“Pathetic world out there,” Yazoo mumbled, “No heroes…”
“Biomech,” it shrugged again.
“That’s what this place is…”
“No, this is my apartment. When you were finished, they sent you here for fine-tuning. You were a rag-doll. People thought you were a toy or something.”
Yazoo nodded before making an effort to stand. 20-13-00 said nothing, only watched. Yazoo didn’t even get a hand up when he fell, but he managed just fine.
“You got a name, old man?” Yazoo took things just a tad out of context in an attempt to get to know the creature, man or machine, that he had the feeling he would be seeing again many, many times after this.
“Yeah…Gerhardt…”
His eyes rose for a moment, meeting Yazoo’s in one eerie moment. Yazoo nodded, but turned his own eyes away after an awkward moment of silence, because he long to be anywhere but in that cold, dark room. He wanted to be outside, under blue, cloud-dappled skies, watching the world go by. He no longer wanted a larger role in the world. He wanted to be a nobody, he wanted to be free.
He half wished that he had never gone into that building to save that girl. He hadn’t even known that child or her parents, but it was in his nature to help people, whether he liked it or not at that point. Now he was missing his natural limbs—the price of heroics—what remained of the old ones feeling awkward and heavy. He stayed as still as possible as he settled himself back on the table that he had been placed on, cushioned only by a thin, leather mat from what he could feel beneath his shirtless back.
He closed his eyes…
----
…and when he opened them again, he was faced with a similar sight, only this time Ger was beside him, not hovering over him. Joey was on a small table as well, curled into a ball, breathing softly and twitching in her dream state as she often did. The one simply dubbed the Mechanic hovered over Gerhardt with tools that Yazoo had never seen before set on a cart beside him, one also in a metal-plated hand. It created sparks against the metal of Ger’s arm that the repair bot seemed totally unaware of, his eyes focused on the dark ceiling, pupils glowing as they had just hours before as well as in Yazoo’s dreams. He shivered, shaking his head, and it seemed to catch the Mechanic’s attention. He continued to work, even as his icy blue eyes stared at Yazoo.
“Where am I?” Yazoo rasped. Well, that answered one question. He had not spoken in long enough that time had stolen his voice away.
“Biomech Industries,” the Mechanic answered, his voice as flat as ever, but softer than when Yazoo last heard him. It was almost as if he was afraid to shake Gerhardt from his focused state or wake Joey. “You are here for an upgrade.”
“I thought I already had my upgrade,” Yazoo snorted.
“You must still be examined,” the robot responded. “You will still need fine tuning.”
“Ger usually does that for me…”
The Mechanic shook his head and, though he looked more complete, there was still the smallest of whirring elicited by the movement.
“Negative,” he said. “I do, recently.”
Yazoo grunted softly in response, but sighed. He did not want to be there…where ever ‘there’ was. Part of the Mechanic thought the same, but the machine mind reined supreme, keeping him in some form of limbo that could drive anyone mad. He was no exception to those rules, however sane he seemed on the outside. Really, he was falling apart at the seams, trying to remember, but failing. He did not know what was real and what was not anymore. He was trapped in a perpetual dream state, unable to control his own body.
Deep down in his human mind, he remembered better times than these. He remembered feeling. He remembered emotions, touch, true sight and sound, taste, but now there was nothing. He remembered the outside world; soft winds, birds singing, blue skies, but sometimes things turned harsh. Sometimes there were storms—wind, rain, thunder, and lightning—but he remembered the soft rains after these storms. He remembered promising two little girls that the storms would never hurt them. The rain was harmless, and despite the fact that, while it could destroy, it also brought creation. It brought the flowers that they loved so and kept the grass and the trees green. It washed away the dirt and grime of city life and sometimes even the memories of days gone wrong, but not always. No, not always…
But, he could not remember those days. Not all of them, at least. He could not remember losing them or exactly how he found himself in the clutches of Biomech Industries. But, he tried. Oh, how he tried…he wanted so badly to remember. He wanted to escape. He could not shake the feeling that, for all of his so-called remembering, that he was just dreaming these things up, that these ‘memories’ were no more than implanted bits of data, strategically placed to make him seem more human, but suppressed so that he would never be human.
He was well aware of what went on in that place, but he could do nothing to stop it, nothing to change it. He was just another one of the cogs that kept Biomech running smoothly. He was created to repair, not to remember. He was not a dreamer, just servant. But, was it all just a dream or was it real? That was what he did not understand. He was never meant to understand, though. He was not programmed for that.1
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