Alive
A fan fiction in progress
by Bryan Harrison
Part 21
1
David stood at the window, gazing out on the deluge. The storm outside was reaching its peak. The one inside was finally passing. He had vented his rage, had been surprised at the depth and strength of it, and only a brooding silence was left in its wake. The anger was still there, and the sense of betrayal. But they were like clouds breaking in the aftermath, allowing the first faint rays of light to pass through.
Hobby had retreated to a corner where he sat huddled against the wall, mumbling incredulity and gazing on his creation with wide uncomprehending eyes. The man had been paralyzed, reduced to stunned silence during David's tirade. Now it was over. But the impossibility was still standing there, gazing out the window of his study. The boy's face was framed in silver gray light and intermittent flashes of distant lightening. It was the face of his son… or what his son might have looked like had he lived.
But he hadn't. He'd died. Long before the first replica had been constructed. Hobby shook his head to clear his thoughts. When he finally spoke, his voice was weak and paper-thin.
"You are not my son," he said. "You can't be. I saw him buried."
David did not respond at first. He placed a hand against the window and pulled it away. There was a faint print left there.
"Then who am I, Father?" he said, his eyes still set on the trace of himself against the window.
"Don't call me that!" Hobby said, desperately seeking a rational explanation. "You're… some kind of clone or something… some cruel trick."
David turned to cast an unforgiving look on the man.
"A trick?" he said, stepping away from the window. He pointed at his silent sibling sitting on the couch, who sat watching their exchange in detached curiosity.
"Like that?" David said. "Like building a creature to burn with a love that will never be returned, so that every moment of his life is a torture just to be with Her?"
"Her?" Hobby said. "Who are you talking about?"
David ignored the question and walked to where Hobby lay crumbled in the corner. He stood over the man.
"Or is it like a book by a certain Dr Alan Hobby that tells how a robot can become real? A book that never really existed, but that brought the boy back to a trap where he was told everything he believed in was a lie? Where everything he loved was torn away from him and left him defeated and alone so that all he could think of is ending the pain! So he jumped! He jumped!"
David's voice hitched. He stopped and wiped a tear from his face.
"Is that the kind of cruel trick you mean? Father?"
Understanding finally came into Hobby's face. David gazed down on him with hard, accusing eyes.
"No, I am not your son, Professor Hobby," David said. "But I am your child. The child of your mind. The first of my kind."
"Impossible" Hobby yelled. He slithered away, pressing back against the wall, his mind grasping for a hold on reality. David followed, and leaned over the man, until their faces were just breaths apart.
"Remember what you told me… that you wanted to see just how far my imagination would take me? Remember? You wanted to know if I would come to the logical conclusion; that the Blue Fairy wasn't real? That she was just part of some human flaw; to believe in things that can't exist? Or would I gain that unique human ability to chase down my dreams?
"Well, I came back to tell you she exists, Professor. And here I am, chasing down my dreams."
It was inconceivable. Impossible. Yet Hobby found himself reaching up slowly to place his hand against the cheek of the boy with the face of his son. He felt the warmth of the skin, the heat of the boy's breath on his palm, the soft rhythm of the young heart beating beneath the flesh, and the thousand little human intricacies that he had spent a life-time trying to duplicate.
He was real.
Hobby yanked his hand away.
"I don't believe in miracles," he said.
"Then I must not be here," David said. He stood and pointed at the desk. "Go ahead, call security. When they come to find you alone with your toy, then you'll know it was all a dream, and you can back to your life and pretend it never happened.
"Or maybe they will find you here with a boy, a very real boy, who looks like your son, but has no birth record, no parents, no genetic code that can links him to any living being. And you can just have them take him away to be shut in a little room, to be examined and experimented with; to grow up in a cage to be a lonely, broken man, while you go on building more."
Hobby rose shakily to his feet. "I will not have my work judged by some con artist… some imposter," he said. He moved across the room, giving wide berth to David as he made his way to his desk.
David watched him with challenging eyes. "Have I suffered enough yet?" he said as Hobby placed his hand on a comm. unit. The man faltered for one moment, but then pressed the button. A soft female voice answered.
"Yes, Alan."
Hobby said nothing at first, just stared at David, transfixed, jaws clenched. The boy who should not be, returned his gaze fearlessly.
"Alan? Are you there?"
"Grace," Hobby said as if woken from a dream. "uh… is Marcus around?"
"Sorry, but I think they wrapped up for the day. Did you try the lab?"
"No, no, I…" Hobby faltered again. "Have there been any security reports… anything strange?"
"Nothing I know of Alan. But I can check if you like…. Is everything ok?"
"Fine," Hobby said, looking hard at David again. Something in his face softened. "Never mind, Grace. And... I don't want to be disturbed for a while."
He broke the connection and stood there for a time, head down, chewing his lip, tapping a thoughtful finger on the desk. David waited silently as the man came to grips with what stood before him.
"I am not saying I believe you,' Hobby said without looking up. "But I.." he trailed off, as if the words were painful to him. "But I just don't understand."
It was a defeated sound. Not like the man he had been in youth, the man who had embraced the mysteries of life with the excitement of a child. This was the voice of the man he had become: jaded, compartmentalized, pragmatic; water was wet, rocks were hard, and miracles don't exist; a man who had conquered the world with his reason and his logic, only to he bested by a child whose mere existence he could not explain.
Hobby raised his head finally, and David saw in his look, something of the man he had once been.
"How?" Hobby said.
David shrugged. "It doesn't matter how," he said. "All that matters is why."
2
He's just a man after all, David thought as he watched his Creator pacing to and fro, face lit up like a boy who wakes one Christmas morning to find a gift more grand than any he could have ever wished for.
David had allowed himself to be scrutinized with one of the hand held scanners the man always kept nearby. They were only cursory examinations, lasted only a minute. But it had been enough. Now the man was going on and on, asking the same questions over and over, dissecting the answers carefully, rambling on about ramifications and potentialities, myths and science, quantum theory and consciousness studies.
"We're in completely new territory here!" he said, hands pressed to his temples, eyes alight with a sense of wonder he'd not felt since he built his first simulator. This was a new realm, one he had never imagined possible, and his scientific mind could not stop trying to chew it to small digestible bits.
Perhaps the repeated requests had acted as some type of mantra, he suggested. "I've seen studies that validate the effects of focused attention on material objects," he explained.
"Mantra?" David asked. But the man had already launched into another rambling train of thought, and didn't hear him.
"No living creature is capable of sustaining that level of focused attention for so long. Even trained Orga are only capable of what… 10 hours… 24 hours? But they all must sleep. But you David. Two years of nonstop concentration? Yes! That must have something to do with it."
David had explained meeting the Blue Fairy, but had not said where. He had not told Hobby of the living statue beneath the waves, or the secret place of his transition to life. Some intuitive part of his subconscious told him that this must be kept secret. But he did try to answer the man's many questions: 'what did it feel like' 'what was your frame of mind at the onset of the change' 'is anything new or different about your thinking?' the man asked. But David really had no frame of reference.
"All I know is I'm here," he said at last. "And I'm alive."
Hobby stopped pacing, a disappointed look on his face.
"There must be more than that," he said. "There must be some way to duplicate…" He gazed around the room suddenly, like he was checking to see if anything had changed; fearing that the walls of the room might have magically morphed into some location from his childhood, and then he'd realize it had all been just a crazy dream.
But he was still in his study. The unimprinted Mecha child still sat watching with a lifeless smile. And the impossible boy was still here, looking at him expectantly.
Hobby laughed. "I can't believe this is really happening," he said.
"It is," David said. "But this is not why I came, Father." He paused. "Can I call you that now?"
Hobby turned and eyed the boy hesitantly. His excited smile dimmed for a moment. Then he straightened his back and took a thoughtful breath.
"Why not?" he said at last. "After all, you are my creation…. Or at least you started off that way. If this is all real … then I guess I must be that."
"And I have a Mother too," David said.
The man's face twisted in confusion for a moment. He pondered the comment as if it might be some grand metaphor he had to decipher. Then he understood.
"Monica Swinton," he said.
If David had ever thought his love for her had faded, he now knew he was wrong. Just the sound of her name coming from another person's lips validated his love, and filled him with a pang of longing that he had not felt since his long isolation beneath the waves.
"Mommy," he said, feeling a pang in his chest and his eyes beginning to water. Her love would never leave him.
Hobby noticed the depth of emotion in that sound. His face grew grim and he turned away from David, shaking his head.
"What," David said, rising to his feet. "What's wrong?"
"She's… not the same, David." Hobby said, his back to David. He couldn't look. If the imprinting was still active, then he knew what the news would do to him. "There were some complications," he said.
"Complications?" David repeated the word. It was clinical. Neat. Explained nothing. "What happened?" he said.
Hobby finally turned to face the boy. "We were incautious in choosing the Swintons, David. We were excited and should have taken more time to study any psychological ramifications. She bonded with you in ways we had not expected. And she was incapable of dealing with the internal conflict of abandoning you," Hobby explained. "You were just a machine, but when she was told you'd be dismantled…" Hobby stopped himself and made an apologetic smile. "I mean to say… to us, David, you weren't really-"
"I don't care about that," David said, urgently. "What wrong with my Mommy?"
"She's had a breakdown, David."
Martins words came back to David now: "You almost drove her crazy!… She kept looking for you for months!… She'd come back crying and dirty from walking through the woods. … They had to drug her to keep her from hurting herself! And it was all because of you!" He had wanted to believe it was a ruse, a trick to keep him away. But Hobby had confirmed their truthfulness.
David began to pace the room, wringing his hands. "I've got to get to her. She needs me now," he said. He turned to the man who had created him, the man he could now call Father. "You've got to get me to her!" he said.
Hobby approached David, his hands held out in a plea for calm. "David, this is not a good thing. Not right now. She could not handle the-" The man stopped and rolled his eyes. "Dear God. For her to see you like this? Flesh and blood? No-no-no, David. It would destroy what little sanity she has left!"
"I need to see my Mommy!" David screamed. "She's the only reason I came back!"
"David!" Hobby yelled. "She's not your mother!"
The words struck David like a slap in the face. He fell silent.
Hobby stepped back and covered his mouth with a hand, knowing he had said the wrong thing… or the right thing in the wrong way. He had not meant to yell. He had not meant to cause the reaction he now saw in David's face. The light was going out, like it had that night so long ago, when he had told his Mecha child that the Blue Fairy was just a dream, just a fantasy for children and fools, and that he would never see his Mother again. Now this boy, this amazing boy, who had somehow crossed the boundaries of reality to become flesh, was having his heart broken again.
Hobby reached out and grasped the boy… grasped his Son by the shoulders.
"Please understand David. She has a child. A son. She has a family that-"
"No!" David yelled and yanked free, his face red and eyes burning.
"Not this time! I am not letting you do this to me again!" He did not want to be like this, he did not want to let his emotions control him. But her love was at the core of his being. It was his sole motivation. Without her… well, he simply would not let that happen. His fight was back. His purpose.
"You brought me into this world for one purpose," David said. "And it is all I know. All I care about. I can't even understand how you Orga live the way you do. And I've seen you; I have seen the world you created in a way I could have never understood before. I am one of you now, and I still don't get it. Why? Can you tell me? Father?"
Hobby shrugged, tying to understand. "What David. Tell you what?"
"All of it!" David said. He turned and gestured to the room, "This," he said. Then to the silent robot boy on the couch. "That." The array of charts and readouts on the wall, the machinery on the desk. "Those!"
He pointed the darkening view outside the window and wonderful, terrible, incomprehensible world that that lay beyond. "The abandoned children in the forests? The crazy men roaming free? The crooks and liars and the scams and the greed? What does is any of this mean without love? Why live at all?"
Hobby was stunned. You've surprised me again, David, he thought. But he had no answers for those questions. He turned away from the young desperate eyes, and from the pain behind them. He had been built to love, and that was all he knew. But it was different now. He wasn't just a machine whose pleas Hobby could ignore. He wasn't just a toy to distract some childless woman from her loneliness. How can I do this, he thought; how do I betray him again? But it wasn't right! Monica Swinton had suffered enough too! He had to convince David. Somehow. He turned, searching for the right words.
"Listen David," he said.
But before he could utter another word, he felt the boy's strong embrace, felt David's head against his chest, felt the boy sobbing against him. Hobby started to pull away, to avoid the sense memory of his true son's embrace. But he could not. They are eternal drives, those of parenthood, and the man's body had not forgotten what it was like to hold his son. He felt his own tears start to flow as he hugged David closely, convinced at last by this most primal form of communication, that this was not a dream.
His love is real. And now he is too.
"I love her," David moaned, his body shaking in his release, his words muffled against his Father's chest. "I need her."
Hobby squeezed the boy tightly. "It's ok, it's ok," was all he could say.
How much time passed as the two stood that way, rocking silently in each others arms while the last remnants of the storm vanished into the growing dusk, neither would be able to tell. But when at last they parted, their eyes were wet and their hearts full.
"Ok, David," Allen Hobby said. Then he corrected himself. "Ok, Son. I will take you to see your Mother. But we have to come to some agreements first, understand? Henry Swinton is already pretty angry with me. And we can't do anything to make her worse."
"She won't get worse!" David said happily. "She'll get better!"
Hobby decided to allow the boy this moment of innocence. He had never had a proper childhood. He deserved one. He was… a miracle.
"Of course she will," he said in a reassuring voice. "Of course she will."
The boy jumped forward and hugged his Father tight. Hobby groaned and laughed. "Easy, David. Easy. I'm not as tough as I used to be, and I was never tough!"
"Sounds like someone needs to run the gauntlet," David said.
"What?" Hobby asked.
David was about to explain when he noticed something over his Father's shoulder. His innocent Mecha brother had apparently grown bored with all the fighting and crying and the rest of the silly Orga stuff, and had gone back to reading its book. David pulled away and looked up at his new Father.
"One more favor?" he said.
3
Dinner was silent again. Hiro slurped up a spoonful of soup loudly, and smiled at his wife. He was hoping she might laugh, and that he would see her happy again. But she only rolled her eyes.
"You eat like pig," she said.
"You've never even seen a pig," he responded.
"It's just a term," she said.
It had been going like this ever since they had been chased away from the building.
"We had to leave, my angel," Hiro said, knowing what was on her mind. "We'll go back."
"When?" she said. "When it's too late to help him?"
"Please, Chiyoko," he said, "You have to understand that-" But he was interrupted by a whirring noise growing outside the cabin. They both looked at each other, knowing who it must be.
"Police!" they said in unison. They rose and rushed up to the deck.
A craft was descending between the dark skyscrapers where they had anchored for the night. It was a passenger copter, lit up against the night sky. When it finally alighted on the water near the boat, they saw the Cybertronics logo.
Hiro noticed what Chiyoko was hiding behind her back.
"Are you crazy, woman?" he said. "Put that gun away and let me do the talking!"
"You talk too much," she said.
But they were both stunned when the doors slid open and David emerged, smiling and waving. There was a man with him. It didn't take either of them long to see the resemblance. Nor did they miss David's stunning resemblance to the other boy with them, the one with the flat, disconnected smile.
"Permission to board?" David yelled. "I have someone I want you to meet."
4
"That was a beautiful gesture, David," Hobby said as the pilot lifted the copter into the sky. But David didn't hear him. He was laughing joyfully, waving out of the window at the couple that stood on the deck of their boat, waving back as their new Mecha son watched them curiously. Then it began to mimic their actions, waving and smiling its best 'bye-bye' smile.
"Bye, little brother," David yelled, although he knew it would not hear him.
Hobby appraised the boy's expression. Something like pride swelled in his chest.
David finally leaned back against the seat. They couldn't see him now anyway. But he'd never forget the happiness in Chiyoko's eyes.
"They'll take care of him," David said, satisfied. "They'll all be ok now."
"You've grown into… I mean, you've become, a gentle person, David." Hobby said.
David shrugged. "That's the way you built me."
Hobby laughed. "Yeah. I guess it is," he said. He shook his head, trying to put together the events of the last five hours or so. "What a day," he said, amazed, still fearing that at any moment his alarm might go off and he'd wake to another dreary days work.
"What a wonderfully strange day," he said.
David nodded, but said nothing. There was nothing more to say. Neither spoke again as the craft flew over old Manhattan, past the weeping lions and back to the landing dock in the building that David was, at least for tonight, calling home. Dinner was waiting; and a bed had been set up for him, by his new friend Alfred. It would be warm and comfortable, set in a room where no one else would be allowed to venture, lest unanswerable questions arise.
Teddy would be there too, waiting dutifully for his return.
Tomorrow, David would be taken to see his true Mother. His beloved.
She was all he could think about. And all that really mattered.
(cont...)