A Glimpse of the Future - Rock and Roll
Nov. 9th, 2007 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bobcatmoranNew fic. This is the third in a series of shorts about robots from the Classic and X series getting glimpses of their successors. Big jump backward in time for this one, as Blues meets Rock and Roll in a horrible clash of musical puns.
Previous parts can be found here.
~~~
Disclaimer: All characters are property of Capcom. I’m not making a single red cent off of this. Or green cents. Or purple cents. Or even puce cents.
~~~
Finally, Blues thought. He set down the issue of Modern Robotics that he’d been reading and reached behind him, unplugging himself from the wall socket.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. 2:00 AM. The lab was dark and silent, except for the high-pitched hum of computer monitors and the occasional grinding of a hard disk. He looked around the room at the silhouetted outlines of the six nearly complete industrial robots. He’d been out doing some field testing today with Dr. Wily on something that the scientist had called an “Ice Slasher.” When Blues had jokingly asked if the Antarctic exploration robot was going to be attacking penguins with it, Wily had yelled at him. That seemed about par for course these days; Wily seemed to have an increasingly short fuse the closer the robots got to completion. Dr. Light said that Albert always got this way when he was working on big projects. Blues said that if that was the case, Wily could work on big projects by himself.
Blues walked into the lab room next door, where the two domestic models were. Dr. Light had dubbed them “Rock” and “Roll” and told Blues that they would be like his younger brother and sister. Rock would be helping Dr. Light and Dr. Wily around the lab, while Roll would be taking over cooking and cleaning.
The idea of having someone else around to do the cleaning was certainly appealing to Blues, and it probably was a good idea to have a robot actually programmed to cook. He’d tried cooking a meal once, but after serving up nearly raw green beans, soggy rice that made disturbing “slurp” noises if poked, and chicken that was oversalted and an unappetizing shade of gray, the short-lived experiment of letting Blues cook ended. Dr. Light had gone through considerable trouble to make sure that Roll would have a sense of taste, so she would be able to tell if she was heading into culinary disaster territory.
He flicked on the light switch, squinting as his optics recalibrated to the light level. Both of the robots lying on lab tables were nearly completed. They’d probably be ready for activation by next week at the latest. Roll had even already been dressed in a red sundress, and if it weren’t for the fact that she had a cable dangling from an access port in her arm, it would be easy to mistake her at first glance for a human girl. Blues didn’t have much experience with actual human girls, but he was fairly certain that Dr. Light had designed her to look like a younger human girl, since she didn’t have those chest bumps that older girls and women had.
Rock was a bit farther behind than his sister. A cable dangled from an access port in his arm as well, but unlike Roll, his cable was plugged into a computer terminal that was in the middle of verifying the personality matrix data that had been uploaded earlier that day. Blues glanced at the readout. There were six terabytes left to check, which meant that the verification process would probably take the rest of the night.
A sudden temptation came over Blues to pull out the cable, which would interrupt the data flow and mean that the whole matrix would have to be reuploaded, delaying the robot’s activation by at least one more day. Roll seemed like she’d be all right, but Rock … well, Blues wasn’t really looking forward to meeting him. Now that the prototype was old news, he wasn’t accompanying his creators to conferences and lectures the way he once had, and most of his time was now spent helping out around the lab. If that was going to become Rock’s job, what was Blues supposed to do?
Add to that the fact that Rock was quite obviously based on Blues’ basic design. Like Blues, the two household robots would be far shorter than an average human adult, both in order to cut down on materials cost and also because a more compact body shape was less of a strain on power and gyroscopic systems.
There was also the fact that the doctors had made adjustments to the new robot’s power circuitry and personality matrix so as to avoid problems they’d had with their prototype. Without actually announcing it directly, they seemed to be building what was basically a new and improved version of their first humanoid robot.
All in all, Blues was pretty sure that he’d get along better with Roll.
Still, it wouldn’t be fair to do anything that could mess up Rock’s programming. Replacement or not, he was completely helpless right now, and pulling the cable out would be a cheap shot. Not to mention that either Light or Wily would notice it, and their list of suspects would be extremely short. Facing the wrath of Wily and a general air of silent disapproval from Light wasn’t something Blues wanted to deal with. Besides, what was one day, more or less? It would all be the same in the end.
Surely the doctors had some idea of what they would do with their prototype after the new models were completed. That was what Blues kept telling himself, anyway. If they didn’t, well, Blues knew full well what happened to old, obsolete robots which had outlived their usefulness. That was a fate he wanted to avoid at any cost.
Blues glanced over at the screen that showed the progress of Rock’s verification, taking in the file names that scrolled by too fast for any human eye to read. “Justice.” “Compassion.” “Peace.” “Friendship.” Obviously Dr. Light had been the one to put this together. The new robot would be nice, if nothing else. Blues nodded. He would give the new robot a chance.
Looking up at the clock on the wall, Blues noted that it was nearly time for the sun to start coming up. If he was quiet about it, he could sneak up onto the roof to watch the sunrise. He turned off the lights, and left the next generation robots as he had found them.
Previous parts can be found here.
~~~
Disclaimer: All characters are property of Capcom. I’m not making a single red cent off of this. Or green cents. Or purple cents. Or even puce cents.
~~~
POWER CELLS AT 98.7% CAPACITY
99.2% . . . 99.6% . . . 100%
RECHARGE COMPLETEFinally, Blues thought. He set down the issue of Modern Robotics that he’d been reading and reached behind him, unplugging himself from the wall socket.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. 2:00 AM. The lab was dark and silent, except for the high-pitched hum of computer monitors and the occasional grinding of a hard disk. He looked around the room at the silhouetted outlines of the six nearly complete industrial robots. He’d been out doing some field testing today with Dr. Wily on something that the scientist had called an “Ice Slasher.” When Blues had jokingly asked if the Antarctic exploration robot was going to be attacking penguins with it, Wily had yelled at him. That seemed about par for course these days; Wily seemed to have an increasingly short fuse the closer the robots got to completion. Dr. Light said that Albert always got this way when he was working on big projects. Blues said that if that was the case, Wily could work on big projects by himself.
Blues walked into the lab room next door, where the two domestic models were. Dr. Light had dubbed them “Rock” and “Roll” and told Blues that they would be like his younger brother and sister. Rock would be helping Dr. Light and Dr. Wily around the lab, while Roll would be taking over cooking and cleaning.
The idea of having someone else around to do the cleaning was certainly appealing to Blues, and it probably was a good idea to have a robot actually programmed to cook. He’d tried cooking a meal once, but after serving up nearly raw green beans, soggy rice that made disturbing “slurp” noises if poked, and chicken that was oversalted and an unappetizing shade of gray, the short-lived experiment of letting Blues cook ended. Dr. Light had gone through considerable trouble to make sure that Roll would have a sense of taste, so she would be able to tell if she was heading into culinary disaster territory.
He flicked on the light switch, squinting as his optics recalibrated to the light level. Both of the robots lying on lab tables were nearly completed. They’d probably be ready for activation by next week at the latest. Roll had even already been dressed in a red sundress, and if it weren’t for the fact that she had a cable dangling from an access port in her arm, it would be easy to mistake her at first glance for a human girl. Blues didn’t have much experience with actual human girls, but he was fairly certain that Dr. Light had designed her to look like a younger human girl, since she didn’t have those chest bumps that older girls and women had.
Rock was a bit farther behind than his sister. A cable dangled from an access port in his arm as well, but unlike Roll, his cable was plugged into a computer terminal that was in the middle of verifying the personality matrix data that had been uploaded earlier that day. Blues glanced at the readout. There were six terabytes left to check, which meant that the verification process would probably take the rest of the night.
A sudden temptation came over Blues to pull out the cable, which would interrupt the data flow and mean that the whole matrix would have to be reuploaded, delaying the robot’s activation by at least one more day. Roll seemed like she’d be all right, but Rock … well, Blues wasn’t really looking forward to meeting him. Now that the prototype was old news, he wasn’t accompanying his creators to conferences and lectures the way he once had, and most of his time was now spent helping out around the lab. If that was going to become Rock’s job, what was Blues supposed to do?
Add to that the fact that Rock was quite obviously based on Blues’ basic design. Like Blues, the two household robots would be far shorter than an average human adult, both in order to cut down on materials cost and also because a more compact body shape was less of a strain on power and gyroscopic systems.
There was also the fact that the doctors had made adjustments to the new robot’s power circuitry and personality matrix so as to avoid problems they’d had with their prototype. Without actually announcing it directly, they seemed to be building what was basically a new and improved version of their first humanoid robot.
All in all, Blues was pretty sure that he’d get along better with Roll.
Still, it wouldn’t be fair to do anything that could mess up Rock’s programming. Replacement or not, he was completely helpless right now, and pulling the cable out would be a cheap shot. Not to mention that either Light or Wily would notice it, and their list of suspects would be extremely short. Facing the wrath of Wily and a general air of silent disapproval from Light wasn’t something Blues wanted to deal with. Besides, what was one day, more or less? It would all be the same in the end.
Surely the doctors had some idea of what they would do with their prototype after the new models were completed. That was what Blues kept telling himself, anyway. If they didn’t, well, Blues knew full well what happened to old, obsolete robots which had outlived their usefulness. That was a fate he wanted to avoid at any cost.
Blues glanced over at the screen that showed the progress of Rock’s verification, taking in the file names that scrolled by too fast for any human eye to read. “Justice.” “Compassion.” “Peace.” “Friendship.” Obviously Dr. Light had been the one to put this together. The new robot would be nice, if nothing else. Blues nodded. He would give the new robot a chance.
Looking up at the clock on the wall, Blues noted that it was nearly time for the sun to start coming up. If he was quiet about it, he could sneak up onto the roof to watch the sunrise. He turned off the lights, and left the next generation robots as he had found them.
