7. Weight of the World
In Jump City it was best to trust only what your eyes told you. People told lies in case you wanted something from them. They told you what they thought you wanted to hear and kept a few pretties on display, hanging off their belts or whatever, in the hope you'd just take that and leave their pockets and underwear alone. To look at them closely was to see the fear in their eyes contrasting the smiles on their lips.
But you had to be careful about what you saw, too, because there were so many things in Jump that defied understanding.
Three days after the Titans let Robin get away, Terra stood on top of the old McDonalds sign, that huge yellow M you used to be able to see from the freeway when there were still cars around. She could see a multicoloured spot on the horizon and knew that it was a chaos vent, and she had to resist the urge to dismiss it just because it was far away. There was so much they didn't understand about those things. Against the clear and present dangers of Misshapens and starvation, it was all too easy to close the eyes to more imprecise threats. You couldn't predict a chaos vent. At least Misshapens acted on hunger, and their impulses were relatively simple to define.
Whatever you saw in Jump had the potential to wound you, as if by laying eyes on something it had the power to take away part of what made you … well, you. After the Observatory, sometimes Terra had the indescribable feeling that it was dangerous to look. She had the urge to avert her eyes from things, to shut them out, but that was dangerous in a whole other way because then you got confused. You forgot what you'd seen and hadn't seen, what you'd come across in the street and what you'd fabricated enough to make you wake up screaming. You became unsure of what you were really looking at, whether it was the same as what you thought you were looking at, and whether what you thought you were looking at was actually, physically there at all.
It was … complicated.
She didn't know if the others felt the same way. She didn't like to ask them.
Speedy, the only other person who'd been there, rarely mentioned the Observatory.
BB didn't understand because he hadn't seen and heard and met those kids.
Starfire didn't talk much anymore. She never smiled or laughed. It was a wonder she could muster enough joy to fly, but Terra supposed the idea of flying just to get into the sky, to get away from all this, was enough to spark some degree of happiness. Or if not happiness, then at least comfort.
As for the others … it was stupid, but she was embarrassed.
It wasn't enough for her to say I'm looking at that thing, because it was one thing to do that when the thing was a paperclip or a CD, but when the thing you were looking at was a dead child, a little girl lying in the street with no clothes on, her head smashed in and all covered with blood … well then, what did you say to that? It wasn't a simple matter to plainly tell yourself I'm looking at a dead child. Terra's mind balked at forming the words. She'd start, but the thought would change into something else. I'm looking at a dead dog. I'm looking at a box of spilled noodles. I'm looking at a Barbie doll in a red dress. She'd started finding it difficult to separate the things she saw from herself. Some part of her imagined that it was she, or someone she knew, lying there in the filth, and that was too horrible a notion to entertain anymore. So she didn't.
She wondered if she was going mad. Then she wondered if compassion was a form of madness.
"So who are you, anyway?"
Speedy kept up the tension in his bowstring, arrow trained on the scruffy guy of indeterminate age. The guy kept his hands up, one of which held what could have either been a wrench or a laser gun under all the add-ons. It looked impressive, which was more than could be said for him. He looked like he was about to soil himself.
Terra supposed she would, too, were she confronted by four superpowered teenagers in a dark alley. Especially if two of them were had energy bolts levelled at her chest, and one was a famous sureshot. She could have completed the set by hovering a big rock above his head, but there was something about him that made her feel slightly sick at the prospect.
His eyes were small, but not hard, instead courting something like dewy-eyed lunacy without truly falling into it. He'd been snooping around where a known family sheltered, so they'd confronted him and had him point that … thing at them in return. Which brought them up to the present moment.
"Who am I?" he echoed, and blinked like he really wanted to know the answer to the question. "Who am I? Hm. Good one. Sure. Real good. Yup."
"Would you please get on with it? Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"Oh, yeah, right. Looking for spare parts. Gotta have spare parts. Can make anything out of junk. Junk-man, that's me. But that ain't my name. Name, name, who's got the name? Think I had one. Must've mislaid it. Always doing that. Not enough room, y'see. Not enough space to keep things in, so they get lost. The boss clutters up the shop, but he won't be moved. Nope. Nu-uh. Too set in his ways. Huh, maybe he could tell you my name. The boss knows a lot of important stuff."
Speedy and Raven exchanged a look. It wasn't the first time they'd confronted someone whose mind was on the verge of snapping. None of them wanted to be the reason these people went over the edge, so Speedy chose his words carefully. "And who's your boss?"
"Yeah, the boss, great guy. World champion, y'know. Top title ten years running. Uh-huh. 'Course, he needs me to keep him on form, but only for the buff-up. Can't teach him nuthin'. Nope. But I'm lucky to be working for him. I am. He calls me Mechanic. Hey – there! A name. Pleased to meet you, I'm Mechanic."
"Right. Uh, Mechanic, who is your boss?"
"Like to meet him?" The scruffy guy, now christened 'Mechanic', beckoned and grinned. The change in his face was dramatic. "Like I said, he stays in the shop. Too big to move, y'see. Not since he did the cease and desist thing. I erased all the viruses, but he ain't been the same since. Don't throw barrels at me no more, which is nice, but I kinda miss the ol' banter thing we had going for a while."
After a short conferral, they agreed to follow him so long as no dangers presented themselves. Nobody wanted to go back to the caves yet. Not with Cyborg the way he was. This provided a neat distraction and might possibly prove useful. Fortunate things often came from odd sources.
It was a distraction that had automatic lasers covering its doors. Mechanic turned them off with a small remote control hidden under his hat, then turned and flashed them another used-car-salesman grin. "Solar power," he explained. "Figured I might as well make use of the panels. Come on in, but wipe your feet, please. The boss don't like no mess in the shop."
"It safe?" Speedy asked when he'd gone a few steps.
"Safe as safe can be," Mechanic replied.
"I sense sincerity," Raven said, sotto voice. "But that doesn't necessarily mean anything with a fractured mindset."
Speedy nocked an arrow. "Right. Everyone, be on your guard."
Mechanic led them down a staircase that screamed 'danger' so much that Starfire's fists glowed every inch of the way. Raven's eyes remained white until they neared the end, when she grabbed Speedy's shoulder and stage-whispered, "I don't sense any other minds down here. At all."
Terra wondered what that could mean.
They got their answer soon enough.
"Whoa."
Speedy couldn't help himself. It was every little boy's wet dream – a giant red, yellow and black-chrome robot, sat in a custom-made armchair of metal piping and foam. Its eyelets were blank, its many joints starting to rust a little in the hard-to-reach spots, but otherwise it had been lovingly preserved. It was nine feet tall at least – maybe even twelve. The proportions were difficult to make out while it was sitting down.
"Meet the boss," Mechanic said proudly. He patted the robot's knee and winked at them. "Top of his game. World champion. Well, until he got that super-virus, but he don't like me to talk about that too much. Ain't that right, boss?"
The robot remained resolutely silent.
"He'd work perfectly, if his brains weren't so scrambled. I kept his power cells online in case he ever got around to unscrambling himself someday. Great guy, the boss, but a terrible procrastinator."
The four Titans froze and all latched onto the same word.
"Did you just say 'power cell'?" asked Speedy.
"Sure did. Self-propagating system based around some old ideas I threw together in college. Much better than the battery pack thing he used to run on. Always needed recharging. Yup. So one day I says to him, I says, 'Boss, you gotta get with the times, man. Don't nobody work with that outdated crap no more.' He didn't believe me, of course. Great boss, but a bit of a smart aleck. Thought he knew why the sky was blue, nameen? So after the super-virus, I thought, 'I'm 'a modernise this system from the ground up. Keep the exoskeleton, but everything else – fwoosh. Out with the old and in with the new, I says. And when the boss gets unscrambled, I got a feeling he'll agree with me. Yup."
"Could you make more of those cells?"
Mechanic stroked his chin. "A customer, eh? Why didn't you say so, bub? If I had the right tools and equipment, I could maybe knock one together. Take me a while to grub up the stuff, though. So … how's three months Thursday sound?"
Terra's heart dropped. Cyborg had maybe three hours.
"What about the cell inside that thing?" Raven indicated to the dead robot.
"You kidding? The boss'd moirderlise me if he woke up and found I'd sold his power supply."
"But could it be removed and set up elsewhere?"
"Nu-uh. Wired too tight to his schematics. The whole idea for self-propagation was for it to work within the boss's particular parameters. Uh-huh. It's all his. He's the only dude who can use it. Very user-specific. Only him. Yup."
Raven looked thoughtful. "You say his mind was destroyed by this 'super-virus' - "
"Virus by the name of TTX-8996-F-G/T-0.776, to be precise."
"Right. Which means his CPU is shot, right?"
"The boss can handle anything, sweetcakes. S'why he's world champ. Like I said, he's just a bit scrambled. That's all."
"Okay. But theoretically, would it be possible to upload a new personality programme into his blank CPU?"
"Theoretically?" Mechanic twitched his head from side to side in a nervous habit. "Theoretically, sure, if the programme was compatible with his hardware. But I don't see that happening. The boss is one of a kind. Numero uno. They never made no more like him. You'd have to get with the artificial intelligence and write a whole personality programme from scratch before you could even think about adapting it to his systems. Big job. Heavy workload. Especially with no gear. No files. A.I. ain't easy. No sir. Government stuff. Very hush-hush. Drive a guy cuckoo after a while. Writing codes in dirt with a twig. Yu-huh. Twigs. Gotta get me a pencil one of these days. Yup."
"We don't need to write a programme," Raven answered. "We have one pre-written, but it needs a new home."
"And you wanna put it in the boss? No way, José. Nope. I took care of the boss all this time so's he'd be good to go when he comes back. Tiptop. First-class. Aces, nameen? His body ain't for sale. Not at any price. Nu-uh." He shook his head with such vehemence it might have fallen off his shoulders.
Terra knew it had to be done. Cyborg's life depended on it. But still, while Speedy and Starfire threatened Mechanic into submission, and Raven made contact with BB, she could taste bile in the back of her throat. And it stayed all the way through getting Cy to the 'shop' and convincing a gibbering Mechanic that his beloved boss wasn't coming back from being offline. Ever.
"'Couse he's coming back. He's the boss. Hard as nails. Tough as old boots. He'll be fine. Gotta work hard. Gotta be ready for him. Returning hero, right? Fanfare, tickertape parade – the works. Yeah."
Eventually Raven had to take his head in her hands and force some understanding into him. It was quick and dirty, and his heartbreaking wail would stay with Terra for the rest of her life, but it needed to be done. Cy's life was at stake. What were one man's hopes and dreams and plans against that? And so what if they had to be less than heroic in getting his cooperation? It needed to be done. It needed to.
She kept her eyes averted while they pried open the robot's chestplate and brought out a multitude of coloured wires that had no business being so bright and shiny. Mechanic had a set of tools he'd built himself, all charged up by the solar panelling on the roof. He worked with tears on his face, struggling valiantly to save someone he'd never met before. Starfire kept a starbolt trained on his back, her expression unreadable, but it was needless. Raven had done her job well.
"You sure we can trust this guy?" Beast Boy asked nervously.
"You got a better idea?" Speedy shot back.
He didn't, of course. There was no time for CVs and rigorous interviewing. If this went wrong, Cy was a goner. If they did nothing, Cy was a goner. Win-win or lose-lose.
Raven had retreated under her hood and shut her eyes. She looked like nothing so much as a female grim reaper, huddled in the corner. Feeling slightly useless, Terra left the others and went over to her.
"You okay?"
"Am I your new pet project, that you have to keep asking me that?"
"Guess I'm just a concerned party. You cool?"
Raven cracked an eye open. "Have you ever heard of an emotion vortex?"
"Uh, no."
"Spiritual nimbus?"
"No."
"Do you know anything about temporal mechanics?"
"No."
"Then I can't explain exactly why I'm less than cool at present."
"Oh." Terra shoved her hands in her pockets. "Can you at least try?"
"No."
"Just a little?"
"You're asking me to explain the finer details of extrasensory output?"
"Um … yeah?"
"Go away, Terra. I'm not a side-show exhibit, and I'm not here just to answer your questions."
"Well, when you put it like that…" Terra pushed hair from her eyes. "I just asked if you were okay. It's not a big deal. Geez. Look, I know you were absent the day they taught Small Talk 101, but can't you at least pretend to make an effort?"
Raven let out a long breath and shut both eyes again. "Mechanic is hyper-emotional. When I connected with him, I formed a bond like … imagine a piece of thread. Each time I connect with a person's mind, I attach a piece of thread from me to them. That connecting thread is called a spiritual nimbus. It may get thinner, but it never really breaks. The more powerful the connection, the stronger the thread. The more emotion that person is feeling, the more pronounced the thread becomes in my consciousness. In addition to connecting with Mechanic just now, I've connected with each and every Titan at some point. All those threads are now in the same room, and the people they're attached to are hyper-emotional. That emotion travels down the strengthened threads and feeds directly into me. At the same time. That's the basis of an emotional vortex."
"Oh." Terra couldn't think what to say. She licked her lips and scuffed her feet. "Do … am I thinking too loud?"
"That's not quite the way it works."
"Can I do anything to help?"
"An empathic purge might not go amiss."
"Excuse me, but I think you actually cracked a joke just then. A bad joke, sure, but a joke."
Raven opened both eyes. "I don't joke," she said flatly.
Terra was about to counter that with a 'you so do', just to irritate her, when a shout went up from behind them. She spun around to see Mechanic holding two sparking conduits together, face turned aside to prevent any falling on his skin. A multitude of nodes connected Cyborg's once-vibrantly blue body to a crude switchboard in the chestplate. He blinked once, twice, and then shut his organic eye. Seconds later the diode went out in his artificial one.
The word 'flatline' popped into Terra's head.
"We're losing him!" Speedy barked, not so much George Clooney as NoahWyle fifteen years ago. "Mechanic!"
"Dude!" Beast Boy said shrilly, of nobody in particular. He looked about as useless as Terra felt, stepping this way and that, looking to the others for guidance and support. The friendship between he and Cyborg was long and entwined, the kind that stretched so far into the past it seemed to have had no beginning. It just was.
It almost just wasn't…
Raven's eyes were shut again. Terra marched over and pulled BB out of the way, yanking so hard on his arm that part of her fretted she might dislocate it. He replied by turning huge eyes on her and moving his mouth like a beached fish.
"Connect the red wire. The red wire!" Mechanic called to Starfire. "You colour blind, girlie?"
"Here." Speedy snatched the wire and shoved it into the required socket.
"Now flip that switch."
"This one?"
"Yup-yup. I'll get this toggle. Hands together, eyes closed boys and girls. It's prayin' time."
There was a fizz and a shower of sparks from the robot's chest. Cyborg's body convulsed, causing Beast Boy to jump forward. Terra latched onto his shoulders and used her weight to drag him down with her into a huddle on the floor. She hoped he didn't shift to something bigger. This was an easily squashable position. And was there really meant to be that much smouldering?
Cyborg convulsed again. Mechanic tapped wildly at a panel of buttons inside the robot's head. He stood on one stupidly skinny – how was that supposed to hold the body up? – metal thigh to reach. When light suddenly shot out of the eyelets, it blinded him and he lost his footing. He fell with a cry, and would have smashed his head on the floor had a hand of black energy not caught him.
Terra looked at where Raven was mumbling something. She couldn't see any eyes, no flash of teeth or tongue, but she could feel the words scraping along her skin like a razor. Not really thinking about it, she mouthed them in tandem, as if it would help.
Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos. Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos. Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos.
The light pouring from the robot's eyelets created a canopy of radiance nobody could look at. They all shielded their faces – even Starfire – and waited with bated breath as the whirring and clicking and buzzing reached a crescendo.
Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos. Azarath. Metrion. Zinthos…
A/N – Title a reference to the Greek legend of Atlas, who supported the world on his shoulders (although he was briefly relieved by Heracles in exchange for fetching some golden apples). Review Replies are henceforth moved to my livejournal (I'm known over there as 'obabscribbler').