It turned out this was one of the few times where Bellamy’s usual pessimism turned out to have been far less negative than it should have been.This bit has virtually no fembot action. it's just a miracle filtered through a scifi context. Still, enjoy.
He stared at the matrix maps he’d scanned out, then over at his elder brother. Seamus was also a little crestfallen, but he’d kept on a professional mien, like that of a doctor calmly advising a family that a patient he had cared for greatly was terminal – the “hard shell now, crack apart later” mien that such doctors had. He typed a few commands into his tablet and looked again.
Elliot had been rushed back to the office with the medium charge required to revive him, but not abruptly turn him into a lithi-galidium bonfire on the spot. He had been slowly nursed back to a full charge with a carefully increased voltage and activated... nothing. No response. He was now staring blankly at nothing of note, his body carefully disassembled and various diagnosis and data cables plugged in after replacing as many frost-damaged hardware organs as possible. “Minimal response, really.”
Seamus alternated between looking at Elliot’s head in its cradle, watching various random things on a screen without a spark of wakefulness in his cranial system, and checking. “no vocal processing or response. No reflex leading into attempts to operate motion controllers. Nothing resembling a thought process in either major neural system. Thing of the past... I think we should... get Marcus prepped for a funeral rather than a reunion... get in a priest from his choice of denomination... I heard he was a Goddess Of Existence worshipper... maybe work on another replacement unit?”
Seamus paused and rubbed his face. “Fuck, I think something’s wrong with me. I’ve been off my psycho meds, why do I feel this wrong when I make that recommendation?” He wiped his eyes a little, the office needed some dusting clearly. So dusty...
Bellamy dropped his work tablet and carefully reached over to hug Seamus gently. “I’m sorry, I’ve been so busy of late that I haven’t read in a proper cleaning shift lately...” Yes, very dusty indeed. “I think I’ve overdosed too and this is just us still riding the edge of it. Yes.”
There was a shared look of denial – this had been their first foray out of household cleaning machines and it had been unnaturally successful in so many ways that they were still flailing and trying to work out how to replicate it, barely managing half-successes of varying size. In fact, they had never figured out how to backup Elliot-01. Elliot-02’s mind had stayed so simple and basic that it was basically restorable from a dumb copy that accounted for connections... Elliot-01 had confounded every possible technique they had tried over the past decades. There was no coming back from whatever death this represented.
“I should make the call. I failed him.” Bellamy offered, trying to throw himself on his sword. “I underestimated how much I needed to do to keep the unit functional.”
Seamus looked up. Ordinarily, there would be this sort of carefree-ness where they gave zero fucks and just let each other carry the entirely of a failure... “No, I hadn’t realised the situation would degenerate this badly. Nobody expects a geothermal plant to fail. Your pessimism might have drawn a line under things earlier enough that this wasn’t the outcome.”
It had become a bizzare mad dash between the Arendts as to who would get to commit figurative suicide.
Seamus proffered a coin that Elliot had given him all those years ago. It was supposed to be a Malt-Eisner-World theme park token, good for one ride. Through some hackery, the kindred had altered the molding template subtly enough that it was no longer usable for entry into an MEW attraction. A dud to a disgusted theme park goer. To the kindred however, the flaws were actually an encode that represented a genuine form of value between them and any representatives they respected and read into their coiterie from outside the York Particulate Cloud...
Seamus smiled faintly. He hadn’t realised the value of it until a animatronic broke character briefly while out of sight and under the lights of It’s a Big World After All. Curiously, the ride had broken down had its later queue management scrambled such that Seamus had had the whole ride and Elliot with him alone as he was briefly abducted down an unused waterpath and read in quickly.
There had been a odd quality to all those tiny toy dolls ceasing their incessant choir chant of It’s a Big World After All, advising him of whom they were, telling him exactly what the coin had been altered for... the park’s human crew had never even noticed this, the cameras simultaneously being altered to represent a slight slowdown that accounted for the four or five minutes they had together.
Seamus supposed now would be just as good a time to fall on his knees at the wisdom and mercy of the York Particulate Cloud. He flipped the coin and slapped it on his palm. “Heads, I make the call, Tails, you do.”
“Heads is supposed to be you winning, how is being the one to offer the bad news winning?” Bellamy snapped.
Seamus looked away. Oddly enough, he felt he had to be the one with the most responsibility. Hence the odd way he had phrased his offer. “Because I said so, you .... dunhead.” There was a peculiar sort of tone to the way he said it. None of the malice that accompanied the use of the word, just a gentle attempt to let Bellamy down disguised as rudeness. Pain hidden behind a moment of lashing out.
He peered slightly beneath at the coin, then frowned. It was as he had expected, he would have to be the one to be honest.
------------------
Marcus Manners paled.
He had expected good news about Elliot as Seamus had summoned him urgently to the offices over the communicator. But Seamus and Bellamy had looked like absolute wrecks: unshaven over the few extra days he had assumed they just needed to double-check that Elliot was okay, unwashed for longer than they ever had been in their years together, clothes rumpled and matched with a total disregard for style and manners that they had rarely displayed.
“So what you’re telling me is that my son is... dead?” Marcus looked sadly at them after they had laid it out to him. Julie stood right behind, her tiny brain still somewhat capable of understanding what bad news was even with zero context or experience with Elliot, her hands gently caressing Marcus’ back to console him.
Seamus tried to stay calm as he read from his tablet. “no vocal processing or response. No reflex leading into attempts to operate motion controllers. Nothing resembling a thought process in either major neural system. I’m sorry, Marcus. Too much damage to his semi-volatile memory from the cold. He’s no longer actively functional. I... I’m sorry...” He got on his knees and put his head to the hard concrete floor of the office, for possibly only the first time since they had gotten together and he had proven how right he had to be on all things and how superior he was.
Marcus laughed a little. “This is a joke right? We can fix him right?”
Bellamy shook his head. “We would be trampling over what’s left, it’s like trying to fill all the holes in a piece of swiss cheese. I don’t think we even have the right cheese for the job, or even the right techniques...”
Marcus leaned down and thought quietly... “Let me see him.” He quietly murmured after a bit.
Seamus hummed and ermed with an uncharacteristic iffiness that he hever had as he stood up. “I... don’t think we should, it’d be like looking at the aftermath of an accident. You have to understand, sometimes we need to work off absolute reality rather than what we desire or yearn for and we.... he’s not in a good shape at the moment.”
Marcus settled the quandry pretty brutally, grabbing Seamus’ arms with a level of disrespect he respected for the worst times. “HE IS MY SON. FOR BETTER OR WORSE. LET ME SEE HIM.”
Seamus gulped. He would give Mr Marcus Manners what he wanted, but it probably wouldn’t do anything but worsen matters.
----
Seamus carefully opened the door to the room he had set aside for attempting to revive Elliot-01... “I wish you didn’t want to do this... Marcus. I don’t want you to hurt any further. We should... just do a disposal... I could make you a new son. Just please...”
Marcus gave Seamus a glare that basically told him to just shut the fuck up and do it. Seamus sighed. It really be on Marcus’ head. This was no longer a stab to the heart he could take for Marcus just by getting him to agree to a disposal and other measures, sight unseen.
Marcus walked in, unaccompanied, and gasped a little.
It had been four decades since Marcus had laid out the various interconnecting parts on a charging pad and carefully connected them together. Most of them had been spent playing rodeo clown to a man with the worst prurient desires trying to be better. That man had indeed been so much better as long as Elliot had managed said manias with a few questionable decisions... That man had been his Daddy, but never truly his father.
That man was now dead and buried, along with empty caskets for his Mom and Sis, as well as Elliot himself. Now it seemed as if they would need an actual casket for Elliot, this time, filled.
Marcus stared at the partially disassembled little robot boy. Seamus and Elliot had partially removed some skin along Elliot’s back as well as his hairpiece, exposing the critical systems in his skull and torso that gave him the ability to think and feel. The lights were all on, flashing calmly, but nobody was home. Unwatching eyes stared blankly ahead at a small screen randomly flashing images in an attempt to find some sort of response, Elliot’s head having been disconnected from his body, along with most of his limbs save one arm left for gauging motor responses during repair attempts, paired with a set of cables carefully spliced to intercept and convey data signals between his head in a cradle and his partially propped up torso.
Marcus pulled up a chair and sat down next to the disembodied parts, watching how little they were doing for a few minutes with a interest purely parental, none of the professionalism he had exhibited at least initially when they had first come together. After a while he gently took the one remaining hand left for him to squeeze and held it, closing his eyes in some sort of prayer to the Goddess of Existence.
“Elliot... Papa didn’t want to see you again like this. But... I hope if you’re truly gone, that you’re happy in the Fields. I know that’s a fucking stupid request for what is essentially a toaster with limbs, but Goddess, if you’re listening, please make him happy. Give him a soul, and a happy afterlife.
Let me see him again when I die. I promise I’ll be good. No more cursing. No more mistreating my fellow Brothers...”
Marcus He paused to watch the one-way dynamic glass separating him from the Arendts and his loving wife in the other half of the testing room, as if he could still see them through the actively electrified and blacked out windows, before looking back and continuing. “Elliot, Papa won’t live forever. Stay young and happy and I promise I’ll make good my promises to you....” No apparent response came back from Elliot-01’s body, at least nothing he could tell with just his naked senses.
The tannoy suddenly crackled to life.
-------------------
Seamus and Bellamy quietly looked on at the heartbreak in progress. Their own initial brush with it had proven ineffective at immunizing as pangs of sorrow and regret washed clearly over their faces. They should be psychopaths. The medicine should be working. Why wasn’t it working when it truly needed to work, after all these decades of living on a leash held by various good friends and colleagues? Julie had decided to repeat what she did with Marcus, carefully patting their shoulders with her hands and frowning, as if this was all just wrong and should not happen in her belief.
Bellamy tiredly looked at the smart tablet, expecting the same absolute bingo signal response he had gotten to date... He blinked. “Pinch me, laddie of mine, but is this just noise within the margin of error?” He asked Seamus, carefully pushing the device over as it drew the usual squiggles it had been drawing on various graphs. For some reason there had been a slight spike and a gradual growth as Marcus had started his mourning session.
Seamus rolled his weepy eyes. “oh, for fucks sake you... you dun head.... it’s probably just random background noise coming through the unshielded walls...” He examined the screen, then widened his eyes in shock. Seamus’ other hand quickly reached for the button to activate the tannoy speaker in the other half of the room so Marcus could at least hear him, and yelled.
“MARCUS. Push the screen away from his face and let him see your face instead. KEEP TALKING TO HIM. KEEP HOLDING. WE HAVE SIGNAL. WE HAVE SIGNAL.” Mixed into his professional terminology was a strange frisson of excitement and hope.
-----------------------
Marcus blinked as he heard the words that came over the speaker from behind the silvered glass. In their haste, the Arendts had only trigged audio input, but not unsilvered the glass separating their halves of the testing room. He complied, calmly pushing the screen away so that Elliot could see his face up close. He took a big breath and glances all over the mess laid out on the table, before hesitantly asked.... “Elliot, are you awake?”
Barely a few seconds later, the lights started flashing wildly through the sealed casing of Elliot’s head and torso chipsets in various patterns of red and green. Elliot’s lips pursed and warped slightly without warning, his lungs filling with air for the first time since he had been plucked limp from the snowfall. His voice gradually filled in, as if he had been sitting far away and started walking over into the room itself, occasionally punctuated by robotic beeps and whirrs. “... pa? Papa? ... Came back... Miss me miss me?”
Marcus quickly dropped Elliot’s hand and rushed to the silvered glass. “GUYS, He’s Awake, he’s...”
Bellamy’s voice cut him off. “You goofball, get back to his side. Keep looking at him, Keep talking to him. You need to keep his attention or we lose this signal!” It was like tweaking an old pair of TV rabbit-ear antennae, then asking someone to hold it for the next half hour aloft just to catch a show in passable quality.
Marcus blinked, but did as he was told, returning to Elliot’s side and gripping his hand even tighter. “Oh, little boy of mine, I did truly miss you. Not just like Coke after Lent, but like cocaine, period... How was your... trip?”
Elliot slowly enunciated, his voice slightly slower than Marcus remembered, but then again, actual dead people had a speaking rate of about zero, give or take a few words on other aspects in some cases here and there... He would take this tiny W.
Elliot blinked as he watched his true ‘papa’. “Up and down. Most of time. Last bit was... absolutely terrible.” The refined speech that had negotiated an agreement between a Senator, an Artist, and someone who Was Clearly Only Pretending To Be A Young Boy had gone, but he was still somewhat understandable. “Find me Mama, Papa? Always wanted Mama.”
Marcus laughed through tearful eyes. “Y... yes... she’s a bit silly, but then again, you always were the smartest person in the room. I should introduce you to her later. Would you like me to?”
Elliot would probably have nodded if all his motor functions hadn’t been isolated, but the twinkle in his eyes as he smiled seemed genuine. “Yes. Complete box set. Family. Three dolls on the shelf. Akibahara.” He did remember things. He was not a complete write off like the Arendts had feared. And oh, forty years had given the two of them so much to speak about...
-----
“And so in conclusion, the good news is that he’s not totally nonfunctional.” Seamus had wiped the tears from his eyes, the mix of sad tears and happy tears staining the tissues which had gone into the bin that hitherto had only contained a mix of rags and the occasonal illicit ‘pressure release’ during testing.
“The ... I wouldn’t say bad, just peculiar... news is that you, Mr Marcus, are some sort of keep-alive signal. A lead finger jammed on a ‘press any key to continue’ prompt, to use the archaic terminology of the earliest days....” Bellamy had butted in, but Seamus just couldn’t be bothered, in a happy rather than pissed but acquiescent way.
“When he sees you, or hears you, or feels you, there’s a response going around the damaged pathways of his systems. Basically, left unattended for a prolonged period by someone the unit identifies as an important person to it, Elliot-01 will become nothing more than a silent machine. With you around and paying attention he comes... erm.... alive. Is that usage permitted?”
Bellamy glanced over at Seamus worriedly, his terminology had gotten a bit sloppy on the edges with the joy that Elliot’s awaking had brought. Seamus nodded and closed his eyes, a wave of momentary relief sweeping over his face at the past few minutes of experimentation and discovery. He knew it was sloppy, but he couldn’t really be one bit arsed right now. The euphoria had never come to him all these years, it was a strange sensation. He was getting the answers on how to be human right, but where he had done the math all wrong to come to it, something was now guiding his hand gently to getting it correct. He worried briefly that he might get the answer wrong for a change later, but at the moment it was a minor concern to Seamus and Bellamy.
Marcus looked at them a little impatiently. “So you’re saying is I don’t need to hold a funeral. It's not the W I would have wanted, but I'll take it anyway. When can I have him back? I needed him back like, thirty nine years ago, but yesterday would be great. Right now would be even better, if you dunheads could manage it.”
“We’d have to repair all the frost damaged bits we can manage, and replace his human flesh analogues, there’s been some serious compromise from the insane chill he survived. But I figure... given some work around the clock, we could get him back to you by... Friday... you know, just in time for a quiet weekend again.” Seamus shrugged as he did the math in his head... good, he could do math, he wasn’t broken like he’d feared.
Marcus facepalmed. “Take proper breaks guys, please.” A dazed smile was on his face, there was a lot of this euphoria shit going around, and he was apparently more vulnerable without a diagnosis of restrainable psychopathy like the Arendts. “You’ve put yourself out there so much, I think we need to draw a line on how much further you do that, it’s no good for your personal health and spirits.”
Seamus gave Marcus a tired look, laced with mockery. “Says the man who waited thirty nine years for his own son to come home. Thirty nine years is a long time. How about we just push for another three or four days? It’s nothing in that context.”
Marcus closed his eyes and nodded tiredly. Between Julie Manners Ambervale being constructed and brought into his life, and now Elliot’s return, the past two months had been a fucking rollercoaster of ups and downs. Somewhere on his communicator was a photo of a game of Snakes and Ladders in progress between two players. Perhaps it was time to resume it with Elliot. He glanced upwards as Julie held his shoulders... Nah, perhaps it was time to scrub and play it with three players from the beginning again.
Life was as perfect as it could be again. “Sure, why not...”
Julie looked up and carefully watched the disassembled unit Elliot-01, perhaps paying attention more than she should be capable of, then quickly resumed rubbing Marcus’ strained shoulders. Her processing filtered out a faint lilt that came in way she faintly heard but couldn’t quite echolocate. Perhaps it meant nothing.
“I’m not going to hold you to it that hard, you faithful sod.” it had said. Who had said it, there was no idea of and nobody else clearly had heard it either.
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