Django Durango

September 6th, 1964

Haworth made concerted efforts not to get comfortable with his life in the glass cell. Getting comfortable was dangerously close to getting lazy. Getting lazy would leave him unprepared to take an opportunity as it presented itself. So every morning, he dressed in his full attire just as he would have were he at home – or as if he had full intention of leaving Haworth Labs that day – before Dr. Hughes came around to dose him with Coconut.

Some mornings, though, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed.

When the lights flicked on overhead today, the light filtering in under the blanket he always pulled up over his head as he slept exactly because the lights flicked on so abruptly, Haworth eased into wakefulness and an oppressive gloom. He woke with that feeling often so he got out of bed like he always did and dressed before his usual morning audience arrived in spite of it.

Sometimes the Coconut would help, pushing the dreary feeling into the background. By the third day of the same dosage, however, the odds were in favor of the morosity winning out. He’d been in a sour mood since yesterday’s visit with Verloc, brief moment of fun working out that code with Gemma notwithstanding. His patient notes had really said it all. Admitted November 10th, 1960, the day his entire world inverted on itself.

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September 6th, 1964

Gemma felt better today. Not by much, but enough to think there was some improvement. Or maybe she was growing used to the discomfort that it was fading into background noise. As she pulled her blanket tighter and sipped her chicory, she assessed her condition. The headache and fever both persisted, but she found they didn’t take up all her mental energy when she was alone with no one to focus her attention on.

Lucky thing too, as Gemma felt she’d made enough progress with Verloc to proceed into the compliment phase of Mary Ann’s interview tactics. She’d need more to talk about than his hair though, she thought as she bit into her apple. She’d probably played that angle out as far as it was going to go, but she was coming up empty on anything else to praise Verloc for. Gemma couldn’t see what Sally ever saw in him, and her theory that their relationship was only ever a facade on Sally’s part was starting to look a lot more likely. Still, if Sally had managed to stick with him for three years, there had to be something admirable about Verloc that Gemma could use to flatter him into submission.

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It turned out the robots weren’t actually equipped to troubleshoot faulty programming in a human being. It was not a matter of simply opening a file, looking over the code, and editing broken logic. Humans didn’t work that way. The only way to interface with them was to explain the correct logic and hope they understood and would amend the errors in their programming themselves.

Nonetheless, after being made to observe the robots in their own world, Dr. Faraday had to acknowledge the evidence suggesting the robots did possess more emotional range than lobsters at least. Once she conceded that point, then she could admit that perhaps it was unethical to kidnap and enslave them.

The one point on which Dr. Faraday was adamant was that it was not wrong to force them to feel happy. On this matter, she simply would not concede.

The robots had made their terms clear however: a portal would be opened only once more and any parties who did not cross at that time would remain in their world thereafter. If Roger and James wanted to take Dr. Faraday home with them – and everyone agreed that it was in everyone’s best interest that they do – she would need to acknowledge the robots’ feelings about being reprogrammed in full.

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“There’s been a change of plans,” Haworth said as he straightened his loose notes. “We’re meeting Miss Byng today, not the General.”

Verloc frowned. “Is he sending her instead as a message?” he asked.

“I don’t believe so. I think he’s just giving her more responsibility over the Executive Committee’s liaison with the labs so he can pull back on his,” Haworth surmised. “All us old guard are making our plans, aren’t we?” he said, regarding Verloc fondly. “Miss Byng is obviously his. She lives in the Village so she’s better positioned to keep more regular tabs on us than he is.”

“We might have already solved the supply problem if we didn’t have to take time out to give them progress reports so often,” Verloc complained.

“They’re under just as much pressure to deliver as we are,” Haworth said as he took a small flask from his jacket pocket. “We’re all on the same deadline.” Verloc eyed the flask reproachfully, but Haworth didn’t notice as he was too busy unscrewing the cap. He took a quick swig and screwed the cap back on, wincing at the bitterness before a look of inordinate delight sprung up on his face.

Just then, the intercom on his desk beeped and a woman’s voice said through the crackling static, “Miss Byng is here for your two o’clock appointment.”

Haworth stuffed the flask back into his pocket, pressed the button on the intercom, and said, “Right on time! Send her in, Dottie.”

“Make sure to smile,” he whispered hurriedly before the door opened. Verloc forced his own face into a too wide grin for the occasion.

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September 4th, 1964

“Did you poison me?” Gemma asked. She hadn’t bothered getting out of bed for Verloc this time, feeling entirely too miserable to even bother, and instead just lolled her head to the right to stare in his direction.

“No,” Verloc said. He leaned against the wall next to the door, looking bored like he was merely biding his time in here. He hadn’t asked her any questions about how she was feeling, which Gemma found strange given the purpose of his visit, but not out of his character. “Blackberry withdrawal is difficult and unpleasant. Didn’t Sally tell you that?” He didn’t ask in a spiteful tone; he sounded as if he thought that wasn’t like her not to have been thorough in her warnings.

“She did, but she didn’t say death would be preferable.” The headache that started yesterday had only grown sharper and more insistent, and today it had been joined by the vague, itchy heat of an impending fever on her back. That morning’s dose of Coconut had added a generalized feeling of anxiety that she couldn’t put a cause to and was now working to ignore. “You have to have Crash here, don’t you? Wouldn’t it make more sense to test your Joy formula without the Blackberry interfering with it?”

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