My Brothers' Keeper

[Proto Man]

Dear Diary,

Today it was actually a nice day for once! We were limited to just seventeen attacks on the Community Center. For once, I really wish they would just mind their own business. I feel like they attack us just because they’re too bored hurting each other. I mean… it’s not like we’re hoarding advanced technical equipment or even half-decent food. If I was a human, I’d balk at having to eat the glorified slop they send us to feed the destitute. It makes me wish the Empire would allocate a better budget to this building, but then again, I guess that’d give the gangs down here even more incentive to attack us? That’d be one of those ‘win-lose’ situations, right?

I’ll have to try and scrap together the supplies to make some more cupcakes for Private Hiberius… he was so happy the last time I was able to bake them!

In other news… I haven’t heard from Blues lately, and I’m beginning to wonder what’s become of him. I know that time can sometimes pass differently in other parts of the Omniverse, so I hope he doesn’t come back thinking it’s next week or last year or something equally ridiculous. Thinks were livelier here with Blues, especially once the others warmed up to him. I hope he comes back soon. I’m afraid they may cut down on travel restrictions after that bounty hunter and her friends shot up the top tier.

Don’t tell anyone this, but I watched that with a big smile on my face! It’s not too often you get to see Judge Dredd one-upped on city-wide television. Now… you’ll never see the footage again because it’s been censored and pulled from the Dataverse, but enough people downloaded it that you’ll see it circulate around. She might be a mercenary, but that woman in the suit is going to become a symbol for a few more upstart rebels. Let’s hope she doesn’t just slip away into an island in the Vasty Deep from now till the End Times.

Well, Diary, I wish I had more to say, but there’s not a whole lot that happens down here on Six outside of the usual spats outside the Community Center. And once you’ve been down here for longer than a month, the gunfights and explosions feel like little more than changes in the weather, rather than people dying. It’s sad really… I’m afraid that many of the people who live here have probably become desensitized to it. Once again, I guess we have the Empire to thank for that…

Until next time!

<3 Roll

***

With a sigh, the girl closed the book and locked it up tight. Lifting up her mattress, she slipped it back into its hiding spot where none of her nosey brothers would find it. Hopefully, today would just be another ‘normal’ day in the Tier Six Community Center.

[Proto Man]

It was just another dreary day down on Tier Six that the package arrived. With a smile, Roll bent over and picked it up from its spot on the little conveyor belt that cycled through everyone’s packages from the upper tiers. Making her way back out of the common area, she wove her way through the hallways until she found her small private quarters. Once inside, he placed the large pink box on her bed and pulled apart the bow on top. Her smile grew wider as she pulled off the top half to reveal what she’d sent away for a few weeks before.

For anyone else, the arrival of some new dresses would probably feel like no big deal. But when you lived in a city with no retail stores, it wasn’t that easy to come by new clothes, especially ones that were still somewhat in fashion. After storing the two new dresses in her closet, she brushed some of the dirt off the patchwork garment she’d been wearing for the last three months. Sooner, rather than later, she’d retire it and have it turned in to be recycled into rags or other useful by-products. For the time being, she’d wear it a little longer.

Returning to her bed, Roll let out a sigh and plopped down onto the lumpy mattress. Her eyes moved to the garish relic that her brother Blues had sent her from Camelot—a portion of a dragon’s skull. The boys had got a kick out of it, but Roll was anything amused. Unfortunately she had to keep the thing hanging up, because otherwise her siblings would start demanding she let them have it, and the last thing she wanted them to do was break it, regardless of how unsettling it was to have part of a dead reptile flanked by a poster of a Tom Hanks romcom and another of New Kids on the Block.

Knock knock!

“Who is it?” Roll asked as she hopped off of her bed and took a moment to smooth down the sheet. By the time she turned around, Guts Man was awkwardly crouched in her doorway, his overly large bulk making it impossible for him to navigate the small entrance. “Hi, Guts Man… what can I do for you?”

“There are some new mercs moving down into Tier Seven… I guess they’re after some old Imperial -bioweapon. Hiberius said we should expect a lot more noise until the situation rolls over.”

“Does he think that we’re in danger?”

The giant android shook his head. “He says it shouldn’t be a huge concern, because the Empire wouldn’t let someone use their old experiments to attack their outposts. It would be bad public relations, he said.”

Roll nodded her head. The last thing she needed was to worry about some maniac mercenary with expensive tech trying to shred up the place. Even the thought of it made her think back to when the Space Hounds had tried to storm the Community Center by force with what could only be described as ‘patchwork power armor.’ The Hounds had been repulsed, but it had taken a considerable effort by most of the battle-capable citizens who lived in the complex. Hiberius himself would have been overwhelmed, regardless of how strong he was or the durability of his own suit of armor.

“You want me to pass a message on to anyone else?” Guts Man asked, prompting his little sister to chew her lower lip for a few moments until the answer came to her.

“Just have Elec Man double-check the wiring in the automated defenses and the perimeter sensors. Best we keep our eyes open in case we have more traffic in the neighborhood.”

“No problem!” Guts Man shot back before lumbering off to relay the message to his brother. Once the heavy thud of his shoes faded into the depths of the building, Roll walked over to her mirror. Much like her dresses, her ‘vanity’ was made from welded together pieces of reflective glass. She supposed she didn’t need much, but she liked to keep herself looking fresh. As a robot she never felt fatigue, but that didn’t stop her from looking like a girl who had been awake for nearly 36 hours.

Grabbing her brush, she hummed a tune as she started to work the bristles through her blonde pigtails.

[Proto Man]

Mopping.

Roll hated mopping. She never had access to fresh heads for the mops, so she was always stuck trying to clean the old ones to make them viable. When you couldn’t order the proper chemicals for fear that the government would black-list you, it was hard to get a clean mop. And without a clean mop, she was just spending her time pushing around grime on the linoleum.

Next to mopping with faulty equipment, vacuuming was next on Roll’s list of ‘Things I Can’t Stand!’ The place was always dirty, always dusty, and once again, they couldn’t get quality products. Just last week, Roll had tried to clean up some of the spare bedrooms with a vacuum at least three times older than she was supposed to be. If only she was a prime, she’d be able to just summon a Vacuum Buster to make the cleaning a little more efficient.

“Roll,” the young woman glanced up and over at the door, where a teenage girl dressed in patchwork clothes smiled at her.

“Hello, Ricki, how are you doing today?”

“I’m okay… you’ve got another package.”

That remark caused the robotic girl to lift a blonde brow. While she’d known the last package was coming, she hadn’t ordered anything since then. It wasn’t a matter of not wanting to, but she hadn’t saved up enough of the scant salary the Empire gave her to help keep the Community Center clean and organized. Heck, she was only doing additional maid work to try and save up enough to buy some nicer shoes. It’d been a good, long while since she’d had a pair of nice heels. Her brothers never understood… they called her silly, but she didn’t expect them to be capable of empathizing with her on this subject.

“That’s a bit weird,” Roll remarked as she stood up off the ground and tossed her rag-slash-mop into a nearby bucket. “Are you sure it just isn’t something for the Community Center staff that has my name on it?”

“No one knows, but nobody wants to open it up in case it’s ‘specially for you.”

Roll didn’t exactly understand that logic, but she nevertheless gestured for Ricki to lead the way back to the main room. Despite having the appearance and mannerisms of someone not yet into their teenage years, Roll’s robotic nature gave her a gravitas beyond her years. It was the reason why teenagers seemed to defer to her leadership despite sometimes being two feet taller than her! A few minutes later, Roll entered the mail room and was passed a small metal box. The container wasn’t locked, and it had a simple enough label—a few pieces of masking tape upon which someone had wrote her name and the address of the Community Center.

“Well let’s find out what it is,” the preteen android said with a smile as she flipped up the simple latch that sealed the box. Lifting the lid, the girl found herself staring down at two tiny gray devices with some blue buttons and a tiny LCD screen. When she reached in to grab one of them, its little screen light up, causing the people crowded around her to gasp and recoil. “It’s okay… it’s not a bomb,” Roll laughed as she picked the device up out the box and held it in her hand. The screen continued to glow, but no words or pictures appeared on it to indicate any sort of advanced functionality.

“What is it?” Ricki asked as Roll placed a thumb onto one of the hard plastic buttons.

“I’m not…” Roll trailed off as she put some pressure onto the blue button. Just like that, the blonde girl exploded into binary, causing everyone gathered in the postal room to scream and dive for cover. Ricki was the only one who didn’t flee. Instead, the teenage girl watched with a mixture of horror and confusion as the cloud of binary that was Roll shot over to the nearest computer terminal and vanished.

Walking forward, Ricki stooped down and picked up the metal box, which now held only one device. When the girl touched it, the gray device remained inert, causing a frown to spread across her young features.