11th October 2010
08:12 GMT -5
"I-I-I-I-I re-. Re-. Reeeeea-."
The turquoise-skinned gynoid twitches, its vocal systems-. No, those are degraded but functional. The problem must be in its mental networks. It literally can't turn thought to speech due to parts of its brain being missing.
I dip my head slightly, visually assessing the damage.
Alright, most of the right side of its brain missing.
Mia lays it down on my work bench, trying to cushion its head as she does so. That's a pointless endeavour. What's left of its skin is
far tougher than human skin, its endoskeleton is far better at absorbing shocks and the general damage after the fusion bomb went off has thoroughly fried what was left of its peripheral nervous system.
"Can you fix her?"
"Oh."
Okay, don't say 'Is that what you wanted?'.
She didn't
say that was what she wanted. I thought she was just giving it to me for
study. This might not be B13, but it's the closest we're going to
get.
And how do you think a superhero should respond to this situation?
Ah… Research the nanotechnology so…
Yes..?
I mentally sigh.
She thinks this gynoid has human-equivalent mental sophistication. She wants me to repair it because she thinks it's a person.
The Brainiac drone had her for several hours. It's possible that she's learned something that you haven't.
"Oh, probably. Or if I can't, I can substitute parts to get her up and about."
I risk a smile. Artemis has been… Giving me pointers, but apparently the best I can do is 'school yearbook'. According to her, that's better than 'serial killer', which is good because serial killers are usually pretty unhappy people.
That's not why it's better.
Fortunately, Mia's not looking at me. She's looking at the trembling gynoid's face.
"Have you got-!? Cyborg painkillers?"
"I doubt very much that it's in pain. It's trembling because of damage to its motive systems. I can make it stop if you want."
She nods, and I sever the connection between the gynoid's brain module and the rest of its body. For an instant its body goes slack, then some parts-. Ah, I see, they're trying to move to a default position. They're mostly failing due to the damage, but it's sort of like a robot jerk reflex. The brain isn't required.
"Okay." Mia looks her over. "How long is this going to take?"
"I have no idea."
You know, you could-.
Scan.
Sure thing, sport!
Huh.
"The-."
"Well?"
"
The.. drone was
much more simple. Not much more sophisticated than one of Earth's most advanced robots… Apart from the brain, presumably."
She frowns. "But… Coluan technology is
far more advanced than that."
"One of Earth's
most advanced robots. The mad genius sort.
Tomorrow Woman's muscles,
Ace Android's bones,
Carapax's armour and
Kilgore's communications array… The brain wasn't recoverable after the electromagnetic pulse, so I can't tell you anything about it."
"Oh. So it-. I just assumed that it came from Colu."
"It
might have done. But I didn't see anything either when we fought or
since that would let me conclude that with any certainty."
She nods. "And what about her?"
"
Much more advanced. Which is part of the problem." I
expand an image of part of her interior. "Nanotech residue. It looks like it was designed to have a circulatory system that used it for self-repair, whereas the Brainiac drone had to manually replace parts of itself."
"And…" She nods slowly in understanding. "They all got fried by the E.M.P."
"Completely destroyed. The residue is enough that I can tell that they existed, but I can tell almost nothing else about them. I'm assessing its advancement based on the remaining parts of the brain unit more than anything else."
"Could you replace them with
my nanobots?"
I frown, and then when that's not enough I squeeze my eyes shut.
"Your nanobots..? Which are designed to merge kryptonian and human genetics in a single organic body and grant it superpowers?"
"Yeah?"
…
"And not-?"
Be nice.
"Sure." I point to the blood extraction array I built to draw her blood. "You remember how it works."
She nods and walks over to it, inserting her arm into the hole. A tiny piece of ultra-sharp
something that I recovered in a scavenging mission will cut through her skin and then a suction tube will remove a little of her blood before the nanobots close the hole. And then do it again and again until it's managed to extract enough of a sample to work with. Her nanobots tend to self-destruct when exposed to… Just about anything that's not her body. It's not impossible that they'll recognise a fellow Brainiacite and be helpful instead…
Hardly a problem for
me if something goes wrong.
She's watching-.
Repair.
Orange light flashes out in a way that will
probably make her happy. Rebuilding the gynoid's body is fairly simple. Which is to say either easy or impossible. I don't have good 'before' scans so there are large parts that I can't reliably repair. The brain in particular is going to absorb my experimental time for the next… Week or two? And that will just be to make it
functional. I literally can't replicate a partially disassembled computer brain from the future. But if I assume bilateral symmetry and that the tissues retain a similar structure in different parts of the body…
The partial rebuild finishes. Mia looks a little impressed. Why-?
"It's not finished. The skin's just relatively simple."
But without nanotech, quite a lot of this won't work as intended. And if Mia wants it up and around, some ability to function in human society would probably be helpful. How should I go about that?
Hm. If the probe used something like Tomorrow Woman's tissue, I suppose that's a reasonable place to start.
Her remains I could scan perfectly well, once Professor Ivo's scan-resistant coating was removed. Doesn't help with the brain -Tomorrow Woman's brain was synthetic-organic and couldn't interface with the remaining Coluan parts- but it will do for the rest.
"Hey."
Mia offers me the filled vial. The gynoid doesn't have an immune system that could react badly to the blood, and Tomorrow Woman's circulatory system can take them to every part of the gynoid's body. I take the vial,
open a hole to one of the remaining nanotech reserves and pour the blood inside before
sealing it.
"There. I still need to finish her brain. I'll let you know when I'm ready to wake her up."
...Now where the heck is that drum beat coming from?
