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incubotwriting · 6 months ago

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14 Sleepless Nights

Inspired by the work of @1-800-daylon

Chapter 1

The wind blew cold and sharp, kicking up snow and dropping the nearby visibility to near zero. Bardon trudged through the ice, whipping around at the roars he heard that seemed to come from every direction of the white haze around him. His long white-gold hair whipped around, tangling in the wind and frequently blocking his eyeline, his light outfit completely hiding his silhouette in the icy void.

Vibrant colour blasts of Divine Energy lit up pure white mist, Bardon’s only link to his squad mates as they fought against the Miramon pack they had stumbled upon.

He called out, trying to find a direction to someone, anyone, to regroup and reassess, but his voice was lost in the roar of the swirling wind. He was completely separated, lost in the howling noise. His arm ached, the cold metal of its housing biting against his skin in the frost.

A roar right behind him was the only warning he got. Bardon swivelled on his feet and instinctively pulled his mechanical left arm above him to block the incoming strike, but felt it disregard his commands. Sluggish and stuttering, straining against the chill, the arm raised to the intended location right as a stone claw loomed from the void. Bardon desperately tried to fire his shield, forcing as much Divine Energy into the arm as he could muster.

The translucent golden shield started to grow out from the lens on the back of his forearm before sputtering in and out of existence and finally shorting out completely.

The claw came crashing down on his arm, heavy living stone crushing through the stressed steel with ease. Bardon felt a shot of pain through the arm as its sensors topped off and then were crushed one by one.

The metal arm was ripped from its socket, sprawling uselessly onto the ice in thousands of tiny fragments. Bardon dropped to his knees, a single thought running through his mind.

“Chalmers is gonna kill me.”

“You did WHAT?”

Chalmers’ voice travelled through the cluttered workshop, even more busy for the multiple people that now occupied it.

Bardon winced, sheepishly explaining the situation. Not that Chalmers could have missed what had happened, with the mechanical socket attached to his shoulder conspicuously lacking the arm that was supposed to be there.

“Most people start with ‘are you alright’ first” Lin Xiao mused, dropping a heavy bundle of blankets on Chalmer’s workbench with a thunderous clatter. There was a metallic rustling from within the bundle as whatever was wrapped inside shifted and settled.

“I ASSUMED he was fine considering you came to my workshop and not the Infirmary” Chalmers snipped back.

Lin Xiao crossed her powerful arms defensively. Normally the two of them were fast friends, but today she was here on Union business as Bardon’s commander, and the status in the room had a way of temporarily tempering friendships.

Chalmers pulled open the blankets on his desk to reveal the utterly obliterated remains of Bardon’s mechanical arm. The prothesis was in fist sized pieces, with wire, leaking fluid and dust from shattered circuit boards making a mess of the rags it was bundled in.

“We were doing a string of missions out near the frozen wastes, and it wasn’t dealing with the cold well…” Bardon started meekly.

Chalmers pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Please don’t tell me you got it serviced by an Utgard mechanic” he said.

Bardon and Lin Xiao looked at each other.

“We only asked them to swap out the coolant for a non-freezing type…” Bardon started.

Chalmers sighed loudly.

“You’re lucky it’s not filled with vodka” he said. “So what did it do? Slow down? Divine Energy spike?”

“Stutter glitch…right as a Miramon came down on me.” Bardon confirmed, apologetically. “The shield failed and, well. I tried to scoop up everything I could…”

Chalmers looked up from examining a handful of scrap to see Bardon’s distraught face and Lin Xiao’s pointed glare. He sighed.

“It’s just an arm. Better it than you. You did good to try and get it back, but this is properly fucked, we’re going to have to rebuild it from scratch”.

“I figured you were going to say that” Lin Xiao interjected “So I went ahead and booked you for two weeks. Authorisation from Raven should be in your inbox.”

“Two weeks?” Chalmers replied, confused “A bit lush for a fab and a refit”.

“If you were just building him the SAME arm” Lin Xiao said with a smirk. “Upstairs are starting to get a little nervous about one of their star Espers rocking an unreliable antique.”

Chalmers looked at her. He had been complaining about the Mk 1 arm for months in their Friday night drinks. He had droned on and on about how the platform was basically hacked together and almost impossible to work with for all the engineers its design had passed through, not to mention the sheer amount of tech-debt he had to wade through.

“Bardon here’s been forced to take 2 weeks sick leave to help you with R&D” She continued. “Think you can do it?”

"I kind of had plans this week…" Chalmers began

"No you didn't" Lin Xiao interupted, with the playfulness of a best friend. Chalmers shrugged. That was mostly true, and besides, this opportunity intrigued him.

Chalmers looked between them, his mind alighted. Gears turned in his brain as he rapidly started checklisting everything that would need to be done, designed, even invented for a full platform refresh. He started pacing, tapping a broken piece of Bardon’s old arm against his palm. After a few minutes of deliberation he looked back at them and delivered his verdict:

“Maybe.” he said. “But it’s not going to be fun.”

Chapter 2

“The alloy is lighter while being more durable, the servos are now top of the line and it’s got a better compute core that lets us triple the polling rate from all the nerve endings compared to your old one. Still haven't got it hooked up to a divine wave capacitor yet, let’s make it work as an arm first before we make it work as a power station.” Chalmers rattled off, his voice husky from weariness.

It had been two days since their project began, and Chalmers hadn’t slept a wink.

‘Not until we have a proof of concept’ he’d said at the time, but predictably his proof of concept had refused to play ball. First the servos burnt themselves out. Then the arm responded perfectly when puppeteered by a game controller but refused to be controlled by a neural wave emulator. In one memorable case it just caught fire. But problem by problem, Chalmers persevered with dwindling patience, energy, and sanity.

Finally, at the end of the second long day, Bardon stood shirtless as he always did when receiving arm care, with a skeletal and clearly unfinished metal arm attached to the socket at his shoulder. Despite its fragile and sinewy appearance, Bardon articulated it with surprising organic dexterity. He opened and closed the spindly fingers of the prototype experimentally.

“Well that’s a good start” Chalmers said, ducking and weaving around the various power-providing and diagnostic cables that anchored Bardon to the room to settle back at his worktable. He rolled through page after page of diagnostic readouts to make sure the prototype was running stably.

“Even only half made I can’t tell you how much easier this is to work with” Chalmers mumbled to himself, pressing buttons in his control software he never had the luxury of building before.

“So, how does it feel?”

Bardon rolled his shoulders back, attempting a handful of stretches that his tethering allowed. Chalmers watched, taking note of the way his exposed pectorals and shoulder muscles moved. He could just picture the gigabytes of sensor data running from the wired nerve endings around his shoulder into the multiple interlocking systems of the arm. He didn’t need to picture it, he thought, he’d made a control panel for it. Perhaps it was his weary eyes not wanting to refocus, but he didn’t feel much of a pull to look away.

“It’s Silent!” Bardon exclaimed “And so smooth, you even fixed the steppy problem around the thumb!”

Despite the sleep fighting him at the edges of his eyes, Chalmers couldn’t help but feel a deep satisfaction from the review. That sticking thumb problem had been bothering him for months. Quietly, he was immensely proud of his work, even in the prototype stage.

“If there’s any other feedback or information you have, say so, we need to get it perfect before we can move on.” He said, rubbing his eyes. Bardon clenched the metal fist and unclenched it, deep in thought.

“There’s one thing…” He began.

Chalmer’s satisfaction rapidly flipped to the usual mild dread he felt when he could sense a nitpick coming down the pipe.

“There’s a lag somewhere, I can’t tell where exactly…there’s just something off kilter.”

Well, that was helpful.

Chalmers grabbed a purple stress ball with a smiley face on it and pegged it forcefully across the room at Bardon. Without even thinking Bardon raised the skeletal prototype up and snatched the ball out of the air, eyes widening in surprise.

“Seems fine to me” Chalmers said, dryly.

Bardon blushed “I mean it though, it’s not very much but you asked for any information I had…”

Chalmers felt a small twinge inside of himself. Perhaps that was dismissive.

“Ok. If there’s something there it’s clearly tiny. We need a way to quantify this.” He leant back in his chair, his mind lost to wires and signal flows.

“Do you want this back?” Bardon asked, pointing at the stress ball still held firmly in his mechanised grasp.

“No.” Chalmers replied stiffly, opening his eyes and beginning to busy himself in the menus of his worktable’s oscilloscope.

“But it’s kind of cute…” Bardon began, transferring the purple sphere to his other hand and giving it an experimental squeeze.

“Stewart gave it to me when he came in to get his watch serviced” Chalmers said half-heartedly, wholly focused on detangling a mess of wires from his drawer “…told me I needed to lighten up. I think he thought he was being funny. Sit.”

Failing to find an empty surface in the cluttered workshop and still tethered close to Chalmer’s workbench, Bardon simply pocketed the ball and complied with the request, sitting in the worn swivel chair Chalmers had just vacated and rolled over to him.

Chalmers picked up a pair of headphones from his desk, wired to a battered and heavily modded music player and gave them to Bardon, who took them with an inquisitive look.

“Tap each of your fingers in time to the music.” Chalmers said, pulling up an unopened box of components and sitting on it across from Bardon. “Just your fingers on the table, use as little movement as possible.”

He quickly checked the song on the player as Bardon pulled the headphones on. It would do, he thought to himself as he hit play. He heard the music bleed through the open eared heaphones as Bardon began to listen. He watched him close his eyes and bob his head the tiniest amount as he began to tap. Chalmers put his hand flat next to the prototype tapping on the table, hoping to use the vibration of the table to assist his hearing.

…..TAP..tap…tap…tap…..TAP..tap…tap…tap…..TAP

There it was, clear as day, yet almost impossible to catch. Each downbeat was occurring a fraction of a second too late. Chalmers’ eyes lit up. He began to excitedly clip wires to test points on the prototype, hungrily on the hunt for the issue. Bardon briefly stopped his tapping, opening his eyes at the motion, but Chalmers gestured for him to keep going.

The oscilloscope flicked to life as it started to receive signals from the wires, dancing in chaotic noise until Chalmers brought it into line with button press. His face turned to an involuntary smile as he saw one of the waveforms drift slightly out of step with the others.

“Hah, got you bastard.” Chalmers said to the glitch, leaning over Bardon as he probed different test pads, chasing the delayed signal through the wires like a bloodhound.

“It’s coming in clean from the socket, stays in sync past the elbow but then lags in getting to the second digit servo…” Chalmers spoke rapidly, using his words to sift through his own swirling thoughts.

“…so it’s not a software issue because each finger shares the same rotation function, then it has to be something in the…oh I’m an IDIOT the index finger trace is longer because I wrapped it around that capacitor…oh that’s dumb why would I…what?”

He paused as he caught Bardon’s face. There was something wistful about the look the man was giving him. Bardon blinked, gently shaking himself.

“Oh, it’s nothing it’s just…Your…uh, your music. It’s really good.”

Chalmers glanced down at the headphones, now resting uselessly on Bardon’s neck, pushing a gentle beat into the air against Bardon’s exposed clavicle.

“Uh…thanks. Those cans are really good for it. Not that fancy, but they’ve got the same drivers as the expensive ones, just lose the wireless stuff, but who needs that anyway. Not to mention they've got a really good sound stage for games and all that”

The very same headphones tried admirably to fill the silence.

“Right. So. Long trace.”

Chalmers worked in silence as he fished a soldering iron from the mess on his workbench, effortlessly bridging two points near the prototype’s wrist with a shorter bodge wire.

“Better?” He asked as Bardon experimentally wiggled his skeletal fingers. Bardon’s face broke into a trademark wide beam.

“Perfect!” he said, pleased.

“Great. I’ll adjust that for the next revision tomorrow. I think that’s all we can do today.”

Chalmers reached into the prototype’s shoulder and released a hidden latch, detaching Bardon from the prototype and its umbilical wires. Bardon rose and offered the swivel chair back to Chalmers, who sunk into it, already distracted by the challenge of re-routing the index finger circuit but also fighting against a mind that begged for sleep. He tabbed into his already open designer tool.

“See you tomorrow” he called wearily into the room.

He heard Bardon’s footsteps head towards the door, engrossed as he was in his design. However, as he heard the door to his workshop open, the small twinge entered his stomach again.

“Bardon?” He called, looking up to see Bardon stop at the door, halfway through pulling a jacket over his bare chest.

“…I’m sorry if I was dismissive earlier that was…not intentional.”

Bardon looked confused before breaking back into a smile, this time not his usual readily available beam, but something a little softer and somehow even warmer. He pulled the stress ball out of his pocket and effortlessly launched it back across the room into one of Chalmer’s unsuspecting hands.

“See you tomorrow. Please get some sleep” he said, with a last lingering look back.

Chapter 3

“…So I give this guy the service manual and he just looks at it with the most fear in his eyes I’ve ever seen in a mechanic, I might as well have given him a bomb to defuse” Bardon described, animatedly.

“Well, divine wave tech, You kinda did” Chalmers mumbled through the side of his mouth

The two sat on the floor of the workshop, Bardon stripped to the waist as usual, with Chalmers kneeling next to him, working on the socket at Bardon’s shoulder. Between a particularly warm day and a morning spent arm-deep in greasy mechanics, Chalmers had discarded his long coat and shirt for the tanktop he wore underneath, his brown skin marred by dark oil and sweat.

Bardon continued to talk excitedly as Chalmers worked. What had started as a simple service and the installation of some minor upgrades had turned into an in-depth repair as Chalmers had discovered several stress faults in the socket from the old arm being ripped from it. Chalmers held a handful of screws in his mouth as he methodically checked and replaced the various connection points and bearings that allowed any prosthetic attached to it to function properly.

He let Bardon talk, his own mouth full of hardware as it was, though he had become exceptionally adept at uttering the phrase ‘piece of shit’ through a clamped jaw.

Perhaps it was the latent joy of seeing a project come together, but there was something very calming about sitting here with Bardon, performing this maintenance.

The work wasn’t difficult, but it was methodical and required a substantial amount of Chalmers’ focus. He could feel his mind slow in these moments, not having the room for the cacophony of design and troubleshooting that usually filled his thoughts. He was half listening to Bardon's stories, more enjoying the tone and presence of his voice than the actual content.

With a strong twist, Chalmers tightened the final screw in Bardon's shoulder, locking it in.

"Well, now that THAT diversion is over and done with…" Chalmers said, pulling himself heavily off the floor. Bardon sprung to his feet too, trying to admire the work done in a nearby mirror that Chalmers had put up for exactly that purpose

"Oh, it's not going to be particularly sexy" Chalmers called back to him. "Routine stuff and parts swaps."

"Those are probably very important though!" Bardon replied enthusiastically. "And it's a good thing my best mechanic is on it."

"I'm you're only mechanic"

"So it's good that you're the best!"

Chalmers scoffed. "Your positivity is exhausting. Kidding. I'm kidding" he hastily appended when he caught the look on Bardon's face. He ushered Bardon over to his table, where the prototype lay on a stand.

It was still intimidating and skeletal, but since the beginning of the week it had been slowly freed of all the power and resource lines that had tied it to the lab. Instead, a large clear component sat at the shoulder.

"So that's the power bit?" Bardon asked, forgetting Chalmers' previous attempts to explain it to him.

Chalmers nodded, patiently. "Brand new Divine Wave capacitor design" he confirmed. Powers the mechanics of the arm from your natural resonance. Turns you into a big battery. Do you want to give it a go?"

Bardon's eyes lit up, his smile lighting up the room as answer. The two positioned themselves, Bardon lowering himself to let the arm align with the socket without much lifting, and Chalmers readied himself to make the connection.

They caught eachother's eyes, as they had with this manoeuvre so many times before, and nodded. Chalmers lifted the arm and felt it magnetise to the socket.

"Nerves." he warned and Bardon tensed himself. Chalmers twisted the arm and felt it lock in place. A static hum ran through the arm as hundreds of intricate components came online. The clear crystalline capacitor started to glow a gentle gold as it took up the task of converting off-cast divine resonance into electrical power. Bardon grimaced, feeling emulated nerve endings and sensory responses reawaken. A small shiver ran through his visible chest muscles as his brain adjusted to the mental load of controlling the extra limb.

"That part didn't get any easier" Bardon said, good spiritedly but with a wry chord.

"Yeah. Sorry." Chalmers replied

"You're giving me a whole new arm, I'm hardly complaining" Bardon's smile had returned in full force and he lifted the arm off the stand, moving it gingerly, but definitely moving it.

Despite himself, Chalmers found himself smiling too, watching Bardon slowly gain more and more confidence with the prototype, and watching it transform from a tool attached to him to a part of him, seamlessly following the natural movement of his body.

"Alright" Chalmers prompted, "Let's try pushing some more Divine Energy through it. Slowly."

Bardon nodded and clenched his new robotic fist. The capacitor began to glow brighter and brighter, the gentle gold turning into a piercing yellow light that sent trails of light coursing through the creases and crevices of the arm. The aperture on the back of Bardon's forearm blinked into life, sparking with golden holographic wisps.

"Come on…" Chalmers encouraged "Come on, you bastard. Give it more, Bardon."

Bardon nodded and tensed harder, except for his hand which he opened in a claw-like hold. All the light pouring from the prototype brightened and brightened, almost becoming blinding. Golden sparks jumped between Bardon's new skeletal fingers as the divine power surged.

Something was very wrong.

Chalmers looked up from his eyeline at Bardon's hand and caught sight of the exposed capacitor. From this angle he saw a hairline fracture in the glassy surface that in his tiredness he had missed. Chalmer's eyes widened and he yelled out, reaching out a hand…

There was a deafening cracking sound and the capacitor shattered. The arm malfunctioned immediately, the hand clamping shut around Chalmer's outstretched wrist. The servos in the rest of the arm surged, pulling Chalmers to his knees painfully by the hold. Chalmers resisted with his arm, doing anything to stop it from twisting any further, but his own creation was overpowering him, forcing him to the ground.

Bardon yelped, clearly no longer in control of the limb, and tried to help pulling it back to no avail. Chalmers tried to babble the locations of the safety disconnects, but he was in too much pain. He grunted, only adding to the panicked look on Bardon's face.

"I'm going to try something, but I need to let go of the arm" Bardon announced with a surprisingly cool authority. "When I say, push back as hard as you can."

Chalmers had no other option but to nod at the command. Bardon gave the signal and Chalmers put every ounce of strength he had into resisting the twist of the arm. Bardon released his hold on the metal wrist, before raising his good arm in a fist. He took several deep, pointed breaths and braced himself before bringing it down with immense force on the narrow joint at the arm's wrist.

The joint sparked and one of the metal bones split as the hand instantly fell limp. Bardon followed Chalmers to his knees and went to scream, but immediately cut himself short when he realised something he expected wasn't coming. They knelt facing eachother, breathing heavily. Chalmers cradled his wrist, released from the iron grip

"It didn't hurt" Bardon timidly realised aloud

"I disabled pain emulation, the code wasn't done yet…" Chalmers said before something crossed his mind "…how did you know that?"

Bardon shook his head.

"I didn't."

They held for a moment before Chalmers came to his senses and reached for the emergency release. The prototype unlatched and fell to the floor with a thunk, a handful of exposed components snapping off as it hit the ground.

Chalmers picked it up off the floor with his good arm, swearing profusely as he went. He threw the prototype roughly against his workbench, where it hit with a frightening crash, before collapsing into his chair and sinking his head into his hands. His wrist was burning red hot and his prototype lay in tatters in front of him.

Bardon quietly approached, looking at the wreck of metal.

"Is it bad?" He asked.

"What do you THINK, Bardon?" Chalmers snapped.

Bardon recoiled, deep concern etched into his face.

"I'm going to need to start most of the hardware from scratch, that's IF my Godsdamn hand is usable at all."

Head still in hand, Chalmers didn't notice the deep guilt sinking into Bardon's expression

"Look, just, take a few days" Chalmers fumed "I've got work to do."

Bardon didn't need to be told twice. Chalmers didn't watch as Bardon fled the workshop, not even stopping to put his jacket on.

Chapter 4

By the end of the first week, Chalmer’s wrist was still too swollen to do any meaningful work, so he allowed himself the luxury of his usual Friday night drinking date. The dingy bar was perfect for shooting the shit, and the barely dressed tigress he sat with was an excellent complaining partner.

The two of them sat at the wooden bar countertop at their favourite spots that the bartender knew to leave open for them. The lights were moody and the cramped room was made even denser by the tacky and multitudinous posters, photos and boxing paraphernalia littering the walls. ‘Unpretentious,’ as Lin Xiao described it frequently.

It took the better part of an hour for Chalmers to bring Lin Xiao up to speed with how the first week had gone. He talked about the all-nighters at the start and the incalculable numbers of advancements, breakthroughs, and regressions he’d made. He talked about the prototype, and how it now lay broken nearly clean in two, showing off his now painfully swollen wrist which Union Medical had assured him was only sprained.

"And you're not upset about, yknow, the whole snapping the arm thing." She asked.

"Why would I be?" Chalmers replied with genuine confusion "It was my dumb fucking mistake"

“So let me get this straight” Lin Xiao said as their second round was placed in front of them. “Our man has a polycarbosomething alloysomething malfunctioning on the end of his shoulder, got you in a full-on wristlock, and so the first thing he does is snap his own wrist before asking you if the pain receptors were on yet?”

Chalmers nodded, taking an exploratory sip of the new pint.

“Metal.” She said approvingly. “That’s the dumb hero shit I’m told I have to tell him off for.”

“Yeah, well it was certainly a change of pace for me” Chalmers admitted. “Like, he’s loud, sure, but I dunno. Guess he never shows that larger than life side of himself when he’s in for repairs.”

Lin Xiao looked at him with a mixture of amusement and interest at this new information.

“I get it, you need that big hero energy to do Union face work, but he always seemed kinda timid to me. Shy or something. So seeing that superhero streak was new” he concluded.

“Oh, man you don’t know the half of it” Lin Xiao scoffed.

Chalmers raised an eyebrow.

“So a few days ago I was sent out to mediate this disturbance in Union HQ, right…” Lin Xiao began, in her all-to familiar work story tone, “…Bardon has got himself into a proper scene with two jackoffs who were talking shit about you, funnily enough.”

Chalmers looked over from his pint.

“Me? What’s somebody's problem with me?” he wondered aloud.

“Dunno, something about you being a bit of a weird grouchy shut-in or some bullshit” Lin Xiao shrugged.

“Oh, is that all?” Chalmers scoffed “Are they even wrong?”

“Well Bardon seemed to think so. Got himself into a hell of a shouting match with these guys. Had to cool him off before he got into a one-armed fistfight.”

Chalmers frowned into his beer.

“What could possibly drive him to make such a scene, I don’t need defending.”

“Oh, you haven’t worked it out” Lin Xiao exclaimed amusedly.

“Worked out what?” Chalmers asked, heatedly, as Lin Xiao laughed openly at his expense.

“You smart people are always so STUPID” She wheezed, racked by belly laughs

“Lin, what don’t I know” Chalmers demanded, intensely disliking the joke at his expense.

“Nah, you’re gonna have to sort this shit out on your own. That’s what you do isn’t it? Troubleshoot the problem? Trace the wires? Figure it all out?”

Confused and put out, Chalmers settled for drowning his angst in his pint.

“I’m surprised you just let the guys be, I’ve never known you to show restraint” he said, trying to move on from the joke he wasn’t getting as Lin Xiao regained control over herself.

“Oh, I beat the shit out of them as soon as golden boy was out of earshot” Lin Xiao grinned “Couldn’t do it while he was there, didn’t want him getting all mopey for your sessions.”

---

The sun was setting as the two parted, and instead of his apartment, Chalmers found his way back to his workshop. He settled himself in as evening turned to night, and night turned into quietest hours of early morning. His checklist sat in front of him, taunting and paralysing him. Small problems flowed and combined in his mind into giant walls that he could find no crack or foothold in.

The light outside his workshop had faded into darkness long ago, but Chalmers had barely noticed, his powered swivel lamp the only concession to the passage of time.

He was technically listening to music, but his concentration jumped between intense focus and the very edge of sleep so quickly that he often caught himself sitting and thinking in complete silence as a playlist ended.

Lin Xiao’s friendly taunts still clung in his mind. His understanding had not progressed an inch, but it provided an easy mental detour that his thoughts slipped into when he lost his train of thought on an electrical or mechanical problem.

Chalmers ripped out a page of useless trigonometry from his notebook, not even giving it the dignity of a toss to the wastepaper bin, and he was once again faced with the imposing emptiness of a blank gridded page.

He sighed and sunk his head into his hands, mind both racing and somehow completely and painfully still. He emerged from his palms just to be faced with the taunting silhouette of the prototype, barely built up from the initial rounds of testing; skeletal, technical, fragile, broken, and scary beyond belief. His wrist gave a painful twinge in agreement.

It simply wouldn’t do, he thought. An image of Bardon flashed through his mind, how inspiring and comforting the common folk must find that smile, the shining demeanour and booming voice that Chalmers had only heard of second hand.

Chalmers’ hand moved without him, sketching out the silhouette of an arm. With each stroke his hand added the crossbars, the connection points, the synthetic muscle, the rivets, the wires. The diagram formed itself from raw muscle memory, countless technical traps and compromises effortlessly avoided, aesthetic aiding function with the elegance his masterwork deserved.

Chalmers finally arrived at the shoulder, detailing the circular cutout for the divine wave capacitor and stopped. He saw the circular void and exposed machinery and fragile components filled in the space in his mind’s eye.

His pencil paused. He knew the components that should go in there, but they didn’t seem right. He thought of the bright, flowing hair, those eyes and smile, and his pencil found a different path, carving precise arcs across the shoulder until a sun motif adorned the shoulder, protecting the socket and naked mechanical intricacies underneath.

Chalmers blinked, the full diagram in front of him. It was beautiful, genius even. And yet, even now, it didn’t seem complete.

He placed an exploratory stroke off the arm from the shoulder. Upper Trapezius, supplied by the accessory nerve, connected to the socket at neural link port 7001 through 8080. More lines. Clavicle, secondary anchor point for the main housing. Pectoralis major, driven by the medial and lateral pectoral nerves, port 8100 through 9000. Latissimus dorsi. Obliques. The shapes of Bardon’s physiology came effortlessly to him, intrinsically tied to and indeed the host and purpose of his work.

He sketched, and sketched, well beyond the realm of anatomy he knew and into what he didn’t realise he’d noticed. He sketched how the tiniest bit of rib poked above Bardon’s abdomen line, the barely visible abdominals that showed proud when he tensed or laughed, the frankly unfair amount of oblique that showed above his waistline, the deep grooves of his clavicle and neck, the proud jaw, the long hair, the piercing eyes…

Chalmers slammed his notebook shut with a deafening thud. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears in the silent night. All notions of sleep were dismissed from him in an instant as he was left with an uncomfortable, dawning realisation.

“…Shit.” He said into the empty, dimly lit room.

Chapter 5

“So, am I getting my two favourite boys back next week or am I playing the grocery lady again?”

Lin Xiao burst into the workshop with a clatter of clinking bottles and rustling paper, unceremonially dropping the bags of snacks and beer at the door. This meeting was technically in the Union calendar as a ‘progress check,’ but hearing that Chalmers was going to have to spend another evening in the workshop, Li Xiao had coopted the time to steal back their usual Friday night drink.

Chalmers looked up from his soldering station and a smile crept to the corners of his mouth.

“Come and see for yourself” he said, stepping aside to reveal a stunning creation of alloy and synthetic weave. The Mk 2 version of the arm was laid out like a half-finished jigsaw on a stand, fine plates of polished metal sitting amongst intricate circuits and components, all waiting to be assembled into a work of art.

The divine wave capacitor sat quiet at the shoulder, waiting for the golden energy that would see it spring to life, protected by layers upon layers of spiralling motifs, laid out like stylised sunbeams radiating out from the sleeping core.

Lin Xiao rocked up to it, hands behind her back just in case, as Chalmers went to rifle through the bags she brought. He started splitting out the things that would need to go into the minuscule bar fridge under his desk as Lin Xiao let out a long whistle.

“My man, you’ve outdone yourself” she called back to him taking in the microscopic detail and care evident in every centimetre of circuit board, wire and plated alloy.

“Still a bit to go, but all the dev work is done” Chalmers said, pulling glass bottles held together with cardboard out of the paper bags. “And thanks for this, genuinely…” he began, before fishing a solitary dark bottle from the final bag.

“…though I’m not really a porter guy.”

“Oh, I know” said Lin Xiao, refusing to elaborate and still examining the Mk 2 with immense interest. Chalmers just shrugged and started to take everything to the fridge.

“So have you tried it on the man himself yet?” Lin Xiao asked, stealing a beer bottle from Chalmers as he walked past and successfully twisting open the distinctly non-twist top lid.

Chalmers made a fuss of bending down and stocking the fridge to buy himself a moment of thinking time. Truthfully, he hadn’t seen Bardon since the malfunction last week. In fairness, he hadn’t told Bardon when he could work on the sprained wrist again, but Bardon also hadn’t asked. Perfectly fine, he told himself, it’s probably why it came together so quickly. His wrist twinged as a beer bottle weighed it down.

“Don’t need to. All the experimental stuff we got out of the way in the prototype” He justified out loud. “Everything else is just boilerplate, linear upgrades and miniaturisation.”

“Mhm” Lin Xiao responded, taking a swig of her beer, clearly unconvinced.

“And besides, he probably wants to actually do something with his time off” Chalmers continued.

“Probably.” Lin Xiao replied.

The two shared a moment of silence, drinking deeply from their bottles.

“So did you figure out your little puzzle yet?” Lin Xiao asked, breaking the stillness by setting down her beer.

Chalmers rapped his fingertips against his own beer, sending a pinging noise into the workshop. He had. In his moments away from his project he could think of little else.

“…Bardon likes me, doesn’t he?” He asked, despite knowing the answer.

Lin Xiao gave a thunderous clap paired with a deafening holler. “See! I told you you’d get there eventually!”

There was an aggressive rolling noise as Chalmers stood up. He needed to do something with his hands. Anything.

“…well?” Lin Xiao asked, arms held out questioningly.

“Well what.” Chalmers responded flatly, mashing the temperature control on his soldering iron, and reaching for a pair of magnifying goggles.

“What do you think about it?” she asked, encouragingly.

“I think he’s loud. I think he’s always bursting in, getting his tech busted up by being an idiot, I think I’ve had to pull multiple all-nighters for him just this week…”

“Yeah, but do you like him though?” Lin Xiao interrupted.

Chalmers fell silent.

Lin Xiao looked up at him, a wicked grin spreading across her face.

“Oh you doooooo” she growled.

“I do NOT” Chalmers retorted, far too quickly.

“Oh, you REALLY like him” Lin Xiao shot back, immense joy in her voice.

Chalmers refused to respond, busying himself in trying to locate his tube of solder flux.

“So you know he likes you, and you like him…” Lin Xiao continued “…so you just go up him, say ‘thinking about your ripped bod has been keeping me up at night’ and then all that’s left is to pick who starts taking the fibre supplements”

Chalmers dropped his soldering iron, cheeks burning.

“This is extremely un-commander-like behaviour from you.” He said, attempting to cool the iron before it marked his table.

“What good am I as a commander if I can't get my boys laid?”

“I’m not on your squad.”

“Wasn’t talking about you, buttercup.”

“Look, it’s not that simple” Chalmers said, attempting to distract himself in the task of seating a miniscule ribbon cable.

Lin Xiao leant her elbow heavily on Chalmers’ desk, resting her cheek on a powerful fist, looking up at him, eyebrows raised. Chalmers swore as the impact knocked the cable clean out of the socket it was just about to be fastened into.

“Enlighten me.” She demanded. Chalmers pulled off his magnifying goggles and stood up from his chair to face her.

“I don’t…I just don’t DO people and relationships, Lin.” He said. The sincere chord in his voice caused the mirth to falter in Lin Xiao’s face.

“I’ve never… no one’s ever…” He started. Chalmers didn’t have the words for this.

“Look. I don't know what interesting or fantastical version of me Bardon’s cooked up in his head, but I can guarantee the real thing isn’t nearly as interesting.”

Lin Xiao looked at him seriously, the wisdom of her age showing for a rare moment on her face.

“I don’t know WHAT he’s seen in me, but it would be cruel to lead him on and force him to figure out for himself that whatever funny or interesting or special version of me he’s imagined just isn’t there.”

Silence filled the workshop once more.

“Bet you a round you’re wrong.” Lin Xiao said, unusually gently.

Chalmers sunk back into his chair, sending it gently rolling backwards from the momentum. Lin Xiao downed her beer and started gathering her things.

“Lin…please. Don’t say anything to him.”

She walked over to him and planted a heavy hand on his shoulder.

“Alright. I won’t say anything, but I think you should.”

She gave his shoulder a bone crushing squeeze before bouncing back to her usual heightened energy.

“Right, you better get cracking so you can actually get a day off” she said, cheekily before bounding her way to the door. With her hand on the door handle she stopped and turned back, a large accusatory finger pointed at Chalmers.

“But listen here, loverboy, if I don’t get a report on my desk that you two got caught sharing a metal handy somewhere you’re not supposed to I’m going to be VERY disappointed in the both of you.”

Chapter 6

Chalmers rapped at the apartment door, standing awkwardly in the unfamiliar hallway. He had considered calling Bardon back to his workshop, but legitimately didn't think he'd be able to make the call.

He heard a shuffling from inside the aparment and sure enough Bardon opened the door. His eyes went wide with surprise when he saw Chalmers standing there.

Chalmers had clearly caught Bardon unaware, he was dressed in a pair of leg hugging teal trackpants and a loose white-beige tank top that didn't cover any of the shining metal socket that replaced his left shoulder. In many ways he resembled a looser version of Chalmers himself, who had stopped bothering with the jacket and overshirt several days ago and stood across from him in his grey singlet and dark cargo pants

"Hi." Chalmers said "…Hi." Bardon said back, the spitting image of an embarrassed bird hitting a window pane "I er, sorry I didn't phone ahead but…" He raised the long carrying case he held "…She's ready"

Bardon looked from Chalmers, to the case and back again, before at long last breaking into his smile and gesturing for Chalmers to come in.

He was lead into the small apartment and placed down on the couch. Chalmers sat and took in the unfamiliar premesis, trying to acclimatise himself to the unfamiliar surroundings.

"It's done! That's amazing! After the wrist and the protoype and everything I thought…"

There was a ceramic clattering as Bardon hastily dumped a collection of plates and mugs into an unseen sink. He needn't have bothered, Chalmers thought, this place was infinitely cleaner than any space he had ever curated

"Yeah" Chalmers called out "The wrist was just sprained, I got back to work that weekend and the rest came together pretty quick."

"Oh! Oh well that's a relief!" Bardon replied with the plastic creaking of packaging being stuffed in a bin.

Relief? thought Chalmers. Had Bardon been worried?

Chalmers was finally able to take in enough of the space to notice what Bardon had clearly been doing. In front of him on the coffee table sat a game controller, modified for single handed use, with a foot pedal tucked underneath. The paused game in front of him was familiar, no, more than familiar.

It was a fantasy game, tough as nails and released exactly two weeks ago. The very same game Chalmers would have been playing if Bardon hadn't broken his arm. In a moment of sudden realisation, it made sense to Chalmers why Bardon could notice a finger response delay in the order of milliseconds.

"I didn't realise you were a fan of this series" Chalmers said to Bardon, who had deposited a glass of water in front of him before shuffling back to the kitchen and returning with a second.

"Oh! yeah! It was just kind of lucky I guess, lined right up." Bardon sat next to Chalmers with the glass.

"I wasn't going to get this one after getting stuck on an optional boss in the first one but…"

"Oh HER" Chalmers couldn't help himself. "Yeah, bullshit design, there's a weapon in the area before that she's weak to but it's basically impossible to find if you're not reading the item descriptions and…what?"

Bardon was looking at Chalmers with a mixture of aghast surprise and elation.

"What? I'm old" Chalmers said back, his cheeks warming "All the kids like arcades now. Too many people."

"Not great with accessibility either…" Bardon agreed before blushing and breaking eye contact.

For the first time in his life, Chalmers sat in an incredibly strange position. He was used to people having more information and understanding than him and making him blunder through a social encounter blindly. However, just this once, in a strange way he held all the cards.

He was a troubleshooter, built to observe strange symptoms and connect them to systems, and for just a moment, that instinct fired for the man in front of him.

He knew for a fact Bardon liked him, and armed with that knowledge he started seeing symptoms. He saw how Bardon was trying to shuffle closer but also how he seemed scared to approach. He saw the unusually tight grip on the water glass and the eyes that flicked from his his face, to the opening of his singlet, to absolutely anywhere that wasn't him. It seemed all so obvious now.

"So, shall we?" he asked, tapping the hard travel case, and Bardon nodded enthusiastically. They cleared off the coffee table and placed the case on top. Chalmers gestured to Bardon to do the honours. He unclipped the latches on the case, then carefully with Chalmers' help lifted the lid.

The completed Mk 2 could only be described as a work of art. The polished alloy gave wave to dark, textured synthetic muscle. reinforcement bands criss-crossed across the upper arm before descending to a solid metal gauntlet with interlocking facing at the elbow. Up at the shoulder, the Divine wave capacitor sat crystal clear and dark, protected by a sprawling collection of curving sun rays that spiralled outwards to cover the entire shoulder

"It's… I mean It's…" Bardon was speechless, his eyes practically sparkling.

"Yeah." Said Chalmers.

"You designed it after me" Bardon continued, quietly

"Well, the underlying tech could be generalised but…yeah, this one's for you."

Bardon's eyes were damp and his body was filled with tension. It was if he wanted to do something, but was doing everything to hold himself back.

"Well, come on, let's get it on you" Chalmers said.

A flash of fear crossed Bardon's face.

"I'm not going to break it again, am I?" he asked, nervously

"Again? What do you mean again?" Chalmers asked, eyebrows raised

"Oh, I thought I…that you…nevermind!" Bardon stammered, before collecting himself with a breath.

For a moment, Chalmers' mind went back to the day of the malfunction and his gut sank. He thought about his anger at himself, his frustration that he made no attempt to direct, and then he thought about what that might have looked like to someone who liked him.

Had Bardon blamed himself? Had he thought that Chalmers was angry at him? Had he thought he'd blown his chance? Was that why he hadn't checked back in? Guilt? Fear?

He had to stop that feeling. He wasn't going to be able to sit by passively this time. He was going to need to make the effort. Make a choice. Reach out.

"Hey." Chalmers said, putting a hand on Bardon's bare shoulder, unsure in his actions and words but trying anyway. "It'll be fine this time, trust me."

Bardon's shoulder was warm against his hand as he looked back up and him. Chalmers was subject to that beautiful blue gaze, the soft features yet strong jaw. Chalmers' heart leapt

He likes you. The only one standing in the way is you

Chalmers helped Bardon remove his tank top and he knelt next to the coffee table, Chalmers took a chance to observe the physique that he knew on a systematic level. His heart leapt again.

You hold all the cards. You just have to say yes

Chalmers lifted the Mk 2 from its case and felt it magnetise to the perfectly maintained housing.

"Nerves" He warned, and Bardon braced.

All it takes is for you to play your hand

Click. Locked. Bardon grimaced, but then blinked in surprise. He slowly stood up, marvelling at the sculpture attached to his shoulder as he slowly twisted the wrist and opened and closed the fingers.

"You figured out the nerves" Bardon said, aghast.

"…Yeah." Chalmers replied. "It's not perfect, I don't think it can be, but it now slowly connects the nerves down the arm rather than crashing them all on. I don't know why the standard is to do them all at once, probably some backwards compatibility thing, It just really sucked seeing it hurt you all those ti-"

Chalmers couldn't finish because he was locked in a tight double armed hug. He could feel everywhere Bardon's bare skin came in contact with his own. The hug barely lasted a moment before Bardon broke it, putting a cautionary space between them

"But how can I be sure it won't hurt you again?" Bardon asked

It was time for Chalmers to do something for once.

Chalmers reached out and guided the textured black hand of the Mk 2, laying it at the center of his chest, just above the low cut of his singlet. He took his hands away and Bardon held it there, the sensitive weave passing the feeling of Chalmers' bare skin to Bardon.

"Trust me." Chalmers said.

Bardon's eyes were wide, and slowly, ever so slowly he moved the Mk 2 across Chalmers' chest. The weave felt rougher than skin, and the divine waves powering it gave the fingertips a fuzzy, almost gentle static feel. Chalmers' breathing caught in his throat as the hand touched him, the first time anyone had touched him in a long time.

Bardon's breathing was also heavy from the flood of ever so slightly different and enhanced sensations the arm was passing to him. Hundreds of tuned sensory inputs fired to life for the first time, and the very first thing they would feel would be their creator.

The arm's movement got more natural as the hand wandered, and by the time it found its way under Chalmers' singlet to meet with its brother and raise the singlet over Chalmers' head, it was no longer the Mk 2, a work of mechnical genius made under 2 weeks of near constant toil and stress.

It was simply Bardon's arm.

Epilogue

Chalmers slept soundly for the first time in two weeks, hells, even longer that night. He was woken well past his operational start time by an email to his communicator. It was from Raven, granting him an extra week of his and Bardon's time to complete the Mk 2 at Lin Xiao's request.

The two lay there, at a complete loss of what to do.

"If it's alright…" Chalmers said to his bedmate "…I think I'd like to give this…" He gestured to the two of them and the world at large "…Y'know, people, a go. If you'll help me take it slow."

Bardon blinked, slightly baffled by the request, but flashed his warm smile anyway.

"Yknow, if you've got nowhere to be…" Bardon began, cautiously, trying to piece together Chalmers' meaning "You could hang out here for a while."

Despite his revelation not 30 seconds ago, Chalmers felt an instinctive twist in his stomach at the suggestion. He forced it down. He needed to try.

"I'd like that" He said, feeling the knot tighten, but then release as he committed.

"Actually, I suppose you haven't had a chance to look at the new game yet…" Bardon raised, thoughtfully.

And so, Chalmers found himself in someone else's room, with someone else's system, sitting on someone else's couch in his underwear with Bardon lying next to him in not even that. Bardon had put the Mk 2 aside for the moment so that Chalmers didn't have to rest on it, and he guided Chalmers through the opening levels.

Chalmers played abysmally, Distracted by the parts of Bardon's anatomy that he wasn't yet familiar with, but was eager to learn.

As morning shifted to afternoon, the two found themselves in a similar state, but in the relaxation Chalmers mind drifted to something incongruous, something that had escaped his attention all this time.

Chalmers reached over to his bag, left abandoned since yesterday and rummaged around. He had thought the two might have shared a celebratory beer together after successfully testing the arm, but naturally plans had rapidly changed. He distinctly remembered clearing out the last two beers from his mini fridge and sure enough when he fished in his bag he pulled out a single bottle of his own favourite cider, and the lone dark bottle.

She didn't.

"Here." Chalmers said to Bardon, handing over the bottle "I have a hunch this might be your speed"

Bardon looked at the bottle and smiled wide in disbelief.

"Oh! Porters are my favourite!" he said, eagerly taking the bottle "How did you-"

She did.

"Like I said. A hunch" Chalmers said, making a mental note that the next time he saw Lin Xiao, he owed her a round for a bet he spectacularly lost.

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