[fanfiction] i'm so into you (but i'm way too smart for you) part 1

[kisforkurama]

i'm so into you (but i'm way too smart for you)

Mark Zuckerberg is ten years old and a little in love with Erica Albright when he writes her an anonymous note. He knows it's childish and dumb, okay? He totally knows it's lame to leave a note on someone's desk, but Erica Albright is just. She's really pretty and Mark really likes her, okay? Like-likes her, not just likes her. The note is simple, done carefully in blue pen.
Dear Erica,

I love you.

Signed,
Anonymous Friend
And Mark's proud of it, up until Erica Albright is a b-i-t-c-h (his mom says he's not supposed to use that word, but he's heard his dad use it and it fits Erica, okay?) and tells the whole class that he wrote it. She doesn't even acknowledge him except when she's laughing at him. They call him stupid, and that's why Mark does it.

Not that anyone cares why he starts The Great Robot War, but that's the reason.

There once was a boy named Mark Zuckerberg who really liked a girl named Erica Albright and Erica Albright didn't like him back, but instead of telling him that, Erica got the whole class to laugh at Mark and call him stupid for thinking a girl like Erica would like a dork like him. It's the kind of story that happens to kids all over the world, but most kids aren't Mark Zuckerberg.

They don't dream of a future that's almost within their grasp, dream of a future where they have control of an entire robot army that will conquer the world. Or maybe they do, but they won't act on it because they're not equipped to. The secret that no one knows about the origins of The Great Robot Wars is this: it's not the fact that Erica Albright doesn't like him back and it's not the fact that everyone laughed at him. It's the fact that they called him stupid.

If there is one thing in the whole wide world that Mark isn't, it's stupid.

He's already outgrown the robot kits that are made for adults with too much time on their hands and outgrown the simplistic constraints of his college-level introductory programming course at ten. When Erica Albright's rejection makes him swear revenge, Mark doesn't fume and think about all the things he could do to Erica Albright. He puts together a plan to show Erica Albright that he isn't stupid at all, and then? Then he calls Dustin.

Dustin, because he's Mark's best (and only) friend, comes over and helps Mark with the blueprints for a flamethrower robot to torch Erica's room. Unfortunately, they don't have a flamethrower so they end up using a fire extinguisher because there's instructions on the internet about turning it into a flamethrower. Also there's, like, irony or something in that because it's a fire extinguisher that's causing fires. Mark thinks that's what irony is, anyway. He's not too sure on the concept.

The only problem is that Dustin is dumb and he doesn't actually turn the fire extinguisher into a flamethrower before they put it on the robot, so what they end up with is a robot who enthusiastically sprays everything with . . . whatever's in fire extinguishers. By the time they mange to shut it off, both Mark and Dustin are entirely covered in the white foam and the robot is a total failure. Mark totally blames Dustin.

"This is all your fault," Mark says sullenly, "It wouldn't even put out fires if there was a fire."

When Mark says that, Dustin sits up straighter and snaps his fingers. Or, well. Dustin tries to snap his fingers, but the white foam kind of stops him from actually snapping his fingers. Not that Dustin is all that great at snapping his fingers to begin with, so Mark guesses it could just be that Dustin sucks at snapping too.

"We'll fix it," Dustin says once he realizes that the snapping just isn't going to happen, "We'll make the robot put out fires better and more accurately than any of the other fire-fighting robots, and then we'll sell the design to make a real robot with a flamethrower to set Erica's house on fire with."

Mark will never admit it in a million years, but Dustin's plan is actually good. That's why they end up carrying it out, and then building the most awesome flamethrower robot that the world has ever know with the money from the royalty sales a year later.

The problem is that Dustin is a big blabbermouth, and he tells Chris Hughes about their plan to burn Erica's house down. Chris Hughes is, like, the world's most responsible eleven-year-old or something and he tells them that they can't burn Erica's house down because they'll get thrown into juvhall and not come out until they're old and wrinkly-which would totally suck--so can't they, like, find some better way of taking out their anger?

"Erica Albright is a bitch," Mark huffs, "and I don't care what you say, I'm gonna burn her house down! Just try and stop me."

Chris Hughes, as Mark learns the moment he tries to exit his garage, is a black belt super ninja of awesome. Dustin didn't tell him that, because Dustin never bothers to figure out anything important. Mark would be mad, but Chris doesn't seem like he's stopping Mark for vicious reasons, just because he thinks that there's better ways for Mark to accomplish his goals.

In a way, Chris is the reason Mark starts The Great Robot War instead of just setting fire to Erica Albright's house.

Eduardo Saverin is eleven when his mother hands him the leather journal and tells him that perhaps writing his thoughts down will help him. He wrinkles his nose and tells her that diaries are for girls and Father wouldn't approve, but his mother smiles sadly and runs her fingers through his hair.

"Sometimes," she says, sounding tired, "your father is wrong about things. If it will make you feel better, though, don't think of it as a diary. Think of it as a book of letters to a friend."

The only reason that Eduardo doesn't tell his mother he doesn't have any friends is because she worries enough about him as it is. So instead Eduardo thanks her and tucks the leather journal lose to his chest. He puts it in the drawer of his desk and it stays there for a month or two before Eduardo's trying to find a spare stylus for his data tablet and coming across it. He pulls it from the drawer and runs his fingers over it.

It's a beautiful journal, probably hand-crafted and worth a considerable amount of money because it's an old technology that's largely lost to the world at large. Eduardo doesn't even know if he has a pen to write in it with, given that the world mostly switched over to using paperless data tablets instead of pen and paper when Eduardo was very young. He can't even remember the last time that he had to use an actual pen.

When Eduardo opens the journal, though, there's a pen tucked in the spine. Eduardo pulls it out and tries to get used to the weight of it in his hands, tries to remember how to use it. He sets the journal on his desk and uncaps the pen, hesitating before starting to write. The penmanship isn't great, but Eduardo figures that it doesn't much matter if no one is ever going to see what he writes.
Dear friend,
This feels so oldschool, you know? I haven't written with a pen in years, so forgive me if my handwriting is terrible or this gets splotchy. My father would chastise me if he knew, because he thinks that everyone should be the best at everything all the time. Or maybe he only thinks that I should be the best at everything? I don't know, I just know that I spend allot a lot of time disappointing him.

I should give you a name so I don't have to consistently call you "friend." What would you like to be named? I guess it doesn't matter, because you're a journal and you can't talk. I think I'll call you Mark.

There's a boy in the class below me named Mark. They say that he's a genius, and he takes college classes in robot programming. My dad asks me why I can't be more like him, sometimes, and I don't have an answer for him. It's not that I'm stupid, Mark! It's just that I'm not a genius who's ten and programming better robots than some professionals. I like different things.

What are you interested in? Because I'm interested in history and meteorology (that's the study of weather and stuff, if you didn't know). My father thinks that's stupid stuff and he wants me to study more about business to follow in his footsteps. I don't know if I want to do that. It's a great family legacy.

"Family legacy" is one of those things I don't really understand yet. My father says that it'll make sense in time, but I don't know how long I have to wait before it starts to make sense. Maybe I'm just impatient. That's what my father thinks anyway. He's always saying that I need to learn patience, but it's hard to when people treat me like I don't know anything and I'm stupid.

It's all my father's fault, because I think he tells all the people he knows that I'm stupid so they believe it and treat me like I am. I wish my father would have some faith in me, sometimes.

It's bad manners to burden other people with you problems, isn't it, Mark? So I'll stop nattering on now and try to find that spare stylus I was looking for earlier. I still have to do my math homework!
Tucking the pen back into the spine and shutting the journal, Eduardo sets it in his drawer again before looking around for the stylus he swears he saw the other week. When he finds it, he starts his math homework and forgets all about the journal again for another couple of weeks. He sees it when he's rummaging through his drawers, but he doesn't think that much about it and he doesn't write in it.

At school, Mark does something spectacular and it's in all the newsfeeds. Eduardo tries not to hate Mark, but it's hard when his father is constantly demanding that Eduardo be more like him. Constantly willing to shower and endless amount of praise on some kid he's never met with none to spare for his own son. Eduardo's mother smooths his hair and tells him not to listen to his father's nonsense, but Eduardo can't help it. He feels a little worthless when nothing he does it ever good enough, and that's not something that goes away easily. His mother is right about one thing, though: writing his thoughts down helps.

The journal fills up quickly, because Eduardo starts writing pages and pages of letters to his fictional friend Mark (who is not the Mark his father talks about). He would worry about how lame that is, only no one's ever even seen his journal and there's pretty much no one who's willing to make fun of him. He guesses that's what having a dad who's influential in the city does. Maybe they think that Eduardo will get his dad to smite them if they hurt him. Eduardo wishes he could.

Mark and Dustin are twelve when a company hires them to design a line of robots for mass-production because of the success of their fire-fighting robot. It's less of a job and more of a design contract, but it's a huge honor and they take on the job of creating a better security bot for the company. It's nice, having huge amounts of resources at their disposal, and Mark thinks that he definitely wants to do this when he's done with school entirely. Especially if it's with Dustin, who's far better at the actual design aspect of the robots they're creating. Mark can design robots, but he's just not as good at it and Dustin's not as good at programming them so they really make a pretty great team.

But also because Dustin's not that great at programming, so it's easy to slip the backdoor program into the code and bury it so no one will ever notice it. Mark's maybe seen Jurassic Park too many times just to laugh at Dustin's forays into acting. The backdoor designed to look like it performs an actual function, and Mark can explain it away if anyone is actually looking close enough to notice, but the important part of including it is that when he decides to take over the world (which will be soon, Mark can tell you that much), Mark will have a way into all the bots he's creating.

The world is going to bend to his will whether they like it or not and when Mark tells Dustin that, Dustin just smiles and says that of course they will. He says it's like there's no question that they'll succeed, and Mark smiles because Dustin's pretty much always been the only person that believes in him. Sure, Chris believes in Mark but it's a differently kind of belief. Chris has morals and concerns with the things that Mark wants to do. He says that Mark can't just take over the world to prove Erica Albright wrong, because that's petty and also a little bit insane. Dustin says that they don't have to listen to Chris, because he's a fuddy-duddy and it doesn't matter if the plan is crazy. There's no better way to show the fact that he's brilliant than to take over the world, right?

Maybe there should be some part of Mark that wonders if Chris is right and his whole plan is a little less brilliant and a little more mad scientist. He actually doesn't care at all, though, because if wanting to take over the world makes him crazy, then he'll be crazy. He'll be the kind of mad scientist that people only thought existed in books, because Mark Zuckerberg is going to start a robotic war on humanity and nobody can stop him now.

Not even Chris, because Chris can't watch him every moment of the day and Mark's never been above exploiting weaknesses. Besides, Chris is only aware of the increasingly terrifying robots they've been building in their garage using the royalty money from their firefighting robots and the flouncy skirts Dustin buys with the extra. He doesn't know about the backdoor code that Mark's loaded into all of the robots people are paying him to build, and he doesn't really understand how Mark plans to take over the world.

In Chris' mind, Mark's plan in incredibly simplistic: build weaponized robots to turn into a robot army and then unleash them on the world in order to take over it. He's certain that Mark will be stopped, because there's only so many robots that Mark can build without real facilities to churn them out, and Mark doesn't have nearly enough robots to launch an attack. That's where Chris is most definitely wrong.

For the most part, Mark already has a robot army. They're currently performing other functions, but they're everywhere-especially since other people have started loading his AIs into things that Dustin hasn't even designed-and when the time is right, Mark will flip a switch and all the robots will report to him instead of their owners. He'll use the robots to keep people captive for a day or two while he uses his weaponized robots to take over a robotic manufacturing plant. It should be easy since manufacturing plants never have any humans in them anymore and Mark should be able to reprogram them fairly quickly. Then he'll be able to make himself a robot army with weapons and he'll have a base of operations that'll be fairly safe from outsiders.

It's a brilliant plan, and Mark's never going to tell Chris about it. He tells Dustin about bits and pieces of it, because even if Dustin tells Chris, Dustin's pretty bad at remembering the finer details of what Mark says and Mark knows he'll never relay the plan correctly. Besides, even Dustin knows when a piece of information is something that he should keep from Chris and Mark isn't worried about his plans being ruined because they're for things that are going to happen so far in the future that there's a good chance that Chris will forget about his concerns before Mark actually carries out his plan.

He's smart enough to execute his plans when Chris can't do anything to him anyway.

When Eduardo is thirteen, his mother gives him a new journal because he's filled up the old one. His father hasn't found out about the journal yet, but Eduardo keeps it hidden anyway. He's careful not to write horrible things about his father down, but his father seems to get mad about everything, and Eduardo never really knows what might make him angry.

Sometimes Eduardo thinks that it isn't anything in particular, it's just him. His father is always angry at Eduardo because he's Eduardo and not a boy genius like Mark. There's nothing that Eduardo can do about that, but sometimes he wonders about Mark (the real one), because there's something angry about him that sometimes Eduardo thinks only he sees.

Maybe it's because people seem to think that because Mark is surrounded by people, he has lots of friends. Eduardo knows that isn't true, because he's watched Mark and he's seen the way that he's polite but not nice to them. He thinks that even if they don't remember how they used to treat Mark, Mark himself remembers and isn't cutting them any slack for it. He remembers the way everyone used to laugh at Mark for being weak and strange. He never joined in, because he didn't think Mark was weak or strange.

Just different. Just not what people expect. Just a little bit more like Eduardo than either of them realize, maybe. They could be friends, if things were different, but Eduardo doesn't think he could deal with his father fawning all over Mark so Eduardo only watches ark from away and writes letters to the fictional Mark in his head.
Dear Mark,
Your namesake is building something incredible for this company my dad works with sometimes. My dad won't stop talking about how awesome it is that your namesake is so awesome and I'm getting a little tired of it. Maybe that's why I never try and make friends with the real Mark: I don't think that I could handle my father heaping praise on to him when he's never said a single nice thing about me.

I won that meteorology contest I was telling you about. I go first place with honors and do you know what my father said to me? "Why do you waste your time with these useless competitions? Why don't you learn useful skills like Mark?"

Once, I tried to explain that meteorology is a useful skill and that I'm not just wasting my time by learning more about it and being good about it, but my father's never been very good at listening. He still thinks it's a silly hobby, but that's okay. This summer I'm going to see if the algorithms I've been working on actually work. Maybe if I'm successful and I manage to make a lot of money, my father will have a tiny bit more respect for me. At least he'll see that my skills have applications that way, even if it doesn't change his mind about their usefulness.

What do you think, Mark? Am I putting too much stock in what my father says and thinks? I don't know. There aren't many people I look up to as role models, and I've never really had friends so I'm not really sure what to do. Aren't your parents supposed to guide and shape you into the person that you're meant to be? My mother says that I should ignore my father and just do what I like to do, but I'm not always sure what I want to do. I like meteorology a lot, but is that really what I want to do with the rest of my life? Maybe not.

We'll see what happens in the future, I guess. Maybe I'll be the weather man on the local news! I'm sure there's nothing that my father would hate more than that. Unless I never get a job and I'm homeless, but that thought terrifies me and I don't think I could ever do that. I don't think my mother would let me be homeless either, so there's that.

It's dinnertime soon, so I should go now. I'll write to you again soon.
Sometimes Eduardo convinces himself that he'll talk to the real Mark and try to make friends with him, but something always stops him from doing it. He's not sure if it's the way that Mark seems like he's planning something or his feelings towards his father, but Eduardo never speaks to Mark. He never asks what it is that Mark is forever thinking about, never asks if Mark will be his friend. He wants to, though, and more and more frequently when he writes in his journal the letters begin with "Today I didn't talk to your namesake again."

If Eduardo had more courage or thought himself more than worthless, he'd have the confidence to walk over to Mark at lunch and ask Mark about his robots or maybe what kinds of music he likes. He'd ask if Mark enjoys all the attention, feels like people appreciate him more now, and if he feels that their appreciation is genuine. He'd asks all of the questions that burn in his mind late at night.

But Eduardo is a coward, and he doesn't.

The day Mark starts The Great Robot War isn't actually significant in any real way except that he starts The Great Robot War. Also someone publishes an article saying that Mark and Dustin are just smoke and mirrors and they're not actually the ones building the robots with their names on them, but Mark is never going to admit that's what makes his lips curve into a smile and call Dustin.

"Dustin," he says when Dustin finally answers, "Chris is still on vacation, right?"
"Yeah," Dustin responds, sounding a little bit confused, "Why do you want to know? You don't care about Chris."
"I do," Mark rolls his eyes even though Dustin can't see them, "but more importantly if Chris is still on vacation that means that he's not here and if he's not here, then I can start a war without him trying to stop me."
"You read the article," Dustin sighs, but it isn't a question, "Chris is going to be so mad when he gets home. I'll be there in fifteen minutes-don't you dare start without me."

Mark makes no promises, because he tries not to make promises he isn't going to keep. Besides, if it starts setting the plan into motion now then it'll be ready to go when Dustin gets to the garage in fifteen minutes. That's Mark's reasoning anyway, because it's going to take at least fifteen minutes for him to break into the local robotics manufacturing plant's security and poke around to determine how easy it's going to be to get in there and take over manufacturing. By the time Dustin is bursting into the garage, panting and out of breath while he tosses his bike to the side, Mark's already determined what the best plan of attack for them is. He turns to face Dustin when Dustin flops into the chair next to Mark. Mark notices that the skirt he's wearing over his jeans is hanging limply, like it's as exhausted as Dustin is.

"Fourteen minutes," Mark nods, "I'm impressed, but we have work to do. I already activated the backdoor code and took control of all our robots again."
"I said," Dustin huffs, still a little short-winded, "not to start without me."
"I didn't," Mark turns back toward his screen, "it takes me like ten minutes to gain control of all the robots again because it's not my most elegant code, okay? They just came back online. I'm sending out the message to take everyone hostage now."

Dustin doesn't say anything, just kind of slumps in the chair and stares at the ceiling. Mark activates all the robots in the garage, one by one, and by the time he's done, Dustin seems to be a little less wiped out. He's managed to change out of his sweat-soaked shirt and is sitting up and watching the robots turn on and march out of the garage when Mark looks over to check on him. Dustin turns toward Mark and grins.

"Are we ready to take over the world?"
"Yup," Mark shuts his laptop and tucks it under his arm, "Let's go."

Technically neither of them have driving licenses, but the law says that if a car is being driven entirely on autopilot, no one in the vehicle needs a license. Mark thinks that hotwiring a car so he can control it from his laptop isn't that different from a car being on autopilot. Besides, they're about to break into a secure robot manufacturing plant. Being caught and given a ticket for driving without a license is pretty much the least of their worries right now.

When they get to the plant, though, it's easier than it should be to gain control over it and Mark would be worried if the ease wasn't caused by his own designs guarding the thing he wants. He picked this particular plant for that exact reason, but also because it's the only plant nearby that had absolutely no human workers. He may be about to start a war, but Mark doesn't want to actually cause harm to anyone if he doesn't have to. Whether or not the world decides to accept his demands or fight is up to them.

(Secretly, Mark hopes they accept because he'd rather this was over quickly and without much bloodshed. He knows that they won't, though, because that's the difference between robots and humans: robots understand when it would be futile to try and fight. Humans are perfectly willing to fight until they're extinct.)

After a day, Mark has enough robots to take over his hometown. After a week, Mark has enough robots to take over most of the United States and he's mostly managed to figure out how to broadcast a signal to every device that will receive it. He makes his announcement then, because while they don't have quite the resources he would like, they're going to take over the other manufacturing plant tomorrow if it's necessary and they're pretty much unstoppable if Mark is being honest and not worrying needlessly.

"Hi," Mark says, giving the webcam a little wave, "My name is Mark Zuckerberg and I'd going to take over the world whether you like it or not. It would probably be in your best interests to surrender now, because I have a robot army and you don't. If I do not receive word of surrender by the end of the day, my army will advance. I suggest you make your choices quickly."

The world, of course, thinks that Mark is a stupid kid and they don't take him seriously. Really, it's their own fault Mark has to start The Great Robot War at all. He gave them a chance to surrender, and they ignored him.

Dear Mark,
Your namesake started a war today.

I told you how I always thought he was planning something, didn't I? I just didn't expect it to be this, and I don't think anyone takes him seriously. He's only 15, you know, just a year younger than me. They probably think that he's a dumb kid that's playing a prank, but I know better. Your namesake is going to take over the world, and I don't know what to do.

There's going to be a war-like the kind that the textbooks talk about, the kind where everyone dies and no one really wins-and I just. I wish I had talked to him, like I was always telling you I was going to, because maybe all he wanted was someone who saw him for what he was. It's too late now, though, so I think I have to consider my choices. The world may not realize that a war is coming, but I do and I need to prepare for it.

If nothing else, I don't think I can stay here. It isn't safe to go on living like nothing will change, and after I pack a bag I think I'll be leaving for good. My mother will be upset, of course, but I don't think my father will care very much. I've made enough money off my meteorology projects that I should be okay, but I have a feeling that money is going to be useless in a matter of time anyway.

How do you fight a robot, Mark? This isn't the kind of thing they teach in school. Well, I suppose it's not something that they have to teach because the three laws are in place to prevent such a thing from happening. Maybe that's why no one is worried: they all believe that the three laws will protect them, but I know that your namesake has figured out some way to remove them. Our security bot (one of your namesake's designs, of course, because father just had to have it) has been acting strangely for a week or so now, and I have a feeling that this has something to do with your namesake's war.

Or perhaps it senses the impending harm about to fall on us. I don't know, but it may be a while before I get the chance to write to you again. Pray for the safety of everyone.
When Eduardo finishes writing his letter just after Mark's announcement, he starts packing. There isn't much he can (or should) take, so it's mostly a few changes of clothing, all his savings, his data tablet, a water bottle, and some of the emergency food rations every household is required to keep. He tucks his journals into his bag too, for sentimental reasons and because he has a feeling that he'll need someone to talk to more than ever if things are going to go the way he thinks they will.

At dinner that night, Eduardo announces that he's leaving. His mother and father react as expected, and he's all set to leave when the security bot stops him.

"Let me though," Eduardo says calmly, "It violates no laws."
"If I let you out," the robot twangs, metallic voice still so strange to Eduardo, "you'll get hurt. I cannot allow you to come to harm through inaction."
"Right, "Eduardo sighs, "I really didn't want to do this, but."

Eduardo may not actually be a robotics expert like Mark is, but he knows that robots aren't waterproof and he knows that getting a robot wet is likely to fry it. Praying that his father won't see what he's about it do, Eduardo picks up the bucket of water that he'd set at his feet and dumps it over the robot's head. The robot fritzes out, and Eduardo slips out the door before anyone can come and see what he's done.

His parents will probably wonder what made him hate robots so much, and the truth isn't that Eduardo hates them. It's that he doesn't trust them the way most people do: implicitly and without question. He questions the laws in class when they learn about them, doesn't treat robots like they're dumb but lovable animals, tries not to engage with them at all-if it can be helped. He's wary of them, and that wariness is paying off.

The war is coming, and he's the only one who realizes it.

The Great Robot Wat is pretty boring, from Mark's perspective. He sits in his manufacturing plant and sends out commands from the control center he's managed to put together. He barely sees any of the fighting, and no one manages to get past his defenses and take him out. He doesn't even think they've been able to figure out where he is-not that's he's been particularly careful of hiding where he is. He suspects that it may or may not have something to do with the fact that nobody's figured out how to take out the robots if he keeps making more.

Once a month during the war, Mark sends out a broadcast to everything that will receive it and reminds everyone that if they just surrender, this whole thing could be over.

Bit by bit, Mark conquers North America. Some places surrender; some places resist and Mark has to take them out. There's not really any rhyme or reason to it, and Mark doesn't much care about the casualties because his armies are under strict orders not to kill any humans unless they pose an immediate and powerful threat. Really, he thinks that he could do a lot worse.

Chris doesn't agree, but Chris is still mad that Mark started the Great Robot War while he was on vacation. And possibly also mad that Mark's plan is so good, in terms of nothing actually going wrong. Dustin usually appeases Chris by mentioning that he tried to stop Mark, which they probably all know is a lie specifically for Chris. It does the job, though, and Chris has realized that it would be a little pointless to try and undo what Mark's already done.

Somewhere between conquering Japan and going for China, Mark thinks about Erica Albright. He knows that's the story going around: he started the war for the love of a girl. Personally, Mark thinks that about the stupidest reason anyone could ever star a war, but he knows that's what they're saying. Chris tells him that they should make a statement about it, but Mark just shrugs him off.

"History is written by the people that win," Mark tells Chris, "I'll write history the way I want to once this war is over, there's nothing to worry about."
"If you say so," Chris says, "but Mark?"
"What?"
"It isn't true, is it?"
"Not in the ways that are important," Mark shrugs, "but I guess it's true in all the ways that aren't."

Mark knows, even without turning to look, that Chris is frowning at him. The fact of the matter really is that if you choose to look at it like that, Mark did start The Great Robot War because of a girl. It's just not in the way that they think it is.

He gave up on dating Erica Albright once he realized that she was a bitch and he was way too smart for her. That was five years ago, and he hasn't looked back. In another way, though, he did start the whole thing because he was hurt, angry, and all he knew was building robots. Erica didn't doom the world because she turned him down; she doomed the world because she made people think he was stupid. Mark's proven he's not, and now there will never be anyone like Erica Albright again. People like Chris probably think that he did this all to impress her, bend her to his will, but he didn't do any of this for Erica. He did it for himself to prove that he could, with Dustin's help.

It doesn't matter why he started a war, in the end. People will speculate on it forever, romanticize it the way that all wars are while forgetting how terrible war can be. Mark may not be outside, may only be watching the war unfold from his fortress of steel, but he can see the fury in people's eyes and he knows that they throwing themselves against an enemy that cannot hope to defeat.

Mark would worry, but in a few more months, he'll rule the entire world and nothing else can matter in the face of that.

Eduardo fights in The Great Robot War because that's what he needs to do. Not because he thinks it will help or it will make Mark surrender-Eduardo has absolute faith in Mark's claim that he's going to rule the world regardless of what people think-but because it's satisfying.

Destroy Mark's creations satisfies the anger and hatred that have been brewing in Eduardo for so long. He tears the heads from robots, crushes them with a steamroller that he only barely knows how to drive, overloads them with electricity, douses them with water-whatever he thinks will make them topple. All of the blind rage at his father and misdirected anger for Mark get poured into a war that Eduardo doesn't believe in. He doesn't think, just destroys and scrounges together enough to survive for another day like ever other soldier in this war they cannot win.

It's exhilarating for the first few months, but somewhere around the sixth month of the war and the second day he's had barely anything to eat Eduardo starts to tire and wonder what he's doing. He's not fighting for anything, just fighting because he's 16 and too angry about too many things. He's not angry any more, just tired and kind of resigned to their fate.

The war's still going on, though, so Eduardo keeps fighting because he doesn't know what else to do. He won't surrender to Mark, because even though he's mostly not angry anymore there's just something in him that refuses to go down without a fight. He's tired, not broken, and that's an important distinction. Eduardo's not ready to forgive Mark for things that aren't really his fault to begin with, and he's not ready to surrender. Without the anger driving him, though, Eduardo is perhaps less careful about staying alive than he was before. It's not that he's careless, exactly. It's just that the robot takes him by surprise.

Over the months, Eduardo has learned that unless you have a gun or other easily assessed threat to a robot's safety, it generally won't try to cause lethal harm to a human. Really, if Eduardo had been thinking more clearly he wouldn't have picked up the gun. For starters, he had no idea whether or not it had bullets in it (it didn't). Then, of course, there was the issue of the quickly advancing robot possibly being a variety with super-strength (it was). And finally: Eduardo had never fired a gun to begin with.

Really, it's a wonder that the robot didn't do more than rip his arm off-not that Eduardo takes much comfort in that. The rip of flesh is sickening, although Eduardo doesn't have much of a chance to focus on it. There isn't much to focus on besides the way every nerve in his arm screams in agony, clinging and unwilling to let go as his arm is pulled from its socket and tossed aside. Eduardo passes out from pain and assumes that's where he'll die: alone and wrecked in the streets of New Mexico.

Opening his eyes to bright lights and a grim face looking down at him is unexpected. Eduardo blinks at the blurry figure, willing it to come into focus, and discerns that it's a girl around his age, maybe slightly older. She's focused in on him like she's checking his reactions and Eduardo groans.

"We couldn't save your arm," she says flatly, "but you're alive. I wouldn't recommend going out there any time soon, though."

His tongue is too heavy to make words, otherwise Eduardo would tell her that he doesn't think he's be able to go anywhere even if he wanted to. She leaves him alone, and Eduardo breathes.

A week and a half later, Mark rules the world and everything is pointless.

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