At last it seemed Rudy's tears had staved off enough for him to look up at Terrence, gazing at the older man in the bed, the pallid color to his face and tired, kind eyes. He managed something like a small smile, but it lasted only a second before conviction gripped him and sobered his expression once more. "You have a lot more going for you than that, sir," he said softly, taking the tension in the air as his cue to leave.
Besides, there was nothing more he needed. Now that Terrence had given him permission to work, Rudy was only wasting time sitting there.
* * *
He'd really taken far too long. Rudy was an efficient man, most of the time--good with his hands, as injured as they were. But he'd taken days of great pains to make sure everything was built properly, at least the core mechanics, because repairs could be made later. Rudy held the lightweight figure draped in his arms, staring down at the artificial sculpted face and clear, but unblinking eyes... conventionally beautiful, objectively, but to Rudy, it just looked dead. A bad omen if there ever was one.
The mainframe was there. Rudy had gutted all of its previous data, anything that might conflict with the introduction of Terrence's memories. Years of work gone, stashed away somewhere in a drawer until Rudy would work up the courage to see if he'd damaged anything in his frantic flight to finish the threadbare necessities for his new plan to work. He nearly jumped in surprise as an odd-looking headpiece nearly slipped off the robot in his arms, gasping as it swung and hit his hip, tethered to a second headpiece already attached to the robot's skull. He stood still, heart beating frightening fast--he knew it was the nature of what he was doing. The duplicity of it all--yes, he asked permission, of course, but... there was something terribly dirty about it. The clock read four in the morning last time Rudy had checked, and Terrence was hopefully long asleep. The brain was at its most lucid when dreaming, anyway.
The floor barely creaked as he pushed through Terrence's doorway. It creaked a second time as he gently bent down to lay the robot against the wall, its head lolling to the side on a mesh throat, concealed by skin that looked far too ethereal to be convincing at all. He checked the headpiece, thin fingers following the wire to the second headpiece lying at the robot's side, and he stretched it as he stood, looking to Terrence. The floor creaked a third time as he carefully, gently attached the headpiece to Terrence's forehead and temples, heart stilling in his chest as he waited with bated breath for the man to wake up...
He did not. Thank goodness. Rudy stepped back, letting out a soft breath, shadows flickering on his face as he looked over Terrence's frail form breathing softly in the bed, at the withered hand laying over the sheets... Rudy reached forward on impulse, hesitated, then barely brushed his fingertips along the tendons in Terrence's hand, something sharp lodging in his throat. No, he couldn't get distracted now. Quick, fast, waste no time. Rudy rushed back to the robot and opened its chest with a few quiet pops, sitting back on his heels--a fourth creak of the floor, and Rudy thought it was a wonder that Terrence was still asleep. Or perhaps everything just sounded amplified in the room, covered only by the heart monitor's beeps and breathing apparatus. Terrence took out a small metal screen, hooked to the robot with countless winding wires, and began flitting his fingers over the touchscreen with a focused look in his eyes.
Direction of flow--set, clear all previously collected data--confirmed, source of information--headpiece_2, receiver of information--headpiece_1, check, check, check. Rudy had to smile to himself; the algorithm seemed to be working close to perfectly. With a rushing surge of hope, Rudy checked a few more things, then promptly hit the large rectangle onscreen that read
BEGIN TRANSFER, and all at once, he felt the breath leave his body as he stared at the new message.
WARNING: THE DESIRED OUTCOME STATED WILL TERMINATE THE SOURCE'S LIFE SUPPORT
DO YOU WISH TO PROCEED? Y / N
Jesus. What was this? Rudy's hand, hovering over the screen, shook with a sudden fit of dread. Had he... really not taken that into account, when programming the thing? Slowly his gaze moved from the bright screen, blinking in the dark of the room to travel up the wires to Terrence's face, the heart monitor suddenly too loud in his ears. It was too late--he couldn't go back and fix this, now. If he wanted it to work, it needed to start now. It needed as much time as physically possible to make the transfer as complete as possible, but...
There's nothing we can do. The doctor's words rang in Rudy's ears, and he felt a chill run down his throat and stomach, filling him with slow-moving ice as he slowly tore his eyes away from Terrence's form to look back at the bright screen, which hurt his eyes now. There were legal issues involved here; besides the obvious emotional barrier, Rudy had no authority to do anything life threatening without Terrence's permission, likely signed in contract... God, why was he even considering
that aspect?! This was murder--this wasn't just a chance of death, this was absolute, definite death. And Rudy was holding it in his hands.
But then again... it was either this, or a slow, decaying death that seemed to claim more and more of the man Rudy idolized and loved each hour. And Rudy had the possible power to delay that, to delay it for as long as Rudy lived, if the robot proved to work. He had the power to bring a dying man back to life, to save his friend and mentor and partner. It seemed as though these dreams of grandeur stretched on forever, for suddenly, Rudy realized that the heart monitor wasn't beeping.
Panic. Rudy slammed a finger onto the
Y, and the machine hummed softly to life, the sensors on the headpieces lighting up with a soft white light. Ah, just a trick of his own thoughts--there it was. The steady beeping, it was back. Maybe a hitch in the system, maybe a hitch in Terrence's heart, or maybe a misconception of the passage of time. Rudy wasn't sure. He wasn't terribly sure of anything, as he stared at the screen, showing nothing more than a spinning circle and a
TRANSFER IN PROCESS displayed plainly across the screen. A death warrant, signed and initialed by Rudy himself. Rudy could feel the blood draining from his face, his head, his hands as the screen flickered between
STABILIZING SUBJECT and
TRANSFER IN PROCESS and
ERROR--DATA CORRUPTION for a split second before a quick
RECOVERING and suddenly, it was all too much.
Rudy swayed, the screen fading to blackness as unconsciousness gripped him, and he fainted.