"Automatons," The Man From U.N.C.L.E., PG-13
Title: Automatons
Author: edna_blackadder
Rating: PG-13: creepiness in spades
Pairings: past Napoleon Solo/OFC, vaguely implied Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin (if you want to see it, it’s there; if not, it’s not)
Word Count: 1,979
Disclaimer: I’m about 40 years too late to own The Man From U.N.C.L.E. No money is being made from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: This is a remix of “Ecclesiastes,” a very awesome fic by epicycles and a clever, creeptacular-in-a-good-way take on the series’ dramatic change in tone from S3 to S4. The original story reveals the cause; this remix attempts to show the effect.
Author’s Note: Written for the Exhibition Remix challenge at mfuwss. Thanks to epicycles and kleenexwoman for organizing this, and thanks as always to my beta, sarcasticsra.
None of us like the idea of retraining. One of my first moves as CEA was to submit a long memo recommending that UNCLE end the practice, considered by many to be unethical, outdated, and highly dangerous. Shortly afterward, Mr. Waverly summoned me to his office to remind me that I was responsible for Enforcement, not Policy.
“I’m responsible for Enforcement agents, sir,” I replied, as diplomatically as I could. “I believe this policy carries a very high risk of potential harm. Surely we can at least suspend it, pending further research?”
“I think not,” said Mr. Waverly shortly. I opened my mouth to protest, my temper rising, and he shook his head. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but when you sit in this chair, you will understand. You’re dismissed, Mr. Solo.”
I said nothing and left. Instead of returning to my office, I went downstairs to see Stephen himself. I had intended to give him a piece of my mind, but Andrea, his charming secretary, smiled coquettishly and informed me that he wasn’t in right now. She was all but purring as she told me I could come back later, and I did, to pick her up for our dinner date.
To my everlasting shame, that was the end of the matter.
*
I’m filing paperwork when I hear a knock. “Napoleon?” asks a voice from outside. The voice is familiar, but it isn’t the familiar voice I was expecting. For one thing, it’s female.
“Come in,” I reply. The voice says something indistinct, and then the shapely blonde attached to it enters and approaches my desk. She places her hands on the edge and leans forward deliberately, affording me a view of her cleavage. “Andrea,” I say, “what brings you here?”
“I never used to need a reason.” She shakes her head, folds her arms, and pretends to pout. “But I suppose, if you’re very busy…”
“I’m never too busy for you, Andrea.”
“Now that’s funny, seeing as how I haven’t seen you in ages. There’s no need to play coy, Napoleon, I know just how full your little black book is.”
She smiles again, and I start to nod absently-but then I stop, realizing that my address book has in fact been unopened for the past three weeks. I blink. That doesn’t sound like me at all. In the split-second it’s taken me to hesitate, Andrea’s smile has vanished. I blink again and try to recover. “You know me entirely too well.”
“Do I?” she murmurs. There’s something odd about her face; she seems to be trying very hard to recapture her earlier smile, but unable to quite manage it. “I’m not so sure,” she says, her cheery tone ringing somehow false. “I think we ought to get re-acquainted…over lunch, perhaps?”
She says it very fast, and seems strangely nervous. “Certainly,” I answer, glancing at the clock. It’s eleven-thirty. “I’ll meet you in your office at twelve-fifteen.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she replies, before quickly turning to leave. She clearly means it to be seductive, but instead, it is simply unnerving.
I let a few seconds pass, then cross the room and peer out the door after her. She is standing near the elevator, one hand shaking a little. I wait until she is gone, and then I step outside and press the button for the next one. It comes within minutes, and I head down to the labs.
Illya is standing over a piece of what looks like very complicated equipment. He doesn’t look up when I enter. “If you’re longing for liberation,” I say, gazing intently at the part of his hair, as his eyes are otherwise occupied, “I have a job for you.”
Illya has taken a string of beatings during our last few missions. After the third in a row, I suggested a short recuperation assignment downstairs. Mr. Waverly disagreed at first. He relented eventually, but he insisted that it not last longer than one week, and that I take my rest at the same time. But even that short, I knew Illya would be impatient to be done with his vacation. He might be a Cambridge-educated physicist, but he prefers fieldwork, and everyone knows it. He’s been glaring at me for the past four days-
I am suddenly seized by a very ominous feeling. He hasn’t. He’s simply been working down here, methodically and without complaint. That isn’t like Illya. But before I can digest that realization, he finally looks up at me. He is wearing a suitably curious expression, which calms me slightly. “What job might this be?”
“I think Andrea Banks is in trouble.”
“Beautiful Andrea from the department that must not be named?”
I nod. “She just asked to have lunch with me. She didn’t say anything odd, but she seemed frightened of something. I think she wants to tell me something important, something she can’t discuss inside the building. And I think it might be best if you’re sitting nearby and listening in.”
Illya’s eyebrow quirks. “You want me to tail you on a date.”
“In short, yes.”
“It is a true measure of my boredom that that sounds like a good idea.” He says this in an eerily flat tone, and my unease returns.
“Are you feeling all right, Illya?” The words are out before I can stop myself, and Illya looks at me quizzically.
“I am fine. How are you feeling, Napoleon?”
“Fine,” I reply automatically, almost robotically, rattling off the standard answer that everyone offers, the answer that is never completely true-but then I realize that it is true. I am fine, no more or less, and I feel as though I always have been. “I told Andrea I’d meet her at twelve-fifteen. Come to my office five minutes before and start tailing me from there.”
“Very well. I’ll see you later, Napoleon.” Illya has a distant look in his eyes, or so I think, as within an instant they’re once again buried in his experiment. I turn to leave. I feel vaguely unsettled, but by the time I reach my desk, it has passed. I return to my paperwork. I run through the pile efficiently and without interruption, and by twelve o’clock, I have finished with it. I uncap my communicator and contact Illya.
“Kuryakin here.”
“Can you extricate yourself from that legendary breakthrough a little early? I’ve finished up here, and if Andrea’s in the kind of trouble I think she’s in, it’ll be best not to keep her waiting.”
“And if she’s not?”
“Well, this is Andrea we’re talking about.” I pause, then add, “Did you know I haven’t been on a date in three weeks?”
“I can’t say I was aware of that.”
“Neither was I.”
“THRUSH has been very active lately.”
“That never stopped me before.”
“I suppose not.”
“Right. I’ll head downstairs, you’ll head upstairs, we’ll meet in the middle and you’ll be out of sight. Solo out.”
I close my communicator and leave. I press the button for the elevator, and soon I am standing outside the Department of Retraining and Deprogramming. I like Andrea, but I have never liked the department she works for. I hear the faintest sound behind me and turn around. Illya is poking his head out the door to the stairway to let me know he is there. I nod, and he closes the door almost completely. I start walking toward Andrea’s office. The door is ajar, and soon I hear her shouting.
“Stephen, I’m not an idiot!”
“I know that-”
“Then just tell me! What did we do to them?”
“I’ve already told you. Standard retraining procedure. Alexander felt they’d lost their edge. THRUSH has moved on from exploding ice cream cones. They’ve come back down to Earth, and Solo and Kuryakin needed to do the same.”
“But something wasn’t standard. If this is the non-issue you’re making it out to be, why ask me to flirt with Napoleon?”
“Merely to confirm what the lab reports indicated-”
“Which is what?” She is practically snarling now, and I am feeling dizzy and slightly nauseated. Retrained? Us?
“Stephen,” Andrea says after a pause. Her voice is softer now. “He was looking at me like a slide under a microscope. He was talking in a monotone. I leaned over his desk in just about the most obvious way possible, and he didn’t react at all. He hesitated when I mentioned his little black book. This is Napoleon Solo we’re talking about. I knew him. Not as well as some, but well enough to tell the difference. What have we done, and how can it be undone?”
In the pause between her question and his answer I swallow hard, firmly rooted to the spot. It can’t be. Illya and I, retrained? Section Two’s top agents? Mr. Waverly would never order that. But to my horror, I find that I cannot contradict anything Andrea has said-
Then I remember his words: “When you sit in this chair, you will understand.” Will I ever sit in that chair, if I have truly been robbed of my personality?
I abruptly feel a hand on my shoulder. Illya has come out of hiding, and his horrified expression mirrors my own. Or I suppose I ought to say that I fervently hope my own mirrors his. Did I really fail to react to Andrea? How can I have?
I reach up to place my hand over Illya’s just as Stephen finally responds. Moments ago he sounded defiant; now his voice is barely more than a whisper. “I don’t know,” he says, and there is terror in his voice to equal mine. “Something went wrong, but I don’t know what it was or how we can fix it or even if we can fix it. It might be possible, but I don’t know! I may very well have killed them, Andrea!”
I hear Andrea draw in a deep breath, then slowly exhale. After a long pause, she whispers, “You said it might be possible. Do you have any concrete reason for believing that?” Stephen mumbles something, but I do not hear it, and it seems that Andrea does not either. “What was that?”
“Kuryakin’s quirked eyebrow. And a slight, very slight, shift in Solo’s eyes. Alexander showed me this tape…” Stephen breaks off, and I can hear him fumbling about, looking for something. And then I hear Mr. Waverly’s voice, and then my own, and then I know that this nightmare is real. There is no question that this is my voice, but I do not sound like myself. I sound like an automaton. I have become an automaton. When I hear Illya’s voice, it is the same.
My hand seizes Illya’s in a vicelike grip. His hold on my shoulder is just as painful, but I do not want him to let go. My world has been turned upside down, possibly irreparably, and Illya is my last link to reality. I open my mouth to say something, but then I close it, because I have no idea what there is to say. A few moments later, he does the same thing.
At some point I realize that Stephen is talking again. “There, just there,” he is saying to Andrea. Then Andrea is speaking, and she sounds horrorstruck.
“Stephen…it’s twelve-thirty.”
“What?”
“Napoleon told me…” she begins, but she trails off, and then she opens the door. For a moment she and Stephen simply stare at Illya and me.
I notice that Stephen’s gaze is locked on Illya’s hand on my shoulder, on my hand on Illya’s, and before either of us can say a word, he is shouting in triumph. “Keep them together!” he yells, his hands flailing wildly. “That’s the key; I knew it! Keep them together, and we’ve still got a chance!”
Author: edna_blackadder
Rating: PG-13: creepiness in spades
Pairings: past Napoleon Solo/OFC, vaguely implied Napoleon Solo/Illya Kuryakin (if you want to see it, it’s there; if not, it’s not)
Word Count: 1,979
Disclaimer: I’m about 40 years too late to own The Man From U.N.C.L.E. No money is being made from this, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: This is a remix of “Ecclesiastes,” a very awesome fic by epicycles and a clever, creeptacular-in-a-good-way take on the series’ dramatic change in tone from S3 to S4. The original story reveals the cause; this remix attempts to show the effect.
Author’s Note: Written for the Exhibition Remix challenge at mfuwss. Thanks to epicycles and kleenexwoman for organizing this, and thanks as always to my beta, sarcasticsra.
None of us like the idea of retraining. One of my first moves as CEA was to submit a long memo recommending that UNCLE end the practice, considered by many to be unethical, outdated, and highly dangerous. Shortly afterward, Mr. Waverly summoned me to his office to remind me that I was responsible for Enforcement, not Policy.
“I’m responsible for Enforcement agents, sir,” I replied, as diplomatically as I could. “I believe this policy carries a very high risk of potential harm. Surely we can at least suspend it, pending further research?”
“I think not,” said Mr. Waverly shortly. I opened my mouth to protest, my temper rising, and he shook his head. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but when you sit in this chair, you will understand. You’re dismissed, Mr. Solo.”
I said nothing and left. Instead of returning to my office, I went downstairs to see Stephen himself. I had intended to give him a piece of my mind, but Andrea, his charming secretary, smiled coquettishly and informed me that he wasn’t in right now. She was all but purring as she told me I could come back later, and I did, to pick her up for our dinner date.
To my everlasting shame, that was the end of the matter.
*
I’m filing paperwork when I hear a knock. “Napoleon?” asks a voice from outside. The voice is familiar, but it isn’t the familiar voice I was expecting. For one thing, it’s female.
“Come in,” I reply. The voice says something indistinct, and then the shapely blonde attached to it enters and approaches my desk. She places her hands on the edge and leans forward deliberately, affording me a view of her cleavage. “Andrea,” I say, “what brings you here?”
“I never used to need a reason.” She shakes her head, folds her arms, and pretends to pout. “But I suppose, if you’re very busy…”
“I’m never too busy for you, Andrea.”
“Now that’s funny, seeing as how I haven’t seen you in ages. There’s no need to play coy, Napoleon, I know just how full your little black book is.”
She smiles again, and I start to nod absently-but then I stop, realizing that my address book has in fact been unopened for the past three weeks. I blink. That doesn’t sound like me at all. In the split-second it’s taken me to hesitate, Andrea’s smile has vanished. I blink again and try to recover. “You know me entirely too well.”
“Do I?” she murmurs. There’s something odd about her face; she seems to be trying very hard to recapture her earlier smile, but unable to quite manage it. “I’m not so sure,” she says, her cheery tone ringing somehow false. “I think we ought to get re-acquainted…over lunch, perhaps?”
She says it very fast, and seems strangely nervous. “Certainly,” I answer, glancing at the clock. It’s eleven-thirty. “I’ll meet you in your office at twelve-fifteen.”
“I’ll be waiting,” she replies, before quickly turning to leave. She clearly means it to be seductive, but instead, it is simply unnerving.
I let a few seconds pass, then cross the room and peer out the door after her. She is standing near the elevator, one hand shaking a little. I wait until she is gone, and then I step outside and press the button for the next one. It comes within minutes, and I head down to the labs.
Illya is standing over a piece of what looks like very complicated equipment. He doesn’t look up when I enter. “If you’re longing for liberation,” I say, gazing intently at the part of his hair, as his eyes are otherwise occupied, “I have a job for you.”
Illya has taken a string of beatings during our last few missions. After the third in a row, I suggested a short recuperation assignment downstairs. Mr. Waverly disagreed at first. He relented eventually, but he insisted that it not last longer than one week, and that I take my rest at the same time. But even that short, I knew Illya would be impatient to be done with his vacation. He might be a Cambridge-educated physicist, but he prefers fieldwork, and everyone knows it. He’s been glaring at me for the past four days-
I am suddenly seized by a very ominous feeling. He hasn’t. He’s simply been working down here, methodically and without complaint. That isn’t like Illya. But before I can digest that realization, he finally looks up at me. He is wearing a suitably curious expression, which calms me slightly. “What job might this be?”
“I think Andrea Banks is in trouble.”
“Beautiful Andrea from the department that must not be named?”
I nod. “She just asked to have lunch with me. She didn’t say anything odd, but she seemed frightened of something. I think she wants to tell me something important, something she can’t discuss inside the building. And I think it might be best if you’re sitting nearby and listening in.”
Illya’s eyebrow quirks. “You want me to tail you on a date.”
“In short, yes.”
“It is a true measure of my boredom that that sounds like a good idea.” He says this in an eerily flat tone, and my unease returns.
“Are you feeling all right, Illya?” The words are out before I can stop myself, and Illya looks at me quizzically.
“I am fine. How are you feeling, Napoleon?”
“Fine,” I reply automatically, almost robotically, rattling off the standard answer that everyone offers, the answer that is never completely true-but then I realize that it is true. I am fine, no more or less, and I feel as though I always have been. “I told Andrea I’d meet her at twelve-fifteen. Come to my office five minutes before and start tailing me from there.”
“Very well. I’ll see you later, Napoleon.” Illya has a distant look in his eyes, or so I think, as within an instant they’re once again buried in his experiment. I turn to leave. I feel vaguely unsettled, but by the time I reach my desk, it has passed. I return to my paperwork. I run through the pile efficiently and without interruption, and by twelve o’clock, I have finished with it. I uncap my communicator and contact Illya.
“Kuryakin here.”
“Can you extricate yourself from that legendary breakthrough a little early? I’ve finished up here, and if Andrea’s in the kind of trouble I think she’s in, it’ll be best not to keep her waiting.”
“And if she’s not?”
“Well, this is Andrea we’re talking about.” I pause, then add, “Did you know I haven’t been on a date in three weeks?”
“I can’t say I was aware of that.”
“Neither was I.”
“THRUSH has been very active lately.”
“That never stopped me before.”
“I suppose not.”
“Right. I’ll head downstairs, you’ll head upstairs, we’ll meet in the middle and you’ll be out of sight. Solo out.”
I close my communicator and leave. I press the button for the elevator, and soon I am standing outside the Department of Retraining and Deprogramming. I like Andrea, but I have never liked the department she works for. I hear the faintest sound behind me and turn around. Illya is poking his head out the door to the stairway to let me know he is there. I nod, and he closes the door almost completely. I start walking toward Andrea’s office. The door is ajar, and soon I hear her shouting.
“Stephen, I’m not an idiot!”
“I know that-”
“Then just tell me! What did we do to them?”
“I’ve already told you. Standard retraining procedure. Alexander felt they’d lost their edge. THRUSH has moved on from exploding ice cream cones. They’ve come back down to Earth, and Solo and Kuryakin needed to do the same.”
“But something wasn’t standard. If this is the non-issue you’re making it out to be, why ask me to flirt with Napoleon?”
“Merely to confirm what the lab reports indicated-”
“Which is what?” She is practically snarling now, and I am feeling dizzy and slightly nauseated. Retrained? Us?
“Stephen,” Andrea says after a pause. Her voice is softer now. “He was looking at me like a slide under a microscope. He was talking in a monotone. I leaned over his desk in just about the most obvious way possible, and he didn’t react at all. He hesitated when I mentioned his little black book. This is Napoleon Solo we’re talking about. I knew him. Not as well as some, but well enough to tell the difference. What have we done, and how can it be undone?”
In the pause between her question and his answer I swallow hard, firmly rooted to the spot. It can’t be. Illya and I, retrained? Section Two’s top agents? Mr. Waverly would never order that. But to my horror, I find that I cannot contradict anything Andrea has said-
Then I remember his words: “When you sit in this chair, you will understand.” Will I ever sit in that chair, if I have truly been robbed of my personality?
I abruptly feel a hand on my shoulder. Illya has come out of hiding, and his horrified expression mirrors my own. Or I suppose I ought to say that I fervently hope my own mirrors his. Did I really fail to react to Andrea? How can I have?
I reach up to place my hand over Illya’s just as Stephen finally responds. Moments ago he sounded defiant; now his voice is barely more than a whisper. “I don’t know,” he says, and there is terror in his voice to equal mine. “Something went wrong, but I don’t know what it was or how we can fix it or even if we can fix it. It might be possible, but I don’t know! I may very well have killed them, Andrea!”
I hear Andrea draw in a deep breath, then slowly exhale. After a long pause, she whispers, “You said it might be possible. Do you have any concrete reason for believing that?” Stephen mumbles something, but I do not hear it, and it seems that Andrea does not either. “What was that?”
“Kuryakin’s quirked eyebrow. And a slight, very slight, shift in Solo’s eyes. Alexander showed me this tape…” Stephen breaks off, and I can hear him fumbling about, looking for something. And then I hear Mr. Waverly’s voice, and then my own, and then I know that this nightmare is real. There is no question that this is my voice, but I do not sound like myself. I sound like an automaton. I have become an automaton. When I hear Illya’s voice, it is the same.
My hand seizes Illya’s in a vicelike grip. His hold on my shoulder is just as painful, but I do not want him to let go. My world has been turned upside down, possibly irreparably, and Illya is my last link to reality. I open my mouth to say something, but then I close it, because I have no idea what there is to say. A few moments later, he does the same thing.
At some point I realize that Stephen is talking again. “There, just there,” he is saying to Andrea. Then Andrea is speaking, and she sounds horrorstruck.
“Stephen…it’s twelve-thirty.”
“What?”
“Napoleon told me…” she begins, but she trails off, and then she opens the door. For a moment she and Stephen simply stare at Illya and me.
I notice that Stephen’s gaze is locked on Illya’s hand on my shoulder, on my hand on Illya’s, and before either of us can say a word, he is shouting in triumph. “Keep them together!” he yells, his hands flailing wildly. “That’s the key; I knew it! Keep them together, and we’ve still got a chance!”