Three of Five, Chapter 22

[melo_annechen]

Chapter Twenty-Two

“Good morning, Sela. How was your weekend?” Charlotte greeted the android when she returned Monday morning. Sela’s response was to drag Charlotte to her room.

“I need you to help me hide these-” they could barely get in the room for the boxes. “He went on a cleaning spree.”

“What - where did these come from?” Charlotte stared at the stacks of boxes, all labeled by barcodes.

“Grandma’s room - come on, we don’t have much time, help me hide them, please?”

Charlotte boggled a moment at that statement, and then proceeded to call Lovelace in on the conversation. “Does he have cameras between the floors?”

“I don’t understand.”

Charlotte pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do you have cameras monitoring the space between the structural ceiling and the drop ceiling?”

“Jobs ‘n’ Woz, Charlotte - no, because there’s not anybody who would think that area needed monitoring.”

“Tcha - John Hughes did, almost half a century ago.”

“Who?” Lovelace asked.

“Never mind, we’ll fix that later; right now, we need the location of a couple of partition walls strong enough to hold the weight of the heaviest boxes…”

>>>>

Hiding Sela’s stash took most of the day, if only to avoid drawing the professor’s attention to the endeavor. The weirdest thing was the professor coming up with a distraction on his own. He had holed up in the reverse entropy lab as soon as 8295 had returned that afternoon.

“What are you attempting to do, Professor?”

“There should be images stored in the drive; however, there has been a great deal of degradation to the structure. I hope to restore some of the… oh, there it is. Wait, that can’t be right.” The image of a small child - perhaps a girl of five or six years of age, holding a soldering gun and one of the Mark I actuator assembly units - appeared on the monitor. If he had wanted to ever use children in a thoroughly unnecessary advertising campaign, there could not have been a better image. The little girl (with the platinum-blonde hair worn in pigtails, he supposed it was a girl, or a boy with fairly unorthodox guardians) wore an expression that was a mix of maniacal glee and gob-smacked wonder. Her brilliant blue eyes shone with a joyful light most children reserved for the most wonderful toy imaginable dropping into their hands. He stared at the image a few moments more before 8295 spoke.

“Is she a relative of yours, sir?”

“No, and no idea who she was or is - the date is over twenty years ago. But there is something familiar about her - I have no clue why.” He searched the drive for additional pictures, saving what he could for further study. The most recent of the salvageable images was that of a bloodied hand and arm protruding from under a pile of rubble. A pair of hands clearing the rubble was in the shot.

The android‘s voice was normally devoid of inflection, but the tones were flattened as he asked “Sir, where did you obtain this drive?”

“This was from 1902’s original chassis. Where in the world would this could have been?”

“Küçükdoğanca.”

“What did you say?”

“The architecture suggests Mediterranean mountain rural building styles, and the time code indicates the image was recorded 8 hours and 56 minutes before 1902’s emergency signal was initiated. The GPS Latitude 42.2305 Longitude 27.5702 is on the outskirts of the town, where 1902 was found under a mudslide.”

“Do you know the identity of the body?”

8295 shook his head. “There was no evidence of human remains when I dug 1902 out of the building.”

“Typing wasn’t the cause of your damage, then - was it?” Madblood raised an eyebrow with his query.

“Not entirely, although I no longer had polymer covering the index or middle fingers before this incident.”

Madblood stared at the final picture a few moments more, and then switched back to the earliest picture. Studying the location code indicated the picture was taken locally, on the other side of town. Cross-checking the coordinates, he found it to be near the river, but not an area he knew personally. “A local girl, perhaps nearing thirty if she is still alive.” He had very little interaction with children, even when he was a child, but she seemed to be different from his vague memories of the children of his mother’s friends. Lupin wondered what became of her.

>>>>

Charlotte dropped from the ceiling into Sela’s room. “Do you know what prompted him to begin the process of clearing out her room?” She asked as she dusted herself off.

“He mentioned Grandma would have been upset to find he had made a guest spend the weekend on the couch.” Sela snickered while she assisted Charlotte.

“He didn’t talk much this weekend, but that isn’t a big change. The fact that he wasn’t brooding when he did speak of Madame Madblood is a change, though.” Lovelace volunteered.

“When I discovered he planned to remove the items in question, I offered to help. As 1902, I had very little contact with Grandma and I am curious about her.” Sela said, shoving another box under her bunk.

Lovelace said “I had more contact with Caroline, but very little interaction. She didn’t see me as you do, but she also wasn’t in his lab but once or twice a quarter, if that often. He began to tell us of his memories while sorting through her clothes for things to give away, so he did not notice Sela putting aside some of the items.”

Charlotte chuckled. “Why did you start stealing things from the donation stack?”

“I wanted to make sure he didn’t lose something we might want later. Some of her suits were in really good condition, and Lovelace decided she wanted some of the other clothes.” Sela ducked her head. “He has some keepsakes of his own - some of her jewelry, her glasses and the like. He had me go through her fiction library while he sorted through her technical library. He commented she had been his father’s assistant before Felix Madblood died. I don’t think he saw her personal journals, though - they were hidden on the shelves behind her bodice-ripper collection. I didn’t want to risk losing them.”

“Not that he would give them away, but there is a chance he would shred them unread.” Lovelace said. “I never would have guessed she went through so much.”

Charlotte paused. “You read her diaries?”

Lovelace responded timidly “Well - yes, but I wasn’t expecting them to be so… personal.”

Charlotte stood very still with her eyes closed. “I should not even ask…”

“Yes, she does detail the elder Madblood’s last experiments. There are a number of emotion-laden adjectives used to describe him.” Lovelace’s voice was unusually quiet. “I suspect she cared for the man, not just the work.”

“They’re labeled as private journals for a reason, Lovelace.” Charlotte said.

Sela spoke up “She wrote them for us.”

“What?!?”

“They’re addressed to the professor and ‘his children, should he have any’. I think she hoped to give her side of the story so the family wouldn’t have to guess at her motives.” Sela finished storing the rest of the evidence of the day’s activities. “She certainly didn’t work for him because he paid well. My emotional response subroutines indicate hers is a very sad story.”

“You read them too?”

“Who do you think scanned them for Lovelace? You haven’t built any hands for her.”

“I’m not sure I should, considering how much trouble she can get into without them.” Charlotte said as she palmed her forehead.

“I’m sorry Charlotte, but I thought-” Lovelace began.

“No, you were probably supposed to read them - I’m just extrapolating how I would feel about someone reading my journals. But if I were already deceased, it probably wouldn’t matter.”

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Comments

[jeffreycwells.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Hidden crawlspaces. What would an evil genius's lair be without lots of places for heroes packages to be secreted in?

I suppose we can forgive Madblood not recognizing the girl. After all, from his own perspective, he's not living in a fictional world where everything like this eventually has to eventually come back 'round into the story. Or is this me making presumptions?