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It was a hell of a fight. Bebop won in the third round with a knockout, but not before taking the kind of beating he couldn’t pass off to Miss Shelly as innocent wear-and-tear. That’s how he ended up standing in Maggie McGinnis’ garage at 1 AM, leaking hydraulic fluid on the floor while the second-best engineer in the city assessed the damage.
”Couple of cracked ocular lenses, pinched hydraulic line to the left arm, electrical short… somewhere up in there, I dunno… And what the fuck is this?” McGinnis rapped her knuckles against his torso right where four messy scratches scored his chest plate. “Who were you up against, the goddamn wolf-man?”
“Wouldn’t recommend calling her that. Turns out it REALLY pisses her off.”
With a snort, McGinnis took a few steps back and eyed him top to bottom. Aside from obvious dents and scrapes, Bebop was splattered with fluids of a frankly impressive diversity of color and viscosity. Whatever internal damage he’d suffered left him hunched awkwardly. Every so often something in his legs whirred and twitched, flexed a cable a few millimeters in a vain struggle to correct his posture, and then collapsed back again in defeat with a sad little spurt of fluid.
“You look like shit, buddy.”
“Thank you for stating the bleedin’ obvious.” With his one good hand, he gestured to his chassis. “Would you be so kind as to help a bloke out, or are you just gonna stand there and leer?”
She shrugged and pulled off her goggles. The look on her face was decidedly short on compassion.
In anyone else, he might have attributed the complete lack of empathy in her expression to his nature as a golem. Most organics had a hard time with the concept that someone who looked more like a model T than a drinking buddy could feel pain. But he’d once seen her give that exact same look to a guy with six fresh holes in his meaty human skin. So in McGinnis’ case, he didn’t take it personally.
“What, you think I don’t have anything better to do on a Friday night?”
“Technically it’s Saturday morning.”
“Whatever. You know it’ll cost you.”
Naturally. He was prepared for this. “I can do twenty-five now and another thirty—“
McGinnis cut him off with a dismissive wave. “Nah. I don’t need cash.”
“Gee, must be nice.”
If anyone else had smirked at him the way McGinnis did just then, he’d have cleaned their clock on the spot. The effort of not doing so had an effect approximately comparable to screwing down the lid on a boiling kettle and then turning up the heat another notch. Pocket-watch sized gears spun inside his torso and pulled half a dozen rubber tendons taut. The increase in pressure popped a pinhole leak somewhere and sent a little spurt of cloudy liquid dripping down his chassis.
This was a decidedly poor negotiating position and he knew it.
McGinnis stripped off her bulky gloves and tossed them aside. Walking a slow circle around him, she reviewed the damage from all angles. “Why don’t you ask Miss Shelly? I mean, you look like garbage, but that’s kinda your baseline...”
“Oh, no.” ABSOLUTELY no. “If Miss Shelly finds out I’ve been handin’ out concussions in the Bear Pit for pay, she’ll be…” Bebop paused, chosing his words carefully. “…very disappointed.”
“For such a well-designed killing machine, you really are one giant momma’s boy, you know that?” McGinnis gave his shoulder a slap that rattled something around that really wasn’t supposed to move.
He’d heard that one before. He never could figure out why he was supposed to take it as an insult, but he was well aware it was meant to be. He felt his internal pressure start to creep up again, and with great effort, willed it back down. “Be that as it may… what will it cost me to avail myself of your mechanical talents?”
It was a long moment before McGinnis replied. “You know what… No charge. Just don’t even worry about it.”
There was a glint in her eye he didn’t entirely trust. “I somehow feel that I should.”
There was that awful smirk again. “Trust me. A night spent digging around in your guts is worth more than you could scrape together in a year at the Bear Pit. You just lay back, let me play around in there for a few hours, and we’ll call it even.”
Something was going on behind her eyes that Bebop couldn’t quite interpret. But that pinhole leak was starting to stretch. He had the feeling it was minutes away from turning into a full-blown tear and spraying hydraulic fluid all over the walls. The best he could do was to proceed with his dignity intact.
“I accept your generous terms. Much appreciated, McGinnis.”
“Don’t mention it.” She was already at her supply closet, pulling out a soldering kit and stuffing assorted wire and flux into her apron pockets. “Get over to the lift before you keel over. I don’t wanna have to drag your two-ton ass myself.”
The first thing she did once she had him on his back was pull off his chest plate, reach inside, and shut off his hydraulics. The instant she twisted that cut-off valve shut, his limbs went slack. Bebop really, really wanted to panic, but all the tubing that should have pressurized in response just hung flaccid. So instead he had the unique experience of knowing in his head that his pressure ought to be spiking through the roof, while his limbs just calmly lay there in a state of perfect mechanical relaxation.
He tried to lift his head to see what she was doing only to find that he couldn’t. Valves clicked open, but with no fluid flowing through his rubber ‘veins’, nothing happened. Every limb in his body was slack. All he could do was stare at the ceiling and let her work.
But even if he couldn’t see what she was doing, he could sure feel it.
Slowly and deliberately, McGinnis pulled his insides out and spread them apart. When she dug both hands into his thoracic cavity and drew out a thick bundle of insulated cables, it triggered a rising current in his electrical system. Tiny actuators up and down his spine primed reflexively.
Bebop struggled to calm down the involuntary electrical response. Miss Shelly had worked on him like this a thousand times before. It was no big deal. So why was he almost vibrating with tension every time McGinnis touched him?
If McGinnis noticed his actuators twitch, she didn’t say anything. Her fingers slid deeper inside, probing firmly until they found his primary hydraulic return line. Thousands of sensors triggered hundreds of tiny motors that powered valves and switches and clockwork gears. They all spun impotently at the same time as McGinnis wrapped her hands around what passed for his heart and squeezed.
Without warning, she gave it a firm twist. The thick black tubing came free with a sucking pop, a gush of fluid, and the click of every actuator in his body twitching simultaneously. An involuntary vocalization burst out of him like static from an untuned radio.
In that moment, Bebop experienced a new emotion for the first time: mortification. It didn’t help that McGinnis slapped his pauldron and said “Good boy” before hefting his chest plate over her shoulder and walking away, leaving him to drain out into a bucket.
It was a long minute while he tried to figure out how he felt about that before the apertures over his ocular lenses stopped twitching.
The flow of liquid out of his hydraulic system slowed to an intermittent drip by the time McGinnis returned with a newly-buffed chest plate. She hadn’t bothered to repaint it. But she’d successfully buffed out all evidence of the werewolf’s claws.
Bebop made a sound like clearing his throat. This whole experience felt extraordinarily weird. He found himself compelled to say something normal, try and neutralize the ongoing struggle he was still having with ‘good boy’. “Nice work with the grinder—“
With a grunt, she propped his chest plate against the wall and walked off again. She returned shortly pushing a rolling cart full of wire, tubing, and all manner of miscellaneous bolts, gaskets, and rivets.
Ok, maybe HE was the only one making it weird. Bebop tried again: “Time to patch up the old hydraulics?”
All he got another nonverbal reply in return and then she was off once more. When she came back this time, it was with a five-gallon jug in each hand. McGinnis hefted them up on the work bench like they were nothing. For reasons he could not explain, this triggered an audible whir of the gears responsible for twitching his fingers.
“You sure do have, er, above average upper body strength for an organic of your proportions.”
With an exasperated sigh, McGinnis braced her palms on either side of his head, leaned over, and stared him right in his one good eye. “You know, you really don’t have to talk.”
“Ah.”
“In fact, I’d prefer if you didn’t.” She had a screwdriver in her hand now. Ever so carefully, she slid it deep into his exposed chest cavity.
“Hmm.”
“If I needed to know what you think, I’d ask.” He couldn’t see what her hands were doing, only the very intent expression on her face in his peripheral. With a ‘tink’, one screw fell free.
“Um.”
“Although I’m not gonna lie…” Another screw came loose. Bebop was momentarily rocked by the sensation that nothing but gravity was holding a very important part of him together.
“…I’m coming around on the appeal of a machine that actually moans when I take it apart.”
His electrical panel slid open under her hands. Air hit a half dozen sensors that all screamed that something was wide open that shouldn’t be. A hungry expression lit up McGinnis’ face as she stared down at his exposed controller, a bright gleam in the eyes, a little tilt of the lips.
All of a sudden it took a whole lot of effort keep his voice modulator steady. “Lady, are you getting off on this?”
A sly grin slid across McGinnis’ face. “Are you?”
“I—“
Whatever he’d been trying to say devolved into a static buzz as she popped a lead free from his controller. “I’m gonna need you to turn up your input sensitivity for this next bit.”
“Uh… Is that, strictly speaking, necessary?” Bebop struggled to keep the static out of his voice. Every actuator in his body was steadily inching towards its activation threshold again. If he turned up his sensitivity any higher, all bets were off. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“Yeah.” McGinnis picked up a voltmeter, leaned across his torso, and deliberately tapped a probe against his faceplate. “Yeah, I think it is.”
She drew back, dragging her hand down his chassis. A gear somewhere deep in his frame whirred in response.
“See, here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna slide these probes between every one of your electrical connections. Then I’m gonna run a current between them, one circuit at a time. And I’m gonna keep doing that over and over again till I’ve found every short in your wiring… or until I get tired. Whichever takes longer.”
One probe tapped at a bare contact. The second probe touched another. Then a faint, dampened pulse throbbed down the wire between them, and Bebop suddenly made up his mind about how he felt about being a good boy: positive. Very positive.
With an audible click, every variable resistor in his body adjusted instantly to set his hardware sensitivity to its max. “Yes ma’am.”
She smiled. “Oh, I like the sound of that.”
Then she got to work.
McGinnis was every bit as thorough as she’d promised. From the controller at the heart of his chest to the tips of his limbs, she methodically tested one connection after another.
At first it was slow. Her probes found their mark. A momentary wave of current lit up the nerve. Then he had a few moments to equalize again while she traced his cables, found the next contact. The sensation was intense. But it was brief, and bearable.
But McGinnis learned fast. She found each new connection quicker than the last. The faster she went, the less time he had to recover. One spike of current came on the heels of the last, and before long stimulus accumulated quicker than his control system could restabilize. What started as transient jolts became lingering aches punctuated with intense spikes that never quite faded.
One, two, three jolts in quick succession knocked a high-pitched static exclamation out of him. He struggled to dampen the sound, but he’d lost control of his voice and now there was no getting it back. McGinnis continued to work with merciless precision, dragging another spike of static out of his voice box with each new shock.
His sensors screamed at him to move, to thrash, to flail or flinch or kick. Even though his hydraulics were dead, electrified valves still fought to swing open and flood his limbs with fluid. Each time a valve opened up and nothing happened, it sent a signal back to try again, open further, pump harder, in a run-away feedback cycle.
Another jolt and he plummeted past the point of no return. In an instant, every control loop crashed out of operating bounds. Every valve and actuator from his feet to his skull chattered uncontrollably. Every sensor flatlined at the top of its input range. Waves of current all crashed together in one electric scream that just kept going and going, past pleasure and into pain and through to pleasure again. McGinnis wasn’t even touching him anymore, but it didn’t matter. There was no coming down from this feedback loop, it just wouldn’t stop, and he couldn’t see, he couldn’t hear, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but vibrate and scream. Time stretched on forever, compressed into a minuscule point, fleeting and unending all at once until with a flip of her thumb, McGinnis tripped his reset switch and everything went black.
The first thing he saw when his eyes finally started working again was McGinnis slouched in a chair, plastered with grease and sweat, and somehow wearing a whole lot less clothing than he’d remembered.
The second thing he saw was a big singed hole in the wall across from him that hadn’t been there before, suspiciously aligned with the barrel of his arm-mounted laser cannon.
Gingerly, Bebop tried to sit up. To his surprise, everything was functioning as normal again. Hydraulics at pressure. Twinge in his electricals gone. Chest plate back where it belonged again. Ocular lenses good as new.
McGinnis rolled her head around lazily to look at him through heavy-lidded eyes. Wordlessly, she adjusted her overalls in a half-hearted gesture towards tucking away her bare breasts. Yeah, he was pretty sure she’d had a shirt on before.
“Er. Thanks for the tune-up. Sorry about… that.” With a guilty glance at his laser cannon, he waved vaguely towards the hole in her wall. “You sure I don’t, um, owe you for the…” Boy, this felt awkward. “…Service?”
“Nahhhhh.” McGinnis arched her back into a full body stretch. Her tits popped free of her overalls again. She didn’t do anything about it. “I got everything I needed… and then some. Now scram. I got real work to do.”
“Right. Well then. Thank you, and I’ll… er… see you around?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
He was almost out the door when she called out after him.
“Oh, and next time? You bring me some god damned flowers.”
Considering how good he felt after an evening in her workshop, that seemed like more than a fair trade.