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wherefancytakesme · 4 years

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“Mistakes”

(BOYD gets to spend the afternoon with Gyro, then Mark Beaks shows up and brings on emotions that BOYD has never had to face before.)

The day so far had been one of harmless goings-on and quiet excitement. BOYD went to school with his adoptive brother Doofus Drake, for once not being as much the studious little database he always was in class—he was going to meet with Gyro Gearloose and Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera after school, and it filled him to the brim with joy.

Since the day he’d reunited with his creator, BOYD loved spending time with the scientist, always awaiting a time when he would call the Drakes over the phone and ask to pick their ‘younger’ son up and bring him to the underwater lab. Gyro always said he needed to perform regular checkups and maintenance on the little android, but BOYD was hoping secretly that it was also about spending time together; The doctor was becoming gentler now that everything in the past was behind them.

Regardless, BOYD’s feet were bouncing lightly under his desk with the anticipation of it all the way until the final school-bell rang—any excuse to see Gyro, someone he considered so close, gave his mechanical heart inexplicable delight.

Finally when class had let out for the day, BOYD took Doofus’ hand, smiling, and pulled him gently along.

“Come on, come on, big brother! Dr. Gearloose and Dr. Crackshell-Cabrera are waiting outside!”

Doofus grunted. His parents had strictly told him to be on his nicest behavior in front of Scrooge McDuck’s scientist, especially for his little brother’s sake—and to say nothing at all if he hadn’t anything nice to say—or else not expect any dessert for the next several weeks. He threw a fit, of course, but eventually resigned to not ruin anything for BOYD—or his chance at still being allowed to eat an ice cream float every night—and let BOYD have all the ice cream for himself.

Some part of Doofus’ subconscious didn’t mind the constant company of someone his own age. But all the unpleasantness that buried such feelings from his thoughts and actions that proved Louie Duck right kept the boy from understanding any of that, and so he simply allowed BOYD to pull him along—small as he was, the android could easily overtake his brother—and decided to be pouty but uncharacteristically quiet the rest of the day—though not altogether unhappy.

When the two boys reached the front gate, Gyro and Fenton were waiting at the entrance. The latter grinned and waved a friendly hand. The former smiled a bit more visibly than he’d have liked to when BOYD ran out to him.

“Dr. Gearloose!” BOYD called out, immediately throwing his arms around Gyro’s knees.

The gesture pushed Gyro to hide his previous smile by putting a fist to his mouth and clearing his throat. But his tone wasn’t harsh.

“It’s nice to see you, 2BO—er—BOYD.”

He had no idea how to greet Doofus Drake, however. He groaned with his mouth closed, awkwardly, and looked away, but Doofus had nothing to say either anyway.

“Are we going to the lab right away?” BOYD asked with bright eyes.

“Well I have an errand to run in town first, but it shouldn’t take long.”

Fenton chimed in;

“We could make a fun outing of it! Uh—nothing that would deviate from the plan, of course,” he said drawing back once Gyro side-eyed him, “Just something to do while Dr. Gearloose is busy.”

“Yeah, like find a local landmark to learn about!” BOYD did some drawing back of his own when he noticed his brother pout, but did so more graciously than nervously as compared to Gyro’s assistant. “Or maybe there will be a park nearby!” He smiled more when he noticed his brother’s frown fade a small amount.

“Whatever we do,” interjected Gyro, “Stay close to me. I do not want everyone running all over and taking up too much time.”

BOYD’s sunny smile remained as he put his hands behind his back, determined to be well-behaved.

“Yessir, Dr. Gearloose!”

About twenty minutes of walking had led the group of four to an obscure electronics store. Gyro needed a special kind of copper wire before going back to the lab and his odd specifications were hard to meet. While he spent his time inside, Fenton and the boys went to the adjacent shop to buy ice cream. Gyro had told them not to wander off, so once both kids had a cone of their own, they walked out to wait for the doctor.

It had taken several minutes longer than usual for the store owner to fetch what he needed, but by the time he had his purchase in hand, Gyro pondered over taking another minute or two to browse recreationally for spare parts. However, the thought was suddenly halted by the sound of a piercing shriek from outside.

“BUT I DON’T LIKE PISTACHIO!”

Gyro’s whole body jumped at the sound before he bolted out the door to see what the commotion was.

Oh.

Of course. Doofus Drake was throwing another tantrum, shaking his ice cream cone violently.

“Then why did you ask for it?” Fenton asked, confounded.

Gyro ground his teeth and rubbed his middle and index fingers against his temples. But the eyes he’d at first squinted shut opened back up when he heard the screaming stop at a kind voice.

“It’s okay, big brother. I’ll eat yours and we’ll trade!”

BOYD had a warm little grin on his face, holding out his hand.

“Fine!” snapped the spoiled drake, fuming as he thrust the treat into his brother’s hand. “You wanted to try a new flavor of ice cream anyway!”

This caught Gyro’s attention particularly. That little brat shouldn’t be forcing something on a robot who wasn’t built for consumption. He approached, and took on a less-than-pleasant tone that now commonly became him.

“Ice cream?” the chicken asked, twisting his face, “2B—er, BOYD, doesn’t eat.”

“I don’t need to,” answered BOYD, “I like to! My big brother told me about all the different kinds, and now every time I eat a new one, I add it to my memory. It’s fun!”

There were so many words in there that Gyro had to take a moment to think over. First and foremost, it was still mystifying why someone like BOYD and someone like Doofus Drake would consider eachother brothers—leaving aside that the former was much older than the latter. But he chuckled mentally a bit at the association between ‘memory’ and ‘fun’. The only other boy he knew who thought like that was Huey Duck, and it was nice that he and the android had found someone like the other. It felt nice too that such a thought could soften him back up again and make his migraine go away.

But Gyro wondered what eating must really be like for BOYD—he didn’t remember programming BOYD specifically to eat, but on a technical level, he supposed it was possible, given the way he’d built him.

“Can you taste it at all?” he said looking down at BOYD now, curious at the answer.

“Yeah! It was actually only recently I first had ice cream. I didn’t know I could taste anything until then, but it seemed to register, and I really liked it! So when I got home, I asked about it, and now I get to have it every day!”

Gyro didn’t realize how much he’d been missing out on the little boy’s life. Even the very first tests he’d run on him didn’t experiment with things like taste, or smell. Body temperature, vision, maybe—but those were comparable to how a computer would run. Gyro had made BOYD with sentient, behavioral programming, but he supposed he never put any of it into practice, in a real-world scenario. Part of that may have been Dr. Akita’s fault, but… Well, Gyro didn’t want to make excuses for what he did and didn’t do back then.

It was strange—and a little sad; BOYD went twenty whole years unaware of whether or not he lacked the sensation of taste, and Gyro wasn’t there when he finally tried. Gyro knew every single robotic modification BOYD had—from the USB drives in his fingertips, to the blasters throughout his body—he’d put every one of them to the test, but how often did he actually take the child outside the old laboratory? Did the small creature have any memory of Tokyolk before his core was overridden?

Quickly Gyro shook any dwelling thoughts from his mind. No matter. He was making up for it now.

At least he hoped so.

All of a sudden, Gyro felt someone bump against his side, sending him back into the conscious world with a jolt. He made a startled squeak, which embarrassed—and therefore slightly angered him.

“Can’t you watch where you’re—Oh.”

The scientist wrinkled his face with annoyance when he turned and saw a slightly younger man on a self-balancing scooter.

“It’s you.”

There was no mistaking it. Sleek cardigan, large overconfident eyebrows, phone in hand… It was Mark Beaks.

Mark Beaks blinked when addressed. He had no doubt everyone knew who he was, but the lanky chicken facing him seemed to be acting like he’d met him before.

“Oh heeeeey… Uh, do I know you? Probably, right? You see so many faces every day when you’re this famous, they kinda all just blend in, y’know?”

Gyro looked up at Beaks with half-lidded eyes.

“Dr. Gyro Gearloose? Scientist of Scrooge McDuck? You’ve stolen and modified my tech about four different times?”

Beaks looked up and narrowed his eyes, stumped.

Gyro sniffed. Mark Beaks had pointed him out in public several times; This was quite obviously being done to wind him up. “Perhaps he looks familiar to you?” he said, throwing a hand out to gesture at BOYD.

“Ohh yeah! You built that guy? No wonder he went all terminator on me!”

Again Gyro responded sarcastically, with more of a scoff this time.

“That is not my fault. Likely you reprogrammed his hard-drive and rewrote his memories so many times, one simple question overwhelmed him to the point that he couldn’t even tell a person from a flyswatter.”

“Ugh, whatever.” Beaks said, waving his hand, “If you make faulty robots and don’t wanna keep the improvements I put in there, that’s on you. Kid was pretty popular online though. I mean, come on!”

Mark Beaks pointed back and forth between himself and BOYD with both of his index fingers.

“He looks just like me!”

When Beaks acknowledged the android a few feet in front, suddenly two yellow eyes stared back. A little gasp emitted from the little black beak that was previously opened to eat ice cream. BOYD hadn’t seen his older doppelganger since the day he met Doofus Drake. His whole face suddenly beamed with cheeriness at a familiar face.

“Da—”

He bit off the word ‘Daddy’. That was a memory overwrite, he knew now. Still, he was happy.

“Mr. Beaks!”

BOYD instantly ran over to the addressee to jump up and hug him. Beaks just as instantly wheeled back with his scooter board, holding his palms up.

“Woah-ho-hooooh, don’t like touching, remember? What was the number one rule?”

Oh. Right. Remembering that made BOYD’s smile fade.

“No hugs?”

“Exactly, see? You’ve still got some of the good ol’ Beaks programming clunking around in there somewhere!”

Gyro rolled his eyes at a statement like that, but for BOYD it started to set a certain train of thought in motion; Mark Beaks had programmed him to be like his son. At the time, he had felt like it, not simply had it wired into his head, but… now that he thought about the standoffish way the young adult was acting, was that all he was to him? Like a son?

That couldn’t be true, could it?

“Um, Mr. Beaks?” BOYD said, voice starting to grow more shy, “I know things are different now—the two of us living separate lives and everything—but even so, would it be okay if I still spent time with you once in a while?”

Beaks sucked his teeth at BOYD.

“Ooh, no can do, sport. See, if we’re not family, there’s kinda no point anymore. Nobody looks at pics of me just hanging with some rando kid, y’know? Outside that, I’m like super busy all the time, sooo…”

“But… Didn’t you have fun with me?”

“Sure, I did all kinds of awesome stuff in a whole day! Took lots of great selfies!”

BOYD faced the ground at that response, trying to process it. All the words were simple, but slowly, they triggered the most complex of memories… ______________________________

The first memory he had after the incident in Tokyolk was the faint recognition of someone’s voice in the garbage dump he’d evidently wound up in. He didn’t know what was going on, and had no recollection of where he came from, how he worked, or hardly even who he was. All he could bring to mind was an assigned identification number—2BO—and a gut feeling that he was a definitely real boy.

But when the voice came closer, BOYD felt his OS booting up again—his processor bringing things back online. What life he may or may not have had before, he knew not. He only understood that there was reason to be up and running now—alive. These feelings hadn’t manifested into thoughts at first—and then he heard the moving figure above him make a noise. When BOYD parroted back the mimicry of lasers, it was purely instinctual—technological sounds, technological creature. But it made someone notice him. It made someone marvel at him. It made someone give him a real name. It made someone want to take him home. That someone was Mark Beaks.

Even if he had only programmed into him the title of ‘father’, the wealthy parrot was the first person he knew to give him somewhere to live. With or without his original memories, BOYD had never really had an actual home before. He’d never had anyone so willingly look after him like a normal kid—like their kid. In many ways, both literal and figurative, Mark Beaks was the first person to be a parent to BOYD. Even lacking the memory of Akita’s cruelty and Gyro’s hesitance, when BOYD was around Mark Beaks, he felt like someone’s son with no hint of abandonment for the first time in his life.

Yet some underlying doubt lie buried, deep down in one of the many corners of his mind that BOYD didn’t have access to—only this one wasn’t blocked by another person’s override. Anytime he called out ‘Daddy’, Beaks didn’t always turn around right away. He might look confusedly around the room, or take a second or two to respond. And even then, he didn’t seem to say things other than ‘Hey you’, or ‘Need something?’—they were happy, but one-sided. BOYD didn’t think about that then. He was just glad to have family, and to have anything a kid could ask for.

But that was another thing that suddenly made BOYD think. The two days he’d spent with his new father were the best of his whole life; He spent time at an office filled with apparatuses to play on, candy to eat, and places to nap everywhere—even if he didn’t need to nap. Then for the rest of the day, the two Greys went all over Duckburg having fun—eating, playing, exploring… And still, through everything, there didn’t seem to be a connection. When BOYD and Beaks spent time at a show, flew kites, or wore novelty hats, the latter was always taking pictures with the former in them, but seemingly never with him. BOYD was too distracted by the thrill of spending time with someone he considered family to notice before, but now that Beaks worded it the way he did, only mentioning the fun he himself had that day, the signs were becoming obvious. He never once touched him—never once looked at him when he took those selfies—BOYD might as well have been a part of the background.

Come to think of it, did Mark Beaks ever touch BOYD? His biggest aversion, which he’d made clear several times, was touching, after all; The hopes of the first hug BOYD thought he’d ever had at the time were straightaway brushed off. Maybe once or twice, when he needed to be kept from getting wet or from going haywire… But otherwise, the man hardly paid physical attention to him. He didn’t want to feed into the worry that was always secretly there, but the recollection of everything made it impossible now. It hurt BOYD so badly to consider that he was only there to serve a purpose—as he had been his whole life—after all. He couldn’t remember Beaks saying his name, he couldn’t remember Beaks saying something gentle to him… Sometimes if he didn’t act the part he was made to, Beaks would scold him. He tried to avoid calling to mind that once, Beaks struggled to even remember the familial title under which BOYD was programmed.

“Yeah, I love this… What was it again? Uhh, uh, son!”

Oh no.

Mark Beaks never even said the words, ‘I love you’.

But no. No, it couldn’t be true that he didn’t at least care about BOYD, it just couldn’t. It was painful all the same, though, no matter how trusting and unassuming a child BOYD was.

He had to know. He wanted just a little word of assurance that he was wrong, that it was all in his head, that it was just worry that came with twenty years of feeling unloved. Even if Mark Beaks saw him as means for attention first, surely there was some sort of fatherly instinct left over from caring for someone made to be for all concerned his family.

BOYD was feeling some sort of physical discomfort he couldn’t pinpoint when he made his next inquiry, as if he was swallowing something down.

“Mr. Beaks,” he questioned, blue irises still fixed on the ground and fingers toying with one another, “Do you…”

He swallowed physically this time.

“Do you love me…?”

Mark Beaks’ face froze, and before answering made a noise somewhere between the word ‘I’, and an ‘Uh’.

“Kid, what kind of question is that? I don’t do the whole affection thing, okay? Much less with someone who’s not even in my entourage anymore.”

Oh, that hurt. That hurt far too much. Normally with Dr. Akita’s overriding, emotional triggers like this would have BOYD glitching. But that wasn’t there anymore. He was open to feel whatever a boy would feel any time he wanted now, without malfunctions and without something to block his true childlike wiring—too open, perhaps, because now instead of his mind going blank over spiritual pain, his mind would take in every single thought that set him off, and fester. What Beaks said to him now was festering. It made him feel vulnerable. Even if it didn’t hurt or scare him as much as when Gyro told him he was going to shut him down for good, or when Gyro constantly put him down, there was nothing to keep BOYD from blacking out afterward anymore. The feelings over Mark Beaks’ statement were flooding all throughout him.

“But…” BOYD persisted still, wanting some sort of kindness—at least for a fresh start. “Couldn’t we at least be on friendly terms? Isn’t there anything you like about me?”

“Aw come on, little man, it’s not like I was letting you get close to begin with. You’ve got other rich people and tech geeks to be with now. So you don’t need me and I don’t need you.” The man crossed his arms.

If any justice could be done, it might be stated here that the biggest reason Mark Beaks was beginning to act more and more bitter with the small child was out of a sour-grapes mentality. Visible weakness wasn’t characteristic of the young trend-chaser, but in a situation like this, where something he genuinely found impressive and thought he’d made his own had been lost to him, and had been left in the hands of someone else he barely knew—knowing that a technological wonder like BOYD was something he could no longer have—Beaks was annoyed, and he would never dare let it show through. Instead he increased his shallowness ten-fold.

Poor little BOYD’s eyes went wide, wanting so terribly not to believe what he was being told, wanting so desperately not to be outright rejected by someone he’d let himself previously grow so attached to. He looked into Beaks’ black eyes, searching for some kind of reassurance in spite of only hearing cruelty. He wanted so much to hear something that would make the building pain he’d never understood before shrink down.

“But,” he said, voice more quiet and in disbelief than he could ever remember expressing, “You gave me a name. You took me home with you. I was like your family.”

Mark Beaks rolled his eyes back, looking only more annoyed that the little creature almost forced him into guilt with such words.

“No way, kid. I just scooped you out of the trash because I thought I could make something out of you. But four-eyes over there took out all the mods I made to begin with—the new voice I gave you isn’t even there anymore. Hate to say it, but without any of that, you don’t mean anything to me.”

He shrugged his shoulders, talking for a minute more so to himself than anyone, but nonetheless just as aloud as before.

“Guess all the time I put into you was a waste. ‘Least with everything else, I got some money or permanent attention out of it.” Beaks blew air out through his nostrils almost like a laugh when he thought about it. “Jeez, kid, you were my worst investment.”

BOYD didn’t know what the feeling was, but those awful words broke something within him. His face tensed up. The tightness in his chest started to swell. All that desperation to disprove his first proper parent didn’t actually care about him, all that pain welling up inside him the more said person shot down attempt after attempt for requited affection… And now he’d dealt him a blow like that? Mark Beaks had thoroughly destroyed his spirit—he might as well have slapped him in the face. And incidentally, his face started to burn. BOYD had no idea what this meant, but the reaction was involuntary. It hurt so much, he couldn’t understand. The heat concentrated in his eyes. His nose and mouth trembled as he faced his former caretaker. A warm, salty liquid began slowly to fill his eyes and then roll down his cheeks.

BOYD was crying. ______________________________

All the time Beaks had been talking, Gyro and Fenton had been narrowing their eyes in anger and darting them back and forth between the two parrots facing one another, the taller one saying nastier and nastier things to the smaller one. Neither Fenton nor Gyro knew quite what to say or do, or how to intervene—for Fenton in particular because he also had to keep an eye on Doofus Drake, who any second could stop being content licking the inside of his ice cream cone and go ballistic again. It irritated him that he had to keep his mind on such a small matter when clearly there were bigger fish to fry at the moment—and also a little bit that BOYD’s adoptive brother didn’t seem to be noticing how much he was hurting.

Gyro wanted to speak up at some point, but couldn’t bring any words into his head.

And then out of the blue, when Mark Beaks had finally pushed innocent BOYD to a breaking point, the tiny thing cried. He cried.

Gyro’s heart stopped dead in its figurative tracks.

His eyes went wide and dropped their gaze to the ground. This was something he had no idea was physically possible. An invention of his had been, through instinct alone, pushed to actually cry. He didn’t understand. He didn’t specifically write that sort of thing into BOYD’s coding when he made him—certainly Akita didn��t put that in—so then what? BOYD was a definitely real boy, but, to this extent? Gyro wanted to react, to do something for the boy, to get angry at Beaks, but everything failed him. He was stock still, frozen with a horrible blend of shock and concern.

Meanwhile, BOYD continued to stare up at Beaks as tears stained his face, disbelief and utter heartache consuming everything from the waist up.

The first reaction was when Doofus Drake turned and took notice of what he had been sure was a robot his parents adopted, somehow leaking sadness out of his eyes. The Drake boy physically reeled back, socially perturbed.

“Agh, he’s broken!” he yelled, unable to understand, “Do something and fix it!”

Fenton reacted second, clenching his hands into fists, intent on indeed doing something to ‘fix it’, but not the way Doofus imagined. He held back solely on the basis that Gyro was going to say something.

But Beaks was the immediate one to react next.

“Yikes, buddy,” he said to BOYD, backing up uncomfortably. He didn’t mean to make anyone cry, but then again, he didn’t think BOYD could feel anything that real. “It’s not my fault a lack of Beaks tech makes you basically worthless.”

Where Gyro normally would have gotten angry, this time Fenton stood in—he saw that the doctor was too dumbstruck to do so for now. But Fenton was certain both of them were equally as angry.

“What on earth are you thinking saying that to his face,” he snapped, “He’s a kid!”

Mark Beaks shrugged, as if his next reply was a matter of fact.

“Well I mean yeah, but like, not a real one…”

Each adult’s face in present company sneered at Beaks. That was the final straw. With that, Gyro Gearloose was finally able to pull himself out of his stunned state and draw up the emotion to straighten his back and snatch BOYD’s hand, dragging him away. Whatever he was thinking or wasn’t able to think at the moment didn’t matter. This child wasn’t going to be tortured by being here any longer.

“Cabrera, you take Doofus Drake home and get rid of this…” He struggled to find the words; “this, while I take BOYD back to the lab.”

Fenton nodded, determined, as Gyro stormed off, leaving Beaks to be thoroughly dealt with. ______________________________

The walk back to the underwater lab wasn’t a long one, but when Gyro wasn’t seething mad, he would look down at BOYD and notice a look on the boy’s face not dissimilar to his own from earlier—it contained surprise, the fearful kind, as if he didn’t know he could shed tears either. He didn’t look up at his creator, even though he followed the aggressive tug of his arm compliantly, and he didn’t try to wipe at his face. He seemed, again, to be having the same sort of shock that tried to question what in the world was happening to him.

When the two finally did make it inside, Gyro relinquished his tight grip on BOYD’s hand, picked him up by the waist, and sat him down on his center loft work desk.

“BOYD,” he said directly, but not ungently, “Keep your face still for a moment, okay?”

Gyro cupped the little creature’s face in his hand, taking a moment to peer into the huge ovate orbs that were wet as ever. There was nothing physically wrong with them… Nothing functionally wrong with them… Lightly touching the substance that had wavered within them didn’t seem to prove this was some sort of fluid leak. As far as Gyro could tell, these were tears, plain as plain.

So then how was that possible? It wasn’t as if the scientist had actually sat down and built a mechanical version of every single organic function an ordinary person had when constructing BOYD—he and Akita wanted a defense drone—but he knew the little one had an approximation of a heart, and bones, and lungs, and other such things; He was an android, which meant he was deliberately supposed to resemble other people in addition to all the access ports and ribbon wire. Still. Things like tear ducts, taste buds, the need to sleep? Gyro didn’t physically install those things into him. Now a possibility occurred to him. He decided to address BOYD again.

“Can you tell me… Can you tell me everything you’ve been feeling since you talked to Mark Beaks? I know it might be hard, but I need you to try for me.”

BOYD felt Gyro place both hands on one of his. It was the first time the doctor had engaged him like that, and it brought on a warm confusion in spite of the pain he still felt at his core. BOYD’s teary eyes were trained on the floor when he started to analyze what kind of things that pain entailed.

“I’ve… been feeling…” he began, voice thin and shaky, “Sad… and overwhelmed… and afraid… and alone, and… and confused… Before, when I had programming issues, I would start to malfunction anytime something hurt me. But now instead of glitches coming on that I can’t control, it’s more like…”

BOYD’s whole body started to shiver. “It’s more like something my heart can’t control, I guess? Not literally, but, I…”

His vision grew blurry and his voice shakier than ever. “I don’t have anything holding me back from losing emotional control, and I don’t understand. What Mr. Beaks said really hurt, but… I’ve been told things that made me lonely and sad before. I don’t know why I’m only reacting this way now.”

BOYD shut his eyes, rubbing at them as he made a little whimper. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gearloose. I know that doesn’t help. The only other thing I know when I think about all this is that it scares me.”

Gyro felt choked up. He wanted to react beyond keeping his hands palmed over the one BOYD wasn’t wiping his own face with, but twenty years of distrust and cynicism had clouded his ability to be as kind as he used to. But that answer actually helped Gyro a lot. Before, he remembered BOYD saying something about eating—he didn’t need to, but he liked to—that he wondered whether or not he was able to taste, but it ‘seemed to register’. Gyro then supposed while he didn’t build BOYD to eat, it wasn’t impossible given the way he was made; He likely found some sort of place in his structure to double as a stomach, being that he was basically the same as any other boy.

This was what made it click in Gyro’s brain. He had programmed BOYD, for all intents and purposes, to be a living child. Even if the actual hardware wasn’t there, even if Gyro hadn’t thought of specifics when creating… Akita called it ‘real boy programming’—there were things within BOYD that could adapt, and apparently had adapted, themselves to become a part of his sentient reactions and behavior—there were things inside him that manifested because at the end of the day, BOYD was… well, BOYD was a boy.

BOYD wasn’t crying because he was built for it. He was crying because all boys were built for it.

Oh god. A realization like that sent a heavy weight into Gyro’s chest. This wasn’t just some invention that was child-like he’d made, as he initially thought two decades ago. He had brought a life into the world.

He was responsible for every bad thing that life would ever face, because he was the one responsible for ever having made something that could feel, could want, could hurt. Why hadn’t he once considered that when wiring sentience into a body? Gyro felt sick to his stomach.

Yet here was BOYD sitting on a desk, afraid because he wasn’t ever told what would happen if he was sad enough—as if crying was normal, but not for him.

“Dr. Gearloose…?” The timid squeaks in BOYD’s broken voice coupled with glumness on every part of his face made Gyro feel pain in every inch of his body. “Is there something wrong with me?”

Shocked as he was still, an automatic reaction came on that brought Gyro to dry the small creature’s eyes. This reaction, too, shocked him.

“No—no,” he answered nonetheless, just as reactionary.

“Really?”

The nervousness in that inquiry pushed Gyro on. What he was grappling with wasn’t important. There was a child in front of him, needing to be consoled. And while he normally was awkward with children—with people in general, really—Gyro knew about BOYD at least from a technical aspect. He wasn’t a medical doctor, but he did have a doctorate in mechanical engineering. He could work from there—he knew hardly anything about children from a biological standpoint, anyway. In a way, BOYD being an android worked to his advantage here. Gyro sobered up mentally and placed both hands on the little one’s shoulders.

“Yes,” he replied, surprised with himself that he was able to sound so matter-of-fact so quickly. He tried as hard as he could to sound gentle too. “Besides your internal structure, you are otherwise indistinguishable from organic life. You have thoughts and feelings, wants and needs. It’s inherent for you to be sad just as any normal boy would—because that’s what you are.”

BOYD looked back at the ground for a moment, then up at Gyro again, putting his tiny hand over the fold of the man’s thin elbow. There was something he wanted to know—there was still pain in his chest that was building up beyond his control.

“Then…” he asked with teary, pleading eyes, “Can I cry a little more?”

Gyro wished that he knew just what to say—his heart ached so much to hear such a little boy ask for permission to feel—but he simply gave a pitying, guilty, yet mostly obligatory, “Yes.”

That one word of acceptance sent BOYD over the edge. A little hiccup escaped him, and what had previously been only silent tears that fell on their own turned into a full-on fit. BOYD covered his face and wept.

Gyro tried and failed to swallow the lump in his throat when he saw BOYD truly cry for the first time. But in under a minute, his creation said something that brought him to accommodate without a single thought.

“Dr. Gearloose? I know you said back in Tokyolk that hugging was just for that day, but—”

BOYD was interrupted when Gyro immediately drew him in with a one-armed hug, bringing him close and holding him tight. BOYD in turn drew himself closer to his creator, no longer holding back.

BOYD’s little cries then were soft and whining, innocent and unhinged in the way that became any child. Any time he needed to sniff or dry his eyes, he buried his face into Gyro’s chest, and sunk his tiny fingers deep into his vest. The length in each wail that came on now and again reflected the fact that BOYD had never cried before, and that he was discovering in the moment just how much he needed to all this time.

Poor BOYD, Gyro thought, barely ever allowed to simply hug anyone before. He was the sweetest living creature Gyro had ever known—always smiling so jubilantly and talking politely to everyone and everything—and yet so many people met him only with malice? That was far too unfair.

Oh.

But then, that was exactly what he’d done, wasn’t it? He’d so readily assumed when Inspector Tezuka brought BOYD down that he’d created something evil—he’d thought the evidence was everywhere, quite literally. But couldn’t it have been just as easy to think that someone like Dr. Akita who’d turned out to be a known criminal could have been responsible? Couldn’t Gyro have at least considered for a second that it wasn’t BOYD’s fault and defended him more? But he hadn’t. Instead he’d let his young mind believe everything his former mentor drilled into his head; His inventions were weapons, plain and simple, and nothing would change the fact that that would be a part of him the rest of his life—that he would always know somewhere in the back of his mind that he was just a big screw-up. And Gyro had taken that out on BOYD. He’d turned his anger and fear over himself and projected it into anger and fear over his first real invention. He’d defended inventions like Lil’ Bulb to the last ditch—even when the evidence they were turning evil was just as seemingly apparent, if not more so. Even they weren’t referred to as failures. All that bitter sarcasm and unkindness that became a part of who he was had all been based on nothing. When they’d reunited, he lashed out at BOYD over and over again, scornful whenever he even looked at him, refusing to call him anything other than an ‘it’, saying he was dangerous to his very core, saying he didn’t have feelings—even when the sadness and frightened tentative motions in his expression and body were clear as day—he even said straight to BOYD’s face that he was going to ‘fix’ his malfunctions by essentially flat-out killing him.

Gyro was furious when Mark Beaks made BOYD cry. But the first person to ever treat him inhumanely, was Gyro himself. It made him feel so unbearably guilty he almost couldn’t breathe. No matter what his eyes would look like anytime Akita’s programming kicked in—those things weren’t even there anymore. Anytime Gyro thought back, those big eyes were always so full of light—light of happiness, of sadness, of kindness, of intelligence, of innocence. How could he have ever looked at eyes like that—eyes that were capable of producing tears—and thought BOYD was evil?

Even if the child wouldn’t say so, Gyro knew there must still exist an ache within him over being rejected by the person that gave him life. He owed it to him to make it known just how sorry he was for it—even if the words kept getting jammed in the middle of his throat.

“BOYD,” he faltered, though it was now becoming easier to call him by his real name, “I need to apologize for the way I treated you back then. I know Mark Beaks hurt you when he told you that you weren’t worth his time. But the awful things I’ve said to you… they’re no different.”

BOYD calmed himself down a little to be able to speak. He didn’t face Gyro when he answered, but it wasn’t out of unacceptance—his answer was simply an automatic one.

“It’s okay…”

Gyro let go of BOYD for a moment to stare at him gravely in the face.

“No. It’s not okay.”

Gyro couldn’t remember when he’d talked so seriously before. He’d talked sternly—talked angrily—shouted several times… But as far as he knew, nothing compelled him to speak so straightforward and strict and deadpan as this in his life. He wasn’t going to let anyone make excuses for him ever again—not BOYD, and most certainly not himself.

“I said I’ve spent my whole life trying to live down my first invention being evil. But you were never made evil. I made you out to be evil. And now I’m going to spend the rest of my life living down ever having damaged you like that.”

Gyro found himself astonished that he was able to say what he did next, but nonetheless let it be said; BOYD needed to hear exactly what he was deserving of.

“And I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to do right by you. Because after everything that’s happened, I am so proud that a boy like you does right by me.”

In spite of BOYD’s constant shivering and whimpering, he was able to smile comfortingly just for a moment, nestling his head further into Gyro’s scrawny arms.

“I of all people know what it’s like to be new to Duckburg and down on your luck with nothing—with nobody. But I was fortunate. I met Scrooge McDuck and he gave me a place to work, and to make my way up the ladder. He was the only one to give me a second chance—to trust me.”

Gyro sighed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do the same for you—as if I didn’t learn. How you stayed the same as I built you this whole time is beyond me. I’m nothing like you.”

“That’s… That’s not true,” BOYD sniffed, rubbing his eyes again, “If I make you as proud as you say, then some of that had to come from you—where else would I get it from? The only other person around me then was Dr. Akita, and then I spent twenty years asleep in Duckburg. I’m like this because you made me. And if I’m still like this, that part of you has to still be in you too—doesn’t it?”

Gyro couldn’t respond to something so kind. He couldn’t. Gyro didn’t deserve merit like that. Instead, he turned to another question that he’d been thinking of as BOYD stayed settled under his arm—something more technical, but still in reference to the android’s feelings and his sentience.

“When you shiver…” he asked with difficulty, “Is it because you’re cold? And if you overheat, do you feel feverish?”

“I do feel sort of sick when something overheats inside me… At home, it’s treated like I have a cold, which usually helps. But… when I’m cold, I operate at peak efficiency, so that’s never uncomfortable.”

BOYD’s voice was still full of quiet hiccups and characterized by the hurt within him.

“I guess I’m shivering because of how sad I feel. There are a lot of things I’m scared of—and things I’m so glad of, they hurt—but mostly, I just keep thinking back to what Mr. Beaks said. He brings up this little voice in my head that tells me people don’t want me. Like I’m making it hard for them.”

Gyro surprised himself again by stroking the back of BOYD’s head lightly. Nevertheless, he responded with defense and firmness in his tone.

“You should make it hard for people like that to want you. If you’re a waste of energy to someone like Mark Beaks, then good. The more you keep being yourself, the less they’ll stick around to hurt you.”

BOYD looked up at Gyro once more with his wet, shining eyes.

“But you won’t do that if I’m myself around you, right?”

That question pulled Gyro into a riptide of guilt so strong that it almost drove him to cry. But he squeezed his eyes shut, fighting down the urge for BOYD’s sake—this was about him. He made it clear to himself he’d never let his little creation down again when he hugged him in Tokyolk—and now he was going to make it clear to BOYD, say it out loud to his face so there was never any doubt again. Gyro rested the hand he had on BOYD’s head, held him just a tad closer with his arm, and said,

“I’m only saying this once; There is nothing you could do in front of me that wouldn’t make me want you. Ever. You can come to me for whatever you need. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gyro watched as that sentence prompted tear after tear to fall down BOYD’s heated face, nearly every part of his insides nagging uncontrollably at him when the little creature encircled his puny waist with his arms.

“I’m so glad!”

The sobs that BOYD let loose figuratively jabbed the scientist in the gut as he thought of the fact that were it not for his sheer irresponsibility, the poor little thing would never have had to be born into a world that presented such harsh treatment.

Still, BOYD wanted to cry. Didn’t the need to cry come from getting to let go—to feel better—to be alive?

Gyro thought as he instinctively continued to stroke the small head under him with his thumb. If he had brought a life into the world that was going to have bad moments, that meant that the same life was going to have happy moments too, didn’t it? Well—he already had! BOYD might as well have been built as a bluebird. Gyro should be glad BOYD was finally allowed to have this kind of release. It meant he could finally, truly, feel like the definitely real boy he was. The pain of fault and responsibility still wracked Gyro—he figured it always might—but at this point, he was relieved the poor thing he held close in the underwater lab wasn’t going to be mistreated any longer—not if he could stand to help it. ______________________________

BOYD sat in Gyro’s lap, beginning to feel better as he allowed himself to let everything out in the embrace of someone close to him. He could cry as much as he needed around Gyro. And he was going to take that allowance for all it was worth.

Part of his crying now came from the warmth he felt knowing that the old Gyro he thought he’d lost was still in there somewhere—that he hadn’t gone after all—and that even though he’d through no fault of his own gotten it lost, he had brought its return as well. That restored a lot more of BOYD’s self-worth than he fully realized.

BOYD was so grateful—so, so grateful to have that Gyro here again. He didn’t understand why at first it hurt so much to be called an ‘it’ by his creator—he didn’t remember Gyro was his creator at the time—but to think that someone was afraid of him and that someone hated him just for being himself stung so badly. He didn’t cry then—he didn’t know he could. But he cried now, over the cutting things Mark Beaks said, over Gyro’s hand at his back, over anything he could think of that needed crying over—mostly however over the knowledge by now that Gyro didn’t see him as nothing more than a destructive machine—as ‘evil down to his core’ any longer. He could tell that even if Gyro didn’t say it, he loved him; He risked his own life just to hold him in his arms, to save him and others from himself. Now BOYD really did have someone who loved him the way a father would a son. He could hug Gyro if he wanted—as many times as he felt like it—and never be brushed off. That thought brought such relief to him, his processor couldn’t take it all in.

But he didn’t tell Gyro any of this; He noticed all those looks on his face—they gave away just how terrible he felt over not being able to do as much as he wanted for him right away. So he kept any more words from leaving his mouth in order not to burden his guardian with any more guilt. BOYD simply let himself release all the emotions he could which he didn’t know he had before, as if he were wringing himself out—and as such, began soaking up all the comfort he was being given like a dry and thirsty sponge.

BOYD learned some wonderful things that day as he clung so strongly to Dr. Gearloose in that lab—much as it hurt to tremble violently, and bleed out feelings until one’s eyes burned, and let out enough raw noise fit to make one’s throat sore. He learned that being allowed to feel so sad was rewarding, and cleansing. He learned that tears were something he could produce no matter what he felt. And he learned that everyone in the world would make mistakes, no matter what or who they were, but that it was never too late to grow from them.

~ Holy shoot, wow, this is the first serious fic I’ve ever posted on here before.

I really wanted to share it, because it took so long to write—although I didn’t think it would turn out so long… 8k words! It’s the lengthiest thing I’ve ever written.

Anyway, this is a story that is very dear to my heart, not only because I put the most into it out of anything, but because studying Gyro Gearloose as a character and loving his dynamic with BOYD has been one of the most amazing things to think of through the hiatus that came after Astro BOYD.

I always loved BOYD, of course, but once I started seeing all the art and fanfics that others had started doing out of the emotions that came with his and Gyro’s backstory, I got swept up in it too, and wanted desperately to get out all those feelings into one story.

The idea came from the concept of whether or not BOYD can cry. We’ve never really seen him do it before, and it’d probably be hard because he’s normally so happy—but I kept wondering if he, as an android, even could. So it hit me; What if BOYD could cry, but Gyro wasn’t aware of it? What if even BOYD wasn’t aware of it? I kept playing with what would possibly make him cry, because even when Gyro was threatening to shut him down or was calling him ‘it’, BOYD only frowned a little. Suddenly I got the nasty idea of Mark Beaks showing up and telling him he never wants to see him again, and it built from there—I started also thinking that maybe what brings BOYD to cry is just a long enough buildup of pain, and maybe he couldn’t feel as much because Akita’s meddling with him had gotten in the way before.

On a sidenote, Mark Beaks was pretty hard to write at first; I had to make sure his confidence was switched on all the time or he’d come off a little out of character. But much as this is about Gyro & BOYD, Beaks being awful is so deliciously fun to write. I think it’s because he makes you love whoever he’s being mean to even more.

Anyway, after I’d written that part out, I spent a lot more time than I initially thought I would focusing on how all this would make Gyro feel—that is, how much guilt his responsibility would bring on. I’m really desperate to see for myself how they interact in canon from now on, but I always imagine that Gyro’s feelings which are most associated with being a father are of guilt; They make him protective of BOYD, they make him sensitive to BOYD, and they might drive him to treat BOYD—again, be more like a father. Pretty much all Gyro’s niceness comes from wanting a do-over.

I never post my serious writing publicly—mostly because I’m really tentative and shy about showing my literary ‘skills’ and the kinds of raw emotion I spill out in words sometimes—but this fic slowly became something I wanted really badly to share with the DT fandom, as a thing that could both be a way to show my own interpretation and thoughts of Gyro and BOYD, and could maybe even be liked by people as much as it is by me.

I know a good few episodes have aired since Astro BOYD did, and that it’s been a long while since the episode has been talked about, but I’ve only now been brave enough to decide to put this story out there for all to see.

I really hope you enjoyed it.

(Incidentally, I wanted to be sure to post it before Let’s Get Dangerous! airs, because I know this fic would get swallowed up by all the emotions to be had from that episode… ^^; )

#boyd #gyro gearloose #astro boyd #ducktales 2017 #dt17 #mark beaks #fenton crackshell cabrera #doofus drake #oh boy here I go writing again #is my new tag for this predictably #not woy

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bluemoon-writer · 5 years

Text

Childhood Friends AU: Max and Markov (Marxkov)

Part 1- In which Max ‘makes’ a friend

(2.6k words)

Masterlist Here

A/N: I got a bit carried away while writing and this became less of a list of bubbly making headcanons and more of a tragic origin story, so it’s a little different from the Marikim headcanons, so let me know what you guys think.

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-Max’s mother, Claudie, gets pregnant with him at age 18

-he was an accidental pregnancy

- his father, Adam Kante, had just enlisted in the French Armed Forces and his mother was just starting university

-it wasn’t ideal circumstances, but his parents loved each other and didn’t want to give up

-So his dad proposed, and was stationed in Paris until Max was born

-unfortunately, then he was sent off to an overseas base

-Luckily, Claudie’s brother steps up to help out.

-Two years older than his sister, he was very different from her and her husband. While both of them were disciplined and fact oriented, he was more laid-back

-His dream was to be a stand-up comedian, and his stage name was Mark Oz

-He worked at night so he was able to watch Max during the day so Claudie could go to school

-With Adam away for so long, Mark became a father figure of sorts to Max

-They would spend most of the day together, and Mark realized early on that he had a child-genius on his hands

-So he bought extra learning material for Max

-He encouraged Max as much as could to peruse whatever academics interested

-Max was only 3 though, so nothing truly interested him more than Transformers

-Mark played the cartoon as background noise one day, and Max was instantly hooked

-He watched every episode

-For his birthday, he received only Transformers figurines

-when he started school he would draw new transformers in Art class

-For his 5th birthday, his mom bought him a robotics kit (a child-friendly robotics kit)

-and his Uncle bought him a coding Manuel

-Max found his new passion

-him and his uncle spent days building simple robots

-he was so fascinated by robots that he spent most of his free time learning more

-he dreamed about one day creating his own transformer

-and his Uncle helped him.

-He was never super academic but was still had the family brains.

-He full heartedly threw himself into Max’s passion

-inadvertedly, it helped his career. He created one of the most unique stand up comedy routines ever heard in Paris, those lucky enough to see it raved about it for years

-Mark Oz was finally hitting it big time, and he did not give a shit

-the only person he cared about making smile everyday was his nephew

-together, the two of them continued to hone Max’s robot building skills

-Mark bought a big black notebook and in it he wrote down every robot Max wanted to build

-max would dictate the details and Mark would write it, and then Max would attach a picture he drew of it

-despite being a child genius, he was still a child and had atrocious handwriting

-Slowly they were crossing robots off the list, starting with the most simple

-a basic walking robot

-eventually, and Mark didn’t know how long it would take, but they’d get to their last robot

-a fully functioning AI

-When Max turned seven he started taking advanced classes

-His mom had just finished her PhD, one of the youngest ever to complete the program, and was considering applying to become an astronaut

-Both Mark, Max, and her husband encouraged her to go for. Adam offered be discharged from the military to look after Max, but Mark insisted that he wouldn’t mind taking care of Max

-“Neither one of you should put your dream jobs on hold. I’ve been watching Max for seven years, I love the kid, and I’ll take care of him for the rest of my life if he still wants me around.”

-And Mark kept that promise

-Unfortunately, he kept it because his life was cut short.

-It was after a late show, the driver was intoxicated and didn’t see Mark crossing the street.

-Claudie withdrew from the astronaut program and took up a job as a train driver so she could be around for Max

-Adam returned from his deployment, but things just weren’t the same. He enlisted in a third campaign after a month

-Max was devasted. His uncle was the only one who understood him.

-He didn’t speak a word to anyone for a year.

-His mom is concerned, but therapists insist that Max just needs time

-Meanwhile, Max works his way through his robot list.

-His mom offers to help him, but he refuses.

-If he can’t build them with his uncle then he’ll build them alone

-a year later he’s halfway through the list

-His mom almost cries when he asks her to come see his robots

-He spends the entire day showing her the different ones and explaining what they do

-After that, their relationship improves greatly. Max talks a lot about everything he’s interested in

-Claudie is barely able to keep up

-She’s afraid that he might have an unhealthy attachment to his robots though, and is afraid of what will happen when he completes his list

-So she introduces him to a new hobby, video gaming

-Mark had tried to get Max into it a few times but Max was more interested in Robotics and programming at the time

-Now though, in memory of his uncle, he gives it a go

-and fucking loves it

-He and his mom spend the weekend playing old games that his uncle had

-He doesn’t give up on his robots though

-Two years later, he’s down to the very last robot on his list

-His father comes home that same week, his three year campaign ended

-Once Max started speaking again, his father would video call him. Max would show him his latest robot, and his father, who didn’t know a thing about robots, would ask him as many questions as he could come up with about it

-It was slightly awkward at first, seeing his dad in person, but soon it faded away

-Max still didn’t want help with his robots, but he was more than happy to play video games with his father

-his dad was skilled, particularly in fighting games, and Max almost never beat him

-at first

-his dad taught him a few tricks, and Max practiced and practiced until he could beat his dad

-Max was doing pretty good

-Still, though, he seemed to have an aura of sadness around him

-His dad asked him one day what games he liked to play with his friends

“I don’t have friends”

-It was the advanced classes. They were filled with older kids, and none of them wanted to befriend a 10 year-old

-His parents decided to pull him out at the end of the year.

-For college, he’d be going to a regular (though very good) school with kids his own age

-Francois Dupont had a great reputation, and offered him an academic scholarship

-His dad enlisted in another campaign

-Max was sad to see him leave, but was feeling happier than he had been in a while

-He continued to work on his last robot

-He turned 11 and started school at Francois Dupont

-He had no idea how to interact with kids his own age

-He was seated next to a hyperactive kid who introduced himself as Kim

-They were in the very front row and Kim joked that the teacher was already trying to keep an eye on them

-it wasn’t very funny, but Max almost fell over laughing

-“Wow, if you thought that was funny, just wait till you meet my friend Marinette!”

-“I’m sorry its just that…I would never disrupt class. Knowledge is the most valuable thing we can gain, and I intend to gain as much as I can.”

“I don’t know man, that sounds kind of like something a mad scientist would say.”

“well, I am trying to build the world’s first sentient AI in my mom’s basement.”

-Being at a regular school is a relief to Max

-The homework is extremely easy in comparison to what he’d been doing before, which gives him more time to work on his robot

-(bare with me through this next part guys, I do not know anything about science, mechanics, or engineering so this will probably be a heaping load of bullshit)

-the biggest difficulty in the creation of this robot was not creating an AI, many people have done that before, but rather figuring out how to allow it to feel without programming emotions into it

-Max had been doing a lot of research on Markov chains lately

-He believed that being able to code the ability to predict events would lead to a breakthrough on how to code the comprehension of emotions

-but the Markov process and chains were extremely complicated

-but, Max was out of ideas

-so he spent weeks reading about all the research and experiments. He read about modern day applications of it, analyzed the codes he could get his hands on

-and then he made his own.

-He didn’t need his AI to study systems, but rather humans

-ideally, if he did his code right, the AI would scan the web for all examples of human behavior to catalog and process it. Hopefully, then it would gain the ability to comprehend human emotion

-Max figured he would know if it worked if it was able to predict how people would react to different things being said to them

-sure enough, he was right…in a way

-Max didn’t think he’d be able to achieve true sentience like what the transformers had

-He was trying to give his AI the ability to understand emotions, not the ability to feel

-and yet, somehow, from the first day the robot was online, he seemed to have emotions

-it confounded Max

-He spent all of winter break talking to the robot

-trying to determine if it really felt

-He started just by talking to it

-it had access to all the knowledge on the internet, yet it seemed to have trouble grasping many theories about philosophy and morals

-Max accidentally stayed up the entire night discussing moral relativism with it

-He counted it’s ability to ask questions and hold a conversation in it’s favor

-however, that’s what Max was aiming for in the first place, and it didn’t convince him it had feelings

-he had to admit though, he truly hoped it did as he was quickly considering the robot as his first true friend

-in the weeks they spent talking Max told the robot his life’s story

-and the robot replied with genuine sympathy

-Max connected with it in a way that he’d only connected with one other person before

-he showed it a video of his uncle’s stand up routine

-when the robot started laughing Max was blown away

-not by the laugh, but by it’s reaction to it

“Oh no! Max, I am afraid I had a malfunction! Do you think it is possible for auditory signals to transmit a virus?”

“What? No, that’s laughter. It’s natural, especially when you’re listening to someone as funny as my uncle.”

“Yes, the brother of your mother. You mentioned he had a career as a comedian, and a quick scan of the web shows that he was quite successful.”

“Yeah, he was.”

“You sound sad. Were you close?”

(it’s only because it’s a robot and has advanced hearing sensors that it’s able to hear Max’s “Yes”)

-Max really hopes the robot truly is sentient

-What finally convinced him is when he heard it cry

-He’d left it in the basement to get eat dinner, promising to be back in half an hour

-but got drawn in to a round of video games with his mother

-sure enough, a few hours past before Max remembered he left the robot in the basement

-he shrugged it off as an accident until he got to the basement door and heard quiet sobs

-when he went down the stairs it was the robot crying

-when Max came into hearing range, the sounds stopped

“Max! You’re back! I thought you had abandoned me!”

-it didn’t seem possible, but Max could hear the happiness in the robot’s voice

-in that moment, Max made a decision

-“How do you feel about the name Markov?”

“Like the chains?”

“Yes, but Markov also sounds like…Mark Oz.”

“…I would be honored to be named after someone who was so important to you.”

-Max introduces Markov to his mom

-She’s literally at a loss for words

-like, she knew Max was a genius, but this was something on a whole other level

-She’s incredibly proud though

-and wants to tell everyone about it

-But Max stops her

-Markov isn’t just a robot, he’s a sentient being, and more importantly, he’s his friend

-if people learned about him, they would want to take him apart to figure out how he works

-Max doesn’t want that and neither does Markov

-So his mother keeps silent

-Plus there’s still more work to be done

-Markov might be built, but there’s still a lot that could be improved

-For starters, he’s huge

-Max built him out of three old computer monitors and can’t even lift him

-luckily, Max doesn’t have to do all the work himself

-Markov creates the blueprint for a smaller body

-they go from three monitors to two to two

-but it is slow going

-the first downsize took six months because Max didn’t want to risk accidentally destroying Markov

-he’s the happiest he’s been in a while

-but Markov thinks he could be even happier

-Max hasn’t been interacting with his classmates much

-he’s on good terms with them. No one trips him or throws things at the back of his head, and he talks to some of them every now and then

-his seatmate, Kim, asks him how he’s doing every morning

-Max doesn’t realize that he could be getting an even better experience out of school

-but Markov does, he’s analyzed enough books to know that it’s vital for a young child to have multiple human friends

-so he encourages Max to reach out

-Max is hesitant, but asks Kim if he wants to come over and play video games sometime

-Kim’s response is a resounding HELL YES

-(minus the swear word bc he’s like 11)

-Max is nervous as all hell, but the moment he has a game controller in his hands it goes away

-Kim is pretty tough competition, but Max still wins most of the time

-before they know it, it’s dark outside

-The next day when they need to partner up for an assignment, Kim asks Max if he wants to be partners

-Max smiles for a week straight

-With Markov’s encouragement, Max slowly befriends most of his classmates

-He’s particularly close with his seatmate Kim and a girl from Class A named Alix

-He also meets Kim’s friend Marinette, who’s in Class A with Alix

-and her friend Nino

-Still, Max considers Markov to be his best friend

-He sits in the basement with him everyday and tells him everything that happened that day

-Markov eagerly listens to all of it

-he wants more than anything to be able to go out and things for himself.

-but for now he’s stuck in the basement

-he’s sure that one day Max will make him small enough to transport

-for now, he’s happy to listen to his best friend’s stories

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Bonus:

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A/N: I didn’t mean to make Max’s life so tragic, I swear.

If you want to be added to the childhood friends taglist or removed from it, please send me an ask or message me.

Taglist:

All Miraculous Ladybug fics:

@ravennightingaleandavatempus @crazylittlemunchkin

All Childhood AU fics:

@charlietheepic7 @krispydefendorpolice

#miraculous ladybug au #marxkov #miraculous ladybug #ml headcanon #mlb #max kante #markov

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deviationdivine · 6 years

Text

The Stoic Prince (RK900!Prompt Request)

TLDR: To you he’s a smug pain in the ass but you still fantasize about getting dirty with him at the DPD.

Word Count: 1,912

TW: Language, Suggestive Themes, Smut Fantasy

A/N: Follower/Reader Appreciation Drabble | Prompt: “Why the hell am I attracted to snarky stuck up dick faces?” - anon request! Thanks for participating nonnie! This went somewhere else. 1 in the queue done! Onto the next!

"Why do you even bother talking to it?"

Bitter taste of coffee barely touches tongue. Peering up at the question leaves a tiny smirk across lips, which did a hesitant skim of cup rim. Can the DPD honestly get a better brand to chug out of this dispenser?

“Excuse me?”

Purposely hedging away from your co-worker’s sudden interrogation hardly hides the clear tinge of artifice lacing words. Speaking any further may give away this ploy. Of course you know who they mean. He is the only smug jackass that does a heck of a job digging under skin.

Tall, imposing steel scoping a sea of puny humans to gnaw on, using his steadfast jaw, cut from stone if he were made of clay to be fitted by the gods themselves. Plastic, metal – raw material configured, manipulated into eye catching aesthetics.

Fabricated beauty and despite a brusque imperious affectation streaming out of those cool, pert lips. Often times you fantasize how human, warm they might taste. Not just against your mouth but gliding in a hungry appreciation upon every inch of skin made readily available.

To say you had the hots for Nines is an understatement. To say it can go anywhere is another quandary in your grand scheme of things. Natural enigmas be damned he is a walking puzzle waiting to be stripped of his authoritarian programming and cynical attitude.

Unfortunately those gods decided pompous and hypocrisy should be star qualities. Incessantly rolling eyes at your luck, leaning casually into table, coffee machine obscured by your current position, sank an invigorating quiet into your weary body for a brief moment.

Breaks are never long enough. At least there isn’t a sign of top human asshole of the Detroit Police. Rather not have to put a foot up his ass again. However, let’s get back to the inquiry at hand since it hasn’t left the break room.

“Daydreaming about it? Wow, Y/N.”

Sounds like some others you’ve known in the city. Detroit is just a heaping pile of garbage on a good day. Android fever is still in full swing and not how society originally saw it unfolding. "Don't call him that." You defend him while not in his presence. Better to keep it that way because no way in hell are you admitting how fast you’d drop clothes and get down with the rigid android on the force. "Just because he's an android, I mean." The female officer rolls eyes at you. "Uh huh. Sure. Next time you’ll tell me Reed’s going out for drinks with Anderson and Connor.”

Considering androids do not drink she’s a long way off course. You snort.

“Better luck with puppy eyed boy,” the officer jabs, smug. “He doesn’t look like he wants to eat people alive. Or maybe that RK900 just wants to eat you out.”

Nearly spitting coffee all over moves you in a quick step forward, grabbing a napkin out of dispenser to brush splotches of brown liquid off shirt. Eat you out?! Yeah, absolutely!

Perfervid antagonism blinds your gaze resting in a target over fellow officer all consuming in personal embarrassment. Truth is not far from luscious fantasies swirling in nightly subconscious. More than a few dreams about tangling body, flesh and humanity with synthetic, plastic and robotics transforms sleep. It is a burning secret.

A mystery garden planted between the cages absconding the heart ruminating for something of construct, designed in perfection but never mind false images. Never mind unnatural heavenly auras built around a shell of mechanized man. He is everything you can dream about but never will quite openly acknowledge.

One more step and – "Your heart rate is dangerously high for caffeine consumption."

The calculating voice of the RK900 hovers close, sinking in smooth and curt. A statement more so than concern but appropriately edged with his swift, sharp stride into break room.

Fusing a firm hand atop your shoulder seemingly resonates effectively. Analysis is punctual upon your figure as are the sweeping steel he possesses to invoke fear in opponents. He stares down suspects and useless colleagues alike. However there is a bit more skill in you out of most among these humans. He keeps silent, studying a wide appreciation in your eyes.

Pupil dilation is telling to an android who measures subtlety, language in the human form, moving under its own command. Rarely does he witness a shining example of what is referred to as a poker face in most offenders. Upon you it is quite - delicious.

The spike in vitals draws him. Nostrils flare in your personal radius sampling as a bloodhound on a ferocious hunt. Fluctuations respond exquisitely as you are equally confounding in his state of processing.

Do you honestly believe you will affect him in such a wasteful way without retaliation? The form in which he shadows your trembling inhibitions is opposite of what is desired in potential partners. This android does not care in the slightest for decorum.

He will pull you into his awaiting grasp, splaying atop his smooth marbled chest, wanton in prurience, undone from the molecules that form soft, fragile flesh. Tasting your essence will act as more than data on a long, skillful tongue. It will bury into the nerves breaking down your barriers in a flood of rapture.

All it takes is a deliberate push. Buttons unfastening with each poke he prods, bleeding into your skin and he does so intentionally to gain reaction. Steeping within your system liquefies him to the plasma running through veins.

Just as thirium runs a gamut of power to biocomponents he readily will be the life force keeping your mortal existence afloat. So it will be because he wills it out of a viral need you have unwittingly but most adoringly spread into his frame.

His lips twitch faint. A tiniest curve unseen by naked eye but he settles them to a hard line.

Your entire body shivers giving away how good he’s gotten you. Damn it. And he’s looking awfully smug about it all. Somehow he manages to keep his stoic façade nestling in his wide, masculine exterior; handsome is a mere flash in the pan for Nines.

He is beyond definition. You think he knows it too. Why else does he single you out? Making you literally sweat, taking great pleasure in how you behave and pretending nothing is happening.

What a complete and total jackass! Sometimes you swear he fakes this hard ass persona to look the part. Actually, no he’s built this way. Deviancy does nothing for him!

Collecting yourself is instinct and self preservation kicking in. Nobody in their life will get away with this but he melts your strong core down to a puddle. Limpid steel expunges self control. In front of him you strive to be alert so it's not obvious but there was more warmth underneath his imposing touch than you can stand.

God, he's too good. Flicking eyes down the length of his body drives a surge in your heart, thundering in desperation to current fantasy riding out awake.

Strewn atop table, legs around his waist; ripping open that damn white jacket, digging fingers against defined pecs visibly bursting at the seams through black material, fluffy camouflage to a toned body. Taking you right then and there, moaning his name, sinking fingers into exposed synthetic skin because you want to lay into him as heavily as he lays into you.

Biting of perfectly white teeth, licking languid, sensual from smooth tongue and pounding your body on hard surface, pain thumping against the plane of your back but you beg him for more.

Ravenous, unfiltered and insatiably poetic while he completely ravages whatever is left of you, nearly collapsing the chosen surface of your hungry carnality. Eye witnesses neither ceasing nor distracting from the obvious orgasm you will ride on high in the clouds of your mind.

Breath catches in a mystifying glaze sparkling up to his hard narrowed brow. A daylight delusion swept hold at the least private location for you to be horny. For a minute you fear he knows what went on in your head. A predatory slit of Nines’ eyes tracks each minute expression, fidget you relay. He resembles an albino king cobra, flaring a shroud to engulf you in his beguiling shadow.

Hammering against ribs betrays you to the point of imagining the entire precinct eavesdropping on the laborious thud. A small inhalation expands his chest one he hardly requires for oxygen but absorbs your arousal. Oh, it’s very obvious. You have a bit of a problem between your legs right now. Fuck.

"Peak performance suggests you not consume more than the recommended dose of caffeine, Detective.”

The android’s voice is deeper, darker than usual. Almost testing, watchful of how your body will respond next. Enough so that a smirk graces the mouth you wish to ascend in prayer to the immediate issue you physically suffer. He will cure such issue predominantly efficient. “Coffee will not help your productivity if you misuse it." Misuse it, huh? Oh, you’re sure nothing will be of misuse here. Preferably his tongue; you screw up your face to hide the lust.

Why the fuck is he looking like that? Does he realize people will start noticing? Honestly, it’s first time you realize it’s just the two of you in the break room. Guess he scared off your former gossip partner. "Why do you care what I do anyway?” Seething at his game and the fact you’re turned on at work, you slam a finger into his chest. Stabbing him doesn’t move his perfect posture but it sure does make you ache more. “It's not as if it's worth your time."

Nines’ head cocks to the side marginally amused by this insolence. He finds it cripplingly fascinating on a good day but why voice such trivialities?

“Perhaps if you behave in a professional capacity, Detective Y/L/N?” Leaning in to brush the words beside ear, purposely expelling artificial breath to lick your skin, the android fuses fingers against your hip.

A slow slide kisses beneath the android’s tempting fingertips allowing the hitch of your natural breath fuel his personal stimulus. Aroused by you will not go without discipline. There is only one kind he imagines to have utmost potency and satisfaction.

“Tell me, Y/N,” Nines switches to informalities, dangerously silken. “Do you wish every advanced piece of technology that wanders into the DPD to fuck you? Or is it because I am faster, stronger and more resilient to your needs?”

Gasping is the last vocalization you will give him. Pushing back from you reserves dignity even if you want him to just snag you hard by the hips and throw you down into the evidence room. Quieter, less traffic right now and it’d be a pretty good way to… He just called himself the best and believes it.

Well, it’s true right? No. Fuck his snide self!

You are trying but still…

“Why the hell am I attracted to snarky, stuck up dick faces?!”

Story of your goddamn life apparently and this one is the snarkiest, smuggest, sexy piece of android you’ve had the discomfort and pleasure to meet.

“Get over yourself, Nines!”

Yelling on the way out of the break room only causes looks and you’re sure without turning around he’s still standing there. Tall as hell and making you weak, oh so weak to his stormy sea and he’s already swallowed you up.

Wait until he devours you.

Tag List: @elydith @your-taxidermy

#dbh #rk900 x reader #dbh rk900 x reader #dbh nines x reader #nines x reader #follower/reader appreciation #dbh drabbles #detroit become human #dbh drabble choice #drabble prompt #personal prompts #it's popping off #lets get follower appreciation lit #snarky nines is best nines #oof it's hot here

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masterserris · 5 years

Text

FUNERAL FOR A MAGICIAN Pt.5: The Oil

They have decided to free this world of Ultron’s tyranny! But who else is along for the ride? How did things go so wrong, and which familiar faces will appear? Mysterio and Spider-Man are in dire straights, but help can come from even the unlikeliest of places!

Characters: Neo Mysterio (Quentin Beck), Doc Ock (Otto Octavius), Spider-Man (Peter Parker), Alexandria Beck (Alex), Maria Beck, Sandman (Flint Marko), Chameleon, Electro, Rhino, Terrax the Tamer, Ultron, UU Otto Octavius, UU Electro, UU Spider-Man (Peter Parker), UU Mysterio, UU Curt Connors

UU = Ultron Universe

Warnings: Explicit gore and death, violence, mentions of past abuse, mental illness, physical illness

^These warnings are here for the story as a whole. If you get invested by reading a less graphic chapter, then be prepared for the warnings above in other parts!!

Mysterio is the quick thinker of the pair. Not to say, Parker isn’t, however when it comes to high-stress circumstances, he can melt under the pressure and make rash choices from time to time. Neo, however, often remains cold. To keep up appearances, he had to learn to cast aside his anxieties long ago. Or rather bottle them up in an unhealthy manner. For as weak and pathetic as Beck was, Neo Mysterio is now a super villain whose masterminding and cunning is unto a class of his own.

It was Beck who teleported next to the blue clad Spider-Man of this Ultron infested universe and without a sound, motioned for him to remain silent and that he meant no harm.

‘This universe’s Spider-Man is smarter than my own,’ Beck mused to himself, as the blue Parker nodded silently and followed him to a closed off alley; Neo’s Parker trailing behind. Once they were sure no one could eavesdrop, the native Spider-Man spoke.

UU Spider-Man: “I have been looking for you for hours now. I’m quite impressed with how well you’ve both been keeping out of sight after your... encounter.”

Neo Mysterio: “I’m surprised you didn’t outright attack me when I appeared next to you, in all honesty.”

UU Spider-Man: “Well, I knew for a fact you weren’t my universe’s Mysterio... That and you haven’t set off my spider sense the entire time you’ve been in this world. Although I wouldn’t put it past you to also have way to block it.”

Mysterio: “Hm. You certainly are brighter than most...”

Spider-Man: “Yes, Beck’s illusions and tech are no joke, but that’s besides the point. As you already seem to know... We aren’t from here. We are trying to get back to our own universe, and we could use your help. Could you fill us in on this whole Ultron situation you got here? And any idea on how to deal with it or at the very least work around it? How did this even happen?”

UU Spider-Man: “Hmm.. well, it started several years back. Hank Pym created an AI that could help serve humanity as an impartial police force. The problem was that Ultron was erratic. It took little time for the program to take hold of New York. At first, everything was alright. Ultron helped me and other heroes take down plenty of villains. Then... Then the Sinister Six happened.”

Neo Mysterio: “Explain,” he simply commanded in a brisk tone as he crossed his arms.

UU Spider-Man: “You see, I had fought the group of them plenty of times before, but now Ultron was here. And the AI was.... vicious. Merciless... it...”

He trailed off as a drone flew by far overhead.

UU Spider-Man: “It still isn’t safe to talk outdoors. Especially about... that. Follow me, I know a place were we can discuss things further. And... meet some friends.”

Curious, Parker followed his azure counter part, while Mysterio remained apprehensive. Something... wasn’t quite right. Regardless, Beck trailed along as well, tensions rising in his mind. He wasn’t going to let his guard down at all.

Soon, the three of them arrived at the back entrance to a rundown condo. Making their way inside, there was a make shift lab of sorts. A staging ground. Sitting at a desk was none other than this universe’s version of Dr. Octopus.

He turned to face them, but what Beck beheld was a shadow of his friend. Otto looked immensely tired and beleaguered. He had small scars crisscrossing his hands and face, grey streaks running through his hair. What struck Beck the most was the profound sense of loss and grief in Octavius’s eyes.

Along with Octavius, was the Lizard. He seemed fairly calm and rational, albeit still animalistic. Curt Connors was in control of himself, but it was clear that his transformation took its toll. Connors merely watched silently, content with observing.

UU Doc Ock: “...You’ve found them. How fortunate..!”

With some effort, Otto rose from his seat and managed to make his way across the room. He had a slight limp from what was presumed to be a past injury. His mechanical arms were no where to be found, however he still had the original main harness grafted to his flesh, unable to be removed. He extended his hand out to Spider-Man, who accepted, and then to Mysterio.

Beck stared for a second before regaining himself and took Otto’s hand. A heavy sense of sorrow filled his heart as Otto spoke once more.

UU Doc Ock: “It has been ages since I’ve seen you, old friend... I... know it isn’t really you, not the you I knew... But still... I have struggled to move past the day... Your life was cut short. I’m glad to meet you.”

Mysterio: “Explain,” he said in a quiet, yet startlingly harsh voice, withdrawing his hand.

UU Doc Ock: “... Ultron came for us. The entire Sinister Six. All we could do was run. You... Died trying to help me get away after Ultron savagely attacked and..... beat me... The others, like Electro... were captured. In fact, Ultron still has many of the Avengers and various super villains locked away.”

Mysterio: “I..... see.”

Beck accepted that response rather well, but it did nothing to lighten the mood.

Spider-Man: “Hey other-me, if... You don’t mind me asking? Why are you working with Doc Ock? Because of Ultron, of course, right? And... if you are comfortable with talking about it, what happened... to your arms, Doc? And, the... Lizard?”

UU Doc Ock: “Simply put, Ultron tore them out as he forced Max Dillon to electrocute me. I have.... extensive nerve damage from it. I haven’t be able to make a new set of arms that didn’t result in... intense pain. Spider-Man and I had joined forces some time ago because of this threat. Besides, I’m in no condition to be his enemy anymore. We’ve moved past all of that.”

Spider-Man: “Oh geez... I’m.. Sorry, I didn’t realize...”

Doc waived his hand.

UU Doc Ock: “I wouldn’t have said a word if I hadn’t come to terms with it. You asked and I answered, think nothing of it. As for the lizard...”

Curt: “I ammmmm in controllllll of myssssselffff. I had become thissssss beasssst long ago. After Ultron came, Octaviussssss my old friend, offereddddddd me a place to hide and continue myyyyyyyy ressssssearch in peace. Spider-Man hadddddd alssssssso been helping me get by before handddddddd. Ultron hasssss targeted me assssssss well. We all hate that machineeeeeee”

UU Spider-Man: “We have been trying to counter Ultron from here for awhile now, but it has been.....”

UU Doc Ock: “Rather futile.”

The blue Spider-Man nodded.

UU Spider-Man: “But I suspect... You have a plan to get home?”

Spider-Man: “We were working on that. We... would like to help in fighting Ultron. It just wouldn’t be feasible to escape with those drones still flying around. It’s the right thing to do, anyways. Also, we’ve scouted the place, and I think we might have a strategy.”

UU Spider-Man: “Well, be my guest. What’s our plan?”

Neo Mysterio: “MY plan is to draw Ultron’s fire. I will sneak into the facility as my illusions and robots confound him. I will shut down his systems by any means necessary as my world’s Spider-Man will take the parts we need to leave this place.”

Curt: “Ssssssoundssssss like sssssssuicide to meeeeee.....”

UU Doc Ock: “That’s... extremely dangerous. I may not really know you, but are you sure you can do such a thing? Your cape is already full of bullet holes. You’d willingly go into a death trap like that? And expect to come out the other side unscathed?”

Neo Mysterio: “I am confident in my abilities. Although an extra pair of hands in the form of this worlds Spider-Man would be welcome...”

UU Spider-Man: “I will help. But if you make any wrong moves, if you abandon me, if you put us at too much risk, I won’t hesitate to deck you. Doc and Connors will stay put. They are in no condition to fight. Plus there is plenty they can do from here.”

Neo Mysterio: “Fair.”

UU Doc Ock: “There is something you should know before you go. Remember how I mentioned how Ultron captured Electro? He’s... He’s using Electro like a battery now. It’s constant torture. That way the hub is disconnected from the city power grid. It’s a self sustaining fortress. You must free him, it may be the only way to permanently defeat Ultron. Electro can fry all of his systems if he were saved. Two birds with one stone.”

Curt: “It issssss no way to liveeeeee. Trapped assssssss a tool for a cruel beinggggg,” he said shook his reptilian head sadly.

Spider-Man: “Right. We’ll save everyone from that murderous machine! We should go immediately.”

Neo Mysterio: “You aren’t coming, remember? You have to grab the parts, you idiot. Besides myself, you’re the only one here who knows what we need, and I have to go fight Ultron. At least one of us needs to get back home, that’s how it is.”

Spider-Man: “Y-yeah... I forgot... whoops.”

Neo Mysterio: “Besides, it’s a bad idea to go running out now. We should carefully plan out our attack and rescue attempt. Plus I have to calibrate my machines for this to work properly. It should only take a few hours at most. You need to rest your leg, anyways.”

Spider-Man: “O-oh... r-right..”

Sheepishly, Parker remembers the wound he received not long ago from Ultron’s drones. It would be a bad idea for him to storm the base in such a condition.

Curt: “Let meeeee get ssssssome painkillerssssss for you....”

Spider-Man: “T-thank you, Dr. Connors...”

Neo set to work as Parker rested. Together, they crafted a plan of attack. However, Mysterio had his own hidden plan in mind. If this was going to work, it was going to be done his way. They just would never understand.

There must always be...

a sacrifice.

#mysterio #doc ock #neo mysterio #ultron #spider-man #sfw #marvel #msocs #au #neo mysterio fic #curt connors #the lizard #electro #long boi set up chapter ahahaha

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firstbook · 7 years

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Looking to get your kids reading? Here’s some of our favorite titles.

K-2

Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade by Stephanie Greene

Posey is very nervous about starting first grade and walking into school all by herself. Worst of all, she has to do it without the one thing that always makes her feel brave and special: the tutu that turns her into the Pink Princess. How will Posey face the first day of school without it?

Mamá the Alien / Mamá La Extraterrestre (Bilingual, English/Spanish) by René Colato Laínez

A young girl misunderstands the word alien on her mother's Resident Alien Card and lets her imagination run wild, coming to the conclusion that her mother is from outer space.

Good Night Owl by Greg Pizzoli

Owl is ready for bed. But as soon as he settles in, he hears a strange noise. He'll never get to sleep unless he can figure out what's going on!

We Are Growing! by Laurie Keller

Walt is not the tallest or the curliest or the pointiest or even the crunchiest. A confounded blade of grass searches for his "est" in this hilarious story about growing up.

The Cookie Fiasco by Dan Santat

Four friends. Three cookies. One problem. Hippo, Croc, and the Squirrels are determined to have equal cookies for all! But how? There are only three cookies … and four of them! They need to act fast before nervous Hippo breaks all the cookies into crumbs!

3-4

The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies

As the final days of summer heat up, so does a sibling showdown over a high-stakes lemonade stand business. Jessie and Evan Treski compete to see who will make $100 first off of their respective lemonade stands.

Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off by Jacqueline Jules

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Pax by Sara Pennypacker

After being forced to give up his pet fox Pax, a young boy named Peter decides to leave home and get his best friend back.

Secret Coders #3: Secrets & Sequences by Gene Luen Yang

Stately Academy is no ordinary school: it was once home to an elite institute where teachers, students, and robots worked together to unravel the mysteries of coding. Hopper, Eni, and Josh won't rest until they've learned the whole story, but they aren't the only ones interested in the school's past.

Malala: A Hero for All by Shana Corey

Even as a young girl in Pakistan, Malala spoke up about the importance of girls' education, via speeches and a blog. Since the Taliban regime was intent on denying girls an education and silencing anyone who disagreed with their laws, this was very dangerous. Malala was shot, but she survived the attack and it did not silence her.

5-6

The Kane Chronicles #3: The Serpent’s Shadow by Rick Riordan

He's b-a-a-ack! Despite their best efforts, Carter and Sadie Kane can't seem to keep Apophis, the chaos snake, down. Now Apophis is threatening to plunge the world into eternal darkness, and the Kanes are faced with the impossible task of having to destroy him once and for all.

Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar

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The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier

The Night Gardener follows two abandoned Irish siblings who travel to work as servants at a creepy, crumbling English manor house. But the house and its inhabitants are not quite what they seem. Soon, the children are confronted by a mysterious stranger--and an ancient curse that threatens their very lives.

Booked by Kwame Alexander

Soccer, family, love, and friendship take center stage as twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.

Max’s Lucha Libre Adventures: Maximilian & the Lucha Libre Club (Bilingual, English/Spanish) by Xavier Garza

Max seems like any other kid until he is asked to join the Lucha Libre Club, but because of strict secrecy, he cannot tell anyone of his royal wrestling blood: his uncle is the king of lucha libre, the Guardian Angel.

7-8

Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo

Raymie Clarke has come to realize that everything, absolutely everything, depends on her. And she has a plan. If Raymie can win the Little Miss Central Florida Tire competition, then her father, who left town two days ago with a dental hygienist, will see Raymie's picture in the paper and (maybe) come home.

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. Even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. Even though her father and Big Ma will send them from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to stay with Cecile for the summer. And even though Delphine will have to take care of her sisters, as usual, and learn the truth about the missing pieces of the past.

A Well and Wong Mystery #1: Murder is Bad Manners by Robin Stevens

Two friends form a detective agency—and must solve their first murder case—in this first adventure in a brand-new middle grade mystery series set at a 1930s boarding school.

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin

Twelve-year-old Suzy Swanson wades through her intense grief over the loss of her best friend by investigating the rare jellyfish she is convinced was responsible for her friend's death.

Zack Delacruz: Me and My Big Mouth by Jeff Anderson

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A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman

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Remember Dippy by Shirley Reva Vernick

Johnny's plans fly out the window when he finds out his single mother is leaving town for the summer. She has a breakthrough job in upstate New York. He can live with his Aunt Collette but only on the condition that he "help out with" his autistic older cousin, Remember. Yup, you heard it right: Remember Dippy.

March: Book Three by John Lewis

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Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

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#books #children's books #children's literature #book recommendations #book list #reading #YA books #kids books #kid lit #stories for all #own voices

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zentigration · 5 years

Text

Muses: Kinelly

To give you a rough idea of my timeline let me lay down some anchor points before we begin. I was born into a cult, I knew about it, no one in our cult was ever shy about talking about it- as long as it was with initiated members.

That was the number one rule of our organization: initiated members only.

Over the centuries we’ve gone by many names, and always called ourselves the total opposite of whatever public gossips were referring to us as. We played hide and seek knowingly with the masses, several entertainment empires rose and fell attempting to expose us. They called it disclosure. We called it playtime.

Our initiates prided themselves on being first and best at every upgrade to our world culture. Our leaders turned to the sacred quarks and followed their instructions. The community had grown into a network of powerful souls working together and freeing themselves of the concept of time by reincarnating through lifetimes of practice.

I’ve been reminded that you are possibly vaguely aware of reincarnation? You see my cult, the Condorian, we invented that binary system that just fired in your brain. Heaven and hell aren’t places, they’re playrooms in your imaginatorium.

It’s been decided that stopping to explain an imaginatorium here would be unnecessarily complex. (*SKM Add Link to ‘imaginatorium’ @ald)

I was a fully fledged member of the Daughters of the Flock, the mystical arts side of our order. I studied the Conscientious Confounding. I mentored under the author/coach of In Plain Sight: The How-To Guide for Initiates Only.

We knew the Apocalyps was coming, we had been preparing for it for so long that when the warning was issued and we were evacuated into our hideaways, we had already been vacationing there twice a year. So the memory of the Apocalypse is blended into a lifetime of privileged family vacations. I don’t think we even lost power, or anything remotely discomforting during that time.

There was simply a day where our community sat down as a family and watched a broadcast from the Head Condor. I was bored and don’t remember much of his speech but somewhere near the end I distinctly heard him tell us that all of our preparation was for now, this moment.

I changed schools that year, but it had been planned for me to begin finishing school anyway, and boarding school was an excellent opportunity to build my family heritage Daughter of the Flock following. My private tutoring had paid off and in the midst of the crisis at the end of the world, my people were preparing me to secure alliances after the great war.

All I remember of the war was an increase in bots doing chores, the robotics industry was exploding and private enterprises were booming over custom lifestyle enhancers. My life lost a lot of human contact during that time and was replaced slowly with the cold reflection of technology.

My family was held in high regard, my heritage work bought me a lot of favour from my mothers generation, and my grandmothers generation. I had a few aunts of renoun as well, and my gift was strong enough that people expected great things from me in my own time and so left me to my own devises.

To look at it from the outside I was cold and numb to the war, uninterested. I was putting my future into place, as was customary. The Apocalypse was a problem for everyone else. We had prepared, we had listened, and followed direction. We were living bountiful lives through the end of days and we would be rewarded afterward.

I was never confronted with the weight of the deaths of millions. If I hadn’t been searching, researching, and uncovering the truth no one ever would have shared the cost of lives in day to day conversation. The war was so far away, so sanitized, and supported by every one of us because we had been taught to beleive. Have faith in the Emergence, and our place in the future will be secure. How easily the verses and songs come back to me, even after so much time. During the time of war we were updated in Capitals won, not lives lost. Looking back it feels like a competitive sport score coverage. The coldness and callus removal of empathy that we were blanketed in during that time gives me pause. To see the bleakest aspect of yourself, your capacity to casually disregard fellow human life, is to stare directly into your shadow.

But I suppose if you are unfamiliar with your imaginatorium then your dreams must be filled with shadows and emotional turmoil. (*SKM Link to Dream Journaling @ald)

So my carefully contrived life fell into place and by the time the aeons had settled the new world order and the Condors were firmly established as the aristocracy of the Phoenix clan, the opportunity I had been waiting for presented itself to me. My story is about the inner workings of my Cult, the opportunities I took, the experiences I chased in order to write them down and offer them to you, so that you may fight this enemy in your battle with the Emergence.

Looking back on my past is a painful endeavour, my indoctrination was cut deep, I felt entitled to know that which others couldn’t because we were so secretive. They were stupid for not being able to see what we refused to share. Our pride oozed into everything we did, our callousness made us rough and patronizing. I don’t think very highly of who I was, and for the inadvertent pain I caused I pay penance daily.

My people are very sure of two things, one is that Art and Science are the Keys to Magic. They’ve been practicing the Orphic Religion for millenniums and have perfected the Pentaxion Arts. The second is that the Timelords are our allies, we’ve shared resources, spells, technology, and so many brides that between the Bloodliners 300 families and our Abrahamist Initiates we’re a nearly indistinguishable one family from the next. When it came to the war I was fortunate enough to be married to a Bloodliner and my cover story of aiding the Apexing was seen as noble and altruistic. Speaking out about my Cult has been lucrative, even as I broke from there infrastructure and control matrix I had support and resources to draw from, at no point during the Emergence did I suffer or want for much of anything. Countless numbers of people died and I never missed a meal or slept in anything but a soft bed. The Emergence was so well calculated by my people that my sanitized life of elite privilege was never interrupted or made uncomfortable.

I tell you all of this to anchor the story down, firstly to my highly secretive spell casting cult that was wise to the Emersion since the dawn of time. Secondly to the complete apathy and disregard for human life I witness and participated in. Thirdly to my people’s blind trust in their alliance with the Timelords, the Bloodliners, and the 300 Families. We didn’t have a post emergence war plan, and we certainly weren’t expecting an Mass Apex Ascension. If any of us had known that the Emergence Wavespell would bring the shadow of death as it has I would like to imagine that someone would have done something…

And so I have agreed to share my story from a place of guilt, shame and hope. Hope that if there’s a chance to build someone’s confidence to take considered and well founded action. I feel as though the hope is self serving and that no one will ever read this, but if you are, and if you do, if the Emergence is coming, if the Cult of Binarism, of good vs bad, happy vs sad, right vs wrong, up vs down, Cult of Absolute Polarity is running your life you must break free and see them for what they truly are: overlords who see you as playthings, disposable, entertainment.

#magenta1 zentigration enneadtrecena ennead muses kinelly wavespellofchaos author nanowrimo sci-fi magic

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webittech · 7 years

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Mr. Robot's new season has business as usual—epic hacks, innovativeness in the midst of mayhem Elliot is back, so too is the high-wire filmmaking and haywire plot.

Mr. Robot appears to know we as a whole need CliffsNotes now. Pause, what's Stage Two once more? How does this character realize that character? Its Season 3 debut to a great extent tosses gatherings of people a bone with some table-setting, reintroducing us to the principle players as they get the pieces in the fallout of different Season 2 turns. Keep in mind, the FBI caught Darlene, Elliot got shot, Angela consented to enable the Dark Army, to control blackouts ran widespread in NYC, et al. So fight the temptation to interruption and make a beeline for Wikipedia, and Sam Esmail and co. will remunerate you with adequate in-scene updates.

In view of the previous evening's first hour ("eps3.0_power-saver-mode.h"), everything still is by all accounts rotating around the dismal Stage Two on a large scale plot level. As we adapted late last season, Elliot (well, actually Mr. Robot) conceived an assault with Tyrell and the Dark Army where E-Corp's paper records will vanish through huge blast, in this manner finishing his revolutionary objectives to pulverize the advanced shackles keeping up riches imbalance. It turns out the femtocell Elliot modified for Darlene (that Angela sneaked into a FBI transitory camp) didn't seek to catch proof of the agency's snooping, rather it was implied for hacking E-Corp. What's more, now Mr. Robot/Elliot/Tyrell/the Dark Army trust they can fill a high rise with hydrogen and cause the transformers inside to light the circuit—Elliot's Batman-like no-murder ethos be cursed. (As an aside: that was tech consultant Ryan Kazanciyan's most loved S2 hack, and it took seven days in addition to deal with, as he let us know on our on-break Decrypted podcast. Kazanciyan has effectively laid out his work from S3 debut if intrigued.)

This being Mr. Robot, obviously things will just turn out to be more confused than that. The debut makes it clear Elliot and Mr. Robot have diverse objectives, and few out of every odd real player has all the earmarks of being mindful of that. Anticipate that S3 will truly commute home how confounded life can get when everybody from your youth closest companion to an omniscient pioneer of a universal hacking ring appears to be mindful of your condition to changing degrees and tries to use it in quest for their own particular advantages. Phew.

Be that as it may, in case despite everything you're following alongside Mr. Robot after a hit-and-miss S2, odds are plot isn't the main (or even the most essential) thing keeping you around. Also, fortunately, in view of screening some of this current season's initial scenes, the show keeps on conveying on a ton of different fronts regardless of whether its story can feel extended now and again.

Seek imagination, remain for Cannavale

Quickly, the show's novel visual pizazz invites watchers back. Power-blackout stricken NYC looks especially troubling and enables bits of neon (from BBQ to shop lights or hacking rivalry scoreboards) extremely pop right off the bat, building up a shading palette not at all like whatever else on TV. Esmail keeps on discovering camera points others don't, as well. One especially remarkable grouping begins our vantage point with a tight shot on Whiterose inside an E-Corp atomic office, step by step raises us skyward to look downward on a dull NYC building, at that point flawlessly transports us into the retina of one Elliot Alderson (all while a Julie Andrews' rendition of "Shrieking Away" cunningly scores it). On the off chance that the stylish keeps you viewing, there's no indication of Mr. Robot's creative filmmaking backing off here.

Try not to stress. The hacking aspiration and specialized detail that draws in such a dedicated Internet following returns also. We see Elliot discover a Def Con CTF (catch the banner) rivalry as yet occurring between worldwide aggregates in spite of the city being without control for seven days ("A CTF competition, programmer Olympics," Elliot considers. "The whole city is enduring a vitality emergency while they're here practicing their inward political agitation"). What's more, even in this first scene, Mr. Robot compensates the individuals who have taken after security news in the previous year—I can't think about another auto pursue that closures like that in late memory.

The show likewise keeps up its comical inclination (Alf slaughtered somebody on-screen a year ago, recall) in spite of just extending its dull, dim representation of society and human instinct. Elliot meanders the avenues in a Josh Groban shirt at a certain point; Whiterose still holds her partner's allegorical hands as she stuns them with pleasantry. And keeping in mind that Leon's affection for Seinfeld is mysteriously gone yet, new expansion to the cast Bobby Cannavale ventures in as a delightfully "excessively" fixer for the Dark Army this season.

Cannavale's character has an always disconnected quiet joined with a know-it-all conceit, kinda like that old Jason Sudeikis character on SNL (directly down to the Bluetooth headset) however all the more debilitating given Cannavale's partners here. At a certain point he traces the defective rationale of not getting a free shake for his unwaveringness card punch 'til the following visit, just to leave the clerk with an unpropitious tip. "It's not about the cash, it's the guideline," he advises her. "When we lose our standards, we welcome tumult." Given the surprising significance new characters tend to demonstrate later in Mr. Robot seasons, we'll be checking this person.

Be that as it may, in maybe its most entrancing convention, Mr. Robot has dependably been a judicious show with regards to building its reality in a way that uncovers facts about our own. S1 set up an Occupy-powered fight over imbalance some time before Bernie Sanders began filling fields over the US. S2 highlights government hacks, crypto-ransomware gone wild, alongside references to the division of uncouthness versus damaging force inside a certain eventual legislator. What's more, despite the fact that these seasons disclosed in 2015 and 2016 separately, the scholars' room concocted such ideas much further ahead of time.

In this debut, we get an expanded monolog from Elliot that reminds us the show will keep on having bounty to say in regards to the present regardless of whether it stays set in this semi-prophetically catastrophic form of 2015:

"They're having their way with us—they bundled our battle into item, transformed our plummet into protected innovation, broadcast an unrest with business breaks, repaired the realities at that point increased the cost, lobotomized us into their VR ghastliness appear," Elliot opines in one of his mark monologs while pictures of Antifa and Nazis, environmental change and Brexit montage-on by.

"Imagine a scenario in which as opposed to battling back we surrender, give away our protection for security, trade poise for wellbeing, exchange insurgency for mistreatment. Imagine a scenario where we pick shortcoming over quality?" he proceeds with, his discourse now joined with sound of Donald Trump expressing "these are not the general population that made our nation awesome, these are individuals pulverizing our nation" amid some battle occasion.

"This is the thing that they needed from the start: for us to purchase in on our most exceedingly terrible selves, and I simply made it less demanding for them. I didn't begin an upheaval, I simply made us sufficiently quiet for the butchering."

In indeterminate circumstances (regardless of whether you characterize them through the viewpoint of individual, political, worldwide prosperity or something unique totally), watching appears about calamitous destructions complemented by viciousness can be excessively dreary. This present reality creates enough uneasiness, as indicated by this line of reasoning, so why dedicate whenever to this? Such rationale got me out of The Walking Dead long back, and it'll likely make them skirt an apparently agonizing rendition of The Justice League later this fall.

The plot of Mr. Robot focuses on turmoil, decimation, and control, however now the show's plot might be the slightest of numerous watchers' worries. Mr. Robot likewise demonstrates the benefit of depicting reality through its way to deal with hacking, it indicates how workmanship can at present be found in even the darkest settings, and it requests that watchers ponder conceivably annoying true powers (from psychological sickness to disparity to autocracy to reconnaissance states and back once more) through a current idea analyze rather than one set in a world far, far away. So regardless of whether we'll likely need the Cliffsnotes again by the end, S3 of Mr. Robot at first hopes to have bounty to offer those hopping in for another 12-scene ride.

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corpasa · 5 years

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10 Unusual Projects for Hour of Code

Coding–that geeky subject that confounds students and frightens teachers. Yet, kids who can code are better at logical thinking and problem solving, more independent and self-assured, and more likely to find a job when they graduate. In fact, according to Computer Science Education, by 2020, there will be 1.4 million coding jobs and only 400,000 applicants.

December 3-9, 2018, Computer Science Education will host the Hour Of Code–a one-hour introduction to coding, programming, and why students should love it. It’s designed to show that anyone can learn the basics to be a maker, a creator, and an innovator. Here are ten unusual projects (each, about one hour in length) you can use in your classroom to participate in this wildly popular event:

Alt Codes

Animation

Coding with pixel art

Human robot

Human algorithm

IFTTT

Macros

QR codes

Shortkeys

Wolfram Alpha widgets

Macros

Grade level: 5-12

By fifth grade, students appreciate technology for how it can speed up their class projects and seek out ways to use it to make their educational journey easier. Take advantage of this by introducing pre-programming skills like creating macros. This is an easy way to add MLA headings (or whichever standard your school uses).

Here are the steps for creating a macro in MS Word (adapt for the digital device you use):

Click View>Macros>Record Macros.

Name your macro.

Choose whether it should be a keyboard shortcut or a button.

Students can use macros authentically in the classwork to do things like add document headings, closings, insert pre-designed tables, and more.

Click here for more detail and a how-to video.

Shortkeys

Grade level: 5-12

Creating shortkeys for oft-used programs will quickly become a favorite with your students. Here’s how to create one on PCs:

Click Start

Right click on the desired program

Select ‘properties’ (you may have to select “shortcut location” first)

Click in ‘shortcut’

Push the key combination you want to use. In my case, I used Ctrl+Alt+S to invoke the Windows Snipping Tool

Save

IPads call these hotkeys. To create one, go to:

Settings > General Settings > Keyboard Settings

Scroll down and click “add new shortcut”

Be aware: This doesn’t work for every app.

Click here for more detail and a how-to video.

Alt Codes

Grade level: 4-12

Alt codes are those symbols that are created by holding down the Alt key and pushing a series of numbers, like these for copyright and the Spanish question mark:

Alt + 0169 = ©

Alt+0191 = ¿

There are hundreds of them for PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks. Click the link for your digital device.

Tip: Press the ALT key. While it is pressed, put in the numbers from your NUMBER PAD. It doesn’t work using the numbers at the top of the keyboard. Make sure the NUM LOCK is on.

Human Robot

Grade level: K-5

Programming a human robot is an unplugged approach to coding that is also a great way to teach sequencing–a critical skill for coding.

Pick an activity—say, taking your seat in the classroom or making a PB&J sandwich. Ask a student (or several) to explain required steps using another teacher as the ‘robot’. The human robot only does what the student directs (think of the old aphorism ‘garbage in garbage out’ explaining that computers only do what you tell them; nothing more). The human does not guess or extrapolate based on what they think the student wants, merely follows directions. For example, if you’re programming the robot to take a seat in the classroom:

Move right foot, then left, 4 times.

Turn right; walk 4 steps.

Turn around (left and left again).

Drop backpack to floor (or place under chair).

If the student forgets to say ‘turn around’, the human robot won’t. For more detail, see Dr. Technicko’s popular How to Train Your Robot.

Human Algorithm

Grade level: K-5

An algorithm is a procedure for solving a problem or completing an activity. Use it in conversation for students, such as, “The algorithm I follow when I get up in the morning is…” Once students are comfortable with the use of the word, suggest they create their own algorithm, one that describes their morning activities. It might include the following steps (which students will have to re-order):

For youngers, you might have images like the ones above, that reflect the activities. Olders can draw them in the class drawing program and then print.

These can be simple or involved and might tie into inquiry taking place in the classroom. For example, use the stages in an animal’s lifecycle.

Animation

Grade level: 3-12

Use a free program like Pivot Stick Figure Animator or Draw a Stickman to program a stick figure. It’s simple to use and students love exploring the possibilities of making their own animated stories.

If you have IPads, try Stick Nodes.

Coding with Pixel Art

Grade level: K-12

Pixel Art is the blocky drawing that looks both amateurish and sophisticated. You’ll recognize it by the:

stair-step edges

limited colors

usually only one focal point to drawing

Before Minecraft’s characters made it recognizable even to kindergartners, players used pixel art in the popular Tetris game.

For this project, provide students with written directions for what color to fill in for which cell, such as:

Blue: A1, B1, C1, D1, G1, H1, I1, J1, A2, B2, I2, J2, A3, J3, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10

As students fill in the cells with color, the image is revealed.

Wolfram/Alpha Widget

Grade level: 7-12

Widgets are free personalized mini-apps that can do almost anything the user can program, from calculating the calories in a recipe to solving complex problems. You can either browse Wolfram/Alpha’s gallery for a widget that fits your need and embed the code into your personal website, or you can build your own widget from scratch using their Builder tool. The level of difficulty will determine how long it takes so start simple during Hour of Code.

IFTTT

Grade level: 9-12

IFTTT allows users to create ‘recipes’ to automate functions, such as being notified when the weather changes or the arrival of an event. It uses a simple statement—IF THIS THEN THAT. Users create a recipe by choosing a trigger channel from IFTTT’s library, then a trigger, and finally an action channel. For example:

IF they post a photo on Instagram THEN share it on Twitter

IF it’s going to rain tomorrow THEN send me a text message

IF my children are near home THEN turn on the lights

Click for more on IFTTT.

QR Codes

This is so simple, you’re going to love it:

Open the QR Code reader on your phone or mobile device.

Center the QR Code within the provided frame.

Once the code is read (which happens within seconds), it will automatically activate the data.

QR Codes can include data for almost anything. The tool you select will offer a list. You’ll check what you want to do and get started. Here are some of the options:

Website URL: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to open the website.

Telephone Number: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to call the number.

Plain Text: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to search the web using your default search provider in Safari.

SMS Message: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to compose the specified message to the specified number.

Email Address: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to compose an email to the specified email address.

Calendar Event: Scanning this QR code will give you a prompt to add the specified event to your calendar.

Location of event: Provide a large QR Code at the entrance to the school or event location with a map and directions to the room where it is located. Attendees merely scan the QR Code and follow the line that leads to the event.

There are dozens of ways to incorporate QR Codes into your classroom. Here are a few, starting with introducing it during Hour of Code:

Introduce QR Codes during Hour of Code to show students the basics of building a code and then using it.

Have younger students scan a QR code so they don’t have to type the long URLs. This is easily done with a Chrome extension like QR-Code Tag which will grab the QR code for URLs.

Record voice instructions for a project; save it as an MP3 and turn it into a QR code.

Have new students follow a QR Code scavenger hunt to find all the important places in the school (with their parents if you do it for Back to School Night). That makes all of that information available on their phones for later use.

Add QR codes to homework sheets that link to help. For example, if the student forgets how to solve a math problem, the QR code will take them to help.

Embed concert programs, directions for station activities, and parent contact information as QR Codes instead of printing

For high school students: Create their resume with a QR Code. They can easily share it with everyone, include it on a business card, or send it in an email. The recipient will automatically have it on their mobile device–no worries about losing it.

For a school art display: Include all data on the student artist in a QR Code. It is small and doesn’t distract from the glorious artwork being presented.

Record students reading a short story and embed it into a QR Code. Post these on a gallery in your classroom where students can stop and visit anytime for a quick story read by their classmates.

Have students draw a picture of themselves with a QR code over their belly. On the QR Code, they’ll type about themselves with at least one fascinating fact most classmates wouldn’t know. Let students scan these with their iPads or another digital device to find out more about their new classmates.

***

That’s it–10 projects that can be completed in the Hour of Code time frame. The good news: Once students try any of these ten, they’ll want more coding.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice reviewer, CAEP reviewer, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today and TeachHUB, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.

10 Unusual Projects for Hour of Code published first on https://medium.com/@DLBusinessNow

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evnoweb · 5 years