Chapter Forty-One

Marco

Marco is sitting at the desk in front of the laminating machine, holding his cell phone. He’s thinking of what to say to Valerie. Aaron’s brain has just finished printing and he’s holding it in his other hand as if it were an incredibly rare mineral specimen. The structures incredibly fine milky grey layered edges glisten in the light. He is in wonderment of how he can hold the man’s very mind and soul in the palm of his hand.

He sets it down on the thin gel pack that will accompany it inside Aaron’s new skull and hits dial. His hand is shaking and he has to hold onto the phone with both hands to be still. “Valerie, Aaron’s mind is ready, it just finished ten minutes ago.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it sitting right here in front of me.”

“Are you sure it’s him? Is everything going to be alright? Did it all go perfectly? What did you see when you processed his mind? Is it all there, all of it?”

He can hear the apprehension in her voice. It’s shaky, and maybe even scared. “Everything is there Valerie, this is it, this is the best we can do in this century, in this world. If this isn’t the real deal, were done. I will walk away and die knowing I put in my best fight.”

She takes a deep breath, knowing the day has finally come and it’s for real. “Don’t put so much pressure on yourself, Marco. We still have his mind saved for later. We can always save ourselves. Can you give me an hour, let's all meet at AMF in an hour?”

“I’ll see you there” As he is hanging up, he can hear her sniffle on the other side.

He hates to hear her in such sadness. She’s as tough as anyone he’s ever known, but this has cut her deeply. Seeing what she loved so much go down in flames as it did has been disheartening. Listening to her on the phone almost made him doubt himself all over again. He forces all of her worries out of his mind and tries to feel excited. After all, they’re about to leap into uncharted territory again. This could be the future of humanity.

He has come so far, but yet, there is so much farther to go. He gets up out of his chair and kicks it, sending it rolling across the floor. He hopes he never has to do any of this again. He feels like a rag that’s been wrung out till it’s completely dry and then torn. The only thing keeping him from falling over right now is all the tension of the whole situation.

He packs the artificial brain and its gel forms into a small Styrofoam box and seals it with tape to keep it protected. He shuts all the lights off and locks the door on his way out of the inconspicuous little white warehouse. He can’t help but start smiling on his way over to his car.

He had a considerable amount of time to look through all of the AMF documents and resources while the brain was being constructed. He found that they don’t even need Paul’s used body anymore, there are three of them already premade, waiting in the stockroom right now. Since he’ll be showing up almost an hour ahead of the others, he’ll go ahead and put the old body back in storage and install Aaron’s brain in one of the nice blanks.

About when he’s finished with Aaron in one of the empty prep booths, Valerie and Evan both walk in together. He was automatically expecting to see Five and Arma with her, but strangely, she didn’t bring them with her this time. Maybe she didn’t want to make any promises to them, in case something goes wrong. This isn’t the first time they’ve ever done this, but she sure makes it feel like it is.

Compared to before, Evan looks to be in much better shape already. He’s even walking on his own. He still has a portable oxygen generator on his belt but doesn’t have that ragged look of being out of breath anymore. Surprisingly, she hugs him and tells him how much she’s missed him, though it’s only been maybe two days since they saw each other at work.

When Valerie notices the brand new blank body in the tilt station, she wrinkles her nose up at it. Even though they’re all used to seeing smooth unshaped faces on new frames, it’s unsettling to see on a friend. She leaves him to finishing the battery installation while she and Evan go over the few pictures of Aaron she’s brought with her.

With the camera equipment and software on Evans's terminal, the two of them can create a full holographic model of Aaron’s face and head. He’s impressed with how well they’ve done with so little. It’s him in every way. They send the three-dimensional representation to a wax printer and it immediately starts developing a negative face mold for them.

Though Evan will still have to create the entire underlying substructure himself, he won’t have to do nearly as much detailing in the end. Though neither of them would ever doubt the quality of Evan’s work, he can still see the concern on her face while she is hovering over him.

Sensing her anxiety, Evan takes her hands in his and closes his eyes for a moment. “Valerie, Marco… I’ll give you two nothing but my absolute best, I promise, but on that note, I would appreciate it if you would give me the space I need for this one.”

They understand and retreat to the AMF lobby. Valerie lays down on one of the sofas and tries her best to fall asleep. For the next two hours, he closes his eyes and listens to her toss and turn on the corporate styled orange leather sofa. Neither of them can relax with so much racing through their minds.

In the finishing bay, Evan lays all of his special tools out on a cart, just the way he likes them, and then rolls them over next to Aaron’s blank. With the overhead crane, he picks the body up by the carry loop on the top of its head and takes it over to the big ring fixture. It still takes him twenty minutes to rig the body uptight, but he’s thankful it’s not a reskinning job like with Arma.

The first thing he does while the frame is hanging in the workstation pit is to peel off the face seal and start modifying Aaron’s bone structure. After changing out a few of the facial muscles and molding new soft structures, he laser scans the bare face. He usually has too much pride to check his work like this, but he promised Valerie that Aaron would look exactly the same as before. As he expected, the scan shows his work matching Aaron’s model almost perfectly. Carefully, he places the skin on Aaron’s face and seals the seams with his spray gun, making them perfectly smooth.

He hates wearing an annoying air supply mask when his quality of work is so pressingly put on the line, but he’s not up to having his lung scarring operated on ever again. With a nice even heavy spray coat, he finishes everything out and adds all the right texturing so that the face will have about the same age to it as before. Figuring that this is what Aaron will look like for the rest of his existence, he only adds enough texturing to make him look the same age as Valerie.

He had never met Aaron himself, but from the two pictures Valerie brought, he can already recognize his new face, even without any paint on it. Confident in having gotten everything as perfectly as he can, he raises the body another couple of feet so that he can do the detail work on his hands and feet. All of the knuckle, palm, and other joint creases take a painstaking amount of effort and finesse. Without any references to go off of, he creates the new features using only his experience and intuition. He bends and checks each joint, making sure all of the creases in the skin are perfect and functional.

Due to working mostly with female models, it takes him a bit more time than he usually remembers to incorporate proper masculinity into his work. He had forgotten how much work there is in making ruggedness. Before finishing up the details on the genitals, he looks around to make sure neither Marco nor Valerie is standing over his shoulder.

As much experience as he’s had with the human figure, he’s still often embarrassed when creating a robot’s artificial manhood. He’s worked with a countless number of male and female nude figure models throughout his career, but he will forever feel quite awkward when having even artificial man-parts in his own hands. It does not help that Aaron’s to-be bulk was sized so shamelessly. Making sure not to half-ass his work, he still hurries up to finish anyway.

Customers have so frequently requested that their orders be intimately functional, such things as genitalia have been incorporated as standard features, even in base models. Customers now actually have to opt-out of such things by request if they want their product to be left unsexed. It just comes with the territory of selling machines in their corner of the market. The most awkward part of it all is knowing that this man is Valerie’s man. He feels protective of her, and yet here he is hand-crafting the thing she may very well lay with.

Evan exhales deeply as he steps a few paces back from the body. While he is taking a small break, Marco comes in through the doors to check how things are turning out. He has become quite curious about the whole process since refurbishing Five-One. Marco looks at his watch and then up at Aaron.

“I didn’t expect you to be almost done already. Everything going alright? Need anything?”

“It’s taken about an hour longer than usual, but I think we’re ready for paint.” He looks over at Marco and notices the smirk on his face, he can no longer hide it.

“Wow! That’s some girth right there. You’re doing her a… solid. Pff ah haha!”

“Go fuck yourself! I have nothing to do with that! Clearly, Paul is the one who spec’d this order!”

“Sorry, sorry, but this is just priceless. And Valerie told me it was impossible to make you blush!”

“Ok, now you’re pushing it!”

Marco tries to not look red in the face himself, so he changes the subject. “Valerie’s finally conked out. I don’t think she’ll be up for at least another hour. You need to take a break? I was gonna order pizza for all of us. What kind you like?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Valerie and I used to put a bunch of jalapenos’ on whatever we got anyway, you alright with that?”

“Hey, you got it.”

In the lobby, the two of them sit quietly while they wait, making sure to not disturb Valerie. Even though it’s way more than enough for the three of them, Marco sets out the two large boxes on the table and opens them up. It only takes about ten seconds for Valerie to wake up to the smell of hot cheesy awesomeness. They can tell, that out of nervousness, she isn’t asking about Aaron, or how far they’ve come.

“Don’t worry, he’s not out there waiting for you. Evan just got done with the skin. He's still got to do the paint.”

“How does he look?”

He and Evan glance at one another for only a fraction of a second, making sure to maintain straight faces. “I think you’ll be… he’s lookin’ good Valerie.”