| The Dream Machine Chapter Three: The Machine An explosion startled Zero from his recharge. He got up from the recharge pod, which Dr. Sky had built for him with help from his blue prints and directions from himself, and paused to listen for any other disturbances. He could hear Dr. Sky frantically yelling about something. Immediately he leapt out of the pod and ran down the corridor, readying his weapon as he reached the main lab’s doors. When he opened them, he saw everything was already under control, sort of. “Nya!” Dr. Sky said as she used the fire extinguisher. “It’s on fire again!” Assistant Bots also helped to put out the small fire, which originated from some poor wiring. Zero stood to watch the hilarious scene. Dr. Sky noticed Zero at the doorway, putting his Z-Saber away. She noted that the assistant bots had everything under control, so she walked over to Zero. “Ah ha ha. Did I wake you up?” She rubbed her soiled face with her sleeve. Suddenly she looked meaningfully at Zero. “So you can smile like that. I’m glad.” Zero was puzzled by her comment, shrugged it off, and looked around the room. “Why are you up at this hour anyway?” Zero asked her as she cleaned up bits of the blown up device. “I’m just working on my hobby.” Dr. Sky replied. She examined a piece of burnt chip and tossed it into the trash bin. “While your armor’s metal is still being made I had some free time to work on this a bit… It’s-” She pouted her lips a bit in thought. “-it was supposed to be a toaster.” She noticed Zero giving her a curious look, as if prompting her to explain further. “A toaster is a twentieth century invention. It was used to heat sliced bread. Now we don’t use toasters anymore. Anyway, I was trying to attach it to a new power source and it ended up toasting my lab.” Dr. Sky laughed again. Zero started to look around the lab. Many inventions were foreign looking, some looked like it shouldn't be functionable at all. The one thing that did catch his eye was one that looked like a standard recharge pod. He walked over and inspected the device, curious at the fact that Dr. Sky built him a new one instead of letting him use this one. “That’s one of my past inventions. It looks exactly like a normal recharge pod, but it actually hooks up to your head and allows your dreams to be monitored. I’ve also added features to allow the user more controls over their dreams!” Dr. Sky walked over to join Zero. “See these plugs here are different from a standard recharge unit.” She laid one hand over the glass covering. “I invented this a couple of years ago, but had to stop working on it since I had no one to test it on since I live all the way out here by myself. I had to live out here to keep all of my research projects secret, but I guess it’s a bit inconvenient at times too! I ran as many computer simulations as I could, but it’s just not the same.” Zero seemed very interested in the machine--he was staring at it for quite some time--, so she offered to let him try it. “It might be fun. I’m sure it’s safe. I’m just not sure how much control you’ll actually have over your dreams and what not.” Dr. Sky moved over to a computer panel and typed in some key sequence to call up a program. “I can monitor your dreams on this monitor.” Zero wasn’t sure why he was trying out the machine. He was quite curious about how the machine would work out, which was why he showed initial interest. Research into Reploids’s dreams and psyche did exist, but most were very poorly done, so he wanted to see what kind of research Dr. Sky managed to do. However, it was Dr. Sky’s enthusiasm for finally testing out the machine on someone that pushed him the rest of the way. Zero closed his eyes and allowed the recharge cycle to begin. The screen Dr. Sky was monitoring was static filled. Several minutes passed with nothing but static on the screen. She was about to call Zero when the static began to form into a blurry image. It was a first person view of what Zero is seeing, Dr. Sky presumed. The screen showed an angled view of an old man wearing a lab coat working on a computer panel. The view became blurry again, and faded out completely to darkness. Things came quickly back into focus on the screen. The screen was filtered with red light. Zero punched out a piece of glass in front of him and slumped out of a pod he was in. The ground rushed up into view. Zero must have fallen out of the pod. Zero let out a cold and painful scream that made Dr. Sky step backwards from the monitor screen. A red intense light filled the screen as Zero let out an even louder scream. Flashes from different scenes followed. First it was Zero’s point of view as he destroyed other Reploids, laughing along the way. Then it was Zero fighting Sigma, almost beating him. An awful electronic screech stared, and Zero seemed to be suffering from hearing it. He reeled backwards from Sigma, who took this opportunity to punch Zero in the head, sending everything back to darkness. The screen turned bright again, and now the view was not filtered in red, as it had been before. Zero was fighting alongside a blue Reploid. Dr. Sky recognized him from the newswire articles to be the Maverick Hunter X. A new image appeared on the screen. It was X hanging from Zero’s grasp, dangling from a high-rise window. X was looking down towards the ground, and then turned to look up at Zero. Zero says something horrifying. “Bye bye, X.” Zero’s voice could be heard, and then he lets go of X, who shrinks from view as he falls towards the ground. Laughter accompanies the explosion as X hits the pavement below. The screen goes black. “Why didn’t you let X go, Zero?” A dark voice that Dr. Sky hasn’t heard before says while the screen remained black. “A perfect opportunity. You would still have the trust of the Maverick Hunters, and carry on the plan to destroy the world, and X would not be here to stop you.” “Wi-Wily?” Zero responds. “Are you Dr. Wily?” “Of course it’s me!” The first voice snaps. “Your creator! Why have you defiled my legacy all these years by working with X? So many chances to kill him, and yet he’s still alive!” “Beh, I don’t care about your legacy, and you’re just a dream.” “I am no mere dream, Zero. I was afraid that one way or another you would go soft, so I included certain protocols in your programming.” Dr. Wily laughed. “Unfortunately the program was damaged somewhere along the line, which is probably why you ran off and joined the Maverick Hunters and worked alongside X.” Dr. Sky looked over at Zero inside the pod. He had a pained expression on his face. “It doesn’t matter. None of it does.” Zero’s voice yelled back, a little more erratic than self assured this time. “I live my life. Leave me alone!” Dr. Wily seemed to be ignoring Zero’s protests, and continued. “Now that some of these protocols have been reactivated, we can continue my plan.” At the corner of her eye, Dr. Sky saw that the monitor now carried a picture. Dr. Sky presumed the hideous face was that of Dr. Wily. “I will be speaking to you more often, Zero. Until then, good night.” Zero snapped into a sitting position in the pod, gasping for air as he did. Within seconds, Zero regained his composure. By the time Dr. Sky ran over to Zero, he seemed to be back to normal. “I’m fine.” Zero said, as if he anticipated Dr. Sky’s question. “I’ve always had these dreams… about him. They’ve just never been his bad before... He was never this… alive.” “I need to look at the data again to be sure, but I think it’s mostly my fault.” Dr. Sky sighed. “When I was rebuilding you, I came across this one program. I managed to fix the program, but it seemed to be empty. It had a space in your files, but contained nothing itself. It seemed pointless to have a program that did nothing, so I tried to delete it from your programming, but the ‘empty’ program seemed to resist and all sorts of barriers blocked it from deletion. “Now I see. That program must be part of the protocols he was talking about. It is what we call a dormant program; seemingly obsolete, until its reactivation. My machine must have triggered the program’s re-activation and enabled you to have this conversation with him. I’m really sorry, Zero.” Zero said nothing. Fan Fiction - Top |
