#104

Doctor Kai stands up, switching off his link to Klaus as reaches inside his trench-coat. The backup plan can still be initiated. They'll have to move fast, though; the forces still in this building are likely mobilizing for different fronts, perhaps heading back to England to continue their assaults, but there will still be some who will detect the intruder. Klaus won't be detected due to his nature, but Kai will, and while he knows he can take a ragtag squad of cyborgs and zombies or whatever, he can't risk the failure of the backup plan.

Within his coat he pulls out a trio of dolls. There's an extra or two, but one won't need to be used. He arranges the skeletons of the disintegrated kids as well as he can, and then places the dolls amidst the remains. This is when Mark walks in.

“What...what happened...?”

The Doctor doesn't say anything at first, assuming Mark will be able to figure it out. Indeed, he glances down at the bones, and his eyes go wide. Then he looks up and sees Klaus, who has stood, still holding You's remains.

“Is he...?” he says, then pauses as he comes to a grammatical realization. “Is he dead?”

Klaus' face is back to normal as he nods. Mark is taken aback for a moment, but it may just be his own shock compounding what little feeling he has.

“We have to work quickly, Mark,” Doctor Kai says then. “I'll need your help. Just let me finish this...”

He raises his hands and thinks hard about an idea which is of little consequence to those assembled. It's an arcane thought, a relic from Kai's days as the demon Kul'ul; he's stored a little magic in himself from that era. This magic reaches down, and touches the trio of skeletons, as well as the dolls—and suddenly, the dolls flash like magnesium, only to turn to ash immediately afterward. There's no mystique about it, just efficiency, but Mark is still allowed to be surprised as the skeletons regain their mortal flesh. The bodies of two young women and a young man lie restored on the ground.

“It worked,” Doctor Kai sighs. “You were right, Klaus, but then I'd expect such correctness from you.”

Klaus nods, neglecting his usual sarcasm.

“Holy shit,” Mark says. “Are they dead?” He's looking at Susie in particular.

“They are also dead, yes. But not for much longer. We still have to hurry to get a solution...and the solution, speaking with grave frankness, will require a sacrifice.”

Mark gulps, wondering perhaps if he means a metaphorical spiritual sacrifice, or something like a human sacrifice. Trying to distract himself, his eyes turn, and lock onto the bodies of the Ultramarine Guards.

“Can our...uh, solution. Can it save those guys?”

“No, because we didn't take preparations to revive them. But they're of no consequence; they served their point in our tale.”

Mark realizes how cold Kai is being right now, but his face is wrought with concern. He's more serious than he's been in awhile, but then he's always been serious—just with a variation of degrees, given the fact that he seems to literally have multiple personalities. Klaus is serious, too, as he bends to pick up Susie. Kai takes Mina and gestures for Mark to carry Jacob.

With that, and a sense of urgency, they return to the elevator, where Kai kicks a piece of Pneumatic Prototype 3H-12I towards Mark. “It's good that you managed to take down this robot; I remember it not so fondly when I first set down on this Earth, during an early duel with the Empire. I believe that Klaus has done something in the way of making sure you fought this thing, because in order for You—not you, but your friend You—to fulfill his destiny, we'll need your knowledge of...well, vacuum cleaners.”

There is a beat.

“...what?”

Doctor Kai doesn't answer. 

“No, seriously! What?!”

“We need to find an empty medbay.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“You didn't articulate a question. You just shouted 'what'.”

“Well, that's...that's sort of what I meant!”

“You meant 'what'?”

“No! I meant 'what?' was my question!”

“I'll explain 'what' when we reach the medbay.”

Mark is too tired to argue further, and so just bites his lip. His entire body is shaking, possibly from the shock, but also because he feels as if something terrible—well, more terrible, really—is on the horizon. He keeps staring at Susie, shoving, as many now have shoved, his emotions to the bottom of his spirit, to ignore them and deal with them later. There, those feelings have a companion, in the form of the question of how he came back from the grave.

Eventually the elevator stops, and opens up in an empty medbay. They anticipated that some of the medics were being taken out to acquire more converts, and they were correct. Now that the Emperor is moving for his final stroke, he brings his mutilated forces with him.

Kai and Klaus lay the dead bodies down on the medbay beds, with You away from the others. “Bring in the Pneumatic Prototype chunks,” Kai says. Mark obliges, with Klaus helping him. They grab as much as they can, though Mark of course questions this; none of it all looks useful.

Once the chunks are piled up in the medbay, Kai's face remains stony as he looks at Mark. “Now, I'm going to perform an operation on you.”

“Wait, what?!”

“Just haphazardly asking that question isn't going to help you, Mark. It's a painless operation. There is knowledge in you which is at a certain stage, and in a being such as yourself knowledge thrives less like a collection of ideas, but like a living organism. It's complicated, but I'm going to evolve your knowledge of...vacuum cleaners.”

“...what.”

“Stop. With the knowledge I'm going to accelerate in you, your knowledge of vacuum cleaners will let you become something of a robotics expert. Because we need to rebuild You—him, not you—as one of those cyborgs.”

Mark jumps back. “Are you fucking insane?! Turn him a lobotomized thing that turns people into other lobotomized things...?”

“The process will revive him, and in turn allow him to bio-mechanically uplink directly with any fuel source. Mark, putting it simply, fuel is the liquid form of the matter between universes. If the Emperor and Inspector Fox gain control of it they will become gods. But by transforming You into one of the medical cyborgs, and give him access to the fuel, he'll also become like a god. We're modifying the cyborg medic model, but we're using outdated parts.

“That's the thing, though, Mark; the old world is beating bad newness in ways that it never expected to. Outdated robot chunks create a demigod; a flash drive overrides 2070-era technology; all of that stuff. It's changing the purpose of old ideas to create new ones; it's cutting-edge and it's ironic. So I'm going to have you use irony magic to get this job done, too.”

“I though the Old Man told me irony magic wasn't real.”

“You and Susie talked about this, I thought.”

“Yes, that's right. We talked about magic being in language.”

“And language is magic. We can shape the world with our words. But as there are bad words, there's bad irony magic, too. Say you steal something from another culture that's really important to them, and make it tacky or kitsch, for some sort of complicated subliminal irony purpose. That's bad irony. That's idiot magic and it's dick magic, and it doesn't even get the benefit of 'evil magic'. So the Old Man was right and wrong. But ze often is, because ze represents fused differences. Ze represents old and new; antiquity and youth. Opposites fusing to create something...else.”

Mark feels uncomfortably okay with this idea; he feels as if he should be more confused, for purposes of the story. Then he remembers that this is real life, and not a story...or is it?

“I am confused,” he says without context.

“Well, let's keep this quick. The Old Man is one of the most powerful beings in the Multiverse, besides Shekinah. That's because ze is a Moonchild. A Moonchild is someone or something that's been exposed to...something that came from a very old Incomputare myth. Long ago, good and evil, newness and oldness, youth and age, and male and female were combined to create something new: a prototype. The perpetually-fresh idea. This idea occasionally incarnates or is forced to incarnate in certain beings, human or not. Whoever is born or reborn a Moonchild comes out with a higher-dimensional idea plan in their head; they can wield magic with great efficiency and can become either angelic creatures, or demonic ones. The Old Man is part of a central axis, representing the male counterpoint to the feminine Crone. Just as there is a Mother on the feminine aspect, there is a Mother; and just as there is a Son, there is a Maiden. However, the Crone, the Old Man, the Son, and the Maiden cross the aspects of our human genders in some way; the Old Man hirself is intersex, so hir name itself is ironic—but he still doesn't wield the pun-energies of his name.”

Mark says nothing for a very long time. He weighs a number of responses to this, for the story of such a being as this “Moonchild” stands out to him. There are indeed many possible replies; but in his manner, he chooses none.

“So, I need to build a cyborg shell for You—for him—and use irony magic to bring him back to life; and then he'll, what, restore Susie, Mina, and Jacob?”

“Yes. But rest assured—their souls will return. They won't come back as Crimson Guards.”

“What about his soul? Will it come back?”

Doctor Kai nearly says “Not yet”, but instead decides to neglect replying.

Then, without warning, he reaches out and touches Mark's forehead. “Hey...!”

But the sudden rush of knowledge—rather, the sudden ascent of knowledge—takes away his words. In fact, he almost spirals into a coma, but there's something holding him back from that.

“I...” he says, staggering. He nearly vomits but wheels himself back to strength. 

“I...well, I know how to, uh, do robots now.” He looks at Kai. “Thanks?”

Kai nods and smiles in response. “Consider it gaining more ranks in a skill, at super speed. Leveling up.” At this, he glances over at Jacob's body.

Mark smiles somewhat in response, but his smile is more awkward. Then, he picks up the robot pieces.

“Huh,” he murmurs, as he begins to reassemble them.

The process takes only as long as the labor is required. It's like there's another power guiding Mark, but for once it's all him. He reshapes the metal like molder's clay, unscrewing pieces and sticking them back together like he's been doing this for years. Decades, really. And then, using some of the nearby common-use medical equipment, he crudely but efficiently grafts it onto different parts of You's broken form.

What he needs to replace, however, is guided by a higher power, but this too is merely Mark's inherent magic. That, also, is rising rapidly, tied intrinsically to his knowledge. He covers You's hands and forearms in gauntlets, and makes boots for him as well. He hides his gaping chest and neck wounds with metallic sheathes, performing a mechanical surgery to replace his shattered vertebra. He's forced to cut into his face as well, applying tricky circuitry to You's frontal lobe—perfectly restoring it, using the rudimentary brain-circuits from the Prototype's corpse. His sinuses are reconstructed, and at last, after a period elapsing for what seems to be mere minutes (though objectively and fairly speaking, passing over much longer), he makes a faceplate to cover up the cuts he had to make—and he struggles to evade the uncanny valley, instead simply replicating the face of an Imperial medic.

You's face, once decently good-looking, but destroyed by torture and surgery, is now a metal plate, with two white eye-sensors, and a gas mask-like vent over his now-missing nose, and his fractured mouth. His red hair, burned and partially shaved, is still untouched. But it is clear that You is no longer who he once was. He truly resembles one of the things that he grew to fear in life.

“I-I can't believe I'm doing this,” Mark says, and he means it, in more ways than one. As far as he can tell, all of these devices are fully functional, and make all of You's biotic requirements possible. The chest-plate makes up for the organs damaged by the sword, and the brace rebuilds his broken throat. The faceplate allows for full use of his original senses, but doesn't enhance them. He's perfect.

Another few well-placed cables and circuits set up a safe and secure battery pack on his spine. From there, a fuel tank can be hooked up to give him raw power. There are several fuel tanks nearby that can be cannibalized into a massive one, and that's installed at once. As soon as the fuel starts flowing, by Mark's estimates, You will come back to life.

Of course, he won't believe it till he sees it. Just because he has the new skills doesn't mean he's accepting that he does have them.

It's only fair to look at Klaus' perspective on all this. Outwardly, he feels nothing. And inwardly, he knows this is just fate. They'll need You's powers to stand a chance against Fox, but as is guessable, he wishes truthfully that it could have gone another way.

Kai feels much in the same way, as Mark looks back at him expectantly.

“Turn him on.”

Mark activates the fuel reserves, and his masterwork makeshifts whir to life. There's a subtle burst, also, of something else, something hidden, radiating out from Mark. A few seconds pass, and there's nothing.

But then, with a jerky and uncanny lurch—You sits up. He's come back to life.