Fic Doodle: Po and Dee and the Tykebomb Make Three
Related Readings: A Reinterpretation of the Gospel of John | This Scene Fails the Bechdel Test, but It's Totally Worth It
Featuring Dr. Death Defying, Show Pony, and the little girl.
Oh, and mentions of Konpun and Popin' Cookin'. What's not to like?
“Okay, okay. Rewind and play it back for me at half-speed this time, girl. What happened?”
“It was like seeing a ghost—only it was much more real! Vivid. Much more vivid. That’s the word. It was like he was alive—”
“But he wasn’t at the same time.”
“Exactly. Like he was but he wasn’t.”
In his little bungalow in Zone 3, Dr. Death Defying lets out a little sigh. He rubs his brow, adjusts his sunglasses. The coffee in his cup tastes like burnt tar because Show Pony left early on an emergency errand and forgot to set the pot like he usually does. Still, it reminds him a bit of his time in the military, when the field coffee tasted bad no matter how it was brewed, so he sucks it down all the same. Waste not, want not.
“Should I tell you the part again about how I shot him twice?”
He frowns. “No, I think I got that part pretty clear, Iris blossom. You shot him twice and it went right through him—”
“But he flickered the second time, like bad video reception.”
Miles beyond even the furthest of the six rings, across deserts and plains, Girl Automatic sits ignoring his usage of her real name. She doesn’t ever correct him or tell him off, seems to delight in the addition of “blossom” that has stuck from the first time he first pulled her name from a data bracelet around her tiny wrist. She sits telling him this story, her high voice sometimes easy to mistake for a young boy’s, and Dr. Death Defying sits at home unsure what to make of it. She is… She has gotten considerably better than her initial days as an Institute escapee, but she is still…a concern of sorts. The deaths of the Joy-boys hit her hard. Hell, it hit everybody hard.
“Should I tell you about the part where he actually had mass?” Girl Automatic asks. “The barrel of my gun poked into his belly. He touched me. Kissed me.”
“He told me to go west,” she tells the radio pirate. “He said to find his body. That he’s somewhere sleeping and that we have to wake him up—”
“That part I got. But I…” Dr. Death Defying searches for the right phrasing in the silence that comes with sipping bad coffee. “Iris, you sure this ain’t a case of just…I dunno—”
“It really happened. All of it. Every moment. It was like something out of a book or a movie, but it was real, Doc. It was.”
“But Iris, how can you be sure?”
There is silence on the other end of the line for a few seconds before Girl Automatic says, “When I hallucinate him, he always wears blue and white. His hair is longer. And he never takes off that stupid yellow mask.”
Dr. Death Defying lets his breath rush through his nose. He raises his sunglasses to rub his eyes. He wants to believe her. Even with a little more than a year passing between the firefight at BLI and now, he wants to believe the boys might roam the desert again. And Girl Automatic wouldn’t call him in the middle of his three-day break for something trivial. That she even felt it important enough to hunt him down through News A Go Go is saying something. But given all the circumstances…
“I asked Go Go to send me all she had.”
“On what?” Did he miss something?
“About ghosts in the machine.” The tone of her voice suggests he hasn’t. “The way he spoke… It sounds like he might be one. Like his consciousness has been fully moved to the digital world. It’s very SEL or maybe like The Matrix—”
“Serial Experiments Lain, Doc. Prewar animation. Technological mind screw to the max. Very worth what I paid for to have it.”
“Hm.” A sound distracts his attention, the soft creak of floorboards. “Listen, Iris blossom, we’re gonna have to continue this a little later. Po’s due home any minute and I’ve gotta clear out the coffee pot before he—but listen, listen, listen. Send me what you get from Go Go, clear? Meanwhile, I’m gonna cast a net and see what I drag in.”
“So you do believe me.” It does not escape the radio pirate’s awareness that Girl Automatic sounds relieved. “Thank you. I-I will. I’ll send what I get. It’s due over soon—an hour at most, then a couple to download.”
“That sounds about typical. Okay. You get anything else going on, he shows back up or anything like that—”
After an exchange of goodbyes, Dr. Death Defying hangs up. He turns his chair around just in time to catch a small girl still in sleeping clothes attempting to sneak up on him, one bare foot still hovering above the floor. He smiles a little.
“Nice try, Tykebomb. The floorboards gave you away.”
The girl brings her hovering foot down in a soft stomp. “I was sure I had it this time!”
“Close but not quite. Barefoot was a good decision, though.” With a wider smile, Dr. Death Defying pats his lap. The little girl climbs up deftly, throws her arms around his neck and kisses his cheek good morning. “You just get up?”
“Little while ago,” she answers. “I brushed my teeth already.”
“In that case, are you hungry?”
“Mm-hm. But I can make my own sandwich.”
“You don’t want me to cook? I can make you some eggs,” offers Dr. Death Defying. “I know how to scramble them without burning.”
The little girl, his doted-on little Tykebomb, thinks about it quietly before nodding, her curls bouncing. She holds on while he drives the chair into the kitchen. “Who were you talking to, Papa Dee?”
“Just your big sister. She’s thinking she might have come across some new information.”
In the kitchen, the child hops off his lap and pours herself a cup of orange juice. She doesn’t ask him for more details. She knows from the somewhat tired tone in his voice not to, not if Girl Automatic is involved. Truely, the girl is about as related to any of them as a cat is to a bear, but even cats and bears have been known to form close bonds. Such is the way with this patchwork family—even with its giant four-person-sized hole in it.
“Do you think she’s lonely?”
“GA. Do you think she’s lonely out there?”
“Well, I dunno, chickadee.” The radio pirate pulls two large eggs from the fridge. “GA’s been living alone a long time. I suspect she’s used to it.”
“But you can still be lonely even if you’re used to it, right?”
“Well, I guess, yeah.” He glances over at her. “But it’s easy to get so used to something like that ‘till you don’t even notice it anymore. People are funny like that.”
“Were you like that?” she asks. “Before Papa Po?”
Dr. Death Defying only smiles a little. In the living room, the door opens; Show Pony’s muffled voice calling out makes both people in the kitchen perk. The young man rolls in on his skates, bags full of items temporarily preventing him from removing his helmet. He is only too relieved to have the pirate and their Tykebomb take the load from him.
“There should be a crime against the day being this hot in the middle of winter!” Show Pony lets out a small huff of air. “Days like this almost make me miss the controlled weather inside BC.”
“Did they really do that?” asks the child.
“They didn’t always use it, but yes. Some Christmases, the city would be covered in snow!” With a bright smile, he leans down to press a kiss to her forehead. “Morning, Rosette.”
“Morning. Papa Dee’s making breakfast.”
Show Pony raises an eyebrow in Dr. Death Defying’s direction. “And you trust him?”
“He says he can make scrambled eggs without burning them.”
“Sweetie, Papa Dee can do a lot of things well, but cooking is not one of them. He can barely even make himself coffee.”
The radio pirate makes a small noise of mock offense. “When I was in the army and out in the field, nobody complained when I ran the camp fire.”
“Honey, she’s a ten-year-old girl, not a soldier at war.”
“She still has tastebuds and a developing digestive system.” The messenger shakes his head in disbelief before kissing his war veteran and shooing him away from the stove. “Let me.”
Reluctantly, Dr. Death Defying relinquishes control of the hearth. In the time it takes for him to fetch his coffee cup from the living room, Show Pony has tossed out what remains of the sludge in the coffeepot and refill it with a better brew. The radio pirate returns, notices, frowns; he reluctantly relinqushes the cup as well when Show Pony gestures for it.
“Did you have something to eat?” he asks.
“I had a sandwich…” Dr. Death Defying shrugs. “Feed the Tykebomb first. I can wait.”
Rosette giggles as she explores some of the bags. She pulls out some brightly colored packages with happy-faced cakes and sweets sharing space with large Japanese characters. “Shiny! You got some of these!”
“Mm-hm! Caravan had a whole bunch. Picked up a few edibles and non-eds for your dollhouse,” says Show Pony.
“It’s not a dollhouse; it’s an underground bunker for the resistance,” Rosette corrects.
“Well, all the same, freedom fighters have to eat, too,” Show Pony answers. “You can play with those after breakfast. Save the edible ones for later.”
The packages of edible candy kits go on the counter by the coffeepot. With her packets of Konpun items, Rosette races down the hallway, and that’s when the war vet turned radio pirate takes the opportunity to tell the messenger about the conversation with Girl Automatic. The more details Dr. Death Defying gives, the more troubled Show Pony looks as he deftly scrambles eggs. Still, he waits until the older man is done before expressing any of his concerns.
“You don’t think she’s serious, do you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think she quite believes it, either. You know how she can be, she knows it now, too—”
“So I’m not really sure. Still…” Dr. Death Defying’s face grows troubled. “It matches some reports.”
“Reports? Oh—” Show Pony turns off the stove. “Get me a plate—?”
“Sure. I just—things I’ve heard on the airwaves—whispers…”
“Things BLI is working on, experiments; mind mapping and…permanent uploading of the consciousness.”
“So the usual, then.” Show Pony puts the plate of scrambled eggs on the table, picks up the empty cup. “Rosette! Food’s on the table!”
“There’s signs of a success,” Dr. Death Defying says in a low voice.
“People are always saying that. Remember that cult in out in Four? The ones who thought they could upload themselves to the Inner Internet—Rosette!”
“Coming!” The child’s voice fills the bungalow.
“What if they finally got the right person, Po? The right people?”
“Wishful thinking, Dee. We’ve been down that dark alleyway before.”
Rosette stands in the doorway, balancing on one foot. The adults glance at each other. Show Pony goes to the fridge. Dr. Death Defying shakes his head.
“Nothing, Tykebomb. Just grownup business."
