This is totally heady. This such a rush; uploading three chpt's in one day. For moi, the Glacially Slow Writer, this is without precedent. I'm stoked.
When I started Berserker, this chpt is what I envisioned; an exploration of Sheldon's unrequited and unspoken passion for Jenny. I wanted something just a bit dark and edgy. I hope I succeeded to some degree.
Moi will explain; I am a devout chivalrist. I hearken back to the famous deranged knight, Don Quixote, and his passion for his noble Lady, Dulcinea. I believe implicitly in the uplifting of the Fair Gender, even in the literary and cinematic media. I am very archaic in this regard. The exploitation of even the virtual heroines leaves me cold.
The history of the human race is not a happy record of consistent sweetness and light. People of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economies (izzat a real word? meh…it is now, XD) have been, at different times and places, minimalized.
Women have been shabbily treated. And in Western culture, Judeo-Christianity is the current whipping boy. Moi will be the first to acknowledge that Judeo-Christendom must bear the onus for the shabby treatment. But moi must insist that this is not the heart and soul of the Judeo-Christian ethos.
(For the purposes of my thesis, I will lump the Abrahamic religions into one entity; I think there's enough commonality between the two that it's justifiable.)
I think Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, with his reverence for Beatrice, represents the apex of fair treatment of the Fair Gender. And I don't see the modernist trend of the Sexual Revolution, which promised all kinds of good, as having done a single solitary thing to stem the tide of spousal and partner abuse. If anything, it looks worse.
So that's why I hearken back to the Classical archaic chivalry. I will also be upfront of my utter failure to translate this fervent conviction into everyday practice. I'm divorced because I'm an emotional recluse. Like many others in the world, I'm a hypocrite.
But enough of the soapboxing and self-excoriation. Y'all came to read a story.
As I say, this chpt is the epicenter of my tale. I am fascinated by my man Sheldon Oswald Lee, with whom I feel such concord. And so I let my ruminations run riot; what would a guy like him / me do if we had the power to live out our dreams and convictions?
I preface this story with a few references. First are a couple definitions from the dictionary of my word-processing-program-of-choice, Microsoft Works, copyright Microsoft Corporation.
ber·serk [bər súrk, bər zúrk]
adj
1. very angry: behaving in an uncontrolled way as a result of anger or irrational feeling go berserk2. very excited: extremely excited or enthusiastic about something (informal) The audience went berserk when she finally appeared.
ber·serk·er [bər súrkər, bər zúrkər](pluralber·serk·ers)
n
frenzied Norse warrior: a member of a group of ancient Norse warriors who fought with wild unrestrained aggression
Second is a quote from the Wikipedia article entitled Women in the military.
According to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author of On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Israeli soldiers reacted with uncontrollable protectiveness and aggression after seeing a woman wounded.
These are the bases for my story. All the characters are from My Life As A Teenage Robot.
I'm an incurable geek; and a devout romantic. This is my guilty pleasure, to wax flowery regarding love and battle; to let the words flow.
Berserker
settling the dust and raising the questions
Nora Wakeman had watched the epic battle on her monitor. And not until after it's conclusion did she notice how white her knuckles were from clenching her fists. Her thoughts kept straying to the other XJ robots stored in the basement, inactive. But she had to admit; they could've dealt with the confederation of XJ-9's enemies no more thoroughly than the Silver Shell had done.
She wondered who had formed this new alliance. Was it Lil' Acorn? Smytus or Vexus? The Space Bikers? Her rival Dr. Locus? The annoying little Killgore? Or even the missing Jenny Exoskin?
Nora put aside such considerations. Her daughter was safe. That was all that mattered. Let the officious brass at Skyway Patrol figure out the particulars of who was the mastermind. They had long made it known that they resented what they called both Nora's and Jenny's 'interference' into their 'business'. Very well; if they wanted to garner the glory, let them deal with the mess, too.
It was a typical brief evening meal for the two of them; a quart of oil for Jenny, and toast and tea for Nora. And Nora listened patiently as Jenny chatted happily on and on about the Silver Shell. It was evident to mom that whatever grudges the daughter bore against the big lugging robot over his interference in her dating life, those were forgiven and forgotten. In fact, the daughter's infatuation with the big lug had gotten another jumpstart…a big lease on life.
Jenny yawned. It had been a big day. And tomorrow was back to the old humdrum of school and hero-work. "G'night, Mom."
"Goodnight, Ex-Jay-Nye-on."
Mother and daughter gave each other the familial hug and peck on each other's cheek. Jenny went to her room and plugged in to the recharge module. Then she yawned, lay her head on her pillow, and drifted off to slumber.
Nora went to her lab. She would make some astronomical observations via her telescope, and some bacteriological and mineralogical observations via her microscope. She would record her observations in a very old-fashioned way; by pencil and paper. She would nod off at her desk, laying her head down for brief snatches of sleep.
Jenny might dream of Don Prima, her onetime human crush, or Kenny Mogg, her onetime robotic crush. Good friends might appear briefly, like her neighbors, Bradley and Tucker Carbunkle, or her faraway robotic soul sister, Vega, daughter of Vexus and ruler of the Cluster homeworld. Sheldon might intrude briefly, cutely, annoyingly. His unwearied unrequited crush on her at once endeared him to her and daunted her. Sheldon was analogous to a dear distant relative, like Mom's sister, Aunt Wisteria. A little could go a long way. It wasn't quite a love / hate relationship; more like love / toleration.
And over all, intruding most persistently, was Jenny's own unrequited crush; the Silver Shell. He could be pompous and bombastic. He could be possessive and overbearing. He was, in a way, a robotic Don Prima. But he had proven himself a faithful ally, as faithful as her friends Brad and Tuck, or her sisters; more faithful than Misty, who was a hero-for-hire with a heart as thin as a coin. The Shell shared Brad's flair and disregard of danger. He had Mom's and Sheldon's grasp of science.
There was another trait the Shell possessed; two traits, actually. The first was a fierce, single-minded, almost fanatical devotion. This trait he had in common with Sheldon. The second, contradictorily, was a furtiveness, an inaccessibility. His appearances teased her heart. He came when she needed him and disappeared when she wanted him.
The Shell was lofty…noble…high-minded. He was on a pedestal. And he put her on a higher pedestal. Jenny wanted someone who would take her off her pedestal into his arms. She wanted someone with whom she could share her hopes and her life; someone with whom she could mess around. She wanted someone who was accessible. And the Silver Shell was…inaccessible.
There was a riddle here, a mystery. And the key to unlocking it was so close. Kenny Mogg was the faithful canine robot. The Silver Shell was the faithful superhero robot. Sheldon Lee was the faithful human friend. Kenny was not what he first seemed. His human persona gradually gave way to the canine behavioral patterns his builder, Phineas Mogg, had programmed into him. And the Shell was not what he first seemed. And who built and programmed him? And why were "Silver Shell" and "Sheldon" phonetically similar…?
Sleep was muddling Jenny's thoughts. She drifted off into contented slumber.
In the quiet of the night, when all was still, Nora Wakeman was peering through the eyepiece of her scope and scribbling her data. The quiet intruded into her thoughts. She lay down her pencil and leaned back in her chair. She stared at the ceiling in contemplation.
Her thoughts took the shape of her daughter and her daughter's friends; specifically two of them; Sheldon Lee and the Silver Shell.
Sheldon was hopelessly infatuated with Jenny. It had lasted for their entire time in high school. Any reasonable hormonal young man would have long since given up and pursued more promising prospects. Sheldon was deeply in love, the way medieval bards and knights were deeply in love with their lady fair. He made no effort to hide it. Not all of Jenny's thoughtless snubs, nor Nora's occasional deliberate curt snubs, could deter it.
And Jenny, whether she was aware of it or not, was falling in love with the Shell, in the same dreamy way that Sheldon had fallen in love with Jenny.
Nora wondered for the hundredth time if she made a mistake, giving XJ-9 a true human range of emotions, with all its complexity. All the other XJ's had rudimentary personalities. XJ-1 behaved like a typical needy infant, requiring frequent diaper changes and bottle feedings; and, like a colicky infant, occasionally spat up what she had suckled…in her case, oil. XJ-2 had a bad case of perpetual hiccups and unintentionally spat out bursts of laser fire. XJ-3 was like a toddler, shy and quiet, yet big-eyed with curiosity; and ungainly; so very ungainly, continually tripping and knocking parts loose.
XJ-4 was prim and neat, continually cleaning every accessible surface to a mirror-like luster. XJ-5 was cheerful and garrulous. XJ-6 was snarky. XJ-7 was mopey. XJ-8 could be bellicose and obtuse.
But XJ-9 had a engramatic personality pattern that could grow, in the way a fertilized ovum could become a full-fledged newborn baby. She chose for herself a name: Jenny; she took for herself a surname: Wakeman, Nora's own name. She initiated socialization with the Carbunkle boys next door.
Nora herself had enabled XJ-9's humanization. She had given XJ-9 an emotive face as well as an emotive mind. She had given XJ-9 the ability to sleep, to enter an approximation of the human state of unconsciousness, rather than simply deactivating her at night. At XJ-9's weepy insistence, Nora had even bestowed the capacity for REM sleep; the ability to dream.
In the big house full of rooms devoted to storage and labs, there was one room that resembled a teen's loft, complete with wall posters and stuffed animals.
Nora lavished a maker's love on her daughter the way a painter lavished love on a canvas; the way a parent would lavish love on a child, if a child could be the work of a parent's hands.
What was more, Nora had reconsidered her original plan to confine XJ-9 to the house when there was no planetary emergency. Like any good parent, Nora had enrolled her daughter in school. Obeying nature's unconscious call, the mother bird had shoved the chick from the nest when the chick began to try its wings. For better or worse, Nora Wakeman had laid the groundwork for what Jenny Wakeman had become, and there was no turning the clock back.
Jenny's friends had insinuated their way into her life. That made Nora wistful. It was to be expected. Sheldon Lee's scientific talents had supplanted Nora's own in the continual effort to keep XJ-9's upgrades current. That made Nora uneasy; not out of a sense of rivalry or competition. Sheldon had too often proven himself an invaluable ally; his brilliance equaled her own. What concerned Nora were the powerful feelings in Sheldon's…and Jenny's…respective hearts.
For a moment, an appalling notion took shape in Nora's heart. The thought suggested itself that Sheldon Oswald Lee was the unknown builder of the Silver Shell…the builder who had eluded all efforts to discover his (or her) identity…the builder who had surpassed the efforts of Phineas Mogg…who had rivaled the efforts Archimedes Locus and Nora herself to create a formidable weaponized robot. And Sheldon's intention in building the Shell was to somehow, through psychological transference, become Jenny's surrogate consort.
Nora at once rejected the notion. Sheldon stressed as much as Nora herself did about Jenny's numerous crushes and distractions. He would never knowingly build anything that would be any kind of hindrance in his quest to leave nothing between Jenny and himself. Still…there was something that Nora couldn't quite put her finger on…
In the darkened garage, the Silver Shell's massive body became an unmoving hulk. The light-emitting diodes that dotted his exterior went dark. His artificial facial features became a blank mask. His chest panel opened…and Sheldon Lee emerged from the tiny cockpit of the Silver Shell battle suit.
He peeled off his sweat-soaked hoodie, t-shirt, and denims. He stumbled into the shower. Today was an intense battle. Almost as intense as the battle on Cluster Prime that led to Vexus' downfall. Sheldon had found his nerve that day. He had learned how to tap in to his inner hero.
He wasn't a natural attention-seeker. Not like Bradley Carbunkle. Brad loved being Jenny's sidekick. Brad loved the limelight. He called himself "Action Brad", and chafed at being relegated to "net boy" duty.
Sheldon was in the shower, the steaming water cascading down on him as his thoughts cascaded in his mind.
Sheldon Lee was shy. And timid. He shunned attention. He preferred to play with his action figures, peruse his graphic novels, and build his inventions. It was his infatuation with Jenny Wakeman that drove him to brave deeds.
Plus…there was that incident with the comet worshipers, and the sojourn with the interstellar pirates. Sheldon had come home from his cumulative ninety-year journey subtly changed. Underneath he had a buccaneer's breezy disregard for sanctions regarding life and limb…a roguish amorality. His former reluctance at using lethal force was gone…as demonstrated by how relentlessly and thoroughly he had turned the tables on the rogue government agency that had tried to sequester and liquidate all the humanoid robots.
The upshot was, he had discovered how to awaken an inner self he didn't know he possessed. He had only to visualize Jenny at risk; like the time the electrical-and-plasma-based lifeform Gigawatt had drained her of all her power and held her limp form in his grip.
Or the time she was sealed in the chestplate bubble of the aggregate multi-unit Cluster Hive construct; she was bound spread-eagle, like some helpless damsel-in-distress from a bad sci fi / horror movie. But her face was implacable, bleached of all emotion. Not a trace remained of the warmth and beauty that characterized Jenny Wakeman.
But he had made the terrible two-edged discovery. Within himself dwelt a primal rage at the thought of either Jenny's safety, intellect, or personhood being compromised; at the rape of either her mind or body. And he had learned to harness it. It was potent. It was indiscriminate. It was homicidal. It was deadly.
It was a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation. The peaceful part of him recoiled in shock and dismay at the passion it loosed. And so for him, it was like the old nuclear option of the Cold War era in Earth's history. Only one cause could induce him to awaken the slumbering beast; Jenny's survival.
Sheldon sometimes wondered at the morality of his outlook. And he always came back to the same considerations.
Brad Carbunkle and his brother Tuck often helped Jenny. But there was also an unhappy tendency to exploit Jenny, or to ignore her, when it suited them; like when Brad wanted to go joyriding with a set of jetpacks; or when Tuck wanted to dominate the competition in the Robot Riot games. At times, they treated her like a utilitarian artifact. Tuck proved especially adept at convincing Jenny to refurbish his treehouse, chauffer his friends, and give him an unfair edge at completing school projects.
Nora Wakeman loved her 'daughter' as much as any human could love a machine they themselves had built and programmed with human personality. She lavished great care and concern upon Jenny. But Nora was still governed by a builder's dispassion, or rather, a builder's caution, and a builder's readiness to lay aside a project if it became untenable or hazardous; again, like the time Todd Sweeney managed to take control of Jenny.
Only Sheldon had trusted Jenny unbrokenly. Only Sheldon had never used Jenny. Only he adored her. It was that adoration that allowed him to believe in her when the evil little Todd (Sheldon struggled to find the appropriate word) spawn…hatchling…whatever…had taken over Jenny. It was that adoration that allowed him to buck the trend.
His obsession with Jenny allowed him to gloss over his own times of faltering conduct, like stealing her technical diagrams from Nora, and interfering in her dates with Kenny Mogg and Don Prima; conduct for which he had paid a severe penance in the form of Jenny's mistrust.
After his almost-hundred-year hiatus, his obsession with Jenny had proven itself to be a reliable standard. He would entrust to himself, and to no other, the task of being her devoted servant and protector. He would allow his obsession to become his guide, and the arbiter of his extreme measures. It overcame his natural cowardice and habitual caution. It gave him strength, resolve, and power to use in her cause.
And for that reason, he could don the silver armor of his surrogate self. He could unleash all the might of his armament. He could rain down devastating hammer blows on the multitude of their enemies…her enemies. He could rake their ranks with energy beams and reduce their numbers with lethal projectiles. He could become an uncontrollable berserker.
He had to be honest with himself; he could be dishonest with the girl he loved. He could be as manipulative and as secretive as any of them…as Jenny herself. They were all only human, after all…even the robot girl with the humanistic programming. But again, his heart tugged his reason back to the main argument; what was the net result? And like a mathematical problem, the solution yielded itself. It was as predictable as an exercise in programming logic. The net result was the wellbeing of the gleaming silvery goddess whom he adored.
Sheldon finished his shower and his reverie. He dried his unruly hair and sort of combed it out. He put on his polka-dot PJ's. He ignored his schoolbooks. He could've had a doctorate if he wanted it. He attended Tremorton High only to be near Jenny.
He got under his covers. Sighing, he turned his face to the wall adorned with pictures and posters of Jenny. As he drifted off to sleep, he lay aside one set of daydreams for another.
One dream had always been for a skinny geeky kid to be a warrior of antiquity…to attire himself in a warrior's armor and defend a lady fair.
The other dream was yet unfulfilled; to fulfill another fairy tale scene; to lay aside the façade and reveal to the princess who the prince had been all along. He looked forward to the day he could take his beloved into his arms…not the substitute arms of his battle suit, but his real arms of flesh, and to clasp her to himself as a lover and spouse.
still more A / N
With the publication of this story, this poor fanwriter…moi…hereby enters another fandom: MLAATR.
Just a few notes. This story was inspired by the illustrations of a gifted artist at DeviantArt: 14-bis. He is known for what are considered the eroticizing of cartoon characters. I am aware of the controversy he engenders. And believe me; that controversy is a tempest in a teacup. I've, alas, seen real hentai. And his stuff ain't it.
I am also aware of the…for lack of a better word…discomfort the issue of romance between a human and a robot provokes. It goes by various names. Robotophilia. Technosexuality. Robot fetishism.
In fact, there's a wonderful article over at my fave online encyclopedia, Wikipedia about Gynoids; that is, female robots, the gender-specific equivalent of androids. It's chock full of all that stuff about fetishes, and sexuality, and those embarrassing topics which have no place on a kid's show, but human adults will speculate about. I'm an intellectual wannabe like that; but I also try to keep it honorable.