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Four in the morning is a *special* time of morning. It's special because I'm usually asleep. In fact, all normal people are asleep during this happy, magic hour. Just ask them, they'll tell you.
I think it was when I felt the nudging that I woke up.
"She's *going* to be mad at us."
Hello. Was that some sort of .. robot?
"Nah, Bean's cool about this sort of thing."
A girl. I could tell by her voice. She's a few years younger than me.
"Besides, what choice do we have?"
Another girl. Same age as the first.
"Bean?" whispered the robot. "Beeeaann?"
No, no. It's warm in my bed. Not to mention soft. And sleepy. I want to be *here*, not out there with ... wait ... who were these people?
"Bean! Come on, it's us!" said a girl.
I don't care who you are. It's four in the morning.
"Don't you know who we are?"
I'm tired! I wouldn't recognize my own mother!
About that moment, it occurred to me that robots generally don't live in my room. Playstation sets and Game Boys do, but no one I know is smart enough to build a robot.
Wait. Click.
"Katherine," I growled from beneath my covers, "if that's you, I'm going to choke you."
"You can't choke me, I'm a storybook character."
"You were NEVER IN a book!"
"There was that one --"
"Shut up." I dug my way out from under my sheets. "You're not here. You can't be, you're not real."
"Really?" Katherine sat on the end of my bed. "If we're not real, how are you going to choke us?"
".... I'm tired. I don't have to make any sense." I rubbed my eye. "Speaking of being tired, since I know I'm just imagining you, I'm going to stop imaging you, you're going to go away, and I'm going to go to sleep. Everyone clear?"
"Can't do that," said Susan.
"We're here because we want another story." Katherine saw that I was starting to lean back, and gave my bed a big shake to wake me up again. "Go ahead, go back to sleep. We can stay as long as you like."
"No," I grunted. "That bad."
"Obviously, we're going to need to go to plan B. Blip! Check the bed."
I watched as Katherine started examining my dresser, and Blip dove into my covers. "What are you doing?" Blip bumped me, and I violently pushed him away.
"Searching for blackmail," she chirped.
Why, oh why did I have to make Katherine so evil? Someone tell me that just real quick.
Susan sat on my bed, taking Katherine's place. I need a sofa. "Look here," she said, grabbing my arm and pulling my sleepy carcass toward her, "I know you. You've been bothered by the idea, *haven't you*?" I stared. I would have had a reaction if I had the energy. "You're either going to write out this idea that's just tickling you, or you're going to go nuts."
"Too late!" shouted Blip from under my covers. I gave that soda can another good hard thwap.
Katherine pulled something from my bookshelf. "Heeeey! What's this?"
"It's a journal," I said.
"Ooo! Heh-loooo...." She opened it, and turned a few pages. "What's this? 'Today, while I was plucking my G string, Stewart came over ...'"
"The G string of my *bass*, you pervert." Katherine stared at me, blank. Yeah, she wouldn't have a deep understanding of the arts. "Bass. Stringed instrument. Biiiig wooden thing that plays low notes."
"Sure, whatever you want to believe. Hey, there's something in here about inserting a patch cord with a male jack into a female jack on a ... " she turned the page, " ... oh, a bass guitar. Wow, bass playing sure is dirty."
"Right, whatever." I turned back to Susan. "Look, you've had two stories. That's plenty. The Original and Before the Beginning is all you're getting."
"But I see it in you!" Susan was almost pleading at this point. Any minute she was going to tell me that she was my father, and that I had the Force. You know what? My swartz may even be as big as hers. "You *want* to give us another story."
"Not at four in the morning, I don't."
"Let this be the beginning of the trilogy! This moment, right now."
"Ha! No! No way. I am *not* being in a HoloDeck story."
"Homer was in the Odyssey."
"What, 'sing in me muse and through me tell the story'? That doesn't count!"
"Wait, Susan, I found something."
Susan shut up, and the two of us turned to Katherine. "Look, look at this entry ... 'I ended HoloDeck today ... but I wonder, does it need to end forever? There's a lot more I can do with each character. I have plenty of ideas ... I don't want this thing I've got going to die! But I'm tired, for now. Let me rest.'"
"I *am* tired, and if you'd *let me rest*..."
"Bean," Susan said, in her 'you're lying and I know it' tone. I shouldn't have given her that tone.
"It's four..."
"Bean..."
"I have to get up early tomorrow..."
"BEAN..."
"What's this?"
That last one was Blip. I heard the jets on his hover skirt fire up, and he pushed something out of my bed. It fell to the ground like a dead body. Blip came out of my bed too, hovering over it.
"That's an old Mickey Mouse doll," said Katherine. She picked it up. "Look at this thing. It's ancient." She took a moment to examine it. "And there's teeth marks on the nose ... it's still wet! Ick!"
Susan laughed. "You have a comfort toy? My goodness, do you have a security blanket, too?"
"Shut up, give me back Mickey, and let me sleep."
"Ha! Nooooo way," Katherine taunted. "Give us a story, or all of AGC is going to know that someone has to have a pacifier to go to bed with."
"You wouldn't dare..."
Katherine looked me square in the eye. "You made me. Now, tell me, would I?"
.... you know what? She would.
"So, do we get a story?" asked Blip.
"Fine. You get a story. Go away."
"Woo hoo!" The three cheered ...
... and faded. Thank God.
So, that's why I'm sitting here, typing out this story. Either I give my original trio something to do, or the whole creatures community ...
.... waaaait a second ...
That little twit Katherine! She tricked me, I know she did! *Oh!* So help me, I'll get her!
I'll get her, and her little robot, too!
-----
Milo Riggs walked through his (new) neighborhood. The weather was nice, so he thought he might as well. He stopped under a tree to admire the leaves dancing in the wind, but the sun caught his eye. He shielded his face, and walked on.
He walked for a bit, actually. All the way to his cousin Katherine's house. There was a project he was trying to complete, and meant to ask her something about it. Katherine was really good at building machines and sciencey stuff and the like. She was also good at making things explode, but Milo tended to ignore that.
Milo opened the gate to Katherine's back yard, and let himself in. As he was fiddling with the latch, he saw his dear cousin in the yard, digging a hole. Sometimes she liked to do that. It's a very odd hobby, Milo thought, but I guess you gotta do something.
"Hey, Katherine?" He looked down in the hole. Katherine was completely muddy from head to toe. It was hard to tell just exactly which body part was which, actually. Everything was brown. "Can I ask you about this blueprint I made?"
"Can it wait?" She didn't even look up.
"I guess ... why?"
"I'm busy." Her tone ... that didn't actually sound right, for Katherine. And besides...
"Katherine, this is a blueprint. You like blueprints."
"Not right now I don't."
Milo looked around and noticed the absence of Katherine's little yellow pal, Blip. Blip was a small robot that Katherine had built a long time ago, and literally refused to leave her side. The thing embodied loyalty. "Where's Blip?"
"Away."
"Huh?"
"He's *away,* Milo. Okay? He's *away.*"
"But Blip --"
"He's away, like you should be."
Whoa! That's not right.
Milo stepped back from Katherine and her hole. Something was very disturbing about this whole thing. Maybe he could go ask her dad or something ...
There was a tiny knock on the door. Milo turned around to see a little bitty horse norn standing there, motioning him inside. "I'm going to go ... in," Milo called to Katherine.
"Knock yourself out."
He did. He went in, not knocked himself out.
"Hey, Lydia," he said to the norn. "What's going on?"
"Shhh! I'm not supposed to be here!" she whispered. "You can't tell Katherine."
"Huh? You norns are always running around through her house."
"Not any more. Something weird happened."
"Then how did --"
"Katherine left us in a Wolfing run, and Dad and I found the HoloDeck in Albia." Dad. She must mean Karr. "He sent me to find someone." Lydia looked Milo up and down. "I really expected Susan, but you're going to have to do." Susan. Katherine's best friend, right? Wait, her best human friend. "Come with me," said Lydia, as she led Milo upstairs.
She led Milo up a second set of stairs, too, a set he'd never seen. "Katherine called this place something funny, something I'd never heard before," as she opened a door and let Milo in. "But it's all dusty in here and there's lots of spiders."
"This is called an attic. It's where humans keep old things."
"Really?" Lydia brushed a cobweb off of her, and ran over to a table. "Are these boxes old?"
Milo followed, and looked at the boxes on the table. There were two of them, both shoe boxes. One was tied shut with a red ribbon, and another with yellow. "What are these?"
"I don't know, no one ever told us. The red one was here before, but Katherine just put the yellow one here. Then she stopped acting like Katherine."
"Did you ever open them?"
" ... no. Katherine made us go back to Albia real quick after she made that box. We never got the chance."
"How long have you been in Albia?"
"We can't tell. Time passes so differently..."
Milo thought about all of this for a minute. None of this made any sense.
Unless ...
He took the box with the yellow ribbon off the table, and laid it on the floor so Lydia could see. Then he opened the box.
If you didn't know what you were looking at, you would have thought it was a mess. There were gizmos and gadgets and whatnots and whathaveyous. Milo recognized a hard drive, though, a small one. Several ports for things like computer links and AC adapters, small speakers, and ...
Hello! Look at these burnt circuits!
"We're looking at Blip," he said.
"What?" squealed Lydia. Then she thought about that. "Eeew, those are his guts."
"See, look, it's Blip all right. Here's some jets from his hover skirt. These burnt circuits are from the time he had that fire rocket lodged in him. All these hook ups are the same kind Blip had. And these ... " Milo held two green Christmas lights in his hand. "You remember those two green dots on his screen that looked like eyes? Well, here they are. These are Blip's 'eyes'."
"Eeewww, eyeballs!"
"But how'd this happen to Blip?"
"I don't know." There was a heavy pause. "Milo...? Is Blip ... dead?"
"Sort of. But he doesn't look damaged that badly ... maybe ..."
Milo choked on that thought. Rebuild Blip? That's the most insane thing ever thought. Blip was more complicated than ... than anything, really. It had taken years to get him to the level of sophistication that he was already at. Blip was ... Blip, and it was absolutely nuts to think that little bitty Milo, of all people, could fix the complex computing machine of ... *Blip.*
But Katherine did it once! screamed a voice inside of him. It's possible!
You idiot, said a second voice, that was *Katherine*. Katherine knows Blip inside out. She could fix Blip in her sleep. She *created* Blip.
So? Just because Bill Gates created Windows, does that mean he's the only person who can fix it when it crashes?
Think about that, fool. Has anyone ever really fixed Windows?
Right, bad example, but we gotta try! I mean, he's pretty whole and stuff. It's just a matter of fitting pieces together and rewiring him.
But what a rewiring job! There's got to be a zillion little wires to connect. And how are we going to know what goes where?
"I'll figure it out!" shouted Milo. "Just shut up, already!"
"Excuse me?"
Milo looked at Lydia. "I didn't mean ... look, I'll need help, but I might be able to fix Blip."
"I'll help!"
"What, you? I was thinking more along the lines of --" Then he realized that there probably wasn't anyone who could help him besides ... okay, Katherine was out of the question. "You're fine. Let's go."
-----
A lot of people don't know that Milo has a lab, too. A lot of people also don't know that it's in the garage, which is a big improvement over where it used to be (the barn).
Milo and Lydia brought Blip's remains to the garage/lab, and sat them on his table. That was about the time his bigger, meaner, older sister Kayla came in. "Hey, squirt," she said, "you got another frog in the box?"
"I told you, this is a restricted area!"
"Who do you think you are, Katherine?" Kayla laughed. "Let me see your frog there, brother."
"Moooooom!" Milo shouted, as Lydia hid behind his leg. "Kayla's in my restricted area!"
"Kayla? Leave your brother alone!"
"Mooooom, he's got a frog!"
"Milo? No more frogs in the house!"
"Mooooom, it's not a frog!"
"Then what is it?" hissed Kayla, as she tore the lid off the box. She picked up a circuit board, and looked it over. "What, a digital frog?"
"Mooooom! Kayla's messing with my stuff!"
"Kayla, stop it, okay, honey? I don't want to hear any more out of either of you!"
Kayla dropped the circuit board, and Milo winced as he heard it land. "You got lucky, this time. There'd better not be any frogs in there." She left, and Lydia ran out from her hiding spot.
"You don't think she saw me, do you?"
"She didn't. Otherwise, she'd tell Mom." Milo picked up the circuit board. "I hope this wasn't anything important."
"It didn't hurt Blip, did it?"
"It's going to be hard to hurt Blip, and Kayla's really not smart enough to do it. Do you see this part?" Milo held up Blip's hard drive. "This is everything Blip knows and remembers. This other stuff lets Blip interact with us, but right here -- this part is Blip in itself."
"Don't hurt it."
"I won't."
So. They worked. And worked. And stopped for a snack, during which Kayla and Milo got in a fight over frogs again. Then they worked some more. Actually, they worked over the course of a few days, but eventually ...
-----
.... huh?
What's this? What's this I feel? It ... it doesn't compute.
No, I'm sorry. I don't understand, that's what I meant to say.
Something doesn't feel right. My circuits ... they're wired together funny. The wires feel new. I don't think some of them are in the same place.
Katherine? What have you done to me?
What am I doing? There's scripts activating, scripts that haven't activated for a long, long time. What are they doing?
They're checking my systems? Why...?
Wait a second! I'm starting up!
I'm not supposed to start up, I'm supposed to be kept on all the time!
What in the name of ...
I can feel the scripts checking everything, one by one. Some of them are returning error messages, yes, but I don't see anything that's going to cripple me.
Did Katherine rewire me? Why did she do that? Katherine wouldn't rewire me wrong. It doesn't ... I'm confused.
Let's see. My energy systems are being checked now. My battery's working, but I'm low on charge. I need to be plugged in, but where's my AC adapter? I'll need to ask Katherine.
Next comes my hover skirt. Something's wrong with the turning mechanism. I'm not going to be able to make any sharp left turns, but I think I'll be okay. I doubt I'll be in any danger.
Hard drive. Check. It's ... it's not in its right place, but I think I can knock it over a few centimeters myself by bumping into something for a while.
Thinking and emotion systems. Well, duh, those are on. The scripts are anal, though, they have to check everything.
Ports. AC Port is fine. Computer link is fine. Medical link is fine, but I wish it wasn't. If that was broken, maybe I wouldn't have to monitor the norns. Disk drive is broken badly by ... water damage? Weird.
Now they're going to my sound system. I hope it's still there. Katherine threatens to take it out every once and a while.
Whew, it is. On to sensors ... they're there.
Before I can feel any other system get checked, my speakers turned on.
"I am Blip," I said. I didn't mean to. It's the scripts, I tell you! They make me say this every start up! "a fully functional robot and an ongoing experiment in artificial intelligence."
Isn't that odd? I don't *feel* artificially intelligent. I always figured I was smart for real.
"I am very sensitive to stimulus and do not take well to over stimulation."
I think that means I spook easily. I need to ask Katherine about that.
"I am very reliant on my owner ..."
Owned. Ick. And reliant? Ick. I guess I can't help it, though...
" ... and need to be returned to her immediately, if not sooner. Otherwise, I may become damaged, confused, or otherwise hurt."
What, does Katherine think I'm a little boy? I'm not! I don't even have a gender!
"Please return me to Katherine Riggs at ... " I said her address. Katherine once told me that she put this script in, just in case I was ever hurt and someone found me AND was able to start me up. Fat chance.
I felt my light sensors warm up. Good, I want to see Katherine. I want to know what's going on.
They came on, and ...
"Katherine?" I whispered. "Katherine ... you're not ..." ... my charge is fading .... " ... plug me in. My battery's low."
"Right," said the boy in front of me. He moved behind me, and I felt myself being plugged in. Whew.
"Milo? Milo, is that you?"
"Yeah, Blip, it's me. Good to see you operational."
I looked around. This is not Katherine's lab! This is a garage! Katherine's Lab has all sorts of technical stuff and beakers and wires and ... this is Milo's garage!
"Where's Katherine? I want to see Katherine!"
I tried to hover, but I couldn't get up any farther then an inch. I felt a paw on my outer casing. A norn? In Milo's garage?
What sort of apocalyptic world am I in!?
"Shh! Calm down," said the norn. Lydia, I remember. It was Lydia. "You don't want to strain yourself."
"But ... Katherine ..."
Milo came around to the front of me again. "I know, I know, you expected Katherine. But she's ... not well."
"What? What happened to Katherine!? What's going ..."
"Calm down, Blip, it was hard enough to repair you. If you blow something, we might not be able to bring you back."
I turned my hover skirt off and looked at them. "But ... come on, stop playing games."
"You were broken pretty badly when we found you, Blip. Do you know how you were broken?"
"I was ... broken?"
"You were in the attic, in a box," said Milo. "Do you know how you got there?"
" ... not really." I'm searching my memory banks ... it's going slowly. I hope I figure out what's going on soon.
"Katherine put you there, and then she put all us norns back in Albia," said Lydia.
"That's not like her."
"We know," said Milo. "She's been acting funny ever since you were gone, apparently."
Okay, *that's* like her.
Waait ... memory banks turning something up ... but it's so vague! All I remember is water ... some heavy weight ... electricity?
"We need to test your memory, Blip. You know, to make sure it's still there."
"I recognized you and Lydia, and where I am. That's enough. Can I see Katherine now?"
"No! Come on, Blip, you need to charge, anyway. Can you tell me what's been going on lately?"
"How ... how lately?"
"A few months after Jenna's death is fine."
My banks ... they can retrieve that.
"I'll try," I said. Anything to get back to Katherine.
So I switched off my sensors and thought reeeal hard....