Do Robot Men Dream of Non-Robot Sheep (Dr. 0 and HELIOS)

The Mojave Desert was massive. It hid almost all of its treasures deep beneath tons of sand, rock, and plants that refused to die. Just like memories of the past. Memories were hidden in this massive wasteland, dark and dangerous secrets that the sands had managed to keep hidden for longer than most thought possible. People had used this sand to hide secrets in for centuries and most had stayed just that but not all things are meant to stay hidden forever. No matter how old or how well they had been buried. It was one of those secrets, younger than some and older than most, which had been buried so deep that it was rarely even spoken of in current time, would be found.

The old and rundown gas station made for great camouflage in this environment. Most of the paint had been stripped away by the many years of wear and tear from the sand, wind, sun, and floods that were common in the desert. Inside the market there was almost nothing left, the few once useful iceboxes were empty and bare, rusting away and soon to become nothing. Behind the counter, through a secret door in the floor, down three floors, and through a pair of swinging doors was a science lab. Beakers and test tubes made sure that anyone could still tell it was that.

Everything was coated in a fine layer of dust, as if there was not enough to say that this place was in fact old. The room was completely dark, not so much as a single sliver of light was able to penetrate the bowels of the hidden room. There were the remains of a few old computers on a few desks to the left of the doors, some beakers and tubes set up on the other side of the room, and all the way to the back was a moderately sized figure hidden under a thick veil. Waiting for whoever it would be that would find this hidden world.

The pudgy little face on Doctor 0's monitor smiled in a surprisingly sinister way for such a meek little face as they finally reached their destination. To most people it looked like just another long-abandoned gas-station, left high and dry in the middle of the desert. years of wind had peeled the paint away on the paint, and just to complete the image the wrecks of two old cars stood next to it. One of them was a van, and it was covered in rust, and its windshields, although intact were far too grimey to make out anything within it. The other car was unidentifiable, but had probably been created somewhere in the fifties, accounting by the sad remains of "tailfins". It was reduced to a cracked, broken shell of a car, completely covered in flakey, crusty rust, not even a trace of the once-magnificent paint-job was present.

He had been driving his own van for quite some time in order to reach this place, and he had brough with him ten of his Atomic Zombie-men to help him scavange the place for whatever secrets it held, and to defend him from any defenses that may possibly still be operational. Apparantly this place had once been a working-station for Doctor Cosmos, better known to mortal men as "Ignatus Clement", a very successfull captain of industry, famed for both his vast intellect and his buisness-strategy. But what most men did not know was just how smart this Mr. Clement actually was. The files on him he had managed to steal from the Gun Prison had been very tthick indeed, however, Doctor 0 was rather dissapointed to learn, that even though Dr.Cosmos had actually managed to put quite a footprint in on the world, there was precious little information about him. No information about how old he was, where he had been born, etcetera. The only noteworthy pieces of information on him that the Gun-people seemed to have on him was that they knew that Doctor Cosmos and Ignatus Clement was actually one and the same, and that he was without a doubt one of the smartest men in the world, probably THE smartest man in the world.

One of his possible former hideouts had been listed in the general area, and thus, Doctor 0 had infiltrated all manner of governments and secret organization and hijacked their satelites to scan the place. And there it was, a faint hint of. . . nothing. . . around this place. A suspicious nothing. All the various satelites indicated that there was at least some tint of radioactivity in the ground, not nearly enough to cause damage to anyone, but just enough to be detectable. Yet, around this gas-station not a single hint of anything. It was a bit too pristine to be for real. He assumed that the good doctor had used some sort of cloaking-device to keep this place safe from detection.

The doctor and his squad of Atomic Zombie-men got out, no doubt looking like a bunch of bit-actors in some funky old-timey science-fiction movie. The gray jumpsuits, black boots, gloves and helmet made sure that no bit of the flakey, dried-out, chemically preserved skin of the robo-zombies where exposed, to avoid causing panic in any and all by-standers, although the good doctors instruments had failed to localize anyone within two a two-mile radius, so he was fairly sure they would be allowed to work undisturbed for quite some time.

The atomic Zombie-men walked into the gas-station uncermoniously and started to open drawers and lockers, looking through every nook and cranny for anything that looked scientific enough to merit further investiagaion. Doctor 0 was sort of dissapointed to see that the inside of this gas-station looked just as rundown and abandoned as the outside in a manner so convincing he actually caught himself doubting his reasoning when he went here. But still, If this Doctor Cosmos were as brilliant as they said, he was surely able to disguise his base in a credible manner. It had to be here, it was just a question of time untill they found something, and as far as he knew, he had nothing urgent to take care off within the comming two or three weeks.

The Atomic-Zombies made their way into the gas station. The beings lumbered a little more heavily than most humans but for the most part they could easily pass for human at the worst of times, especially with their outfits. Clearly, someone had spent some time making sure that their clothes would get them past a common person’s superficial glance. The ‘men’ were busy looking everywhere imaginable, and a couple much less imaginable, turning the one broken vending machine, which had not been knocked down yet, over. One of them was searching through some trash that gave plausibility to the theory that wanderers had used this place as refuge in the past, some rocks from outside stacked in a circle and ashes within it were probably the most interesting thing in plain view in the store. Then one of the Atomic-Zombies which had wondered behind the counter accidently pushed a button just under where the register once sat.

Lights began to stream up from what appeared to be cracks in the floor and quickly the lights formed the glowing silhouette of a man. “Good evening, sports.” He said in a very energetic way was he motioned to the empty spot where the register used to be, “Can I ring anything up for you?” His accent was something from a bygone era and his smile seemed disturbingly bright, almost as though it were not quite human. The image appeared to look from one end of the store to the other, “Looks like we got quite a few of you sports here today. We don’t usually get so many people this far out.” As he spoke it became more and more obvious that he was not looking directly at anyone, as if it were more guessing at what he should say. “Just in case you boys missed it we’re selling gas for two quarters by the gallon. I know that’s step bu—“ His words were suddenly cutoff by the crash of an icebox hitting the floor. One of the inhumans had been looking under.

“It looks like you hoodlums want to get rough,” The image blinked with every other word, his processors changing route for the change in atmosphere at his attempt to understand whether or not people were trying to trash the store. “Two can play that game,” Its accent was strange and robotic, again pointing to its nonhuman status. The hologram turned off as two small turrets emerged from hidden panels on either side of the door that the goons and their boss had come through. It locked onto its targets, using the cameras to pick who to shoot first. The guns picked the one that had lifted the icebox and the other that was closest to the counter. They waited a moment and before they would open fire, giving everyone present a chance to evacuate.

The face on Doctor 0s monitors eyes widened in an expression of surprise and excitement as the strange man seemed to manifest behind the counter, seemingly appearing out of the air like a ghost or some sort of ludacris teleporter. A normal man would probably be fooled by such a sudden apparation, but Doctor 0 quickly understood that it was a hologram, although a finely crafted one. Truly a masterpiece of engineering, programming as well as creativity indeed. Doctor 0's senses for information-absorbation suddenly started 'sucking' knowledge out of somewhere . Right now it was nothing but snippets of code, but the longer he waited, the more clearly it would become. Apparantly, this holographic projection was backed by advanced personality-programs that were just interactive enough to make small-talk and fool a prospective 'customer' or robber, however it was obvious that the program was lacking a true AI, so tryint to reason with it would probably be pointless. Doctor 0 was just starting to deduce what sort of parametres the programmed shopkeep had to its actions, when it seemed that the defensive routines of the program kicked in, due to the store being disturbed. Doctor 0 quickly surrouned himself with a forcefield, although, unknown to the good doctor the program had no intention of killing him off just yet. . .

Two turrents popped out from two well-hidden panels behind the door, seeming far too advanced and shiny to fit in with the rest of the rather shabby enviroments. Energy-weapons, probably to prevent amunition from running out. He imagined a universal supergenius like Doctor Cosmos would utilize some sort of highly advanced methods energy-store for the entire facility that would be able to sustain operation for decades, maybe even centuries. although, whilst he was busy investigating these fancy-looking turrets, they quickly locked on targets and fired upon two of his atomic robotic zombie-men, literally blasting them into pieces. He would lie if he said he was not impressed at some level. After all, his robotic zombiemen might be simplistic and cheap in their design, but their enhanced physical attributes were far beyond anything a human might achieve, yet they where blasted apart like wet paper in a blender.

Doctor 0 quickly focused upon them with his telekinetic abilities, ripping them out of the wall. He quickly did a search in the data he had absorbed from the hidden computer maintaining security in the room, looking through the information for additional threats, quickly finding another turret that had yet to be deployed behind a crumbling magazine-rack. He did not waste a second before telekinetically reaching out, and disabling the turret before it had time to deploy, thus causing the room to be somewhat safe.

He then hovered towards the hologram, wich had suspiciously reappeared during the battle and had seemingly gone into some kind of standby-loop. He had aquisitioned all of the data from its computer by now, and in the data he had found a particurlar phrase that would enable him to turn off the defenses and access whatever was hidden here. "Do you say alcohol-free beer?" he asked in a sing-song voice, causing the hologram to smile and deactivate. He could barely contain his excitement! Soon the marvels sprung from the mind of the worlds oldest and certainly most brilliant super-genius would be revealed to him!

The hologram had hit a slight snag after the apparent destruction of the two plasma blasters and the preemptive destruction of the third did not help matters. Two of the men, those that had been targeted, had been quickly reduced to paint on the walls but that had not been nearly enough. The brain in the jar floated over the hologram, by no means quickly but fast enough for the matter at hand, and said a nonsensical phrase that to any regular person but here it made perfect sense. The hologram broke from its loop and looked directly at the brain, though not quite in the right spot, and replied, “Why yes, we sell that in the back, Sport.” The hologram gave a quick gesture over his shoulder with his thumb before he finally turned off.

The floor began to rumble as it split like the red sea, revealing a fairly long set of stairs leading into the bowels of the secret labs. At the foot of the stairs stood the same hologram as before, “Took you long enough, Sport.” On either side of the hologram were long rows of doors. The doors to the left of the stairs, as well as the right of the hologram, led to a series of almost dorm style bedrooms. The rooms were cramped, holding as many as four beds in each and little room for anything else. On the right of the stairs, and the left of the hologram, were what seemed to be office rooms, with everyone having a desk, a typewriter, a phone, and what looked like a large arcade machine, and the last looking like a midsized cafeteria.

While the large contraptions looked like large arcade machines they were anything but that. The objects were very strange and early computers designed by Clement himself. The ‘computers’ were able to send messages from one to the other by means of coded radio waves, large antenna being the dead giveaway. While the behemoths were large and clunky they worked better than a postage system and reduced the number of people walking around with classified information. They were made for ease of use by anyone that knew how to type on a keyboard; keyboard located in the middle of the device, an analog stick to scroll through messages, and several buttons to switch between screens, one for archives and one for drafts. The screen when turned on would display messages in white lettering to contrast the black of the rest of the screen. The only still working machine is in the third office.

“Anything I can do for you, Sport?” The hologram asked with the same odd and sinister smile. Though the intruders had managed to use the passcode to open the door leading to the labs there were traps lying in wait for them. Every floor with a passcode of its own, beneath the nonexistent feet of the projection was the only trap on the whole of the current floor. The trap was a five foot drop to a group of sharp and pointy spears and once someone tripped the pressure plate at the bottom two flamethrowers would be activated. Crude but it got the job done.

The face on doctor 0's main vidscreen smiled widely and somewhat wickedly as the Hologram answered him with a smile on its own, pointing behind him, whilst telling him they sold non-alcoholic beer in the back of the store. Doctor 0 had actually hoped that the hologram would deactivate, since he founds its pre-recorded gaze somewhat unnerving. The way it looked towards him, but not quite at him was quite frustrating. He had no idea why he felt that way though, he understood that it would be nigh-impossible to record a hologram that could provide a socially acceptable eye-contact for any and all commers, but the annoying feeling lingered in the back of his brain. He suspected it was yet another memory. A part of the "Ghost" that haunted the brain he had 'inherited' when he was created. There were no proper memories, just hints of recognition, certain, unexpected likes and dislikes and some vauge recollections. Not nearly concise enough to actually be memories,, but memories of memories.

Nevertheless, he quickly shoved the "memories" into a temporary cache to isolate it from his usual protocolls and routines, so that it would not interfere with his behavioural programs, as the floor split open in quite the dramatic fashion to reveal a staircase leading down to the unknown. The eyes on the good doctors vid-screen widened slightly at the scene. Whilst he had indeed had quite a few expectation when it came to this whole enterprise, he had not expected an ancient, half-forgotten abandoned former lab to be quite as advanced, judging from the fact that there had been little to no activity here in almost five decades. Especially not from the creator of this locale.

Doctor 0 hovered down the stairs in a manner similar to a giant goldfishbowl that had somehow managed to master the difficult discipline of flight somehow. The smile on his vid-screen grew even wider and greedier. It looked similar to a college dorm for some reason, judging from the appearance of the walls and the general decay of the place it had been active sometimes during the early days of the cold war, or perhaps even as far back as world war two. The big one.

"Marvelous. Qui-et Sciencearrific indeed!" Doctor 0 said enthusiastically, if a tad off-key as he telepathically 'felt' the walls for traps similar to the one he had faced upstaits. He found little of the sort, but he did find something quite interesting. An ancient computer. No, the word computer was not really appropriate for these arcade-machine looking devices. They where to computers what homo erectus had been to humanity. A progenitor that had gone out of style. A hypothetical ancestor that represented the mysterious missing link between the modern computer and the adding machines of the olden days.

"Oh, Doctor Ignatius Clement! If you only knew. . . ha ha ha. . ." The doctor laughed in a slightly maniacal, sinister manner. He quickly decided that this little fit of madness was not nearly enough to celebrate the magnitude of his discovery here. He quickly hovered over to the hypothetical computer and activated the machine, ready to absorb any and all information that remained on its primitive hard-drive with his psychosomatic abilities. "Activating subroutine onehundred and sixtyfour point two four five eight: Mad scientist gloat grade 3. " he said in a rather calm, computerlike voice

"Oh, Doctor Ignatius clement Soon all your obsolete science will be MINE! MWUA HA HA HA! " He cackled maniacly as the download was completed. As he headed back out into the lobby he had called for all of his minions and took great care to instruct them to avoid the particurlar tile that had been containing the dealdly death-trap.

"Probohibition could have worked" Doctor 0 said to the hologram as soon at is reappeared once more, already having managed to absorb the password from the ancient device in the adjoining room.

The robotic doctor glided right past the second hologram without so much as giving him an offhand look and the floor trap was not set off because of the aforementioned floating. The Atomic Zombiemen stayed put at the foot of the stairs as if they had been instructed to not take another step forward due to the pit that lay not three feet in front of them. “Aren’t you boys hungry? The cafeteria is right down the hall, Sport,” The hologram tried to goad them in some way into the trap but it did not work. Once the good doctor returned and said the pass phrase the hologram suddenly became rigid and said, “Yes sir, Doctor. Proceed at your leisure.”

At the end of the hall the next bulkhead unlocked as well as the bulkhead on the next level. The two levels intended for only the scientist to be on. Both floors were almost identical with rows of test tubes, circular burn marks from blast radius, and what looked to be half done experiments. The whole of these labs looked like the people that had been performing them had just left in the middle of whatever it was they were doing. Even with the appearance of odd experiments something even stranger lay on the third floor, or the second science floor, down and that was the large safe like door that sectioned off the rest of the third floor. That was the top-top secret experiment secrets. The secrets that were kept secret even in a secret underground military base and where robots waited.