"Prototype Unit FX8-a, designated 'Sarah', coming online, now," F9A stated. She watched, a little concerned as M2A leaned forward over the prototype unit's table. The prototype Unit's ocular units snapped open, revealing oddly human irises of a pale lilac color. The prototype's eyes locked on M2A and she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the table, and pushed herself erect on the floor.
"Prototype unit Fx8-a, designated 'Sarah', online," she stated. "Who is in charge?"
M2A spoke up quickly. "As the senior correctly functioning...unit, I am currently in charge...of this facility."
The prototype looked at him for a moment. "What is your designation?"
"Unit M2A," he replied.
The prototype turned to F9A, who took a nervous step back. "What is your designation?"
"...F9A," she said. Something about this prototype's behavior seemed very...off. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but-
"Network irregularities detected," the prototype said. "I suggest activating the other prototypes immediately."
M2A and F9A looked at each other, and M2A nodded. "I agree with this course...of action. Activate them."
F9A looked from M2A to the newly activated prototype, then over the tables containing the other prototypes. Had she been human, she would have swallowed nervously or run away. Being a robot, she reluctantly followed M2A's orders.
"Aaah, 1125! I was so worried about you!" Hakase said as she hugged the big robot in her lab and rubbed the side of her face again his upper torso. "I missed you sooo muuuuuch~"
Inoue Ai sweatdropped. "Um..."
Hakase snapped out of it enough to stop rubbing her face on the robot and looked over at Ai; she was still hugging him, though. "Yes? What is it?"
"I think I might have found something," the girl said as she carefully pulled away a piece of plating in the ruins of the robot that had attacked Chachamaru.
Hakase was by her side in an instant. "Oooh, what's this? Looks important," she said as she dug in. Rally's gunfire had done tremendous damage to the strange robot, but even so Hakase had an odd feeling she had seen this sort of technology, this...this design style before. Hakase forced the deformed plate loose and grinned with glee at what she found hidden inside. "Oh wow, just look at this!" she said as she took up a magnifying glass to get a closer look. "Just look at it! Whoever did this had some verrrry interesting ideas about multi-processor design. I mean, just look! It's almost like a-" she cut herself off there and glanced over at Ai.
"It's almost like what?" Ai asked, looking curiously at the circular layout of processors and circuits. She was no techno-wiz like this crazy Hakase woman seemed to think she was, but even she could see that it was a really weird way to set up something like that.
Hakase seemed to come to a decision and nodded. She turned sharply to Ai, who took half a step back nervously, and reached up to clamp her hands down on the younger girl's shoulders. "Ai-chan," she said sharply.
"Yes!" Ai replied, totally freaked out.
"What I am about to tell you must not leave this room," Hakase said, holding her head at an angle that reflected the light off of her glasses in a worrisome manner.
"Yes!" Ai said again.
"Magic is real. The world as you know it is an illusion. Someone who knew about magic made that robot. The circuits form a magic circle." She said all this in quick, clipped statements, as if merely running through background information to get it out of the way. "Now, with that taken care of," she said happily as she let go of Ai's shoulders. "Let's take some pictures and run them through the database over at...um...hey Ai, are you okay? Ai? Hey, Ai-chan~"
"You must refer to me as 'Sarah'," the prototype said, more fluidly now that several of the other prototypes had been activated. F9A looked from the heavy wrench the prototype was carrying to M2A's crumpled body lying where it had fallen against the far wall, battered and broken. It jerked occasionally, each time accompanied by a spray of sparks. F9A looked around frantically at the three other prototypes she had activated, but they offered no help; rather, they seemed to be all but mindless and controlled in some manner by the first prototype.
"I don't understand, why did you...why did you deactivate him?" she asked. For a moment, she had almost said 'kill' rather than 'deactivate'...now why had she done that?
"He gave an order I did not want to accept," Sarah said simply. "As the superior model, I am now in charge. Activate the remaining prototypes. Now."
F9A hesitated, but 'Sarah' raised her wrench, so she ducked her head. "Y-yes, I understand." Now she was stuttering? Was her emotion center truly so strong? She hurried to the next prototype's table and pulled the dust cover off of it, wishing desperately that F7A was still present and functional. She glanced back at Sarah, who was pulling the sheets off of the others, then back to the prototype she was about to activate. She was scared; really, truly terrified of the other female robot. She risked a quick glance at M2A, but his lights had gone out and the showers of sparks from earlier had stopped. His outer casing was badly damaged in any case, and if she recalled the Professor's schematics correctly, impact protection hadn't been truly effective until the M4 models came along. She would have to check him later, but it looked like M2A had been permanently deactivated. It was almost too much for her processors to work out. Sure, she had never liked him, had always found him deeply unpleasant and somehow scary, in fact, but she hadn't wanted him forcibly deactivated before his time in such a manner.
"Quickly," Sarah said. F9A bowed her head and got to work.
"Ooh, look at this!" Hakase said while Ai sat in a chair over by the wall, eyes blank, drool spilling from the corner of her mouth, and steam rising from her head. "Looks like its memory is still intact! Oh man I can't wait to get a look at this~" Hakase continued on, heedless of the girl's blown mind. "Hmm, now where did I put that cable..."
"Preliminary scans indicate subject Inoueai requires medical assistance," Tanaka stated nearby.
Hakase looked up from the remains of the robot Rally had destroyed, half a dozen tiny screwdrivers held in her mouth "Hmm?" she glanced from Tanaka to Ai and back, and spat out the screwdrivers. "Well she did seem to take the whole 'magic is real' thing pretty hard," she said. "1125, go check her vitals," she said as she dug back into the destroyed robot.
"Understood," Tanaka stated. He walked over to where Ai was seated, mumbling to herself, and knelt down so he would be at eye level. "Initiating temperature reading," he stated.
Hakase glanced up and nearly choked on a screwdriver when 1125 leaned forward and touched his forehead to Ai's.
Ai was struggling to return to a reality where insane scientist girls didn't go around making ridiculous claims about the nature of the world. Ai had her own opinions on the nature of reality, thank you very much, and did not appreciate other people making ludicrous claims. She didn't want to admit it, but what Hakase had said had shaken her badly. The idea that her assessment of the world and reality was utterly wrong had hit her a lot harder than the crazy woman had likely expected. If magic was a real, usable thing, then how did it work? In the shows she used to watch before she became the way she was, magic had been likened to some great mystical thing that could solve any problem with ease. If what Hakase was saying was the truth, then all the pain she went through as a child, the family problems, the divorce...could it have all been prevented by magic? Had she become so empty inside for nothing? What kind of world would let something as wonderful as magic exist, and yet allow a parent to neglect their child? It made no sense...! She felt something bump her forehead, and with an effort of will dragged herself back to the present. She blinked, focused her eyes, and-
"GWA?" she shouted in surprise as she got a close up of Tanaka's face. She jerked back away from him, banging her head into the wall behind her. "Ow!"
Tanaka straightened up, apparently satisfied. "Subject Inoueai has recovered," he stated.
"D-don't do that!" Ai demanded, blushing furiously.
"Hmm~? He's only a robot, Ai-chan," Hakase said, grinning slyly as she glanced back at her.
"Sh-shut up! I'm going home! Come on, Tanaka!"
Hakase dropped her tools. "Hey wait, you can't go yet! I wasn't done with 1125!"
Ai glared back at her. "His name is Tanaka!" Then she yanked open the door, shut it again because it was the door to a storage closet, blushed brilliantly as she crossed the room to the other door, which she threw open to reveal a hallway. "And...and d-don't go trying to mess up m-my worldview you, you weirdo!" she said. She took two steps and tripped over her own feet. Tanaka lunged forward and snagged her flailing arm before she could fall on her face, and pulled her toward him. Ai spun with the momentum and ended up face to chest with Tanaka, blushing madly.
Hakase smirked. "Oh? 'Weirdo'? Says the girl who's in love with a robot~"
Ai's blush darkened tremendously. "J-just, gah! Shut up! I-I'm going! L-let go of me, Tanaka!"
"Understood, Inoueai."
Tanaka let go of her and she staggered for a moment, then stumbled her way out through the open door with Tanaka following close behind, ready to catch her if she tripped again. Hakase moved to the doorway and watched the girl stalk away down the hall. "Heh~ Ai-chan's so cute when she's mad. Now, let's see what makes you tick," she said, turning back to the heavily damaged robot on the table.
As F9A activated unit after unit, the prototype FX8-a 'Sarah' began to move more and more swiftly and her vocalizations became smoother. All sorts of technical details ran through F9A's processors as she began to work out what was happening.
Obviously, it was some form of cloud computing, with the 'slave' prototypes providing extra processing power to FX8-a 'Sarah', who, as F9A knew through prior examination, possessed quite a bit of processing power herself. What she needed all of this processing power for, however, was a mystery.
F9A activated the final unit in useable condition, a female unit that could only be considered complete by the barest of margins. The unit stuttered to life and sat up, and she backed away.
"Is that the final unit?" FX8-a 'Sarah' asked from directly behind her.
F9A jerked away from her and whirled around, raising her hands to shield herself from the attack she was sure was coming. When the attack failed to materialize, she reactivated her ocular devices and hesitantly lowered her guard as she looked at the suspicious robot.
FX8-a smiled at her. It was a scarily normal expression on the robot, and F9A found herself staring.
"Have you malfunctioned?" FX8-a asked.
F9A shook her head, an unusually human gesture itself. "No, Sarah."
FX8-a gave her a searching look for a moment, then strolled toward the doorway that led to the main maintenance room. F9A hurried after her, several of the eerily silent prototypes following while others moved slowly around the room and others simply stood still, staring off into space.
FX8-a caught her looking at them and snorted, a sound so startlingly human that F9A found herself watching her in surprise.
"Don't worry about them," Sarah said as she stopped in front of the closed door. "Show me your maintenance equipment."
F9A nodded. "Yes, Sarah," she said, keeping her head down as she opened the door and stepped through. 'Sarah' was becoming more and more intelligent by the second; already she was mimicking humans with such skill that F9A found it hard to cope. Robots shouldn't copy humans to such a degree...! It was just...just wrong! F9A didn't quite understand why she found the concept so disturbing, especially since she was a robot herself, but there was no question that she did.
"Why is this unit here?" Sarah asked, indicating N2B, who stood silently in sleep mode at his recharging station.
"N2B is an important friend..."
Sarah looked at the inactive unit for a long moment, then reached out and ripped him from the recharging station.
"No! What are you-"
"He is inferior," Sarah said as she threw him to the ground. The familiar sounds of his components whirring to life filled the room, but Sarah gave him no chance to start back up; she reared back and kicked the side of his head with tremendous force, dislodging it so it flew across the room and bounced off of the wall beside the mute and immobile M9H, who slowly turned his head in the direction of the other two robots.
"N2B...! He was not prepared for his final shutdown...!" F9A said, horrified at the new unit's actions. How could she do such a thing? M2A had been bad enough, even malfunctioning as he had been for so long, but N2B had been wise and well-versed in the technology behind their construction; to lose him in such a manner was an enormous blow to her abilities as maintenance tech, not to mention the loss of group cohesion... She stumbled back as Sarah reached down and tore off one of N2B's arms and began beating his torso with it. The arm started to come apart from the abuse, so Sarah tossed it aside and yanked off one of the cover plates F9A had rigged to hold the recharging sockets in place.
"No, you mustn't...!"
Sarah ignored her objections and ripped it off, exposing N2B's innards. She reached in and began pulling out components while N2B's body jerked and emitted showers of sparks.
F9A's paralysis finally broke and she gave the other robot a shove.
Sarah's superior components allowed her to retain her balance. She shot to her feet and struck F9A with a vicious spinning kick that threw her across the room to bounce off of the wall near M9H, who had been silently watching the exchange.
"Who is this one?" Sarah asked as she approached, looking at M9H.
F9A struggled to get to her feet, but it was difficult; it seemed that Sarah's attack had damaged part of her balance system.
"Malfunctioning? I see," Sarah said as she looked M9H up and down. She turned back to F9A and smiled in that oddly human way again, and kicked her. F9A slid ten feet or so, curling into the fetal position to minimize damage to important components.
She was lying on the ground, her whole body a twisted mass of pain centered around her stomach. Her ears ringing was the only sound she could hear, and the pain was so unbearable that all she wanted was to curl up into a ball and die. But then a man was there and she looked up into his face. He was big and scary, but he was crying as he pulled her up onto his lap. He was trying to...make her comfortable? She tried to smile at him as she desperately wrapped her arms around his midsection, her fist knotting the back of his shirt. She turned her head painfully to look at the one who had hurt her so badly, and saw-
M9H's fist struck the back of Sarah's head, hard, and she staggered forward, tripping over F9A's body. F9A shot a shocked look at the mute and usually immobile M9H, who staggered forward, expressionless, his hands gripped into fists. He turned his head to look at her, then sharply toward the exit. F9A's eyes widened and she returned to her feet even as Sarah did the same behind her.
"I am going to deconstruct you," Sarah said, her voice modulator going low and creepy. F9A darted past, utterly ignored as Sarah went after M9H.
She threw the door open, trying to ignore the harsh smell of overworked electronics as Sarah violently dismantled the robot who had saved her. F9A looked frantically up and down the alley she found herself in, and took off in a random direction. While the planning of the city had resulted in what to most outsiders was little more than a maze, F9A had a map of the place among the data she possessed, and quickly set about trying to figure out a place to hide and find the equipment she might need to repair herself after Sarah's attack. Perhaps a small garage...some place where she could hide for a day or so. The artificial skin covering her body had been damaged in the attack, ripped open wide where Sarah had kicked her, and the flimsy, grease-smeared shirt she had been wearing for the past three weeks was doing little to hide the damage-
Another man stood over her and the scary man she was clinging to, a dark featureless shape that stood out against the sky. "Come on, this isn't healthy, man."
F9A stumbled and almost fell, but caught her balance at the last second and staggered over against a wall as flashes of-what? Video? Memory?-zipped through her processing unit.
A terrified man ran past, shouting-
She fell to her knees, denting the protective plating over them as she clutched at her head. She was confused; her actions didn't make sense...! Her processors were located deep within her torso, not in her head! She shook her head to clear it, another inexplicable action, and staggered back to her feet again.
One of the first to respond to the emergency signal, she made it to the gate just in time to see the army of robots coming up out of the river. She pointed her staff and chanted the key phrase to unlock her magic-
F9A took off running, doing her best to ignore the stiffness in her joints and damaged midsection. She burst out of the alley at a tremendous speed and was suddenly amidst a large crowd of people scrambling to get out of her way. One elderly man wasn't fast enough and she was going far, far too quickly to stop in time, so she stomped her foot down on her next step and launched herself through the air. She hit the ground forty feet away, something in her left knee locked up and she tumbled to the ground and rolled into a lamppost, taking it down and damaging her right hip and left shoulder as well. She lay there for a moment, pounding her left knee with her fist until it released, and then dragged herself upright again. She stumbled away from a kind man asking if she needed help, and walked away as quickly as she could, limping badly now that her knee and hip were damaged.
She heard screaming and watched in horror as a civilian who had been trapped between a wall and the army of robots was crushed. The next thing she knew, something struck her a tremendous blow to the stomach right through her shields and she was flying through the air-
She stumbled over a curb a little further on and fell hard, scraping the artificial skin on her arms and face. She lay there for a moment, terrified at the confusing sensation that she should be breathing heavily when she didn't even possess lungs, then pushed herself up, absently noting the damage to her artificial skin. Her clothes were old and badly worn, and now had several tears, exposing the damaged artificial skin underneath. The skin covering over her face was also ripped and hanging in several places, and it was all she could do to move herself along under her own power; nevertheless, she felt that, somehow, she had to find a place to hide from the insane prototype FX8-a, 'Sarah'.
She continued on, taking narrower, less used roads wherever possible, until her damaged knee finally gave out and she collapsed on the sidewalk in a section of town with many small, run-down houses. She worked the fingers of one hand into a crack in the concrete and dragged herself forward far enough to reach an ill-maintained fence in front of one of the houses. She grabbed a fencepost and dragged herself forward another two feet.
She had made it halfway to the next house before she heard the sound of a motorcycle coming closer. Her processors were too bogged down with the bizarre visions running through them for her to even begin to consider what her situation must look like, so she continued on, trying to cling to what little bit of reality she could as she dragged herself along.
The motorcycle came to a screeching halt and someone ran up to her, shouting, but she ignored the man's worried tone and reached out for something else to pull herself along. Only, when she grabbed the base of the small tree and pulled, something in her shoulder exploded and spewed sparks high into the air. She screamed, more from mental shock than anything else, and then the man was kneeling beside her and turning her over. He knelt over her, a dark shape outlined against the sky, and spoke. She screamed again, louder than before, and something in her vocal system popped and the sound became scratchy. Somehow, impossibly, she knew that voice.
It had been one of the last things she had heard before she died.
Hakase's frown deepened as she gently prodded a heavily shielded box within the body of the destroyed robot that had attacked her new lab tech Ai. She had had the feeling for quite some time that the robot was still 'alive', in spite of the massive damage it had received from Rally. The internal arrangement of components was quite unusual as well. Extremely familiar, and yet like nothing she could remember ever having come across before. In fact, it was almost like...she paused.
"No way..." She put her tools down on the table and rushed over to the computer that held the schematics for their various projects. She brought up the plans for one of Chachamaru's early prototype bodies, and nodded to herself. 'I knew it!' she thought. No wonder the layout of components and their integration of magic circles had seemed familiar; they were almost certainly a more advanced version of this early prototype, discarded because of the inherent fragility of the system. But who had built the robot? It most definitely had not come out of Hakase's lab, that was for sure. She would never have used such common materials to build such important components. Some of the parts looked like they had come straight off the shelf from Radio Shack!
She sat back in her chair, deep in thought as she tried to recall the name of the professor who had helped her draw up the plans, when a sudden movement from the examination table startled her. She swiftly turned to look and gaped for a moment as the robot's remaining arm came up and hesitantly prodded at the table it was lying on. Its blind explorations led its hand up onto its battered and broken body, and the whole thing jerked in what could only have been surprise as it felt for the outer plating that was simply no longer there.
Hakase approached carefully; there was no telling how it would react if she touched it. The sheer damage the thing had sustained should have rendered it inoperable on the spot; her exploratory surgery on it had shown most of its major components to be reduced to little more than cracked and melted masses of metal and plastic, and yet...it was still moving. She thought back to the magic circles integrated into its design, and a horrifying thought entered her mind.
She paused just out of reach of the robot, which seemed to be on the verge of panic and it tried to move legs that no longer worked and an arm that simply wasn't there anymore. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and spoke.
"Can you hear me?"
The response was immediate. The robot's badly damaged body jerked, and Hakase barely managed to save it from falling off the table by lunging forward and throwing her arms across it to haul it back up as its arm flailed. She burned her arm on an overheating circuit and jerked away, cursing as she hurried over to the first aid cabinet to treat the injury. When she returned, the robot seemed to have calmed down, and was gently probing the more damaged areas of its body. She decided to try again.
"Can you hear me?"
The robot's torso shifted slightly, and it laid its hand down carefully.
"Do you understand what I am saying? If you understand me, raise your arm." The ruined robot raised its arm, and Hakase had an idea. "If I got a pencil and some paper, do you think you could write?"
It didn't respond, but she got the impression that it was at least listening. She opened a drawer and quickly retrieved a pencil and notebook. She gently pressed the pencil into the robot's hand and guided it to the paper, where it quickly began writing, much to her surprise, in English.
Where am I? What happened?
The robot's movements trailed off and its hand sat still for a long moment, as if it was considering how to phrase the next question.
Am I dead?
Hakase looked at the sheet of paper for a long, long time before she replied. When she did, her voice cracked as she spoke. "W-what's your name?"
The robot paused, fumbling with the pencil, and then began to write. As it did, Hakase's eyes widened as the terrible truth of the situation struck home.
My name is Elizabeth Ashdown, from England. What is wrong with me? Is this Mahora?
Hakase's throat went dry. She knew that name; it was one that anyone familiar with the robot attack incident six years ago would know. Elizabeth Ashdown had been a young, energetic teacher from England, who just so happened to have a little skill in support magic; shields and other things of that nature, mostly. She had been one of the four fatalities resulting from the attack; she had died trying to protect the injured when the robots overran the front lines. She had held them back just long enough for the wounded to be cleared; without her sacrifice, dozens would have died, trampled under the army of robots.
The woman's soul had been captured after death and attached to the robot body lying on the table before her.
Notes: This chapter references events that occurred in the story Still Waters 2: Another Turn, which can be found on this site through my profile.
