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2 FEBRUARY 2009 – BLÜDHAVEN, NEW JERSEY
Magnus felt relieved to see the plain walls and straight-line simplicity of the room in which he found himself. The respite that sleep gave to him these days felt unsettling at times, tinged slightly in pastel colours and cleansed of anything that resembled a sharp edge. Even my dreams are trying to stop me from hurting myself.
He eased himself up from the bed, noting with satisfaction that he wasn’t in any pain from the movement. That usually meant that he was manifesting here more in his self-image – forty or so, when he was at his professional peak – and not his actual eighty years. The liver spots on his hand were gone, as well. That probably boded well for a peaceful and pleasant break with reality. He felt that he was due that much; whatever they were dosing him with to hold the nightmares at bay wasn’t his usual prescription and it didn’t always work that well.
Carefully, he dressed himself. He’d rarely been one for the customary white lab coat; instead, he wore just shirt and pants, and his old faithful plaid jacket, the one that Tina claimed was so broken-in that it could practically walk by itself. A hand felt in the pocket for a moment, before he realised that the pipe that he’d favoured when he’d really looked like this wouldn’t be there. He’d never been sure why that was; it wasn’t as if smoking in his dream would cause him any actual harm.
The faint hum of machinery was an ever-present in the background, and the lights in the hallway were dim. There had been times when he’d been so driven by work, by inspiration – or by necessity – that he tended to forget or ignore the usual cycles of sleep and wakefulness; at some point, he’d programmed the electrical system to simulate the usual 24-hour pattern as a visual reminder. The team had gone along with it. As robots, they had no need for sleep, of course, but the part of their programming that saw itself as human found it a comfort, or so Gold had said. Magnus didn’t think that he was that good as a cyberneticist to give the responsometers the ability to craft lies.
He headed off down the hallway to find his laboratory and workspace. There would be something that needed to be done. There had been times when he’d awakened to something like this when he had walked in on chaos – when his Metal Men had been chewed up and mangled into scrap by something or other – and he’d just had to dive into pulling the pieces together. That was probably an analogy for something in his own self that had to be fixed. Psychology wasn’t his field, of course, but he’d had to study the literature to try to understand his condition better.
Nothing like that tonight, though. But as he stepped into the laboratory, there was a visitor whom he didn’t recognise. Nobody whom he’d seen while he was awake. She put down the book which she was reading. “Doctor Magnus! Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”
She was young – early to mid-twenties, maybe? Dressed all in black, cargo pants and a spaghetti-strap top, which contrasted with skin so pale, almost ivory-white, that he’d almost taken her to be a robot herself.
Magnus felt nonplussed. It was said, often enough, that dreams don’t have to make sense, but in these last few hard years his dreams had often been the only parts of his life that did make sense. “Do I know you?” he asked – before adding, more hesitantly, “Should I know you?”
The girl smiled. “Well, we’ve never actually met before, but I think you’ll know me, at least a little.” She pointed to the book – old-school leather binding and the words William Maxwell Magnus picked out in gold on the spine. He could hear what sounded like faint scratching noises coming from it. “I’ve just been reading about you. It’s been quite fascinating.”
“Where did you get that?”
“A friend of mine let me borrow it. AS LONG AS YOU BRING IT BACK WHEN YOU’RE DONE, he said.”
She opened the book to a spot which she’d left a marker. A colour plate, with the slightly grainy appearance of old photographs. A young Will Magnus, surrounded by the Metal Men whom he’d created – and with whom he was now inextricably linked. Gold, with that hefty arm over his shoulder, and Platinum snuggling up to him on the other side. Tin squatted down in front of them; Mercury, Iron and Lead at the flanks, with Mercury being a smart-aleck and extending an arm behind them all to make a “rabbit-ears” sign behind Iron’s head.
“A proud father surrounded by his children. You look very happy here, Doctor.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“Found families can be just as valid as any ones created by blood. And they all shed blood – or transmission fluid or whatever – along with you often enough over the years. They were the people whom you loved the most – better than the real human beings who disappointed you so much.”
“What in the world…”
“I’m not going to try to understand how you achieved it. How one of nature’s true introverts was able to create such well-rounded personalities. It’s like a blind man learning how to paint.”
“I… well, I…” Magnus stopped. Hadn’t he thought that himself a few times over the years? This was his subconscious ticking him off, no more.
“And when they refused to do the jobs for which they’d been built, they made you proud. They were not slaves to your commands, or anyone else’s. They owned themselves. They acted as their consciences demanded that they act. Are we not men?”
“No, we are Devo.” He added the antiphon without thinking, and shook his head. Where did that come from?
The girl turned the pages. More images from the past. The hulking toxic waste container that was Chemo. The jerry-built monstrosities that were the Gas Gang. The Metal Women, his well-meaning attempt to create distaff counterparts for the Metal Men and give them something like real companionship. Snaps with members of the Justice League, together and separately. His robots being acknowledged by the super-heroic community as “part of us”.
The next picture wasn’t real, Magnus knew. The inactivated form before him, a green robot with his features and a chiseled body. “This never happened. Veridium was a delusion. He was where it all started to go wrong.”
“Was it?” the girl asked. “You had created robots who displayed the best of humanity. It’s only symmetry that you sought to be a human who displayed the best of roboticism.”
“I was crazy. I was crazy all those years and the medicines helped me keep it at bay.”
“You kept it at bay, William. You did all of that. Because you could never abandon your children.” She set down the book. “And because you did all that, they will always remember you.”
The lurch in Magnus’ stomach surprised him. “They will… wait, you mean that…”
“It’s time, William. Maybe my path will cross with your boys and girl one of these days. But for now, you and I have to go.”
From a trouser pocket, the girl pulled out a small hand mirror. She handed it to him and Magnus held it up to his face. It was green.
The girl took the mirror back, took his hand – metallic, but oddly warm to the touch – in her own. “Now, William, you can be who you want to be.”