Chương 79: Book 2 Chapter 7.2: The Derek Dilemma

Kim held her mechanical limb aloft, flexing the various metallic joints to demonstrate it's full range of motion. The group stared at the robotic revelation for a moment before a semblance of thought returned to them.

"Oh, geez, my bad for screaming," Hawke said.

"I- it's not about the robot thingy, it's the whole 'ripping off your arm meat' bit."

"I understand," Kim said flatly.

"On that note, dear, I do believe we have seen enough," Lee said.

"Does it bother you that much?"

"The machinery? No. However, there is the matter of the odd flesh glove you have left discarded on the table." Kim looked to the side. The "skin" she'd removed from her metal skeleton was lying on the table, looking like a partially deflated severed limb. She could see how that would be upsetting.

"Right. My bad." Kim grabbed the "glove" and held her hand under the table, out of sight, for a moment. When she raised her hand again, it looked just as it had before, skin and meat and metal underneath.

"Alright, well, that explains a lot," Harley said. It also dashed many of her theories on why Kim was so strange. She was especially disappointed to find her "actually three to seven raccoons in a disguise" theory was wrong.

"But it also leaves a shitload more to be explained."

"It's a long story," Kim said.

"So maybe we should save it until after we deal with Derek."

"Uh huh. So. Putting together the pieces here," Harley said.

"You think we could use you to get evidence on Derek?"

"It stands to reason," Kim said.

"I keep my memories of the first loop, and my mind's entirely digital. There must be some way to view and copy those memories, just like any other file." That sounded right, but only Harley could verify it. She took a moment to think before shrugging.

"Theoretically, it'd work," Harley said.

"I can't say for sure without getting hands on with whatever hardware and software you're running on. There's no guarantee I'll be able to do anything." The prospect of having herself examined disquieted Kim. Harley felt no more enthusiasm at the idea of doing the examination.

"If anyone can do it, you can," Lee encouraged.

"You're one of the best roboticists on the planet, much less at this school."

"I'm not that good," Harley said.

"And even if I were, that's still no guarantee. A fully sapient android is a full century ahead of schedule, at least. Are you from the future, Kim, or is this some kind of magic experiment?"

"There's magic involved," Kim said.

"But as far as I know my hardware is all modern."

"I might be able to do something with that, then," Harley said.

"No time like the present, I guess. I'm going to go get my lab prepped. Come by whenever you're ready." Harley headed for her laboratory, leaving Kim to consider when she'd be ready to be examined. She hated being poked and prodded -but she also hated the idea of Derek running amok, abusing the loops to help himself and hurt others. She also needed answers. Answers she now knew this group was in a very good position to provide.

"Vell?" Vell, who had up until this point been staring silent in a mix of confusion and awe, finally snapped to attention.

"Yeah?"

"Could you come with me when Harley is... doing whatever she's going to do?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"Then yeah, I will." The two awkwardly parted ways, leaving Hawke and Lee alone for a moment.

"Why are those two being weird? Aren't they like, dating?"

"Well... no? Maybe?" Hawke rolled his eyes and let out a deep, heavy sigh.

"Sometimes I feel like I don't really know anything that's going on around here."

"I hate to say it, dear, but it's going to get worse before it gets better," Lee said.

"Enjoy the blissful ignorance while it lasts."

"So. I don't know if you're on the cloud, or if you got plugs or ports or whatever," Harley said, holding up a handful of tangled cables. Each one paired to a different variety of device scattered around the laboratory. Harley had gathered every bit of equipment she could think of to handle the strange circumstance of Kim's robotic nature.

"It's just a standard USB. Type A."

"Boring, but functional," Harley said.

"Where at?" Kim lifted her shirt and poked herself in the belly button.

"Boop."

"Oh good," Harley said.

"I was worried you invited Vell because your ports were in one of the no-no zones."

"Why would someone put a USB port there?" Kim asked.

"Well, uh, why would somebody build an anatomically correct robot in the first place?" Vell asked. Harley and Kim stopped to stare at Vell for a second. The realization struck him two seconds later.

"Yeah, I get it now," he said sheepishly. Harley handed over the cord and Kim jammed it into her bellybutton. Although the port was actually part of her anatomy, she still had to flip the USB twice to get it right, per the universal law of USB alignment. Harley brought her laptop to Kim and set it up while Kim stood and waited.

"Getting access is going to take a bit," Harley said.

"So. Anybody seen any good movies lately?" Kim stared at Harley, who stared at Vell, who stared at Kim.

"Very large elephant in the room, I see. So. Do you mind if we ask some questions to pass the time, Kimbo?"

"Depends on the question."

"Naturally. First big thing: how do you do that stuff with your, well, meat?" Harley asked, pointing at Kim's bellybutton, which still had a long wire sticking out of it.

"I've seen you bleed -and not bleed- before, so how do you like, remove it like a glove and not look like a Tarantino movie?"

"It's trans-substantive," Kim said.

"Depending on what I want, it's either actual flesh and blood or a sort of rubbery synthetic. I don't know how it works, but it does." That certainly explained why she hadn't gotten her blood sucked during the vampire incident, though it did not explain why and how her blood had an off-switch.

"Neat. So if you wanted to, could you theoretically peel the whole thing off and walk around as just a metal skeleton?"

"I don't know. I've never tried."

"I'd keep that up. I've had my face removed before, it's not a very pleasant process," Vell said. Kim nodded in agreement.

"Just a, uh, technical question on my part, who made you?" If the technology used to create Kim was advanced as Harley said, that meant there was some sort of robotics wunderkind out there in the world. Vell wanted to know who might have been responsible for the apparent miracle, but Kim didn't seem eager to tell. She stared at Vell for a second with a look he didn't like at all.

"Tough question," Kim said.

"The guy who built the body was just some amateur robotics loser in Osaka. He just put together the pieces, though. Who or what made me... me, is... well, I don't know. I was just some ordinary mindless robot, and then I wasn't."

"Sounds suspicious," Harley said.

"Maybe we can find some clues in your memory files, because that just pinged ready." The various files and folders stored in Kim's intricate internal mechanism unfolded before Harley's baffled eyes. She was overwhelmed by how underwhelmed she was.

"This is... basic C++ coding," Harley said.

"I mean, respectable stuff by most people's standards, but we learn this stuff in first year at Einstein-Odinson. Whatever magic juiced you up must seriously be pulling it's -oh, that's new." As Harley spoke, the code that made up Kim's personality shifted slightly, re-prioritizing certain processes over others, and rewriting new ones entirely. Harley nodded in approval. The code was shifting in the same way a human's mind might wander, or filter out unnecessary information.

The processes that Kim didn't need blipped out of existence until they were needed, just like a human brain ignoring the fact that it could always see it's own nose until they tried to focus on it.

"Synthetic neuroplasticity. Intriguing. I'd love to get a handle on this, but I figure you don't want me digging around in there too much," Harley said. Kim nodded.

"I might accidentally delete your ability to think cats are cute, or something."

"Cats are cute," Kim said.

"So hands off. Just find the memory folder and get this over with."

"Okay, okay... so, with the way I assume this works, it's probably going to be a lot easier if you're actively thinking about a memory for me to find. Think about something that happened on the first loop, and concentrate on it as hard as you can." Kim nodded and closed her eyes. The code started to shift and focus, reshaping before Harley's eyes. It was all complete gibberish to Vell, but Harley was tracking different elements as they moved, somehow finding the usable information amid the clutter.

Most importantly, she found the directory where memory information was stored.

"Alright, Kim, I think we're in the right spot," Harley said.

"Might take some tinkering to convert this into a usable video format. It should be pretty standard stuff, but considering I don't know exactly what I'm working with... I can't make any promises. Last chance to back out if you're not comfortable with this." Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Kim stared down at the wire sticking out of her stomach. It unsettled her for several reasons, but she could not let that personal discomfort change her course.

She didn't understand life at all, but she believed in her heart, or whatever machinery passed as her heart, that hurting other people was wrong. So was standing by and doing nothing while someone like Derek hurt others. Kim had a chance to put a stop to him, and she had to take it. But that didn't mean she was going to like doing it. Kim held out her hand in Vell's direction. With a nod, he took it and held it in a loose, gentle grip.

"Do it," she said, before she had a chance to change her mind. Harley pressed a button, and Kim squeezed Vell's hand tight, gritting her teeth in anticipation of whatever might happen. Which turned out to be nothing.

"Oh, hey, there we go," Harley said.

"Easy peasy." The code easily converted into a viewable video, as Kim's eyes were basically cameras anyway. Harley hit pause on the newly encoded video, just to be sure they didn't browse anything private, but she couldn't help but notice a very clear detail -the face of Vell. Everything else on the screen was slightly blurred and indistinct, but Vell's face stood out perfectly crystal clear.

"Hmm. So the first time you saw Vell, huh?'

"It was... the strongest memory I had."

"Right. You're still holding his hand, you know." Kim tore her hand out of Vell's grip so fast he got mild rugburn.

"Ow."

"Sorry," Kim mumbled.

"It's fine. I'll live." The two were starting to look at each other funny, so Harley clapped her hands to drag attention back to her.

"So. I feel like things are getting a mite weird, and I also feel like we should maybe give Kim a minute to breath between really big conversations," Harley said.

"How about we take a break and get some pizza or something." Kim forced herself to look away from Vell. She still felt a pull towards him, no matter how hard she tried to defy it. But Harley was right. They had a lot to deal with, but Kim only had so much energy and time.

"Food sounds good," Kim said. Vell agreed.

"Alright, let me just eject this," Harley said.

"I usually skip that 'safely eject hardware' stuff, but in this case, the USB is connected to my friend, so…" Once it became safe to do so, Kim unplugged herself from the laptop, severing the connection like a digital umbilical. With complicated matters put on hold for a while, the trio headed for the dining hall to get lunch.

"So on the topic of food, Kim, do you poop?" Harley asked.

"I've seen you eat but do you just like, well, what happens to it?"

"Do we have to have this conversation before lunch?"

"I didn't want to ask after, you might've thought I was going to ask for a demonstration." Kim made a gagging noise.

"I don't need a long explanation, a simple yes or no will suffice." After a long pause, Kim said "no", and they never spoke of it again.

"So, Kim, just one more question and then I promise I'm done," Harley said.

"For now."

"Okay, fine, one more," Kim said. The pizza had refreshed her patience for interrogation.

"Do you have integrated weapons?"

"No."

"Do you want integrated weapons?" Harley asked.

"Because I could give you some." Kim held a slice of pizza in front of her mouth and paused thoughtfully.

"I'll get back to you on that," she said, before taking a bite.

"Understandable," Harley said.

"How about the rest of you? I can theoretically install an arm-cannon into any one of you."

"What kind of arm-cannon are we talking?" Hawke said. He felt like he'd be a lot less cowardly if he had a laser gun in his arm.

"You're pretty broad, so I could probably swing you a railgun or something," Harley noted. Vell held up his own forearm to Hawke's to compare -and then held up his other forearm. It took both together to match the sheer bulky musculature of Hawke's arm.

"Vell, you're probably going to set stuck with a single-shot laser bolter."

"I'm fine, I've got my, you know, revolvers," Vell said, quietly envious that he would never have a railgun in his arm.

"You could perhaps have something installed in your chest, though," Lee suggested.

"Oh no, no bioweapons in the chest. Too close to the heart," Harley said.

"Maybe something in the shoulders, then." After suggesting several alternate locations on Vell's anatomy where a weapon could be placed (and, surprisingly, never making a phallic joke about putting a gun between his legs), they moved on to Lee. While not as skinny as Vell, she was slightly shorter, and so placing a sizable weapon in her anatomy was also difficult.

While the other loopers discussed weapon placement, Kim fell silent, watching their conversation play out until the line of thought -and the pizza- started to run out.

"So, Kim. If you're ready, we can try to bait Derek as soon as tomorrow."

"I'm more than ready," Kim said defiantly.

"I want him out."

"Don't get too bold," Vell cautioned.

"He's already proved he'll hurt people."

"What can he do to me? It'll be the first loop, so he can't kill me in any way that matters, and I can just turn off my pain receptors."

"You can what?" Harley snapped, suddenly outraged.

"Turn off... my pain receptors?"

"We've been dying once a day for weeks now and you haven't felt anything?" Kim backed into her chair, suddenly aware that everyone was glaring at her a little bit.

"I mean... no, sometimes, when I get surprised, or…"

"I got eaten by a giant spider for you and you wouldn't have even felt it?" Vell said.

"Well, no, but it still would've sucked. For me," Kim mumbled. For a moment, everyone at the table glared at her. Then, as one, they broke into laughter. Kim breathed a sigh of relief.

"For a second there I thought you guys were mad," she said.

"Eh, I get it," Harley said.

"But next time one of us has to get electrocuted or eaten or something, you're up to bat first."

"I suppose that's fair," Kim said. Lee waved her hand, and the cloud of magic dust coalesced into the palm of her hand. Her magical scrying eye had caught Derek in the act of rifling through another office. With their target confirmed, she turned to Kim.

"Alright, you just need to go around, confront him in the act, hopefully get him to admit to what he's done," Lee said.

"Ideally try to lead him away from any discussion of the time loops." The video being edited in any way would call their entire story into question, but any mention of the time loops would render the video unusable. They needed to extract a clean confession.

"It'll be challenging, but you can do it," Lee assured her. Kim gave a confident nod and stomped around the corner, ready to face off with Derek in a climactic battle of wits to extract a confession.

"Oh what the fuck do you want?" Derek said as soon as Kim rounded the corner.

"Here to lecture me about cheating?" Kim froze in her tracks.

"Uh, yes," she said.

"Well fuck off then," Derek said.

"I was cheating yesterday, I'm cheating today, and I'll cheat tomorrow." Kim focused as hard as she could on memorizing every detail. Derek was certainly making it easier than she'd expected.

"Man you're stupid," Kim noted.

"How'd you even make it this far?"

"Surprise," Derek said. He leaned in close to deliver a caustic whisper.

"I was cheating at my old school too."

"So what you're saying is that you, Derek Langford of Winnipeg, Canada, have been cheating repeatedly for the past few years of your academic career?"

"Yep, exactly that," Derek taunted. He leaned in close again for what he thought was a taunt.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to turn you in and get you expelled, obviously," Kim said.

"Good luck with that. Maybe I'm not smart enough to know bullshit seventeen-syllable words like you and your friends, but I'm the only kind of smart that matters: smart enough to get away with it."

"Are you?" He was not.

"Well, thank you again for bringing all that to our attention," Dean Lichman said.

"It was difficult to find any evidence of his cheating here, but we did find some suspicious activity at Mr. Langford's old schools. Enough to warrant a possible expulsion."

"Excellent. Glad to hear the work has been done." Kim's video, once converted, had proved more than enough to put Derek under a formal investigation by the school. His underhanded methods were far less clever than he believed, and once someone was actively looking, they were quickly exposed. Dean Lichman had overseen most of the investigation personally.

"If I may say, Lee, while I understand your lack of trust in school establishments after what happened last year, I hope that in the future you can come to me with concerns directly."

"It's not a matter of trust, Dean Lichman," Lee said.

"Some things simply have to be handled personally." Dean Lichman reluctantly accepted her explanation and sent her on her way. The other loopers were waiting just around the corner to hear the news.

"Everything seems to be in order," Lee said.

"Our evidence may have been scant, but the suspicions were enough to pry up evidence of cheating in Derek's past." Everyone breathed a sigh of relief at once, Kim more so than the rest. She had been reluctant to reveal her secret, and the fact that the revelation was not wasted came as a great relief.

"Now what?"

"There will be a long process, I assume, it may be some time before Derek is formally expelled-""Hey, what the fuck!" Derek himself came careening around the corner, phone in hand.

"How the fuck did you people get me expelled?"

"Damn, Dean Lichman works fast," Harley said. A few decades of undying educational experience had made the Dean a whiz when it came to paperwork.

"You're the one who confessed to cheating, Derek," Lee said.

"You want to look for someone to blame, look in a mirror. And comb your hair while you're at it." That counted as a sick burn by Lee standards, though Derek did not appreciate the banter.

"Well- Fucking how? You have to have faked something!"

"Nope, all one-hundo percent real, live, unedited footage of you confessing like a dumbass," Harley said.

"Shouldn't have messed with the loop experts, newbie." For once, Harley's confidence was not entirely genuine. If not for Kim being a robot, there might have been nothing they could do to thwart Derek. But Derek didn't know that, and that made him very, very angry.

"Fine. You want to play this game? How about I tell the Dean and everyone else about your stupid loops on my way out?"

"You've seen firsthand why that's a bad idea," Lee scolded.

"Everyone would either not believe you or go insane, and you would likely be their first target." Thanks to that warning, even Derek, who had famously bad ideas, figured out that it was a bad idea. Most people couldn't build a universe-melter as fast as Freddy Frizzle, but most people could punch Derek in the face a lot better than him too. Though that thought did give Derek another, equally bad idea.

He was smart enough to realize Kim had likely been the one to record his confession, so he locked eyes on her, clenched his fist, and raised one arm. If he was going to get expelled, Derek figured he might as well do something to really deserve it. Kim let out a brief gasp of surprise as she realized Derek was actually about to punch her. Derek's punch never landed. Not because of lightning-quick robot reflexes, defensive systems, or anything of the sort, but because Hawke's punch landed first.

Having also read Derek's punchy intent, Hawke flailed a fist in Derek's direction and happened to land a blow directly on Derek's chin. The soon-to-be-former looper crumpled almost instantly.

"Hot damn," Harley said.

"Nice punch, Hawke."

"Did that work?" Hawke whimpered. He opened his eyes long enough to check.

"Oh geez. I was just trying to shove him or something."

"Not to discredit Hawke's inadvertent sucker punch here, but I think Derek's just a bit glass-jawed," Lee noted. Derek let out a muffled groan as he apparently regained consciousness, but he stayed on the ground.

"Should one of us, like, help him?" Vell asked.

"Eh. Even if I were feeling charitable, which I'm not, he'd just try and punch us again if he woke up," Harley said.

"I'll call the medical bots."

"Okay. He's still a jackass, but I don't want him to get, uh, a concussion or anything."

"Hawke didn't even punch him that hard, he can't get any more brain damaged than he already is," Harley said.

"Come on, we should get out of here. I was serious when I said he'll probably try and punch us again when he wakes up." Derek stirred again, and made the prospect of more punching a very real possibility. The loopers retreated to the safety of their lair, safely out of punching distance.

"Yes, I'm quite happy to hear that," Lee said.

"Thank you for keeping me updated, Dean." Lee hung up the phone and nodded to the rest of her teammates, confirming what they already suspected. Derek's attempted assault had only expedited the process of getting him kicked out of the school and off the island for good. With Derek removed from the student body, he would also be removed as a looper, ending any chance of him exploiting the loops for his own benefit ever again.

"Great!" Harley cried, before jumping out of her seat.

"Hawke, did you finish that banner?"

"No. I'm also happy Derek is gone but a 'Fuck That Guy' banner seemed like a bit much," Hawke said.

"I disagree but I respect you standing your ground," Harley said.

"The important part is that he's gone," Vell said.

"And we can get back to focusing on, uh, more important things."

"Like the fact that Kim has radically redefined our understanding of what it means to be a sapient entity?"

"Well, yes," Vell said.

"So long as, you know, she's comfortable talking about it."

"I'm not. But I have to," Kim said.

"Because I think you guys are my only chance at ever figuring this out." She glanced at Vell with a mixture of regret and fear in her eyes, before grabbing the collar of her shirt.

"Especially you." With a slow, careful gesture, Kim pulled down the neckline of her shirt, and simultaneously moved aside a patch of synthetic flesh that covered a metallic sternum. Vell took one quick glance and felt a familiar jolt of electricity down his spine.

"Oh, motherfucker." Printed on Kim's metallic core, just above where a human heart would be, was a ten-lined rune, identical to the one on Vell's back.