Binary Seven #2

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You know what, screw it.  Cutting and pasting exactly 2,000 words is a pain.  Here's the next 2,312 words.

(twisted pieces of) metal. 

Botone looked up at Aldon from her position the table.  She lifted up her hand.  Aldon looked at it.  She placed it at her throat and tugged.  Her finger caught a wire.

Aldon gripped her hand. 

“Careful.  You’re not programmed with the knowledge to fix yourself.”  He paused.  “Are you?”

Botone closed her eyes.  She reached down into Aldon’s tool box with her free arm, and lifted it up onto her stomach.  She opened her eyes and surveyed the tools within.  She took out a pair of tweezers and began to pick at the wires in her throat.  Aldon stepped back.  His eyes went wide. 

“You know how to fix yourself?  Are you—“  He bumped up against his bed—“are you an overlord?  Do you have something to do with the overlords?” 

Botone stopped her hand.  Her eyes crinkle at the edges in a fit of laughter.  Sparks jumped out of her open throat.  A crackle sounded.  Botone turned her head to Aldon and smiled.  She held out her tools to Aldon. 

Aldon shook his head. 

“No, if you can do it, do it …”

Botone raised one eyebrow. 

Aldon narrowed his eyes. 

“What are you?  Why do you have the ability to repair yourself?  Why didn’t you do that before?” 

Botone pointed a sharp tool at her throat.  She waved it in front of Aldon.  Aldon nodded. 

“You didn’t have the tools.  That …  that makes sense.”  He put his finger to his chin.  “But why would someone program you to do that …  if it’s illegal … and they didn’t give you the tools to do so ... why would—“

The door to Aldon’s apartment pounded.  Aldon jumped back.  Botone twisted her head towards the door.  Her pupils dilated.  Her face read surprise.  She drove her sharp tool into her throat.  Her hands moved with blurry speed.  She picked up tools and tossed them back to the desk.  Aldon looked between her and the door. 

“What are you doing?  Who’s there?” 

The door pounded again.  Aldon faced it.  He did not expect anyone.  He put his hand against the doorknob.

“Hey!  You!  Let us in!  Or we’ll bust this door down!” 

Aldon gripped the doorknob tight.  He keyed up the monitor beside his door, and looked through an external camera.  Paint covered most of the screen, close up.  A small sliver of light showed three men in black suits at Aldon’s door.  Aldon’s blood went cold.  The union. 

The center man brought out a device the size of his hand.  He pressed it against the door. 

“We warned you!” 

Aldon swept the door open.  The middle man stumbled, past Aldon into his apartment.  The other two men gripped stun batons in their meaty hands.  The middle union thug gave a big grin.  He looked around the room. 

“This is a nice place you got here.  It’s a shame we’ll have to trash it.” 

Aldon stepped back.  He kept his body between the thugs and Botone.  He held out his hands. 

“Guys, guys, you don’t have to be this extreme, I mean—“

The left-most thug slammed his stun baton into Aldon’s stove. The baton flashed white.  The stove smoked.  An explosion thumped on the inside.  The room smelled of burnt meat.  The thug gave a huge grin. 

“Ha, that was fun!  Why don’t we—“

“What is that?” 

The head thug took a quick step back.  His eye widened. 

Aldon glanced behind himself.  Botone stood up in front of the desk, her throat open, one hand inside with a pair of electrostaplers.  Her other hand laid against Aldon’s arm.

The three thugs regained their composure.  Their faces went grim. 

“You know that’s illegal.”

Aldon took a step back.  The center thug lifted up his black doorbuster.

“You know that that’s punishable by death.” 

Aldon took another step backwards.  He reached his arm behind himself, for his soldering iron.  His fingers touched hot metal.  He gripped it.  He kept eye contact with the center thug.  The thug brandished his weapon.  Lightning snapped on its front end.  The thug grinned. 

“You like it?  This thing will bust down any door you use it on, no matter the material.”  His grin grew wider.  “You wouldn’t believe the mess it leaves behind.”   He pointed it at Aldon. 

Botone leaned her head around Aldon’s neck.  Her lips moved, dry air moved through them. 

“Kiss me.” 

Aldon dropped his soldering iron.  The point sizzled his arm.  He leaned back against Botone, against the desk behind her.  The thug stepped closer. 

“That android’s gonna have to go, you know.  If you would kindly step aside—“

Botone twisted Aldon’s body around so that he faced her.  She held him close.  She met his eyes. 

“Kiss me!” 

Her voice gained volume, became lyrical.  The incised skin of her neck melded back together.  She reached her arm around Aldon’s head. 

“Kiss me!” 

A fat, meaty arm grabbed Aldon’s shoulder. 

“What, are you giving your pet robot one last goodbye kiss?  Too bad she’s gonna—“

Aldon kissed Botone. 

Lighting crackled between her lips and his.  The skin around her body shimmered.  Cracks appeared.  Synthrubber tendons pushed up around platsteel bone fibers and mesh metallic muscle.  Botone’s body opened up from the inside out.  Her legs clapped against Aldon’s legs.  They melded around his calves and his thighs until they formed a shiny metal coating, soft artificial skin on the inside and sharp plasteel on the outside.  The rest of Botone’s body followed.  Her eyes moved up to meet Aldon’s, and he saw through a heads-up overlay.  He opened his mouth to breathe, and Botone’s body responded.  Aldon staggered.  His motions pulsed with mechanical power, and he slammed into the thug behind him.  He twisted his body around and brought his arm up to steady himself.  It slammed into his bed and cracked it in half.  It moved through the floor and smashed a hole up to the elbow.  Red outlines surrounded everything.  They flickered, then changed to all colors.  The thugs stayed red.  The room and everything in it outlined blue.  Lines of hyper-quick code scrolled down next to dots that pointed to pieces of equipment.  The thugs’ weapons highlighted green.

The center thug stumbled back onto his tailbone.  He lifted up his arm to shield himself.  His eyes opened with terror. 

“What the hell are you?”

Aldon opened his mouth to speak.  He raised up his hand in an instinctive gesture.  Fire exploded through his limbs.  A mass of energy blasted out from his palm and incinerated its way through the thug, and the rest of the building.  Sparks crackled.  The blowback shot aldon against the far wall of his apartment, through the metal plating inside, through the layers of insulation, and out into the world beyond.  He tumbled.  Adrenaline arced through his bloodstream.  His eyes blurred.  Botone’s face appeared in a thumbnail screen at the edge of Aldon’s vision.  She gave a huge grin. 

“Fly!  Kick out your feet and fly!” 

Aldon kicked out his feet.  Fire coursed through his spine.  His feet exploded with force.  The world twirled around him.  He lifted out his hands for stability.  His twirl slowed.  Skyscrapers rushed past.  Aldon experimented with movement.  Every motion he made translated into an intuitive effect.  He twisted his body up and rocketed into the air.  Botone’s artificial skin pressed into his body around the hinge points of the suit that covered him.  It absorbed the sharp metal and replaced it with sensual feeling.  Aldon kicked out his feet.  He soared over the top of the city.  A blue dot appeared in his vision, on top of a helicopter pad on the side of a space elevator.  Lines of code flew past.  Botone pointed from her thumbnail in the corner of Aldon’s vision. 

“Land there.” 

Aldon swept his feet over and pointed them at the landing pad.  A quad-copter buzzed past underneath.  It veered to the right.  The blast from its rotors caught Aldon from an angle.  He twisted through the air.  His feet pointed up at the sky for a second.  They came back down.  He threw out his arms.  His rotation slowed.  A little triangle icon appeared over Botone’s picture, in the corner of Aldon’s vision. 

“Do you want me to engage in flight-assist?”

Aldon jittered his way down to the landing pad.  His feet connected with the white-painted metal and sounded off two metallic clicks.  The synthetic skin shock absorbers that cradled his body muted the impact of the landing.  Aldon staggered for a few steps, then found his balance.  He held his hands out in front of his vision.  Black plasteel plates surrounded a synthmesh underlay that glowed in the indirect Harunian sunlight with a deep blue tint.  Aldon glanced down at Botnone’s picture. 

“I’m fine.” 

Botone pointed up at the rest of the view screen. 

“You don’t have to look at me.  I can see you fine from there.  Keep your eyes on what’s in front of you.”

“Did I kill him?” 

“Kill who?” 

“The man.  The one I shot with my hand.  Did I kill him?” 

“I don’t know, the energy readings were too bright.  I couldn’t get an organic reading.” 

“The energy readings?  Where he stood a second before the blast hit?” 

“The steel in the floor melted and interfered with my readings.  I’ll have to get them calibrated.” 

“So I killed him.” 

“I can’t say.” 

“He’s dead.  Because of me.”  Aldon lifted his hand up and stared at the palm.  A bright blue circle of light stared back at him.  It pulsed. 

Botone pursed her lips.  A facial recognition program sputtered about Aldon’s view.  Green lines intersected with red, transparent on top of what he saw in front of him.  A yellow icon flashed in the center of his view.  Botone folded her arms. 

“You’re psychologically damaged.  You need some time to recuperate.”

Aldon tossed his arm out to his side. 

“Damaged?  Recuperate?  What the hell are you talking about?  Thirty minutes ago I find you in a dump, and now you make me kill a man?  Maybe more?  Who the hell are you?  What are you—“

Botone’s eyes went wide.  She leaned in close to the screen that pictured her.  Red icons flashed all across Aldon’s view.  Sweat beaded on Botone’s brow. 

“This is bad.  This is very bad.  That’s a lot of hyperspace signatures.  That’s too many for—“

A massive triangle shape shot out of the sky high above the city of New Tokyo and snapped off three space elevators in quick succession.  They ripped away under the force of gravity and smashed down through a row of skyscrapers that stretched across the horizon.  Explosions rippled through the air.  Air raid sirens whirred to life.  The triangle spaceship let loose a thick swarm of circular shapes.  They sprouted wings and took to the air.  Missiles streaked up to meet them.  Explosions rippled.  Jet planes streaked in from outside the city.  The overlord spaceships moved to engage.  Lasers arced from the bottom of the mothership. 

The space elevator that Aldon stood on trembled.  Debris fell down from orbit.  Aldon clenched his fists.  He looked up at the overlord mothership.  He opened up his palm.  He lifted it and pointed it at the ship’s broad underside.  Fire coursed through his veins.

Botone gave a determined grin. 

“You can do it, Aldon!”

Aldon clenched his jaw.  He muttered to himself. 

“Maybe they would have died anyways.” 

A blast of light shot from his arm.  He braced his legs against the floor to catch the blowback.  His arm spurted to the right under the pressure.  The laser arced through the sky.  The bottom of the mothership rippled red.  Debris separated from the wound and crashed down to earth.  The ship lilted.  A swarm of spherical fighters darted towards Aldon.

Botone brought her arm down in a gesture of triumph. 

“It worked!  Go get them!” 

Aldon set fire to his feet and blasted off of the platform.  He gritted his teeth. 

“I’m not a child.” 

He twisted his body around to avoid a burst of lasers.  His body motions translated into complex maneuvers with no effort on his part.  He swung his feet around and flipped sideways.  A spherical spaceship shot past.  Panels of metal resolved, between layers of red lines that pulsed light.  A gun port swiveled around on an axis that surrounded the sphere. 

A red light flashed in the center of Aldon’s view. 

“Clap!”

Aldon clapped.  The gun fired.  A layer of blue energy popped up in front of Aldon.  The lasers billowed into clouds of energy that then dissipated along the curvature of the shield.  Aldon twisted his arm around and shot a blast from his hand cannon.  The spherical fighter exploded.  Bits of metal slammed against the blue energy shield.   Aldon twisted about and headed in the direction of the mothership.  A flight of jet planes sallied up beside him. 

A triangle marker flashed next to Botone’s picture. 

“The commander of D-wing seven wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know!  Tell him that I know as much as he does!”

“You talk to him!  I can’t run another process, you’re taxing me enough with your stupid flight maneuvers!” 

“I told you I was fine!”

“You’re obviously not!” 

Aldon spiraled around a spherical fighter and blasted it out of the sky.  A jet plane burst through the smoke.  The pilot lifted his hand from his joystick to wave at Aldon.  Aldon twisted around. 

“Fine!  Patch me through.”

A picture appeared on the other bottom corner of Aldon’s vision, opposite Botone.  A pilot in a pilot’s mask. 

“Who are you?!” 

Aldon remembered all of the sudden his childhood, the cartoons he liked to watch then.  He remembered the tattoo on Botone’s shoulder.  Binary model 0111.  0111, in binary.  Seven. 

“I’m Binary Seven.”