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 Posted: Mon Nov 24, 2008 7:47 pm
Last night it had seemed to Archie that today would be the perfect day to sleep in. It promised to continue to be cold out, and Francine, Alek and Archie's daughter Dixie were sleeping over at some sort of "Peace Love Family Blah Blah Blah" meet-up, leaving Archie alone in his former home. Between Halloween costumes, Christmas presents and the seemingly infinite number of children Archie and his girlfriend cared for, a personal getaway was not only desired, it was required.
When he had awakened this morning with the dull, monotonous buzzing in his head that signified an eminent landing, Archie had cursed his bad luck, but had gotten out of bed anyway. He liked kids, obviously, especially ones like he had been, and after an moment of internal pouting he decided he could deal with being with one of them, even on his day off. Hopefully someone would be pass by at the right moment to be cajoled into taking the child. It had always worked out that way before.
Hours later, when the pod finally came into view, Archie was sitting in a folding chair on the lawn, sipping hot chocolate and staring at the sky. There it was! He gathered the chair up and tucked it against the side of the house, all while keeping his eyes on the little ship, trying to gauge its trajectory.
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2008 11:37 am
The robot girl was technically 'off', but more likely sleeping, as the pod suddenly jolted. The girl's eyes flickered on and she shifted in the overly cramped space where she lay. She could remember when the space had been larger, but it seemed to have shrunked over the time she was in the pod... of course she could remember everything that had happened since she'd been here, but not really what had come before. It was almost as if she hadn't existed before the pod and that was fine by her.
She'd had a lot of time to think about this.
And as the time had passed there had been nothing like this jolt. She quickly ran through a list of possibilities, but could come up with nothing substantial since she had so little facts to work with. Moments later the pod started to jolt again, only this time it kept on jolting, buffering this way and that, causing the girl to knock her head against the ceiling several times until she curled up more. As the jolting continued the inside of the pod started to warm up. Not so much as to become uncomfortable or to burn her, but enough that she noticed a difference. The heat continued to rise until she felt a slowing of the pod's motion (also something she'd bever felt before) and a subsequent thud and complete halt of all activity. Whatever lights had been on and whatever machinery inside the pod had been thrumming all went dead and quiet.
The girl sat in the dark and silence for a moment before the pod opened.
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 10:02 am
Archie shuffled forward, careful not to touch the warm sides of the pod as he tried to look inside. He expected to see a baby, and at first he didn't see anything at all, but then something glowed and... okay then.
"Hello?" he asked quietly. He had never, at least to his knowledge, seen anything older than an infant come out of one of these things and he wasn't sure what to do. This creature might have been a baby, but if it was, Archie was certainly curious about what it would grow into.
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Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:02 pm
The girl robot blinked at the sudden light and then blinked again when the light was covered by something. It took a brief second for her to adjust her 'eyes' to the new lighting conditions, but once she did everything came into an all too new focus.
She placed her hands on the rim of the opening and pulled herself to a standing position. Once there she was able to look Archie up and down, taking in his hair and clothing and general strangeness. It ocoured to her very quickly that this was a creature, and was somewhat like her. She looked at his hands and then down at her own... she looked at his shirt and then touched her own body with an audible 'clank' as the metal of her hands collided gently with the metal casing of her body. She watched curiously as he opened a hole in his face and spoke... Then she put her own hand to her face and felt around her mouth noticing that there was no opening like his.
She wondered briefly how he'd made the noise from his mouth, and almost at the same time her brain provided a possible answer. She had been recording everything she'd seen and heard all her life so far, and therefore it was certainly easy enough to 'replay' his voice.
So she did.
"Hello?" Repeated exactly the same in his voice with his intonation. Then she cocked her head in confusion and blinked her eye lights at him.
"Hello?" The second time she said it, the word came out much higher, with a slightly hollow metallic sound to it. Still the same intonaiton, but not his voice anymore.
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Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 9:44 pm
"Oh, so you can talk! Not a baby then," Archie said to himself, or at least she wasn't by his own personal logic. He had to admit that he'd never seen anything like this... girl before, but he was still fairly confident that if it could talk and stand up, it wasn't a baby. He looked around, but despite the usual cars full of pod-chasing, rubbernecking college kids that zipped past every once and a while, there was no one. Where were this criminal's new parents? There was always someone who had followed the streak in the sky and didn't know what they were getting into or someone else who had heard all the rumors but still couldn't stop the high-and-mighty thought that they might ultimately be responsible for turning another being into a law-abiding citizen.
Hmph. Archie shrugged and offered the metal kid a hand. She wasn't staying with him, that was for sure. Someone at the Unit would know what to do. Unperturbed by her voice mimic, but not yet realizing she didn't know the language, he asked, "So, what's your name?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 7:29 am
She cocked her head at him and replayed his first statement in his voice. "Oh so you can talk!" And then she shook her head and spoke the rest in what might be considered her own voice. "Not a baby then,"
She blinked her eyes and climbed fully out of the pod. It took a few seconds to get herself straight up and down without fallign over, but it was just a simple set of adujstments and readjustments to her balance and walking programing. Come to think of it, she hadn't known she even had that programing until it had kicked in just now.
She cocked her head in confusion again and then walked unsteadily around the pod looking it over. She placed her little metalic hands on this and that, but when she came to a specific part of the Pod... she stopped. Something in her brain told her that this was an important word... nevermind what a word was, or how she knew it... only that the printing 'LeeLue' on the side of the pod, all scratched, dinged and faded, meant something important.
She turned to Archie with yet another head tilt, pointed to the pod, and repeated the last of his earlier sentances, again in her own voice.
"So, what's your name?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:08 pm
"Oh," Archie said. For a moment he felt like he was being filmed by some sort of hidden camera, but a quick glance around the yard only revealed another passing car full of ogling kids. He followed the girl around to the other side of the pod and squinted at the word printed there.
"LeeLue?"
He had never known someone to land with a personalized ship before, but there was a first time for everything.
"Nice to meet you, LeeLue. I'm Archie."
By this point he had realized that she probably didn't understand, but it wouldn't hurt to be polite. "Do you want to come with me?" he asked, making the required hand motions to indicate the suburban house on the other side of the fence. Maybe Lissel would know what to do with the new kid.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 5:56 pm
She cocked her head at the word and repeated it slowly. "Leeee Looo." Then she turned back to him and blinked. "Come with me... Leeloo. I'm Archie." She blinked at him again, commiting all the meaningless words to memory. "Come with me, nice to meet you."
She turned from him with a perfect lack of understanding, but a built in desire to learn, and started towards what he pointed at, muttering all to herself along the way.
"So what's your name? Oh so you can talk. I'm Archie. So you can talk. Not a baby then.... Leelue. Nice to meet you. Leelue."
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Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 12:41 pm
Archie followed, a confused expression practically plastered to his face. He was reluctant to say anything more for fear that the child would repeat that too. Instead he caught up, pushing open the gate he'd had installed between his former yard and the Unit, so the robot could pass. He hurried ahead, leading Leelue around the side of the house and through the front door.
"Hello?" he asked the air.
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