Of Robots and Insanity(Open)

[Anonymous]

Lana did not answer, since she had already fallen asleep. She lay there, her mind blissfully set in the placidness of sleep. It took a few minutes for the nightmares to start. At first she merely twitched and turned a bit, while muttering tense nonsense.

Then the scream came. It was a piercing wail of agony that seemed to fill the whole room. She shot straight up, her body stiff and rigid as she continued to yell in fear. She clambered from the bed and backed herself into a corner of the room, her eyes still shut, and her mind asleep.

“No! Leave me alone! For the love of God, please! Don’t hurt me, I’m begging you! Please, I just want to go home!� Once again, a shrieking cry of fear and pain escape her lips. She held out her arms to fight off unseen attackers, and tears fell from her still closed eyes.
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Mike stood in his quarters, preparing to leave the station behind forever. He was planning on taking a little gift for his conspirators, something that would be a little bit of extra incentive to treat his guards a bit better than the rest of Libra. A self-aware robot seemed like just the thing.

He had also discovered something else that made taking Lana even more appealing. He had been studying Utari’s transmission, and discovered that she referred to the girl as her daughter.

He couldn’t help but grinning. He had hoped to have something to hold over her head before it was time to leave, something that would make her sorry that she was such a pain. What was worse than losing one’s child, especially after she had just been returned?

[Anonymous]

Utari watched from her chair. She didn't want to frighten her by trying to shake her awake since the girl seemed to already be afraid someone was coming at her. "Abarri sweetheart" Utari cooed, trying to soothe her with the voice of her mother and endearing terms and tones she probably would not have heard while under their 'care'. "Abarri, you're having a dream darling, you're safe, no one is going to hurt you" Though she might ought to see what she could do about Mike...at the very least report him for barging into her quarters and locking up yet another patient he'd scared into being a 'threat'.

"Abarri, come back to me, wake up. You're safe" She studied the movements, the sounds, the words of her daughter, trying to see what she was seeing so perhaps she could understand what the nightmares were about and help her to get past them.

[Anonymous]

tari’s words seeped into Lana’s brain, but the images in her mind were still too strong. She pressed herself into the corner, the screams becoming even louder. Her arms suddenly went to her side, and her whole body became as still as a board.

“Make it stop, please just make it stop! Make it…� her voice once again dissolved into screaming wails as her body stayed frozen in place. Whatever she was remembering, it was not something pleasant.
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There wasn’t much time, so Mike would have to work quickly if he wanted to be able to enact his revenge on Utari before he had to leave. Still, he had to be patient and strike at the right time.

He would wait until about 23:00 hours, and then he would enter Utari’s room once again. This time, he wouldn’t be leaving alone. He held a stun gun in his hands, one that would knock the scientist out for at least five hours. By the time she was able to get up, he would be long gone, and then her real suffering would begin.

“This is what you get for messing with me,� he muttered to himself, while watching the clock slowly move forward.

[Anonymous]

"Abarri" She said, coming nearer "You have to wake up, wake up and it'll stop." She encouraged. Her daugher wasn't armed, she knew that much, Mike had seen to that. "Abarri, wake up" She reached out to touch her daugher's arm. She was getting the impression she waasn't going to get any sleep at night, but she was willing to pay that price. She had her daugher back, she'd sleep on lunch breaks from now until the cows came home if that's what it took. She was concerned Abarri's screaming would draw unneeded attention. "Controls, lock down. Authorized personel only" She said to the room. Anyone getting in would now need a key card with clearance levels. "Abarri, shh sweetie, it's okay."

[Anonymous]

“Mom! Where are you? Please, help me! Make it stop!� Lana didn’t seem to realize that her mother was speaking to her or that she was even in the room. She was locked in whatever horror her mind was showing her.

Still, her mother’s words were starting to seep in a little, even if it wasn’t outwardly apparent. It was like rain seeping into a patch of concrete on a cold winter’s day. Slowly but surely, she would be calmed.

Maybe Lana’s subconscious was actually speaking to her mother, asking her why she had let her get taken in the first place. Some thoughts and feelings just never made it to the surface, and could only be spoken of through dreams.
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Mike prepared for his departure, and checked to see if everything was in order. His ride had come a few weeks before, posing as small merchant ship. The man had spent several weeks making phony arrangements to supply Libra with medical supplies. Now all he had to do was get down there before it left.

He might even go and fetch the robot a little early, so he could stand over Utari and gloat. Yes, that way he could see her pain. It would be a nice image to take with him when he left this hellhole once and for all.

[Anonymous]

Since she hadn't been hit thus far, Ubari gathered Abarri into her arms. "I'm right here. I won't let them hurt you anymore, but you have to come back to me. They're gone, you're free. It's okay now" She cooed. "Your mother is here to protect you now. Peace my darling." She started humming softly, remembering the old songs she used to sing and waiting for the words to come back to her memory. She hadn't sung them in many years, but they were still there, waiting to be accessed in her mind.

[Anonymous]

Lana actually started to calm down a bit, Utari’s voice helping to push back the demons in her mind. Her screaming subsided, and her face and body relaxed into the calmness of a dreamless sleep.

Alas, this quaint little scene was not to last. For right at that moment, Mike had decided to strike. He used his security clearance to open the door to Urari’s quarter, and he stepped inside, brandishing his stun gun.

“Oh, isn’t this just a precious sight,� he said, his voice dripping with acidic hatred. He glared down at the mother and child, and fought down the urge to throw up at the sickenly saccharine scene.

“I know who she is now, Utari. I know all about your precious little nutcase of a daughter.� He stepped a bit closer, before aiming the stun gun at the woman. “Please don’t scream or do anything stupid. This gun may be set to stun you, but I’ve made sure that it can permanently disrupt a robots electrical impulses.�

“Wake her up, and please be quick about it. I don’t want to stand here all day.�

[Anonymous]

Utari cursed as he appeared in the doorway. Honestly that man was more trouble than any refugee they had ever had aboard. "Just what exactly do you know about me and my daughter?" She asked pointedly, standing and leaving Abarri as she was. After all, so far she had not managed to wake her daughter up, so there was no reason to think it would suddenly work now. "And why is it any concern of yours?" She put her hand in her pocket and hit the lockdown button used by the scientists for when they needed to make sure something did not escape the ship-- bacteria, experiments, missing chemicals and the like. She was not going to lose her daughter again, especially not to Mike. There was no telling what he might do to her, robot or not.

[Anonymous]

“It is a concern of mine, because I want to make sure your life is miserable,� he said, as he made his way over to Lana. He placed the gun next to her head, the sleeping robot completely unaware of what was going on.

“Now, I am going to leave with her, or she will die right here…� He gave a cruel smirk, as he stared up at Utari.

“Is that what you want, Utari? Do you want your little girl to die? I promise you, it will be a slow, and painful death. If you want her to live, then I suggest you stand aside.�

Mike was really enjoying this. The look on Utari’s face was priceless. If he ended up having to kill Lana, it was no skin off his nose. He would just tell his contact that he had been unable to retrieve his little gift. He only wanted to make Utari suffer before he left.

It was then that Lana started to stir from her sleep. Now that the nightmare had passed, her sleep was not nearly as heavy as it had been. She opened her eyes, only to see Mike standing over her, with a gun to her temple.

She let out a scream, and tried to push her way up, but Mike grabbed her shoulder and forced her back down to the floor.

“Move again, and I will shoot you. Scream again and I will shoot you. Do anything, and I will shoot you.�

Just then, there was a flash of light, and both of them disappeared from the room. It seems that Mike's contact was in a bit of a hurry.

[Anonymous]

ooc:

Since I have to leave very soon, I will edit my post to make Mike and Lana end up teleported by the ship that is picking him up. I will return them both when I get back.

[Anonymous]

Utari screamed and cursed as they vanished. She had barely retrieved her daughter before she was stolen again. What sort of life was this? She hadn't been able to keep her promise. What happened to the teleportation shields on the ship? She ran down the halls "I need to talk to command!" She cried, grabbing her communicator out of her pocket. "We have an emergancy situation. Mike has taken one of my charges hostage and I believe he has left the ship. He said his purpose was to make my life misurable, I don't know what he's going to do to her. She's mainly robotic in biology, but she is cognitive and just as alive as any other humanoid....I'm afraid he might try to dissect her or sell her to who knows who. She's just a scared girl, she may very well be a 'threat' as Mike called her when she has a weapon in her hand and is swarmed by his apes. No, he's mad at me because I signed her out! I didn't let him leave her locked in that dark cell of his. Yes! She's the one I've been looking for for twelve years! I didn't even get to keep her for one night! Can't you do something!?"

Her heart was racing, her bare feet resounded off the hall walls as she ran as fast as her aging legs could carry her up to the command post. Her hair was rapidly falling out of it's usual carefully pulled back style. She finally reached the door and started pounding. Very few code keys indeed would open that door. "We're supposed to be able to protect our refugees, what does that say about us if we just leave her with Mike for him to do whatever he pleases? She was tortured before she got here, she still has damage I didn't have the opportunity to fix yet. She feels pain. She feels everything we do. She's a biomechanical human. No one questions any other sort of humanoid. They just accept it as another species. She is her own species, she lives, she deserves to have a normal life. She shouldn't be dragged all over against her will!" She was pleading, whether the door opened or not, she didn't care, she knew they could hear her through the intercom by the door and through her communicator.

[Anonymous]

It had been a few days since he had left Libra, and Mike was bored. He had left his contact on a small ship of his own. He now had everything he wanted, even the robot girl. He had decided to keep her, as he was already giving quite a bit to the Adelosians. They weren’t that happy that he reneged on his little last minute deal, but he didn’t give them much choice. It was either let him keep her, or forgo the rest of Libra’s defense codes.

He should have been happy, but he had grown tired of the woman.  What real use did he have for a robot? He didn’t care what she was made of, and he really didn’t want to get involved with anyone who would buy her, since he really needed to lay low for a while.

He paced the room, trying to think of what to do. Lana was like a toy he no longer cared for, one that he needed to find a way to discard. Maybe
he should just jettison her out into the cosmos, and let the vacuum of space deal with the mess.
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Lana was stuffed in a small, dark room, normally used for storing supplies. It had been hours since she had last seen the light, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. At least that meant that Mike seemed to have forgotten about her.

She had managed to grab hold of a communications device and had been using it nonstop, broadcasting her pleas to anyone who might listen. So far, no one seemed to have picked up her signal, or maybe no one cared. She turned it on again, even though she knew it probably would not work. It was her last link to hope, the last thread of sanity she had.

“Please, can anyone hear me? Help me…I’m begging you…Please, just help me...� Her request for help had devolved into a whiny plea. Most likely, it would continue to go unanswered.

[Anonymous]

Utari had been constantly searching, scanning radio waves, attempting to pick up the electronic pulse of her daughter, match the data, anything. She'd been put on leave as she had been unable to focus on her work and was rather distraught about the entire thing. She couldn't put it aside. She hadn't even had her daughter for an entire day and that jerkface Mike had stolen her. And for what? Because she cared about people and he didn't care about anyone except himself? She had of course reported him to every authority she could contact. His abusive conduct as well as his breaking and entering, assalt and kidnapping.

The scanner crackled and she tuned it to see what she could get. She almost didn't believe it when she heard the transmission. She ran up to the bridge and frantically punched her id into the pannel and started almost hysterically talking through the com to the captain.

The second in command came down to talk to her and take a look at her scanner. Well, whether it was Lana or not, it was someone in trouble. He took the scanner and headed back to the bridge to contact the authorities and have the ship arrested.

[Anonymous]

Mike cursed as his ship was hauled back to Libra by the authorities. Lana wasn’t his biggest concern. He was a traitor, who had sold sensitive secrets to Libra’s enemies. If they were to find that out, he would be dead. Even if they didn’t find out what he had done, he would probably be dead when the fighting started.

Well, there was no point in fretting about all that. He had the more pressing matter of having a hostage on his ship. He couldn’t let them know about that, but if he jettisoned her into space, it would be quite obvious to the three ships that surrounded him. He would have to find a way to hide her.

“Perfect!” His conniving brain had hit a rare spring of intelligence, and a plan started to form in his mind. He took out a small welding torch, and went over to the hatch that led to what had become Lana’s prison. He retrieved a piece of scrap metal from the pile of junk he had let collect in the ship, and welded it over the hatch. Now it looked like a slapdash repair job of a piece of rotted floor, instead of a room that could possibly hiding a young woman.

When the ship finally reached Libra, Mike was waiting at the door, a calm smile on his lips, his whole body exuding an air of cold confidence.

“What seems to be the problem,” he asked as the guards, his guards, entered the ship. “Can’t a guy go on vacation? If you needed me back that badly, you should have just asked…”

[Anonymous]

Utari was marking the transmission and had it pinpointed on a handheld screen. She did not appear, but whispered something to the officials from the other room. The man nodded and entered the room where Mike was.

"Come with me please" He said quite sternly. "We have probably cause to search your ship and questions to be asked" He nodded to the men at his sides who tried to handcuff him.

Utari was waiting impatiently to get on the ship and search it from top to bottom and everything in between. She wanted her daughter back and she had every intention of outfitting her with a tracking device and a self defense lazer and antitheft system. Unauthorized touching would result in an electrical shock. Oh she had all sorts of (slightly far fetched) plans to keep her daughter safe once she had her back in her possession.

[Anonymous]

“This is ridiculous!” Mike glared around as the handcuffs were slapped on his wrists, his mind filled with rage and fear. He couldn’t let them search the ship, not with a hostage hidden under the floor. He may have liked to pretend he was something special, but in all reality, he was merely the head of a group of glorified rent-a-cops. He had no connections to get him out of this, and it would probably be only a matter of time before his other, more serious, crime was discovered.

“Let me go! I refuse to be treated like a criminal! What crime have I committed? What the hell is going on here?!”

“You are under suspicion for kidnapping,” one of the guards said, looking at his former boss with contempt. Every guard had lost any respect they had for him. For some, it was the fact that he had blatantly broken the law, but for most it was that he was stupid enough to get caught.

“Kidnapping?? Why in the hell would I kidnap anyone? You know me…Do you really think I would do something like that?”

That was a mistake on Mike’s part, because the guards knew he probably would do something like that. Hence the anger from most of them about getting caught. They would also be inclined to do the same type of thing, but they would have tried a lot harder to keep from getting arrested.

 “Come with us,” one of the soldiers said with a sneer, as he dragged Mike away from his brooding guards. While the guards were angry with him, the soldiers were ecstatic that Mike Holloway had finally been put in his place. They were tired of him strutting around with his group of thugs, acting as if he was something special.

“So Mike, you finally ended up in a pair of handcuffs, eh? I always knew you’d end up where you belong…in a jail cell with all the other no good miscreants.”

“Fuck you,” were Mike’s eloquent words as he was dragged off of the ship. He turned and glanced at Utari as she was waiting to board the ship.

“Utari, I should have known this was your doing. I bet you claimed that I took that robot of yours. Actually, she did come with me for a while on my vacation, all on her own, of course. I have to say, you did a really good job constructing her. She was killer in bed.” He flashed her a wicked smile before the soldiers started to pull him away yet again.
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The device in Lana’s hands was still sending a signal, but she had already given up on imploring anyone to come to her aid. Her insanity had once again robbed her of her voice, and the darkness was starting to creep into her mind, casting images of dark things best left in nightmares.

She heard sounds from above, but in her state of mind she merely assumed that Mike was coming to retrieve her, or that the shadows of her past had come alive and were waiting to devour her.

She didn’t dare make a sound, lest she reveal herself to the monsters that surrounded her. The world was dangerous, a place to be feared. The few moments she had of peace had been taken in a matter of hours, and she had found herself a captive once again.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel for her, at least not in her addled mind. She crouched against the wall, ready to fight against whatever terror awaited her.

[Anonymous]

"Breaking into my room, leaving me unconscious and taking my daughter is your idea of a willing travel companion?" Utari asked in shock. She opened her mouth to insult him, but stopped and simply shook her head "Get him out of here and make sure he doesn't have the key to the cell you put him in, and make double sure you change the code to a completely new one." She glanced back over his shoulder "And you might ought to do a cavity search. Who knows where he might stuff a code breaker" She stepped into the ship, going almost directly to the patched part of the floor. There were several problems with Mike's plan to hide the door. First was the fresh weld. The second, was the transmitter and thirdly, he was simply an idiot and bound to be caught eventually. "Abari?" She called, grabbing a cutter torch "Abari sweetheart, I'm coming. Stay away from the door, I have to cut it away and it might fall in." She warned, hoping she'd be able to hear her. Maybe she'd cut a small hole first so that if the piece did fall on her daughter, it wouldn't do serious damage.

[Anonymous]

Mike sweared up a storm, as he was lead away from the scene. Oh, Utari would pay for this, she would pay dearly. His hatred for her started to grow at that moment, if such a thing was even possible. He wanted to see her dead, to see her suffer even more than she already had. For now, he would have to satisfy himself with memory of the pain he had caused.
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Lana could not make out her mother’s voice through the thick metal that was welded to the ground, but fortunately she was already away from the door. The sound caused her to back even further away, her hands searching for any type of weapon she might use to defend herself. The only thing she could find was a medium sized roll of toilet paper, which was not quite what one would normally think of as a weapon. Still, she clutched it as if it were the world’s most deadliest cudgel.

[Anonymous]

"Abarri?" She said breathlessly as she lowered her head into the hole she had made. It wasn't big enough for her whole body, but it gave her a chance to make sure her daughter was still in there and had enough air and everything. It was however, hard to see in the dark of the hold after the light of the station. "It's okay. I've come to get you out. Mike has been arrested and I'm going to have a word with the captain about him. It'll be fine. Come on now." She was about ready to lock Lana up as well just to make sure she was safe.

[Anonymous]

Lana rushed forward, her face filled with a mix of wild terror and relief. She was like a desperate animal whose cage had finally been let open. She started to climb the walls, trying to get towards the opening, even though it was obviously too small for her to fit through.

No words left her lips; just a panicked breathing that seemed to be on the verge of turning into a scream. She managed to get a grip on the small opening and she found herself attempting to push her whole body through the hole. She ended up slipping and falling back to the floor, and repeated the process over again, like some sort of crazy wind up toy.

Still, she did not speak, and merely made a grunting whine like a puppy that had lost his ball under a chair. She finally got a grip on the opening, and dangled over the opening like a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse freezer.