Author's Note: This is an odd little theory of mine. For those of you who are averse to OCs, my apologies. You might want to go read something else, either by me or by any of the fine authors linked to in my "favorite authors" or "favorite stories" section.
Constructive criticism and other remarks are always welcome.
-o-o-o-
Kalinka stirred her hot chocolate. She knew full well that it was far too early for any sane person to be awake, but she hadn't been able to sleep and figured that sitting sleepless in the kitchen with a mug of her favorite beverage was just as good, if not better, than lying sleepless in her bed, sans chocolate.
A flash of light and the unmistakable "blip" of a teleporting robot came from the darkness of the next room. None of the Cossack robots were out, and they weren't expecting any visitors. Kalinka grabbed a heavy cast-iron pan. It probably wouldn't be that helpful against any enemy robot, but maybe it would be sturdy enough to deflect plasma shots, at least. She gripped the pan tightly with both hands and edged toward the doorway.
"Kalinka, put that thing down," a deep, familiar voice said from the next room.
"Blues?" she asked, relaxing her grip on the pan.
The robot walked into the light seeping in from the kitchen. "What were you going to do? Try and whack me over the head with that if I attacked you?" he asked, indicating the pan with a tilt of his head.
"Something like that," Kalinka said sheepishly.
"Well, it's good to see you, too."
"Oh, Blues, I wouldn't hit you with a frying pan."
"I know. Listen, I can't stay long. Can you give this to your dad?" Blues handed Kalinka a disc labeled "The Best of Perry Como."
"Perry Como?" she asked.
"No, of course not. Let's just say it's a little something to even the playing field." With that, Blues teleported out in a blip of red light.
Kalinka looked at the disc, then at where Blues had just been standing. She shrugged, then returned to her hot chocolate, which was, much to her dismay, now more along the lines of tepid chocolate.
-o-o-o-
Many years later
"This is insane. I'm going to freeze to death out here."
"It's not that cold. Look, the sun has been shining all day."
"But the sun isn't warm."
"What are you talking about? Of course the sun is warm, otherwise it wouldn't be the sun."
"But not at this latitude. I'm not designed to operate under these conditions. I can feel my fluids congealing. Ini, if I freeze solid, tell Red that I died a hero, okay?"
"Gear, you're gonna die of a buster shot through the head if you don't shut up."
"But it's cold. And barren. A cold, barren wasteland. I thought the terraforming was supposed to be fixing that."
Ini sighed. "For someone who's supposed to be such an expert with antique technology, you sure don't know much about history. Siberia was like this even before the Eurasia incident."
"Was it this cold?"
"It's called winter. You know, that season where the earth's axis tilts away from the sun and temperatures drop? Now hold up, I need to take another satellite reading."
Gear bounced in place impatiently while Ini stood stone still for several seconds. "What's taking so long?"
"There's not as many satellites here as in the more populated areas. It's hard to get a good recep— there." He turned slightly to the left and pointed. "We've gotten a bit off course, but not too bad. That place should be about another half a kilometer to the southwest."
Shading his eyes against the setting sun, Gear squinted in the direction Ini was pointing. "Oh, yeah, I think I might see a building or something out there. Good, I can't wait to get indoors."
Ini readjusted the pack he was carrying and decided against mentioning that wherever it was they were going, it was unlikely that it was heated.
-o-o-o-
The sun was nearly below the horizon by the time the two reploids arrived at their destination, which turned out to be a nondescript, small concrete building.
"This is where they got those anomalous readings?" Ini asked, looking at the building skeptically. "It doesn't look all that anomalous to me."
"Sure it's anomalous. It's a sign of civilization," Gear replied. He trotted up to the door and squinted at the lock. "Ancient civilization. Look at this lock — it's completely mechanical." A shot whizzed by Gear's head, shattering the lock. "Hey, I was examining that!" he exclaimed.
"You said you couldn't wait to get inside," Ini said, retracting his buster. "Lock's gone. Now we can go in."
The doorway opened onto a dark staircase. A distant generator whirred into life as the reploids entered, and a series of overhead lights flickered on. "There must be a motion sensor somewhere around here," Gear mused. "Nice. That means we won't have to dig out our lights."
"Yeah, well, it could also mean that whatever's down here is still operational, and it might not be friendly," Ini said. "I'll go first. The last thing we need is to run into an antique security system and have you try to analyze it while it tries to kill us at the same time."
The stairs seemed to go on forever, burrowing their way down dozens of meters below the surface. "It's getting warmer," Gear noticed out loud.
"Mm," Ini grunted. "We're probably deep enough that it's at a constant temperature year round. About three degrees celsius, if I'm calibrated right."
Another door waited at the bottom, this one with another mechanical lock. Ini groaned with exasperation, but let Gear try and pick it open. "How often do you get the chance to deal with such craftsmanship?" Gear pointed out as he twirled the dials, ear pressed to the door so he could hear tumblers click into place. "You don't just destroy something like this. Especially not when it's so easy to get through without breaking it."
The door gave an audible "click" as it opened into a large room full of humanoid figures. "What are they?" Ini asked, staring around the room.
"They're old mechaniloids," Gear said, awestruck. "They've got to be more than a hundred fifty years old."
"Weird looking, aren't they? Look at this one. It's got some sort of chute on its head."
"And this one," Gear said, pointing at another. "Poor thing didn't even have proper hands, just these drill things. They must have been industrial robots of some sort."
"I'd hate to see what sort of industry this skull guy was in," Ini said, looking at a skeletal robot.
"Um, mortician, perhaps?"
"Hey, there's another door here," Ini said. "It's got a proper lock on it, though. Do you want to try hacking it, or can I just blast through?"
"No, don't blast it!" Gear said. "If there's anything like this on the other side, I don't want you to damage it." He looked at the lock. "Oh, circuits, I don't even know if I have the right cables for this." He rummaged around in his pack, pulling out cables, converters, and data drives. One cable got a long, appraising look before Gear said, "Nah," and added it to the growing pile on the floor beside him. "Ah, this might work," he finally said, pulling out a cord with a bristly-looking plug on the end. "SonicPort might be able to interface with this. I hope it does." A matter of seconds was all it took. "1024-bit encryption. What a joke," Gear said, shoving things back into his pack.
The door stuck in the frame and required a good shove from both reploids before it ground open. This room was smaller than the last, and everything was draped with dropcloths. Ini pulled one off, revealing what looked like a sleeping capsule. Gear pulled off another sheet, dragging a pile of papers off a desk which had a computer sitting on it.
"Nice," Ini said, looking at the mess on the floor. "You're picking that up."
Gear didn't seem to be listening. "Hey, there's someone in here," he said, looking into the capsule.
"Whoa, look at him," Ini said.
Gear scanned over the robot. "I know, he looks like a reploid, doesn't he? Something this old probably won't be anything like us, though. He might not even be able to think for himself."
"An old mechaniloid, you think?" Ini tapped on the capsule's glass.
"Yeah, probably." Gear sat down at the computer terminal that was hooked up to the capsule and started looking for a power switch.
"I dunno. I mean, there are some reploids that are really ancient. I heard that Megaman X is over a hundred years old."
"And I've heard that he's three meters tall and can take out twelve Mavericks with a single shot, blindfolded," Gear replied while fumbling around the back of the terminal. "I saw him once. The guy's a shrimp and kind of wimpy looking as well. All those stories about him are probably just Hunter propaganda. Hey, I think I got it!" He clicked a switch, and the terminal emitted a high-pitched hum as it warmed up.
A monitor flickered on next to the terminal. A middle-aged woman, blond hair pulled back into a bun, appeared on screen. "Segonya chevertoe augusta," she said. Gear's internal translation system raced to figure out what language she was speaking, and managed to determine it was Russian just in time to hear, "… given to my father by Blues, and provided an operating system advanced enough to control the nanite network without loss of function."
Ini peered over Gear's shoulder. "I think my translator's running all right, but I'm still not understanding what she's talking about."
"Shh, shh!" Gear shushed him, staring at the screen wide-eyed.
"Fine," Ini muttered, rolling his eyes. He rifled through some of the papers on the floor. They appeared to be some sort of legal documents. Judging by the underlining and copious notes in the margin, something called the "Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Act" had been heavily scrutinized. He glanced over at Gear again. The research reploid was looking through other files on the computer now and making little, "Ooooh!" noises.
Ini went over the capsule again. No matter what Gear said, the robot in there didlook like a reploid. The grey and navy armor accented with red stripes wouldn't look out of place in Red Alert or even the Hunters. Orange hair splayed out behind the robot's head, which, combined with the extremely human-like features of his face, only contributed to Ini's feeling that he was looking at something that was at a level beyond the industrial robots in the previous room. Those robots had been well made, from what Ini could tell, but they were also obviously the products of another era. Just the fact that this robot got his own room seemed to speak of his uniqueness.
"Ini, hey, Ini," Gear said.
"What?" Ini turned around to see Gear frantically motioning him over to the computer.
"You're not going to believe this. That robot over there. It actually is a reploid," Gear confided.
"Well, yeah, anyone can see that," Ini said.
Gear gave him a withering, who's-the-expert-here look. "No, no, but he's not just any reploid. He was made sometime before X was activated, but not by Light. By that lady in the video. She made this amazing reploid, only she couldn't do anything with it because of the Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Act."
Ini scanned over the papers he was holding. "You mean this thing?" he asked, holding out the heavily marked packet.
"Yeah," Gear said, flipping though it. "There were these big robot rebellions back in the 21st century, and they figured the best way to stop it was to ban the manufacture or ownership of any robot that could think for itself."
Ini looked horrified.
"You didn't know about that?" Gear asked. "They say that's why it took so much longer than it should have for reploids to be developed. People had to do stuff in secret, like this." He indicated the room with a sweep of his arm. "She — the video lady — knew that the statute was set for review sometime in the '60s, and I guess she was hoping that it'd get repealed, but in case it didn't, she left all this so if someone came upon it, they'd know what it was all about."
"So we've got an ancient reploid on our hands here?" Ini said, glancing at the capsule.
"Wait, I haven't told you the best part. This reploid can alter his DNA structure without compromising his cognitive systems."
"And in normal talk that means…?"
"He can shapeshift. This reploid can change shapes."
"Red is going to burst a circuit when he finds out about this."
Gear grinned. "You bet he will. Come on, help me get a teleportation lock on this guy and we can get out of here."
-owari-