Paradigm City - Fan Fiction - Beneath The Surface

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Beneath The Surface

Part 7

"Master Roger?" the butler politely knocked at the door. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, come in, Norman," came the answer. The butler lifted an eyebrow but said nothing at the unexpected sight of Paradigm City’s top Negotiator shaking dust out of his jacket out on the balcony. Roger gave the jacket one more good shake and put it neatly on a hangar along with the pants. His shoes, Norman observed, had also been cleaned off and were sitting neatly on a section of newspaper awaiting a polish. "What did you make of those pictures?"

"It looks like the wreckage from a megadeus," the older man replied.

"That’s what I thought," Roger agreed. "Let’s go down to the repair bay, Norman." He headed down the stairs, stopping in the kitchen long enough to let Dorothy know where they could be found should Dastun stop by.

When they arrived at the repair bay, he grabbed some rags and leather cleaner and started industriously cleaning the grime off the Griffon’s seat. "There’s no need for that, Master Roger, I’ll attend to it," Norman reproved.

"That’s all right, Norman. I’ve been a bit inconsiderate lately," he told him. "Consider it an apology for my behavior." The butler nodded slowly and got some rags himself, attacking the upholstery from the passenger side.

"There is more wreckage there," Roger said conversationally. "A lot of wreckage."

"At the dig?" Norman inquired.

"Yes. They uncovered a tunnel earlier today, and I went and checked it out. I found the remains of hundreds of megadeuses, as if they had been dumped there to be disposed of."

"Were any of them salvageable?" the older man asked.

"No, probably not," Roger applied himself to a particularly stubborn spot. "Norman, do you...do you remember anything about a lot of Megadeuses?"

"No, I can’t say that I do, Master Roger," the butler answered. "Although it does remind me of a nightmare I once had of the city being destroyed."

"Yes, nightmare is a good word for it," Roger shuddered again at the images. "Hundreds of them, with the city in flames. I don’t know how they were finally stopped, but this is the first evidence that I’ve seen that maybe it wasn’t just a bad dream."

"Oh, dear," Norman shook his head. "That would be a dreadful thing to contemplate."

"I’ve asked Dastun to stop by later," Roger told him. "I’m of two minds about what to do. On the one hand, this...this graveyard represents memories, and might be valuable. On the other, there might be just enough left there to be dangerous. I’m not sure if the site should be further excavated or if we should just lay a few charges and collapse it forever." He gave a final polish to the seat and looked down at the floor. "I ought to bring out the vacuum cleaner," he mused.

"I’ll take care of that later," the butler said. "It was kind of you to do this."

"I’ve made a lot of extra work for you lately," Roger shook his head. "It’s a small thing to do, to clean up my own mess."

"Please, Master Roger. I can see you’re disturbed by this." Norman firmly took the rags from the other man’s hand. "Why don’t you go sit down at the work bench? I’ll bring you a cup of coffee and we can discuss it further."

"That sounds good," Roger allowed himself to be shooed into the repair area. As he waited for Norman to return, he looked idly at some of the schematics that were laid out on the bench. One in particular caught his eye, it clearly was some kind of diagram of Dorothy. It seemed to show varying zones on her limbs by way of a color code. He studied it more closely.

"Ah! You’ve found the schematic of Miss Dorothy’s sensors," Norman had returned with a tray holding a steaming pot of coffee, two mugs and small containers holding cream and sugar. At Roger’s questioning look, he said simply, "I thought to bring an extra setting in the event Dastun arrived in the near future."

"Why don’t you join me in a cup instead?" Roger suggested. "We can get another mug for the Colonel when he gets here."

"Very good," the butler nodded and served them both. He took a seat at Roger’s gesture and looked down at the schematic. "Violet shows the fewest sensors, red the most," he explained. "She’s very elaborately made," he tapped the diagram that showed the fingertips in blazing scarlet. "In some places, there are literally thousands of sensors to the square inch."

Roger looked surprised. "How would you fix something like that?" he asked.

"Very slowly," Norman chuckled briefly. "Fortunately, Miss Dorothy has a repair scan that can give a very close approximation of where the signal stops. We were fortunate that her recent injuries were in areas that don’t have as much of a concentration of sensors, otherwise we would still be growing new ones."

"Growing?" Roger was amazed.

"Yes, they’re made of a type of crystal." Norman explained. "It’s really quite fascinating, although you need a microscope to see it. We did the arm first and got the hand properly re-connected and Miss Dorothy did most of the work on the leg herself. It was daunting at first, but the growing crystal tends to seek to bond to itself, so it was just a matter of keeping each new branch separate until it had made the proper connection."

"How did you get it to the outside?" Roger wondered out loud.

"Oh, the replacement skin? Miss Dorothy did that herself, it’s very tedious." Norman hunted around for a bit and produced a small piece of foam that was about an inch thick. "She wrote out the formula for making this, quite simple, really, and I made up a batch. She used a very fine needle to make an almost microscopic hole and then seeded it with the crystal-growing liquid. Once all the connections were made, she actually sent a heat impulse through the sensors--a vibration, really, but a fast one. The foam works almost like shrink-wrap. It reduces by about half, and then it gets painted with another chemical that changes the outer structure slightly so there are no seams. After that, it’s more or less immune to heat, at least any heat that wouldn’t be enough to melt her metal skeleton."

"Why would someone put all this work into an android?" Roger drained the last of his coffee and shook his head.

"They wanted to give her every chance to experience life as a human would, apparently," the butler answered. He shuffled through the pile of schematics and handed another diagram to Roger. "You’ll probably find this interesting, too."

Roger looked at the print. His jaw suddenly dropped. "Norman, are you telling me...?"

"Did you know that Miss Dorothy experiences a hug as pleasant and damage as painful?" the butler evaded.

"She..." Roger looked down at the diagram again. "This is...this is...."

"Forgive me, Master Roger. I need to begin dinner if it’s going to be served at a reasonable hour." Norman disappeared off to the kitchen.

Roger put his head into his hands. The full-body schematic of Dorothy’s sensors fluttered unnoticed to the floor.

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