The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Cartoon Network, Sunrise, and Bandai Visual.

THE BIG O:

ACT 28

SCAPEGOAT

Chapter Eight: Back to Reality

Darkness. The only light shone dimly through a little window in the door. He didn't know where he was, only that his arms were wrapped around his body and that he was laying on a cushioned surface. He managed to roll his body to a sitting position, but with his arms restrained it was difficult. Where was he? What was he dressed in?

He seemed to be wearing pajamas, at least that's what his legs were covered with. His arms and torso, however were a different matter. The sleeves were too long and were tied behind him. He seemed to be wearing it backwards since he could feel straps and buckles in the back, not the front. Worse still, a strap went between his legs, making it impossible to take the strange coat off and painful to even try.

He didn't seem to be wearing shoes, and the room he was in smelled like a combination of a gas station restroom and soiled gym clothes. "Where am I?" he muttered out loud. "I was in a fight…" He listened. Moaning and sobbing could be heard, as well as gibbering and laughing. Wherever he was, it was a pit of the damned.

The light in the window increased. No, there was a second source of light bobbing and moving as footsteps joined the din. The sound of a keys jingling was heard and the door opened to reveal two shadowy figures. There faces were hard to make out because a flashlight was shining in his eyes.

"Mr. Smith?" asked a tall broad shouldered figure in a white double-breasted suit. "It's me, Doctor Rosewater," the man asked kindly. "Do you know who you are?"

"M-my name is… Roger Smith…" an unshaven Roger mumbled. "I perform a much need job here in the city of amnesia…"

"Yes, well, that's mostly right," the man stepped forward to reveal the tight skin and prominent cheekbones on his skull like face. "Roger? Do you know who I am?"

"You're… Alex Rosewater…" Roger rasped.

"Why yes, that's right," Rosewater smiled. "It's me… Doctor Rosewater, your physician. Do you know where you are?"

With the light spilling into his cell, Roger could get a better look at his surroundings. The walls were padded like upholstery. He was wearing a straitjacket! No wonder he couldn't use his arms! "I… I'm in an insane asylum…" he stammered. "I'm in a madhouse!"

"Why yes, that's right again," Rosewater grinned. "Although we prefer to call it a sanitarium. You're making excellent progress Mr. Smith. Come, let's get you cleaned up." The orderly next to Alex Rosewater lifted Roger to his feet and escorted him out into the hall.

"Don't listen to them!" shouted a voice from another cell. Roger turned to see a bandaged face leering at them through a tiny window in the door next to Roger's cell. "They want to hide the truth! The truth about this city! The truth of what happened forty years ago! They want the truth to be erased! To remain hidden for all time!"

"Now Mr. Seebach, you know better than to upset the other patients," Rosewater scolded. "It does no good to be putting ideas in Roger's head you know. Calm down and we can commence with your treatment in due course."

"I don't need treatment from the likes of you!" Seebach spat. "My name is Swartzwald, not Michael Seebach, and you will never see your darling reporter again! Forty years ago, something happened! All of us lost our memories, and it is people like you who want to keep them for yourself!"

"Please Mr. Seebach…" Rosewater began.

"Swartzwald!" Seebach shouted. "You told everyone I was dead! You had your little angel tell everyone that I was dead! But now your lapdog knows the truth, doesn't he? I'm alive, and I want to be free! Do you hear me? Information wants to be free!"

"The poor man," Rosewater shrugged as the orderly helped Roger follow him down the hall of doors. "Don't worry, Mr. Smith. Once you're cleaned up, I'll meet you in my office."

Roger ignored the orderlies stripping him of his clothes and subjecting him to a cold shower. His mind was whirling with questions. Who was Roger Smith? What was he doing in a lunatic asylum? How could Alex Rosewater be his doctor? Wasn't he the president of the Paradigm Corporation? Where were Dorothy and Big O?

Soon Roger was in a change of clothes and sitting in Rosewater's office. He didn't get his own clothes. He got a uniform made of thin, soft fabric: White elastic pants and a white shirt with slippers for the feet. No ties, belts or shoelaces that he could use to hang himself.

Medical degrees and bookshelves adorned Rosewater's office, and the man in the white polo jacket sat behind a big mahogany desk in a wide backed chair as if it was a throne. "All right, let's take a look at your case Mr. Smith," Rosewater said as he put on a set of reading glasses and opened a file. "Ah yes, the amnesia case. Do you know who you are? How much do you remember about your own personal history?"

"My history..." Roger muttered, "the history of a man named Roger Smith, is nothing but boring. Raised in an orphanage but gained an education due to an affluent foster family, I could never develop any sense of pride working for the military police defending law and order in Paradigm City as one of Dan Dastun's men. So...I used some incident as a pretext to leave the force. It wasn't much longer after that...when I met him. When I met Big O."

"Ah yes," Rosewater nodded sagely. "Big O. You talk about it a lot. How did you get involved with Big O?"

Roger relaxed in the chair and let his voice rattle on without him. "It was purely on a whim that I had latched onto the idea of making that broken-down, decaying bank building, just outside of the domes, into my home. Or so I thought. But it seems that wasn't the case. Big O...was waiting for me."

"I see," Rosewater scribbled in a notebook. "So you feel that it was your destiny to pilot a giant robot in order to fight…" he flipped through his notes, "…other giant robots. Do I have that right?"

Roger nodded helplessly. "Yes, I suppose so."

"I know this is confusing, even frightening to you," Rosewater said gently, "but in reality you're making incredible progress. We might be able to take you out of solitary and allow you to socialize with the other patients. You doubt these illusory memories of yours. That's excellent news. It means that there's hope for recovery."

"Who am I?" Roger asked pointblank. "Who am I really?"

"Roger," Alex sighed, "I don't know how to break this to you, but you were never adopted by wealthy foster parents. You remained in the orphanage until you were grown. After that you were a drifter, a wanderer. You never joined the military or the police. There is no such thing as giant robots. I assure you, the rest of us haven't lost our memories."

"You… haven't?" Roger asked. "Not even the elderly?"

"Well some of the elderly do have memory problems," Doctor Rosewater admitted, "but most of those cases are due to Alzheimer's."

"Alzheimers?"

"But I assure you, the world hasn't lost its memory, giant robots don't run amuck and you aren't a professional negotiator," Alex Rosewater assured him. "I'm sorry, but you're just an ordinary man who's met with unfortunate circumstances."

"B-but… who am I?" Roger asked fearfully. "What do I do?"

"I'm afraid that you don't actually do anything, Mr. Smith," Alex said condescendingly. "You're unemployed, one of the homeless. Your condition makes it impossible for you to get a job. If it wasn't for state funded medical care you'd be starving in the streets."

"What?" Roger blinked as he tried to clear his head. "But I'm Paradigm City's top negotiator…"

"No Mr. Smith, I'm afraid you're not," Alex shook his head sternly. "There is no such place as 'Paradigm City' except maybe in a comic book. You're simply a homeless man who's fallen through the cracks. These delusions you suffer from keep you from living a normal life. For a while we thought you were incurable, but don't worry, the medication is finally having an effect. Let's get you into a new room and let you socialize with the other patients and we'll see how it goes, okay? We'll take things slowly. The real world may not be as glamorous as the one in your head, but I assure you, it has its own rewards. Alan, you can show him out now."

Roger Smith wandered through blandly painted halls to enter a cafeteria. He ignored the various patients watching television or playing board games preferring to explore his own thoughts.

"Who am I?" he thought to himself. "What am I doing here?"

He watched a patient that looked like Jason Beck play cards with some other inmates. When he saw Roger Smith he winked.

"I could have sworn that I was in a fight," Roger scratched his chin. "That I was a negotiator. Had my memories been mistaken from the very beginning? Who was that I was portraying? Was I portraying someone in illusory memories? In a world I used to be in, all memories and all records of events prior to forty years ago had vanished. From that point on, maybe, we had been portraying people other than ourselves."

At another table, a girl that looked like Dorothy Wayneright sat listlessly, ignoring the world the same way Roger was.

Roger glanced up at the florescent lights on the ceiling. "Paradigm city negotiator...the man named Roger Smith. The man who would team up with Big O. I was only an actor who played those parts. If those roles were taken away...I would have no reason to exist."

Roger was so wrapped up in himself that he didn't notice a cadaverously skinny orderly whose messy blonde bangs covered his eyes saunter into the cafeteria. His blood red lips smiled hideously as he searched the room.

Roger ignored him, looking at the wall. "I'm nothing but a man whose existence has no value and meaning in this place," he sighed.

"Well-well, look what we have here," the pale blond orderly smirked as he approached the languid Dorothy Wayneright. "Looks like someone forgot to eat and drink again today."

Roger inhaled. He knew that voice. It belonged to Alan Gabriel, the psychopathic cyborg who betrayed the Union to work for Alex Rosewater! "Not all memories are pleasant ones..." he muttered.

"Robots do not eat or drink," the weary girl replied. "We run on electricity and high grade oil."

"Hm, I'm afraid we're out of that at the moment," the orderly that resembled Alan Gabriel taunted, "but I would recommend the mashed potatoes, or if that's too hard for your system, baby food. Do you need me to feed it to you? You know how much I would love to put something inside your mouth…" He teased as he picked her up by the shoulders.

In an instant, Roger was on his feet and had his hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Get your hands off of her!" he cried as he delivered a punch to Alan's chin.

Dorothy collapsed back into her chair, her terrified lavender eyes staring at the fight.

"Look boys," Beck taunted from his table. "Looks like someone's going back into solitary. Boy, when I faked my insanity plea, nobody told me there'd be this much entertainment!"

"Roger, no," Dorothy implored as she rose to her feet despite her weakness from malnutrition and dehydration. "I am not worth it! I am just an android!" She extended her hand in Roger and Alan's direction.

"You're more than just an android, Dorothy!" Roger exclaimed as he punched the grinning Gabriel in the stomach, "and I'm more than just a mental patient!" He through Alan into the wall and was satisfied to see him bounce off and fall to the floor. "Get up! You're not so tough when you're not a cyborg," he taunted. "You've been asking for this a long time—Yagh!"

Roger felt an electric shock against the back of his neck and he fell over in a jerky spasm. A beautiful blonde nurse who looked exactly like Angel was standing behind him carrying a clipboard and a taser. "Mr. Smith," she sighed. "Not again… You were making so much progress too."

Alan wiped the blood off his mouth and smiled, his eyes still hidden by the bangs of his blond hair. "Looks like the medication isn't working," he snickered. "We're going to have to use more drastic measures," he laughed sinisterly. "Electroshock therapy, party of one!"

As Roger was placed on a gurney, he felt as though he was disassociated from his body. It was as if he was an observer who was watching a movie from the inside of one of the participants. His thoughts couldn't focus on what was happening around him, so he concentrated his inner struggle.

"Among my memories which I myself already know to be uncertain, the most unpleasant of all is starting to reawaken," his inner voice told him as he was shackled to the gurney like Frankenstein's monster. "This emotion that I'm feeling right now...it's so primal...so illogical...an emotion I never wanted to feel again," he mused as a rubber block was inserted into his mouth before he was gagged by a mask. "A feeling of terror...a feeling I don't want to admit to having."

"Shouldn't we wait for Doctor Rosewater?" Angel's voice asked.

"Do we have to?" Alan Gabriel answered childishly. "Isn't it more fun to do this ourselves?"

"Electroshock can affect the memory you know," Angel debated. "From his chart, Mr. Smith has enough problems with memory already."

"His memories are fictitious," Gabriel sneered in his effeminate voice. "If anything goes wrong he won't miss them."

As Angel bent over him, Roger could feel a gelatinous substance being rubbed on his temples.

"It really turns me on to see you apply the conducting jelly," Gabriel taunted in a perverted voice. "You like touching him don't you? You like being his caretaker, it allows you to get near him…"

"You probably deserve to be committed more than he does," she growled. Before she was merely arguing by the numbers but now she was getting irritated. Had Alan's taunts hit a nerve?

"I really should have kissed her when I had the chance," Roger thought.

"Do you fantasize about strapping me down and rubbing conductive jelly on me?" Alan teased. "If you ever do so it's only fair to warn you, I might start to like it."

"You know, I believe you would," Angel grunted. "I'm going to get Doctor Rosewater. While I'm gone, don't touch anything!" she snarled.

The orderly that resembled Alan Gabriel cackled in an insane effeminate laugh after she exited. "She doesn't really expect me to just wait here and let Doctor Rosewater have all the fun, does she?" he grinned in Roger's face. "Honestly where's the fun in that?"

Alan's laughter echoed in the chamber as sweat formed on Roger's face.

"Time to get this jalopy started," the sadistic orderly said as he put what appeared to be headphones on Roger. Instead of placing them on his ears, he put them on Roger's temples where the jelly had been applied. "Time to warm up the generator, Mr. Smith!" he said as he pulled a switch.

Roger realized that Alan was deliberately prolonging the preparations so he could enjoy his victim's fear. In despair, Roger closed his eyes and attempted to block the world out. He ignored the voices of Angel and Alex Rosewater, for their arrival wasn't really a rescue, it simply meant that Alan wouldn't get in trouble.

"All right," Rosewater's overly reasonable voice intoned. "Everything seems to be in order. Twenty seconds should do it." He pushed a button and Roger's body stiffened as the world went blurry on him.


On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Norman's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:

Next: No Business Like Show Business