New Vegas: Sheason's Story - Chapter 100: Picking Their Brains

“A most rapturous good morrow on your return to your domicile, sir,” Jeeves’ accent wafted through the air just as soon as the elevator doors opened to The Sink. The holographic bars above his table were rising and falling as he spoke, causing a vaguely-kaleidoscopic light show on the ceiling. “I trust that sirs’ expeditions and explorations of the crater today were most successful?”

“Absolutely, Jeeves,” I said with a smile, Roxie trotting along at my side and Stripe still sitting on my shoulder. “Even picked up a few strays. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Fear not, sir. Even were I to ‘mind,’ as sir is wont to say, the addition of other biological life forms within the confines of The Sink, it is not within my programming to alert sir to such an inconvenience.” It took me a few seconds to work out exactly what Jeeves was trying to say. While I was standing there in front of the circular table, Stripe hopped off my shoulder and started wandering around The Sink, sniffing the air as he went.

“You know, you could have just said ‘No, I don’t mind.’ That probably would’ve been easier.” I said with a chuckle.

“Indeed, sir. But where would we find the fun in that?”

I blinked several times.

“Was… was that a joke?” I asked; before Jeeves had a chance to answer, I just shook my head and pulled out the two boxes I’d picked up in Higgs. “Nevermind. I found these personality chips out in the crater. How do I install them?” As I held them both in my hand, I took another look at them. I hadn’t noticed it in the dim light of the Higgs village buildings, but each box had a small white hexagon printed on the top of the lid.

“Installation of the other personality constructs is very simple, if sir will pardon the pun,” Jeeves said simply, the holographic bars above his table shifting their colors several times before finally settling back on blue. I blinked, thinking about that.

“What pun?” I asked.

“Wasn’t there one?” Jeeves seemed surprised. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir. If sir truly wishes to go through with sirs aim of inflicting upon sirs self the dubious services of the other constructs within this domicile, then sir may find the proper installation slots on this terminal, just below the main Sink Central Intelligence Chip slot.” I looked down, and all I saw below the spot where I’d installed the chip was… blank space. It was just a solid sheet of curved metal.

“Wait, what? But there isn’t-” As I spoke, the metal hissed, and it split apart from a seam that just seemed to materialize. Seriously, it had been completely invisible seconds earlier. Inside, there was a bank of 9 empty slots, just the right size for the chips. With a satisfying click, I slid the two chips into two of the blank spaces near the left side.

The table began to hum, and the holographic bars disappeared; several words appeared in midair, flickering but still legible.

INSTALLING PERSONALITIES:

-BOOK CHUTE

-JUKEBOX

“Book chute?” I asked aloud, reading the holographic words. “What the fuck is a book chute?” As it happens, I got my answer very quickly.

“Ahhhh!” A voice from somewhere in front of me sighed.

“Did someone… who said that?” I followed the noise; it led to a mechanical device on the wall that started to light up as I drew near. It looked like a box with a long thin blue light on top, a few blinking blue buttons (circles and squares) in the middle, and an opening in the bottom with several sharp metal ‘teeth’ around the edge.

“Good day, Citizen!” the machine on the wall said, cheerfully as I approached. “Library Processing Unit 232.7 is on-line and ready eradicate sedition!”

“… eradicate sedition?” I asked. I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d never actually heard that word before.

“Of course, Citizen!” the book chute continued. “That’s my duty and sole joy in life! All those books from before the War, full of seditious, treasonous, and overly-complicated thoughts!” Alright, that clears that – wait, what? “Just dump any pre-war books into my intake slot, and lickety-split I’ll have them pulped, scrubbed clean, and pressed out again! Clean and white and sedition free!”

“Clean and white… wait, hang on. You take books from before the bombs dropped, and make them blank? What’s the point of that?”

“Blank books are better for the mind, Citizen!” This thing’s overly cheerful demeanor was getting slightly disconcerting. “Real science by real men in real lab coats has proved that introducing outside thoughts confuses the brain! Blank books encourage the reader not to question, but to blindly and zealously accept what’s put in front of him!”

I felt my eye twitch.

“Alright, leaving aside the utter insanity of what you just said for a minute,” I said as flatly as I could. “Those books are… there’s knowledge in those books from before the war! Why would you destroy them like that?” The book chute was silent for a few seconds.

“Citizen,” the machine’s voice dropped down into a surprisingly serious tone. “That sounds dangerously seditious. If my re-indoctrination module was installed, I’d take care of that for you. Sadly, that system was cut for budgetary concerns, so you’ll have to perform your own indoctrination. Now, to begin with, you’ll need a cage that can fit over your head and a sack of rats-”

“Ohhhh, give it a rest already, man!” I heard a deep, gravelly, booming voice sound off from the other room. Looking for any excuse to get away from the, frankly, disturbing book chute, I followed the voice until I came across the jukebox in the other room. As the machine spoke, the lights ringing the edge flashed. “You are just way too high strung for this place…”

“What, and you’re not?” I asked, looking at the jukebox. “I can’t imagine anybody being entirely stress-free in this giant bowl of sugar-free insanity.”

“Oh, I’m absolutely a cool cat, daddy-o. Dig? Got nothin’ to prove. Not like that Toaster. Now that boy, he got some issues.”

“Toaster?” I asked softly, thinking back to the toaster I’d found earlier bolted to the table. I shook it off quickly. “Alright, so who are you?”

“The name’s Blind Diode Jefferson, acoustical wizard. What’s the haps?”

“Acoustical wizard? So, what? You play music?” The Jukebox – Jefferson, apparently – just seemed to hum.

“Mmm… Used to. Long time ago. Then Ol’ Doc Mo ripped out my music drives. Stuck in more acoustical processors. Guess you could say I got the blues…” He chuckled softly. “Even if I can’t play them no more.”

“So… what do you do?” As melodic as his deep, gravely voice was to listen to, I was just a little bit tired of getting the run-around.

“Ol Doc Mo used me to prototype his sonic weapon designs. Get me a good sample base to work from, and I can whip up a wave that makes Jericho look like a kazoo.”

“Sonic weapon?” I reached into my duster, and pulled out the sonic projecto gun. “You mean this?”

“Yeahhh… that’s the… hang on.” A light turned on, right in the middle of Jefferson’s front panel, and quickly scanned the weapon in my hands. “It ain’t upgraded yet. It’s still the base model… that’s odd. I thought Ol’ Doc Mo upgraded that thing years ago…”

“So… you can’t do anything then?” I asked, examining the pistol again.

“Well, not yet. I think the schematics are somewhere… ah, damn, where was that again?”

“X-8?” I offered helpfully.

“Yeah, that’s it! The schematics should be somewhere in there. I bet if you ask real nice, one of the Think Tank downstairs can help get that thing back up to scratch. Once you do, bring that old thing on in here, and then bring me some sound samples. I’ll make that baby sing!” He paused, adding with a chuckle: “Or scream, if that’s what you want.”

“Scream, huh?” I asked with a smirk.

“Mmhmm…” Jefferson grunted out slowly. “With all the funky grooves I know how to spin, you can damn well bet that I know how to make the ladies scream.” And then he just started laughing.

“DID YOU RETRIEVE THE TECHNOLOGIES YET?” Klein’s thundering, perpetually booming voice yelled in my face. “WE NEED THEM, AS I HAVE INDICATED.”

“Not all of them yet, but-” Klein cut me off.

“THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE, WITH YOUR PENIS-FEET CONTAMINATING THE THINK TANK? IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THE TECHNOLOGIES, THEN YOU ARE AS USELESS AS YOUR EXTRANEOUS LIMBIC EXTREMITIES!”

“Slow your roll, megaphone,” I said as forcefully as I could. “I’m here because I need to… need to…” I tried reaching into my duster for the sonic projecto gun, but for some reason… as soon as my hand got close to the pistol grip, my whole hand locked up. The joints in my fingers just… they stopped responding, and my joints wouldn’t unlock until I drew my hand away.

That’s odd.

“NEED TO WHAT, LOBOTOMITE? EXPLAIN YOURSELF, AND THEN REMOVE YOURSELF! YOUR CONTINUED PRESENCE IS TAKING OCCAM’S RAZOR TO THE TENUOUSLY THIN THREADS OF MY ALREADY WEARY PATIENCE!”

“I’m trying to grab the projecto gun in my duster,” I said, looking up, a bit confused. “I think I got the upgrade schematics from X-8, but I… I can’t grab the gun. Why can’t I grab the gun?”

“THAT IS A SIDE EFFECT OF THE CEREBRAL SCRUBBING. IT WON’T STOP YOU FROM EXCRETING – OR ASKING QUESTIONS, APPARENTLY. HAVE TO CORRECT THAT NEXT TIME…” Klein hovered around me, talking (yelling) more to himself than to me for a moment, before finally coming back and yelling directly in my face again. “HORMONAL AGGRESSIVE TENDENCIES ARE ACTIVELY SUPPRESSED BY THE PACIFICATION FIELD. AGGRESSION IS A NO-NO, AND NOT PERMITTED IN THE THINK TANK. SHOULD HAVE DONE THE ANTI-AGGRESSION SCRUB WITH THE LAST BATCH.”

“Last batch?” I asked. “What do you mean, last batch?”

“THE LAST BATCH OF VISITORS TO BIG MT, BEFORE YOU ARRIVED.” Klein yelled. “THEY CAUSED A GREAT DEAL OF DAMAGE IN A SHORT TIME. THEY STOLE A GREAT MANY SECRETS AND MUCH TECHNOLOGY. IMPERTINENT.” Klein paused. “ONE OF THEM ALSO BROKE ONE OF MY TRAINS. I SPENT YEARS PERFECTING THE DETAILS OF THAT ATOMIC POWERED 1:1 SCALE MODEL RAILWAY!”

“These other visitors… who were they?” I had a sneaking suspicion I already knew… but I had to ask. I had to get some kind of conformation.

“DOCTOR 8 AND DOCTOR O COULD TELL YOU MORE,” Klein bellowed. “DOCTOR O MORE THAN 8. THE BATTLE AGAINST THE VISITORS DAMAGED 8’S VOICE MODULE. SUFFICE TO SAY, THOSE VISITORS ARE UNWELCOME. NOW, IF THAT WILL BE ALL, REMOVE YOUR OOZING, GLANDULAR PRESENCE FROM THE THINK TANK! THERE IS SCIENCE TO BE DONE, AND YOU ARE INTERRUPTING MATTERS MOST SCIENTIFIC AND BEYOND YOUR PRIMITIVE LOBOTOMITE LACK-OF-COMPREHENSION!”

“Fine, whatever, look -” I opened up my duster to show Klein the makeshift holster for the sonic. “How do I get this damn thing out of the holster without the pacification field kicking in?”

“HAVE YOU TRIED TURNING IT OFF AND ON AGAIN?” Klein yelled unhelpfully. I buried my free hand in my face.

“Forget it, I’ll figure it out on my own…” I sighed and walked away, intent on speaking with any other member of the Think Tank who wasn’t going to shatter my eardrums.

“YES. A MOST GOOD-BYE.”

“Hey… uh…” I walked up to the Think Tank with the dull burnt-orange bio gel in his tank. “Doctor 8, right?” The brain-tank-scientist-robot turned around in midair, looking at me… and then he let out that same static that I’d heard before.

**[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ * $ ( ^ = ) # ]**!

“Uh… right.” I cleared my throat, still a bit perturbed that I could somehow ‘see’ the characters he was spewing in my head. “Can you speak? Do you… I mean, can you understand me?”

**[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ * $ ( ^ = ) # ]**!

“Your voice module got damaged,” I said, going out on a limb. “I heard from Klein. But you can still understand me, right?”

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Is… is that yes?” I asked. “A no? Or… a yes-no?” I smiled, chuckling weakly. There was something… I don’t know how to explain it, but somehow… the more I was talking with him, the more…

**[ $ – – – – – – $ ]**.

“So… is it alright if I ask you some questions?” Dumbass, you’re already asking him questions. You’re asking a question just asking him a question.

**[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ $ – – – – – – $ ]**.

“Not… sure. What you meant.” I said, being honest. But still… there was something…

**[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ $ – – – – – – $ ]**.

“Alright…” I said, recognizing the same series of characters again. “So, here’s one: What can you tell me about the attack that ruined your voicebox?”

**[ # – ! ! ! ! – # ]**! **[ # – ? ? ? ? – # ]**! **[ # – ! ! ! ! – # ]**!

“Alright, alright!” I said, holding my hands in a disarming gesture; at the mention of the attack, 8 started shaking in midair like crazy, and the static… characters… got more frantic. Somehow. I guess that was the wrong thing to say. “I’m sorry, just calm down. I didn’t mean to alarm you.”

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Hang on,” I said, looking closer at the tank suspended in the bio gel. “I swear your brain… tank… thing… I think it sparked.” And then… somehow… it all came together.

**[ # – ? ? ? ? – # ]**! **[ # – ! ! ! ! – # ]**!

“Wait a minute… that’s…” I paused, going over the images broadcast in my head again. “You’re emitting characters in patterns of 8, aren’t you? They’re… bracketed patterns of 8 characters, with tonal adjustment at the ends.”

How did I know that?

**[ # – ? ? ? ? – # ]**! **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Well, I just heard the rhythm in the sequence is all,” I said with a smile and a shrug, almost answering my own question. Honestly, I wasn’t sure – but it sounded right, at any rate. “I probably should put it to use counting cards when” if “I get back to Vegas.”

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Well, yeah,” I nodded. “I mean, the code has got some problems. I’m not arguing that.”

**[ # – * $ $ * – # ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“So… oh, I think I get it now. Your broadcast pattern is RobCo termlink code, but not by choice…”

**[ = $ + _ – – * ]**? **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ $ – – – – – – $ ]**.

“But if that’s RobCo termlink protocol… doesn’t that mean it can be hacked?” I asked, thinking about all the many, many, many times I had to sift through RobCo termlink garbage to hack into a terminal.

**[ # – ? ? ? ? – # ]**! **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Hey, c’mon, don’t worry,” I said, trying to ease the obviously nervous brain-bot. “I’m not going to take advantage of the exposed code. I’m not that kind of guy.”

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**…

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“It’s not a problem, man,” I said with a nod. “I know what it’s like to be experimented on.”

**[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ # – ! ! ! ! – # ]**!

“Well, alright… now that we know each other a little bit better,” I grabbed the edge of my duster and showed 8 the sonic device in the makeshift holster. “Maybe you can help me out with this? I think I got the upgrade schematics from X-8, but I’m not sure they’re installed… I’d like to be sure this thing can take out forcefields next time I head out into the crater.”

Suddenly, a small beam of burnt-orange light began projecting from the front of the brain bot; I felt a strange tingling sensation, and the sonic gun was lifted out of the holster and held aloft in a tiny tractor beam. Several pulses of thin blue light bounced back and forth between the sonic and 8, suspended in midair by the larger shaft of orange light.

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

**[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

“Well, ‘projecto’ is kind of evident,” I said, commenting on his explanation of the device as he worked to upgrade it. And, apparently, what Rox had found in Gabe’s lair wasn’t the upgrade – the upgrade schematics were transmitted directly to the Think Tank as soon as I finished the High School test. Gabe’s bark was one of the audio sample bases that I could take to Blind Diode Jefferson upstairs.

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

**[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**. **[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

**[ * . . . . . . . ]**… **[ $ ( ( * & ^ # % ]**.

Man… so much information contained in so few characters… I was having a hard time grasping just how I could understand all this. But I could. And it was weird.

Well, now that the sonic was upgraded and I could (in theory) disable force fields, I didn’t really have any need to stay down here with the other floating, talking tin cans.

But… I dunno. 8 seemed all right. Maybe it’s just Klein who’s the asshole. So, I decided to give it a chance, and wandered over to the floating brain bot with green bio gel: Borous.

“Hello, Lobotomite!” Borous said as I got close. He floated around me, extending his eye and mouth monitors in odd directions in front of me. “Good work retrieving the schematics from X-8. And for putting down Gabe!”

“Wait, what?” I seemed a bit taken aback. “You’re glad I killed your dog?” Granted, I’m not sure that giant Frankenstein monster of metal and fur could’ve really been called a dog anymore… but Borous just nodded his tank.

“He was a scamp, but really… his highly-augmented combat programming could have proved meddlesome. In any event… thank you for putting him down. One LESS test subject to catalogue and sort – clearly a FAILURE of doggie cybo-engineering…” Borous seemed a bit less histrionic than he’d been before. And that’s when I remembered:

“Hey, you know… I found this in Higgs village,” I said as I reached behind me, pulling out the dented plastic dish. “This is Gabe’s bowl, isn’t it?” Borous froze in midair, his two eye-screens locked on the lump of plastic in my hand.

“WHAT?!” Suddenly, a green beam was emitted from Borous, much the same as when 8 took the sonic from my hands. The plastic bowl was lifted up in the air and Borous stared at it for a few seconds before speaking again. “Why… yes. Yes, it is. I used to leave it outside his dog house, chock-full of chems. Before the cybernetic modifications, of course. And…” He paused. “No matter how chemmed the food, he would always eat it. And his tail, his tail would wag… even… even while I… I…” Borous stopped again, simply staring at the dish for a few seconds. He cleared his throat and turned back to me, lowering the bowl but still keeping it suspended in the tractor beam. ” I am having the most perplexing feeling squiggling through my biogel. I can’t quite… pin it down…”

“You know,” I approached Borous with a smile, intent on putting a hand on his shoulder – and then I remembered that he doesn’t have any. So I settled with patting the top edge of the closest eye-screen in a (hopefully) comforting gesture. “Sounds to me like Gabe really loved you.” Borous didn’t move. He just lifted up the bowl again with the tractor beam, and kept staring at it.

“Why… yes.” He sighed. “Gabe. No matter how awful my day had been, he… he was always waiting there.” He paused again. “How odd. My gel is de-coagulating.” He floated back away from me, the eye and mouth screens retreating inward, and the hovering bowl following. “And when I would talk to him about Betsy – and how Marcus would beat on me and call me Smarty Sissy Pants, he’d just sit there, head on my knee. And…” He stopped retreating, and turned back to me. “If you don’t mind, I’ll… I’ll just take this bowl. I just… need to remove it. Put it away. Somewhere out of radar range. For some reason, its similarity to the Crater-shape of Big MT is starting to fill up all available cognitive spaces. That, combined with my own overwhelming feeling of having done something terrible… the two are hitting me with… unexpected force.”

“Hey, it was yours in the first place,” I said with a shrug and a nod. “Sounds to me like you hurt someone who loved you very much.” Borous looked at the bowl in his tractor beam, and then back at me, hovering up above me slightly – not because I thought he wanted to be above me, but because he’d already backed up into the wall.

“As odd as it is, I believe that is the conclusion. And… I wonder why it didn’t hit me before, until I saw that memory in your hands?” Borous floated back down, finally setting the bowl on a nearby table, and deactivating the tractor beam. “This sensation is unpleasant. I don’t care for it.” He started hovering around me, his screens slowly and subtly shaking. “I don’t care for this place, either. And… I feel… as if we’ve forgotten something…”

“Forgotten?” I asked, a bit more curious now.

“Still… it…” Borous didn’t seem to be talking to me anymore. “It is NO MATTER.” Ah yes, there’s the histrionic Borous I’d seen earlier. “Crush the feeling down. Crush it down, push it into the loop, the… hmmmm.” The brain bot spun in midair and turned back to me. “YES. Forgotten. Almost. Yes? I do not need to remember ANY MORE. Not today.” Borous nodded at me, and then hovered past me and up into the rafters; up and out of sight.

“Not today…” I barely heard before he disappeared completely.

“Breaking News!” Doctor O yelled as soon as I wandered close, without even turning around until he was halfway through speaking. “Talking Lobotomite arrives in Think Tank! Its purpose? Unknown. Undefinable. Its presence here? UNPOSSIBLE!”

“Uh…” I laughed a bit, walking up to the brain bot with dull grey bio gel. “I think you mean ‘impossible,’ not ‘unpossible.’ Unpossible isn’t a word.”

“O REALLY.” Doctor O shoved his two eye monitors up close to me. “Now the Lobotomite is master of the dictionary arts!” He started spinning around in place, still ranting and raving. “What, do you have a doctorate in verbology? No? I do! And…” When he finally stopped spinning in place, he focused his eye screens directly on my arm. “STOP. THE. PRESSES. Just in from my eye monitors…” He looked up at me, shoving his monitors in my face, causing me to back up. “Is that RobCo tech on your arm?” He looked back down at the Pip Boy. “IT IS!” He looked back up at me. “What’s your agenda, bringing that in here?!”

All that moving about and yelling at me that he was doing was starting to make me dizzy; I shook it off as quickly as I could.

“What’s the big deal? It’s just a Pip Boy.” I looked down at the computer on my arm; for all I’d been through since I got it, it still didn’t look any more or less beat up. How many explosions and gunfights had this (and I) survived?

“What, are you showing off? How great Robert House and his biiiig company are?” He started floating around me, speaking in a fake high-pitched accent. “Oh! We can make Securitrons better than any robot those geniuses at Big MT can make, and they’ll last for a thousand years!” He shook his tank and growled, going back to his normal voice. “Oooh! You’re lucky I don’t have hands to tear that Dip-Boy trash off your arm – or feet to stomp on its stupid metal guts! Ooooh! Damn RobCo!”

“Well,” I said, thinking back to my assault on the Lucky 38’s Penthouse. “Look at it like this. You don’t have to worry about House anymore.” O looked at me, finally settling down a bit, and the eyes on his monitors narrowed at me.

“Worry? About House? Why would I do that? Hope he died alone in a dingy room, streaming his last remaining bodily fluids into jars! Him and his dirty girl-bots! Don’t even get me started on those filthy biological catcher’s mitts!”

“Calm down,” I said; you know, for a crazy, stupid, ancient brain in a jar, he wasn’t far off from what actually happened. “I just wanted to ask you some questions.”

“Fine,” O sighed, and settled into a hover a few feet away from me. “Ask.”

“Well, you know… Been talking with the other members of the Think Tank. At least, I tried to talk to 8 about the attack I keep hearing about, But he… wasn’t really all that helpful.” He looked like he wanted to curl up in a little ball when I mentioned it, I didn’t say.

“Uh… I’m not sure I’ll be much help either. I don’t like to talk about it. It wasn’t all the visitors though – only one of them got out of control. He’s the one that took control of Little Yangtze, our old human farm.”

What.

“Human… farm?” I asked, utterly confused. “What do you mean?”

“This human… I can’t believe it…” O said; I think he didn’t understand the question… “He broke out of the Think Tank. In seconds! Then he went for Yangtze, got the bomb collars, and started practicing on the subjects that were still there until he got the right frequency.”

Elijah. It had to have been that old bastard. While I was thinking, O kept talking.

“We were sending robots to stop him, and he was slicing and cutting through their shells with some souped-up laser gun like they were cheese… paper. When he hacked into the mainframe, 8 tried to stop him and got fried. Me? He rerouted my processors to take control of the train network here. If you see the tunnels with the trains plowed into them, you can thank our visitor for that. He wrecked the whole place. While we were busy trying to keep containment on the surface, he used one of the other trains to punch out a tunnel and escape… it’s sealed now, but…”

“Wait, you said there were others, right? Who were they?”

“Two other human specimens. One arrived not long after the troublemaker… and the last one…” O paused. “Not sure when he showed up. Thought the first one was going to be lobotomized in Y-17, but she got out… somehow.”

Christine. Didn’t she say that she’d been experimented on here in the Big Empty? Note to self: visit Y-17 at some point.

“As for the last subject… Klein might know more. He talked to him, then Klein let the last visitor leave the Think Tank. So you should probably talk to Klein if you’re interested.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass. My eardrums can only handle so much in a day…” I grumbled… but the gears in my head were turning. I was trying to remember what Christine had told me when the two of us talked in Vera’s suite:

“There was someone else who came along. Saved me. Knew about Elijah.”

“What, like another member of the Brotherhood?”

“No. A courier. He called himself a courier, at least. Wore an Old World flag on his back. He was the one who pulled me out of there. Told me where Elijah had gone.”

Elijah… Christine… who was this other guy? I tried to shake it off. I didn’t have enough information to figure it out now, so there was no sense worrying about it. At least, not now.

“Never mind. What about you? What do you do here, anyway?”

“What I do?” O asked me back. “I am responsible for all things robotical. You see a robot? I made it. See a broken robot? I made it that way. Deconstructed it down to parts! I have a gift with machines, you see. I can render anything inoperable – preserve them in a non-functioning state.” I thought about that for a minute.

“That… doesn’t sound all that impressive.” I said. “Breaking machines, that is.”

“Well, who asked you?” O blurted out defensively. “You just wait until a working machine threatens you! O yes, you’ll wish I was around then!”

“Hmm…” I scratched the back of my head, my fingers brushing against the metal studs at the base of my skull. “You know, I’ve got to ask… That name of yours, O… is that your only name? Just a letter?”

“No…” he grumbled. “It wasn’t always ‘O.’ I had to take that one by default because SOMETIMES it’s easier to accept the mistake as long as the purpose works.” He grumbled again. “I don’t want to get into it. It’s a sore topic with me. Makes my gel ripple.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” I asked. “I’m a good listener. Got the ears for it.” I laughed a little, and flicked my earlobes back and forth several times.

“Great. Psychology. Clearly the worst of the Sciences. Right after Colosto-Diarrhetics.” He sighed heavily, and continued. “O-kay, so my name isn’t ‘O.’ Never was. It was circular, a single character, digit, but not ‘O.’ But even with enhanced sensors, not a single one of the ‘geniuses’ here in the Think Tank could get it right! Always kept seeing the letter, not the number.”

It didn’t take me all that long to work that out.

“If they kept confusing the letter with a number, then that means, your name is… Doctor Zero?”

“YES!” Zero yelled, nodding his tank feverishly several times. “Thank you! Zero! I am Zero! How hard is that? A narrow, thin Zero, but no! They always call me O, and never remember when I try and correct them!”

I thought about that for a minute.

“You know, if you wanted to differentiate the “0” and the “O,” why didn’t you just put a slash through the zero?”

“What.” Zero came to a dead stop in midair, letting out the flattest ‘what’ I’d ever heard uttered by anyone.

“Draw a slash through it,” I continued. “I read about that in a science book a couple years back. Programmers would draw a slash through a zero whenever the distinction for the character needed emphasis. I mean, as long as none of the Think Tank are Scandinavian, they shouldn’t confuse it with Ø.” Wait, hang on. How… how did I…

Dead silence reigned between us for several seconds. The gel in Zero’s tank bubbled and the light flickered.

“Did… did I shoot myself with a brainial beam or something?” Zero’s tone of voice made it seem like he thought this was the most brilliant idea he’d ever heard. “That’s brilliant!” He coughed, and tried to compose himself. “I mean… er, I… I would have come to the same conclusion. Eventually… er… O, who am I kidding? I never would have figured that out! I can’t figure anything out! I’m…” Zero let out a wail. “Aighhh! I’m useless!”

“So, is that what you want to be?” I asked, trying to get him to stop feeling sorry for himself. “Zero, I mean. Not useless. You want to be Zero?”

“Exactly! At least the old name was indisputable. O… O is more like… surprise. ‘O, look what I just stepped in!’ you know?” I shrugged, nodding in agreement.

“I do. And personally, I like zero as well. There’s power in zero. It reduces anything multiplied against it – to zero.” I smirked, thinking back to his earlier comment. Kind of like what he does to robots.

“Well, of course it does,” Zero nodded his tank in agreement. “That’s the most lethal of mathematics.” He paused, thinking on that for a seconds. “That’s pretty cool, actually. Destroyer of numbers! I already wreck every robot I study, why can’t I wreck basic arithmetic, too?” He turned back to me, and started ranting – but happily this time, not angrily. “I like your solution, Lobotomite! With that kind of slash in the middle, I can set myself apart! Er… I mean, if I wanted to. The biggest Zero in all the Think Tank! They won’t be able to escape it, that diagonal slash right down the middle!”

“You can take the idea, I’m not using it,” I said with a smirk. Zero nodded again.

“Thanks. Talking to you… it really helped unclog some frustration.” He sighed. “Huh. Talking. What a primitive form of thought-kicking…”

One last brain to talk to: Dala. She turned to me as soon as I got close, and stared at me with eye-screens that looked slightly… larger than any of other members of the Think Tank.

“You are an unusual specimen to so boldly… walk… into the mighty expanse of the Think Tank,” Dala said in a silky sweet (and surprisingly calm sounding) voice. “Fearless and proud as a teddy bear. Between the extraction of their higher reasoning abilities and urination-inducing fear, most Lobotomites dare not approach us. Let alone speak to us.”

“What can I say, I’m special like that,” I smirked. Dala started hovering around me, and I could practically feel her gaze looking me over.

“You have no such fear, facing me, epidermis flushed with blood, plasma running molten beneath, your face contorting with… muscular expression…” Dala came to a halt in front of my face, staring at me with intent and hungry eyes behind those monitors. “Will you… indulge me? Say a… a few words?” She seemed short of breath – which made about as much sense as anything else here. “Please, face toward the monitors, so that I might… record it… for further… examination.”

I raised an eyebrow, and smiled at her again. What to say? I wonder if she wanted me to say anything in particular… And for some reason, I thought back to when Christine had just gotten her voice back in the Sierra Madre…

“The quick Scribe jumped over the lazy Paladin?” I offered up eventually.

“Yes… yes, go on.” Dala said with a slight quiver in her voice. “Seeing your… lips and mouth forming the words… both revolting… and somehow…” She paused. “How does it feel to have the flesh roll around in your mouth like that? To control each muscle… and the… tongue… like having a fish or an extremely dexterous slug, lolling and flopping in one’s… mouthal cavity.”

“Man, I love doctors. They’re so disgustingly clinical,” I said with a laugh… and then an interesting idea popped into my head. Not sure if it was a good idea, but it was almost certainly bound to be a laugh, at any rate. I thought back to Dala’s house in Higgs: the love nest. And here she was, so obviously obsessed with…

“You know… I could be wrong,” I laced my fingers behind my head, and my smile practically spread from ear to ear. “But it seems to me that you have more… biological needs than your counterparts.” Immediately, Dala floated away from me, looking back and forth from her left to her right.

“What?” She said hurriedly. “Nonsense.”

Oh really?

Without saying anything, I closed my eyes, and breathed in obviously and heavily through my nose; I reached high up above my head and stretched.

“Wh- what are you doing?” Dala’s monitors twitched, but she didn’t look away.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could, let out a long, heavy sigh, and ran my hand along the top of my shaved head. I angled my head so she could get the best view of my fingers running along the top of my head.

“St-stop it! Wh- why are you m-making me partake in this… this… this filthy formography?” She still wasn’t looking away; the lights in her tank flickered, and I could see a few bubbles.

I brought up my other hand, and ran my hands alongside both sides of my face as slowly as I could. I inhaled deeply (and loudly), sucking in the air through my teeth, and then letting out a satisfied “Mmmmmm…”

“Enough!” Dala blurted out; a big bubble rumbled through her tank, and the light was shining brightly. “I am already… intrigued. You have sufficiently… percolated me.”

“Got your motor running, huh?” I said with an almost predatory smile. Dala kept staring at me.

“I… don’t know what it is about the biology of Lobotomites. It… it infects my thoughts. All that skin and muscle… and…” Dala angled her eye screens down. “…tissue.” She quickly brought them back up to look at my face.

“You don’t have to feel ashamed,” I said, lacing my fingers behind my head again. “There’s nothing wrong with looking at the human body. I certainly don’t mind you looking.” I grinned again.

“Perhaps… perhaps there is value in what you say.” Dala paused. “I… I did so enjoy breathing once. Long ago.”

“I could come back any time, and just… breathe.” I offered. “If you want.”

Dala was silent for a very long time.

“I… yes.” Dala finally said, her voice dropping down low. “There is… I think there is something you can do. Something more than… breathing. Though that is nice. It’s very… very nice.” The light in her tank flickered and glowed brightly again. “But there is… yes, there is more you can do for me. For Science, I mean. ”

“More than breathing?” I asked. Dala nodded.

“It’s… an experiment. Something that I’ve been… working on…” Dala looked around again. “In my… private labs. Away from the other members of the Think Tank.”

“Private lab?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“What is this place?” I asked, following Dala as we descended deeper through a series of twisting, turning tunnels.

“There are several laboratories beneath the Think Tank Dome,” Dala said, much more confidently now that it was just the two of us. “Each member of the Think Tank has a private laboratory, where private research can be conducted in isolated, controlled, and especially private conditions, away from the other members of the team. Only I can access my private laboratory, just as Klein can only access his, and so on.”

“And there’s an experiment here you want me to help with?” I asked. Dala didn’t say anything, but I could tell that she was nodding, even though she was in front of me, and leading the way.

We finally came to a halt at the end of a long hallway, which ended in a metal bulkhead, and a circular light (glowing purple, obviously) right in the very center. Dala extended a beam of light from her metal chassis, directed right at the purple light; there was a heavy thud, a clunk of metal machinery grinding against more metal, and the door slid into the floor.

“This is a lab?” I asked, stepping into the room behind Dala; the door slid shut behind me. “Doesn’t look like a lab.” One of the walls was lined with shelves upon shelves of holotapes. Teddy bears were scattered all around the room – sitting against the walls, lying against the floor, sitting on top of the furniture… and there was even one sitting on the bed situated right in front of me.

Wait, bed?

“My collection of… ehm, formography – strictly for research purposes, mind you – it… uh, it only goes so far. There is only so much data that can be collected from holotape, or from radar scan. Once I get to a certain point, the data stops being… fresh. So I’ve been trying to perfect a more detailed data collection procedure, but… I…” Dala seemed incredibly nervous. “I’m not sure it works. Completely.”

“Do the other members of the Think Tank know about this?” I asked. I looked back at the wall; the shelves went from the floor to the ceiling, taking up all the available space on the wall, and each one was completely full. If this ‘formography’ was actually what I thought it was, then that was a whole hell of a lot of porn.

“Oh, my word! No! No, no, no, absolutely not! Quite apart from how repugnant I find them all, they don’t believe formography a legitimate field of research, and what’s more, they’re lacking the proper…” Dala looked down again. “…equipment. They would be more useless than normal.”

And that’s when I realized she was looking at my pants.

“So, you need someone with a body?” I think I could see where this was going…

“I have tried to calibrate the… erm… the data collection procedure using normal Lobotomites. However, as their higher functions have been removed, they are completely unsuitable for my needs. They are little more than animalistic lumps of meat, uncoordinated and clumsy.” She paused. “Also messy. The data collected is only marginally more stimu- er… informative than what I can see on holotape.”

“Alright, I sure I can help you out. I can be rather graceful, when I need to be. So, where’s this data collection whatever it is?” I asked, looking around the room. Dala gulped audibly, and the light in her tank flickered.

“It… it’s me.”

The light on Dala’s chassis lit up again, and for a moment, I thought she was going to use the tractor beam for something… but no. The beam widened, appearing very large – almost as large as a person… and then, purple cubes made of solid light materialized in the beam, coming together in a manner which I’d seen before only in the Sierra Madre. The cubes grew together into something solid – a woman. A woman with short, messy hair and wearing a labcoat materialized in front of me, made entirely out of solid purple light.

Okay, I was wrong! This is not what I was expecting at all.

“Is… is this you?” I asked, staring at the hologram standing in front of me. “I mean… is this you from before you… before you…” I couldn’t quite say out loud ‘before you put your brain in a jar.’ Something inside of me told me that would be rude.

“I… I don’t know.” Dala said; when she spoke, the hologram also spoke in time with the brain bot, and I could hear the sound coming from both the robot and the hologram.

“You don’t know?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “How do you not know?”

“I… I think it’s what I used to… but I’m not sure. I’ve forgotten…” Dala paused, and her hologram looked flustered, screwing up her mouth. “I designed this composite facsimile based on fragments of data I recovered over several years. But I couldn’t find enough data to provide a complete picture.”

I hesitated for a moment, trying to process what she’d said… and finally decided not to bring up the whole ‘memory loss’ thing. At least, not right now. Something strange was going on, that much was certain. 8, Borous, Zero, and now Dala… all of them either directly or indirectly mentioned gaps in their memory. Klein was probably the same, but I… wasn’t really interested in talking with him to find out.

“So… you’re telling me that this hologram… collects data?” I finally asked, incredulously. The hologram Dala nodded, and took a step forward; the brain bot followed, keeping it projected.

“The digitally generated surface structure of the hologram can transmit data, in much the same way as a normal radar scan, but provides a much more detailed image. The way it collects data is modeled after a Lobotomite’s nervous system. There are… gaps, I admit. I have not been able to replicate certain biological functions digitally. Smell. Taste. It can’t replicate the sensation of breathing…” Dala advanced on me again.

“What are… what are you…” I began, but trailed off when I realized that the hologram Dala was lifting one of her hands to press it against my cheek. The holographic fingertips that brushed against my face felt smooth and slightly cold – a bit like glass. The Dala hologram closed her eyes and shuddered.

“I have managed to replicate the sensation of… touch.” Her lower lip trembled slightly. “But whenever I try to collect data using a normal Lobotomite, they are… they are too rough. Too clumsy. I can’t calibrate properly in time for the more intense… sensations.”

My smile turned truly predatory, as I finally, really figured out where this was going.

My first thought: This is weird. This is really weird, even for this place. This is one of those things that seems like a good idea at the time, but then you look back and you realize that you only thought it was a good idea because you’ve drunk half a bottle of Absinthe.

My second thought: Oh, what the hell. You only live once, right?

I reached up and touched her cheek, mirroring her gesture. And I gotta say… touching a hologram is the weirdest fucking thing. Seriously, it’s just… yes, it felt like glass. But it moved. It wasn’t rigid and immobile, like you’d expect from something that feels like glass – it had the same kind of give as normal skin. It was just so squishy. And what’s more, as I moved my hand along the holographic surface, I could feel faint tingles and sparks, almost like static electricity arcing into my hand. It was such an alien sensation, and yet…it sent shivers up my spine. I was so fucking confused, because I didn’t understand why I was so turned on, but this was really turning me on.

“So, you need someone who can be gentle?” I said in a husky whisper, slowly snaking a hand around the hologram’s waist, and drawing myself in closer to her. “Someone who can take you through it, show you what feels the best, step… by… step?” I leaned in, and pursed my lips, blowing softly against her neck. The hologram shivered.

“It… it would be… hah… most beneficial – ahn! – f-for… for Science…” Dala bit her lip, and reached behind me with her free hand, pawing feverishly at my back. She took the hand pressed against my cheek and wrapped it around my head, drawing me in closer. I chuckled a little, nibbling softly at her neck; the holographic Dala let out half a gasp, half a moan, and squirmed in my arms.

“Whatever you say, darlin…” I muttered with a smile. “Whatever you say…”