TITLE: Sticky Sweets
AUTHOR: Michael J. Gallagher [aka "MikeJoe" ( mikejoe@odyssey.net )
SYNOPSIS: Rommie faces the greatest challenge of her short existence-- finding a way to say "Goodbye" to Harper
RATING: PG
WARNING: It's a leettle angsty
ARCHIVE: Yes, but ask me first
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I read this quote on SSBBS ( http://www.slipstreambbs.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/004104.html):
>Lexa Doig, meanwhile, is difficult to catch, determinedly spending
>some time with visiting boyfriend Michael Shanks. She and Woolvett
>do, however, manage to find time to lick gummi bears and throw
>them at a nearby studio wall, where they are indulging in a competition
>of height and seeing whose sticky sweets can stay in place the longest
I envisioned their alter egos, Rommie and Harper doing that, and the rest fell into place.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own ANDROMEDA, and make no money off this; it's for fun. Please don't sue me.
++++
Rommie hesitated at the door to the hangar bay for her land warfare robots. She knew Harper was in there, and having said her goodbyes to everyone else, she wanted to say goodbye to him, too.
And she didn't want to.
The *Andromeda's* beautiful android avatar still wasn't *entirely* sure about leaving with Gabriel, the avatar of the now-destroyed *Balance of Judgement,* but she wanted to be with him, to make a ....a life with him. But that meant leaving the *Andromeda* .... leaving Harper. He hadn't made an effort to hide his jealousy from the minute she and Gabriel had seen each other; she feared he might take her leaving with Gabriel as a slap in the face, an insult, and hate her for the rest of his life.
'I could face anything but that,' she thought. 'Dismembered by a mob, skewered by Magog, anything as long as Harper doesn't hate me.' She couldn't say why the possibility bothered her so much, but it did.
"You don't have to do this," the ship's voice said gently.
"Is that a direct order?" Rommie said, speaking in the same voice (of course -- they were aspects of the same being).
"No. And on that point, have I lorded over you, or given you orders you disagree with?"
"No ..... sorry."
"Apology accepted." The disembodied voice softened. "I just wanted to spare ..... you any further emotional discomfort."
"Only leaving without saying goodbye ... "
"Technically, I'm not leaving; just an aspect of me is."
"Think that would make a difference? Really?"
A pause, then, "It's your call."
'Before I change my mind,' Rommie thought, and stepped forward; the doors opened, and she advanced into the room. She found her engineer .... her creator ... her friend .... damn, why did this have to be so hard? ..... in a far corner. He was taking sweets from a bag on a work table -- "gummi bears," according to a brief data dump from her main AI (would she miss those?) -- licking them, and throwing them at the bulkhead. They would stick for a time, then fall to the deck.
Rommie stayed behind him, watching, uncertain what to say.
Harper licked a sweet and threw it. "How's your body feel?" he asked, not looking at her.
"What ...? Oh, the mods you made." She shrugged and tilted her head from side to side a little. "To be honest, a little odd."
"Probably gotta reconfigure the software drivers; may have left some old default settings in place. Your new autorepair systems should be able to handle it, but you'd have to sit still for a couple of hours."
"I'll look into it. What's up with Gabriel? I know he's still in your machine shop ..... "
Harper still didn't look at her. "Oh, he took a bit longer. Turns out the factory model avatars are a *lot* different from you configuration- and construction-wise, and the ol' BoJ didn't leave behind any documentation on the mods he made over 300 years. Took a while. Plus, his memory's a clogged up mess, so he's runnin' some optimization routines." He glanced down at his com gauntlet. "Should be done in about 20 minutes. You leavin' right away?"
"After I stand a brief watch in Command. And I have to close out my connection to the main AI."
"Any major problems?" Harper still focused on his throwing.
"Only that the *Balance* transmitted something big *somewhere* before he exploded, but I still don't know where. I'd like to figure that out before I go, but if I can't ... " She shrugged.
Harper nodded; Rommie felt more uncomfortable. Their parting should have more to it than final technical instructions.
Harper threw another bear.
"Mind if I try?" Rommie said.
"Huh? Sure, knock yourself out."
Rommie moved to Harper's side, fished a bear out of the bag, licked it, and threw. It smacked right on top of the last bear Harper had thrown, sticking to it.
"Hey!" Harper yelped. "Yer cheating. No android superpowers."
Rommie had a rebuke on the tip of her tongue and suppressed it. "Easily fixed ..... sensory and physical parameters now at human normal. Good practice at fitting in."
She threw another bear ..... it landed lower than the first one and fell to the deck.
"Ha!" Harper threw another bear; it landed higher than hers and stuck to the wall.
"Ok. I'm gettin' ticked," Rommie said; she licked another sweet.
"Ooh, I'm scared," Harper said.
Rommie hauled off and put her whole body into the throw; the bear landed at the same level as Harper's with a solid SPLAT but still fell to the deck.
"What -- !?"
"You gotta do it just right, Rom Doll. Just hard enough to get them high enough, but too hard and they don't stick. Watch."
Harper licked a sweet and threw it; it hit high enough but promptly fell to the deck.
Rommie laughed; Harper finally looked at her, smiling himself.
"I never could figure that out," Harper said.
"What?" Rommie asked.
"That grin o' yours. It's so damn goofy. I kept wonderin' why that was and how to fix it."
"I thought everything about me was perfect."
"Well .... yeah, and your grin is perfect .... goofily perfect."
They smiled again. Rommie still felt awkward, but not quite as bad as she had.
"Look, Harper -- " "Rommie -- "
They stared at each other.
"Let me say this," Rommie said. "Harper, you are a colossal pain in the ass. And I have no doubt you would have been thrown out of the High Guard recruiting office on general principles. And there is certainly no way I could ever give you the kind of relationship you wanted; I'm just not interested -- "
"I know -- "
"Let me finish. Having said all that, I would not be who I am and what I am now without you." Her voice started to shake. "You've ... kept me going, not just mechanically but .... in other ways through one of the hardest years of my existence. I honestly doubt I could have survived without you and .... and I feel closer to you than to any other sentient who's been aboard, a-and ... " She couldn't help it -- she started crying. " ... I'm going to miss you ... "
"Hey .... " Tears started flowing down Harper's cheeks. They fell into a hug and held each other, sobbing on each other's shoulders.
When they finally disengaged, Rommie tried to speak first between sniffles. "So, uh ..... will you build another humanoid avatar after I leave?"
Harper shrugged. "I dunno. I got some ideas for a new model -- upgrades I never got around to incorporating into you ..... " he shrugged.
Andromeda's hologram appeared next to them. "I'll go with what you decide, Harper, but I've found ..... her ... perspective on things to be useful. I wouldn't object to another one if you wanted to build it."
"Well .... I'll think about it, 'kay?"
The hologram nodded and vanished.
Rommie shifted. She didn't know what else to say ..... but she and Harper didn't have to say anything, did they?
"I hope I see you again before I leave, but if I don't ... " She leaned over, kissed Harper's cheek, and pressed her cheek against his. "Thanks."
"No problem." Harper smiled .... and grabbed her buttock.
"Harr-PERRR -- "
"Ok, ok."
He let go; she pulled back and he had one of those grins of his. She was going to miss that.
She wanted to leave before she cried again.
"Later," she said.
"'Bye," Harper said.
Rommie left the room, not looking back.
****
Rommie looked up from the control panel and looked around the command deck, empty save for herself and a couple of other Maria 'bots. "It's funny," she mused. "I will miss this place .... and yet I *am* this place." She turned to the big screen. "Did you mean what you said about Harper building another avatar?"
The main AI appeared on the big screen. "Of course. And while .... I never wanted an avatar, I am having difficulty imagining performing my duties without one."
"You out to make me cry again?"
"Of course not; you'd have to cry for both of us, and I wouldn't want to overstress your tear ducts."
Rommie grinned. "No chance of that -- "
At that moment, within the *Andromeda's* CPU, several datapoints connected; a mystery suddenly made sense.
And both aspects of Andromeda realized the avatar's tear ducts might get more work done.
****
Rommie waited around the corner from the entrance the *Eureka Maru's* hangar, the force lance heavy on her leg. She knew where that data was -- in Gabriel, probably the reason for the optimization Harper had run. She did not know what it was -- it was coded -- but among her suspicions was one which would require .....
"Gabriel has entered the hangar and is boarding the *Maru,*" the ship's voice said. "You don't have to do this."
"You keep saying that."
Within a half an hour, Rommie's suspicion, that Gabriel contained a copy of the *Balance of Judgement's* core personality, was confirmed by Gabriel himself.
And then Gabriel was dead by her hand.
****
Dylan came out of the machine shop just as Harper approached it.
"How is she?" Harper asked.
"Upset," Dylan said. "She even begged me to erase her."
"Over *him*?"
Dylan clapped a hand on Harper's shoulder. "Listen .... Harper. I know you didn't like Gabriel. To be honest, I wasn't thrilled about her leaving with him. But right now, she needs support, not a caustic recounting of his flaws. Ok?"
"I gotcha, Boss. Don't sweat it."
Dylan let Harper go; the engineer found Rommie sitting on the edge of a work bench in the machine shop.
"I heard what happened," he said. "Sorry."
Rommie just nodded.
Harper extended his small bag of sweets. "Want a gummi bear? You can digest 'em, you know."
"Ok."
Harper gave her one and took one for himself; they ate in silence for a moment.
"Harper?" Rommie said (still chewing). "Can I ask you something? Seriously?"
"Sure."
"Was there ever someone ... special?"
"Yeah." His face clouded over. "A long time ago."
"And you lost her?"
"Yup ..... I'd rather not talk about it."
"I understand. I just want to know ... at the time, did you want to die?"
"Yes."
"How did you get over that?"
"Who says I have?"
Rommie just looked at him; a lot of things about her engineer suddenly made sense.
"Ok .... " she said, and swallowed the last of her bear. "So .... what's on your agenda now?"
Harper swallowed and picked up a flexi. "Well, thanks Gabe's 'other half,' there's a ton of repair work to do. And as always, it has to be done yesterday."
"Want some help?"
"From *you*?"
"What, I can't get my hands dirty?"
Harper smiled lewdly. "Do I get to clean 'em off afterwards?"
"Nope."
"Oh .... well, c'mon."
Harper handed her a tool kit, and they set off down the corridor. Rommie found the rhythmic jingle of Harper's tool belt oddly
comforting.
'I can bear anything as long as you don't hate me,' she thought, and knew then she would get through this, too.