(no subject)
Jun. 4th, 2013 10:17 amAnd I realized that given Victor's origins, putting him in an Animal Crossing game might have ... implications.
OK. I think I might officially have a problem.
“Excuse me? Doctor?”
He didn't recognize the woman when she came up to him. But she smiled at him, and the lines in her face wrote a tale he couldn't read right away.
She set the child in her arms down on his feet. A small boy, with a mop of curly dark brown hair, looking up at him with wide, astonished eyes. “Show him, Luke,” she said gently.
The boy stepped forward hesitantly, and Insano knelt down to get more on his level. “Hello there, lad!” He blinked in surprise when the boy offered him a piece of thick, off-white paper with both hands. “Oh, what's this?”
It was a picture, drawn in crayon. Insano could make out a building with wobbly lines of windows. It was being lashed by violent tongues of red-orange and canary yellow, and thick, ugly scribbles of black smoke.
But there were two little people moving away from the fire. Smiling. One was a little boy, with a scrawled thatch of brown hair. The other, looping arms longer than he was tall around the child, had a long white coat, and huge glasses with spirals.
The letters were spelled out painstakingly below the picture, in carefully printed purple block letters. THANK YOU DOKOR ISANO
He had trouble talking for a bit. “Is this … for me?” The boy nodded. “Why … thank you very much, Luke. I am quite honored.”
The picture went on the wall of his study. He began to save his news clippings. One morning he entered to find Spoony looking over the scrapbook he was building, puzzled. “You're saving these? I thought you hated this 'Doctor Insano' stuff.”
He smiled. “I'm getting accustomed to it.”
He was sprawled out on the floor, intently looking at glossy pictures of stars and nebulas in a book that was almost as tall as he was. Even though his reading skills were far more advanced than most 3 year olds, he was still usually drawn to picture books. Strasser had tried to take the photo books and atlases that Zero loved to curl up with, with the excuse that they were “stunting” his developing reading skills. Zero had cried, and Tease had given Strasser a proper scolding for getting him all worked up. As she should have; a child with Zero's health conditions couldn't be needlessly stressed.
Cochram didn't understand for the life of her why Dr. Troy Strasser was in such a senior position on this project. It clearly wasn't out of any love for children. She'd asked him before, and he'd brushed her off by saying he was working in a research capacity. Some of us are actually trying to expand human knowledge. You run along and we'll call you when the guinea pig needs a patch job again. Ugh, that man. And he honestly thought he was funny.
Well, she could tolerate Strasser. He seemed content to stay out of her way. And times like this, when Zero wasn't ill or recovering from surgery … they were getting to be pretty nice.
Her mood darkened a bit as she thought back to that last surgery. Zero had been very weak by the time his heart finally gave out, and during the transplant she had been sure, almost completely sure, that he was … but no. He was a fighter. He kept beating the odds.
Zero looked up as Cochram entered the room, and his eyes immediately sparkled. “Cochram!” He stood up and ran to her. “Cochram, I know something!”
“Really! What do you know?”
“It's about the universe! Before the Big Bang happened!” He tugged insistently on the hem of her coat. When she bent down to listen, he cupped his tiny hands to her ear to whisper. “It wasn't there.”
Cochram's eyes widened. “No.” Zero nodded fiercely. “That is amazing, Zero. Where did you learn that?”
She smiled warmly when Zero took her hand to lead her over to his book. Maybe he was going to grow up to be the “paradigm-breaking” genius Strasser claimed, and maybe not. She'd take Zero's new-found knowledge over Strasser's any day.
Guns fully charged. Jetpack fully fueled. Goggles calibrated. Anti-magic drones ready.
Locked on his position. Watching the satellite feed. On the move. Praying he doesn't move first.
Remembering. Joe lying bleeding on the ground. So many other bodies. And he, he didn't … he didn't care. They're nothing, he said, they can't even make moral choices. They're only clones. Under the skin and blood they're soulless. Machines.
The look in his eyes. When I told him what I was. When I told him no.
Remembering. I said I would never shut down again. I said I would never freeze. And I will not. And cannot. Now.
It's time. He's moving. Go. Now.
Go. Move. Move.
The word was the only thing in Zero's mind. It drove back his panic, kept his heart pumping through its exhaustion. If he stopped to think of anything else, he would slow down, and the next bullets would find their mark, and that would be the end of it. He just ran.
He didn't realize anything was wrong until he took his next step and slid, crumpling to the ground. His sore and screaming legs had cried enough for the last time. Every breath sent knives through his veins. His brain struggled. Hypoxemia. Gunned it too hard. Hyperventilating. Must breathe. Please.
He heard the footsteps, and looked up and saw the barrel of the gun. He saw the logo emblazoned on his assassin's uniform, and a hundred childhood memories stirred. The Corporate Commander had found him. So stupid to think he'd given up the search. And the graduation announcements were in the paper, and so were those asinine mocking news posts. Reason after reason for his discovery sailed through his mind. But his body was frozen. Waiting for the end.
His attacker's face was covered with a balaclava and protective goggles. There was no knowing smile, no hard glare of betrayal, no satisfaction at a mission complete, as the man took aim. Simply a machine following orders.
And then, like an avenging angel...
“WOLVERIIIIIIIIINES!”
Zero hadn't even seen Spoony chasing after them, never saw the moment of impact. But his twin was standing over him, and his would-be killer went down with a sickly crack on the concrete floor. Spoony grabbed him and wrenched him up with strength his wiry frame shouldn't have had, and began screaming curses and threats. Zero just watched. His lungs finally started to obey his frantic commands for more oxygen, slower respiration.
Never. I must never shut down like that again.
Well, it was all science, you see. Here, I can even show you some of what I used.
His goggles had a setting that could detect infrared light. They allowed him to see the dangerous flares of heat in the building long before it started giving off smoke, and even before most of the residents knew the danger they were in.
The device mounted on his wrist was a miniaturized force field generator. When the flames shattered one of the windows, and when he heard screams from inside, he'd made a few quick calculations and targeted a sustained field on the fire at the window. With no oxygen, the flames sputtered and died, and the people in the apartment could get to the fire escape outside.
He'd designed and programmed a tool for his own cell phone that could read faint vital signs. It was how he'd known about the large group of people huddled in the basement, and it was simple enough to clear a safe exit path for them with the field generator.
I'm lucky I had the right tools for the job, really. I was only doing what anyone else would do in the same situation.
And when the heat and low batteries finally made the generator sputter and die, with one still small body lying unresponsive in his arms and fire and smoke all around, and he wasn't sure how far into the building he was, or even what madness had driven him to try and and get to that last fading life sign, and he couldn't even breathe or see much less think of a plan...
...well, obviously it was the adrenaline that allowed him to make it through the smoke and heat and collapse in front of the firefighters outside, all with a 30 pound child in his arms. Science again. Hormones were wonderful things.
Hero? Oh, I can't say that. I'm happy I could help, of course.
He still flinched when he saw the headline - “'Doctor Insano' Helps Firefighters Battle East Side Blaze” - but that was the day that things began to change for the better.
He'd never been good about keeping multiple pots on the fire, especially when he was in the final stages of a project and lost in a manic flurry of tinkering. So when he finally finished a project, he would find himself with nothing at all to do but wait for his next royalty check.
He would mope about for a few days. Jot down random notes on scraps of paper all around the house and forget them. Sit over cups of tepid tea for hours, fiddling aimlessly with his hands. Spoony would tell him over and over to take it easy for a day and chill, maybe crack a video game. Of course, he meant well, but he didn't understand. How could he stay cooped up in here when there were so many problems in the world crying out for the balm of science?
Soon enough one such problem would sort itself out of the throng, something would spark his imagination, and he would be back to work, chipper as ever. It was the time preceeding that flash of inspiration that he really couldn't stand. There was nothing that got under his skin worse than restlessness.