The Solution (Part 1)

Thrusters activated, but faltering. A stagger. The burning was getting worse. He had to get to his room fast, in case his mother was around...

There was still blue light lingering in the sky outside the lab. He looked out the window set in the door to the courtyard. The only light out there was inside the fountain, throwing ripples across the columns on either side of the yard. Two wasn’t there as far as he could tell. Fletcher cracked the door open enough to slip through, hovering as fast as he could manage over the gravel path. It was coming up again... he went faster, though it wrenched at the sharp pain in his middle. The lights weren’t on in the hallway connecting the bedrooms, and the light of dusk left the stone walls the same ambiguous shade of blue as the sky.

Fletcher made it to his room undetected, greeted by the muted murmur of his aquarium’s filter. He bolted the door behind him and darted to his bathroom before he hit the light switch.

He made it just in time. Grabbing onto the rim of the sink, Fletcher stopped suppressing the urge to retch and spit black fluid into the ceramic bowl. The motors in his joints trembled, agitating the flame that licked his insides. He arched his back and squinted his eyeforms shut as a spasm engulfed his entire frame.

When it passed, he leaned his entire weight against the counter, panting, staring into the sink. Questions made his visor cloudy. He needed to do something before anyone found out, but he couldn’t do it himself. Panic drove him and caused him to act before his mind gave consent.

“Q-Quinn...”

“Master Fletcher? Is something wrong?” the system answered.

“Yes. You can’t tell Mom, but I need your help... I... urgh...”

Fletcher had to stop when more black fluid rose into his mouth. Quinn waited until he was finished to continue.

“Master, are you sure you don’t want me to get your mother?”

The young probe shook his head. He needed a few moments to regain his speech. “Please trust me. I need you to put away the materials I was using in the lab... I need it to look like I wasn’t doing anything. And please bring me the lightest inert oil we have... as much as you can without Mom noticing.”

“I apologize, Young Master, but this appears to be serious. Your parents would want to – ”

“No,” Fletcher turned his head to the camera in the ceiling, “I’ll explain when I know that it’s safe, but they can’t know. Please, Quinn. You have to swear you won’t tell them!”

“...Understood.”

Left on his own, Fletcher rid himself of as much of the black liquid as he could. The effort quickly took its toll. His systems weren’t designed to reject such a small amount of fluid – he’d only taken a mouthful – yet every part of him wanted it out of his body. When a few minutes had passed since his last bout of hacking, he turned on the tap, watching it swirl down the drain. By the time he went back to his room, it was even darker outside, but the hall light was on. Golden tendrils snuck through the crack beneath his door. He went to his aquarium and felt along the hood to locate a switch that illuminated the plants, bathing the room in cool, blue-green light. He then pulled out the bottom drawer of his dresser and took a power cell. He was going to need all the energy he could gather.

A soft thump coming from the port in the wall next to his holo-console let him know that Quinn was with him again. He opened the hatch over the port and removed a gallon of oil. Some of it had been used, but enough was left for what he needed.

“Thank you, Quinn,” he hummed.

“Now you must explain what has happened. Those chemicals you were using weren’t your father’s, were they?”

“No. I ordered them for a new project in its early stages of development. I’m formulating a solution that will temporarily dull the senses... or, I’m trying to. I just don’t understand... it shouldn’t have reacted this way. It’s supposed to target major artificial nerve endings, jam their signals for a while, then decompose into substances that dissolve in the lubricant. This that I’ve been expelling... it’s black. It’s a salt, but I don’t know what could have synthesised it!” Fletcher spoke as much to himself as he did to Quinn.

“Master Fletcher, you took those substances in? Even small concentrations of most of those chemicals are capable of causing serious damage to your outer metal, nevertheless your internal systems.”

“I know that. I calculated the metals that make up my alloy down to the hundredth of a percent, and I know how they react with the substances I used. Besides, I didn’t just drink them right out of the bottle! Most of them were reacted to synthesize other products.”

“But it’s obvious that something was dangerous! For your systems to be so disturbed as to reject the fluid is extreme. If you went into the Robotics Lab, they would be able to repair you and tell you what went wrong.”

“Then do you think Mom and Dad would let me continue experimenting? Mom would overreact and panic anyway; I don’t need to put her through that. Dad would be upset for sure... The bottom line is, I know every chemical present and in what quantities. I have all the information I need to solve this for myself.”

“...I will help you, then, Young Master, but if something drastic occurs, you must know that I act with your best interest in mind.”

Fletcher nodded. The pain in his middle was returning. “Thank you. Would you please tell me where Mom is now?”

Quinn went quiet for a minute. Fletcher began to fear that the system had decided to alert his parents despite what he’d said, but they replied soon enough.

“Your mother is outside, gardening,” they reported.

Fletcher sighed and lifted the jug of oil. It was a nice lubricant with a low viscosity, pleasant in small doses. Small doses, however, were not what Fletcher had in mind. He found an empty cup in his bathroom, filling it to the brim with his first of many servings of the clear oil. If he drank enough of it, he would have to reject it, hopefully removing whatever was left of the black product. He grabbed the empty plastic wastebin from next to his bed and sat at the chair in front of his console.

“Quinn, can you bring up my research notes from the lab on this screen?” Fletcher asked.

The system didn’t say anything, but the notes appeared. Fletcher looked over his collection of equations and data, organizing the pages on different windows of the holo-screen so that they were in an order that he understood. He pulled up a blank document and opened his browser when a sharp pang flared inside of him. The probe took his cup of oil and swallowed his first sip.

Every wire in Fletcher’s body ignited, his motors seized and oil slopped out of his cup and onto his shirt. A noise somewhere between a cough and a yell tore from his speakers.

“Master Fletcher?”

His cup tumbled to the floor and he tried to pick up the wastebin, but his trembling hands fumbled it as well. He convulsed and expelled the small amount of liquid that he’d managed to swallow.

“Master Fletcher, what has happened?” Quinn tried to ask again once the fledgling had calmed down.

“I-I don’t know,” he whimpered, “My systems must be trying to fight the relaxant. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold anything down...”

“Now will you ask for professional help?” the system prompted.

“No. I’ll just deal with the burning... it’s not unbearable. I’ll have this figured out before it can do much more damage anyway,” Fletcher assured himself.

Over the next hour, all he did was sort through his research (once he had cleaned the oil from the floor). Occasionally, the burning would act up and he’d try to quench it, but the result was always the same. Sometimes he’d start heaving when there was nothing for him to give up, but through it all, he never gave in. Nothing could stop him from solving his newest puzzle, though it was a while before Quinn gave up on suggesting the ARL.

Fletcher was in the midst of reviewing a complete list of reactive chemicals in the system, crossing each one with another to find what could have mixed to create his ailment, when a knock sounded at his door.

“Fletcher, Dad’s home! Come join us for dinner,” his mother invited.

The young robot reflexively jumped out of his chair before he remembered that his door was locked, though he barely managed to hold back the yelp of pain that came from his quick movement.

“No thanks, Mom. I’m working on an experiment; I’ll just eat in here.”

“Can I come in? I’ve hardly seen you all day!” Two chirped.

“N-No!” Fletcher bit his lip. He’d answered too forcefully. “No, I’m sorry, I’m working with some light sensitive materials. If you open the door, it’ll be ruined.”

“Alright then, Mr. Science. Feel free to come out if you get the chance,” she laughed.

“Yeah, sure thing,” Fletcher said casually.

He sat down in his chair, half expecting Quinn to comment on how he had just lied to his mother, but his thought was interrupted by a cough.

...A cough? That was a reaction designed to expel dust from his ventilation system. What could have caused it? As he thought it over, his mind blurred. It was getting difficult to think... it was hot.

“Quinn, would you cool it back down in here?” Fletcher asked, coughing again.

“The temperature hasn’t increased, Young Master,” the system informed him.

“...My systems must be working too hard. I think I’m overheating,” the fledgling said as he rose to get a washcloth from beneath his sink. He ran it under cool water, wringing it out and pressing it to his forehead. He just needed to return his motherboard to a stable working temperature.

Doing his best to ignore the coughing, dismissing it as a byproduct of his confused inner workings, he kept toiling and tried to keep himself cool. He removed his shirt and went back more than once to freshen the washcloth with more cold water.

Almost an hour passed before Fletcher spoke again. His eyeforms were dull, his tone the same. “Quinn, I...” his voice faltered. No. Of everything that could have gone wrong... “I think I’ve found it.”

“You don’t sound pleased,” they observed.

Fletcher certainly wasn’t. A careless mistake, a simple slip of the mind from his initial calculations, had affected the percentages of his metal makeup. This wasn’t the worst case scenario he’d had in mind. He thought that he was mostly titanium with a small amount of aluminum, vanadium, carbon, and terillium alloy, but he had been wrong. He thought he was using the equation that the artificial reproduction ware used to determine the metal composition of the child, but he’d neglected the fact that his mother’s system was a prototype. The equation that he’d used was designed for a more current version of the hardware. Running the numbers through the correct equation showed that he was not mostly his mother’s titanium... the complex alloy of his father was a mixture of so many metals that he hadn’t taken them into account, but there was a lot more of it in him than he’d thought. In fact, it was most of him. The possible reactions were practically limitless.

“Quinn, please, I need nanobots!” Fletcher urged. His panic seemed to incite more coughing. It seized his body and stoked the burning in his center. He tried to cover his mouth in case his parents had gone to their room, but it didn’t do much to muffle the noise. When it finally began to subside, he lowered his hand and saw blue covering his palm. That was it.

Fletcher sobbed. A fear far worse than the pain absorbed his mind. The corrosive solution had eaten through his coolant tank, and it was leaking inside of him. The coughing that wanted to remove nonexistent dust from his ventilation system was because his ventilation system was failing altogether. That was why he was so hot. Something was rising up, trying to make its way out of his mouth, but he wouldn’t let it, not this precious fluid.

“Quinn!” he cried.

If he could get the nanobots in, they might be able to seal up the leak, if Quinn would bring them fast enough. There was another sound in the delivery port. Fletcher frantically took the vial of nanobots and went into the bathroom. He couldn’t stay standing up, so he bent next to the bathtub. It was becoming harder to resist the rising coolant by the second, but he was hardly thinking any longer. He pulled the top off the vial of opaque, silver liquid and tipped the entire thing back into his mouth. It was more than he’d anticipated... each one of the three swallows seemed to tear at his insides. He kept his teeth clenched, fighting with everything he had, gripping the side of the tub with all his might. The white material cracked beneath his fingers, he convulsed, determined not to let anything go, but his body fought him with just as much force. Strangled weeping overtook him. Fletcher tried to keep his mouth tightly shut as the nanobots came back through his teeth and dribbled down his chin. The sight of blue mixed in with the silver was all it took to break him.

Leaked coolant spilled from his mouth with a groan of agony. His senses began to leave him, the blue fluid formed a pool at the drain end of the tub, somebody was trying to get through his bedroom door...

Fletcher barely registered a crashing, splintering of wood, and his head hit the tile.

~~~