Great green curtains draped down over the opera stage, splendor swept the crowded seats as the chorus— from a musicians' pit beneath the oak auditorium floor— dropped their soaring soprano sonata to a crushing baritone roar, falling just as the great king Humpty Dumpty falls from his magnificent wall. Violins crescendoed violently just to match the pure animus of it all. Painted marionettes danced about the stage floor— in period accurate Spagonian attire— their faces carved into expressions of distorted mourning. The puppets watched, their eyes fixed in wooden horror, as their king broke to pieces.
There on the night of the debut— surrounded by unoccupied seats in the box closest to the stage, beneath a black stovepipe hat (which was constructed from nearly the same fabric as his cape, a precise match of shade and texture), with a single monocle adorning his left eye— was Dr. Ivo Robotnik.
Spagonian opera tradition has long been infatuated with Humpty Dumpty retellings, but Dumpitus Rex was largely considered the quintessential adaptation. This was probably due to its simplicity. Other renditions of the tale were forced to come up with an explanation as to why the King had such particular interest in the preservation of a single egg; In Dumpitus Rex, the King is the egg.
Though Rex is a respected opera with a storied history, it's always a bit of a risk to finance a new interpretation in the modern theatre landscape. That's the trouble with popular stories told again and again: everyone has their own, unique attachment to the property. As a result, new iterations are seen as an attack on the sanctity of what came before, and audiences are hardened against them.
But despite the uphill battle that comes with challenging the tropes of a long beloved classic, this production had found— through its unconventional form— a method to stand on its own. By replacing the human bodies with wooden ones, the unreality of the setting seemed almost heightened. Paradoxically, the inverse seemed to be true: using marionettes made certain moments more real, more raw, more tangible than they had ever been depicted before.
This effect was certainly strong with Robotnik. Somehow, the swell of the music paired with the earsplitting crack of Humpty's puppet breaking on the floor, it was enough to incite feelings in that man's rotund chest— so foreign— so alienating as to drive him to tears.
How could it be? he cried, against himself. Those pieces of ourselves… god, what had Humpty ever done to the world? What, besides fostering ambitions of his own? Is this all we are? Eggs on a great wall waiting to crack?
His sobbing had transcended its initial subtlety and erupted into a volcanic display of sorrow and misery. Heads were turning all over the audience. Ivo, sensing the growing tide of attention directed his way, thrust his face beneath his cowl, ashamed, but it wasn't enough to stop his sniveling sobs. When the momentous applause let Robotnik know that the evening's show had come to an end, he turned and stormed out of the opera house as briskly as his little legs could carry him.
"That director!" cursed the mad doctor under his breath. Ornate marble and stone were set in the age-old buildings all around him, as he trudged his way down the alley on the right side of the theater. Beneath the asphalt were traces of cobblestone; remnants of a time before the Chaos War. Approaching a door which said 'CAST AND CREW ONLY,' he could hear the dull conversational banter of the cast backstage. He knocked rapidly and forcefully on the door.
"Read the sign, jackass!" jeered a voice, which was followed by laughter.
"It's me," said Robotnik through gritted teeth, "The jackass. If even one more singer is heard laughing, talking, or expressing any further joviality— then they will be fired from this production— and promptly."
Silence seized them. After a brief moment, a timid man seeped out from behind the backstage door.
"Ivo!" he said, trying to maintain a facade of nonchalance. "Have you heard the reviews yet? People have been saying some wonderful things!"
"That's Doctor to you," Robotnik growled, "What in the hell was that?"
"Listen, I'm sorry Ginny called you a jackass. Okay? That was really stupid, but she didn't know it was you. You can take—"
"Not that, you idiot. I'm talking about that horrendous display I just had to sit through! You call yourself a director? Puppets? Humpty Dumpty?"
"Sir, it's Dumpitus Rex. What are you—"
"Dumpitus Rex? In today's climate? What is that, some kind of political statement? Are you insinuating something about me? Something egg related? And on my dollar, too!"
"But you told us that—"
"Don't interrupt me, Atticus!" Ivo's head began to boil. "This will not do! At this rate, I'll never be able to complete Eggmanland!"
Atticus raised an eyebrow. Ivo had hardly even realized what he said.
"I mean Robotnikland! See? You've gotten me all worked up. It was gauche, okay? Gauche!"
"Have you finished?" said Atticus, after the passing of some disquieting moments.
"And one more thing!" howled Ivo, but he seemed to lose his head in the heat of the beratement. "Okay, yes. I am finished. Commence with the apologies."
"Sir, I would love to apologize. Believe me, I really would. But… Doctor… this whole thing was your idea."
"Well, sure— I tossed you a blank check for 'fine arts,' that doesn't very well mean that I—"
"Sir," said Atticus, who had developed a look of growing concern. "You chose to put on a production of Dumpitus Rex and you hired me explicitly because I work with marionettes. What could make you say the idea was mine?"
"Because," said Robotnik, but he realized there was something absent. A motivation, a memory, perhaps even a motor neuron— something in his head… was missing.
"I… I don't know," he said in awe of himself, "To tell you the truth, there's something I just… I can't remember…"
"Was it not wonderful to see materialized, Doctor?" said Atticus. "We hired only the finest puppeteers, and thanks to you— we have now some of the finest marionettes ever crafted. I will never be able to thank you for that enough."
"What do you mean by that, Atticus?" stammered Robotnik.
"What do I mean? Wow… you really don't remember, do you?"
"It was just last month. Preproduction was wrapping up, and we were having issues with the Humpty puppet. We constructed a puppet that was divided into multiple pieces, pieces that could click together to make the complete puppet. This would be so that the Humpty could break when he hits the ground. We also tinkered with a way for his strings to be able to extend— gradually, manually— so that the puppeteers could lower him to the ground, make him look like he's falling. Much like how it is usually done with actors."
"But this was giving us some problems: for one, the cracks on the puppet were too visible, and for another, making the puppet both walk up to the ledge and drop the strings fast enough to make him fall— well, the mechanics were more complicated than puppeteers typically work with. And for another: none of our puppets really looked… egg shaped. We were having a show business emergency, and seeing as this was— financially speaking, your endeavor— we thought it best to call you in."
"You went into the workshop, you cut and sanded down birch wood into thin planks, and soaked them in barrels of water overnight. In the morning, you rolled the wood into tubes, and tied rope around the top of them; this strained the cylinders enough, and you fashioned a magnificent crown to hold the strained, warped wood together. Even though these tubes didn't fully close, and in truth, were flat— your craftsmanship hid those imperfections perfectly. I mean, come on. Didn't that look like an egg? It was wonderful!"
"It was perfect— but still, I did not understand. I reminded you that we needed a breakable puppet; here was a puppet with no cracks, and no falling string mechanism! To this, you replied: 'I shall grant you a Humpty for every night of the production. When Humpty walks up to the ledge, have the puppeteers cut the strings. Every night, when the audience hears Humpty's lament, they shall see this strained puppet shatter, never to be repaired again. This will remind them why they love the opera. This will remind them why they love art. This will remind them why they are alive.' And you were true to your word!"
For Robotnik, the effect of learning this was much like the effect of a black hole suddenly erupting deep within his heart. Tiny as a pin for the first instant— with the vacuous sensation of an entire star condensed into that infinitesimally small point within himself— before pulling, clawing, tearing at his insides at with such monstrous gravitational force that no ounce of light could ever hope to escape. The production had been his all along! He'd wasted his precious time… woodworking? The very thought of it was preposterous. He'd never catch himself waiting around for trees to grow, no… Robotnik's work could hardly ever be contained by the flimsy canvas of nature. But how those puppets moved so much finer than clockwork! Their joints held all the miraculous potential of simple mechanics, but with the fine touch of strings— attaching the vessel to the puppeteer, a tether to life itself— it brought a wonder to their sculpted bodies that Ivo had always tried to contain in his machines. Marionettes spat in the face of robotics; it was as though, by their very existence, puppets hold a crooked mirror up to the face of any scientist that would dare distill the life's essence into the crude works of mechanics. It was practically a stain upon his own name to pursue puppets over automatons. After all, the very first robot got its namesake from Gerald Robotnik. In many ways, the field was his birthright. Yet, here he had been, a natural craftsman. With no memory of the event, and no immediate access to that wondrous part of his mind that had flourished so intricately with the careful art of a carpenter, he had crafted his own heart and broken it.
"I don't understand this, Atticus."
"Am I intruding on something?" said a voice which neither Atticus nor Ivo had expected to hear. He was wearing a remarkably plain black suit. There was nothing challenging or bold about his attire, but there was also nothing which would have seemed perhaps too old fashioned or stingy. It was a wardrobe tailor made for someone who did not want to stand out or be recognized. Contrary to this effect was the vibrant piercing green of his left eye, which leered ominously beneath his chiseled brow. His other eye was obscured by an eyepatch. Ivo recognized the man.
"Commander?" he said, adjusting his posture to meet his gaze. "Stealing me away from the old country, I presume? What could you possibly want from me now?"
"There's been an incident at Station Square. We'd like you to take a look at it."
"Station Square? You're kidding me, right? I will not help pull you out of— whatever urban planning disaster you've inevitably run into." There was a tension here, Ivo had been very committed to the idea of building his dream city Robotnikland in that land on West Side Island. He'd done a lot of work with the funding granted to him by the Federation. Without his work in The Zones, many would doubt that humans would have been able to live on that land at all. Still, the man was notoriously erratic. Even the most radical members of G.U.N. could not entirely put their faith behind all the decisions Robotnik had made over the years.
No one really seemed to bat an eye at the displacement of Zone-generated wildlife, that was more or less accepted by humanity as par for the course. But his methods were controversial, to say the very least. The man practically had his own private Air Force, and that was hardly conventional. So giving him his own city, complete with his likeness plastered across all the architecture? There was simply no way the Robotnikland proposal would ever be approved for federal funding, especially not without at least getting vetoed by the President. Still, when Station Square was built over the existing animal settlements instead of his project, Ivo took it very personally.
"No, Doctor, I'm afraid this problem goes well beyond the realm of infrastructure." As he spoke, an ominous-looking limousine pulled up alongside the nearest curb. Not a passenger was visible from the outside, the windows were tinted pitch-black. "Care to take a drive with me? It'll all be very simple to explain."
"Fine," Robotnik huffed indignantly, "But you'd better make this quick. I'll reserve the right to leave on my own time."
"Of course, Ivo," the Commander replied, "I wouldn't expect it any other way."
Inside the car were two silent men in sunglasses. The Chauffeur had a soundproof wall separating him from any confidential information. On a tablet hanging from the ceiling, Ivo saw a helicopter view of Station Square. Police had barricaded off part of the district, and a tiny blue dot in the center of the screen— Sonic— could be seen sparring with… well, Ivo wasn't quite sure what he was seeing exactly.
"See, we've funded some of the digging in the Mystic Ruins," the Commander explained, "They seem to have certain unexplained connections to Angel Island. Some of the archaeologists accidentally nudged some glyphs, and— well, we're not sure why, but Angel Island fell, and the Master Emerald was destroyed. Inside of the emerald was this… thing. That's what you're looking at."
"This cameraman is doing a terrible job," spat Robotnik, "Let me handle this."
Before any of the men in the limo could protest, the doctor jabbed a bulky data drive into the side of the monitor. Pulling back his left sleeve revealed an array of buttons, touch pads, and dials; with a few quick keystrokes he was able to launch a drone of his own from one of his many hidden outposts. Within seconds, the drone's view was displayed on the screen before them.
"There," he said, "Closer… closer… There." Sonic's putrid sneer was distinctly visible now, and the liquid thing he was fighting became clear as the drone's lens tightened its focus. Its eyes were remarkable like emeralds, and its strange watery head split off in three directions. It was completely bullet proof, and was rapidly extending and retracting his arms at will. The thing could not stop itself from absconding up the nearby lampposts, but Sonic never lost track of it. Despite the odds, it seemed like the hedgehog was sparring with it quite effectively.
"What is it?" Robotnik said.
"Well, given what we have left of your grandfather's..." the Commander gritted his teeth before continuing, "Unfinished— experiments, we have reason to believe that it could be the Ultimate Life Form. It's in the best interest of our agency to capture the specimen alive, take full advantage of its strategic capabilities. Of course, it's rather feral in its current state. That's where you come in, Doctor. We'd like you to control it for us."
"Commander, you insult me. I'm a roboticist. I have no interest in life forms. You're barking up the wrong Robotnik. If G.U.N. really wanted the key to immortality, then maybe they shouldn't have killed the other one."
"Ivo, you know I don't venerate G.U.N.'s decision to infiltrate the ARK." he swallowed, the Commander— and pulled off his eyepatch. His right eye was a weary, burning orange. The limousine almost felt warmer with the eyepatch removed.
"You weren't there. Maria and I— I don't think you'll ever be able to grasp what we went through on the colony."
"You're right." Snapped Robotnik. "The government continually denies me access to those damned files. How should I know what you've been through? If you want sympathy, you'll have to spare me some transparency as well."
"But you don't know nothing, do you, Ivo?" His burning eye could have almost scalded the beholder. Robotnik became acutely aware of how his clothes felt touching his body. "I'm not stupid, Ivo. We have men in high places. Meteor Tech has been holding out on something— property of Gerald's— it seems you haven't shared it with us. We'd be very curious to know what that sort of thing could tell us."
"You can't prove anything!" jeered Ivo. "And even if, theoretically, you could prove something, it won't do you much good. Anything of Gerald's that I— might— have gotten is my birthright. At least, it would be. Hypothetically."
"You're right, of course. You're always so right, Ivo." The bastard. Ivo could have punched him right then and there. Of course, the consequences of such a move were not exactly ideal.
"Still," the commander continued, "If you choose to comply, then you would find yourself with a truly substantial fortune." The Commander clicked his pen and began to scrawl out a check.
"Fortune? What am I a charity case? I'm offended by the very-" Ivo's eyes nearly burst out of his skull when he saw the number.
"That's how much money you'll earn by selling us all your assets. All the shares in Meteor Tech, your factories, blueprints, all the robots, the weapons— leave all that to the Federation. You'll be able to keep anything that's a familial legacy, but its time that you've surrendered control of the machines."
Robotnik passed the check back to the Commander.
"Fat chance," shot Robotnik, "I'm an industry man, an entrepreneur. Robotics are my livelihood, Commander. I'm not selling anything. Besides, you can't buy my property as payment for a favor. You should be paying me for the favor, directly."
"In that case," began the Commander, "Should you refuse to give us what we want, we will withhold any amnesty previously granted to you by the United Federation."
"What?!" screamed the doctor, "No, you can't do that!"
"I'm sure the Prime Minister of Spagonia would be startled if she happened to learn that those rumors— which we'd previously refuted— were actually true. Tampering with the Chaos Emeralds?" He clicked his teeth as he shook his head. "The Zones were created for a reason, Doctor. Utilizing them in weapons of mass destruction? You'll be an international war criminal overnight. When that happens, G.U.N. will be forced to infiltrate every square inch of your company headquarters, and we'll reserve the right to seize anything which we deem a threat to national security."
Ivo, for the first time in many years, was completely dumbfounded. He was facing a total loss for words.
"We'll be acquiring Meteor Tech, Ivo. One way or another. I prefer the route where you just take the money. Here, if it eases your conscience." The Commander paused to scrawl two additional zeros on the check Robotnik had returned him. "May I assume that we have your cooperation?"
The poor doctor held his composure, adjusted his monocle, and spoke.
"Very well commander. I'll see what I can do about this."
"Wonderful news, Ivo. Now, the limo is gonna take us to a heliport, we're gonna fly back to Station S-"
"You think I'm going to take a helicopter?" said Robotnik. The Commander and his bodyguards noticed a feint electrical hum— it was getting louder every second. "Bah! Those primitive machines are too slow. I've had an armada trailing us for blocks now. Gentlemen?"
Robotnik opened the door to the car, stepped out onto the road, and grabbed onto the rim of a fully automated anti-gravity pod which had been levitating just outside.
"This shall be my exit. Adieu."
As the Doctor hoisted himself into the pod, the Commander felt the beginning of a crippling headache.
"Ivo…" he said, "I always swore that man would someday be the death of us. I pray that I should be proven wrong."