Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Six, Part One

 Notes: A little maudlin, a little sad...don't worry, it'll be dangerous again soon ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Six, Part One

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Chapter Six, Part One

 

Blobby liked holding hands. It was with a little sense of relief and a little pang of regret that Kieron realized that it didn’t matter who Blobby was holding hands with, he just wanted to do it.

As soon as they got back to Catie, Elanus made grabby hands from where he was sitting right behind the ramp. “Gimme gimme gimme,” he said. “I want to do some fine-tuning on the particle twist, he ought to be able to make better legs than that.”

“He’s just a baby,” Kieron replied, feeling more than a little protective. “He’ll learn.”

“Yes,” Elanus said patiently…for him at least. “And he’ll learn a lot faster if his nanoparticle linkages twist the right way so he doesn’t have to strain to get them to fit together. I’m not doing this because he’s stupid or inferior or any other reason. It’s not a punishment, Kieron.”

Oh. It was odd to have his own internal reasoning called out with such precision.

“Seriously, give him to me—” Blobby didn’t need to be asked again, though. He stretched a tentacle from Kieron to Elanus and, with a few stumbles, settled into his creator’s lap with a scrunch upward, followed by a relaxed sort of moan. “Hydraulics, really?” Elanus muttered as he began to scan Blobby with a tool he’d cadged from the autodoc. “That’s so retro, why would you even try hydraulics with a closed system like this, what are you—are you trying to eat air or something? Are you picking up bad habits? You don’t need to breathe, Blobby, don’t pick up your daddy’s bad habit of breathing.”

“Humaaans need to breeeeathe, Daddeee!”

“Well bots don’t,” Elanus replied as Catie shut her door behind Kieron. He began to methodically strip out of his EV suit, focusing on every little linkage and trying not to think at all, but it wasn’t working. “We want all the autonomic functions, none of the somatic ones with this little guy. Linkages! You’re cutting-edge carbon-nano technology split with alloys I created just for you, you don’t need hydraulics when you can have these linkages! You—what are you doing?” He raised the tool above his head. “Are you trying to take my scanner? Naughty, this is to be used on you, not by you.”

But Blobby wasn’t trying to take it—all he wanted was a grip around Elanus’s wrist. Once he had it, he let his creator continue. “Seriously? You want to, what, hold on and make sure I don’t mess things up? You want to be the director of the body now, hmm? Somatic nervous system indeed, that’s just not—”

“Daddeee, he just wants to hold your haaand,” Catie said.

“Oh. Well. I guess that’s okay…except this is my dominant hand and I need it to function like a normal engineer, so how about you hold the other one? Yeah, there you go, very good.”

Kieron hung up the last of his suit, then sat down in one of Catie’s chairs. He felt strangely off-kilter, like there was something inside his body that had forgotten how it was meant to fit together. Was this how Blobby felt, when his linkages didn’t mesh? Like there was a hitch in his step, a puncture in his lung, a hole in his brain where crucial information was meant to be?

Why did he feel this way all of a sudden? Kieron reviewed the past few minutes and couldn’t narrow it down to a single trigger that made him become maudlin. Maybe it was because he was in a place where he’d been young, but never really a child, with a bot who was allowed to be more of a baby than he could ever imagine being himself. Maybe it was the way something inside of him longed to take Blobby back and hold him again, to feel simple emotions toward a being who had no preconceived notions of who he was or what he meant to everyone around him. Maybe he was just low on electrolytes and slightly dehydrated and sad and sorry and sick of this goddamn place.

[Kieeeron?]

He switched over to talking through his implant. [Yeah, honey?]

[Are you okaaaay?]

[I…] He wanted to say that he was. He wanted to tell her that there was no reason to worry, that he wasn’t going to be the cause of even more stress for her. He wanted to say that everything was going to be fine and so was he. He wanted to tell her beautiful lies and reassure her that he remembered everything, that he felt so much better, that as soon as the storms were gone they could leave without needing to go anywhere else. But… [I don’t know,] he settled on at last. [I feel a little strange.]

[Sick straaange?]

[I don’t think so.] He’d know if he was really sick…probably. [Just unsettled by everything, I think. It’s very strange for me to be here, and I’m very worried about you and Elanus.]

[We’re okay, Daddeee.] There was a pause, and then she said, [Lizzie is only speaking in binary right now, but she asked me to tell you that she’s going to take care of all the heavy calculations for me.]

[That’s sweet of her.]

[Xilinn and Pol want to knoooow how the trrrip has been so far. Lizzie told them it’s ‘busy.’]

Kieron chuckled a little. [That’s accurate, I guess.]

[She doesn’t waaant them to worry. There’s nothing they can doooo.]

Kieron sighed. He knew how they felt. Being responsible for Blobby had given him, very briefly, a sense of purpose that had centered him. It made him feel needed, necessary in a way that he couldn’t find any reason to feel otherwise lately. With Blobby firmly ensconced in Elanus’s arms, being tinkered with by the inventor himself, Kieron was back to having nothing but useless musing to do. He didn’t like it.

He sighed and patted Catie’s control panel. [How are you doing, honey?]

[I have plenty of reserrrrves, Kieron, I’m fine.]

[That’s my tough girl.]

[I waaant to be tough, just like you.]

He shook his head. [You don’t want to be tough like me.]

[I do, though. You’rrrre so strong. You saved me, and you love us even when we’re diiiifficult, and you came back here even though it hurrrts you.] He gets the mental impression of a shudder. [I neverrr want to go back to Cloverleaf Station.]

[That’s fair, baby.] He can’t imagine it holds good memories for her, all things considered.

[But I would go for youuu.]

Kieron closed his eyes. [I don’t deserve you, Catie.]

[Yessss you do,] she said, quiet but firm. [Um. Do you want to waaatch a ballet? Lizzzzzie and I are putting on a new one. It’s got antiiiigravityyy effects!]

He…thought he remembered liking their ballets. And other performances. Wasn’t there something with pink dinosaurs at one point? Thinking about it made his head hurt, so Kieron just said [Yes, of course,] and let the show play out on the backs of his eyelids.

There were still dinosaurs, only this time, they flew. There was no way he couldn’t clap for that.