CrossoverChapter 10: What? You Lie!
Somewhere, on a hard and manufactured surface, a small and pseudo-leather suited form lie in what was primarily darkness. An immense glare shone down on the fallen figure, one from above. The body was on display, unmoving and without activity. The form was petite and slender, encased in a pseudo-leather and form-fitting bodysuit up to the neck, hard arms bare. Arms were gray, the head dark-haired and pale-skinned. The small body was sprawled and spread-limbed. All was silent, the silence of the peace that came with death. A slight indoor breeze rustled the dark and shoulder-length hair. The gentle wind buffered the unfeeling face and lithe form. Synthetic lips remained unmoving. Eyes and cheeks below a smooth forehead remained without animation. There was almost no sound. Nearby, someone regarded the fallen figure. Appraising the small female-cyborg's body, he thought to himself, she will always be the best. Gally fought hard, fought with her strength. Of course, she never just fought with strength alone. . . His eyes looked at the artistry of the body, looking at the excellence of design -- smooth curves, nice shape and a perfect petiteness. The eyes were a touch large, but that just made the cyborg more cute. If the cyborg's arms were covered, he would not be able to distinguish the cyborg from a full-flesh person. Amazing and fascinating, how the person that crafted Gally's now-still body made her a walking and active work of art. Beautiful and deadly, the metal-bodied and synthetic-faced Gally was truly a piece of work. The light continued to glare down from above, onto the body on the hard surface. Another light breeze blew. Gally's eyes flickered. Her right hand's fingers flexed and stroked the hard marble floor. She made sweet and small mumbling, as if coaxing someone in a dream. In the quiet office, the man in the office could hear the cyborg coaxing someone unseen. Gally probably imagined that she comforted someone dear to her. She whispered, the small and young voice from her armor-solid body and synthetic-soft face gentle and caring. Gally whispered, semi conscious. The man behind the desk listened. "Poor Vicki. Shh... You will be fine. We will seek Ido; he will... Ido... Ido." Gally's voice shot up an octave. "Vicki, I will take you...!" Gally shouted herself out of her own unconsciousness. Her small and angelic mouth flexed, the lips opening and closing. Her artificial lungs pulled air through an equally false throat. Deeper breaths, then Gally came around to full consciousness. She tried to come around. Everything whirled, consciousness swirling. It was just so difficult to get a solid hold on reality. Where could she possibly be? Was she sleeping, lying so comfortably. After the noise and madness, pain and fury, there was this good and deep peace of darkness. Her eyelids closed against the overhead glare, Gally did not want to awaken. Why awaken? There was nothing out there. All that was outside was pain and madness. There was the material of nightmares. Then again, Scrap Iron City was a constant one. She lived as a freak among freaks. Her body was metal, and she had to accept what she was: a cyborg. Around her were other cyborgs, their bodies also unreal-electromechanical. Gally knew herself. She also knew where she lived. As she felt now, she did not want to get up and face things. Craft-shapely legs and athletic slender limbs sprawled, feeling comfortable in her own semi-numb body of metal, Gally did not want to awaken. What was all of this insanity, this madness called life? In shadows of her mind, still struggling for consciousness, Gally imagined all that had passed as vague shapes and sounds. Half-conscious, floating in a peaceful semi-consciousness, Gally just let half-dreams and half-notions of sights and sounds formed in her head. The image of those industrial thugs juxtaposed with the Lawsons. In her head, the Lawsons swirled with the Brindles. Then, there was the part of her swirling and half-serious consciousness that had envisioned Ido sitting with Vicki the gynoid. A gynoid? Rather, it was a replicate in the dream. What was that? From Gally's weak perspective, things still swirled and twisted. Images whirled around and around. There was half-imagined whispering of The Cloaked Man. Gally had semi-conscious visions of the obnoxious and rough young man in the slacks and tee shirt with the red cape. She imagined him saying the words to the song he sang at Dorothy's: I'll see you... in the breeze... The shout shook Gally. Gally awakened. "Your work ethic is astoundingly lacking. I would expect less laziness among my employees! Are my data files wrong?" asked Thunderhorse. Gally's thoughts solidified as the authoritative and chiding voice spoke. "Do cyborgs really sleep for such prolonged periods?" Gally pressed her arms backwards to support her upper body; she sat up from her place on the floor to face the man that had directed her and Vicki's life so. Gally saw Mr. Thunderhorse, still behind his desk. Before Gally arrived here, he must have returned the globe and two indicator photographs that The Good Man gave him. Now, all that was on the desk was basic paraphenalia: an upright and inch-thick flat monitor, a wireless keyboard, and a foot-high red lamp that gave off bright light. He must have changed lamps as well. "Well, has the little dark angel of the Scrap City finally awakened? Hello!" Illuminated in the peripheral light of the foot-high and green-shaded lamp, Thunderhorse raised his hand in a gesture of welcome. "Hello!" he said again. "Don't you want to talk?" The voice was not as harsh and obnoxiously confident as one would expect of immense authority. Gally rose from the floor, the bright and circular overhead light coming from the darkness overhead. She strode to one of the seats before Thunderhorse's wooden desk. Gally's large and light-swallowing brown eyes solidly on Thunderhorse, Thundherhorse stared back. Then, he leaned back in the leather bucket seat of his own. In an unmistakibly feminine gesture, Gally crossed her legs -- then her arms. Her face had neither a smile nor a frown. This man, he put Vicki and Gally throught so much. He still sat there, seated behind his desk -- a desk backed by the yards-high curtains that must cover panoramically huge windows. "Why that look, Gally? You look as if you are going to miss the escapades of the adventure you just completed. Did you like it, Gally? Did you love the chaos and conflict? Is that why you think that there is something so very hot and precious to be gained by fighting?" Limbs still crossed, Gally asked, "Where is Vicki? She should have been repaired, considering the nature of your trans-warp setup." Thunderhorse shook his head slowly. Gally remembered: "Your equipment can only repair the physical aspect of a subject going through time. So, she still needs software repairs." Thunderhorse gave two thumbs up in approval of Gally's answer, his swarthy and rough face holding a smil. "There you have it! You are smart, Gally! Indeed, your other party member is being held until she can be repaired. She came back fully reconstituted, but there was severe software damage done to her processors. Her software, damaged. Vicki's software is damaged." With a fresh sentence, Thunderhrose added, "I don't know how long it will take to get that synthetic girl up to snuff again. Those programming methods used by Dr. Ted Lawson, they were unbelievably delicate. And, all this time, we were never really sure that a gynoid -- or replicate, to use your word -- could really be successfully made in the 20th century. Why, Administrations is damned interested in that gynoid. We could probably keep her around for a little while yet." Gally crossed her solid arms tighter, armor on armor. Metal squeaked across metal as the smooth surfaces of her hard forearms grated together. "Thunderhorse, what about the rest of all of this -- about why Vicki and I were put through all of that madness? Did we finally eliminate that madman? And, why could you not have simply removed him from time yourself? So many were hurt and killed as Vicki and I sought the fugitive from your time period -- this time period." Thunderhorse, still leaning back in the chair, pointed to the desk-mounted monitor. "Because he was The Cloaked Man, Gally. The Cloaked Man, he escaped into time long because he had a personal and self-contained device for chronological trans-warp. The cape, remember? With that cape, he could go where he pleased and when he pleased. His own time-travel adventures were all his own, with no outside control. "But you two were taken between Scrap Iron City of the 30th century and Southern California of the 20th century with this quipment." He tapped the top of the inches-thick computer monitor. "I could track your progress because of my equipment. The Cloaked Man, though, was a slippery demon and just leapt away from efforts at reaquiring him. In the meanwhile, as time progressed here, The Cloaked Man's own time ran relative to this time period. That is, as an hour passed in this time period, an hour passed in his own personal time period. He continued to play jokes on the timeline, and raise Hell with history." Gally wanted to hear more, about The Cloaked Man. "What about him? What drove him to his off-balance acts of ugliness and destruction? Be him a probable lycanthropizine junkie or common violent criminal, those acts were simply mad." Thunderhorse smiled. "He had a terminal illness, Gally. The Cloaked Man was dying. Of course he was mad! It was just some time before he finally did; it was just matter of you un-pranking his historical pranks and keeping him occupied." Terminal illness, and he did not tell them? Gally thought a shocked thought. They were against a dying man, a man that was that desperate. Gally could have used different means of stopping The Cloaked Man if she had known. There were ways of talking to people, ways of softening madness caused by types of despiration. But, it was probably too late for that, unless The Cloaked Man was really still... "Oh, he is dead. That's why you're here, and not still gallivanting about through other time periods." Thunderhorse tapped the top of the computer monitor. "The Cloaked Man died, his energy signature no longer appearing in the equations. He crossed over. In the meanwhile..." said Thunderhorse. His fingers clickety-clacked on the keyboard a rapid clip. He had something more to say. "Do you realize how deeply you managed to foul up? You stopped The Cloaked Man, meeting your primary objective. However, some things were still left done. Gally's eyes widened. What mistakes did she make? Thunhderhorse explained. "For one, what about that bystander out of the 20th century, Bonnie Brindle, ending up in Scrap Iron City -- one thousand years beyond her own time period? The Cloaked Man managed to grab her, and you failed to stop him." Gally frowned, her small lips compressing and large eyes showing anger. "It was a casualty, I know. It hurt, to leave a person stranded. But what about the rest of history? I had to survive the encounter -- for my sake and Vicki's sake. If you use your equipment to..." "Also, what about Dr. Lawson taking looks at you. Dr. Lawson now has ideas that should not be put into use for centuries beyond his time, hundreds of years. As if Vicki Lawson were not enough of an anachronism, Lawson will probably raise some more trouble in history -- probably trying to make cyborgs of his own to go with that synthetic female he passes off as a daughter. And you thought The Cloaked Man to be trouble...! "I did what was necessary, revealing my physical form as proof of my mission! I had to convince the Lawsons of the mission that you assigned!" said Gally, becoming agitated. The small cyborg's grip on the chair began to tighten. The chair was made of a tenacious material, but its strength was being tested. "Anyway, what about the largest grand-master of a mistake: leaving The Cloaked Man's cape with a certain scientist. Does Dr. Nova set off any stress in that synthetics-cased brain of yours? When you get back, you just may find one more 'Cloaked Man' running about and causing troubles. And from the historical data..." said Thunderhorse, tapping more keys on the monitor, "Dr. Nova is more likely to be a troublemaker than just any self-styled 'cosmic joker.' Imagine that, Gally, a serious man with The Cloaked Man's cape" "For all that was done, Thunderhorse, I would expect thanks at the least. I fought despite being taken out of my own environmental context. One of your people leaked into previous time periods. He then had a great time at ruining Vicki's time period and my time period. Thank Vicki and I for fixing your people's mistakes." Thunderhorse squinted at Gally. "If that's the way you call it, metal-girl, what about this? What if this office, a sub-division of Administrations, were to simply let The Cloaked Man have his way? To allow that freak to parade through time would have been quite entertaining. I did this for you. What in tarnation do you think I am, some sort of darned superhero sponsor? You make me pissed. And maybe even coffee couldn't fix my mood then." Gally saw no point in continuing argument with Thunderhorse. He would simply put off blame on Vicki and herself for making errors. There would be no thanks. People were hurt and dead because of The Cloaked Man. Gally fought and undid what was done. Vicki struggled, was even destroyed in the process. At the end of it, Thunderhorse merely criticized them. But wait, what was with the timbre in Thunderhorse's voice? Thunderhorse's voice was different. No, it had an edge that was familiar. Gally looked up. Thunderhorse had a smirk on his face, one that had a malicious gleam in it. Gally knew that look, one that had a look of mischief and obnoxiousness in it. "What are you doing here? This is Thunderhorse's office!" shouted Gally at the man behind the desk. The man behind the desk smiled with his mouth as his eyes squinted, a devilish smile. As soon as her shout finished echoing in the darkened office, "Thunderhorse" rubbed his chin. Microscopic robots then ate away his "face," ate away the rubberoid mask he wore. The man behind the desk then quickly rubbed his hair to restore the dark curls. Now came time to dump the suit. "Damned monkey suit! I hate dressing up!" he said as he whipped off his dark business jacket. He loosened and tossed the tie, then tore off the starched shirt -- a tee shirt with a red cape underneath. He then said, "Heey! Fancy meeting you here!" The Cloaked Man was back. "You died! Also, how is it that we trans-warped back to this location? Is this not Thunderhorse's office? Where is he?" Gally fired questions, trying to get The Cloaked Man to talk. "Dying is such an inconvenience, believed Dr. Nova," said the resurrected Cloaked Man. "You see, Dr. Nova has a great deal of fancy stuff -- technology that was forgotten over the centuries. Hell, we don't even keep track of years in this time period, so we were bound to lose track of some technologies. Nanotechnology was one of those lost technological items. "Dr. Nova used his nanotech to build me up again after my demise in that ghetto called Scrap Iron City. I was reduced to just a few thousand skin flakes on my cape. But then, then... Oh, guess what! Guess what!" said The Cloaked Man, nearly bouncing around in his seat with excitement, his face breaking into a grand grin. "Guess... what!" he requested again, raising a finger. "What happened?" asked Gally, becoming annoyed. "He remade me from scratch -- and gave me several more hours' existence. Countdown syndrome could not be undone. But still, still, I have a few more hours left to party! To boot, Dr. Nova even made a repaired copy of my trans-warp cape. O-o-h, what a too-sweet outcome -- just because Dr. Nova wanted to test his nanotech skills! "Then, with my cape back up to snuff, I came back to this time. I found an old office in the basement of Administrations, then set it up like what I know Thunderhorse's office looks like. From here, I hacked my way into Administrations' core, and gained access to the trans-warp mainframe. That is connected to the same devices Mr. Thunderhorse used to trans-warp you!" Gally merely pursed her lips, eyebrows over her large eyes bent into her frown. The Cloaked Man then had more to say and do. "This is too much, isn't it? And now, what am I to do now? Heh, watch this!" He hit some keys. Gally then felt the paralysis she did when she first met Vicki and Thunderhorse in this unkown time period -- the paralysis device Thunderhorse had in his real office. "C'est chic, n'est-ce pas?" said The Cloaked Man. Gally could barely comment; her body was seized with complete paralysis. She dropped from her chair, unable to stop her fall. Her metal self clacked on the hard floor of the false office. Sprawled with her head to the side, before the desk, Gally was helpless when she lost use of her body's mobility functions. The Cloaked Man began tapping more keys. He put one hand to his ear. "What was that noise? Uh-oh! There is an intruder in the complex!" he said aloud, said foolishly. He then looked looking into the computer. "And, guess who the intruder is, Gally?" he said, grinning. "The intruder is... you! Oh, boy! I'm going to see the security droids tear you apart, like how the big robots in Thunderhorse's office work!" Sprawled on what she now noticed to be a dusty and somewhat cracked marble floor, one that lacked proper care, Gally heard the heavy foot-poundings of something large and powerful-something on two legs. Soon, she could hear a beastly machine's mobility motors working as it came closer to this office. Unable to move, Gally's mind was frozen and afraid. Her brain, trapped in a metal skull, trapped in a paralyzed metal corpse, would not be able to evade. Whatever was coming. Then, Gally heard The Cloaked Man becoming upset. "Dang it! What's wrong with this machine?" The Cloaked Man began to type rapidly. Then, his fingers slowed for a reason Gally did not know. In the dim light of the mock office, Gally did not see what was immediately wrong. But, The Cloaked Man felt what was wrong -- in his hands. Dr. Nova's nanobots restored him to his physical condition of several hours before his death -- not give him an entirely new and healthy life. Pain began to build in The Cloaked Man's hands. Blood seeped from cracks in those rough hands. Countdown syndrome symptoms came out. "Damn, what a time. Oh, what a time! I can't stop the... security!" said The Cloaked Man, struggling to stand despite the pain of his infection's illness. Gally heard The Cloaked Man struggle to stand from the leather seat, a seat that was a near-match for Thunderhorse's own. He staggered, tried to limp his way to the side of the office. The Cloaked Man, overcome with pain in his spine and head from lack of medication, keeled over. "It hurts..." he said, falling to one knee. Worse, Dr. Nova did not resurrect The Cloaked Man's sophisticated anelgesics pills -- the only ones truly effective against Countdown syndrome. Now, The Cloaked Man was as helpless as the paralyzed cyborg on the ground. Heavy automatic weaponry sputtered out from behind, tearing through the door. Gally heard the artillery projectiles whiz high overhead as the door was holed many times over. Something then smashed the door. Gally suddenly felt someone lifting her, felt herself being carried away. The person wore a blouse and felt somewhat soft enough to be an all-flesh. Yet, she had immense strength. Vicki, thought Gally as she was carried past the nine-foot and bipedal monster of a robot with two powerful legs and two rotating guns mounted on its spherical and perfectly armored body. Gally was carried rapidly away from the mock office, carried up dust-covered stairs... Still in the mock office, it was the end of the game for him. The Cloaked Man, bleeding hands and a head that felt pressurized, could barely breathe. Breath coming shallowly, he turned his head to the right -- looked right at the powerful security machine with the spherical body. He tried to move his bleeding hands to his cape... Heavy fire from twin artillery guns mounted on a nine-foot monster of metal took apart The Cloaked Man. Red mess sprayed against the wall as the double heavy guns sprayed thousands of rounds of high-velocity and heavy-caliber artillery fire on The Cloaked Man. In seconds, there was nothing but a few shreds of sparking and electronics-embedded red cloth, shreds of cloth in a wide puddle of reddish mush. The puddle of gore glistened in the dim and dark light of the mock office.
Dozens of stories above, Thunderhorse read the report coming in from the Military Battle Robots' logic processors. The target, The Cloaked Man, was located and eliminated. The Cloaked Man thought himself clever, hiding in the very last place that Administrations would look. But, The Cloaked Man was successfully tracked throughout time, and wherever he hid in this time period was no serious hiding place anyway. Why did The Cloaked Man choose to come back? Did he think that his hacking had damaged Administrations' computers to the extent that they could no longer track him? He probably did not want to die on the shores of an unfamiliar time period; The Cloaked Man most probably wanted to die in his own home-time. Thunderhorse laughed. The most uproariously and damnably funny part was yet to come. What, could the duo be allowed to return to their own time periods with full knowledge of what the future held? If that were true, they would try to change history. It was terrible enough, how that forsaken Cloaked Man tried to twist history to join him in death. We cannot have two being wanting to change history, can we? This thought in mind, Thunderhorse's fingers went to work on his computer monitor. Something had to be done about the cyborg and the gynoid. The Good Man sat before Thunderhorse's desk and smiled. After Thunderhorse typed in two more pages of commands, he laughed yet more. The Good Man also joined him in the laugh.
Downstairs, in the hall of a building set in an unknown and dimly lit time period, Vicki continued to run with the metal-bodied girl over her shoulder. Vicki had failed Gally before, would not fail the cyborg again. Vicki was determined to get Gally away from those powerful security machines -- those gigantic and bipedal beasts with unbelievably fast and powerful automatic guns. Vicki sensed it first, with the sensitive receptors embedded just below her synthetic skin. Gally felt it as well, felt a sort of tingling in her metal physique. There was certainly a buildup of positive static charge in the hall. Then, there at the end of this hallway, Vicki saw a doorway, opened it with her right hand. It was a stairway. was sure that Gally was securely over her left shoulder, then dashed up the stairs. It tried the limits of Vicki's processors, her balance compromised with the dense being on her left shoulder, but she made it to the top of the stairs. A solitary dim light at the top of the landing was all the light there was. Was this outside? What was outside of Administrations? What did this time period look like? Gally heard Vicki opening the door of this unknowably large and dark building. Also, Gally feared what to expect. Maybe, the outside would be a desolate and darkened wasteland. Or maybe, the sun froze in this time period -- and all people lived inside? When the multi-colored lightning began to strike, Vicki's image-lock on what lie outside the doorway was unable to resolve the dimness. Outside, it was so dark and barely lit. Finally, the two vanished into time once more by the input command of Thunderhorse's computers. Upstairs, Thunderhorse and The Good Man had huge laughs for little-understood reasons.
The girl did not want to awaken. In the dark dream, there were many pretty images -- images that she would fight to retain. There was a peaceful and sweet little town in the dream-place. In the world of the dream, the town had comfort and happiness -- more happiness than what ghetto-gritted bitterness and glory-seeking struggle there was these days. In that dream-place, there were such things that the small being only heard or read about in the revered and preserved old books that Dr. Daisuke had. Indeed, Dr. Ido Daisuke's interpretations and lent texts to Gally almost exactly described that dream place. "Mmmh..." whined Gally, becoming conscious. No, what was this? Was it all grand falsehood? Is falsehood happiness? Gally thought those thoughts as her mind became less dream-fogged. She came to consciousness in her bedroom of Ido's medical facility. The well-equipped building really was reality, not that dream place. Her eyes still closed, Gally came to remember where she was. Through the synthetic flesh of her closed eyelids, the small cyborg knew that sunlight had not come arrived yet. She could remain in bed for perhaps an hour more before going about her day's business. What was the business? What was important today, in the cyborg's artificially long lifespan. Already, she lived hundreds of years -- not all of them conscious. This was another day in Gally's existence. Now, what about the dream? Lying there, savoring the fading dream, Gally felt part of something special. It was a private vision, something precious and all her own. It felt good, being in that dream-place. People in the dream-place were different. They had strange customs and had stranger attitudes, but Gally felt slight pleasure just thinking of them. But, why were they all full-flesh? Gally puzzled over the dream, lying there in bed as sunlight came over Scrap Iron City. The air in the dream place was cooler than the temperatures reached in these times; even the simple summer breezes of that dream place felt good in those times. She could remember the winds of that dream place flowing along her electromechanical body's small cooling holes. But the good feeling was certainly not just from simple and small physical pleasures. Indeed, there were other things in that dream place. Gally felt healed in that dream-place. It felt healing to just consider that dream place, Southern California. The small cyborg sat up in bed, surprised to find her armor-bodied self in her night-clothes: loose pantalons and a loose, sleeveless blouse. She placed her thin metal digits on the edge of the blanket, then fully removed the blanket from her form. Yes, she was still who she was -- what she was. Alloy-steel gray feet and toes still poked out from beyond her pantalon cuffs. Gally wriggled her alloy-steel gray fingers. Making subtle metal-clicking sounds, her fingers were still hers. Her skull was still just as likely metal as well -- all-metal skeleton and body with electromechanics acting as a body to a human brain. What about the rest? Was there no remains of the dream outside the quickly fading thoughts in her head? With the morning sun rising over the hyper-industrial concrete and metal machine-work of Scrap Iron City, Gally moved to the window. Slowly, almost traisping, the female with an electromechanical body moved to regard her reality. All the same, there was Scrap Iron City -- all around. The few Factory buildings that operated at this hour still billowed smoke up into the sky. Farther than Gally's dollishly large (and even more synthetic) brown eyes could regard from the second-floor window, she knew that Scrap Iron City stretched and encompassed her current reality. This was just a room in a building, a building on a block, a block in a borough, a borough in the area thousands of miles square, in Scrap Iron City. Gally was not sure if she wanted to leave the window open, left open to let air circulate in her room as she slept. Did she really want to hear the screams of victims, those becoming yet the next victims of the habitually murderous "crazies" that very often popped into being in Scrap Iron City? Compared to that dream-place, the screams she often heard were those of playing youth. Now, the screams that often echoed throughout Scrap Iron City's streets were screams of pain and suffering. Half-thinking, her large brown eyes not really focusing, the small cyborg pressed her gray and hard fingers to the window -- to close the window. She had not heard any scream -- yet. Still, there was the chance that the scream would break her reverie. Gally wanted the moment to last. Gally thought of the dream. It was a long and twisted one, leaving Gally to slightly wonder if any rogue experimenter in the city had performed any wide-range experiments on unsuspecting and sleeping people. The people in it were so other-worldly, so different from now. There were the full-flesh Lawsons, so calm. Jamie Lawson was a bit boyish, but both of his parents were very kind and caring in concerns. Ted Lawson was curious about Gally's physical well-being in addition to keeping Vicki the replicate in shape enough to help against The Cloaked Man. The Cloaked Man, Gally became annoyed just thinking of that wit-cracking and time-tripping cosmic joker. The Cloaked Man adored those "pranks" he caused in history. He enjoyed what he did, trying to ruin history enough to make for humanity's death. Worse, The Cloaked Man was one of the topmost annoying and worse joke-telling being she could immediately recall meeting. But, as she remembered, The Cloaked Man should have died in the dream. If The Cloaked Man were still alive, would she dream again? Thunderhorse was another enigma. He was brutal and literal-minded -- but very powerful and intelligent being. Gally recalled how Thunderhorse endowed her and the replicate with the ability to understand languages. He did this with those far-time machines. Also of note was how Thunderhorse seemed to harness the power of lighning -- and he was a full-flesh! Or, was he? In that dark office, in another time near the end of time, Thunderhorse probably typed on. There was a major dream-person that Gally now came close to forgetting: Who was Vicki Lawson? Gally recalled from the now-fading dream that the "girl" was a gynoid, a sort of 20th century replicate. Unlike the usage of replicates by those of the floating city of Zalem, the "Vicki" gynoid, or replicate, was kind. She used her near-infinite strength and tirelessness to help Gally. Vicki sometimes had difficulty understanding general social conversations, and she had a somewhat straightforward view of morality and honor, but she was an indispensible partner going against The Cloaked Man's efforts. And, they won. Alternating between dreaming about Scrap Iron City and the dream-place of Southern California, circa the late 20th century, Gally and Vicki countered The Cloaked Man's pranks. They stopped him until he died. He died of a terminal illness, it being in place before he began to cause chaos. Gally looked outside. She lifted the window, a nice slight wind blowing. I'll see you, then you'll see me-e-e... in the dark trees that blow... Gally thought of The Cloaked Man's cryptic song. He knew that he was dying; his song could have been one for death in that dream time. After a short pause, Gally opened the window. She could barely hear the hum of Factory machines in various buildings. People walked about outside, getting up and about the day's work -- whatever that work was. Gally knew that a scream was likely to be forthcoming from somewhere, but she knew that it was just futile to run from waking reality forever. With but the barest memories of that dream-place, Gally prepared for the day. Dreams are beautiful. But, reality can be beautiful too. Life can be beautiful if we work to make it so. Gally would make this day beautiful despite the darkness that covered Scrap Iron City despite the daylight -- the darkness of ruined times of the 30th century.
Else-where and else-when, a girl lie in bed, barely moving. Lying face-up in bed, mane of dark hair somewhat neat despite sleeping, her peaches-and-cream face in sober calm, the girl was at peace. She breathed in a rhythmic way, very controlled breathing as she slept. The light of dawn had not come yet, not quite yet. The sun just barely caused a glow in the eastern part of the sky, local streetlights still on. Did she dream? Without expression on her face despite her nearing consciousness, there was no way to tell. There was no mumbling, no turning or even half-mumbled commentary. She was almost perfectly still -- save for the movement of her chest. In the light blanket, in a room with plush toys on dresser-drawers and a "Questor" poster on the wall, the girl in the girl-room was in an unknown state. Then, computers began to power up. Moving out from the "power down" mode for low-energy operation, mobility processors, logic processors and the rest of the systems came more fully up to operating status. Computer signals flickered and fired back and forth through integrated curcuitry and fiber-optics. On a sub-operations level, the banks of microchips raved incessantly. Then, when the "operations complete" and the diagnostics registered "OK," Vicki awakened. She felt strange. What was all of that? She had memories that she did not know about. She "knew" that she should not have been awake when she gained those memories; her sub-processors indicated that Vicki "slept" for seven hours, forty-eight minutes. If so, then why did she remember doing other things when she should not have been conscious? This was new to Vicki. Vicki then pushed aside the cover and stood in her pajamas. She dreamed! Vicki heard her friends talk about dreams, night visions and such. They talked about times they have been through terrible and terribly good times in dreams. Vicki, when with those friends, just emulated "polite passivity": smiled and listened politely. She never dreamed before. That was because Vicki's hardware was barely able to emulate a consciousness, let alone a random subconsciousness. Inside the gynoid's head and chest were banks and tightly packed groups of well-hidden and very dense computer chips. So much of Vicki's personality took up memory space that a mere fraction was left for the flash RAM that made up her memory storage. Of course, gynoids do not really dream. But, Vicki believed that she did. What could that dream mean? She recalled images of strangeness and madness. There was someone called Thunderhorse, seated in a darkened office somewhere beyond known time. In the dream, Thunderhorse sent Vicki and... someone after a time-traveling fugitive. The fugitive laughed a lot, was very strange -- so strange that remembering him began to set of temporary "error" measages and give Vicki a slight headache. Who was that metal-bodied and strange-talking girl? In the dream, Vicki remembered "Gally" and her tough ways. That was because of Gally's home-town. Somehow, Vicki passed into Gally's hometown of Scrap Iron City. "Scrap Iron City?" Was that something out of The Wizard of Oz, like The Emerald City? Vicki thought of it for a moment, her processors cross-referencing. The similarity was there, but not fully able to be confirmed. Vicki let the thought go. She went to the window next to the mirror, the mirror looking over at the Brindles' home. There was only one car in the driveway. Not that Vicki knew just immediately, but the presumption was made that Bonnie Brindle skipped off to a relative's indefinitely. Slight signals also went off in Vicki's processors -- and quickly faded due to slight and pinpoint electrostatic charges in certain: Vicki would not have hinted notions of the trouble cause by any hired thugs from a "cosmic joker." Her memory of the "dream" was twisted. That mad vision of a ruined future, cyborgs, time-traveling pranksters and mysterious people behind desks in dimly lit mega-offices was truly twisted. But the stored memory had unsurety attached. Just once, Vicki had something resembling a dream. But what about one prominent thing out of the dream? Oh yes, she was called a robot. Being a robot? That's funny! Vicki gave a slight and controlled laugh aloud: a robot! First cyborgs, then time-travel, then there were robots -- that look like people! Better yet, the dream had her being described as a robot! If Vicki were truly human, she would have gone as far as to stomp around the room in the mockery of a low-budget movie robot. She merely laughed -- about being a robot. Vicki washed, dressed and prepared to go to the library. It was the summer; she had months to do whatever. Would Jamie come along this time? Or, would Vicki be allowed to go alone this time? She was a teenager, yet her father remained protective. At least, Vicki had to have Jamie around to soften her sometimes-stiff demeanor. Vicki considered Jamie, thought him useful in social contexts after all. Vicki checked her appearance in the mirror, scanning for general aesthetics taste (blouse, suspenders and jeans complete with a small purse), then sat down to read until slightly into noon. She went down the stairs, into the comfortable and well-kept living room. Ted Lawson was sofa-bound, watching some sporting event on television. Vicki would tell her father and creator about her dream. But, she would make it seem as if it were not her sole and initial dream; that would make her seem abnormal according to stored criteria for the gynoid being passably "normal." "Dad, I had a really weird dream last night," began Vicki, walking to the right side of the couch -- the end facing the living room front door. Ted was shocked, but chose not to show it. Instead, he began to ask about it. "Oh? What did you... dream about, Vicki?" He forced a smile to his face. "I don't think you would believe it. It was scary, dark and weird -- like those movies Jamie likes to watch. It was about all sorts of things: time-travel, cyborgs, the future and a criminal that made the corniest jokes. But essentially, the dream was about me being teamed with a strange girl -- and us fighting that criminal. The best part was that people kept calling me a 'robot.' Would you believe that, dad? They kept saying that I was a... robot!" Vicki then gave several measured spates of laughter, and Ted "laughed" as well. Vicki stopped laughing, sharply. She's still having problems with timing, still a bit too measured with some behaviors, along with this latest problem, thought Ted. He readjusted his grip on the remote, looking nervously at the television every so often. "Okay, so I'm going to the library today, dad. Is Jamie going to come with me this time?" voiced Vicki. Ted gave a quick answer, enough to get her to head for the door. "Oh, go ahead!" He flashed a smile. "If Jamie gets back home, I'll send him there. But in the meanwhile, just go there and have fun!" Vicki smiled, pivoted completely and sharply around, then went to the door. Ted manipulated the black remote. He removed the battery cover... As Vicki reached for the door, Ted pointed the remote at Vicki. He then pressed the small button that was hidden within the remote. Vicki stopped stiffly; her personality emulation went on standby; Ted's remote commanded Vicki to do that. "WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS?" asked Vicki in a monotone, no simulated emotion at all. Ted frowned, not liking to do this. "Vicki, go to the work room and await reconfiguration." Vicki confirmed: "AWAIT RECONFIGURATION." The teenage gynoid then walked carefully up the stairs and to the end of the hall, to the room with four computer workstations. Ted Lawson breathed deeply, once. Vicki was not supposed to "dream." If she had any erratic and inexplicable behaviors, he had to reload her personality and previous day's memories. In short, if she showed any rogue and "dangerous" behavior, Vicki's "brain" had to be erased -- and her personality reinstalled. He left the living room. Before going upstairs, he turned off the television. He remained upstairs for such a length of time that the living room soom dimmed with the warm rays of late-afternoon sunshine through curtained windows. Short of Ted's computer-clicking fingers and some far-off sounds outside, there was peace in the living room. Gynoids do not dream. They do not dream of anything, especially cyborgs and time-traveling criminals and ruined futures.
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