How could I argue with that beard? “Well… okay. I’ll go find a room and lie down, I guess.”
Finding a room proved so easy, it looped around and became hard again. When I left this workshop, none of the other doors were completely shut anymore. Some, mostly on this side on the second floor, had more workshops, for assembling electronics, or hooking together rods of metal into fully fledged limbs, or moulding plastic surfacing. Stuff like that. The first floor had actual regular house things, like a dining room and kitchen. I found at least six guest bedrooms, but most of the rooms were empty, although ‘empty’ might not be accurate. They didn’t have any furniture, but they sure had robots. Little robots, big robots, bipedal robots, bug-shaped robots, and whole rooms of action figures and dolls whose eyes turned towards me when I peeked inside.
Finally, I picked a bedroom in a tower on the third floor. Its round shape, prevalent pink color, and windows looking out on the street gave the room a surreal air that felt more comfortable to me than the blandness of the rest of the house. Of course, it had more posters, this time for what had to have been the worst claymation holiday cartoons in history.
It also had bookshelves. Pink bookshelves, sure, but bookshelves. Actually, all the rooms that weren’t for building or storing robots had bookshelves. West Lee clearly loved to read. But this one had the comic books.
In fact… yes! Pulling out the complete set of Sentient Life, I lay down on the pastel bed, and pointedly ignored half a dozen watching plush toys as I flipped through the pages.
I’d read these graphic novels several times, now. Would my attention span be better or worse without nerves and muscles to twitch and distract? How does a robot handle repetition and boredom? Those questions stopped being important as I got swept up in the story of a bioengineered dolphin, who loved his creators and felt proud of being able to explore the solar system for them.
Every word and picture touched my metal heart just as deeply as they had my original, flesh and blood version. When Delph’s ship passed the orbit of Mars, passed the last outposts of humanity and entered the cold, emptiness of deep space, I felt his isolation as deeply as if I were there myself.
My parents would be tucking a monster wearing my body into bed right now. Until I retook my body, I had no parents. I had no home. Any home I could find would just be a fake, a bed to sleep in while I missed the place that I truly belonged, and the people who loved me.
Curling up into a ball under the covers, I thought about my parents, and wished this body could cry.
Without fidgeting muscles, it did take a long time to get bored. Eventually, I reached my limit. The worst pain had passed, and I couldn’t lie in bed any longer and stare out the window at darkness and occasional passing cars.
So I got up, and walked around the house.
And walked.
And walked.
I’d underestimated the place on my first tour. The rooms not devoted to robots were hardly bare. Memorabilia filled bookshelves and mantles. Posters and photographs, statuettes and plastic toys, books ranging from massive hardbound picture albums to advertising pamphlets. If it had robots, West Lee had collected its merchandise. Movies, computer games, theme parks—he loved robots, no matter what the medium. Crafting supplies also filled closets and lay abandoned in bathrooms, bedrooms, and the middle of hallways. Not just obvious robot stuff. A bag of yarn and a three-quarters knitted fox puppet resided in the arms of a man-sized plush fox.
I had no idea what time it was. I didn’t want to check. It also didn’t matter. That was the good part of being stuck as a robot. I could keep walking until the sun came up. All night, all day, until Friday, if nothing better came to mind. That would keep the sadness at arm’s length.
A hallway behind the main stairs connected the dining room and the music room on the far side of the house. No lights were on, and here in the heart of the building, no windows brought in light from the street. Only keen eyes let me see rough shapes in the shadow, and see the thing that stepped into the corridor ahead of me.
No way was this thing human. Bits stuck out the wrong way. Its outline rippled. Tiny white dots lit up near the top. Eyes.
The first floor lacked carpeting, and footsteps sounded behind me. Lots of footsteps, but light—the tap-tap-tapping of tiny feet. Looking over my shoulder, I saw robots ranging from ankle to waist high shambling in my direction, arms out.
The giant thing at the other end advanced. It showed no dedication to the floor, spending as much time advancing with arms propping it up between the walls as it did walking.
Run? Fight? If I ran, it would have to be over the little ones. The amorphous monster took up most of the room on its side of the corridor, though if I ducked past it, I’d have the advantage of surprise. There was no third way to go, or place to hide. They’d picked the longest stretch of doorless hallway in the house.
No. West Lee seemed like too nice a guy to do this to me. Hoping I was right, I stood still and waited.
The first of the little robots to reach me wrapped its arms around my calf, and gave me a hug. Within seconds, I was the center of a mob of hugging robots, some metal, some with china doll coverings, some like plastic dinosaurs or army men. Even a wooden marionette and a nutcracker.
The thing arrived. Up close, and with the light of dozens of tiny glowing eyes to help me see, I could finally make out more than a general shape. Admittedly, what I saw didn’t help much : the biggest robot I’d seen so far, its spider’s nest of limbs stuck out in odd places and directions. Only the head, at the end of a long neck, had a plastic covering, that same mask I’d seen earlier. Now, up close, I could see it wasn’t at all human, but elongated like a reptile. A reptile with a huge, goofy grin. The rest of the body lay bare in a metal skeleton, which was why making out any shape had been so tough. Let’s see… the reptilian face explained the wide, heavily-braced hips and thick tail; the things that looked like umbrella struts might be wings without membranes. Regardless, it had too many arms, too many legs.
It used most of them to hug me.
More minutes passed. A light went on, and a giant skeletal robot I recognized as a Gerty Goat with only the fuzzy head cover led West Lee into the hallway. Gerty pointed at me. Not much of me could be visible, sitting on the floor surrounded and covered by hugging robots, and with the big one huddled protectively over me.
In a rumpled nightshirt, West Lee regarded this sight with obvious befuddlement, until his hand lifted to his mouth. With a guilty gasp, he said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. You can’t shut yourself off. I’m so used to pure robots, it didn’t occur to me. Going without sleep really messes up a human in a robot body.”
“It can’t be fixed,” I answered, resigned. It was a lot easier to be okay with my situation buried in hugs.
“No, I think I can, and this is important. Come upstairs.”
He beckoned, but I didn’t get a chance to stand. Not exactly. Hugging arms let go in a rippling wave, although many of the little bots patted me sympathetically before stepping back. The half-made Gerty took one of my hands, and the spider-dragon-thing grabbed my waist and under my arms, lifting me to my feet. The goat-bot let go, but the multi-armed, affectionate nightmare held onto me as West Lee led me upstairs, right back to the head assembly shop where we’d started.
“I didn’t realize they were intelligent,” I said as I half-walked, half was carried up the stairs.
“Not many are. Even the ones that can think aren’t smart. Kind and sweet and loving, but not smart. I don’t make AIs, only bodies. Some of these have computers other people made in them. Most of these are built around cloth hearts Raggedy made. They can’t talk, but they can love. It’s a good way to make robots.”
The crowd in question followed us all the way up, peering in at the door as Lee led me back to the work table, and patted its surface. “Droopsy, if you could help support her? Penelope—uh, that is your name, right?—this may hurt. It’s definitely going to feel strange.”
&
nbsp; I climbed onto the table, this time facing the wall. Droopsy, the giant spidery thing, held my arms, my head, and the different joints of my torso in place. She had a strong but gentle touch.
West Lee unbuttoned most of my shirt, and pulled it and the lab coat down around my shoulders. I felt him fiddling with the button on the back of my neck. A few twinges of pain didn’t bother me, but something clicked softly, and I felt wobbly, and a touch nauseous. ‘Why’ became clear as Lee set the plates of my neck down on the table next to me.
Thank goodness for Droopsy. Her grip felt very reassuring indeed, which I needed since… I really didn’t want to think about my neck’s condition too closely. In a very real sense, my spine had just been taken out. So many yikes!
“Well, I can see what’s wrong,” said Lee behind me. “There’s a blank patch on the muscle fabric. Your ‘off’ button doesn’t connect to anything.”
That triggered a memory. “Oh, yeah! I ran out of gold while making this body. I thought it was the self-destruct function that didn’t get completed.”
“It might be. This wouldn’t be the first time that the power switch and the destruct switch used the same button. You really made this? How? This is the most advanced robotics I’ve ever seen up close.”
I chuckled. Droopsy tilted my chin down to make it easier for West Lee to do something I could neither see, nor feel. I did hear a lot of clicking. “Not a clue. My power works in trances. The more impressive the invention, the less I remember.”
Above a scraping noise, Lee said, “Oh, yeah, I understand. My power is pretty weak. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have a natural feel for robotics, and that’s it. Every once in awhile, though, I have a fit where I black out and make something incredible. I still have no idea how Epimetheus works. How can anyone make a robot that evolves?”
“Is he…?” I started to ask, not sure if I’d misunderstood the name of the big spidery thing.
I got a sigh in reply. “The last I saw him, he was walking off into the sea. I hope he’s okay. For a while he went crazy and thought he was Evolution. When he accepted that he wasn’t, he got super depressed.”
“Oh.”
And lo, for she that does not asketh receiveth! That is, West Lee patted the plastic snout hovering over my head. “And Droopsy Dragon here was the same way. I wanted to add a new animatronic to the Family Farm cast. My power took over while building the prototype, and this is what I got instead. She looks a mess, but she’s highly intelligent. She can even talk, but she’s too shy. It all comes out sounding like quotes from a Family Farm show. If it were your birthday, she wouldn’t shut up.”
The plastic dragon face lowered a few minutes, little white dot eyes in black lenses watching me hopefully. I tried to shake my head, which needless to say did not work. “Sorry, Droopsy. That was a couple of months ago.”
She licked my forehead with a stiff rubber tongue.
Lee’s nervous tone came back. “Anyway. I’m sorry for babbling.”
“Oh, no, it’s great! I’ve never met another mad scientist who has fits like mine. It makes me feel understood.”
He did something that felt prickly around the base of my neck, then hot. With a hint of growl, he said, “You have, trust me. Most mad scientists don’t like to talk about it. Everyone likes to pretend they know what they’re doing.”
I started to laugh, and then went “Ah! Ooh! Ah!” instead, because it felt really weird and uncomfortable as he fitted my neck plate back into its socket.
I knew when he finished that, because Droopsy let go. A quick nod and roll confirmed that everything worked.
Scooting around, I hung my legs over the edge of the table and asked, “All done?”
He laid some tools in a drawer, and shut it before I got a good look at them. “All done! Your off switch should work now. Press it, and it will put you in a modulated turned-off state, with regular but very brief awakenings. That should imitate REM close enough that you’ll feel like you slept. I think that you can decide how long you want to sleep when you press the button, but even if I’m wrong, I built a failsafe into the switch. After eight hours of sleep, it will reactivate you.”
I hopped off the table, and stopped because Lee went into a case of severe fidgets. He winced, and scratched the back of his own neck, and looked around until even Droopsy leaned over and watched him in concern.
Finally, he said, “There’s nothing stopping you from pressing it again when you wake up, if that’s what you want. That’s not my decision. I’m pushing sixty, and I haven’t figured me out, much less what’s good for anyone else.”
Aw. Actually, I felt a lot less depressed. And then I gave a little jump. “That reminds me! I’m surprised you didn’t do the head turn trick.”
“Oh, you mean like this?” he asked, waggling a finger from side to side. “If you think you’re human, that’s enough for me. Raggedy and Gothic would rather you be just a robot, anyway.”
I reached around behind my neck, and felt the little square button. Looking over at the little robots crowding the door, I asked, “If I turn myself off, you’ll tuck me in bed, right?”
They nodded, spilling into the room and holding their arms up eagerly.
That made me laugh. “This is great. I could certainly use a robot army to get my body back.”
West Lee shuddered. On that kindly Santa Claus face, anger looked out of place, but now he was definitely angry. He gulped at words, fighting with his shyness. “I. Do not. Make robots. To fight.”
Holding up a hand, I laid it on his shoulder, then reached over and gave one of Droopsy’s stubby, clawed hands a squeeze. “I admire that. A lot.”
He let out a sigh, not just smiling, but sagging in relief at not having to be mad.
Well. Only one thing left. “Okay, guys. Catch me.”
Pushing the button on my neck, I turned myself off for eight hours.
did sleep a lot, not to ease the pain, but because it was such a wonderful, pleasant relief. The off switch produced a ‘lying in bed and feeling lazy’ sensation, and after a day like that, I needed it.
Besides, every time I woke up, Droopsy would be there, clinging to the ceiling and watching me sleep. The presence of a giant, metal, spider-dinosaur skeleton hanging above me produced the same feelings of comfort and safety that would normally require a whole pack of affectionate German shepherds.
When sundown on Friday arrived, I tried to see myself out. As I approached the front door, an arm that looked an awful lot like one of Droopsy’s unfolded from above the lintel, turned the knob, and opened it for me. So. One final mystery solved.
Then, reveling in my finally being able to wear my bracers right, I teleported across the street!
It stung. Ow. Pain lanced through the cracks in my arm, and my chest. They weren’t worse than ‘stinging’, but each teleport carried the burden of however far I went in one step. My damaged body couldn’t take that much shock.
I cut it down, and teleported half a dozen steps along the sidewalk, skipping ahead of a couple of people. No pain.
Sweet.
And now, to get moving. Chinatown was across the hills to the southeast, but a decent walking pace was about four miles per hour, and I could make six times that easily, without getting tired. Granted, it was a surreal journey, with the world constantly skipping like a strobe lit room, but it didn’t take me long at all to pass the last street onto the hills themselves. Unlike a car, I could go cross-country. Unlike a human, ‘uphill’ didn’t matter. Distance was distance, to my bracers.
Round about full dark, and whistling with the immense satisfaction of being a queen of mad science, I approached Chinatown from the back end. Unlike most parts of town, it had fences between and around buildings, shutting off all but the main entrance. I spotted a gap, and blinked through. Of all my inventions, these bracers were second only to my wonderful Machine. It was great to have them back. I couldn’t use them when I was pretending to be good.
Of course, I w
as good. It was the other Penny that was evil.
No. I’m REAL. The other is a FAKE.
“Bad Penny!” shouted a guy sitting on a nearby rooftop. He waved his banana, and went back to eating it. It matched his suspiciously banana-like floppy yellow costume.
Mom had been right about one thing. These were my people.
This early on Friday, the storm of villains descending on Chinatown amounted to a mere drizzle. I strutted my way through them, keeping an eye out for familiar faces. I saw a few, but none I actually felt like I knew.
One face I specifically did not see belonged to Bull, thank goodness.
Ah, but every face setting up at the mad scientists’ tables I knew. I’d be right over, but first, I was passing the dim sum buffet table thoughtfully spread out near the mall entrance. Leaning over a tray of soup with boiled eggs in it, I sniffed as hard as I could.
Oh, yeah. I could smell that, the sharp vegetable smell of the soup, and the rich sulfur eggity. Weak, though. I so needed to get some robot food from Pong.
Underneath the table, a squeaky voice said, “Hello?”
Leaning down, I lifted the tablecloth and peered underneath. Half a dozen mason jars filled the lower shelf. Five contained black goop. The sixth… a wrinkly pink and white mass, squished up against the glass. Also some peach color, like really pale skin. Very much like skin, what with the hazel eye blinking up at me hopefully.
“Could you, uh… help me out, uh… here?” the girl’s voice asked, audible thanks to the air holes punched in the lid of the jar.
Hey, I might be back to villainy, but I wasn’t evil. “Sure. Watch my back.” Someone had to do this to her, right?
I picked up the jar. I tried to pick up the jar. Criminy, it weighed at least as much as an adult person. Maybe I could lift it, but not at this awkward angle. So instead, I unscrewed the jar lid.
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