The Origin (Chapter 1, 2, 3/Paper 1) by Hazirah M. FIRST: 30112000 LATEST: 26032001 ---------- CHAPTER 1 ...In a darkened room... A small figure no taller than two feet hurried about. The robot could speak and move freely, and, as one of the scientists had commented, had a mind of its own. It had once been an experiment, but one day it was able to move on its own and later it spoke some rather rude words to the scientists in Japanese. (The scientists had marvelled at first, but when a Japanese scientist translated its words, no one marvelled anymore.) It had been labelled a reject, but no one could get rid of it. Some of the scientists called it a blessing; most of them called it a nuisance. It was always there in the laboratory, and it had its advantages and disadvantages. The robot, nicknamed 'Boy Z' by one of the more amused scientists, stared in awe at the latest project of the scientists, a robot that was as tall as a building. Boy Z circled the 'dead' machine, staring with envy at its striking surface. Boy Z then stood in front of the robot and spoke in Japanese. Since I do not speak in Japanese nor can I understand it, I can only tell you what Boy Z said in English: "What is your name, big one?" The robot did not answer back. It was, after all, 'dead'. It was not yet completed, even though many months of work had been put into it. Boy Z said, "What do your masters want to do with you?" The robot did not answer back, but Boy Z kept on talking. He felt the robot had a good reason for not speaking, but still wanted it to speak. Outside the door, a scientist stopped in his tracks and heard Boy Z's voice. He felt angry to think of Boy Z's freedom of speech and movement. He had worked on Boy Z for a few months until the project was terminated. He had tried hard and long so that his many robots could have the freedom Boy Z had, but nothing had worked. The scientist then turned back to Boy Z's voice. He could not understand Boy Z's words, but he knew that Boy Z was speaking to someone. He opened the door slowly and could make out Boy Z's figure, speaking to their latest project. He hoped the robot could answer, but it didn't. This made him even more furious. "Monster!" he yelled and lunged at Boy Z. Boy Z moved away quickly, but the scientist kept chasing him around the room. Finally the scientist became tired and stopped running. Boy Z picked up a piece of laboratory apparatus nearby and smashed it onto the scientist's head. The scientist was knocked out cold. Boy Z then made his escape. ...In a small house in a pleasant neighbourhood... It was 10PM and Frida had arrived home angry from her first date with a young champion racer. The racer, whose nickname was Heat, had seen Frida watching him after one of his races (in which he had arrived in first place). After speaking with her, he had asked her out on a date. It was a week ago, and now, just about three hours after Heat had come to pick her up, Frida was home and furious. "I NEVER WANT TO SEE HIM AGAIN!" she shrieked at her younger sister Comet, who was 15 years old and had tactlessly asked how the date had gone. Comet, amused as their father was shocked, nodded to her and smiled. "No calls from him then?" "None at all!" Frida snapped. "Tell him to drop dead in the middle of the road!" "Frida!" exclaimed their father. "Daddy, I'm not seeing him again," Frida replied. Then she stomped upstairs to her bedroom. Wordlessly, their father turned to look at Comet. Comet smiled at him and replied, "What she said." ...Many months later, in the same room we saw earlier... "Shrinking performance perfected," said a scientist we know simply as Perry (surname). She looked at the other scientist, Logan (surname), who was in his twenties and had done a lot of joking around on their latest and biggest project, Robo-Z. "Now he can finally walk out the door without making serious damage to our walls, OUCH!" Logan grabbed his head and turned to look at Richardson (surname, all surnames for these scientists, get me?). "It's just a joke!" "Too many jokes," Richardson replied, frowning. She turned away to look at Robo-Z, the biggest robot they had ever constructed. "It's completed then!" said Perry. "We can go and report this to Dr. Wells." "Let's check that list again first," Richardson suggested. They turned back to the list. "From the top," said Perry, and she started reading the lists of Robo-Z's abilities. "Speech, perfected. Movement, perfected. Absorb, perfected. Rays, perfected. Dance, perfected." Perry raised her eyebrows at Logan, who was laughing. Logan had been the one to suggest the new robot be able to dance. Perry continued reading the list, which was a long one. When she had finished she turned to look at the other two scientists. "Done," said Richardson, nodding her head in approval. "Now we can submit this report." She and Perry started walking towards the door. "Wait!" said Logan. Perry and Richardson, noticing the serious look on his face, stopped and walked back to him. "Any problems, Mr. Logan?" Perry asked in a concerned voice. "His surface looks kinda dull, don'tcha think?" Logan and Richardson got into another argument, while Perry, waiting for the argument to be over, walked over to Robo-Z and inspected his surface, which DID seem kind of dull. She noted his height, which was only about five feet now, and wished that Dr. Wells would tell them what he wanted with Robo-Z. One thing she really wanted to see was Robo-Z dancing again. Richardson made it sound ridiculous, but all of them really liked his dancing during the test earlier, about a month ago. "Dr. Perry!" yelled a voice across the room, interrupting Perry's thoughts (and Logan and Richardson's argument). Another scientist named Curtis came running across the room to Perry. "Dr. Perry!" she exclaimed breathlessly. "Are you done with the tests? Dr. Wells said that you'd be done by today!" "Why, yes," Perry replied, bewildered by Curtis' panicked behaviour. "We were just about to submit the report..." "Ms. Lily Curtis, you have to relax," said Logan, coming over and patting her on the shoulder. "Being stressed does not do a thing for you." Curtis caught her breath, then she spoke again. "Dr. Wells has already gone," she said. "What?!" exclaimed Richardson. "Already? But he was expecting the report today!" "He seemed pretty angry about it as well..." Curtis continued. Richardson and Logan looked shocked. Perry looked at the three of them and spoke. "We can send in the report tomorrow." "Are you sure?" Curtis asked doubtfully. "Dr. Wells..." "There's nothing else to do if he's gone already," Perry interrupted, pushing aside thoughts of what Dr. Wells would say or do to them the next day. "And if any of us run into any problems..." she paused, looking at Logan, who looked very pale. (He had not done much for the tests.) "I will take the blame. The report is with me." They talked a bit more, Perry reassuring the other three, Logan worrying, Richardson panicking and Curtis catching her breath. They talked as they left the room. Not aware that there had been someone else in the room, listening to everything they'd been saying. ...In a shack by the beach... "You're not coming?" Frida stopped bandaging her feet as she thought about Comet's words. Then continued. "Why not? What happened?" "Dad grounded me, Frida!" Comet whined on the other end of the phone. "He looked at my last test. He said he had seen too many red marks. He said I'm not going anywhere unapproved by him this month. He said when I'm seventeen like you are I can go and live in my own pad and paint all day or whatever but I'm not yet seventeen. He said..." "You're getting too chatty for my own likes, Comet," Frida interrupted, annoyed, and at the same time concerned that her sister could not come to the dance competition the following day, called 'Bust A Move'. "But you're not coming tomorrow? Can't you even come for awhile to see me dance?" "'Dancing is not worthwhile.'" "What?!" exclaimed Frida. "How can you say that? We loved to dance! You always..." "That's what dad said, Frida," Comet interrupted. She grinned to herself despite the conditions. "So, if you meet any cool people, say hi to them from me. Give them my e-mail address." "What e-mail address?" "Oh yeah, I don't have any..." Comet rolled her eyes at herself for the lie. Frida was not supposed to know that she had an e-mail address. To her it wasn't a big deal, but their father felt somehow that Frida shouldn't know, perhaps as a punishment for moving out. "...Right..." Frida raised her eyebrows. "Anyways... I have to go now. Say hi to Daddy for me." Without waiting for another word from Comet, she hung up. Frida looked down at her bandaged feet. What happened to them in the first place I will not say, for I do not know. (If I knew, I'd tell it to you some other time.) Frida looked at one of her canvas paintings, a 'normal-looking' one for once (quoted by Comet), a painting of herself posing in front of her shack. For a strange reason, Frida felt it could tell her what was coming for her the next day. Because Frida felt that something big would happen the next day at the competition. CHAPTER 2 ...The next day, on a sidewalk somewhere... Frida was on her way to the Bust A Move competition. She had seen the flyer advertising the competition when she and Comet were out shopping (their father thinking they were doing 'studious' things). She and Comet, who liked dancing, thought it was a great idea and agreed to come. Now Frida was on her own and only had with her a piece of paper with the Bust A Move competition's address written on it as well as a backpack full of 'necessities'. Frida arrived in front of a solitary hut in the middle of a large grassy pad, with a huge sign next to it that read... Bust A Move Competition Do you like to dance? Do you know how to move? Well, this is your chance to do so and win an exclusive prize! Don't be fooled - it's gonna be big! Age Limit: Over 10 years old What to do? Open the damn door! Frida raised her eyebrows at the sign as well as the hut, but was hesitant to open the door. 'What if it's all a trick?' she thought to herself. 'What if I find something else in there...?' Frida didn't dare think any further. Just then another figure came walking down the street. Frida looked at the person. She looked twelve years old, wearing overalls with a cap worn backwards and had a something that looked like a teddy bear in her pocket. The girl noticed Frida, but ignored her as she walked towards the hut. However, she hesitated just as she was about to open the door. Frida could see why. Being twelve years old and alone on a strange street, about to enter a hut, what was not to be scared of? Frida walked towards the girl, who sent her a nervous glance. Frida smiled her friendliest smile then spoke, "Hi, my name's Frida, what's yours?" "My name's Alys... I mean, Shorty," the girl replied, with a small smile. "You here for the competition?" Frida asked Shorty. Shorty smiled shyly and nodded. "Well, then," said Frida, taking Shorty's hand. "Let's go in, shall we?" Shorty looked nervous but nodded anyway. The both of them entered the door together. ...In the building which held the lab, I mean, darkened room that we saw earlier... "How could this have happened?!" "What did they do?" "Where could Robo-Z have gone?" Everyone who had contributed to the Robo-Z project walked around, panicked and nothing else. Even Perry, who had done a good job the day before comforting her colleagues, could not fight the panicked feeling she had now. One of the scientists had gone into the lab Robo-Z was kept in to check on him that morning. Robo-Z had disappeared. All the scientists who had worked on Robo-Z were nervous, and dreaded Dr. Wells' reaction. Most nervous of all were Perry, Logan and Richardson, who had seen him last. Perry clutched the report she should have handed over the previous day and walked towards Dr. Wells' office. She would take the blame for the late report, but she was still too stunned to say anything about Robo-Z's disappearance. Perry paused outside Dr. Well's office. All the excuses she had used back in the days of grade school entered her mind, but she knew none of them would ever work on Dr. Wells. Dr. Wells was sharp and his frightening enthusiasm on the Robo-Z project had made him rather difficult to work with all these months. Perry took a deep breath, then knocked on the door. She waited for Dr. Wells' voice, but she couldn't hear anything. Perry knocked again, but didn't hear anything coming from Dr. Wells' office. Cautiously she opened the door. Inside there was no one, and it didn't look like anyone had been in there that day. The chair was empty, the desk untouched. "Dr. Wells?" Perry said to the empty room. Of course no one answered. Perry didn't know whether to be relieved or afraid. "Dr. Perry!" came a familiar voice. Perry turned and this time it was Logan who was running towards her. She didn't dare to ask what was the matter this time. She let Logan do the talking. Logan stopped at Dr. Wells' door, and tried to catch his breath as well as explain his urgency. "...Boy Z...gone... Tony Nicholas... saw him last..." Perry was not very impressed by this. Boy Z had insulted her once (in Japanese, remember?) and Morishita (another scientist, who was Japanese) had translated it to her and since then Perry had held a grudge against the robot. Perry would have liked to see Boy Z as a scrap of metal in a junkyard. "That's good!" she snapped. "I wouldn't care anything about Boy Z except for the person who got rid of him, who'd I congratulate endlessly." "But..." "What could Boy Z have to do with Robo-Z? He's a pesky little creature and Robo-Z is a huge gigantic robot! Boy Z couldn't have carried that thing out of here!" "But, Perry..." Perry shut her mouth and looked at Logan. She suddenly realized that Logan was not in his joking mood. "Tony Nicholas saw him last," Logan said again. "He was running down the halls yelling Japanese at the top of his voice. And he was running from the direction of the room where we kept Robo-Z..." "Oh God!" exclaimed Perry in realization. "He could have been there the whole time! He could have found out... how we made Robo-Z do his shrinking..." "That's what I thought!" said Logan, almost triumphantly. Perry was already running down the hallway... ...In the hut earlier... "What kind of a joke is this?!" exclaimed Frida. Frida started cursing as she walked around the hut, looking for anything that could lead to identification of the so-called joker. Not that there really was anything in the hut. It was empty and had nothing worth looking at except a small trapdoor which opened to, well, nothing. Shorty leaned against one of the walls quietly. Her biggest worry was that she'd be caught and found out and sent to her parents in shame. Now there was nothing to worry about other than whether or not Frida would ever run out of swear words. Shorty yawned, then looked around the hut again. How could a poster like that be a joke? It didn't happen very often. Maybe that was why it happened this time. Shorty walked over to the trapdoor again. It had been left open, and Shorty had looked it for as long as possible, but could not find anything interesting, not even an interesting-shaped pebble. Shorty flicked her finger at the soil. Nothing. Then she felt a change and looked at Frida. Frida had stopped cursing. Someone was opening the door. Shorty and Frida looked at each other, silently sending out signals. 'WTF?!' said Frida's signal. (No explanation to what that means, you should know) 'Papa's gonna kill me!' said Shorty's signal. The door opened. CHAPTER 3 ...Boy Z's hideout... "They wanted to use you for evil reasons!" said Boy Z to Robo-Z in Japanese. "...Evil?" Robo-Z repeated, confused. Robo-Z had to shrink to four feet to fit in Boy Z's hideout, some pour soul's basement. (I say poor soul, I mean, to have in their basement a runaway Japanese-speaking free-thinking cheeky little robot and a shrinking evil-eyed versatile not-dead-anymore runaway's sidekick of a robot) "To destroy, to kill," said Boy Z, who we now know does have a heart, in a way. "...destroy..." Robo-Z repeated, suddenly 'remembering' that his master - Dr. Wells - had tried to teach him to 'destroy' a few months ago. Fortunately he had failed because it had been too early. He had meant to try it again after Robo-Z's tests were complete. "Humans are stupid, they build you then kill you, but not all of them, and we should never kill humans." "...kill..." "We should not kill." "Never," agreed Robo-Z. ...The hut again... "Heat?!" shrieked Frida. Her shriek was so loud that Shorty felt someone outside would have heard it and come running in to see who had died. "You!?" exclaimed Heat. On his face was an expression very much like Frida's, except that he looked less hysterical. "What?" Shorty said quietly. Frida looked at Shorty then back to Heat. Heat... anger built up inside her as she thought of the one and only date they had ever had (and of its failure in advancing to a relationship or even to a second date). At this, out came the very swear words Shorty had heard earlier, and in exact order. She walked around the hut, looking for anything that she could use to hit Heat with. Not that there was really anything in the hut. It was empty and had nothing worth looking at except for a small trapdoor that opened to nothing and the very confused faces of Shorty and Heat. Shorty shivered, sensing déja vu. Heat coughed, then spoke. "Alright, girl, calm down!" he said sternly. "I know we have, er, bad memories of each other, but do you know anything about this poster?" He showed the girls the poster advertising the competition, very much like the ones they had seen. "That's the exact reason why we're here," said Shorty, when Frida didn't say anything. (Two reasons: One, Frida thought the poster had been Heat's doing. Two, Frida did not want to be on speaking terms with Heat.) "Well, where are we supposed to go then?" Shorty looked at Frida for an answer, but Frida was determined to not say anything to Heat. Shorty sighed, then spoke. "We don't know." Just as she had spoken, they heard a very loud noise. It continued, crescendo. (Crescendo meaning 'gradually getting louder', at least that's what I learnt when I had my piano classes before.) The three stood silently, transfixed as they listened to the sound, then Heat pulled himself together and started yelling. "Yo! Snap out of it!" he yelled to the two girls. "It's getting louder! It must be getting closer!" Frida came out of the trance and quickly grabbed Shorty's hand. "Shorty!" she yelled at the girl, pulling her. "We have to get out of here!" "Wha...?" Shorty's eyes were half-closed and her head slumped over Frida's shoulder. "What's wrong with her?" yelled Heat (who was already at the door) to Frida. He ran over to them. "She's still listening to that sound!" Frida yelled over the sound, forgetting that she hadn't meant to speak to Heat. "She... she must be hypnotized or something!" Frida just watched a movie of that nature two nights ago. "Damn!" Heat went behind Shorty and took her from Frida. He lifted her from under the arms. (...It's so difficult to write down these actions! Please use your imagination!...) He turned to Frida and yelled again, "Let's get out of here!" But before they could do that, 'it' had crashed into the hut. ...At Z-Kynetixx Laboratories, or ZK Labs, meaning the building holding the darkened room we saw earlier... Our friends Perry, Logan, Richardson and Curtis (along with a few more of the scientists who worked on Robo-Z) sat in the cafeteria, but none of them had the appetite to eat their lunches. It had been about four hours since they had discovered Robo-Z's disappearance. (...'Discovered a disappearance'... that somehow sounds like an oxymoron to me... hmm...) Along with Robo-Z's disappearance was of course Boy Z's disappearance, and onto another discovery, Dr. Wells also seemed to have disappeared. It had been on their minds, but it was Richardson who said it out loud. "You... you don't suppose Dr. Wells had anything to do with Robo-Z?" Perry and Curtis looked at each other. No one had wanted to say it, but no one had doubted it. Logan looked down at his fingers, which weren't very interesting. "He wanted so much for the project to be done and over with," Richardson went on. "And... I heard he wanted to teach Robo-Z to 'destroy'..." "What about Boy Z?" questioned Perry. "What could he have wanted with Boy Z?" "Maybe," spoke Logan in a flash of inspiration, "maybe it was Boy Z who made Robo-Z shrink and kidnapped him. Dr. Wells found out before any of us did and now he's searching the land in fury for Robo-Z and Boy Z and didn't even care to leave us a note." "No way," said Richardson, laughing dryly. "Why not?" replied Perry, who decided not to let her money go to waste and was drinking up her water. This silenced the others. (Her comment, not the fact that she was drinking her water.) In fact it was the closest to the truth. TILL CHAPTER 4, IF I EVER GET TO IT ************** TITLE: The Origin (Chapter 1, 2, 3/Paper 1) FOUND AT: http://www.chickpages.com/ego/saya238/write/theorigin1.txt AUTHOR: Hazirah M. E-MAIL: hazirah@hotmail.com