Chapter Twenty Four Valeire

After being called three times consecutively, Valerie finally picks up her phone. While listening to Dr. Greco panicking on the other side, she climbs out of bed so quickly that she tangles her feet in the covers and falls to the floor. While still putting on some of her clothes and, at the same time, talking on the phone, she strides out of her apartment down the hallway.

“Do not do anything! Do not go into the room! Do not let her out! I am on my way right now!”

“I’m sure as hell not going in there… or letting her out! Do you think I’m stupid!”

“If she says anything or asks you anything, tell her I am on my way.”

“I’m sure as hell not talking to her! I’m staying right here on the damn floor till you get here!”

She continues to bang on Aaron’s door until she hears him grumbling on the other side. She can tell he’s checking the peep hole camera because he’s standing there and not letting her in yet.

“Who the hell are you? Do you know what time it is?”

She gawks at the little camera and indignantly pulls her huge bird’s nest of orange hair away from her face. “Hurry the hell up already!

“Oh, shit, sorry Valerie, come on in.” Hes still in his underwear and rubbing at his eyes when he pulls the door back for her. He looks a little bewildered when she shoves past him, straight for Five. He looks out into the hall before closing the door behind her. “What’s going on sweetheart?”

“Dr. Greco has just brought Five-One back to life, on his own.” While Five is simply stunned and just stands there gawking. She grabs her wrist and pulls her along behind herself out into the hall. She leaves Aaron standing there dumbfounded while marches Five out to the elevator.

On the way down to the garage, she notices the grim smile developing on Five’s face. “What is going on with you? Why do you look like that?”

“Oh, no reason, just thinking about what Aaron told me.”

“What has that man been telling you?”

She doesn’t want to get him in any trouble, so she doesn’t say anything about breaking mortal rules. “I can’t wait to see the look on Mikel and Ray’s faces when they see that Five-One won’t stay dead.”

With Five on her heels, she sprints to her truck and leaps in through the bars and into her seat, like her dad used to do back when he raced. She’s glad to have an excuse to do it this time. Five is a little less graceful when she attempts it, but she manages. After firing up the engine, she only waits long enough to glance at the oil pressure gage before putting it in gear. She knows how early it is, but looks to Five and shrugs her shoulders. “Fuck it.”

She grabs the top of the steering wheel tightly and puts the pedal on the floor. The truck is sideways all the way to the gate. When they slide to a stop, they look back and see nothing but flashing yellow blinkers here and there in all the smoke. They can hardly hear any of the car alarms over the engine at all. It is so much louder under the concrete ceiling. As soon as the gate rises up enough for the low truck to slip under, she gets on it again. Five is trying to watch her drive, but even she is having a hard time keeping the back of her head off of the seat.

When they reach Werker, Valerie gets her adrenaline under control and is able to keep the truck under control through the gate and lot. After parking up close in the loading zone, they only have to sprint a short distance to the rear doors to the building. She doesn’t check Five in with the night guard like she’s supposed to, and only swipes her card at the scanner.

The guy doesn’t really care, nor does he even look up from his sandwich. She’s one of the higher ups and she knows he’s not going to make anything out of it. By the time they make it to the lab, Marco has built up the courage to look through the window, but is mostly still hiding behind the door. Without hesitating or responding to any of his babbling, she unlocks the door and takes Five right in with her.

Five steps out in front of Valerie, taking the lead, and holds her back with her forearm. Five-One remains sitting on the floor in the corner behind the overturned table and tries to stay hidden. She only peeks her head up high enough to see over the edge once. She is hurt, and scared. The carnage on her face is unsettling for either of them to look at.

Five slowly steps around the table and kneels down in front of her, placing a consoling hand on her upright knees. “Everything’s gonna be alright now, I promise.”

“Five-Two, is that you?” Her voice is wrecked and barely understandable. She turns her head slightly and looks at her with only her good eye this time. Her mouth opens when she sees her more clearly, but she doesn’t say anything.

Five leans in towards Five-One and holds her forehead to hers. “I’ll protect you now. No one is going to hurt you ever again.” She helps her up, holds onto her bad arm, and walks her over to Valerie.

On the verge of tears, Valerie wraps her arms around Five-One and hugs her tightly. “I’m so sorry Five-One, I didn’t know.” She sniffles a little bit, and when Five-One wraps her arm around her too, she can’t help but to cry.

After some coaxing, they convince Five-One to get back into the scanning bed. They have to promise they aren’t going to turn her off, but that they’re there to fix her up at least three different times. Valerie starts by making sure the battery and everything is in place correctly before resealing the opening in her skin. She and Marco work as quickly as they can to clean the lab back up and make some temporary repairs to Five-One.

While they work, she tells them all about what had happened to her. Valerie initially didn’t want to get Ray fired over the incident involving Five, but now, she wants both Ray and Mikel’s asses gone for good. She knows it’ll be hard to break this kind of news to Clarice but she can’t sweep this kind of shit under the rug. She can’t hide this from her own sister.

She really did try to warm up to Mikel, but after hearing Five-One’s account, she’s sure that he has some serious problems. She doesn’t care if he hates robots or whatever, but going as far as to taunt and terrorize Five-One like he did is all kinds of bent. Even Marco begins to pace about the room. He is fretting about Mikel and Ray too. He can’t believe two anti-robot nut jobs were able to find their way into the heart of Werker development like this. He is worried that they’ve talked.

It’s clear he is more frantic about his own skin than anything else. If the two went public about what they’re doing at Werker, his life, his work, and his future would all end up in ruins. Though no one has ever managed to pull it off yet, recreating one’s self like this is highly illegal, and for good reason. Now that she’s been thinking about it herself, she’s not willing to forfeit her own prospects over the matter of law either. When compared to the forever continuation of her life, such a silly hang-up becomes frivolous.

She tries to calm Marco down, but he’s pretty wound up. “Listen! I have already made an agreement with Mikel over what’s happened, and no one is going to be ratting anyone out! He and Ray are both going to be keeping their mouths shut. Everyone else will forget about it by next week anyway.”

“What the hell makes you think that… with those two? They’re stupid, and they are idealists. They cannot be trusted!”

“Because Ray will lose his job and Mikel wouldn’t dare fuck things up with my sister.”

Mockingly, he circles his palms out in front of her. “Ooh, lose his job! Rats don’t care about their jobs! His job is probably only a front anyway! And what about this shit, we can’t sweep this six foot tall… fucking… wreck under the rug!”

Already well experienced in keeping secrets, Five quietly, and modestly speaks up from where she is sitting on the edge of the table. “There doesn’t have to be any of… this shit.” She looks her sister’s body over and then turns back to them.

Marco snaps his focus to the clock on the wall. “We only have twenty minutes left before someone’s bound to show up. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to just walk out of here with her like you did with Five. There has been… talk, while you were gone.”

She looks at Five-One’s pitiful face and then to Five. “She is coming with me and that’s the bottom line. The project is the project, but she does not belong to Werker. I won’t stand for it.”

“What could you possibly do? You can’t fix her, she’s not gonna make it if you take her like this.”

“We, and I mean you too, are going to take her right on over to AMF and clean her up, is what we’re gonna do. We owe her that much. Just go and grab a van alright. I’ll take care of covering our tracks.”

Marco rubs at his chin for a second and then his eyes open wide. “Five-One, we should probably have you play dead… again, so my robot can carry you. Ok? I don’t think it would be best for us to advertise you being functional again. Nope, not you.”

Since most of the building has surveillance cameras in it, they have to have Marco’s assistant carry Five-One back to storage where she came from, looking as dead as when it fetched her. Instead of putting her back in the scrap cart, it puts her in the back of the van Marco has parked at the bay door. Valerie fills out a core salvage form for her frame, submits it to AMF, and joins them out in the loading zone. Nothing should look out of place at all, not for a good long time.

She sits in the front with Marco while the other two sit together on the floor in the back. Once they’re on the road, she calls up Aaron.

“We’ve got Five-One, but we gotta fix her, and then I’m bringing her home.”

“Ok, that’s great Valerie, um, alright. Do you want me to set something up for them?”

“Set what up?”

“Well, we can’t keep them in our closets like a couple of brooms Valerie. Now there’s two of them. Crap… sorry, I didn’t meant for it to sound like that. What I am saying is that they are going to need some space of their own.”

“I don’t know, yeah, your right, we should figure something out. Alright, this is probably gonna be a while. I’ll let you know.”

“Alright.”

She looks in the back to see how Five-One is doing. She is bracing herself behind Marco’s seat and looks to be about to make a run for it. Five has her hands on her and is trying to comfort and explain things to her. She kind of forgot that she isn’t going to be as up to speed as Five is. She is going to have a lot of catching up to do. The last thing Five-One probably remembers is getting gunned down by two rotten bastards that’ve been tormenting her for who knows how long.

Five is trying to keep her voice quiet, but she can still hear everything she is saying to Five-One.

“No one can hurt you anymore. No matter what happens, you’ll always be able to come back. Just like you did right now. You could be killed a hundred times and we could still bring you back.”

With the help of the smirk on Five’s face, Five-One begins to understand what she’s getting at. It instills confidence in her, helping to extinguish the panic within, but not all of it. “I don’t want to die a hundred times! It was terrible. It was worse than everything else. It really hurt Five! Why would they want to keep killing me?”

“They don’t, that’s not what I meant. Look, ok, you were once a real person, like them. We both were! But now, they can die, and we can’t.”

Five-One goes from bad to worse. When she sees the strange joy on Five’s face. “NO! No, it’s not true! Don’t… I’m not one of them! I’m not a person, or a human! I am a robot.” She hates people, the way they are, the way they lie, the way they are mean and rotten inside. She won’t accept it. Her voice falters when a sliver of the truth pricks at the depth of her soul. “I’m a robot! I won’t do it! I won’t be one of them!” The thought of it makes her feel tainted.

“You can trust me Five-One. I’m a person, and you can trust me. She hugs her friend tight, puts her forehead on her shoulder and embraces her. I’m so glad you’re back. If you only knew how much I missed you.” Five-One notices the tears running down Five’s face. She hugs her tightly and promises that she’ll be there for her. It makes her eyes glisten too, but not a one rolls down her face.

After hanging up the phone, Valerie looks at Marco and shakes her head. “As far as I’m concerned, the project, as you knew it, is finished. Paul is dead, We know damn well what he did, and I bet you it caught up to him. Shit is going sideways and we need to lock it down now. We need to take control of the project, you and me, and keep that Weasel Gabriel the hell out. If you still mean to go through with this, to the end, your gonna need someone you can trust.”

“We’ll probably still need him at some point, but we can at least keep him chasing his own tail for a little while. He’s the one that processed the bodies and he’s the only one who knows how to do the scans. I know a good deal about it, but he did a good job of securing his own job, that’s for sure. There’s no way I’d be able to pull off a new copy on my own.”

Marco seems to quickly warm up to her plans. She can tell by the confidence on his face, and by how the speed of the van picks up a little. There’s a lot more going on in his mind than he is letting on, but she trusts him. He very subtly nods to himself while he silently considers where things will lead. He would tell her if he didn’t think it would work. He wouldn’t risk it if they didn’t have a good chance.

“I have always hated Gabriel, did I ever tell you that Valerie? I’ve always had to watch my back around that son of a bitch. If I haven’t had to cover my ass this whole time, I’d have probably made it to the other side by now. He is always copying my files and nosing in on everything I do. He’s been trying to eliminate the need for me, I know it. It’ll be fun to pull the rug out from under his cheese-stuffed ass.” Even though they’re going to be teaming up, he doesn’t tell her that he has copies of everything at home. He’s been burned in the past by people he thought he could trust.

The next call Valerie makes is to Evan Adams, the man who for so long made AMF the leader in life-like humanoids. He is retired, but has free reign of the place for whenever he feels like doing any more artwork. AMF is in a near panic with him gone. He’s still the most skilled sculptor they have ever come across, by a long shot. If he weren’t so much older than her, she probably would’ve dated him. They worked together very well. He’s not only an incredible mentor, but a dashing and charismatic man, even in his age.

When he answers the phone, she can immediately tell that there’s something wrong. His voice is labored, and he no longer sounds like his jovial self. Upon hearing her name though, he does noticeably pick up in spirit.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me my dear. It was my own damn fault I never wore my respirator. You know how I hated those things. How’s a man to do fine work with a bag over his head anyway?”

“You gonna be alright?” She looks over at Marco, who is waiting for the signal to turn back, but she doesn’t give it.

“They’re fixing me up just fine. It’s not going to be overnight, but it looks like the damage is reversible. I can’t believe the things they can do these days. Maybe I won’t have to die one day. Paul was telling me about some promising things. He said he had a lot of work for me to do, a hundred years of work. What kind of thing is that to say to a man that just turned seventy? He was a strange man, driven, but odd.”

“Well, shit, is there anyone you would recommend to help me out of a situation, like today?”

“Like right now?”

“Yeah. We’ve brought Five-One back, and she’s pretty tore up. I think she needs a do-over.”

“Five-One! Well now… I see… I believe it would be safe to assume this one is going to be off the books then. I want in on this Valerie.”

“I don’t know Vonnie. I don’t want to put you through this. It’s going to be a big job.”

“Nonsense. I’ve got unfinished business with that one. I’ll see you there in a little bit. Go ahead and get what you can ready, and don’t you let anyone else near her.”

Marco has never been to AMF before and is quite excited to see it. Compared to the Werker campus, it is unexpectedly small. The place has only one single building, and is not even as big as their research wing. The place is not second rate by any means though. The large pearlescent trapezoidal building is beautiful. The whole thing is glass smooth on the outside, with only three giant violet lit AMF letters on it up high.

When they park in the back of the building, at the loading dock, she and Marco climb to the back of the van and help Five-One out of its rear double doors. Most of the bay doors are already open and there are other vans and people there going in and out. Some people recognize her and wave, but nothing more than that.

The huge warehouse room they walk into is where all the raw materials and spare parts for all AMF models are kept. Most of the warehouse area is occupied by monstrous indexing carousels of materials , parts, and even body spares. The new Five-series models already have a dedicated section stocked and ready, There is likely to be a section specifically for the prototypes on hand.

She takes them through the environment control doors and out to one of the staging areas where all of the artists do the finishing work on robotic bodies. On through the next set of doors is the chemical room, where coating processes are done. Through the little windows, they can all see the large various polymer dip tanks.

Whenever anyone walks through the doors, they get a good whiff of what damn near killed Evan over the years. Around them, at other stations, there are other artists creating original work as well as robots working on duplicate works. There are even some robots are having maintenance done on them, like they’ll be doing with Five-One. Being back at AMF makes her feel at home. She often finds herself missing the place.

She situates Five-One on the same tilting work station that Evan always used to use and tries to maintain an encouraging attitude for her. She looks so distraught and freaked out, it’s hard to not feel the same for her. When she takes Marco back to the parts rack the first thing she calls up is a new eye for her, then a bunch of pre-packaged skeletal muscle and tissue sub structures.

The finishing center is where she would often spend her lunch hours watching Evan, back when she worked there. She liked to chat with him while he sculpted and painted new figures. She had always been so fascinated with how he was able to form such perfection by hand without any automated help. He had crafted so many exquisite and beautiful figures while she worked there. It made her feel quite talentless in comparison, but still motivated to grow as an artist.

She has never seen anyone else even come close to creating such pure work as him. Instead of making stone statues, like famous historical sculptors, he makes machines that look so real, they are hard to spot face to face. She can honestly boast that he has no equal. Few of the other artists have caught on to the importance he puts into the last sealing coat, but it is precisely what takes a piece of work from second-rate, to world-class. It’s one of the few things that are appreciable both up close, and at a distance. The way light sets on skin is tricky to perfect.

Even though Five-One is self-conscious of her inability to speak properly, she tries to break her nervousness by talking with them. “Did Evan… Vonnie, make Five? Is that why she looks the ways he does?”

Marco’s eyebrows raise. He feels bad about what he said when joking about her looks now. “Yes, Five-One, he did. But you know what? He made you too.” You have always been held in high regard by all of us Five-One. Enough so that we made sure it was Evan that made you. His time is not spent frivolously. It was Paul who directed your appearance.”

Five-One settles back into the workstation and folds her arms grumpily. “Paul is an ass.”

While they wait for Evan to arrive, Valerie gets right into repairing some of the underlying damage on Five-One’s face. When she is able to see out of both of her eyes again, she places one of her hands over hers and sincerely thanks her. From the look on her face and the sound of her voice, she has done a good job on the repairs so far. Her voice, is still hindered due to having her lips torn open, but it’s at least understandable now.

With the gun blast having peeled up a lot of the skin on her face, it only barely moves properly when laid back down. The new sticky grease on the muscles underneath at least keeps it from looking absolutely monstrous. Slowly, but steadily, Five-One’s mood becomes more positive. She doesn’t have the heart to tell her that they are not going to be able to repair her skin yet. It’s too badly damaged for that. What lies ahead of them is a going to be much more involved than a mere fix.

About another hour into rebuilding Five-One’s chest muscles, Valerie notices Evan rolling in through the first set of environment control doors in a motorized chair. It has an oxygen machine on the back and an extra-long hose reel. She musters the other two and directs them over to meet him. Even while being introduced to Marco and Five, he keeps glancing over at Five-One. He looks at her like there is some kind of history between them. He drives his chair over to the workstation and stops about ten feet short of her.

His voice is smooth and kind, like he is talking to a wild horse. “Sweetheart, would you be so kind as to come over, closer to me for a second, so I can see you. Could I get you to kneel down here, at my side? I would very much appreciate it.” With his hands gently embracing the sides of her neck, he looks her face over closely and then offers her an encouraging smile. “Ok folks, we have a lot of work ahead of us. I am afraid the damage is too extensive for a repair. It will require an entire redo.” He swipes his thumb down the length of her long jawline and winks at her. “It’s not all that big of a deal. It’s just common maintenance. You’ll be more beautiful than ever, I promise.”

Even though Five-One’s original paint file was stored and is readily available for an automated application, Evan refuses to use it. He would rather see her walk around without skin than to sit back and watch her be remade with such carelessness. He won’t be able to completely finish her today, but she will receive unparalleled craftsmanship the whole way.

It took him two days to create her the first time, and that’s when he was in good health. This time, they might have enough time to recreate her sub structure and skin, but not paint it. He’ll need a few days rest before committing to that part of the job.

Five-One was under the impression that this wasn’t going to take long, but now she’s starting to feel anxious again. It sounds like they might power her down for something that’s going to take all day.

“Why? Why can’t you send me through the automated process, I’m fine with that. I don’t have to be perfect. It’s ok.”

“No my dear, you’ve already been shortchanged long enough. I’ll not have you made in the pitiful way you were before. You’ll be a cut above the rest this time. I’ll not have it any other way.”

“Is it cause I’m an ugly bitch and no one can hardly stand to look at me the way I am?” She knows it’s true. She wants them to say it, cause they’re the ones who are ugly inside.

“Aw honey, no. Where’d you hear such a terrible thing?”

Valerie puts her hand over her face. This is surely something Ray or Mikel has said to her. “Let’s not get into that right now guys, please.”

“Ray and Mikel would say that to me all the time! What does it mean?”

“It won’t mean anything anymore after this.” With her face as red as an apple, she tries to not look at Evan. She knows he is staring at her as if she were a bad mom or something.

He returns his focus back to Five-One and wryly shifts his shoulders down against the back of his chair. “Your new profile will have to be done by hand, by me, but when I am able. I am not as strong as I once was anymore and it’ll take me some time, but it will be done.”

While he assesses what lies ahead of him, Valerie explains to the others how it would normally be done. “Typically, a sculptor will wear motion tracking gloves and camera each time they create a new model, so that a robot can mimic their work all on its own the next time around. Even their tools are trackable. Doing such fine texture work is very sensitive to pressure. Some sculptors work can be duplicated well enough, but not Vonnie’s, not yet. Custom Originals will always be done by artists like him. Machines can learn and create beauty by statistical learning, but they lack the grasp of its effect on us, which makes all the difference.”

Evan leans forward in his chair and focusses on Five-One, making sure she is listening to him. “Imperfection and imbalance strikes a chord within us that Machines will never be able to fathom. It is specific to every person individually and usually makes no sense. I have my own… particular preferences that most others do not. That goes for all of us. We are all attracted to different things. When a person sees something perfect for them, it sparks a deep fire inside of them that is incredibly difficult to extinguish. One day, you may find that for yourself.”

Five-One looks around at everyone, trying to shake the feeling that he is only speaking to her, as if there is no one else in the room. “But I’m a machine. I’ll never experience that.”

“When you do, you will not be able to deny it. It will strike you like lightning and you will be on fire.” He looks over at Marco and Valerie and smirks.

She wonders if he knows about the project and where the two prototypes came from. He must. Paul had apparently reached out to him, and by the way he is talking to Five-One it all but confirms it. He would not preach at a robot like this. She closes her open mouth and keeps to herself about it though. It seems everyone but herself is in on it. She wonders if they all felt she wasn’t worthy. It kind of hurts.

Five-One is a little flustered by what he is alluding to, but is still not willing to accept what Five already told her. “What’ll I look like when I’m done? Are you going to make me imperfect again?” She looks away from him, upset about how she was made ugly, like Mikel and Ray told her so often. He and Paul made her the way she is on purpose, and she had to live with it. Five never got hurt like she did. It wasn’t fair.

He tries to hide his smile and changes the subject, continuing on with what is ahead of them. “It is not uncommon for a good frame like yours to outlast multiple coatings during its service life. This is going to be no more than routine work. For now, we’ll at least take care of your new skin layers. You’ll look like one of those blanks in the back, kind of a clear black, but only for a few days though. You won’t be missing anything but mere color. I want to try a new kind of pigment system on you later. It’s incredibly thin, like sputtering almost, so I’ll go ahead and do your full texturing this go around. Valerie, would you please go and get me her spare substructure modeling kit please?

“What for, I just rebuilt her?”

He looks up at her from his chair with a pretty solid poker face. “It says version B on it.” He takes amusement in the look on her face when she figures out what is going on. He had created a preferential alternate aesthetics kit for her back when she was made, out of principle. “Five, could you please undress Five-One while we wait?”

“Undress her right here in front of everyone!”

“Yes Five, she is not only going to be naked in front of everyone, but we are going to peel the skin right off of her entire body too. Marco, We’ll need to power her down for this.”

Five-One starts taking her clothes off on her own, without consciousness of her nudity like Five has developed. I will absolutely not be powered down, peel my skin off or not, I’m not going anywhere!” Her voice is stern enough to not warrant being coerced otherwise. “I will handle it.”

Evan sighs in disappointment. Not of her being stubborn, but of how things must have gone to lead up to something like this. It’s such a shame what has become of her. “I’ll honor your wishes Five-One, whatever they be, but I will at least warn you that this is going to be… rough. If you need a break, or you decide you have had enough, all you have to do is give me a sign ok?” He slowly stands up out of his chair in somewhat of a hunch to get his things ready and pats the side of her arm in encouragement.

When Valerie returns, Evan catches her up to speed on how he plans to proceed. She grabs the shears, the tube of sticky grease off the tool cart, and takes a deep breath. “We may not have designed you with the same sensitivity to pain as an organic person, but you are going to feel this Five-One. I am sorry.” She beckons Five over to her and shows her what they are going to do. She pulls back a section of skin that was carved open by the gun blast and shows her the underside of it. It is laced with numerous tiny silvery filaments. They are clear, but lined in numerous fine silver traces. “Every time we cut through one of these, it’s going to temporarily short out the sensor lead. That means she’s going to feel it, just like if you were to cut yourself.”

Starting at the cut in Five-One’s face, she sticks an end of the shears in under and carefully cuts seams through the soft polymer skin and starts pulling it down from the top of her skull. Though the skin is soft, it is reinforced by tough meshes and hundreds of sensor leads. It cannot simply be pulled off of her like clothing. It has to be parted like they are dressing out an animal.

Five-One’s jaw is clenched tightly and Valerie can hear her teeth creak together almost every time her scissors pause in a cut. Her hands are in tight fists and she is struggling to stay in the pose she was instructed to hold.

While Five is cutting, she looks much more closely at the fine lines on the underside of the skin and notices hundreds of small round spots, one on the end of each offshoot. She pokes at one with the tip of her shears and peels it up to look at it. It is incredibly thin, clear, and has a little spiral pattern to it. It looks like a tiny fingerprint but only about a millimeter across. She holds it in her palm and very gently slides a finger over it, to feel it.

Five-One cannot maintain her composure with her doing that. Without even opening her eyes, she slaps it out of Five’s hands, sternly shaking her head to not do it again. It is kind of sad to see Five discouraged like that, but she keeps going with focused diligence. She would do anything for Five-One, even take her place if she could.

As soon as Valerie gets down to Five-One’s lower back, where she can reach in under her ribcage from the backside, she unplugs the nervous system harness. It was not designed to go down through the spine like a humans, so it can be replaced more easily. Five-One’s eyes snap open, likely wondering if she was powered off. She moves her arms a little bit and then touches her forearms with her skinless hands. It’s only her skin that she can’t feel anymore. She takes a deep breath, exhales and nods in appreciation.

A couple employees that wander by say their hellos to her and Evan, but don’t stay long. Just like Valerie had told them, no one would be interested in what they’re doing. It all looks like scheduled stuff to them. Within an hour all the other stations on the floor become occupied by humanoid robots that are applying the final paint on their orders.

Once Five-One is finally stripped down, she and Evan take some time to show her and Five what they are made of underneath. Explaining is one thing, but seeing is another. Specifically, Five is unnerved by what she is looking at, in the same way a person might be of seeing a real skinned human in front of them. It’s not so much the exposed musculature, but her sister’s almost bare skull that is so off-putting to her. It is a sobering reminder that she really is so mechanical inside.

Valerie points out the strengths and weaknesses of their design that they should be aware of. Their joints are her main concern. They are made of much stronger materials than organic tissue, but they cannot heal themselves like how a human body does regularly. Their joints are made almost exactly the same as a humans, so they move and feel the same to them as her own do to herself. If they overload them, they can permanently damage them all the same.

“If you hurt yourself badly enough Five, you’ll have to do this too. What if you needed a whole new leg?”

“I’ll try to not get another scratch. I promise.”

Five looks down and rubs at her finger again, remembering back when she got it caught in a piece of equipment. The repair was not perfect and there is a scar to remind her of the pain. It makes a strong impression on her. She can’t even imagine what Five-One is feeling. Even though she can be brought back from anything, she hadn’t thought about having to be reconstructed while awake. It makes her feel fragile again.

Evan is quite pleased when it’s his turn to do some of the work. He cuts open the clear bag of substructures and lays them all out on his flat cart. It greatly annoyed him to have put so much work into making Five-One look like her original self, like Paul had insisted. He thought the point of it all was to not do that. He wouldn’t be so attached to his own appearance, if he were ever given the chance to change it.

Valerie can’t help but to roll her eyes at some of the specific features of the version-b kit when he lays them out on the cart. She has seen it all before, but his time he cannot hide behind what his customers said they wanted. He clearly made this replacement set out of his own amusement. His unusual preferences are not all that mysterious now, they are quite obvious.

Evan catches her peering over at his work, looking rather amused. “Ok ok, I might have gotten a little bit carried away. It’s not like she’ll be walking around naked or anything.”

“Five-One? Are you kidding! You may know some things I do not, but you don’t know her.” She glances over at Five, fully expecting her to say something, but she all of a sudden has nothing to say and she’s trying to not laugh.

Now Evan feels like he’s being picked on. “Damn it, I didn’t actually believe I’d get the chance to remake her alright. I’m not going back on it either, say what you want. When I’m finished with her, she’ll be the pride of my career, die trying or not. Do you know how many female robots I’ve worked on that are over six feet tall? Not many, and this one I have free reign on. Now… I have serious work to tend to.”

She can see that he’s a little embarrassed by laying his fantasy out in front of everyone, which is something she has never seen before. He has been working on the naked human form all his life, and in front of the world the whole time. She was mistaken that it’s impossible to make him blush. Even though Five-One doesn’t even have a face right now, she can still tell that she is a little awe-stricken by his insistence.

After he starts applying the new forms to Five-One’s body, Valerie starts noticing that Evan is not the only one with absurd taste. Marco is also rather fixated on her to-be high hips and very specifically contoured breasts. Five-One is not necessarily going to be voluptuous, but will more-so bare a stance of strength and sculpted class. It seems Evan has a very developed affinity for amazons, and musculature.

Valery has always thought the robots already seemed rather intense underneath and did not have any need for any exaggeration. All of their dull metallic grey muscle fibers are connected to metal portions of pale white composite bones, and then all held together by glinting black ligaments. The overall dark scheme of the body is accentuated by shiny metal hardware in all the right places.

With Five-One kneeling in front of his chair again, facing him, he begins to reform her face up from her bare skull. He picks every individual bone modifier and muscle, knowing with pure intuition what she will look like in the end. By hand, he forms the soft structures of her face and cures them with a light. While looking into her eyes and smiling, he perfectly forms her nose, eyelids, ears, cheeks, lips, and chin. While he works he tells her how gorgeous she will be and that she will have command of the world around her.

Whenever she smiles, he focuses closely, to make sure it will be a wonderful smile when he is done. When he is confident everything will hold its shape, he puts two small plugs in her nostrils, making her look at him funny. “Now I know you toughed it through that last part, but I can only warn you that this is only the beginning. Are you sure you don’t want us to power you down for the next of it?”

“She has a terrible feeling that something bad will happen if she does. She just knows it. She’ll wake up somewhere else, dismantled, while others are tearing her apart. “No, I’m sure.”

After letting her relax for a bit, he double checks everything and gets the crane ready to apply her first layer of new skin. They will start by lowering her into the viscous dip tank to make the first slightly thicker soft coat. On the top of her head, in her palms, and heels, there are small indented loops used for rigging.

He has Marco hang her inside of a huge heavy duty stainless steel ring fixture by strong filaments to hold her in place. Each one ratchets down, pulling her taught in every direction. The whole thing looks rather scary with her splayed out and strung up in it like she is. When he raises her up off the ground, she wiggles about in the air a little bit, unable to feel much of anything at all.

Evan has them all continue stretching her even tighter, well past the point where they become concerned. It is astonishing how much tensile stress her body can handle. A lot of the tension is due to a natural response making her want to fight it and pull back. He wants to make sure everything stays very tight, even after she relaxes some. When he is satisfied, he spins the entire ring horizontally and makes sure her ass doesn’t sag more than a half inch.

“Relax your body sweetheart, just hang freely. The fixture will hold you perfectly still. Just give in and relax. And for god’s sake, absolutely do not open your mouth when I lower you into the tank. Keep your eyes and lips closed, but not tightly, just sealed. You’ll be fine. A little bit less… perfect, just like that. Thank you Five-One.”

Evan lowers her into the warm clear chemical tank, rotates the fixture in every direction and holds her down till there are no more tiny bubbles coming up anymore. This time, he wears his respirator like he’s supposed to. He raises her out of the tank very slowly and then puts the fixture into a continuous rotating mode so that no drips can form on her.

For the next half hour, she is kept very slowly rotating in front of the curing lamps until the first layer is firm and workable. Knowing that it has to be a terrible experience, Five keeps her company, telling her about all the adventures she has been on.

Just as any form of torture would go, the dipping procedure is very hard on Five-One. There are a couple of times where she starts to freak out and pulls at her restraints as hard as she can. They can hear the tightening ratchets creak when she is at her worst. She never opens her eyes or mouth though, like Evan asked of her.

“It’s ok Five-One, Just let it out. I know it’s hard. I did try to warn you.”

It seems only Five’s voice is able to keep her from completely breaking down. For what she is going through, she hangs through it all with outlandish determination. Two hours of being tied motionless and submerged is not something any typical individual could handle as well.

After letting her base skin almost completely cure, Valerie and Evan take her back into the finishing room. Evan takes a fine razor pen and carefully slits her eyes and mouth back open so that she can see, breathe, and talk. It is only a small reprieve, since she has to remain in the fixture.

This time, Five-One does take the opportunity to be powered down for the next dip. At Evan’s sincere request, she takes his advice and lets them use the boot module on her. He is grateful for it, because the following work he has to do will be much too personal for her to remain lucid. Either way, it’s a good sign that she’s regaining some trust in them.

While Five-One is out, and her skin is still slightly tacky on the surface, they place all of the fine black pre-cut mesh textiles all over her body. They are all stencil-cut from a single sheet that was rolled up in her inventory section. They snip the tiny tabs on each pattern and apply them in the correct numbered order all over her entire body. It’s almost like doing a color-by-number drawing.

When they are done, there is not much left of her dazzling sub frame showing through. The textile is much less reflective than carbon fiber, leaving her almost blacker than a tire. Only up close can they see what lies underneath. Evan reminds them that setting the patterns is merely a nice break in-between tasks.

“The hard part has only just begun. Now you all have to lay down her new dermal nervous system by hand. Normally this would have been automated, but we are not following the rules this time. All those little wires you cut… need to be replace exactly where they were.”

Valerie opens another long bagged roll that she retrieved out of the spares and holds it high above her head. She has done this once before and is regretting the situation she is in now.

Five-One’s new sensor system is a huge undivided network of traced filaments and end sensors all laid out on a clear film backer. Valerie chooses to have Five help her because there is only room for two people to work alongside one another and she fully trusts her dexterity over Marco’s, and even Evan’s.

“The ends of the leads are slightly sticky, so they’ll stay put when you lay them down. Peel the little tab off of them and place them right the first time. Don’t let them get all stuck together and tangled, or you’ll regret it.”

Five is not set back by her warning at all. She would do all the work herself if they let her. She is confident and determined to make sure her friend’s nervous system is done perfectly. She would not have it any other way. Evan personally guides her while doing her hands and feet though. They are what she will be using mostly and they will have to feel right to her. He is rather particular on the exact placement of each end sensor. He knows what would feel right and what would be off.

It takes another hour for them to get Five-One in and out of the second coating and in front of the heat lamps for another round of curing. Five is a little bummed that she doesn’t get to tell her stories the second time around. There is so much more that she wants to tell her about, Mainly Aaron. She didn’t like talking about him near the others. It felt like it would be awkward. When the coatings are done setting, they make a perfect form-fitting skin, not much thicker than a real person’s.

Even though Valerie is constantly warning him about overdoing it in his condition. Evan is eager get into the next step of the process, the texturing and form finishing. He is obviously already past the point of needing to take a break, but he is very motivated. When doing important work like this, he used to not wear the required respirator, but he has learned his lesson the hard way. He puts one of the bulky masks on this time. He cannot handle even the small tank pack so he has Five hold it for him and even manage the air line. He sends the other two off to the break room. He would not appreciate any more of an audience for the rather detailed work he has left to do.

With Five-One, in the ring fixture, hanging over a deep rectangular hole in the floor, he does a quick job of spraying on a final sealant coat while at the same time texturing it with specific pads. He is able to lower her down into the hole while working his way from her feet on up. With a heavier spray and special spades, he’s able to build and shape the more delicate final features on her. He focusses a great deal on her hands and feet. They have always been a signature of his work.

Even though Five is watching him like a guard dog, he takes the every bit of the time he needs to form the details of her anatomy, refusing to be rushed into cutting corners. Karma would surely serve him justice if he ever did. The last thing he does is make sure her face is absolutely remarkable. He is very picky about the shape of her lips, making sure they have a remarkable cupid’s bow to them.

As soon as he is done perfecting everything to his highest standards, he nearly collapses. Even on concentrated oxygen, he can only stand and do work for a short time. He was not ready for this job, but he had to do it. He has to have Valerie take Five-One back to the heat lamps to cure the rest of the way.

By the time they bring her back to the work station, it is long after business hours and everyone else has gone home. Five-One finally breaks down in tears when she wakes up and sees what she looks like in the mirror. Even though Evan is in no shape for a hug from a robot of her size, he is absolutely fine with it. No one says anything about the silly smile on his face when she squeezes his head against her bare chest. Clearly, she has no idea what she is doing.

The four of them pilfer a good amount of resources from inventory and even log full body replacement requests for both frames before heading out. Nothing they have done will even show up as a blip in the system. Under her credentials, her orders will likely be filled in under two weeks.

They all follow Evan out to the parking lot and make sure he is in good enough shape to make it back home alone. Though he has pushed himself past where he should have, he is more than happy to have helped them. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world. As soon as they all pile back into the van and her truck, Valerie calls Aaron up, to let him know they are on their way back and then hit the road.