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When the transmission from Deep 13 finally came through, the first thing that Mike and the bots saw was Dr. Forrester laying in his bed, fidgeting with an oversized pair of dentures. He wore his typical neon green pajamas, but also had on many white bandages; there was one over the bridge of his nose, another on his right cheek, many over his knuckles and fingers, and some gauze peeking out from the collar of his nightshirt. He seemed rather enthralled in his work, and didn’t respond to his monitor clicking on.
“Uh, Dr. F?” Mike called. He was immediately met with the visage of Pearl as she stepped into view beside the bed, earning an exaggerated gasp of fear from the bots.
“Good evening, Mike and gang,” she began. “We’ve got a little bit of a problem here in Deep 13. Clayton was putting the final touches on this week’s invention exchange and, well, it kinda blew up… Not kinda, actually. It really exploded. Some kind of gigantic automated nutcracker. It didn’t work that well, anyways, so, nothing lost that will be missed. It did take Clayton down with it, but with some of mother’s kisses, some gauze, a plaster splint, and about six spare pints of blood, he’ll be about as good as new in, say, two months?”
“So no more movies?” Tom interjected, earning an uproar from Crow. “No more movies, no more movies!” They sing-songed in unison.
“No, no, the experiment will go on,” Pearl continued, “but I will be running the show until Clayton is back to health. He insisted on bringing his bed in here so he could continue to work on his ‘experiments’ and keep an eye on you knuckleheads, because apparently he doesn’t trust his own mother enough not to mess anything up.”
Dr. Forrester called out from the bed, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, mother, it’s that I don’t want you messing around with my work and compromising the results!”
“So you don’t trust me, then?” Pearl retorted, turning to look back at her son.
Dr. Forrester glared up at her for a moment, then turned his attention to the screen. “Hello, my blue-suited boobie et al,” he said through a feigned smile, raising one hand to wave. “Mother is taking good care of me, and I promise you I will be better in no time.” In his other hand, the mechanical dentures snapped shut on his finger, and he yelped before immediately trying to pry the dentures off.
Pearl sighed and shook her head. “Since Clayton’s original idea for this week’s invention exchange was ruined, I took it upon myself to come up with a new one.” She briefly disappeared from view, then returned with a seemingly normal plate of chocolate chip cookies. “For many mothers across the world, there is a common enemy when it comes to dinner time: stealing food before dinner is served, sneaking a bite during the blessing, or simply eating too quickly. My invention this week is the Zap-Plate. It looks just like a normal plate, except it can be charged with an undetectable electric force field that keeps naughty children from digging in too quickly. Allow me to demonstrate it for you.”
Pearl approached the bed and stood beside Dr. Forrester. “Clayton, would you like a cookie?” She asked, holding the plate before him. He looked up from the dentures, now having been removed from his finger, and inspected the plate before smiling and reaching for one. When his fingers got too close, however, the plate shocked him and he quickly recoiled. He instinctively put his finger in his mouth to ease the pain, which earned a laugh from Pearl. She sat the plate down on his bedside table, then returned to the screen.
Back on the Satellite of Love, Crow and Tom remained positioned on the counter in the bridge while Mike stood before it with his back turned to the screen.
Tom cleared his throat and began to speak. “This week, we looked not at the profession of motherhood, but rather that which deals with electricity.”
Crow continued. “Nowadays, electricians have so few options when it comes to protective gear, and even those options only come in just a few colors! First you have to go about risking your life playing with some dangerous energy, and you don’t even get to do so dressing like you want! So, for the fashionable fitter…”
“The well-dressed wireman…” Tom added.
“The trendy tech…”
“The lineman in the latest wrinkles…”
“Get on with it!” Pearl yelled.
Mike suddenly turned, his hands posed in front of him to display their invention. His jumpsuit sleeves were rolled up to reveal a pair of tight skin-toned rubber gloves that ran the whole length of his forearm with red nail polish painted where the nails would be.
“The Shock Opera Gloves!” He said, alternating his hand poses.
“Yes, this fine pair of gloves will get the job done, all the while letting you express yourself without having to cramp your style. But! A good electrician needs more than a good pair of gloves. To keep oneself fully protected, you also need…”
Mike pulled one leg up to set his foot on the table, revealing the rest of his ensemble. He wore shorts, but a long rubber sock came up just past his knee. Again, it was skin tone and had red nail polish over the toes.
“The Shock Opera Stockings!” He said, running a hand up the length of his shin.
“Ensuring that you can safely protect your feet when, say, doing regular electrical work, or doing electrical work with your feet, or walking through a tank of electric eels, or walking through live wires, or keeping your legs perfectly dry on a rainy afternoon. They come in nudes of varying shades, with or without tattoos, prints, and solids.”
“What do you think, Mrs. Forrester?” Mike asked, pressing a gloved hand to his face like a model.
Back in Deep 13, Pearl was rummaging through her purse, pulling out various items and throwing them behind her.
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” she said offhand, then looked up at the screen. “Listen, since I’m in charge around here, that also puts me in command of the movie you guys are gonna watch, and boy do I have a doozy for you this week. Unlike all the ones you’ve seen so far, made by film corporations with total nitwits who wouldn’t know acting if it bit them in the clapperboard, this one is authentic. It’s actually a movie I made myself, so you’ll really not want to miss it.”
The inhabitants of the Satellite of Love all gagged, retched, cried, and begged for freedom or death (whichever came first would suffice).
“It’s not a dirty film, you little space pervs! Not unless I brought the wrong tape, that is…” Pearl kept looking in her purse until she pulled out a dusty VHS tape, blowing it off and looking it over. “Aha! Here’s that little sucker.”
Dr. Forrester looked up from his dentures and noticed the tape his mother held and the title scribbled into the side in her handwriting. He hadn’t seen it in so long, but how could he ever forget it?
“Mother, that can’t be the film I think it is,” he said, his voice already shaky.
“It sure is, Clayton dear,” Pearl said, looking at her son with a smile. “When you were unconscious and I went to take your lab coat to the cleaners, I stopped by my place to pick up a few more supplies, and decided that I might as well snag this old thing while I was there. Sure glad I did, aren’t you? Maybe this will teach you to be more careful around your lab.”
“Mother, please, don’t show them the film. It’s embarrassing… They don’t need to know…” He sat up in bed, discarding the dentures beside him and bringing his hands up in a pleading position.
“Oh, but they do, Clayton! I’m going to send this movie, and then they’ll learn all about it, just like you need to learn from your own mistakes. And once this movie starts, you know that there’s no stopping it, no pausing, until it’s all over and they’ve seen the whole thing. And you’re gonna sit and watch it, too, because with that busted leg of yours you’re not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Pearl turned back to the screen, working on fitting the tape into its correct slot.
As her back was turned, however, Dr. Forrester flung the blanket off from his lap and began to attempt to stand. Instead of his pajama bottoms, he simply wore a pair of gray boxer shorts to accommodate for the hard cast that ran the whole length of his leg, keeping his leg perfectly straight. When he finally managed to stand, with his leg stuck out behind him, he hobbled and bounced as silently as he could toward his mother.
“Your movie today is a compilation of my own creation, something I’d like to call ‘Growing Up Clayton’. Not as long as your other movies, and there are a few jump cuts and a pretty inconsistent timeline, but what it lacks in length it makes up for in plot. Plus, there’s a pretty good twist towards the end, so keep your eyes peeled...”
As Pearl was beginning to place the film in the slot, Dr. Forrester finally reached her and grabbed her by the shoulder for stability, trying to reach around her to grab the tape.
“Give me that movie!” He cried, flailing his arm around her.
“Is that any way to treat your mother, you ungrateful little --” Pearl began, but the force of her son’s body weight on her one side caused her to twirl, Dr. Forrester in tow. The two of them twisted and fought one another for a moment, each hurling insults at the other, until they both fell onto the control panel, mashing every button on the many keyboards. A few of the lights flashed, a few alarms sounded, and the tape was accepted by the player.
Up on the Satellite of Love, lights flashed and alarms blared, too.
Mike and the bots all looked at one another.
“We’ve got Movie Sign!”
Mike led the bots into the Mystery Science Theater, sat Tom down in his seat, and found his own between Tom and Crow.
“Boy, if this film is about the old doc and he doesn’t want us to see it this badly, maybe it will be a worthwhile watch,” Tom said.
“Yeah, and maybe we can get a week off of movie duty if we promise not to tell anybody about all the juicy secrets we’re about to see,” Crow added.
“Who would we even tell?” Mike questioned.
They waited a moment for the movie to start, heckling a black screen in silence, before a picture actually appeared.
The first shot was in grainy black and white. It showed a hospital room, at first far away but the film slowly panned around the lightly decorated room and centered on the bed; there was an older woman pulled up to its side as another younger woman laid in it, clutching what looked like a bundled blanket to her chest.
“Uh, ‘scuse me, sir, this is a clean room, you can’t bring all that in here,” riffed one.
“Ah! Paparazzi!” riffed another.
The camera approached the bedside and was directed at the women, who both smiled brightly. The woman in bed had messy blonde hair, thick rimmed glasses which currently rode down the bridge of her nose as she looked down into the blankets in her arms. She was a lot younger when this footage was taken, but all three viewers easily recognized this woman as Pearl Forrester.
“Man, Mrs. Forrester really cleaned up back in the day.”
“Yeah, almost makes me wish she’d have mixed up the tapes after all.”
“Can it, you two. That’s Dr. F’s mother you’re talking about.”
“We know!”
Pearl pulled back the front of one of the blankets to reveal its inhabitant: a tiny baby wrapped up in a onesie and a cap, sound asleep in its mother’s arms.
“Pearl Forrester in… Attack of the Killer Babe!”
“Yeah, just wait ‘til that thing grows up, ‘cause once it hits about two or three months it’ll rip your face off if you’re not careful.”
The older woman flagged down the person behind the camera. “Come on, Clayton, give me that. You should hold her.” A man’s voice agreed with her off screen, and the camera was handed off to the old woman. It shook in her hands.
“I think this might have been shot by the same people that did Tremors.”
“Wait, that’s Dr. F? Who’s the baby, then? Oedipus J. Forrester?”
Clayton came into view and pulled another chair up to the bed, then sat next to Pearl. She carefully transferred the swaddled infant over into his arms, then laid back and watched the two together.
Clayton was a tall, skinny man with dark brown hair short enough to look professional but long enough for a few curls to escape the wrath of all the pomade. His eyes were as deep colored as his hair, with dark circles beneath them. There was a pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip.
“Hey, Mike, I know we said that was him, but… this guy doesn’t look all too much like the doc we know.”
“Yeah, Crow’s right. I mean I see it a little, but he looks more like George Orwell than Dr. Forrester.”
“Or Eric Blair.”
“Well, guys, let’s just keep watching and see what happens, I guess.”
“Okay, Mike.”
As quickly as the scene began it ended, cutting with a quick flicker of darkness.
The next video that appeared was of a group of children, running and playing in a backyard.
“Ew, Jamie picked up a worm, run away! Oh, and he’s got cooties! Now the worm’s got cooties, too!”
“‘A perfectly normal neighborhood, full of perfectly normal people and children who are never murdered, kidnapped, sacrificed, or transformed into vicious man-eating creatures from the depths of Hell.’”
The movie cut again to the interior of a house where one of the children sat at a dining room table surrounded by presents and balloons. Pearl sat one one side, Clayton on the other. Before the girl was a small cake lit up with candles — there was one large ‘5’ in the middle with one standard candle on either side.
“Aw, my little baby’s turning 151. I love that age, ‘cause they’re so calm and hardly ever chew up the furniture anymore.”
The girl in the center had brown eyes hidden behind thick pink frames that matched her shirt. Her hair was brown and pulled into two long braids that fell far past her shoulders; on the right side of her bangs was a thin white stripe.
“Somebody keep that kid away from the fire, she might catch like a match!”
The lights dimmed and the partygoers quieted, counted, then began to sing.
“Happy birthday to you…”
“Snappy thirstbake flu brew…”
“Happy birthday to you….”
“Crappy firstquake shoe blue…”
“Happy birthday, dear Deborah…”
“Deborah? Who names a kid Deborah?”
“Yeah, might as well have called her Esther.”
“Or Mary Magdalene..”
“Happy birthday to you!”
“Snappy worthjay snooze grew!”
“Hey, Mike, isn’t Dr. F’s middle name Deborah?”
“Yeah, Crow, it is…”
There was a period of silence from the three, overlayed by cheering and smiling from the movie. The scene changed from the table to a living room, where Deborah now sat on the floor, ripping into her presents. The first one was a model laser gun, which she pew-pewed at the others who laughed at her playfulness. The next gift was a kids chemistry set which she squealed about and wanted to open right then and there but Pearl said no, Debbie had to wait. The next gift was a doll; she threw it aside without care to open the next one, which earned her a slap on the back and brought out a forced apology to ‘Grandmother Opal’.
“Wah hah! I wanted cha-cha heels!”
“Uh, guys, I think I know why Dr. Forrester doesn't want us to see this movie.”
“Why, Mike? Is it because he doesn’t want us to know about his life before he became a scientist? Because if I knew that that life encompassed him and his secret incestuous love affair with his own mother, I wouldn’t have wanted to know either!”
“Well, Crow, you were right in the first half. But what I’m saying is… Well, just put it together. This movie is about Pearl’s kid named Deborah, who’s really into science and has a white streak in their hair. Who else do we know who’s like that?”
“Dr. F, obviously, but he’s not a girl!”
“Maybe not right now. Maybe he used to be a girl, though.”
Deborah’s next present was a new dress; this time she not only threw it down, but got up and stomped on it. Pearl grabbed her by the arm and dragged her out of frame, yelling the whole way.
“What, so he’s trans?”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Oh… I mean, it makes sense. I always get some fruity vibrations off of him.”
“Yeah,” Tom interrupted, “he does seem like he’s missing a little something. And I always wondered why such a curvy figure and a good tush had to go to somebody like him.”
“You know he can hear you right, Tom?” Mike reminded him scoldingly.
“What? It was supposed to be a compliment.”
They continued to watch in silence for a while until Mike spoke up again.
“How about we not riff this movie, you guys. Let’s just sit. Try not to think about it all too much.”
“Alrighty, Mike. It’ll be nice to just turn my brain off for a while and try not to absorb any of this contraband.” Said Tom.
The three of them sat in silence and watched the rest of the movie, watching the various scenes from Dr. Forrester’s life flash upon the screen.
Deborah was wearing an Evilos scout uniform and was playing with a little chemistry set on a carpeted floor, mixing fluids together in a flask. She seemed a little bit older than in the last video, and her hair was cut significantly shorter. “What are you working on, ‘Dr. Forrester’?” Pearl's voice came from behind the camera. “I’m making a bomb, mother” the girl said, her eyes not leaving her work. She crushed up some small tablet, added the powder to the flask, and the substance fizzed until it bubbled out onto the carpet, then immediately ignited the plush floor. Pearl dropped the camera and it landed lens down onto the floor; there were no visuals, but the three viewers could hear Pearl screaming and what sounded like spanking.
Mike and the bots all exchanged glances, more so of contentment and acceptance (as much as a one robot with lacking optimal facial features and one robot without a face at all could express) rather than mockery.
Then, a toddling Deborah was walking toward the camera on her own, but she fell and started crying. Clayton came into view, picked her up, squeezed her tight, and Deborah stopped sobbing.
Next, a middle school concert. The next piece was announced to feature a trombone solo by Deborah Forrester. Mike and the bots did riff a bit as the music started because it was simply terrible.
Skip a few years and it became high school graduation. The principal introduced the valedictorian — “Deborah Susan Forrester” — and the crowd began to cheer as she mounted the stage to give her speech until she tripped, fell, and came back up with a bloody nose and broken glasses. The cheering gave way to laughter from the whole of the graduating class. Regardless, Deborah took her place on the podium and began a speech about how she hated the school, hated everyone in it, and that they should hope that they all die before she has a chance to rule the world and put them in their places. “And you got my name wrong,” she said, “it’s Clayton. Clayton Forrester.” With that, the teen returned to the crowd and sat, blood still dripping. The clip ended quickly after.
Next, a very young Deborah was sleeping in a hospital bed; her arms and torso were exposed, her neck in a brace, and her hands bandaged. There were burns and branching scabs that trailed down from her right cheek, down her shoulders, across her chest, and down her arms. In the right side of her long hair, there was a perfect streak of silvery white.
The graduation hall changed into a Christmas party. Pearl went around and showed off her guests in what looked like a large banquet hall decorated for the season. “Here’s mother… here’s Gerry… oh, there’s Marie, and there’s Samuel and Patricia and their little girl…” She approached the hors d'oeuvre table and snuck up behind someone inspecting the punch bowl, surprising them. “And here’s Debbie,” Pearl said, sighing. The teenager wore a black suit and tie, black earrings, and black framed glasses which barely concealed dark black eyeliner and deep black eye bags. Their hair was buzzed clean off, the streak of white barely visible against a pale scalp. There was a small bottle in their hands, which they tried to conceal behind their back.
“Little punk,” Mike couldn’t help but let out. The bots chuckled, but silenced themselves.
“You look terrible,” Pearl said behind the camera.
“Thank you, mother, I aim to please,” replied the teen with a worried smile.
“No, really. You look terrible. Your suit doesn’t fit right, probably because I told you to wear a dress. Your haircut makes you look like a skinhead. Your makeup makes you look like a punk bitch who stomps on puppies and pushes old ladies down to steal their purses — which is the only thing that does you justice, I guess. You look like a corpse. We could probably throw you in the ground right now and the gravedigger would be none the wiser… Now, go dump this out in the kitchen, bring us some more punch, and don’t go poisoning it this time, Deborah.”
The teenager halted for a moment, looking defeated as sadness crept across her face; before it contorted into anger as the bottle returned to sight, was uncorked, and dropped entirely into the punch bowl. Deborah got a plastic cup, filled it with the tainted punch, and threw it in her mother’s face. Again the camera went dark as it hit the table, having been discarded again, this time backed by gasps and Pearl letting out a string of curses.
Finally, the last scene appeared on screen. It began with Pearl behind the camera, following a late teenaged Deborah and the now extremely old “Grandmother Opal” out through a pair of castle doors onto the front steps; there sat a car, its back seat already filled with books and boxes and clothes. Opal opened the back door for her grandchild, who threw the remaining items from under her arms on top of whatever junk was already in there. Deborah still had their short choppy hair and now wore a loose-fitting college-embroidered hoodie.
Opal smiled and pulled Deborah into a hug, kissed them on the cheek, and whispered in their ear.
“‘A boy’s best friend is his mother’,” Tom riffed in a whisper. The others stifled their laughter.
Opal stepped back and Pearl hustled the camera off into her hands. “Oh, take the film, mom, I want a picture with her. And get those flowers I got you back out, dear, show them off.
“It is not ‘her’, mother,” the teenager groaned and returned to the back seat of the car, retrieved the flowers, and held them in one hand. The bouquet had been crushed by the rest of the luggage, and was wilted and floppy.
Pearl grabbed Deborah by the waist and pulled her into a hug, holding tightly.
“My little daughter,” Pearl said loudly.
“Son,” the teen corrected.
“All grown up.”
“Undoubtedly so.”
“So beautiful.”
“Handsome.”
“Moving away to college, leaving her poor, dear mother here all alone to rot, die, and rot again, and waste away into nothing.”
“I cannot argue with that remark.”
Pearl squeezed Deborah’s arm, earning a cry from the teen.
“Smile, Debbie.”
“That’s not my name.”
“Deborah.”
“That is not my name, mother.”
“Deborah Susan!”
The teen remained quiet, and Pearl sighed and gave the arm another tight squeeze. Her child squeezed back.
“Clayton Deborah Susan Forrester, smile for the damn camera.”
Finally, the teen turned toward the camera and smiled, showing off a metal retainer on their top and bottom teeth.
Pearl had dropped her smile, and was scorning into the camera.
And just like that, the movie ended. The screen went black, and for a moment the only noise in the theater was the whirring of the projector which indicated that the movie was fully over.
“That’s it?” Crow asked, looking at Mike. “That was what, twenty minutes? And there weren’t even any credits!”
Tom chimed in. “Yeah, where was the high-speed chase, the papier-mache monster puppets, the big kiss at the end between the main protagonist and his period-typical soft and insecure female counterpart?”
“Why don’t we talk about this outside of the theater, you guys? See if Pearl needs us?” Mike suggested. The bots agreed, and all three exited and began the trek down the long hallway back to the bridge.
Back in the main room, Mike sat Tom back on the table where he usually sat and Crow leaned against the edge on Mike’s other side.
“I just don’t see what the big hype about this movie was, Mike,” Crow started. “I mean, GPC is trans, and everybody loves GPC! So what if Joel had to pitch her voice synthesizer up a few notches? So, so what if Dr. F had to knock his own down?”
“I actually think it was quite nice,” Tom said. “For how long that he’s kept us up here, watching our every move, cataloging our every thought, it was interesting to learn a little bit more about our captor this time around.”
“That’s a really mature perspective from both of you, but really, I don’t think that this movie was actually meant for us,” Mike responded.
“Huh? What?” The bots asked.
“Well, you remember how Mrs. Forrester said that Dr. F needed to learn a lesson? And how he really didn’t want us to watch this movie? I think that her experiment this week was actually on him, but instead of showing him the movie, he showed it to us. We don’t have a problem with him being trans, but he probably didn’t want us to know about his transition at all, and his mother doesn’t like him being trans in the first place. So, us finding out was his punishment.”
“Oh wow, Mike,” Tom gasped. “So that means that she’s studying him by him studying us while making us watch her watch him? That’s complicated.”
“Yeah. It’s either that or she’s just being a big meanie like usual.”
“Ah, revenge, a dish best served by a cold-hearted bitch,” Crow joked.
Their conversation was interrupted by a flashing red light on the control panel.
“Speak of the devil,” Tom began.
“And she doth show up,” Crow finished.
“Very funny, you two, but listen. I don’t want to hear anybody making any jokes today, alright? Dr. F is probably really upset, and we don’t want to hurt his feelings any further, right?” Mike said as he pushed the button. He earned a chorus of agreements as they connected with Deep 13.
“Hey, Mrs. Forrester, we’re done with your movie.”
Dr. Forrester was seated in his bed with his hands pressed to his face, his glasses having been placed on his nightstand beside the Zap-Plate of cookies. There were a few crumpled tissues in his lap.
Pearl was checking her makeup in a mirror adjacent to the screen, looking off-camera and wiping away some stray lipstick. She was in much more sparkly and revealing attire than her typical day clothes.
“Hm? Oh, hello Nelson. I hope you liked it, because I don’t really care what you thought about it…”
She looked back to her son, who didn’t acknowledge her.
“Anyways, I’m going out for the evening. Celebrating my little victories, you know? You’re in charge, so don’t let the little ones get into too much trouble while I’m gone.”
Pearl grabbed her purse from off-screen and turned to leave, though stopped beside Dr. Forrester’s bed. She looked down at him, but his head remained straightforward.
“Clayton, just in case you get hungry, there are some leftovers in the fridge, and you have about a pint and a half of spare blood in case your stitches rip again. Do you need me to pick you up anything while I’m out? Car batteries? Roadkill? Uranium?… Ice cream?”
A few moments of silence passed before Dr. Forrester, reluctantly, spoke. His voice shook as he did.
“Mint chip.”
Pearl smiled, then quickly leaned down to kiss her son on the forehead before he could protest. She left a deep ruby-red stain on his forehead. He pulled his hands away from his face to snatch up a tissue and rub the mark away; his face was flushed pink and wet.
“See you boys later — and you too, Clayton,” Pearl said, then helped herself out the large door of Deep 13 and let the heavy metal door slam shut behind her. The clattering echoed throughout the cave.
Both Deep 13 and the Satellite of Love remained quiet, each man studying the other in the silence. Mike was nervous, and Dr. Forrester was more embarrassed than anything else.
Eventually the silence was broken as Dr. Forrester brought a tissue to his face to blow his nose, then cleared his throat afterward.
“What?” He began defensively. “Did you like your little movie today, boys? Was that little ‘plot twist’ satisfactory enough for you this week, hm?”
“Listen, Dr. F—” Mike began, but was cut off.
“Clayton. Drop the formalities. I want you to call me Clayton.”
“Okay, uh, Clayton… Look, I’m really sorry we had to watch that movie. We didn’t know it was gonna be so personal. I would’ve turned it off if only, yknow, I could.”
“Oh, of course, Mike baby. You in your heart of hearts would do anything for your little old mad scientist down here…”
“Honest, Clayton, really! Yeah, we were riffin’ on it at first, but we didn’t know what it really was, or who it was really about.”
Crow and Tom stayed silent, simply looking back and forth between each other and Mike and Dr. Forrester — or Clayton, more like it. They tried to express as much sympathy as sentient robots with stiff constructed facial features could.
Clayton sighed and tapped his bandaged fingers against the blanket covering his lap.
“I guess it’s… alright, Mike. There’s no use helping it now, the movie’s already over. At this point in our relationship, if you had for some reason asked, I would have told you. You’re some of the only people who didn’t know. I just would have liked to have this conversation at least before you were subject to a glimpse into my rather troubled childhood.”
“Did Joel know? And Frank? And all them?” Crow piped up, unable to control his curiosity. Mike placed a hand on his metallic shoulder with the intention of interrupting his own interruptions, but instead just listened. Crow seemed genuinely interested, as did Tom as he was intensely watching the screen and waiting for an answer.
“Well, I tried to keep it from everyone at the Institute at first, but you know how scientists like to talk. Luckily they don’t have any issues with us types of folks here. Larry brought it up every now and then, but it was only in jest. And Joel was always one of those sympathetic types, you know. He was still just a janitor here when the news broke, and he didn’t say anything about it. Hell, he even tried to comfort me over it on a few occasions, even though I really didn’t need all of his mushy-gushy cutesy talk. And Frank…”
Clayton looked over to the opposite side of his bed, where a perfectly smooth pillow and blanket draped the mattress. One of his hands migrated up and his knuckles depressed in the center of the pillow, leaving a perfect divot in the center.
“How could he not know? Sure his uptakes were a little leisurely, but it’s a little hard to miss and he wasn’t a total imbecile. And when he found out, he didn’t care. He didn’t care about what I have or what I don’t, or what I used to be. He was the only one who seemed like he only cared about who I am now.”
The lab fell silent, and Tom broke the silence by clearing his throat.
“Pretty heavy glitter bomb you’re dropping on us, there, Clayton,” he remarked, earning Mike’s other hand to poke him a little.
“Oh, sorry, you all. You know how they say that the best way to get through something is to talk it over,” Clayton responded, then brought his hands back to his lap.
“Well, we ought to go, then, to let you do your talking, if you need some space,” Mike suggested.
“No, it’s alright, Mike. Your little buddies seem inquisitive, and it’s within their right. Do you two, uh, have any more questions?”
Clayton was hesitant to offer the bots an interview, but their faces lit up like a holiday tree when he asked. They hopped and cheered and looked at each other and argued over who would go first.
Mike gave Clayton a look of ‘Are you sure you want to go through with this?’
Clayton responded with ‘I’m fine with it, don’t you worry, boobie’.
Crow started the tirade: “So, if Joel knew this whole time, then why didn’t he tell us? He never kept secrets from us!”
“It wasn’t exactly his secret to tell, little man. I wouldn’t have cared if he did or didn’t, either way, but he kept it to himself and that was his decision. But, you know now, so don’t let that juvenile jealousy get out of hand.”
Tom asked next, “So, that Clayton guy, was he, like, your dad?”
“Yes, he was — and I say ‘was’ because that’s all I have to know him by. I never really remembered him. Mother said he ‘hit the road’ when I was six, but for all I know he could’ve hit it face first at 90 miles per hour out of the passenger side of a Transporter.”
Crow continued: “How did you get into Evilos if you weren’t a boy?” Mike cleared his throat, and Crow corrected himself with, “A Boy Scout, that is.”
“I wasn't interested in anything the ‘Girl’ Scouts had to offer. The closest thing that they ever had to evil sciences was a Think Like Mary Kay award for multi-level marketing, and that wouldn’t cut it. So, Mother, in her usual fashion, slept with the scout master, pushed him off a bridge, took his place as the lead, and got me in.”
“Wow, what a lady… Oh! Uh, how do you go to the bathroom? If you don’t have a weenie?” Crow continued.
“How do you go to the bathroom, without a… ‘weenie’?”
“Are you trying to tell me that you, Clayton, are in possession of a functional catch can tank and drainage valve?”
Clayton just shrugged his shoulders and smiled a bit.
“He’s a cyborg!” Tom interrupted, which caused the bots to scream and panic and run around the bridge. This left Mike and Clayton to themselves, man-to-man and screen-to-screen.
Mike couldn’t help but satiate his own curiosity.
“Hey, Clay, I thought your mother said she didn’t have any daughters.”
“Oh, no, she had a daughter. Only one. But, of course, I made sure she didn’t get to keep it,” Clayton responded.
“Ah, well then…” Mike bit his tongue for a moment, but still had a few questions. “And I gotta know: what did your Grandmother say to you? When you left for college?”
“Oh, I don’t remember. Something about having to love your mother, and ho she’ll always be my friend, and a bunch of other conforming pacifisitc bullhunk.”
Mike couldn’t help but smile. He wouldn’t let Tom know he was right, even if he was just making a joke. It might make the bot think he were a god, which happens too many times a week already to run the risk of it happening again.
Mike apologized for his questioning, which earned his apology and apology from Clayton, defending that he was the one who allowed them to ask questions in the first place.
For a while they talked not only about Clayton, but about the concept of gender as a whole. Clayton had to mention that he couldn’t help but notice Mike always had a bit of a “familiar flair” when it came to his costumes in his and the bots’ skits, which was the turning point of the conversation from jovial to psychoanalytic. Clayton was a doctor, after all; he knew how to worm people’s fears and secrets out of them. For Mike, however, it felt good to talk over some of his previously dormant feelings with someone whom he knew would actually understand. It was like therapy with a psychopath, and it was unfortunately some damn good therapy.
Their conversation came to an end, but Mike didn’t exactly want to leave it on a saddened trauma-rooted note. Then, he had an idea.
“Hey, Clay. You think you can get out of bed again?”
“I think I could hobble well enough, why?”
Mike slipped the Shock Opera Gloves down and off of his forearms, then sat them in the depository of the Umbilicus and sent the pair down. The gloves arrived in Deep 13 with a clatter. Clayton pulled himself to the edge of the bed and stood carefully, balancing himself on his unbroken leg and hopping to the receiving chute. He took the gloves, thought for a moment, then smiled. He put on the gloves, returned to his bed, then carefully began to lower his hand toward the Zap-Plate. He felt the electricity connect with his fingers, dancing across the surface of the rubber, but he felt no pain as he grabbed a cookie and removed it from the plate. He brought the cookie to his lips and took a bite, feeling no shock.
“Thank you, Mike,” he said, taking another big bite and having a seat on the edge of his bed. “I suppose you lot aren’t as useless and as crude as I took you for.”
The bots ceased their panic and returned to Mike’s sides at the control panel, out of breath and panting.
“Hey, Mike, how come you… don’t have any… any more gloves?” Tom asked between breaths.
“Don’t worry about it, little guys. How about we just call it a day, huh? Say goodnight to Clayton.”
The bots grumbled in agreement, but Crow interrupted again.
“Oh! Oh, before I forget! I have another question I forgot to ask!”
Clayton grabbed another cookie. “What is it, my little gilded companion?”
“If you’re a man now, why do you still have so many pairs of panties in your underwear drawer?”
Tom couldn’t help but laugh, as did Crow as he was proud of himself, but Mike only scolded them both and mussed Crow’s net. Tom earned himself a flick in the arm, which sent his non-functional hands to bounce about on their springs.
Clayton dropped his smile, crushing the cookie in a fist. He inhaled sharply through his nose, hustled himself to his foot, and bounced across the floor of the lab until he reached his own control panel and brought his hand down onto a mass of the buttons on the keyboard.
The transmission ended with a click.