For hc_bingo: Lessons In Programming
Logic
It’s already high noon and the far-from-spring sunlight is searing hot against her skin. Sandy brushes back the sun-bleached hair over her eyes, stretches and back-bends to work out the kinks in her lower back.
“You know,” she begins as she sinks the shovel into the dirt again “I had a reason for bringing you here.”
“Reasons, I believe.” Desmond says. He settles in a folding chair positioned at the edge of the field, water bottle in his right hand and a large tube of sunblock on the other, and looks at Sandy and the rest of the barren landscape like a warlord inspecting his spoils after battle. “Not only do I have the singular most advanced processor in this side of the galaxy, I also- Oh dear heavens the sunlight’s coming this way.”
Sandy glares at Desmond’s attempts to relocate his chair and adjust his - is that a parasol?
“A reason” she repeats with hard jabbing motions on the soil, hoping to drive her point well across the thick metal plates of his skull, “for carrying you out of that dumpster all the way back to the farm. On my back.”
“Yes, yes.” Desmond sits down again on his repositioned chair, now inside the cool shade of his - honest to god - parasol. He then proceeds to inspect the tips of his ridiculously long black hair, sighing mournfully over them. “Frankly this heat is not doing wonders to my hair. Now if you care to stop dawdling we might be able to finish these ditches by nightfall. We’re a day behind schedule as it is - which is not my fault.”
“Dawdling?!” Sandy narrowly misses stubbing her toe on a sharp rock. “And how is this my fault?”
“You don’t get to blame me when you’ve not been using labor-saving devices to-“
“You ARE the labor-saving device you jerk.”
Desmond sits up and finally looks at her, face frozen in an ‘oh’ expression. Sandy tightens her grip on the shovel and barely avoids taking a swing at his head.
“So you want me to… dig for you.” The words sound strange and foreign in his mouth, like the concept of it eludes him. For the first time since this morning Sandy finally relaxes.
“Yes. That’s pretty much the idea.” She says slowly. Like talking to a child - if said child is six foot tall, can design a new irrigation system under a minute that can increase the yield threefold, all while having a strange predilection for fine clothing.
“Things would get done a whole lot quicker if you help me and-” Sandy continues, going for the gold. “-we could get out of the sun much sooner.”
“You do have a point there.” Desmond sits back with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Sadly I am unsuitable to such feats of manual labor.”
“You are?”
“I mean, consider this.” Desmond gestures at his long lean frame, his impractical pair of shiny black shoes, his crisp long-sleeved shirt, the long black hair falling past his shoulders.
Sandy shrugs. “I can cut off your hair.”
“No!” He holds onto his hair like Sandy’s chopping it off right this instant. “Look, I don’t have your farmer’s physique, your callused hands, the specific tan of your skin that makes you impervious to melanoma-”
“If you don’t shut up,” Sandy warns “I’m going to tell on you and Papa- my father will be reprogramming you so hard you won’t tell a difference between my specific tan and your anemic complexion.”
Brute force
The jeep is low on gas and there’s a strange rumbling in the engine that might result in some unwarranted stopovers on the way. Sandy floors it anyway.
“Des says he’ll only be gone for a minute.” The voice in her radio is roughened with worry. She imagines her father, all 200 pounds of him wearing down the carpet in their living room. “He heard about the ruined fences and thought he could go fix it on his own.”
There’s a distinct scent of coming rain in the air. And smoke. “I told him I’ll take care of it. I should have just smacked him in the face for all good it did.” Her father sighs in the other end. “Papa I’ll get him back ok? He’ll be alright. They won’t come after-“ Sandy stops at the sight of fire and smoke at the horizon. “Oh shit.”
Their crops are already torched to the ground. After a bit of running, Sandy finds Desmond slumped against the electronic fence and breathing hard. His left arm is missing, a patch of skin is falling off his cheek, some of his hair is chopped short up to his chin, and the ground beneath him is steeped in something sticky and blue-green.
“Fixed it. Some vicious wild animals you’ve got here.” Desmond says through gritted teeth and tries to give a reassuring grin.
“Shut it.” Sandy kneels beside him and assesses the damage. Most of the stuff on the ground is just plain old coolant, nothing detrimental that will shut down Desmond at the moment. His arm is worrying her though. The stump of his left arm is too clean, the cut too smooth that there are no jagged bits of wiring or metal jutting out like it should be. Sandy recognizes the sinking feeling in her gut as fear.
“Can you stand up? We’ll get you back home and patched up in no time.”She crouches low and fits Desmond’s undamaged arm around her shoulders. When he doesn’t make a move , she shouts. “Come on!”
“I can’t…really move my legs.” Desmond grinds out. “Are they- are they coming back?” Sandy recoils from the sudden static running up her arm and she realizes there is something wrong, wrong, wrong.
Her fingers find the gash right at the base of his skull. It’s 3 inches wide and the cut is so straight and deep that Sandy can almost picture how it happened: Desmond crouching low to fix the breach in their fence, one of the townies striking him from the back with something heavy and sharp - an axe perhaps - so easily and without thought because Desmond is strange, because Desmond isn’t human.
“Can you stop the cerebral fluid from leaking out? I need my hands to drive you home.” Sandy drags him to the back of her jeep, talking so loudly so Desmond wouldn’t even think about going under and shutting down.
“No. Can’t” His movements are erratic and he isn’t blinking as much as he used too. He’s losing control, Sandy thinks, and it’s making her desperate enough to pull something crazy. She grabs hold of a utility knife from her belt.
“What are- What” Desmond is weak and uncoordinated but he manages to latch his good hand on her wrist. “I don’t think suicide is going to help.”
Sandy shakes his hold loose and visibly steels herself. “Idiot. Your processor clearly needs an upgrade.” She then makes a clean incision from the bottom of her left wrist, down to the start of her elbows. She can feel Desmond’s stare as she fishes around inside her arm, coolant spilling on Desmond’s chest.
“I’m sharing some of mine so don’t dare break down before Papa takes a look at you.” She pulls out one lengthy piece of cable out of her arm, locates the jack at the back of Desmond’s neck before plugging it in. “Recite pi or whatever I don’t care. Just don’t go under.”
“Sandy.” His eyes settle on her limp arm.
“I’ve done it before, don’t worry.” There’s something unreadable on Desmond’s face like her answer is more troubling than reassuring. She turns away instead and gets on the jeep. “One hand is all you need to steer the wheel anyways.”
Restart
“-back online. State your serial number.”
“D45606444-8777.”
“Good. How are you Desmond?”
Desmond blinks slowly - one, two, three- and takes a deep fortifying breath before answering the gruff male voice.
“System functions appear normal though I don’t remember having such high-pitched voice.” His hands reach up to touch his neck, smaller now, and then he slowly starts to feel his way down his collarbone, his chest. “I don’t remember having breasts either.”
“Papa, stop him from groping me!” Sandy screams from the other side of the room where she’s working on, well, Desmond. She’s in the middle of fitting him a new arm - an ugly one at that, Desmond thinks. For one, the complexion is off by a shade or two, and it’s lacking the swan-like grace of his old arm-
“It’ll hold up much better than your old one.” Peter, Sandy’s father, says, catching the direction of his gaze. Desmond only nods back at him, remembering all too well the sound of crunching metal.
“Movement will be a little sluggish in this body.” Peter explains when Desmond attempts to get off of bed, only to collapse on the floor. Desmond clamps a grateful hand at Peter’s offered shoulders as he tries to get to his feet. “It’s Sandy’s old one but there were lingering problems.” Peter’s eyes drift for a moment on his back.
(Later when he’s alone and no longer stalked by Sandy to stop him from any ‘inappropriate touching’ on her old body, Desmond locks himself in the bathroom and just stares at his face in the mirror. He then remembers the look on Peter’s face and strips off: there are puckered skin - scars - running across his back, most of which ran through the spine. Desmond wonders if it had been the same people that attacked him.)
He slowly makes his way towards Sandy, watching her snap the last nerve and cable in place. “I have this great idea to salvage our burnt fields.“
Sandy sighs. “I just finished patching up your arm. Can’t it wait?”
“Planting season waits for no one.”
“Right.”
He bullies her into driving him out to the fields and ignores the way she stares when he helps her in shoveling the excess ashes out of the soil.
There are things he isn’t programmed to do, he isn’t programmed to know: like plowing fields, digging ditches, that while there are people who simply throw them out there are those who do otherwise. But he supposes he can learn these things.
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