Work Text:
Summer 2022
And maybe it's the humid-thick air (—he needs to fix the ventilation in here, he needs to fix the elevators, he needs to fix the whole world, really) or the long-tall-tall ceiling of the hall of wires, but he’s tired-dulled-tired, with sticky sort of sweat to his arms, sleeves rolled up, cuffed up at his elbows,
When he was a child it wasn’t this warm, all the time,
Fire season wasn’t a thing, then.
He’s too old-or-maybe-not to be kneeling on the ground like this.
Or maybe he was too young to be told about wildfire-smoke, or too young to notice the crushing heat, or—
Or he was a troubled-or-scared child. But they didn’t really sanitize things the same way, for children, back then.
Uncle Petey would read the paper with a grimace each morning, and Wanda would read it over dinner. They never once smiled.
But QWERTY needs new fans installed — a high-pitched whining wreeeeee that demands something, something, trills from them, as he thinks, lately,
QWERTY hates acknowledging he’s just as physical as the robots.
QWERTY hates admitting he is blue-matter-crystal-structure-RAM-and-memory, read and written and encoded, and not only his face and mind detached, wherever he projects it.
But he is. And blue-cores run burning-warm, water-boiling hot, and he—
And fire season wasn’t a thing in 1960.
Things are getting warmer.
He is getting older.
Not everything was this hard a few years ago. And QWERTY hates admitting he is just as physical as any person-or-thing else alive.
…His Peter’s doing better, at least. He's planning to propose to Vivian, now. All schemes and plans for their six-years. He's all smiles in his voice, and, more commonly than before, on his face.
No mask at the dinner table, lately.
He mentioned the days-since-last-panic-attack counter on his phone ticked over five-hundred. It’s been over a year since his son had a panic attack.
That’s good.
That, at least, is good.
Even if the blue matter poisoning has him in bed more days a month than it did a few years ago. Even if he refuses to talk about it longer than just-long-enough to backstep and duck out of the room, stiff-shouldered, denying,
…He needs to fix so many things.
He's going to start with QWERTY.
Part of everything is starting. Part of fixing everything is just starting.
QWERTY buzzes silent under his fingers, demanding unacknowledgment of the mortification of needing physical maintenance.
He’s nearly as bad as Peter, really, at some of these things.
He has always appreciated computer internals, really. Compared to the robots. Everything has an exact-simple place. Adapters, converters, color-coded-cables and standardized-shape-holes. Everything inside QWERTY’s main casing is serviceable by hand, enough room between RAM and GPU, between drives and processors that his hands fit inside. Pattern-fit and custom, built to perfect-sense and square.
The inside of QWERTY makes perfect sense to him.
…but he did build his son, so there's no surprise to that.
Fixing the robots is a balancing-act of disassembly and reassembling needlessly intricate interlocked gears,
He never met his great grandfather. He'd like to have a word with him, really. (He'd like to have been able to have a word with any of his forefathers, really.)
But so would any orphan, he supposes.
As he unscrews the loud-whirring fan to replace, the heat is thick, radiating warmth from the blue-pulsing-plate of crystal that makes QWERTY's memory,
…he thinks he'd like to fix the air conditioning in here too.
His Peter has satellites orbiting just about every planet in the solar system, radio dishes pointed out, scanning starward for transmissions. Equipped with cameras and telescopes, catching images of the far-flung stars so pixel-perfect that he thinks his uncle would have all-but-killed to see back before—
Well,
Back before his uncle went and saw them all himself.
Wanda’s given up on Petey, The Fourth, his uncle ever coming back again. He’s mostly abandoned the idea himself. But his Peter seems to hope, maybe,
Peter never did get to meet him.
Not with a brain more advanced than that of a two year old.
…And he's getting older, is the thing. He's getting older. He turns 75 in December. And blue-matter-be-damned he's starting to feel it in his knees and his wrists, and finally, in his hair. He's graying white in streaks back from his ears, now.
His son turns 37 this year. He was 38 when his boy was born.
…..it's been a long long time.
And he still has so much to fix.
But the future doesn't sneak up on you. He has to worry about today, tomorrow, and not a thing much further than the next bill cycle.
Any much further isn't all that important, really.
One day at a time, the world doesn't spin any faster than one day at a time.
He screws back in the new, better fans, checks, as he always does, his son's more-advanced cooling systems.
His QWERTY turns 40. 40.
It's been a long time.
He's a lot different than the wired-to-a-single-monitor AI he and Annie turned on back in ‘83.
He flips a switch, power on, and the fans whir to silent-life, quiet shrr-rrr-rr of air,
Things are going to keep going. One day at a time. Things will always keep on going.
He's lived a long time. He turned 60 in 2007.
He's been the oldest Peter Walter to ever live for well over a decade.
His son hates that fact, or….gets caught up on it. Sick over it. Or at least he used to, less so, now.
He's fine setting the record. He hopes it's an example, really, proof to his Peter.
Living a long time. (That they can live a long time.)
He doesn't have to die young.
Not all of them did.
None of them had to, even.
It's not about burning up. It's not about burning out. Sometimes it's about standing up, staring back at at the giants of before,
And finally, finally seeing beyond the shore.