Of Robots and Insanity(Open)

[Anonymous]

Abarri sat on the ground, reading through the book her mother had given to her. It was so interesting! Man, she didn’t know she was this complicated! Now, if she could only learn how to build robots of her own….

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of five men in silver uniforms, with strange looking guns at their sides. The girl leapt to her feet, a look of concerned shock in her eyes. She turned to run towards the house, when one of the men drew his weapon and fired it at her.

She screamed as loud as she could, as her body filled with pain, and she fell to her knees. She tried to get back up, but nothing was responding. Her mind was filling with panic, and she started to scream for help, before she felt a hand cover her mouth and lift her up as if she was merely a rag doll.

No! This couldn’t be happening! She had to get away! But it was happening, and there was nothing she could do. Panicked tears filled her eyes, as she continued to try and scream, even though it was too muffled to do any good.

The man shoved her into a helicopter, and laid an EMP device on her neck. The next thing she knew she was in a strange box, with bars lining the farthest wall. It was not big enough to stand, but it was big enough to sit comfortably.

Of course, Abarri noticed none of this, or the fact that she was now wearing the same sort of uniform as the men who had captured her. She only saw the bars, and the fact that they held her in.

“Help! Mom!� were the words she screamed over and over, as she hurled herself against the bars again and again, for about ten minutes. She finally collapsed into a crying heap, leaning against the bars and hugging her arms to her chest.

“Nobody’s coming to save you,� one of the scientists finally said, a devilish smirk etched on his face. He strode over to the cage, and opened it up, grabbing the girl before she even had a chance to escape.

Abarri exploded with desperate flailing as he pulled her over to an examination table, and proceeded to strap her down. The other scientists gathered around, their eyes just as sadistic as the first scientist’s were.

“Please, let me go!� Abarri said as she struggled against the straps. “I want my Mommy! Please, just let me go home!�

“This is your home,� one of the scientists said, as he pulled a scalpel of a tray and proceeded to cut into Abarri’s artificial skin. The pain receptors caused her to scream in agony, but it was nothing compared to what happened next.

The man attached a device to the nerve endings of the newly exposed area, and pressed a button. The device was to see how her receptors responded to pain, and the only way to do that was to cause it.

She suddenly felt her whole body light up with pain such as she had never experienced before, and she begged the men to stop, to just let her go home. She continued to cry out to her mother, which made the scientists smirk even more.

“You are a robot,� one of them said. “You have no mother. You were built as a sick imitation of true life, and nobody is going to miss you. You are ours now, and you’d better get used to it.�

Finally, after what seemed like hours(because it was hours), the scientists finished their experiment, and dragged the whimpering girl back to her “room�. She backed away as far as she could, her eyes filled with oily tears.

“See you next time,� one of the scientists said with a laugh, before the group turned and left.

Abarri didn’t respond, but continued to cower in the cage.

“Mommy…�
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Dreams can tell us a lot of things, but sometimes all they are cruel nightmares. This is why Lana hated to sleep. But her body had been built to require it, and unfortunately dreams as well.

She looked around her surroundings, and the dream started to slowly fade back into her subconscious, and the present day began to assert itself. She was on a ship that was heading to Space Station Libra. She had never been there before, but she had heard that it was a nice…

Wait! Where was everybody going? It was then that she noticed that the crowd that had been sitting near her were all standing up and heading towards the door, which happened to be open, revealing the docking bay of Libra.

She quickly got up and latched onto the very end of the crowd, as they spilled out onto the station. They all started to fan out in multiple directions, leaving Lana to ponder just what she was going to do. Which way should she go? What exactly should she do here?

She didn’t have much time to think, because a group of station guards were suddenly upon her. Their faces were stoic, and looked more like robots than she ever had.

“You can’t have that here,� one of them said, pointing to the stun wand hanging around her waist. He held out his hand, and seemed to be waiting for her to hand it over to him.

Unfortunately for Lana, she did not do well with people in uniform stomping over to her. It reminded her way too much of the scientists who had ruined her life, and caused her to involuntarily back away from the men.

This, of course, made them believe she was ignoring their commands, and trying to walk away. One of the guards laid a hand on her shoulder, in a simple attempt to keep her from leaving. He was about to tell her again that she couldn’t leave until they had confiscated her weapon, but he never got the chance.

“Let go of me,� Lana screamed, her sudden outburst ringing out across the bay. She tried to pull away, which simply made the guard’s grip intensify. Now she was starting to panic in full force. She started to scream once again, this time even more shrilly than before.

The other guards moved in to try to calm her down, and were unprepared for the stun wand that was now in her right hand. She managed to hit one guard before the weapon was wrenched from her hands.

This made things a lot more serious. She was no longer some woman having a mental episode in the docking bay. She was now a woman who had injured a guard during a mental episode on the docking bay.

The guards swarmed over her, and managed to secure her hands behind her back with a high tech pair of handcuffs. They dragged the screaming woman to the elevators, eager to get her safely into the brig.

Lana’s perception was a bit skewed at the moment. She no longer saw the guards, but instead saw the scientists who had taken away her life once, and were about to do it again. She struggled as hard as she could to get away from the guards, terror seeping from every pour in her body.
-----------------------------
Placing Lana in a cell to calm her down might have been a good idea, except for the fact that she was terribly claustrophobic. She had finally realized what had happened, though. Now she had the worry of what the officials of the station would do to her, along with the terror of being in a small, enclosed space.

She shut her eyes to try to block out the walls that seemed to be closing in on her, but it really didn’t help. If she had a stomach, it would have been queasy at this point in time.

[Anonymous]

Utari wore the typical white lab coat. It marked her as a scientist and prevented her from spilling too much on her usual clothes. She was a bit older than some of the others of the lab-- there were many interns, all of them children in her eyes. She struggled at times treating them as co-workers rather than children.

She was not a young woman, nor was she flawless. Her skin had grown softer, her eyes had creases, her scared hands spoke of a lifetime of working with them. She was sweet and motherly, but there was also a deep loneliness that never managed to leave her eyes completely, even when she was happy.

Today, she was supposed to be helping sort the new refugees into their quarters, help them get settled seeing as the other senior scientist of her particular department had pulled rank and flat out refused to deal with that many people. In her opinion, it was for the best. He was not a warm man, and the people that usually came into Lybia had had more than enough trauma without meeting the grumpy old coot.

Now what was that? "Keep moving, come along now, get yourselves signed in for housing. We'll get you a hot meal soon, come along" She urged, her voice amplified to be heard over the den of milling people as well as the shrieking girl. She'd have to see what that was about later. She well knew criminals could be any gender or species, but those screams had sounded more like terror than aggression to her. The guards were not known for their subtlety or their compassion. She'd been studying people and bioengineering for ages. People were everything to her. She relied on them much more than most scientists did. She was willing to be wounded over and over again, never giving up on people, finding the reward more than worth the risk.

Getting the group organized and passing off the actual signing in processes to the interns, she went in search of the head of the guards with every intention of getting to the bottom of things. Certainly if it was a threat, she wasn't going to meddle too much, but if it was a mentally disturbed patient, locking the individual in a dark cell was not going to help much at all.

[Anonymous]

“Well, I see our favorite bleeding heart just couldn’t wait to stick her nose in things,� the head guard said, as he saw Utari coming up towards him. He was standing next to Lana’s cell, a look of cold disdain etched on his face.

“Do you know what this psycho did,� he asked, his words spilling out in a waterfall of ranting. “She freaked out when we tried to take her weapon away, and /stunned/ one of my guards! Then she screamed and carried on when we tried to subdue her. It took eight men just to get her down here. In my opinion, she should just rot down here. I have more important things to do than deal with some crazy with vampire eyes.�

He tapped a monitor on the wall, and a picture of the cell became visible, and the room was suddenly illuminated by an overhead light. Lana was still crouched down, her eyes shut to keep out the encroaching confines of her cell. When the light hit her face, Lana opened her eyes, eyes that were burning with absolute terror.

“As you can see, she’s perfectly fine,� he said as he studied the cell. “She isn’t even screaming anymore. So, why don’t you go away, and find someone else to bother? I think I can take care of one violent nutcase…�

He pressed the monitor, and the cell was once again blanketed by darkness. He crossed his arms, and waited for Utari to leave. He knew she probably wouldn’t, and would try to talk to the prisoner, but he could always dream, couldn’t he?
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For a few precious moments, the light made the room a little bit more tolerable. All too soon, it was shut off again, and the room seemed to shrink even further. Lana didn’t know how much longer she would be able to keep as calm as she was. She was inches away from screaming her head off, but she didn’t want to cause anymore of a scene than she already had.

[Anonymous]

Utari looked at the guard with bored distaste. It was always the same. He always insisted the terrified refugee was perfectly fine, locked in the dark room without ever investigating the reason behind the attack. "You said she freaked out after your guards tried to take her weapon from her? Did they advance towards her before she panicked? How many were there?" It was a reasonable question. She suspected a larger than normal portion of the girls had been assaulted in some way or another, panicking when advanced on by a group of men was a reasonable response from someone who had been assaulted.

"What's her name? Where's she from? And leave her some light. There's no reason to get her imagination and fear all pumped up. That'll only make another fit of panic all the more likely when you finally do have to open the cell again." Honestly, why didn't these guards have to have a degree in human studies at least, though she would have preferred psychology be required. This was ridiculous. Locking young girls into dark dungeons. She wanted a closer look at this girl besides. There was something all too familiar about her, though she hadn't gotten a good look under the harsh light, grainy camera and curled up posture.

"If this is another of your harebrained, over-reactive busts, I'll have you put on report." She said firmly. She didn't go around threatening just because things weren't done her way. She felt there was an honest problem with the way the guards handled distraught refugees. There was no compassion. Of course she didn't think it was okay to attack and stun guards, but even at her age, having never been attacked by anyone physically, she suspected if she got off a shuttle in a new place and had a battalion of guards come stomping over to her, she might panic too.

[Anonymous]

"We're not sure of her name," the guard said, his disdainful starting to show a bit of nervousness. "The ship records only show that she signed her name as Lana, with no last name. And you know that people only do something like that when their trying hid something...." He uncrossed his arms, and looked continued to try to justify his actions.

"Look, all we did was come up to her. We were in a group of six, but that's the number of guards I always have with me when coming up to a potential problem. I asked her to give up her weapon, and she started to leave! Well, I kept her from leaving, and she freaked out! My men tried to help me subdue her, and she had the nerve to stun one! We did what we had to do!"

The guard sighed, and pressed a button on the wall, causing light to flood into cell. "There, you want the criminal to have light, then she'll have light." A self satisfied smirk appeared on his face. "And if you want to see if we've overreacted, then why don't you just go in there and talk to her yourself." He pressed another button, and the door unlocked. "Just don't come crying to me when she attacks you..."
--------------------
The light flooded into the room once again, and Lana's panic subsided a little bit. The enclosed space was still pressing down on her, but now it wasn't as bad. She straightened up a bit, and tried to actually look around the room.

The sound of the door unlocking filled her with both panic, and hope. Were they going to let her out, or were the simply going to try and interrogate her or move her to an even smaller cell? She couldn't help but feel that it would be the latter.

[Anonymous]

Utari looked at the guard and approached the door. "Hello. My name is Utari" She said through the door. "I'm going to come in, but it'll be just me. I only want to talk." She said quite calmly, her voice warm and motherly as it usually was (other than maybe when she was talking to that blasted head of the guards). She slowly eased the door open so to avoid startling the girl. "Are you okay?" Now up closer to the 'prisoner' she seemed so familiar. "What's your name?" She left her lab coat outside the room. She knew scientists could be scary too with all the rumors of testing going on. She didn't want to be scary, she just wanted to talk.

[Anonymous]

Lana mind started reeling at the first sound of the voice she had not heard in twelve years. She shut her eyes again, sure that this was some sort of dream. She would wake up in a few seconds, and the cell would be as dark as ever, and she would be alone once again.

But she did not wake up. She could hear the door open, and someone stepped inside, and the voice became even clearer. The only dreams she ever had that had such realistic senses were her nightmares. And she doubted her mother would be in a nightmare.

She finally found the courage to open her eyes, and look up at her visitor. Her eyes widened in shock when she saw that her mother was truly standing in front of her. She quickly stood up, which was not such a good idea, considering her claustrophobia. She fought down the wave of panic, and continued to stare at the woman before her.

She tried to speak, but she found that her mouth would not actually form any words. She stood there dumbly for a few moments, before she was able to force herself to utter something.

“Mother?�

It was not a grand speech, but it was all that she could say in her current state of shock.

[Anonymous]

Tears sprang into Utari's eyes. "Abarri?" She gasped and then practically smothered her in a hug. "are you okay? what happened? I missed you so much! I looked and looked and no one knew anything at all and I couldn't find you." She was going to have that guard's badge. She sobbed softly "I thought I lost you. Are you hurt at all? Hungry?" She always had been the queen of cooking. It was perhaps somewhat of a lost art with so much technology, but it had been passed along in her family for ages and ages. No one was keeping her daughter in the brig. "Why'd you stun that guard?" She asked at a whisper. That was pretty much the only reason her daughter was in the brig at all. "What happened when you got here. Oh we have so much to talk about."

[Anonymous]

Lana's shock melted away, as the reality of the situation finally hit home. She returned Utari’s embrace, her eyes filled with oily tears. She had dreamt of this moment for years, but nothing compared to the real event.

“I never thought I’d see you again,� she sobbed. She heard her mother’s questions, and it took her a while to sort them all out. She took a deep breath, and tried to answer as many as she could.

“I was taken by some scientists,� she said, not saying too much, since she really didn’t want the painful memories to encroach on her current joy. “I’m not hurt too bad, just a little bit of damage to my right foot. I don’t feel that hungry, but that may just be shock.�

Lana sighed, and started to answer the final questions. She was not proud of her mental state. Still, explaining herself might make it easier for her mother to get her out of this blasted cell. “A whole group of guards came over to me, and asked for my stun wand. I really don’t like it when I’m surrounded by a group of people with weapons, and so I tried to get away. They swarmed on me, and that’s where I lost it. I panicked, and had a flashback to when those scientists took me…I didn’t mean to stun him. I thought I was protecting myself!�

[Anonymous]

"Well, we'll see what I can do about that foot" She commented, hardly letting the girl move she held her so close. "That seems reasonable, certainly not aggressive. At the least I should be able to get you transferred to my care or to the care of one of my trusted colleagues" Who would probably hand over the care to her if she asked, though it would be the colleague's name on the forms and files. "Come on" She said "I want to get you checked out and see if I can get the berth beside mine joined." She squeezed her a little closer and turned to guide her out the door.

"We're coming out" She informed the camera in the room and the guard in the process, expecting an argument as usual. "I'm taking her into my care."

[Anonymous]

“You are not taking my prisoner,� the guard said, as he opened the door. He had no clue what was going on, since he never listened to Utari’s feel good rap sessions that she had with the criminals. He had tried once, but he had nearly lost his lunch.

“You may think you’re so high and mighty,� he said, as he blocked the door. “But you can’t just waltz in here and leave with my prisoners. If you’ve come up with another piece of nonsense to get her transferred, you have to fill out the forms, and then bring them back down to me. Until then, she’s not going anywhere.�

Lana stared at the guard, her face flush with panic. “Please, I can’t stay in there. I can’t handle small spaces…�

“Well, you should have thought of that before you stunned one of my guards. Sorry honey, but you’ve got to stay in that itsy little box until miss “Champion of all Nutcases� can convince someone that you can be let out.�

Lana took a step forward, but the guard gripped down on her shoulder. “Did you hear what I said? I could take your little act as an escape attempt, and I don’t like escape attempts…�

“I wasn’t trying to…� Lana’s face was getting more and more frightened.

“Just shut up! Just because you can talk back to Utari, doesn’t mean you can talk back to me. All you criminals are the same…�

He turned to Utari. “You’ll figure that out one day, when one of your nutsos you love so much turns and stabs you in the back.�

[Anonymous]

"This 'nutcase' happens to be a young girl you scared when six of your guards closed in on her. You realize she was abducted when she was a young girl...a group of people closed in on her then too. You have your overbearing apes pounce on these refugees without a thought of what they've been through. Put yourself in their place. You come from who knows where, most likely chased out of your home, probably by people not so unlike your guards and then you see some massive group single you out and try to deprive you of your only means of defense. What are you going to do?" She pointed out, much angrier than she usually let herself get when dealing with prisoners. Normally they were just people she saw needing help. They weren't her daughter.

"Come with me if you like, walk me and this poor girl here down the hall. It'll take me less time to fill out the form than it will for me to walk all the way down there. She's not going to stay in this room. She's not dangerous, she's just scared."

[Anonymous]

"Fine," the guard said in a cold tone, keeping the shock out of his voice. He had never seen Utari get this animated over a prisoner before. Well, he didn't want to cause a scene, especially not this close to his evaluation.

He grabbed Lana's wrist, and started pulling her down the hall.

"I'll do this one time, Utari," he said, as he walked as quickly as he could. "Why are you so interested in this one crazy, anyways? Is she going to be part of some human behavior study of yours? Did you need to pick out the most worthless and mentally messed up subject you could find?"

Lana did not speak, as she really didn't want to anger the guard any more than she already was. She may have been crazy, but she wasn't a sadistic bastard like he was. And she had come to learn that people like him were very dangerous when provoked.

[Anonymous]

"Why not just be glad you don't have to deal with her anymore if she's such an inconvenience to you. And stop dragging her! She can walk if you give her a chance to get her feet under her."

She was going to write a report one of these days, not this time. Investigations were problematic and brought everyone under scrutiny. She didn't need them coming and deciding her daughter was highly interesting and attempting to study her. No. She'd just got her back. She'd content herself with that and save her oust the idiotic head of the guards crusade for a later date.

"Maggie, I need the change of custody form" She said, though Maggie knew the drill. It was always the change of custody form, even when she thought the prisoner was really dangerous, custody tended to be changed from the guard's hands to someone more fit to deal with the problem. Why couldn't anyone reasonable take the job? She cast the guard a glance as she pulled out her pen and began filling it out. It didn't take her long, she had nearly memorized the form.

She handed it back to Maggie, who ran it through the computer to get it authorized. Maggie poked the screen and then picked up an electronic tablet and handed it to her along with a stylus.

Utari sighed and feverishly wrote, hit send, read, wrote and hit send again before looking up at Maggie.

"Change of custody complete." Maggie announced, looking at the guard. "She's no longer your prisoner." She wasn't a prisoner at all anymore if you wanted to be technical. She was more a ward of Utari than anything else.

"Thank you Maggie." Utari said, returning to her daughter's side with every intention of peeling the man's hands off of her if he didn't remove himself from the situation.

[Anonymous]

ooc:
I think I will make the guard an actual character…As soon as I can figure out a name to give him.XD

ic:

“This is just perfect,� the guard said, his voice filled with exasperation. “Once again, you’ve managed to get another thug a nice cozy room, rather than letting them have the punishment they deserve. It’s no wonder the brig is so empty!�

He let go of Lana’s wrist and walked away in a huff. ‘This isn’t the end of this,’ he thought to himself. There was something odd about that prisoner. Utari never acted this animated with any of the other derelicts that came through here. Yes, there was definitely something going on, and he wouldn’t rest until he found out.  

He would just have to be careful about it. He hated to admit it, but Utari was a lot more intelligent than he was, at least when it came to book smarts. To find out what he wanted to know, he would have to be cunning, one of the areas his brain was definitely not lacking in.
Lana stood next to her mother, wondering what would happen next. She was so used to wandering around, trying to stay invisible from those she had escaped from, that she didn’t really know how to function somewhere such a Libra.

She also didn’t know just what she would say to her mother. She wasn’t that keen on telling what had happened, but she knew that she would have to. Also, lingering deep down in her psyche, was the fear that her mother really didn’t love her, and had been glad that she had been taken. The scientist had told her this over and over again, and she couldn’t help the fact that it had sunk in.

“Thank you,� she said to Utari, once again being cautious in her words.

[Anonymous]

"Speaking of thugs in cozy rooms, they give you yours and pay you for being a thug" She muttered, irritated before turning to her daughter "Come on, let's get out of here. He's an ass, but he's the head of the guards, so he thinks he's king or something." She explained after he had stormed off. She gently attempted to take Lana's arm to guide her towards the quarters. "Maggie, if you could check on that reconfiguration, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to step in and have the walls rearrange on me."

Maggie nodded "Will do" She assured.

She walked down a long hall, watching with interest as the walls shifted to allow her room to join to the one next to her's. "Do you have a change of clothes or anything? All systems functioning properly?" She couldn't hide the worry in her eyes and she suspected she'd be hugging her daughter until the cows came home if given the chance. She never wanted to let her go again.

[Anonymous]

“I usually just wear these clothes,� Lana said. “I wash them when I get the chance. I really try to have as little luggage as possible. Except for my foot and some old wounds that don’t really cause too many problems, I don’t think there’s anything wrong…� She stopped talking. She really didn’t want to speak about all that had happened.

The truth was, her body had plenty of damage not only from her travels, but also from the experiments that she had been subjected to. She really didn’t want to burden her mother with her problems, and if she saw the extent of the damage, she would invariably start to ask questions.

“I’m fine really,� she said to Utari. “I can still function…�

Lana couldn’t help but be guarded. She had spent so much time being secretive and alone, that she even held her emotions away from her own mother. She tried to excuse this in her own mind by telling herself she didn’t want to upset Utari, but the truth was, she was just scared. She wasn’t just scared of her pain, but she was scared that her mother wouldn’t care.

Ooc:
Man, that was short….

[Anonymous]

Utari opened the door. The room was simple, but that was the way of Lybia. There was not a lot of call for personalized or frilly rooms. There were however, pictures of her and her daughter hung all over the room. There hadn't been a lot of pictures taken of them before she'd disappeared, there just hadn't been enough time together for albums and files of pictures.

"I'm so glad you're back...will you stay?" She asked, worried perhaps her daughter would be eager to be rid of her after so many years of independence. "Here, I had a room made up for you if you care to have a bit of time alone, but you are more than welcome to stay here in my rooms if you prefer." She was practically wringing her hands before she flung them around her daughter again, hugging her close. "Can I....can I check you over? I'd feel more at ease if I could" She was worried that after so many years her daughter's systems might have begun to fail. She could of course repair most damage, even if the system failed all together, but there was always that worry about what if she couldn't repair it, or what if her core systems became corrupted and had to be rewritten-- she might continue living, but she might not be the same person.

Her silver hair was finally starting to poke out around her ears, giving her a little bit of a frazzled look.

(no worries. Doesn't look short to me, and I don't mind short replies anyway...and if that was short, then I haven't managed to post anything but short replies to you *guilty*)

[Anonymous]

“Of course I’ll stay,� Lana said. She still wasn’t sure if her mother was just being polite, and really didn’t want her there. It was a stupid and illogical thought, but she couldn’t help but think it. She kept these thoughts to herself, just as she kept most thoughts to herself. She was like a nervous little rat, always ready to bolt in case a shoe came down at her.

She looked around the room, and saw the pictures. The fact that she had cared enough to put pictures up should have eased her mind a little, but the fear was too strong for reality to come crashing in.

“Yes, you can check out my systems,� Lana said, finally coming to the moment she had been dreading. Once her mother saw the myriad of problems, especially the extensive nerve damage, she would probably want to know what had happened.

She couldn’t think of anything more to say, and simply stood there like a lump. She was coming closer and closer to having to tell her mother her story, and she felt like a runaway train barreling down towards a steep precipice.
ooc;

Yeah, but your posts are really filled with emotion and detail, even though they are short. My last post seemed a little weak in all that…Then again, I don’t think Lana really had much to say at the moment…

[Anonymous]

"Here, have a seat" She requested, pulling out a footstool out for her to sit on. "I'll be back in a moment. I need my kit" She still, for whatever reason, had her kit she'd always used for her daughter. When she opened it, it became apparent it was still completely stocked and the fluids were even fresh. There was no rancid oils, no coagulated lubricants, nothing of that sort. The batteries of her system analizing/diagnosing machine were still charged.

"Are your ports still operational?" She asked, understanding that if they had not been used this entire time, they might need cleaning or repair before she could run her system check electronically.

There was no evidence that anyone else had ever even been in Utari's quarters. There was certainly no other daughter, human or not. There were not even pictures of Utari's family on the walls. She did have a picture of them in her books somewhere, tucked in the leafs of her keepsakes. Most of her other books were electronic, stored in files on her computer somewhere. It seemed the things she'd had with Lana were the only things she'd kept hard copies. of.

((well thank you, I appriciate that))