301: Save Mim

By Orad, Research Engineer, Stra II
80526.11
Concurrent with Heading Down

-=Technology Allocation Control Center: 3 miles beneath the surface of Stra II=-

"That's it. We've done everything we could do. The unit is damaged beyond repair."

The woman called Lind sighed and moved toward a small sonic sink. She activated it and rubbed her hands together beneath the waves, working quickly to remove the grease that coated her hands.

The substance had bonded to her skin as she had tried physically to reach inside of the malfunctioning robot and find some burned out component, some frayed wiring, anything that could account for the fact that the Mechanical Interface Maintenance Bot Mark VIII had ceased to function the way that it was designed to.

"There's got to be something else we can,"

"No, Orad." Lind turned on him angrily. "The time for one more try is over. You of all people should be able to understand why this thing is not working. But you don't."

Orad's eyes flashed anger, and he looked at MIM sadly as the little mechanical sat temporarily powered down in the corner, head hanging, it seemed, in shame.

"When my father created that thing he never intended for it to be the only power allocation bot to run the grid alone for the next century," Orad objected. "There were supposed to be others. It was supposed to have help. So, if our leaders decided that they would simply ignore the warning signs of impending breakdown and continued to run the old system until it failed, fault for our current situation lies with them. Not me. They were shortsighted, and they chose to believe this day would never come. Well, it's come, and we will all suffer for their inaction."

"We will suffer because you can't fix the M8. End of story. If you'd been worthy of taking on the job that you were given by birthright, you'd have been able to head off this problem before things got so bad." Lind snarled back.

*I didn't know the mechanical would become. . .* Orad thought, but he stopped himself.

He couldn't let himself believe, truly, that MIM had somehow, somewhere along the line, become sentient. If he did, how could he possibly do what he was now expected to do? It would be nothing short, in his mind, of committing murder.

"You've got to pull yourself together." Lind chastised. "Things continue to deteriorate on the surface. We are out of time and out of options."

She moved toward a bank of screens and brought up the latest security report from the Medical Center. "The people are suffering withdrawal and soon they will be panicked beyond reason. We have to carry out our orders, and move on. We can't fix the M8, we have to destroy it."

"How are the organic workers settling in? Is there an update?" Orad tried to buy himself a few more moments to think by changing the subject. He and Lind had been sequestered in this small, interior room in the deepest part of the underground network of tunnels that linked the Medical Center to the Central Power Allocation facility for hours, and so by this point had no idea if anything beyond the four walls still existed.

"There are four hundred and ninety two people up there trying to do the work of that one thing," Lind complained, ". . .and doing it badly."

"I thought Starfleet was supposed to be sending an Engineering crew to help. Why aren't things locked down?"

"You know why." Lind turned and headed toward the door.

Indeed, Orad did know why. *Because their hands are bound too tightly, there is no way they'd be allowed into any areas where they could do any real good.*

"Are you going to finish this, or must I? At least you can make yourself useful by disposing of the components and recycling them. I have to go up to the control rooms, and try to see if we can streamline any of the basic power systems so that people can at least get a partial feed restored to their Wires. If we can just get people stabilized with enough data coming in to keep them calm. . ." She shrugged, and sighed. "Hurry up and finish this, then come up to control as well."

Lind locked the door behind her, and Orad slumped down, despair overtaking him as he sank into the chair next to Mim, and regarded the little being.

The mechanical was half gutted already, with various components strewn around and about him. Orad thought back to the day that he'd taken over this job by birthright from his father and finally, to the things his father had said to him as he lay on his deathbed. . .

-=Flashback: Ten Years Ago=-

"Father, please, tell me. Why haven't they been able to construct another mechanical to assist the M8, or supercede it?" Orad asked, as he sat in the dimly lit room beside his father.

Glar was a frail old man now, one whose thick head of once-ebon hair shone like silver as he turned his head away from his only son, refusing to answer.

"Father, I must know. Everyone expects me to fix the mechanical's defects, or replace it with a better model. With several better models. But your schematics, your designs for future bots, they're all flawed."

"Are they." Glar stated flatly, before asking his own question. "Are you so certain?"

"Yes, Father. I've tried to build them. I've tried every last one." Orad was desperate. He knew he had very little time left, and as much as he wished he could use this time to speak of memories of times they'd shared, or whatever people may speak to their parents about in the remaining hours of their lives, Orad did not have any such a well of memories to draw upon even if he had the time. His father's work had been his life, and the only time the two had spent together had been in the lab- means to the end that would assure that Orad would take his father's place one day as was the way of their people.

"You're so brilliant, Father. I don't understand why the designs don't. . ." then something occurred to Orad as the old man's thin, dry lips parted into a satisfied smirk.

"The designs don't work because I didn't want them to work." Glar announced. "Mim was never supposed to be the only one of his kind. But the Resident Overseer wouldn't let me have the resources that I needed to build the fleet of them that was supposed to safeguard our society from the eventual breakdown of the one little robot. But Lenk was more interested in using all of our scientists and engineers to continually work on the Wires, to make the feed more addictive to the people. To give him more control over the minds of the people. His son Lank is even worse as Overseer and continued tying my hands as his father had- until finally all that mattered to anyone was maintaining that control of the people and working poor little Mim to death."

"Why do you call it that? Like it has a name. Father, people think that you're,"

"A crazy old man? Maybe I am. But I'm telling you, son, that little being. . .changed, somewhere along the way. It's not just a machine anymore, and you can't treat it as just a machine. If you do, he won't last your lifetime. He'll burn out, he'll shut down. No being could do what Mim does indefinitely, alone."

"It's a MACHINE!" Orad shouted. "One that our people depend on. You have to help me, you have to tell me what you've left out of the designs so I can make more like it."

"I will never help them make more so they can enslave them the way they've enslaved Mim." Glar sputtered. "I won't help them, and I won't help you."

"You'd take the secrets for our survival to your grave with you?" Orad turned back, and knelt before his father's bed, taking the man's pale, skeletal hand in his own. "You'd damn us all?"

"Our leaders have damned us all," Glar closed his eyes and a tear shimmered between his eyelashes for a long moment before it finally rolled silently down his face. "With their need to control the people more than care for them, and no one can blame me for that."

"They will blame you, and me."

"Then, son, you had better decide if a life on this world is the one you want. Frankly if I were you," Glar advised, "I'd move."

-=End Flashback=-

For a time after his father's death, Orad considered leaving. But in the end he, like the rest of the population, cared more about the Wire and receiving their daily doses of biochemically induced pleasure than about making a life on another world, even if that life would be a better one for not only themselves but their eventual offspring as well.

Even though those brought into the engineering field by birthright were given adjusted implants, which allowed them much more mental control than that possessed by the average citizen- the lure of the drug was just too enticing to break free from.

Now, they would all be caught up in the middle of complete madness on a world forced to give up its drug, in an instant.

Orad thought about the times he had wondered if this creation of his father was something more than wires and relays. Time and again they had wiped its memory to try to keep it in line. Yet in the end, even though the mechanical could now no longer remember with certainty as it once did who its builder was, it insisted stubbornly that there was a Builder.

It always returned to asking everyone it came into contact with, upon first meeting, if they were that Builder.

As Orad looked up at the security report screen once more it flashed, another update coming in.

The text only display read, "Medical Center under siege. All personnel evacuate immediately through tunnels. This is not a drill."

Orad sighed, and he realized what he had to do.

He plugged Mim's missing components back in, and reactivated the little bot. After a moment, Mim's processors whirred to life, and his eyes blinked as his head pivoted toward Orad.
"Are you my Builder?" Mim asked gently.

"I am but a shadow of the man your Builder was, Mim. And I'm so sorry."

Mim started to remember what had happened to him right before he'd last been deactivated, and he began to roll backwards, pressing up against the two walls as they met at the corner behind him. "No! No! Save Mim!" He cried.

Orad glanced at Mim sadly. "Don't worry, little one," he whispered, as he blinked back tears at the thought of what this little machine really was. Mim was his father's legacy.

He began attempting to override the security lockouts in order to locate the Starfleet Engineering team that had been dispatched- and should be somewhere in the building.

"Help Mim? Save Mim?" The mechanical repeated sadly.

"I'm sure as hell going to try."

-=Meanwhile: Temporary Control Center, Level Five=-

Lind stormed into the room and grabbed the first two security officers she could locate. "Go down to the locker and finish off the M8. It has been damaged beyond repair, and I don't trust Orad to do it."

"What if Orad protests?"

Without a moment's pause or hesitation, Lind answered the question.

"Then finish off Orad too."

------------------------------------------

Orad
Research Engineer
Technology Allocation Control Center
Beneath the surface of Stra II