"I want a full assessment of the damages," Syllia commanded. "Be careful we might have aftershocks. Take a communicator and report in every fifteen minutes."
Priss, Nene, and Linna nodded as they each picked up a radio set and went through the underground complex, surveying the damage the quake did. Nene walked down a corridor that had its lights knocked out by the tremors. She quickly grabbed a flashlight from a nearby emergency kit.
'I hope we'll be able to get out of here. I have some chocolate cake in my fridge I want to eat,' Nene thought to herself, as she carefully picked her way along the darkened corridor.
"Syllia, corridor 5 has its lights out. I'm going to check out the old storeroom and make sure nothing was damaged," Nene called in.
A long pause of silence came from the radio before Syllia replied, '"Okay. Be very careful in there and leave as soon as you have surveyed the area.'"
'Sheesh. All it is, is a room where we store our old hardsuits as spare parts. You think Syllia had something to hide in there,' Nene thought. "Understood, Syllia."
Nene slowly made her way to the old storeroom and cautiously entered. Looking around she saw that only a few of the out of date hardsuitd were knocked over. Nene sighed with relief, seeing that nothing was damaged. She was about to leave when a new tremor shook the building. The shaking became stronger. Nene quickly realized that the first quake was only a buildup for what was to come. She dove for the center of the room as the tremors became stronger. The hardsuits that weren't knocked over in the first earthquake, fell in unison. The multiple pounding of the metal suits caused the floor of the storeroom to give way. Nene tumbled into a room, underneath the storeroom.
'Ow. That hurt,' Nene thought as she got back up. 'Where am I?'
Nene looked around and saw some very odd equipment. Against one wall, there was what looked like an electric chair connected to an old fashioned tape drive computer, the type that stood close to two and a half meters tall. Next to it were more old fashioned tape drives. Each of the drives had what appeared to be headphones attached to it. A large machine, with several two meter tall Plexiglasss tubes, stood along the second wall. The tubes looked wide enough that a human being could stand in one. In another corner there was a machine that had two massive Plexiglas cylinders. Inside each cylinder there was some sort of apparatus that could restrain a person. The final wall had a large control console with a huge television screen placed up against it.
"Wh-what is this stuff?" Nene asked aloud.
Nene quickly tried using the radio to contact Syllia, but received nothing but static. Nene wandered around the hidden room, feeling a little bit lost now that the radio was dead. She saw another room and entered it. In this room the walls were lined with shelves, filled with magnetic tape. In the middle of the room was an old wooden desk, with matching chair. Looking at the surface of the desk, Nene spotted a whistle, some weird looking remote control, and a book. Nene opened the journal and looked at one of the pages.
Oct12: I still haven't figured out how my dad built all this stuff and how it works, but I will make up for the evil he has done.
"Syllia's dad was evil?" Nene wondered aloud.
She flipped though the pages and looked at a later entry.
Sep24: I have just received a job at Whiz laboratories and will soon begin the redemption of our family. I have figured out just enough of the programming dad used to try and make a cyberoid. I will never be as good as my dad was at doing this, but at least mine won't have that silly glitch in it.
'No, it was her grandfather that was evil. Dr. Stingray's father was even better at cybernetics than he was? I wonder what the glitch was?' Nene thought as she looked at the labels of some of the tapes. 'Chinese. Japanese. Singing. Surfing. Cooking? Maid? Drawing? What is this stuff?'
She left the room with the oddly labeled tapes and returned to the room with the bizarre equipment. Nene looked up at the hole where she fell though and hope the others would come for her soon. She turned her attention to the console.
On the console, she noticed that one of the lights on it was blinking. Underneath the light was a switch. Nene shrugged as she flipped the switch, thinking that it would turn off the light. Instead, the giant screen came on and Nene saw her friends. In the center of the screen was Syllia and off to either side of her was Priss and Linna. At their feet were battery operated lanterns, providing light. Nene realized that she was seeing her friends from some sort of camera, but couldn't figure out why it was working when the lights were out in that corridor. She jumped as she recognized the area they were at was just outside the old storeroom. She sobbed softly in dismay as she saw the huge pile of rubble they had to dig though to get to her. She quickly flipped the switch back to its former position and the screen went dark.
'I'm trapped in some weird room with devices that look like they're out of an old horror movie. Wait a sec,' Nene thought. "How come this place has power?"
Nene examined the room and found cords leading from the various machines leading to a third room. Nene easily identified the central object in this room: a very powerful self contained generator. Off to one side, their was an old cryogenic capsule. The rest of the room was taken up by racks that held women's clothing on hangers. A large section of the clothing was gold colored bathing suits. Underneath the clothing were shoes and boots. Gold colored calf high boots were the most common. Nene scratched her head in confusion at what she was looking at. She shrugged it off and went back to the machines. Nene headed for the device with the two giant cylinders.
'Okay, what does this device do?'
Examining the controls, the red-haired girl saw that each control's functioned was written in a different language.
"What sort of madman would make a machine's controls so hard to figure out? Sheesh."
She shrugged slightly as she pushed a button labeled with the letter 'T'. The cylinder on her right lifted up and allowed access to the apparatus inside.
'Ah. 'T' stands for tube,' Nene thought as she walked up to the exposed device.
Nene visually examined the apparatus. It appeared to be some sort of restraint to keep a person from falling down. Feeling a bit silly, she put her hands into the device.
"Hey. Look at me I'm handcuffed," Nene said with a giggle.
The laughter stopped as the restraints suddenly tightened and the cylinder came down. Nene, panicking, tried to wrench her arms free of the restraints. She was unable to do so. The cylinder finally shut and the machine hummed to life. A vague sort of pulling was felt by the trapped girl. Before blacking out, she saw Syllia and the others leaping down into the room. The last thing Nene saw was Syllia's face full of shock and fear. -- Nene woke up and saw that she was in Syllia's apartment. For some reason Syllia was wearing a one piece gold bathing suit and a pair of those gold high-heeled boots. She looked down at herself and saw that she was in the same sort of get-up. Nene looked around and saw that Priss and Linna were looking at Syllia and waiting. Seeing that she was awake, Syllia spoke.
"I wished you hadn't found grandfather's old equipment. Normally I would berate you for playing with equipment like that, but you have already paid a high price for your carelessness."
Syllia stood up and helped Nene to her feet. The leader of the Knight Sabers sighed and continued speaking.
"Grandfather was a madman and a genius. He was able to build robots that could fool humans back in the 1960's. That equipment you saw was his, and it still defies any attempt to figure out how it works."
"Uhm. Syllia, what happened to me and what price did I pay?" Nene asked, feeling a bit scared.
Syllia looked at her friend and answered, "Your consciousness was transferred into a robot body."
"I'm a boomer?"
"No. Not exactly. Boomers were developed by my father after he figured out enough of the old robots programming."
Syllia paused and addressed the other two Knight Sabers, "You made a promise to hear this out. Remember that."
Not bothering to see if they nodded or not, Syllia turned back to Nene.
"My father used the machines to create me. And studying how I worked allwoed him to develop the boomer programming," Syllia said.
Nene pointed to herself and asked, "What's with these bathing suits?"
Shaking her head, Syllia answered, "Default uniform. I'll explain more later."
Nene sighed and tried to accept her new fate. A sudden thought came to her.
"Syllia, I read in that journal downstairs that there's a glitch in the programming of the robots. Do I have it and what is it?"
Before Syllia could answer, Priss, feeling a bit in shock, had snapped on the radio and music came pouring out. Priss and Linna watched in confusion as Nene and Syllia started doing a robotic dance number. After a minute of watching her friends dance, Linna realized something.
"Priss, turn off the radio," Linna said.
Not understanding why, Priss did so. As soon as the music stopped the two robotic girls stopped dancing.
"Wh-what was that all about?" Nene asked in shock.
Smiling ruefully, Syllia answered, "That's the glitch. There is some sort of urge in us that causes us to dance. I was caught off guard and you're not used to resisting your urge. So, we both wound up dancing until the music was turned off."
Linna asked a question that had been bothering her for a while, "By the way Syllia, what was the name of your grandfather? I don't recall any Stingrays into robotics that were active in the 60's."
Syllia looked up and said, "His name was Dr. Goldfoot."
See other episodes by Disruptor
(Posted Sat, 08 Feb 2003 14:39)
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