall. He rolled a fair distance, and then Mecha picked him up again and pinned him to a tree. Every inch of his metal body was searing hot and Sonic was burned with every touch.
Trapping the hedgehog beneath him, Mecha raised one arm and brought out his missile gun.
"I should have done this ssso very long ago," he hissed, his voice cracking apart like a scratched record, "Every negative experience of my torturous existence has concerned you somehow. You have repeatedly scarred my mind with your tormenting presence. The damage is done, but this will at least grant me the satisfaction that no more will occur. Goodbye, Sss-ssssssss-sssonic"
Sonic awaited the rocket's explosion in his skull, but it didn't occur. Instead, there was a violent force as something collided with Mecha from behind. The robot turned to see Espio, and Mecha snarled and hit the chameleon away. The distraction gave Sonic the chance to escape Mecha's grasp, and the supercharged robot activated his rocket booster and shot up into the air again. When Sonic saw the robot diving towards him, he realised that he was going to have to fight if he had any chance of seeing another morning. There would be no running away. It seemed like everybody in town was watching this battle. The whole population of Newton stood in a crowd around the lake, as though this was some kind of public performance. In Sonic's limited experience with these rude and xenophobic townfolk, he knew that not a single one of them would raise a finger to help him. He felt like burning Newton down after he left this town. The horrifying thought that he might not leave it alive didn't dwell with him for long, he was no pessimist.
Mecha rocketed towards him and Sonic prepared himself for a counter-attack. He would not leap forward to tackle Mecha, at these speeds it would be like leaping in front of a steam-train, but he decided instead to leap to the side and kick out, hopefully getting in a good enough impact to dislodge the glowing thing in his power core, which was obviously the source of his newfound power.
The robot screamed, the disturbing sound of something almost alive, and struck out to attack Sonic. The hedgehog made his move, kicking Mecha from the side. The purple wad of gum on his chest was like a bull's-eye target, and he struck out with all the force he could muster, striking that purple thing full-on.
What happened next was completely unexpected. Mecha rocketed upward again and turned around for a second strike, but when he turned, Sonic could see that the wad of purple stuff had changed. It too was now glowing with its own energy, like lava from a volcano. Whatever it was, Sonic's kick had activated it and it seemed to be powering up out of control.
Mecha shrieked, "iI'm coming to kill you S-/i", but he was cut off by the explosion that annihilated him mid-air like a supernova. His body was lost in the fireball that spread out from him in a sphere of destruction, and the blast was so loud that Sonic thought for a moment he may have gone deaf. The crowd of townspeople cried out in unison, and some of them bolted away.
When the smoke cleared, Mecha Sonic was gone. Pieces of twisted and blackened metal, some of it still aflame, periodically rained down on the town and splashed into the lake with a hiss.
Sonic, panting, sat and watched the spectacle as he salvaged his composure. His heart was beating harder than he would like to admit.
After a while, Espio helped him to his feet.
"That thing sure seemed like it hated you, dude," the chameleon commented.
Sonic, his eyes still fixed to the spot in the atmosphere where Mecha had finally perished, snorted at the thought.
"Yeah. It's not fair. What did I ever do to him?"
XVI
The evening set in, and the first stars began to appear in the sky, twinkling with modest brightness. The people of Newton had returned to their homes to recover from the day. The robots had been taken care of, and all of the other unwanted outsiders had taken their leave. Everything was as it should be. The town could go about its job of slowly dying in peace.
Beside a narrow dirt road on the outskirts of town, a piece of debris lay like a stone, motionless and dead. It was the head of Mecha Sonic, stripped of its blue paint and blackened. The eyes had both blown out like overloaded light bulbs.
Zero Tolerance strolled out of the evening shadows, clad in a suit of armour so bulky that he might have been mistaken for a robot himself - and that was just what he wanted.
The suited hedgehog came across the robot head as he followed the path, and stopped when he saw it. A pitiful scrap of a thing barely recognisable for what it was. He growled deep in his throat and cocked a large-barreled gun, pointing it right between the eyes of his decapitated ex-enemy.
For a long time Zero stood in this position. He and the gun stayed silent, only the sound of crickets and noctournal beasts coming out of slumber could be heard on the breeze. Then he sighed and put the gun away again.
"Oh, what's the use"
He kicked the head. It rolled some distance and then came to a stop upside-down, staring sightlessly into the expanse of the desert. Zero shot it a final glance and then continued on his way, the metal suit clanging against itself with every movement.
There was more work to be done, always more work. As a wise philosopher whose name had been long forgotten had so aptly pointed out, there was no rest for the wicked. No rest, not ever.
MECHA:
The Third Interlude
I've travelled the world from sea to sea and seen remarkable things,
The falls of empires, the rise of mountains, the legacies of kings,
But never again in all my life have I been able to find,
A being made of metal who for life had always pined.
He lamented for forbidden hope, what he could never be,
So unloved for what he was, confined to misery,
There was no catharsis for this being made of steel,
Yearning for the simple things that he would never feel.
I met him on my travels once, a creature filled with sorrow,
A being without need or want to look forward to tomorrow,
Created with a body that would never match his mind,
He wanted peace and mirth, something he could never find.
I said, "Eternal Sorrow, why be so set in your way?
Why wish for what can never be? Why lament every day"
Eternal Sorrow told me then the reason for his strife,
"All I ever wanted was to taste the fruits of life."
"But why," I asked, "Can you not simply live with what you are?
Why look at what you cannot be, pine for it from afar"
He replied, "Because of what I am, I will always remain branded,
When all I ask is to be given what others take for granted."
I've travelled this globe all over, oh the lessons I have learned,
The cultures I have visited, great empires overturned,
But what a lesson I have learned from the machine who had a soul,
Who feared his destiny would not allow him to be whole.