ii. Breakthrough

Gerald was rummaging through one of the ARK's warehouses looking for replacement parts. The supply tech was getting rather snippy about the number of chips he'd destroyed, so he'd decided it was easier to locate some himself. He had already filled a cart with most of what he thought he needed, but there was one more piece... As he sifted through a last few discarded pieces and found the one he wanted, he noticed a peculiar looking robot propped in a dark corner and half-buried in junk. Pocketing the part he moved over to investigate. After pulling it out into the light, he realized the design was completely unlike any human-built mecha he'd ever seen, save only the humanoid shape. Popping open the chest panel, he saw that the circuitry was also completely unique, both in design and apparent materials. He loaded it onto the cart with his other finds and drove back to the lab. He unloaded the parts he'd been looking for first, and as he maneuvered through the door the phone started ringing. He groaned mentally as he heard Dr' Greens voice and realized he'd forgotten to send in any updates recently. By the time he'd escaped the phone call, he'd forgotten the robot completely and instead spent the rest of the morning failing to make progress.

"Hey Gerald, are you busy?" He jumped as Mary poked her head in. She surveyed the ruins (slightly smoking) of his latest variation and switched to a sympathetic tone. "Still no luck? Scott wants to know if you're done with the cart."

"The cart? Oh, yes he can have it." Gerald for once was too preoccupied to really pay attention to what she was saying. He'd been so certain that the last adjustments would help, but they'd burned the circuits out even faster. He suddenly realized Mary was still standing in the door. "Was there something else?"

"Did you want the robot? It's still in the cart?"

"What ro- oh! Er, yes. Um." He remembered the strange circuitry. Maybe that might give him some new ideas. "I'd better bring it in here, I guess; thanks."

"I'll give you a hand, if you'd like. And then you're going to have dinner with me, because you haven't had lunch yet."

Gerald blinked and realized that it was considerably later than he'd thought. He'd worked right through lunch and by the length of the shadows he was close to missing dinner. "But the project..." the protest sounded feeble even to himself.

"...is getting nowhere, so you may as well refresh yourself so you can start new. Even a brain as powerful as yours needs refueling, you know. Or maybe I should says especially." She gave him a playful glance. "Since that moustache is surely leeching nutrients as we speak."

Gerald snorted as they reached the cart. "Hi Scott, sorry I forgot about this one." He started to pick up the robot and Mary grabbed the legs to help carry it. "Cart's all yours now." Dr. Scott Baleff, never one to waste words, nodded and wheeled the cart away towards B unit. Gerald and Mary carried the robot back into their building.

As he elbowed the door of 14 open the light reflecting off the robot's eye made them look as if they were lit from within. As Mary followed him through the door, they almost dropped the machine as it suddenly started to twitch. "Gerald, look!" gasped Mary, nodding past him to where the Chaos Emerald's glow had brightened considerably. Setting the robot down on it's feet, the two scientists stared as it toppled over and seemed to be trying to creep towards the emerald. "Other lab?" she suggested. Gerald nodded and they carried the robot back into the hall. As soon as the door closed on the Chaos Emerald, the robot returned to its prior, inert state.

In the "control" lab, they pulled off the robot's chest plate and began examining the circuitry. Neither had ever seen anything like them, nor the materials that made up the components. Mary took samples and headed for C unit where there was equipment for identifying materials. Gerald meanwhile focused on deciphering the intricacies of the circuitry layout. Dinner was forgotten entirely.

རྩྭ རྩྭ རྩྭ རྩྭ རྩྭ རྩྭ

"Mmmph," Gerald blinked groggily; his pillow felt very hard and was jabbing his cheek. He sat up, realizing that he'd fallen asleep not only on his desk, but on his notebook - it was the spiral binding that had impressed itself on his cheek. Literally impressed - as he spotted his reflection on a reflective piece of equipment, he noted a set of red line up the side of his face. Rubbing his cheek sleepily he moved across the hall and poked his head into Mary's lab. She had also fallen asleep in her lab, her head propped on her folded arms. "Mary." He shook her gently. "Mary, wake up."

"Hmm? Oh...Gerald?" She sat up so suddenly that she cracked the back of her head against his jaw. She winced and grimaced an apology at the same time. "Ouch! Sorry. We seem to have missed our dinner date; can I offer you some breakfast?"

Date? The thrill accompanying the word took him by surprise. Gerald shook his head slightly. She didn't mean it like that; wake up, Gerald. "Breakfast would be good. Then we can discuss the robot. The circuits in it are completely unlike anything I've ever seen before."

"Good. I've got some news about the materials too. I know you like bacon, do you like waffles?"

"I don't think I've ever seen waffles at the cafeteria," Gerald pointed out.

"I've got a waffle iron. But don't tell anyone; it's considered a fire hazard," she grinned conspiratorially at him. She accepted a hand up out of the chair and led him towards the dormitory building.

In her apartment, she handed him a package of bacon and began mixing the batter while the waffle iron heated. "That thing is Ancient, Gerald, with italics and a capital A. But the materials - there're plastics in there, and some ceramics and metal alloys like nothing I've ever encountered. I can tell you what went into them, but not how they were made; not yet at least." She poured batter onto the metal grill and placed butter and honey on the table. Gerald checked the bacon in the microwave and set out the plates and plasticware she'd placed on the table. "I can probably recreate some of them, but the rest...I don't know. I'll show you the results after breakfast. And a shower. You could probably do with one too, your moustache is only at half mast this morning."

Gerald grunted. "It stayed up too late trying to work out the circuitry in that robot.If what you say is true...well, the layout of the components are as strange as the materials. But I keep thinking I can almost see...the..reasoning, the answer, then it slips away again."

"It'll probably come clear more easily after breakfast and all. You were all day and most of the night at it, after all." Mary placed the first waffles on the table and indicated that he should serve himself. "No point in letting them get cold." She joined him intermittently, but kept an eye on the waffle iron, removing steaming waffles and adding fresh batter as needed. Finally she sent him down the hall with a wrapped package of waffles he could reheat later.

Showered and in fresh clothes, the two regrouped in lab 12. Gerald could read most of the information on the components' compositions, and Mary explained the rest. Many of the materials were truly unique, but unlike the Chaos Emerald, all the component elements could be identified. Then Gerald showed his diagrams of the actual pattern of the circuits, which were unlike anything human technology had used. " In fact, they're completely useless for human technology because they cannot draw adequate power from typical batteries or generators. If you have an energy that increases itself within the circuits, however..."

Here then, was the solution to the Chaos Emeralds self-replicating energies. Inspired and given direction by an ancient robot of impossibly advanced technology, Gerald at last completed his first assignment. Using some of the materials Mary was able to duplicate - some she was simply not able to recreate - he developed the first of his "great" inventions: the Chaos drive. Self-regenerating energy embedded in a control circuit that could be used as a battery with minimal changes to a vehicle's or robot's original design.

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I think I'll shoot for two posts a week, but this week I'm moving into a new house, so not sure when I'l get the next part posted.