Fic: Epic Bot!Fic, G, Beckett/McKay by inkscribe
Title: (in other circumstances this would be) Epic Bot!Fic
Author: inkscribe
Pairings: Beckett/McKay
Rating: G
Words: ~1600
Spoilers: none
Locations: carsonsmut, icaw, malesofatlantis, notmcshep, rodneysmut, sgaauwtptbdfu, my LJ
Feedback: yes, please!
Summary: A short take on the epic romance between two bots.
Author's Notes: So of course, when one is far too busy is always the exact moment one sees something that spawns evil crackfic.
For those who read McShep, I will give a nod of inspiration toward the lovely and far more serious stories Gravity by rheanna27 and OK Computer by cesperanza ... both of these have clearly left computers and AIs on my brain.
For the ridiculous parts terminology, I’ll toss credit toward the old masters of SF, Ray Bradbury in particular. Offhand I don’t think any of the words I used are outright copies of anything coined by him, but there may be a passing resemblance.
ETA: Woah ... I just discovered that tardis80 had designed a highly apropos icon. Well, okay, the bots in this story are both bots but this is just sooooo similar to what I had in mind, LOL! Check out the doodle post here. /ETA
This is completely unbeta-ed, so any mistakes are absolutely entirely completely all my own with only myself to blame.
This story is dedicated to nickespix, who will soon receive a hardcopy version via snailmail. The hardcopy is what causes the circumstances of this epic to be un-epicable ... the other bit of inspiration that hit me was a rather amusing greeting card featuring a couple of robots. Hopefully I can squeeze the darned thing into the space available for mailing!
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is not mine; please don’t sue, we’ll both regret it in the morning.
(in other circumstances this would be) Epic Bot!Fic
Rodney!bot’s servo-motor-assisted core processing unit was figuratively broken. He knew this meant ‘sad’. His creator had discarded him, left him to be swept out with the rest of the spare parts and scrap metal, melted back to slag and recycled elsewhere.
Given his luck, he was pretty certain his molecular components would end up as a chair in a botany lab, or worse yet, a plant pot in a botany lab.
He shuddered a little at the image processing through his robobot-brain.
The terrible injustice of it all was that Rodney!bot knew he could keep up with the newest model, knew he could outperform calculations of outrageous magnitude and error-check his results with astonishing accuracy. But Rodney!bot was built to be solid and sturdy where the new model was all flash and shine, and apparently even among genius robotic inventors, style still counted over substance.
Unwanted and unnoticed, Rodney!bot crept away from the only home he had ever known, maybe a little bit more than figuratively heartbroken.
[]
Carson!bot sifted through the junk piled before him, the only overt indication of his profound dejection was the intermittent flickering of the tiny red light on his communication antenna. He sorted the junk into bins labelled by their contents: plastics in one, scrap metal in another, old circuitboards in another. Miscellaneous bits and pieces got chucked in yet another bin, pieces usually requiring more processing before being able to be sold off for profit on the mass therein.
Every so often Carson!bot had to stifle a rumble of sadness as he came across a discarded bot, one that with a little oil and fuel might be good for years yet had its owner simply chosen to keep it. Often they were torn and battered from neglect, and usually key servo-components or robobot-brain linkages were either missing or so severely damaged that even a talented surgibuildibot like Carson!bot would have been hard pressed to repair, even if he’d had access to the marvels of a bot factory like the one he was created within, or the repair shed of the human hospital where he had once performed life-saving human medical procedures.
He was lucky to still have a job himself, he knew. Especially when he saw a Keller!bot come through the scrap heap - if they were replacing her model already, how much longer could a solid, old-fashioned medical bot like him possibly hang on to the little bit of mechanical dignity he had left? How long before someone noticed he was older and scrappier than the scrap, and tossed him on the heap?
Carson!bot resolved to keep his head down and stick to work. That’s when he heard it, a sound so small in the noise of the scrapheap that he thought he was imagining things at first. He stopped completely, making no movements, listening with all his might. Then he heard it again and knew he wasn’t experiencing robotic wish fulfilment. Something was in there. Something still operational!
Frantically, he started to sort through the scrap, pushing aside pieces large and small, hunting for the sound, now clearly audible as a faint ‘beep beep’ of a communication antenna. Finally, he discovered it ... a battered bot, gears grinding as it tried to gain purchase against the jumbled pile surrounding it, ‘beeps’ for help nearly inaudible from robobot-hysteria.
Carson!bot had to stop for a moment, fascinated at the speed the struggling bot tried and rejected solutions to extricate himself. The bot’s beeps shot into ultra-high frequency wavelengths for a picosecond, then ceased entirely.
“Well, nuts,” the bot cursed, and Carson!bot would have blushed to his servo-motor-assisted core processing unit at the bot’s language had the function been available.
Carson!bot cleared his channel and sent out a reassuring ‘beep’. The other bot froze immediately. Rust-encrusted joints squealed in protest as the bot turned its head toward Carson!bot, giving him an appraising stare.
“Well don’t just stand there, you moron,” the damaged bot said suddenly. “Get me out of this junk!”
Shocked again - this time shocked because he hadn’t already extricated the bot from its scrap-part prison - Carson!bot sprang into action. He extended his clamps and got a good grip on the other bot, then lifted it bodily from the wreckage.
“Hey,” the other bot squawked. “Be careful! I have a very delicate bot-back, you know! I might never recover from all this careless handling!”
Carson!bot placed the other bot gently on the scrap room floor. He felt strangely reluctant to open his clamps. He shrugged mentally: no doubt he simply missed the contact he’d once had with so many humans and robots, back when he’d been a bot of importance. A bot of value. He shifted back, suddenly realising he was about to spring a leak from mechanical melancholy leading to emotional instability.
“You look like you could use a good oiling, lad,” Carson!bot said, trying to be helpful.
The other robot eyed him suspiciously. “Are you coming on to me?”
Carson!bot felt his surface temperature heat - it was insufficient to count as a true blush but, “Oh no, no no no,” he stammered in response. “I dinnae mean anything by that! It’s just,” he waved a flexible robotbot-arm toward the other bot, “you seem a bit worse for the wear. I’ve got some shop oil here. It might help your bot-back, not to mention the rust.”
“Oh,” the other bot said, looking chagrined. He looked at himself with a bot-critical eye before turning toward Carson!bot again. “My self-diagnostic indicates you’re quite right. I am rusty.”
The bot’s light blinked erratically for a moment as he obviously tried to process that data. It was an awkward, uncomfortable moment.
“I’m Carson!bot,” Carson!bot said, breaking the moment by extending a clamp toward the other.
“I’m Rodney!bot,” the other bot replied, meeting Carson!bot’s clamp with his own. They docked perfectly.
[]
Rodney!bot had tried desperately to keep from showing his growing interest in Carson!bot. Rodney!bot had always worked alone; he’d never had the chance to appreciate being close to others of his own kind. Even wandering the streets, skulking through back alleys and trying to avoid rainstorms had kept him away from other bots.
He had considered doing something bot-actularly obscene like trade off some data in exchange for a little fuel or a little oil, but he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it. Tired and moving a little stiffly from building rust, he had turned the wrong corner at the wrong time of night and bang got swept up by an automated streetsweeper.
He hadn’t really expected to retain connectivity. He’d been on the streets long enough to see the steel-crunching capability of those brutes up close.
But here he was, his bot-body under the capable clamps of Carson!bot, oil added here, oil added there. A fuelbar slipped into his energy processor.
He was well-oiled now, but with the growing heat he sensed across his surface, Rodney!bot definitely had some friction happening somewhere. An external sensor noted that Carson!bot had a similar ... problem.
Rodney!bot considered the possibilities. He considered a number of possibilities that required exponents to express them in digits. He looked at Carson!bot. He appreciated the sturdy bot-body and the stocky bot-legs and the strong bot-arms.
Rodney!bot concluded that he was in bot-love.
Carson!bot, at that very moment, looked into Rodney!bot’s primary visual sensors. Wireless, site-to-site packet data transfer confirmed the conclusion was mutual.
[]
Epilogue:
Carson!bot was satisfied - no, pleased - to learn that their clamps weren’t the only parts they had that docked perfectly. Nuts and bolts held the same thread, and they were both happy to discover each had always preferred the same oils.
They sifted and sorted and saved from the scrap they worked on, day in and day out. Rodney!bot started making something special and secret off in a dark and dusty corner, partitioning his very robobot-brain processes from Carson!bot so as not to spoil the surprise.
Carson!bot not only loved Rodney!bot, he admired him, too. Admired that he was stubborn and rebellious and more than a bit of a genius. A genius in more ways than one, especially with that trick with the extra oil and the socket wrench, Carson!bot mused to himself.
So Carson!bot wasn’t particularly surprised when Rodney!bot dragged him to the back corner, punched a series of buttons on strange machine he’d cobbled together, and said, “Let’s go! We’ve got a galaxy to explore, and we’re not getting any younger hanging around this scrap heap.”
Carson!bot stood with Rodney!bot, their clamps firmly docked together, and waited for the blue splash of Rodney!bot’s wormhole stabiliser to solidify and settle. Rodney!bot transferred some warm and oily data through their shared ports, then blinked and beeped his antenna in excitement. “One small step for bots, one giant step for bot-kind!” he shouted, and together they stepped out of the room and into the galaxy.
The End
Author: inkscribe
Pairings: Beckett/McKay
Rating: G
Words: ~1600
Spoilers: none
Locations: carsonsmut, icaw, malesofatlantis, notmcshep, rodneysmut, sgaauwtptbdfu, my LJ
Feedback: yes, please!
Summary: A short take on the epic romance between two bots.
Author's Notes: So of course, when one is far too busy is always the exact moment one sees something that spawns evil crackfic.
For those who read McShep, I will give a nod of inspiration toward the lovely and far more serious stories Gravity by rheanna27 and OK Computer by cesperanza ... both of these have clearly left computers and AIs on my brain.
For the ridiculous parts terminology, I’ll toss credit toward the old masters of SF, Ray Bradbury in particular. Offhand I don’t think any of the words I used are outright copies of anything coined by him, but there may be a passing resemblance.
ETA: Woah ... I just discovered that tardis80 had designed a highly apropos icon. Well, okay, the bots in this story are both bots but this is just sooooo similar to what I had in mind, LOL! Check out the doodle post here. /ETA
This is completely unbeta-ed, so any mistakes are absolutely entirely completely all my own with only myself to blame.
This story is dedicated to nickespix, who will soon receive a hardcopy version via snailmail. The hardcopy is what causes the circumstances of this epic to be un-epicable ... the other bit of inspiration that hit me was a rather amusing greeting card featuring a couple of robots. Hopefully I can squeeze the darned thing into the space available for mailing!
Disclaimer: Anything you recognise is not mine; please don’t sue, we’ll both regret it in the morning.
(in other circumstances this would be) Epic Bot!Fic
Rodney!bot’s servo-motor-assisted core processing unit was figuratively broken. He knew this meant ‘sad’. His creator had discarded him, left him to be swept out with the rest of the spare parts and scrap metal, melted back to slag and recycled elsewhere.
Given his luck, he was pretty certain his molecular components would end up as a chair in a botany lab, or worse yet, a plant pot in a botany lab.
He shuddered a little at the image processing through his robobot-brain.
The terrible injustice of it all was that Rodney!bot knew he could keep up with the newest model, knew he could outperform calculations of outrageous magnitude and error-check his results with astonishing accuracy. But Rodney!bot was built to be solid and sturdy where the new model was all flash and shine, and apparently even among genius robotic inventors, style still counted over substance.
Unwanted and unnoticed, Rodney!bot crept away from the only home he had ever known, maybe a little bit more than figuratively heartbroken.
[]
Carson!bot sifted through the junk piled before him, the only overt indication of his profound dejection was the intermittent flickering of the tiny red light on his communication antenna. He sorted the junk into bins labelled by their contents: plastics in one, scrap metal in another, old circuitboards in another. Miscellaneous bits and pieces got chucked in yet another bin, pieces usually requiring more processing before being able to be sold off for profit on the mass therein.
Every so often Carson!bot had to stifle a rumble of sadness as he came across a discarded bot, one that with a little oil and fuel might be good for years yet had its owner simply chosen to keep it. Often they were torn and battered from neglect, and usually key servo-components or robobot-brain linkages were either missing or so severely damaged that even a talented surgibuildibot like Carson!bot would have been hard pressed to repair, even if he’d had access to the marvels of a bot factory like the one he was created within, or the repair shed of the human hospital where he had once performed life-saving human medical procedures.
He was lucky to still have a job himself, he knew. Especially when he saw a Keller!bot come through the scrap heap - if they were replacing her model already, how much longer could a solid, old-fashioned medical bot like him possibly hang on to the little bit of mechanical dignity he had left? How long before someone noticed he was older and scrappier than the scrap, and tossed him on the heap?
Carson!bot resolved to keep his head down and stick to work. That’s when he heard it, a sound so small in the noise of the scrapheap that he thought he was imagining things at first. He stopped completely, making no movements, listening with all his might. Then he heard it again and knew he wasn’t experiencing robotic wish fulfilment. Something was in there. Something still operational!
Frantically, he started to sort through the scrap, pushing aside pieces large and small, hunting for the sound, now clearly audible as a faint ‘beep beep’ of a communication antenna. Finally, he discovered it ... a battered bot, gears grinding as it tried to gain purchase against the jumbled pile surrounding it, ‘beeps’ for help nearly inaudible from robobot-hysteria.
Carson!bot had to stop for a moment, fascinated at the speed the struggling bot tried and rejected solutions to extricate himself. The bot’s beeps shot into ultra-high frequency wavelengths for a picosecond, then ceased entirely.
“Well, nuts,” the bot cursed, and Carson!bot would have blushed to his servo-motor-assisted core processing unit at the bot’s language had the function been available.
Carson!bot cleared his channel and sent out a reassuring ‘beep’. The other bot froze immediately. Rust-encrusted joints squealed in protest as the bot turned its head toward Carson!bot, giving him an appraising stare.
“Well don’t just stand there, you moron,” the damaged bot said suddenly. “Get me out of this junk!”
Shocked again - this time shocked because he hadn’t already extricated the bot from its scrap-part prison - Carson!bot sprang into action. He extended his clamps and got a good grip on the other bot, then lifted it bodily from the wreckage.
“Hey,” the other bot squawked. “Be careful! I have a very delicate bot-back, you know! I might never recover from all this careless handling!”
Carson!bot placed the other bot gently on the scrap room floor. He felt strangely reluctant to open his clamps. He shrugged mentally: no doubt he simply missed the contact he’d once had with so many humans and robots, back when he’d been a bot of importance. A bot of value. He shifted back, suddenly realising he was about to spring a leak from mechanical melancholy leading to emotional instability.
“You look like you could use a good oiling, lad,” Carson!bot said, trying to be helpful.
The other robot eyed him suspiciously. “Are you coming on to me?”
Carson!bot felt his surface temperature heat - it was insufficient to count as a true blush but, “Oh no, no no no,” he stammered in response. “I dinnae mean anything by that! It’s just,” he waved a flexible robotbot-arm toward the other bot, “you seem a bit worse for the wear. I’ve got some shop oil here. It might help your bot-back, not to mention the rust.”
“Oh,” the other bot said, looking chagrined. He looked at himself with a bot-critical eye before turning toward Carson!bot again. “My self-diagnostic indicates you’re quite right. I am rusty.”
The bot’s light blinked erratically for a moment as he obviously tried to process that data. It was an awkward, uncomfortable moment.
“I’m Carson!bot,” Carson!bot said, breaking the moment by extending a clamp toward the other.
“I’m Rodney!bot,” the other bot replied, meeting Carson!bot’s clamp with his own. They docked perfectly.
[]
Rodney!bot had tried desperately to keep from showing his growing interest in Carson!bot. Rodney!bot had always worked alone; he’d never had the chance to appreciate being close to others of his own kind. Even wandering the streets, skulking through back alleys and trying to avoid rainstorms had kept him away from other bots.
He had considered doing something bot-actularly obscene like trade off some data in exchange for a little fuel or a little oil, but he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to do it. Tired and moving a little stiffly from building rust, he had turned the wrong corner at the wrong time of night and bang got swept up by an automated streetsweeper.
He hadn’t really expected to retain connectivity. He’d been on the streets long enough to see the steel-crunching capability of those brutes up close.
But here he was, his bot-body under the capable clamps of Carson!bot, oil added here, oil added there. A fuelbar slipped into his energy processor.
He was well-oiled now, but with the growing heat he sensed across his surface, Rodney!bot definitely had some friction happening somewhere. An external sensor noted that Carson!bot had a similar ... problem.
Rodney!bot considered the possibilities. He considered a number of possibilities that required exponents to express them in digits. He looked at Carson!bot. He appreciated the sturdy bot-body and the stocky bot-legs and the strong bot-arms.
Rodney!bot concluded that he was in bot-love.
Carson!bot, at that very moment, looked into Rodney!bot’s primary visual sensors. Wireless, site-to-site packet data transfer confirmed the conclusion was mutual.
[]
Epilogue:
Carson!bot was satisfied - no, pleased - to learn that their clamps weren’t the only parts they had that docked perfectly. Nuts and bolts held the same thread, and they were both happy to discover each had always preferred the same oils.
They sifted and sorted and saved from the scrap they worked on, day in and day out. Rodney!bot started making something special and secret off in a dark and dusty corner, partitioning his very robobot-brain processes from Carson!bot so as not to spoil the surprise.
Carson!bot not only loved Rodney!bot, he admired him, too. Admired that he was stubborn and rebellious and more than a bit of a genius. A genius in more ways than one, especially with that trick with the extra oil and the socket wrench, Carson!bot mused to himself.
So Carson!bot wasn’t particularly surprised when Rodney!bot dragged him to the back corner, punched a series of buttons on strange machine he’d cobbled together, and said, “Let’s go! We’ve got a galaxy to explore, and we’re not getting any younger hanging around this scrap heap.”
Carson!bot stood with Rodney!bot, their clamps firmly docked together, and waited for the blue splash of Rodney!bot’s wormhole stabiliser to solidify and settle. Rodney!bot transferred some warm and oily data through their shared ports, then blinked and beeped his antenna in excitement. “One small step for bots, one giant step for bot-kind!” he shouted, and together they stepped out of the room and into the galaxy.
The End