Chapter Text
On a cold night in August, the storm outside raged.
Astronomically, it was summer in the northern hemisphere of Copper-9, but it’s not like it was ever warm enough to matter. Not since the core collapse. With a third of its mass lost to the Solver, the planet couldn’t hold onto as much of an atmosphere. And without a third of the atmosphere and its greenhouse gases, the temperature plummeted planet-wide.
On that cold night in August, a woman sat in a chair in the living room of her apartment, reading the same line of her book over and over.
Midnight approached, and the warm haze of sleep threatened to envelop her right then and there. Yeva knew, of course, that it would be wise to go to bed sooner rather than later. She was trying to read, yes, but she wasn’t exactly paying attention to what was on the page. Her husband, Adam, had been encouraging her as of late to get some more sleep. Like a hypocrite. He didn’t sleep much either, and he didn’t even have an excuse like she did.
Thinking of this, a soft smile came to her face. ‘It’s nice to know he cares about me, though.’ She went back to trying to read.
A small voice came from somewhere nearby. “Mamachka...?”
Yeva looked up from her book. Doll stood in the mouth of the hallway, shoulders hunched, small and sad. She was clutching her little teddy bear like a lifeline, and her hair, which Yeva had neatly braided just hours ago, was tousled as if she’d been tossing and turning.
“[Doll? Is something wrong?]”
She nodded silently.
“[Come here. Did you have a bad dream?]”
“[...Yes.]”
Doll’s footsteps were slow and unsure in the dark. She was only four years old; she wasn’t quite used to her intermediary body yet. Yeva got up from the chair to meet her little girl halfway. She took a seat on the floor, and Doll crawled into her lap, resting her head on her mom’s shoulder. Yeva wrapped her arms around her daughter, putting a gentle, comforting hand on her head. “[Do you want to talk about it?]”
“[No.]”
This was the fifth time in three weeks that Doll had complained of a nightmare, and she never wanted to talk about them. The book on parenting that Yeva had read said that children have nightmares more frequently than adults. (It was about human children, but there weren’t exactly any books on robot children yet.) It didn’t say how often “normal” would be, though. And even if it did, if Doll never wanted to tell her what they were about, Yeva had no idea if this was an unrelated issue, or if her daughter had inherited her own proclivity for nightmares.
The nightmares that she’d been avoiding when Doll left her room.
She didn’t know what childrens’ nightmares were like. She and Adam had never been children, not in the same way as Doll. But she couldn’t imagine they’d be like her own. Hers were echoes of the Solver, full of teeth and blood and bone and meat. They were the last traces of it in her code...she hoped. After the Crucifix Patch was fully installed, it seemed to go dormant. Her thermoregulation normalized, her cravings for oil subsided, and try as she might, she could no longer lift things with her mind.
She didn’t dare tempt fate, though. She was careful to keep out of the sunlight, careful not to do anything too strenuous as to avoid overheating, careful not to smile too wide so nobody would see her teeth, careful to never look in the mirror for too long. Careful, careful, careful, careful. Walk on eggshells until the nightmares stop, Yeva, lest you wake the beast.
(…Nori probably had it a lot worse, though. She’d never been quite the same since the exorcism. Poor thing.)
The front door opened, and Adam walked in, returning from one of the late-night walks he was so fond of. He stopped short when he reached the living room. “Did something happen?”
“[Doll had a nightmare.]”
“Another one?” Yeva nodded as Adam sat down next to the two of them. Voice hushed, he turned to Doll and asked, “Don’t want to talk about it, do you, rybka? ” She shook her head. Her eyes were hollow and downcast, and she was fidgeting with the end of her nightgown.
That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all.
“Hey. See this picture I took today?” Adam pulled an instant-print photograph out of his pocket and showed it to Doll. It was of one of his coworkers in the WDF posing with one of the cool guns that they had but never used. “It kind of reminds me of something funny. Do you want to hear it?” She looked up at him and nodded. Perfect. “Well!
“I used to be a helper for this rich human family, yeah? The parents were always busy, so sometimes I had to watch their kids. They had two boys and a girl.” (Yeva smirked and rolled her eyes at this. He was fibbing; he’d been a miner, as had most of the Worker Drones on Copper-9. But Doll didn’t need to know that yet.) “And one day, the boys were playing superheroes. One was a bringer of justice, a paragon of morality: Ultraman! And the other was the cold wind on the back of your neck, the darkness of the night: The Shroud!”
“[Those are big words for a four-year-old. Do you know what he means, Doll?]”
“[Ultraman was the good guy and Shroud was the bad guy, right?]”
“See? She gets it.”
“[Okay, okay.]”
“Anyway, the two of them were locked in combat, a battle to the death! They both unholstered their blasters, and Ultraman yelled, ‘Ha! Fool that you are: that’s not a blaster! That’s a CHICKEN!’”
“[What’s a chicken?]” Doll sat up straighter and cocked her head.
“Oh, that’s right, you wouldn’t know, huh? Well, a chicken is a type of bird. They don’t fly very well, and they’re about, uh, this big.” He held his hands about a foot and a half apart. “And they make a noise like this...” Adam cleared his throat, took a deep breath, threw his head back, and yelled “ BAGAWK! ”
Doll burst into a fit of giggles at this, and Yeva couldn’t help but chuckle, too.
“Anyway, the villain-boy got really mad, because he didn’t want his blaster to be a chicken . Chickens are funny! They have stupid little faces, and they walk like this!” Adam stood up and assumed a ridiculous stance: head forward and butt out, hands on his hips to mimic wings, knees bent and feet wide apart. He took a few steps forward, clucking and looking around dumbly, and Doll fell apart laughing again.
“[Papulya, you look silly!]” Doll squeaked out through her mirth.
“Well, yeah, chickens are silly!” He reasserted a normal standing position to continue his story. “And the villain-boy wasn’t having it. He wasn’t funny! He was The Shroud, and he was terrifying! He commanded respect! ‘TREMBLE BEFORE ME!’ he roared, but his insufferable hero of a brother just kept laughing and pointing, chanting ‘Chicken boy, chicken boy!’”
“Chicken boy, chicken boy!” Doll tried to point and mimic her dad’s pronunciation of the words in English, but slumped backward into Yeva’s chest, incapacitated by laughter.
“Yeah, like that, exactly! But then! Their older sister kicked the door open! ‘I am Professor Wildcard!’ she announced. In her hands was a blaster of her own, and taped to it was a rubber toy chicken! ‘Behold, the CHICKEN BLASTER!’ And then she laughed, like this!” Adam struck a dramatic pose and cackled wickedly toward the heavens, as though he were trying to ensure the gods could hear him.
Yeva looked down at their little girl, smiling ear-to-ear and staring wide-eyed at her dad as he laughed maniacally, and a warmth bloomed in her chest. She could almost forget why they were all up so late in the first place.
“The boys agreed: Professor Wildcard and her chicken blaster had to be stopped! They’d never seen anything like this before; who knows what she could be capable of! So they fought! And what a glorious battle it was indeed! But she was just too powerful! She had them on the ropes, they were just barely hanging on!” He lifted a hand to his forehead dramatically. “BUT THEN!”
Adam looked Doll dead in the eye.
There was a beat of silence.
“[Then what? What happened next, Papulya?]” Doll’s eyes shone as she looked up at her dad, and she clutched her teddy bear tightly to her chest in suspense.
“Well, uh...” Adam shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Their parents called them down for dinner, so they all dropped their blasters and left.”
“[Whaaat?]” Doll deflated and crossed her arms, making a pouty face up at him. “[That can’t be it!]”
“Ah, I’m just teasing, you got me. Can’t get anything past you, Doll, can I? You’re so smart already!” He knelt down and pinched her cheek, squeezing a giggle out of her. “Anyway!
“Professor Wildcard had them cornered! It looked like it was curtains for Ultraman and The Shroud both! But while she was busy monologuing, Ultraman took the opportunity to throw his empty blaster right at her face!﹘” He mimed throwing something as hard as he could. “﹘distracting her long enough for The Shroud to pull out his secret weapon: the CHICKEN POWERED NUCLEAR BOMB!”
“[Why would Shroud have a chicken bomb? He didn’t want a chicken blaster.]”
“Well, holding a chicken instead of a blaster is just silly. A nuclear bomb powered by chickens isn’t silly at all. It's a nuclear bomb.”
“[(Does she know what that is?)]” Yeva asked sotto-voce. He shrugged.
“(I think she probably knows what a normal bomb is?)” he stage-whispered back. “Anyway. The CHICKEN POWERED NUCLEAR BOMB exploded in her face, she didn’t stand a chance against it!” He crouched down low and quickly sprung back up again, throwing his arms out to mimic an explosion﹘ “KABOOM!” ﹘before falling to the floor. “But as she lay dying on the ground, she croaked out: ‘I’ll be back...’” He went limp with a bleh , tongue hanging comically out of his mouth. “And then their parents called them down for dinner.”
Yeva and Doll both clapped as Adam rose and took a bow. “[Bravo, dear. Lovely performance.]”
“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all week.”
“[Did all that actually happen, Papulya?]”
“Of course it did! I actually have a picture of the chicken blaster. But, um, I left it, uh...on my desk at work.”
“[Oh.]” Doll yawned and rubbed at her eyes a bit. “[Okay.]”
“[Awh, are you ready to go back to bed now, sweetheart?]” Yeva gently ran her fingers through her little girl’s hair.
“[Mmh...yeah.]”
“Alright﹘hup!” Adam scooped Doll up to carry her to her room, kissing her cheek before dropping her onto her bed. She smiled and closed her eyes as Yeva tucked her in.
“Я вас люблю,” She whispered, snuggling into the blankets. (“I love you.”)
“Мы тебя тоже любим.” (“We love you, too.”) Yeva tenderly pressed a kiss to Doll’s forehead.
“Сладких снов, Долл.” (“Sweet dreams, Doll.”)