003; Sean

r | major character death

[SHIFT complete. Begin Timeline Fragment 004.]

They hadn't seen it coming.

No, he hadn't seen it coming. Junpei noticed, too many seconds too late.

Sigma had kicked Junpei out of his workshop, along with Akane, Eric, and even Diana, as they all had tried to follow him in. He loved Diana, but she couldn't help and was only becoming more upset with each passing moment. Phi stayed, as the only one who could actually offer assistance.

The walls of their home were too thin - his only complaint - so he could hear them trying to calm down Eric. Akane with reason, Diana simply trying to be comforting. He hoped Junpei wasn't raiding the liquor cabinet. A year of sobriety didn't really matter much right now, but he couldn't be mixing alcohol with whatever Diana had given him for the pain from his gunshot wound. Sigma wished they would move farther down the hall, go sit in the living room. Junpei should be lying down, anyway. There was no need for them to be loitering in the kitchen, where he could still make out snippets of Sigma knows what he's doing and they're doing everything they can .

It wasn't going to be enough.

He shook his head as if to dislodge that thought. They could do this. Even if Sean's robotics were far beyond anything Sigma had ever put together, here or in the future. Luna had been version 016; Sean represented something Sigma might achieve at version 030, if he was lucky.

His diagnostic tool was plugged in - base of his neck, hidden by light brown hair - but it wasn't picking up any readings. It just kept prompting him, "Connect device to be scanned now."

Phi smacked the side of Sean's head - a real head now, or a semblance of one, still metal and ABT and circuits, but it looked like she was slapping a child.

Percussive maintenance.

"Why is Junpei so upset?" Phi muttered as she slapped Sean again. Sigma fought back the irritation that made him want to yell at her that she knew damn well why. He had already snapped at Diana and told her to be quiet, before Phi repeated Sigma's instructions to vacate the room, in a much more civil tone.

"Connect device to be scanned now."

The screwdriver slipped from his entirely too-sweaty hand, but he didn't bother fumbling for it on the floor. With fingers that felt like overstuffed sausages, he grasped for the tiny, hot-to-the-point-of-burning-his-skin screw and tried to turn it manually.

"Move." Phi had grabbed another screwdriver and plucked his hands out of the way, zeroing in on the target and removing quickly. He took the opportunity to wipe his palms on his jumpsuit - he hadn't even changed, wearing the same stupid janitor's outfit that he had on Akane's stupid infiltration job - and then pried open the conduit.

And stopped.

"Connect device to be scanned now."

Phi was frozen for only a moment before she punched his arm, although not with anywhere near the force he knew she was capable of.

"Okay, so we replace it. Interchangeable parts, right? Where is it? You know I can't make sense of your old man organization system."

Sigma just shook his head in response. "I can't replace this."

Another punch, harder this time. "What are you talking about?"

"This is his brain , Phi. I ... I wouldn't know how to construct this if I tried."

Hands open, this time, a harsh shove. "You've made GAULEM brains before. Plenty of them."

"Not like this." He stared at what was left of circuits that were usually protected by ABT and a metal frame.

"Connect device to be scanned now."

"You ... you modified him when you downloaded his program! I remember you saying that!"

" No ," he growled. "I modified the program . I didn't make anything but cosmetic physical changes. His CPU is too advanced. I wasn't even entirely sure that downloading him was going to work."

If only they had paid better attention. If only they'd noticed the woman with the gun before Junpei did, if only they'd reacted better when he had cried out a warning.

Phi broke off the flap and before he could warn her, she stuck her hand into neural net. She must have been intending to pull up the damaged parts of the circuitry, but the instant her fingers made contact, she yelped in pain and jerked back.

"Shit! Phi, he's overheating!"

"Why didn't you say something?!"

"I didn't know you were going to do that!"

She glared at him as twisted the knob on the work sink's faucet.

"Run water over it, but don't -"

"Nothing came off." She turned her wrist so he could see. The tips of her fingers were bright red, but none of ... of Sean ... had come away and adhered to her skin. He couldn't even remember what the melting point of silicon was, or if the Leidenfrost effect applied, or why that wasn't really the right phenomenon to be thinking about, even as he scoured his mind for anything - anything - from his classes or his time on the Moon that might help him.

"Connect device to be scanned now."

"God, shut up !" He ripped the diagnostic scanner out and threw it across the room, hearing it clatter to the floor in pieces.

"Okay. We'll just download him again," Phi said, a tinge of panic in her voice as she began pacing. "You can download him into one of your GAULEM brains, can't you?"

Wearily, he slumped against the wall and slid down until he was sitting. "We destroyed Delta's computer, remember?"

"I know ! I don't mean from there. You have a backup somewhere. You have to have a backup somewhere. You have three separate backups for your thesis, for fuck's sake."

"He didn't want a backup."

She stopped so suddenly her shoes squeaked against the tile. "You ... what are you talking about?"

"He wanted to be as normal as possible. Wanted to be able to eat. Give the illusion of breathing. Get tired and fall asleep. And when his body had reached a normal human lifespan, he wanted to just ... stop."

Sigma had given it all to him. Sean could consume small amounts of food, which would be stored in a tank to be disposed of later. Somewhat wasteful, but necessary with him attending school. His chest was wired to rise and fall. After 16 hours of continuous runtime, his body would start to enter hibernation mode.

And now, by honoring his wishes and keeping the only copy of the programming that really was Sean inside his GAULEM body, by not paying enough attention when they were on Akane's stupid infiltration mission, he had given him the death Sean had asked for. Just at least 90 years too early.

She came towards him and he expected ... he didn't know what he expected. That she would try to haul up his 188-pound frame, slam him against the wall. Something. But she just joined him on the floor.

"That couldn't have been a regular bullet," she said after a while.

He shook his head. "It set off some kind of exothermic reaction in him. If we did an ... an autopsy, my guess is his whole head is one molten mess."

"Doesn't he have ventilation systems?"

"For the normal heat produced by computers. Not ... not whatever that was."

"But ... the gun I took off the other guard ... that fired regular bullets. The wound in Junpei's arm was from a regular bullet. This..." She gestured to the bandage around her calf. "... that was from a regular bullet."

"They knew we were coming," he said, his voice hollow. "They knew we needed Sean to get into the computer, and they knew normal bullets would only stop him if they got a headshot. Even then ... he could have kept functioning with damage to certain areas of his ... his brain. Whatever they shot him with ... it's melting him down from the inside."

"So we didn't get the records, Sean is dead , and Eric is probably going to snap. Maybe Junpei, too."

"And they know enough about us to know that Sean isn't a real human."

Wasn't.

Wasn't a real human.

Wasn't even a robot anymore, now.

ABT was extremely heat-resistant, but even it was starting to break down with whatever was happening in Sean's body. Like a plastic container left too close to the stove, his chest was warping. The reaction was spreading. They needed to get him out of the house.

Phi seemed to come to the same conclusion. "I'll get Akane. We'll ... I don't know what we'll do, but we'll get him to the backyard, at least."

"I'll do it."

"Sigma -"

Ignoring her protest, he got to his feet and easily swept up the small boy in his arms. The heat coming off him was uncomfortable, but not burning him. Yet. He had no clue how hot it would get.

He exited his workshop and ignored the anxious faces that greeted him. Even Diana's. He couldn't look at her right now. Eric started shouting, but Sigma kept going, fumbling a little with the back door. He walked out into their yard until he was about halfway to the privacy fence, which thankfully kept anyone from seeing him carrying what looked like a dead child. What was a dead child. He laid Sean on the grass.

Even if the reaction was in some kind of thermal runaway state, it would have to end at some point. Sean would cool down enough for some kind of proper burial.

He would wait.

[End Timeline Fragment. SHIFT to 005.]