Chapter Text
They say you die twice… Once, when your body ceases to be, and again, when your name is spoken for the last time. For Albert, this phrase has resonated quite strongly with him ever since college, where he first heard it. Up until then, the man had led a middling life, struggling to get by as many do in the area he grew up. It was only through hard, tedious work, a bit of latent understanding of technology, and sheer determination that he had landed himself at one of the top schools in the country, the Robotics Institute of Technology.
With a doctorate in hand, he and his boyfriends, Tom Light and Noah Lalinde, began the process of founding their own robotics laboratory under the provisional name of LLW Labs. Unfortunately, Thomas had an unexpected and unpleasant reaction when Noah became Noelle, and the group split apart, LLW becoming Light Labs in the messy breakup.
Cast out by Thomas and unable to get over him, Albert quietly left Noelle, too heartbroken to heal their damaged relationship. During this time, he went to work for the federal government just to get by, developing automated defenses and brutal weapons to supply the military.
This isolated him further from his peers in the robotics community, who tended to look down on him for his work despite his situation. His resentment of the world grew as he bitterly gave up his dignity to survive, only second to his self hatred for his violent creations.
It was only when he got scouted by Light Labs that Thomas finally reached out again, refusing to even talk about what happened with Noelle and pretending he hadn’t permanently broken both her and Albert’s trust in him.
Still, a semblance of their old relationship slowly kindled back to life, where if you squinted, and ignored the hole in the group, it was like nothing had happened. This irritated Albert, but something in him wanted to go back to how things were, if only for a while.
Still, things were never perfect. Robotics as a field was still limited in scope, only useful as a novelty or for specialized industrial machines. They got by, making floor cleaners and partnering with Bunby to design delivery drones, but all that could barely pay the bills. Light Labs (a name that bothered Albert to no end) was naught but a little hole-in-the-wall studio in central Megalopolis, CA, and the overdue bills were beginning to stack up.
Albert decided to make a few calls to some old associates, hoping to score a contract for them…
“Tom! I got something!”
Albert rushed up the stairs from the basement, startling Thomas as he sipped his morning coffee.
“Is it Bunby Co again? They might as well be our only partner at this rate-”
“No, bigger!”
“What, PumpJack? The Delivery Corps?”
“The military. Specifically, the army!”
Albert’s excitement dimmed as he saw the grimace on his partner’s face.
“Tom, we need this contract, the bills-”
“TO HELL WITH THE BILLS, ALBERT! You know what that would do to our reputation!”
Thomas placed down his mug a little harder than he meant to, chipping it on the cheap tile counter. His eyes carried a weary anger, the kind seen at the end of wars on the face of a losing general.
Albert continued, knowing he’s close to wearing down his partner, “Do you have any other options? Bunby’s barely keeping us fed, we’ll lose the shop soon without something else to pay back the loans…”
“And slaughtering thousands, millions, is the answer!?” Thomas’ grip on the mug tightened, “I can’t… I can't live with that on my conscience…”
Albert motions to the stack of their mail; all over due bills, “Soon enough we can’t live at all. We need something to get us back off the ground, our grants ran out months ago. I know you miss the interns, Tom...”
He sighed, putting his arm over Tom’s shoulders, “Think of it like this: There's gonna be a bunch of newbie army techs helping with this, you’ll be able to have students again..!”
Thomas gave a barely visible smile. He sighed, “I guess it would be good to try to influence their perspective… It still feels like we’re giving up on our dream, though.”
Albert grinned, the familiar face of the man with a Wily scheme cooked up.
“Don’t be so sure, Tom! I may have called a few favors and gotten us full control over the project; A fully unmanned, general purpose robot!”
Thomas looked like he had been shown the meaning of life itself. “You mean, this contract is…”
Albert’s face shone like the sun, “YES! We’re getting paid to do our life’s work- creating a living, thinking machine, and sooner than we ever thought!”
“But… What of the weapons? We can’t just give our life's work over to the military, and-”
Albert squeezed him. “Tom. Breathe. I have this all planned out- Entirely defensive weapons systems, an override hidden in the emergency stop system, i have a few ideas for a separate internal board dedicated to the personality…”
“Wait, wouldn’t they easily find such an override..?” Thomas cautiously asked.
Albert preened, “They haven't found them in any of my old contracts~!”
Thomas’ face quickly jumped between mortified, unsurprised, and impressed, before settling on a mix of all three.
“If it is found, I'll be taking the fall anyway, so why not?”
Thomas put his head in his hands.
“Alright, sure…”
Albert beamed. “Great, I’ll go make the call, you start organizing the lab!”
As Albert booked it back upstairs, Thomas just shook his head wistfully.
For the next three months, the Doctors were hard at work designing and constructing the first of a new generation. The skeleton takes shape, made of titanium and steel. The locomotion systems, a combination of pneumatics and artificial muscles.
When it came to the power system, however…
“Albert, I think you underestimated how big these things are.”
The rest of the techs had gone home for the weekend, leaving Thomas and Albert to install the nuclear core on their own.
“It’s not my fault nuclear physics hasn’t progressed since we were in college!”
“Maybe not, but you could’ve at least checked the dimensions of this thing before designing the chassis around it. The chest is too small!”
Thomas placed the microreactor frame into the unfinished torso, ignoring Albert’s grumbling and coming to a realization.
“We could just make it female.”
Albert, flabbergasted, turned to stare at Thomas.
“Tom, what?” The hell is he on about now?
“No, no, hear me out on this. If the chest was just bigger, we could design her as a girl and not have to rebuild the frame!”
“Her- Tom, the army isn’t going to want a little girl as a soldier!” They want intimidation, and sadly, that means hypermasculine.
Thomas held firm, “Just spin it as psychological warfare or something- Nobody would expect an attack from a girl!”
Albert had to hide his disgusted grimace. There it is again, that casual disrespect that drove Noelle away…
“Wouldn’t that add unnecessary complexity to the design? We agreed on a basic frame..!” Maybe you can get him to back down on this without fighting him.
“It’d cost more to get a smaller core, and that likely wouldn’t have the output we need anyway.”
“I… sure, Tom, whatever…” Coward. This is why she left you, too.
Thomas had already turned away, sketching out new chassis designs, idly mumbling about “giving her eyelashes” and “long hair”.
Uncomfortable, Albert returns to coding the processing system, slightly defeated…
As the project progressed, the basic frame slowly filled in to resemble a person; a daughter, to Thomas. To Albert, who had coded the brain, it still wasn’t convinced it was a living thing yet. He had faith in his and Tom’s ability, but until it started talking to them he would remain cautious of calling it done.
The day of the activation had arrived, and the Doctors were running the final checks. The army techs were hidden in the other room, watching through a one-way mirror they had set up.
Albert finished up the diagnostic setup, “All ready on this end, Tom. How are things over there?”
Thomas held his hand up for a second as he secured the last few cables, then gave a thumbs up.
“Ready!”
Albert runs the command, and the two are silent as the machine’s systems come online, waiting with bated breath as each one slowly gives green…
And then, she opened her eyes.
Her eyes darted back and forth, scanning over the room. Her chest hummed with energy as she pushed herself to a sitting position.
“Who… are you..?”
Thomas’ smile gleams in the light, brighter than ever, like he’s witnessed the birth of a child.
“I am Doctor Thomas Light… your father.”
Albert softly shook his head as Tom began to bombard the robot with questions, but with a wry smile. Let him have his moment.
The Proto Android project wasn’t yet “complete”, but it felt like a major revolution in robotics had just begun.