Ryden Oneshots

Common Circuitry Problems

Summary: "Oh," Brendon breathed. "Your robot has a stutter. Spencer, that's *adorable*."

"Hey," Spencer said, opening the door. "Thanks for coming around, I know it's late."

"It's cool," Brendon said, because he felt that saying dude, when the mysterious guy from your organo-metallurgy class invites you over to look at his secret project, you don't say no might come across a little creepy. "What do you need?"

"It's – right, okay," Spencer said, letting Brendon in. Brendon tried not to stare too obviously at the shape in the centre of the room with a dust sheet covering it. "You know the final assignment for Watkin's class? I've been working on – well."

He shrugged his shoulders a little hopelessly and then crossed the room. He pulled osf the sheet with no theatrics, which Brendon appreciated – you'd think that well into the 24th century people would be over the mad cackling scientist thing, but apparently not – and then he stopped appreciating, and started gaping. It was a fully humanoid, titanium enforced robot, with real-looking synthetic skin and what looked like organic growths of hair on its head and the back of its arms, and sensory darts built into an intricate pattern that looked like tattoos on the underside of its wrists. Judging by the slight flicker in the robot's eyes even powered down, Brendon was guessing that they were the latest in electro-optic circuitry. Really, though, the only way he could tell it was a robot at all was through its unnatural stillness, and the open panel on the back of its neck.

"His name's Ryan," Spencer said.

"Um," Brendon said weakly. "I – what seems to be the problem?" A horrible thought occurred to him. "He hasn't gone evil, has he?"

"No," Spencer said. He sighed and typed in a code, then shut the open panel on the back of Ryan's neck, making it as though it had never been there. Ryan came to life, face flickering with tiny muscle tics, mouth opening and closing twice (Brendon was pretty sure his own mouth was hanging wide open).

"Ryan," Spencer said. "This is Brendon."

"P-p-pleased t-t-t-t-to m-meet you," Ryan said in a high, wavering voice, and behind him, Spencer made a hopeless face.

"Oh," Brendon breathed. "Your robot has a stutter. Spencer, that's adorable."

"Can you fix it?" Spencer asked. "I've tried everything, and you came top in that speech software class."

"I'll give it a go," Brendon said, and Spencer powered Ryan down again. "I need to see his voiceworks, if that's alright."

"I haven't sealed him all up yet, it's cool," Spencer said. With a soothing pat of Ryan's head, he carefully opened him up and extracted a green circuitry board. Brendon examined it carefully, holding it up in the light.

"Ah, yeah, I think I can fix it," he said. "Do you have a soldering kit? And some copper?" Spencer did, and Brendon spent twenty minutes bent over it, making minute adjustments. This was so much better than what he'd had planned for Friday night.

"Okay," he said finally. "Let's give it a try."

Spencer inserted the circuitry again, hooking up the wires with precision, and Brendon held his breath as Ryan's face came alive again.

"Am I fixed?" Ryan asked, and Brendon clapped a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing aloud. Ryan's voice was a perfect, drawling monotone.

Spencer met Brendon's eyes, mouth twitching. "Good enough," he said.

*

On Sunday, Brendon was delighted to look up from the nest of books and notes he'd scattered over the grass around him to see Spencer walking with a familiar spindly figure. Spencer was holding the robot's arm with one hand and a holo pad with the other, trying to take notes as they walked along. Ryan was stumbling and swaying all over the path, a tiny frown of concentration on his pale synthetic face.