A/N: Most of you have probably heard that strobe lights can induce seizures in epileptics, and occasionally even in people who aren't epileptic (although some believe that Pokemon cartoon incident was more of a mass hysteria thing). I know of no instances of specific wavelengths of non-strobe light inducing seizures in humans, but we have no data on human/xenoorganic hybrids yet. :D
Also, I know it sounds wrong, but the correct plural of chassis is, in fact, chassis. And the average American cigarette will register 9 CPM (clicks-per-minute, believe it or not) on a Geiger counter, while normal background radiation on Earth is 4. This was a popular demonstration by my favorite chemistry professor in college. She also demonstrated properties of liquid nitrogen by dumping it directly onto the lecture room floor. She'll always be my role model, that woman.
5
A few weeks later, at Xen's very persistent request, Bunni and Tori tested her eyes for sight distance and light sensitivity. They started with eye charts and the Lab's ambient lighting and graduated to tiny flashlights over the course of a morning. She could barely stand the Lab's normal lights at maximum with her inner lids closed. Anything brighter made her head hurt so badly that she had to shut her outer lids, too. Having a flashlight shined into her naked eye made her twitch.
"That's no good," said Tori. "Bet you twenty caps she'll seize in normal daylight. Too many xeno rods and cones in there."
"It does look like dilation is contraindicated," said Bunni. "And where would you get twenty caps?"
"What's contraindicated mean?" asked Xen.
"Means it's a bad idea," said Tori. "Anyhow, with the scanner Dr. Montalban built, we don't really need it." She waved a tiny instrument in one hand, indistinguishable to Xen's eyes from a pen light. The light from it was equally uncomfortable. Fortunately Tori had only had to look into each eye for a couple of seconds. "She's got lower eye pressure than a normal human, even. She's not gonna get glaucoma."
"Is that good?" asked Xen.
"Very good, Xen," said Bunni, rolling up an eye chart carefully with both manipulators. "Your eyes are sensitive, but you have good focus and they're very healthy. They're probably done growing, but we'll have to check again in a few months to be sure."
"And then I can go outside? Above the ground?"
"I can probably build you some goggles by then, yeah," said Tori. "You can help me with those. Meantime we'll start bumping the lights up a notch every few days, see if we can get you used to normal interiors, at least. Then maybe we'll see if we can work up to a trip to the shop. Masterson should be okay for your first human social contact."
"The Doctors were human," said Xen.
"Yeah, but they weren't like other people," said Tori. "Especially not the ones you're gonna meet out here. Most people aren't scientists."
"So what are most people like?" asked Xen. Her historical reading was not clear on this point.
"People are very different from each other," said Bunni. "I'll show you some pictures and video if you like. You may need to know about some of the creatures as well."
"Let's hope not," said Tori.
"I want to see them," said Xen.
"Come along, then, Dear."
Months sounded like a long time, but Xen was kept very busy for the next while. When she wasn't studying, she was working on her new robot, and when she wasn't doing that, she worked on the goggles with Tori. This turned out to be a much longer process than she had expected, involving the grinding of lenses and the making of rubber seals. This former process was something Tori had to teach herself first, from the computer, and then build tools for it she could teach it to Xen. The seals weren't quite as hard, though Tori obviously hated to use the rubber.
"It's laboratory grade, it's clean, and unlike the glass, we're not going to get more of it easily," said Tori as Xen was painstakingly cutting out the pieces. "So go easy on it. You're lucky you don't need correctives. There's no way we'd be able to grind them that fine. Can't even get the right grade of sand. Not without some risks we can't take just yet, anyway."
Tori brought the glass back from a trip outside. She was gone for almost an entire day, and she came back holding a canvas bag with two arms so that it dangled beneath her main chassis. Inside were several large, dirty pieces of broken glass and a box with a couple of pairs of precious prewar sunglasses.
"Why can't I just wear these?" Xen asked, trying them on. They were made for a full-sized adult, so they stuck out to each side of her face, and the shape of them reminded her of the pictures of insects she had seen. She liked the smoky finish on the lenses.
"They only cover the front," said Tori. "That means they'll let light in on the sides and top. We can't have that for you, kiddo. Anyway, put them back in the box. We're gonna scrape them off, stick the scrapings in the spectrometer, and copy their anti-UV coating."
"Do we have the reagents for that?" asked Xen.
"Not all of them. These were name brand, back in the day, so they probably have commercial-grade compounds on them. Cost me a good chunk of change, anyway. But we can copy the basic UV blockers."
"Chunk of change?" said Xen.
"Cash," said Tori. "I know the Robobrain's been telling you about economics, 'cause I heard her."
"No, I mean we have money?" said Xen. "How much?"
"I'm not telling you that 'til you're old enough to be in charge of it, or you figure out how to reprogram me and Bunni," said Tori. Xen blushed. "Yeah, I saw you looking at my specs. If you can figure it out, I guess you'll have earned it – Doc Sherman wasn't the clearest writer ever. It's not gonna be before we get the glasses done, though, so don't be getting ideas."
"I wasn't," said Xen. "But I might need to reprogram you. For a good reason."
"Sure," said Tori. "It could happen. Anyway, it'd be nice if Bunni got to be a little bit less of a wuss. I can hurt anybody who tries to get in here, or tell the bots to. Bunni can't give them orders, and she can only attack anyone who's already in here and trying to hurt you. One sneaky bastard with a Stealth Boy could rob us blind while I was out shopping. And she's a combat-ready model, too. I've got stuff on me that can't be fixed if we break it."
"I'll learn how to fix you," said Xen.
"Yeah, you probably will," said Tori. She rotated a small tool attachment out for a coarser manipulator and, unusually for her, reached down to ruffle Xen's hair. "You're a smart kid."
Xen smiled.
She went outside almost every day for the next four months. She walked up and down the stretch of tunnel, memorizing everything she could see and touching whatever Bunni would let her. She talked to Tawnee, who talked kind of funny but was still very nice. Sometimes she talked to Stephanie and Michelle, too, but usually just to say hello. They seemed very busy to Xen, and the only thing they wanted to talk about was the last time they'd seen an intruder, how many times they'd shot it, and how fast it had evaporated. So far Xen had only heard them talk about animals. She was glad about this. She would hate for her first contact with a new person to be breathing that person's dust in the air.
One day she asked Stephanie, "Could you kill something and not have it evaporate?"
"That is technically possible," said Stephanie, but she didn't sound very enthusiastic about it.
"Why, Xen?" asked Bunni. She stood back in the doorway of the lab. Xen suspected her programming wouldn't let her go further unless something threatened Xen directly.
"Doctor Graber used to dissect things in the lab, didn't she?" asked Xen.
"Yes," said Bunni.
"I bet it would be very educational for me to look at the inside of a radroach," said Xen.
"Yes, Dear," said Bunni. "But you might be allergic to them. They're very dirty. And they're all contaminated with radiation. We can't risk exposing you to even minimal gamma yet."
"What about just part of one, then?" Xen asked. "Like a leg. Tori could decontaminate it first. I know she could. I read about it. I want my new robot to have legs that work. I've already got the navigation code written."
"Well, all right," said Bunni. "When Tori gets back I'll have her give the orders."
The glasses were done soon after that. Tori helped her fit the leather strap to her head, and then she stood blinking as she looked around. The main lenses were bubble-shaped, so they didn't hurt her peripheral vision too much. They were only visibly tinted a little, making the lab look slightly dim and colorless. Xen opened her inner eyelids slowly. Things seemed suddenly brighter, but there was no pain. She could see the heat expanding from the Lab's machines and Tori's power plant, the faint bloom of UV from the overheads (just the tiny bit that the goggles didn't screen out), the ripple in the air as Tori sent some instructions out to the sentry bots. Tori and Bunni both glowed faintly as the ultraviolet reflected from their chassis.
"They work," she said. "I can see everything."
"Let's see how you do with the lights at maximum," said Tori. "That's pretty close to normal daylight up top. Close your inside eyelid first."
"Raise the lights very slowly," said Bunni.
"Yeah, yeah," said Tori, and went to fiddle with the light controls. Xen closed her inner eyelids. Everything went gray again. The room brightened slowly.
"How's that?" Tori asked.
"Not bad," said Xen. "It just looks like it did before."
"And that is just how it should look, Dear," said Bunni. "Move your head around and make sure there are no cracks."
Xen rolled her head around obediently. "I don't see any," she said. "I'm going to try and open up again."
"Be careful," said Bunni. Xen squinted her inner lids.
"It's kind of hard to see," she said. "But it doesn't hurt."
"You'll still have to do without your special vision options in broad daylight," said Tori. "That'll put you level with most people. Just don't forget that you have an advantage in the dark." She turned the lights back down again. Xen pulled the goggles down around her neck.
"What do you mean, advantage?" asked Xen.
"Hopefully nothing, Dear," said Bunni. "But the world is a very dangerous place. That's why the Doctors came here to begin with."
"I'm gonna go see if we've got a radroach leg yet," said Tori. "I want to know if she can see gamma."
"No," said Bunni. The tone of her voice did not change, but then, it never did. Xen had often wondered if it was a modulation problem or a programming problem; Tori obviously didn't have it. "That is far too dangerous."
"Ease up, fatty," said Tori. "I can't endanger her any more than you can. Even after I decontaminate it, it'll be a couple of CPM above normal background. Less than a cigarette."
"Which we also do not keep inside the Lab," said Bunni.
"Come on, Bunni," said Xen. "It won't be for very long. Tori can throw it away when we're done."
"Well, all right," said Bunni. "But I'm going to be there monitoring both of you."
Which she did. Xen paid little attention to this, completely engrossed as she was in trying to use a scalpel while wearing gloves designed for fingers shorter and thicker than hers. The radroach leg did glow faintly in a way she hadn't seen before.
"So what's it look like?" said Tori.
"Can't you see gamma already?" said Xen.
"Sure I can," said Tori. "I've got enough extra sensors in these three eyes to make the Enclave flatten the entire city block over our heads if they knew about it. I was just curious what it looked like to you."
"Sort of bluish-purple," said Xen, squinting her inner eyelids open through her goggles. "Only more so. What's it look like to you?"
"Error processing response," said Tori. "Meaning Idon't have a fleshy brain and an optic nerve, so what I see would look to you like a bunch of complicated numbers. I've got three inputs facing in different directions on top of that, so I've got trinocular overlap. Ask the Robobrain."
"The interface of my cellular and inert components means I can't process very many visual inputs," said Bunni.
"Two squishy lobes with hardwired cross-connections," said Tori. "She can't even look in two directions at once. Not with a monkey brain."
"My perception of gamma uses a miniaturized Geiger array," Bunni went on, apparently ignoring this. "It's just a series of audible clicks, Xen. The higher the radiation is, the closer together they are. That's why it's measured in clicks per minute."
"Oh," said Xen. "So can you see me?" She looked back over her shoulder.
"Of course I can, Dear," said Bunni. She patted Xen's shoulder with a manipulator. "I have infrared and motion sensors. And I can hear very well on a good spectrum of frequencies. And my fleshy brain, as Tori so rudely calls it, can process olfactory stimuli better than anything in her sensor array."
"Oo, got me," said Tori. "Next you'll be saying I smell bad."
"Of course you do," said Bunni.