I. – Mid-day 2231...
"This place is so… uninhabited."
Abba and Tress stepped off of the Giant clone's hand in the ruins of Alpha D. C.
"Thank you, Sputnik." The Queen smiled up at the gray automaton.
Droids could self-transmute in this new age and take people to places the IR did not.
"Do not be too long." He replied amiably in the Ominish language they all spoke.
"They're courteous," Tress moved along with his friend through the ruins. "But I never cared much for their one-note hospitality. You know, the Giant had many dimensions."
"My father." Abba agreed, throwing her green rubber sack over one shoulder. The two were dressed down in sporty green jumpers normally worn in lower Zephyron by people Tress's age. When the man mentioned Hogarth Hughes she waved at the air dismissively.
"I have no concern for him."
They came across the building Trina had told Abba about.
"She would visit during her down times from the Northern Hemisphere."
Anything before the Giant was hurtled into 1957 was lost knowledge.
Even Trina, who seemed to know everything, did not know how humans were made.
"You hope to uncover the truth of humanity." Tress said as he took the old card used to open the huge metal doors, sliding it into the side of the enormous building. "If anyone would have known it would have been Hogarth… and my brother. His passing was…"
Abba placed her hand on the man's shoulder. "He would want you to do this." she said.
He looked up at her with moist eyes and accepted her hug.
Finally, Tress pulled back and relaxed. "Maybe you're right Abba, maybe we can find a means of saving humanity. Without children, without the knowledge of how to make at least some type of heirs after ourselves…" the giant, creaky door slid away from it's jab.
"Would it not be awesome to convert droids into humans?" Abba said, child-like again, as they entered. "We would all be on equal ground then!" she jumped around excitedly inside the shadowy expanse. Tress shot her a look. "Just imagine! The wonders we two could-,"
"Are you insane?" The man turned on her, snappish.
Abba was quick to reel back.
"I thought you wanted past clues to further our existence, not hasten our destruction."
"I do!"
"You're insane! Whatever hope to save humanity left when Ven died. He might've not been a shining example, neither was your father, but they had the good sense not to toy with the unnatural." Abba watched him stalk out. "Come with me, we're returning you."
"No," the woman cried like a little girl, walking backwards, "I don't want to."
"This isn't a request, Abba." The single-purposed droid came to Tress when he motioned for him. "It is a plea from a concerned friend. Board your droid, we're getting you home."
The look in her eyes was imminent.
Tress sighed as she raced inside the dark facilities.
"She will be okay?"
"That's why we're going in after her, to make sure she is."
II. Mid-day, 2000...
"Are you sure you're waterproof?" Hogarth asked as he and the Giant went to the base of a collection of rocks down by the shore. They were a quarter of a mile south of Rockwell.
"Nope." His friend told him happily.
The robot shoved the 40-foot-tall rock pile aside. Hogarth saw that they were cemented
"Where'd ya find the material, pal?"
"Around Maine. We never left more then thirty miles at a time."
" 'We?' "
The Giant gave Hogarth an excited yet hushed look as they entered an underwater cavern. Rock and metal strewn in a sparkling substance made colorful ribbons along the towering walls the robot took him past. The man was not so amazed by the expanse of rock hidden below as he was the glittering limestone that shone green and yellow as they moved along.
"It's beautiful," he remarked.
"It's only one of the best parts." The Giant took him to an opening slightly above his head where a metal pane was embedded in solid green-gray rock. "I brought this back with me from a hotel." Hogarth smiled, impressed. "Anytime you want to come here, you can use this. The entrance will open up as a sliding rock door, use the keyboard under the moss."
Hogarth had to look away so the Giant wouldn't see him swipe at his eyes.
"Thanks, pal, that… that really means a lot."
The Giant, however, didn't lose pace.
"I didn't say that was all of it."
As the cavern opened up more – much like the auditorium of 2201 Hogarth had exited – a multitude of iron and metal made up the enormity of the huge space. The walls shot up far over the Giant's head as artwork, inventions of crude to sophisticated design and different piles of pure scrap littered the floor. Hogarth was without words. He looked to the Giant.
"I kept busy."
"I'll say you have." the man said in a stunned voice.
A partially buffed out green town car sat amongst many refurbished vehicles.
"I never moved past figuring out how electrical wiring works, so none of them run."
"You sure as hell knock the socks off of the originals."
"What?"
"Well, there's no way you restored all of these. I mean, they gotta be reproductions…"
The Giant cupped his hips, grabbed the car up in his hand and peeled back a white sheet that was covering the front. He gave his hand an exaggerated bounce as he leaned down to show Hogarth; who folded his arms and shook his head. "I stand corrected my friend."
It was a fresh coat of green paint.
"Come on," the Giant encouraged. "I want to show you how to metal fish."
"This is incredible Giant." Hogarth kept praising as they moved more into the middle where huge piles towered nearly to the robot's shoulders. "You could have just stayed
in the future. You didn't have to come back here." The Giant barely showed any traces
of emotion over this as he scraped back a black BMW's hood and sat him in the front.
"I don't really want to talk about that."
"Sounds good to me," Hogarth compromised, concerned but not wanting to ruin things.
The Giant sighed and dropped back lazily into his large clumps of metal, causing his friend to outright laugh. Hogarth relaxed himself as well, relieving his sore shoulder of the boxed six pack. He slipped his jacket off and, feeling comfortable, unwound the bandages around his arm. This is what he wanted, a goodtime with his best pal. He screwed a small stainless steel bowl with a duck tapped Swiss army knife around his arm stub. His close army pals use to call him Captain Kook, but he had just let it roll off. The feeling of Hogarth's pants around his midsection caused Dean's early accusations to make themselves known. With none of the apprehension he usually had, Hogarth pulled out his shirt and zipped down his pants. When the Giant suddenly turned to him from reaching across the piles he stopped.
Hogarth gave him a sly look and indicated the bottle in his existing hand with a bottle cap opener extending out of the knife. He didn't draw attention to the fact that his shirt was pulled out or that his pants were pulled down. Whether the Giant understood any of this or not didn't show, a warm smile touched his white eyes. "It's good to have you home."
The man smiled back and uncapped his beer bottle.
He then proceeded to snap the button off of his pants. "Let's see some metal fishing." as he toasted his approval the Giant nodded enthusiastically and retrieved a huge metal crane.
Just as Hogarth was finally feeling at home and ready to let everything hang, the stomping of arriving feet froze him in motion. Even as he recovered fast and tried to appear normal when in fact he had been in the process of unwinding, he was still in the throes of worry.
The Giant tried his best to ease the tension.
"It's okay, this is the last part."
Hogarth watched as he stood up and indicated a new giant robot. This mechanical man was not a clone, or even a little different like Pygmy. It was not flashy like the Motorix and yet it was somehow connected to the Giant, Hogarth could feel that. The robot he was shown came more into the light, which Hogarth now saw projected from rod after
rod of fluorescent lighting. The wires, he saw, were exposed along the limestone top.
"The rock doesn't help our metal," the Giant mentioned, oblivious to the dangers of electricity and water. He now turned to the robot who was wrapped in copper cords.
Hogarth noticed the other bronze-ish material that layered it over in patchwork metal.
"She was there when my clones transmuted their metal to me."
" 'She?' "
"Hello, Hogarth," the droid lifted 'her' mandible, "It's been a while."
III.
A knock on the door sent little Taylor scurrying over curiously to investigate.
"Taylor Donald Renton, you know better then to answer for strangers."
"Sorry Mom," he backed away.
The thirty-two-year-old mother turned the knob open to reveal a man in his sixties.
"Is John Rice at this residence?"
Her eyes widened.
"No? All right then. Do you know the whereabouts of Jane Smith?"
The woman's eyes grew larger. "Look," she recovered, "If you're an army buddy of-,"
"Hello, Robert." Julianne wheeled herself up to the door.
"Julie." He nodded his head of gray hair.
"Bubbie isn't here." She nodded for Donna-Lee to head back into the living room.
"Well then, I can wait."
For once the good humor was free and clear from the woman's face.
"You will not endanger my family by dragging us back into some future war."
Robert settled her with his own look. "It isn't a war this time, Peaches, it's our existence."
Julianne was all in that moment taken aback, she hadn't heard that name since Gordon had died; from colon cancer, no less. Robert Evans excused himself into the quaint little homey kitchen. Julie's father had funded nearly all of the money he had to build her this big home.
"As I said, our existence is at stake." He studied a peculiar cross-eyed dog oven mitt.
"From commies? I told you," she raised up on her wheelchair's arms. "It's over with."
"That's what your mother said." Robert told her with his eyes down. He glanced up. "I've been doing a lot of undercover work on this case off and on again, Julianne." Once he was sure the family in the other room wasn't listening he went on. "Dimelo had one more plan up his sleeve in case the cyborg project failed, it's a back-up plan to change us all into…"
"Into… what?"
"I can't say. If Sergey Dimelo has his way he could rewrite our time, our history. That is why I have got to see Hogarth, I have something to give him. Tell me Julie, where is he?"
"There's just one thing, Rob. How can a dead man doom us all from beyond the grave?"
To be continued…
~ Lavenderpaw ~