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School was over for the day, and Atom had nowhere to be. His friends were all swamped with homework, and they couldn’t exactly do it all in their heads like Atom could. They wouldn’t be hanging out for the foreseeable future, or at least until Shibugaki stopped slacking off and started doing his math. Uran was at home, currently unable to leave by herself following an incident involving herself and the local flower garden. She really did like flowers, he knew that, but cutting them herself wasn’t exactly the way to go about it.
Flying over the streets, he saw something interesting on the sidewalk. A woman pushing a small cart, with bouquets of flowers for sale. He touched down next to the cart, startling a few nearby pedestrians.
“Sorry!”
He said, as he rummaged around in one of his pockets for the credit card Dr. Ochanomizu had given him. It had a little money he could use as he wanted, in exchange for doing chores around the Ministry. He didn’t really use it that often, there weren’t very many things he could buy that interested him, but that meant there was more than enough to buy some flowers for Uran. He pulled out the card and looked at what the cart had to offer. He spotted a bouquet of pink, red, and purple carnations. It was Uran’s favorite color, and Atom hoped she would like it.
“Hi ma’am! Can I buy those flowers right there?”
He pointed to the bouquet of carnations with his free hand, the other holding the credit card.
“Of course, young man. Just hand me that card.”
He handed it over, and she scanned it. The transaction cleared, and he took back the card and the bouquet. He smiled, Uran would surely like these flowers.
“Thank you ma’am!”
He said, before he started to walk away. These flowers looked delicate to him, flying would probably break them. He’d have to either walk back home, or call Yuko or Dr. Ochanomizu to drive him back. Yuko would probably say no, he assumed. She wasn’t the type to drop work to go pick someone up when it wasn’t an emergency. But, Dr. Ochanomizu would surely come. So, he tapped a panel on his arm, rigged to set a connection between himself and the Ministry comm systems. With the connection, he could relay messages like a kid with a walkie-talkie.
“Atom! What’s wrong?” He could hear Dr. Ochanomizu’s voice on the other end, complete with a tinge of panic.
“Nothing’s wrong, Doctor, I just need you to pick me up. I have something fragile with me and I can’t fly with it.”
“Oh? Well, in that case, just let me finish signing a few things and I’ll be right there. You’re by the school, right?”
“Yep! I’ll stay here and wait for you.”
With that, Atom ended the call. Now, it was just a matter of waiting ten or so minutes for Dr. Ochanomizu to come, and then he could surprise Uran with the flowers. He stood at the street corner, waiting for his car to come into view. It wouldn’t be long, he knew that.
But, his sensitive hearing caught something. It was loud, it sounded like people chanting. Then, he saw it. It was a large group of people marching down the road, holding signs and banners. Some of the robots working on the street were running away from them, and some of the humans around him glared at the group and returned to their own business.
From here, he could see the signs. It was an anti-robot protest, and he was caught in it. There were people holding signs with his own face on it, crossed out in red paint. A banner held by two people read “Robots will be the downfall of humanity!”
“Hey! It’s that Atom robot!”
One of the protesters pointed at him. He turned around, looking for a way out of the confrontation, but there was nowhere to go. The street turned directly into the protest, and they were coming for him.
“AI robots will destroy humankind! They must be scrapped!” Someone yelled, pointing at him.
“Wait, no! I don’t want to destroy anyone, or anything!” Atom answered, the feeling of panic starting to seep into his deepest circuits.
He turned, and locked eyes with a construction robot. The robot was moving away from the protestors too, but it was slower than Atom. A person holding a sign reading “Robots are taking our jobs!” shoved the construction robot out of his way. The robot fell to the ground, and Astro gasped in shock. He dropped his flowers, which another protestor stepped on. He rushed over to the construction robot, not caring about the flowers or Uran or Dr. Ochanomizu anymore. All he wanted was to get out.
“He’s only programmed to care about his own kind!”
A woman yelled, pointing at him as he tried to reach the construction robot. The hatred of the crowd was filling his ears, and he wished he could just turn off his hearing so he didn’t have to listen to it anymore. He reached the robot, managing to pull it to its feet.
“Thank you.” It replied, before turning and rolling onto the sidewalk to get away from the thickest part of the crowd.
How was he going to get out? The crowd here was too dense, taking off into the air meant he ran the risk of burning someone. These people hated him, but he didn’t hate them. He didn’t want to hurt anyone, even if they would gladly hurt him. Still, he needed to find someplace where he wasn’t at risk. He was durable, but he didn’t want anyone pushing him around regardless.
He spotted an alley, and he wasted no time in weaving through the crowd in order to duck inside. He ran to the end, reasoning that if anyone came in, he’d have enough space to take off. He sat down at one corner and curled up as tightly as he could, in an attempt to hide from anyone who entered the alley after him. He pressed his hands tightly over his ears in the attempt to silence the crowd’s hatred towards himself and all other robots, but it was no use. His auditory receptors were simply too sensitive.
He felt something else, too. His internal circuits were getting unbearably hot. The stress and panic was wreaking havoc on wiring and boards that weren’t meant to withstand it. The point of panic was to make someone leave the situation, or fight. He could do neither, so the feeling could only compound and compound until he fried. He doubted he could lift off with his rockets if he tried.
He could hear sirens, the noise only amplifying the chaos going on. He pressed over his ears even tighter, but he could still hear everything that was going on around him. A voice came through a megaphone, and he recognized it. It was Inspector Tawashi! What was he doing here and not at the police station? The police didn’t usually shut down protests, even ones as awful as this.
“That’s it, you all need to disperse! Protesting is one thing, tampering with city property is another! This protest is disbanded!” Inspector Tawashi yelled.
Atom couldn’t believe it. Tawashi was taking his side? Well, no, that wasn’t right. They had gotten out of hand, that was all. Still, he could hear the crowd dispersing. The sounds of hate were getting quieter. He stayed in the alley, not wanting to get up from his position. It was the only thing bringing him any semblance of comfort at the moment. If he got up, he would surely fall apart.
He heard someone entering the alley, and he shrank back as far as he could against the wall. It was Tawashi, and he had definitely noticed him.
“Atom? What are you doing here?”
Atom found that he couldn’t respond at the moment. He couldn’t get the words out, he wanted to scream for Uran or Yuko or Dr. Ochanomizu, but he couldn’t. At least Tawashi didn’t get any closer. Instead, he ran out of the alley.
“Doctor, he’s in there!”
He heard Tawashi saying to someone. Who was it? Atom could barely think at the moment. He could barely move, even if he wanted to. It was as if he was frozen, even though a basic self-scan showed nothing was wrong besides the overheating, which was starting to dissipate. He heard another person running into the alley, and he closed his eyes. Tawashi wasn’t a big fan of him, but he wouldn’t send someone in to hurt him, would he?
“Atom! Atom, are you okay?”
It was Dr. Ochanomizu! A wave of relief settled over Atom. Dr. Ochanomizu was perhaps the best person who could have found him, he knew that. He could certainly fix whatever had gone wrong with Atom. The older man picked him up, and Atom found he didn’t have the strength to resist. He saw Tawashi nodding at the two of them before the Inspector got into his car and drove off. The street was nearly empty, except for the crushed flowers in the road. Dr. Ochanomizu gently placed him in the passenger’s seat of the car, buckled his seatbelt, and climbed in himself from the other side.
They took off into the air, and Atom could do nothing but lean back into his seat. He felt very tired, the overwhelming burst of emotions had sapped his energy and left him drained. He would need to charge overnight, that was for certain. Soon enough, they were back home. He felt better now, away from all the noise and the hateful people, but he still felt tired and worn out.
Dr. Ochanomizu carried Atom out of the car and into the house, placing him onto his bed in his room. This was the one of the few times he had gotten so close to an empty battery, which took much more effort to recharge than a near-empty one. He opened a panel on Atom’s arm, plugging a charging cable into an open port. Atom knew that just his own systems wouldn’t be able to bring himself up to full power by tomorrow morning. Hence, the external charging cable. But, he felt a little better, like he could finally speak now.
“Wha.. what happened? Did something break?” Atom asked, concerned that he had missed something in his self-scans that had caused him to overheat and almost shut down.
“No, Atom, I suspect it’s something different. Just like how humans can become overwhelmed and be sent into a panic attack, your emotion receptors allow for the same thing. It’s a by-product of being able to feel at all. That's the trade-off for having emotions, sometimes you can feel too much.” Dr. Ochanomizu replied, pulling the covers over Atom and placing a hand on his shoulder.
“I.. I overheated. Because of everything they said, it was all too loud. It hurt.”
“I think you should stay home tomorrow, Atom. Rest up tonight, and tomorrow I think I’ll have some upgrades for you.” He replied.
Even with the charging cable, Atom still felt tired. It wasn’t long at all before he fell asleep
Usually, when Atom slept, he didn’t dream. If he did, it was usually a hazy, unfocused mess of previous events, and it was usually over in a matter of seconds before returning to peaceful darkness. Tonight was different. He opened his eyes into a dream, this one in crystal focus.
It was the same street he had been on earlier. The protest was even louder than it had been before, an earsplitting roar that he couldn’t get out of his head. He frantically looked around, but there were no alleys to run into. Then, he heard a piercing scream above the other noise.
He whipped around to see where it was coming from. It was Uran, who was being pushed and kicked by a circle of men and women holding signs and posters, screaming at her and calling her names.
“Go back to the scrapyard where you belong!”
One woman yelled at Uran. No matter how hard Atom tried to shove past, he couldn’t get through to Uran. He couldn’t use his rockets, or any of his weapons. He felt a sharp pain at his back, and fell to the pavement. A protestor had kicked him, and he didn’t have the strength to fight back.
“You robots should never have had feelings in the first place!”
The man yelled at him. There were children laughing at him, adults yelling obscenities at him, until all he could hear was static.
He woke up with a sceam, taking in a few gasps of air in the attempt to get more circulation to cool his overheating circuits. He hadn’t ever had anything like that before, and it scared him. What was going on with him? He tried to move, but his arm was being held back by something. He saw the charging cable hooked into him, and he pulled it out. He just needed to go somewhere, anywhere. He needed to get all of the thoughts out of his head. Trying to be as quiet as possible, he got out of bed, hoping to get out into the main room. He just wanted to be anywhere but in his bedroom. He hoped he hadn’t woken anybody up.
He opened the door, and spotted Dr. Ochanomizu.
“Atom? Are you alright?”
“Doctor, I don’t know what’s happening! I had a dream about yesterday, I could see them hurting Uran!”
He could feel himself starting to panic again. What if he was really broken? Or worse, what if it was a sign that someone would truly hurt him and Uran?
Before he could think about anything else, he felt Dr. Ochanomizu wrap his arms around him in a hug. The feeling of someone else being there was enough to calm him down a little. The older man guided them both to the couch, and Atom sat as close to him as he could. He didn’t think he could handle being alone at the moment. He felt so strange, he wasn’t supposed to dream like that, he thought.
“I knew this would happen sooner or later. Atom, your dreams are simply your brain attempting to process yesterday’s memories. The more intense the emotion, the more vivid the dream. I should have told you earlier so you could have expected it. I’m sorry, Atom.”
“I’m sorry for waking you up, Dr. Ochanomizu. I probably scared you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Atom. You can always wake me up if you need me.. and this definitely counts as a time when you needed me.”
Atom nodded. It made sense to him that sleep was the ideal time to process memories and decide what would be kept. It made sense that time would result in dreams. He just wished he didn’t have to keep what happened yesterday. It was so horrible, Atom didn’t want to remember it.
The two of them sat together for a long while. However, Atom could feel himself drifting back into sleep, his battery still at a low percentage. Somehow, he didn’t feel scared about it. Having someone next to him was about the best guardian against nightmares that he could have.