3) Electric City>
Roger is awakened by Dorothy playing the piano. Annoyed by being roused (and probably by the fact that he overslept to begin with), Roger snippily reminds the android that, while her piano playing is good, what she does is little more than mimicking human behavior. At this point, Norman announces that Roger has a visitor, and the visitor has already been admitted to his office. This can only mean one thing: it's a woman, and an attractive one. Roger dresses and sees the woman, who identifies herself as Miss Casey of the Paradigm Group, the mega-corporation that manages most of Paradigm City itself. Then the power goes out. This is convenient, because it allows Miss Casey to explain to Roger that the Paradigm Group is having trouble allocating resources to power the entire city, which is resulting in these blackouts. On the far-flung outskirts of Paradigm City, a borough called Electric City houses a dead hydroelectric dam. The Group had tried to reactive it before, but the poor locals will have none of it; it's not clear why they don't want the dam reactivated. Miss Casey hires Roger to go and investigate, and if possible, negotiate with the residents of Electric City over the fate of the dam. Roger finds the residents, and they're certainly a surly bunch. Further, they inform him that they can't permit him to reactive the dam, or it will anger a "titan" that will cause tremendous damage to Electric City. Thinking they're ignorant hicks, Roger goes and investigates the dam himself. But he doesn't get far before being cold-cocked by an unknown assailant. It turns out to be a frail old man, who seems to know some terrible secret about the dam. Roger finds clues about this in the basement of the old man's shack, but suddenly a huge creature rises from the lake-- a creature that saps and gives off electricity, powered by the dam-- the dam which had somehow been re-activated. The culprit turns out to be Miss Casey, who is actually called Angel. She seems to be a free agent, wanting to activate the dam for her own reasons. Upon seeing the huge beast, however, she decides to flee. Roger seems to have made an impression on her, however-- before she speeds off in her car, she tells him, "Maybe if you survive, we can get together sometime..." Roger, for his part, knows what to do-- he raises his watch to his face. The Big O is able to fight the beast toe-to-toe, but Roger has a difficult time dealing with the monster's frequent massive charges of electicity. He wants to fire the Big O's helmet cannon to destroy the beast, but he can't slow it down. That's when he suddenly notices the old man, rowing out to the dam. As Roger, now fighting off panic, tries to keep the monster distracted, the old man deactivates the dam. This is all Roger needs to dispose of the monster. Some bits of the past are too bitter to keep around. The old man was named Sven Marisky; he was a researcher before the Event, and his greatest creation was the sea monster that become a nightmare for the residents of Electric City. To take the pressure off of the locals in Electric City, Roger destroys the power plant. He returns home to see an ever-sullen Dorothy, playing a blues piece. He asks her how an emotionless android can play the blues, and she responds: "I play the blues because I feel like it." As Roger puzzles over how an android could "feel" anything, he notices that Dorothy seems to have torn up Angel's business card...
