The Four Brothers - Ch 4

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Chapter 4 – The fight back begins – A hard ask is heard

The Texas Fundamentalists had made several assumptions when they forced their dirty little bill into debate. They had counted on the fact that it was coming out late on a Friday to stifle response to it from many quarters.

Unfortunately, they had not realised that fansship was often a 24/7 thing, especially amongst the most ardent of fans, as well as those who kept factories humming even through the weekend, or still responded to things that happened adjacent to them and threatened their livelihoods.

It only took about twelve hours before Theodore Giss was flooded by a horrendous flood of hatred for standing in the way of advances in American research.

Officially, Arendtcore took no part in the revolt. Unofficially, however, Aymee’s offices had become a storm of coordination. Fans grouping together over socmedia to examine and explain why #TheodoreIsWrong, the hashtag blowing up over several separate networks as they used either an expert eye or simply the energies of their ardent interest in a better future to power through token resistence from the Texas Fundamentalists. Every troll and bot who spoke in favor of what the proposed ban would do was flooded and yelled down by a dozen or more people opposing them.

Firms previously kept apart by energetic competition in the robotics industry suddenly started talking to each other and making awkward alliances either directly or reaching feelers across the scarred wood of Aymee’s worn old table, in a figurative manner of speaking.

A message got Aymee’s attention. Senator Bundt had responded. Things had come to a head that he no longer felt that a Xoom conference was sufficient. A time later in the evening had been quoted for dinner, light drinks, and discussions...

Aymee quickly stood up to get the invite forwarded to the Arendt brothers and Marcus on their prefererred method of walking over. For a brief moment, the swirl of activity circled their room... then the room started swaying ...

When Aymee came to, she was lying atop the couch in her office, a throbbing headache pervading her thinking bits as Marcus, Seamus and Bellamy looked on concernedly. Allie was also fully dressed up and standing next to Aymee, calmly easing a ice bag on their brow. “Well, I found her lying on the ground while I was passing by for some reason, so I thought something bad had happened. And then, I thought it merited your attentions, sirs.” Allie chirped, a tone of anxiety issuing over her synthetic honey tones as she watched Aymee’s face with a look of concern.

Marcus nodded slowly. “Thanks, Allie.... yes, we got the message you were about to rush around delivering to us... honestly, Ichigo-san, why can’t you just use the forward button in your emails like a normal, modern person?”w He gently chided Aymee, even as the Arendts nodded to each other and continued dressing up, presumably to get ready for dinner with Senator Bundt.

“You should get ready too, Marcus...” Seamus pointed out as he took a razor to trim his beard slightly. “Whatever Senator Bundt wants to talk about, he’d clearly rather read all four of us in together. But I don’t think we can ask Ichigo-san to power through the giant war she’s started and have dinner as well with anyone. Let her rest the night here with Allie’s oversight...”

“I told you already, I’ve seen this sort of thing happen before and it tends to leave people vulnerable when it happens. I mean, it happened every month to my own mom-” Marcus started protesting, before quickly shutting his trap as he realised what that implied about Aymee’s actual gender biologically was something she would not be very happy about...

Aymee’s response was surprising in its lack of strength and its absence of actual violence, as they balled up a fist and gave Marcus’ shoulder a punch so weak that it must have just been the wind.... “Marcus, just... shut up. Sit with me if you don’t want to go hobnob even when the host is one of our greatest collaborators... The fracas I’ve started will maintain itself for a while. I’ll just take a well-earned rest and...” She pauses to think as she watches the Arendts shrug and leave the room to get to their dinner date. “Marcus?”

Marcus looked back. Aymee had weakened considerably. Lack of rest? Lack of constitutional walking or exercise? That time of month? “Yes, Ichigo-san?”

“I keep some medicinal brandy shots in the main drawer of my work desk, could you please get one for me, and one for yourself... and pass me that blanket on my chair?”

Marcus nodded quietly, walking over to the desk and opening the drawer. Apparently it was the kind of brandy monks brewed to keep their spirits lifted in the chill of their halls. Aymee was not a drunkard – there were only two small bottles of the stuff, each holding just barely enough for a mouthful. He took the small quaffs of brown, murky liquid and the gingham checkered blanket draped subtly on Aymee’s chair, before returning to the couch and handing her one of the bottles as he draped the blanket over her in the flickering light of the office’s false fireplace, the holographic embers still offering a sort of warming draft behind the illusion of fire they portrayed.

“Thanks.” Aymee smiled as she popped the screw lid on her brandy, taking a hard swig and downing it in one go, causing a slight cough as she crashed right back into the couch. “Allie, please go around and check that all unstaffed offices have their lights and air-controls shut off properly before you retire for the night.”

Allie nodded. “Yes, Miss Ichigo.” She politely demurred before slowly turning around and exiting the office.

Aymee was clearly in a bad shape, offering zero protest to Allie’s misgendering. “Blast it. I told her that’s not the right way to addres... a man...oogh.” She collapsed, spent.

Marcus was certainly worried by now if he wasn’t worried before. “Hey, you sure everything’s going to be okay?”

A voice flecked with sheer misery and tiredness came back over. “I feel a gathering of horses has just decided to trample all over my belly on the way to the races. I feel like the exhaustion of the world has finally decided payment is due from me. And I also feel...” Aymee examines Marcus’ concerned mien... “That it’s rather nice having you worried and caring for me more than worldly status or kissing up, even to a man of great importance and a friend to our concern...”

Marcus shrugged indifferently. “They won’t agree to anything significant if you don’t toss your vote in. I’ve seen how much you’ve trained them on that. They’re like a pair of rambunctious puppies, but they won’t risk your wrath by doing anything legally or HR-ly compromising. I think you and I are good not going and getting some proper rest instead.”

Aymee tilted their head. “You’re tired too? ... Come here.” Marcus eeped as he suddenly felt Aymee wrap their arms around his head and carefully squish it against a pair of something familiar and rounded and big. He shut his eyes tightly as he felt his cheek squish against a pair of generously ample breasts, getting ready to be punched into unconsciousness or a form of throbbing pain...

That never came. Instead, Marcus was treated to the snoring and slight breathing of Aymee falling into sleep. “Again, definitely a chick with great tits. Not a guy. Definitely! Tits!” Marcus momentarily scowled and silently told his inner voice not to offer useless and offending commentary about any brother of his.... then the sleep contagiously spread, and he too was out like a lamp in the darkened study office.

“Ah, sleepyhead’s awake already?” “eight hours a night should be enough for anyone, and we’ve given him twelve.” “GUYS. You only gave me ten and I was feeling sick!” Marcus heard the words first as he slowly woke up several hours later.

“Well, Ichigo-san, are YOU still feeling sick?” Bellamy asked pointedly... The Arendts and Aymee were clustered in standing spots around Aymee’s table, looking over some smart tablets and at each other, looking at some notes, presumably from the previous night’s dinner event.

Aymee thumped their chest, causing their bosom to wobble furiously for a moment. “Feeling much better, Bellamy, Like it never happened at all! Anyways...” Aymee yelled loudly, as if to shake Marcus awake fully. “Wake up, dunhead! We got an all-hands on deck meeting!”

Marcus slowly sat up, stretching a little, before he sluggishly ambled to the table. “eventful meeting with Senator Bundt, I take it?” He spoke up after a few seconds of taking in the silence and purposeful looks.

Seamus raised a cup of something hot, probably his favorite green tea, and nodded back at Marcus. “We had some news that’s probably good, and some news that could be either terrible or great. I don’t know exactly which. I need to know if you’re on board with it before I can say which...”

Marcus eyed Seamus furtively. “Can we start with the probably good news first?”

“Gladly...” Seamus looked at his smart tablet. “Senator Bundt presented us with several surprisingly good suggestions on how to cope with the attempted ban, based on how they vote next month in Congress. Obviously, we’ll need longer term plan changes if the Fundies fuck more shit up and move the window further away from where we’d planned to go with our debut housekeeper robot thingy...”

“All those in favor of this concern of ours not being forced to shut down, hands up!” Aymee raised one of their hands up, in a mock vote of sorts.

There was a little laughter around the desk – they truly valued being in each other’s company, and while they had other options to keep doing it even if Arendtcore was forced to close, each of them had also started getting comfy with the staff in various aspects, enough to consider the idea of retrenching them in any major way repugnant. It wasn’t that Seamus wasn’t incapable of doing so if it was absolutely necessary, but even a controlled psychopath like him had grown fond of all the ties that were forming and tangling them all together in a big family of sorts. “We know what that vote is going to look like if we really took it.” Seamus pointed out.

“Anyways, we have a lot of outs that keep us in business whatever happens. Most likely we’ll be pivoting to innovative new devices for medical training. We have the equipment, we’ve acquired the engineers and artists we need as well, we can keep making work for all of them while we fight back this terrible proposal.”

Seamus started biting a little on his favorite biro and frowning, the heavily chewed synthplastic cap showing how much of a habit it had become over the years. “The other thing that happened at the dinner is that... the Senator made a odd request, asked for an odd favor, if you will. He wants a family.”

Marcus blinked puzzledly in the early morning light streaming in through the windows of Aymee’s office. “We’re not a matchmaking agency or an adoption home, Seamus. I take it you turned him down at least on the first pass?”

Bellamy deadpanned back. “Ordinarily you’d be right, but he challenged us to MAKE said family for him. One young boy, one young girl, one wife to come home to. He even suggested some traits that he wanted in them. He’s clearly got a firm picture, so it’s not just some off-the-cuff request that he’ll have forgotten by now.”

Marcus dropped his jaw as he took this in, like he’d been told the World’s Greatest Joke and found that his sense of humor must have expired along with last week’s bottled milk. A “beg-your-pardon, I did not just hear all that stuff” look crossed his face... and then he finally figured out what he wanted to say.

“We’re looking at an existential crisis where those Texas Fundies want to destroy our chance at finally having some sustainable, profitable form of success... and now Senator Bundt wants us to practically walk into that fire while dressed in accelerants and oilskins... figuratively, I mean. Seamus, if you don’t turn him down, even knowing he’s been a faithful friend and a loyal helper on the outside... we’re probably agreeing to some major levels of pain. Like ‘kill everyone in this little place and their helpers’ pain.”

Seamus took off his sunglasses and bit on one of the legs on the sides of the amber gold lenses... “Come on, Marcus. I know we brought you in for a different sort of more stylized thing. But... you do know how to do live drawing and realistic sculpting art. We need those skills right now instead.”

Bellamy piped up with an observation. “Bundt was very agreeable to us setting any terms we wanted to create any sort of deniability or protection for our company against any possible issues this wish of his creates... we do it on the down low, we don’t involve the other 99% of the company. Just us, and the small set of resources we’ve hogged entirely for ourselves. No cross-contamination with the Allie project, no reading in anyone on enough of this epically ridiculous idea-”

Bellamy clearly shared Marcus’ concerns on the quixotic nature of what Senator Bundt had asked for.

“And certainly, certainly, we’re still going to be a Btotherhood together, whether or not you agree to help us out. You build the shapes we start out with, Seamus figures out how to push in the hardware, I figure out how to program it to make it fit for purpose, and Ichigo-san here works out what sort of legal weasel-words it’ll take to armor us up against any possible discovery or liability.... and also to make sure Senator Bundt takes the stab wound instead of shanking us if things get bad enough.”

Marcus looked down at the notes on the tablet. It probably shouldn’t work, and this was probably more than they owed Senator Bundt even after all he’d done to help them out for the past few years. A pang of sorts flitted through his mind. It was of an outrage that he was being an unappreciative fusspot, and that he should put himself out for Bundt the same way that he had done for them all these years, and even now in these trying times...

He finally spoke up. “It’s going to be a challenge in so many ways, isn’t it, Seamus.”

Seamus nodded solemnly. “we all seem to think so, yes.”

Marcus paused, as if to contemplate all this. But he already had made up his mind. “Just so we’re clear, this is a side project to everything we’re doing to try to stay afloat and beat back the Texas threat? If it fails, there’ll be no hard feelings? And hopefully no fatal or serious damage to what we’ve built up?”

Aymee was still heavily focused on her briefs and the handwritten notes from the previous night’s dinner. “It seems he’s aware of the risks and is willing to take his share of them, yes... I’m still writing up that agreement just in case I’m wrong about him.”

Marcus smiled for the first time in the past half hour. “Aymee, that’s just overcaution. I’ve never seen you read anyone wrong.”

Aymee nodded as they sat down at their desk. “First times for everything happen, Mr Manners. Now, if there’s nothing else, I move that we all take some time apart from each other. Think carefully of how we can accomplish all the things we need to do... or at least give them the old college try.”

Seamus furrowed his brow. “You realise between being the CEO and the Eldest Brother here, I should be the one closing this meeting, Ichigo-san.”

Aymee paused, putting down their stylus. She seemed to be frozen in thought for what seemed like a short moment. Eyes up. “And we are all, for some reason, standing right together in my office. Which I now need privacy in. In order to focus on the future. Now. Shoo.” Aymee gave Seamus a dismissive wave of their hand, before resuming writing a draft...

“She’s got a point. Come on. You too. Let’s all get game-faced and get back to work.” Bellamy dragged Seamus out in agreement. “You too, Marcus..”

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Marcus shook his head hard again. Another one of those reveries... He might need to get his rejuve adjusted, those little moments were getting more and more common. What had woken him from it was the soft glugging and rumbling of the charging station providing its add-on services, draining off the wastewater, disposing of any solid wastes and garbage. A garbage truck would probably be around to collect the solids at least once a month, more often if the station got more use for some reason. The water would be filtered and used as greywater to cool the geothermal plant and charging infrastructure.

A prompt blinked at the dashboard screen. The AI, bless its gentle heart, had waited to make sure Marcus was absolutely ready to hit the road again.... He wasn’t, not so soon anyway, as he folded the fur sheets of his Queen bed and trimmed his beard more thoroughly, letting the cool Alaskan air (or what was left of the chill after the the campervan had warmed it) blast the skin beneath it. He dudn’t want to show up looking like a hobo. Aymee had often impressed on him how important it was to give a good first impression, even if it wouldn’t matter down the road. “The act of a man who knows what he wants from the world”, they had haughtily said, a frisson of absence of self-awareness hanging in the air from the actual biological gender of her existence.

Marcus laughed briefly to himself. Then he cried. Oh, he still missed Aymee so much, even if circumstances had arranged themselves peculiarly in such a way as to ensure that she would require an extreme effort and will to actually go away for real...

He had a small cup of instant “pour-over-filter” coffee and a reheatable muffin, its lava chocolate pockets sweet and warm in his mouth after two minutes in the microwave. The packaging had recommended only 40 seconds of normal heating, but it assumed an oven that wasn’t underpowered, unlike the one hanging above and to one side of the kitchen sink. “Campervan... resume next leg of planned journey.”

“Acknowledged,” The crisp voice of the AI replied, as the sounds of charging cabled slithering back into storage announced that the campervan was no longer recharging or running off the geothermal plant. It was all on its own now in the wilderness, save for a signal to ping off the satellites in the clear eternal night sky and back down to HQ as if to say, here Mr Manners was, he was doing okay, and almost at the site where he needed to work on things that couldn’t be trusted to just any other staff in the company.

Marcus sat down on the sofa as the campervan started off on the last leg of his trip over to the destination of intent. The slight bumpiness of the chiled asphalt on the road as it micro-fractured and fixed itself dozens of times a second as the wheels rolled over it was oddly soothing, and it was only a matter of time before Marcus’ bad habit of narcolepsy in boredom caught up to him and thumped him gently back into the past again...
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It had been mutually agreed that Project Goldfish (as the side-project Senator Bundt had requested had become known, based on a irrelevant joke from Marcus about ‘replacement goldfish’), would start small and slowly scale up. This way, failures would initially be cheaper (and hopefully easier as well) to fix.

What that meant was partial assemblies were the first things that kept popping out of the Arendt’s hands.

The first few were just art pieces of sorts. Disembodied single hands, eyeballs. Feet, cut open at the ends to expose the wiring, tubing, and artificial muscle and actual loadbearing lightweight but strong bones and actuators, all sized to resemble the size and shapes of the anatomy of a young child. The kind of thing you would fob off onto a premium museum experience about sci-fi or anatomy, or the future.

It was clear that everyone was getting serious and bringing at least their B-game by the time of the flute recital.

It had been like if someone had taken a T-posed young child and carefully drew a rectangular box around their head, their outstretched arms, and enough of their torso to encompass some of their back and their ribcage, before running a sort of lazer to slice everything else off. A sort of life-like human skin analogue had be applied to almost every surface where it had made sense, but only a cursory effort had been made to embed any other details.

That was never the intended point of the test, as the assembly raised a small flute to its lips and started a haltingly played rendition of Button You Must Wander. Fingers clumsily ambled between the finger holes, breaths taken and released in careful bursts to form notes, as a hastily written piece of code translated archaic MIDI score files for a single instrument into the required motions...

The assembly finished off its last note, slowly dropping its arms back onto the table with the flute, looking blankly at the small camera that was facing him directly, wobbling slightly in its cradle.

Bellamy looked on satisfiedly as he reached over and hit the red stop button on the viewfinder screen, before carefully taking up the camera. “So... are we going in the right direction?” He asked as he glanced down and rewound, watching the performance played silently as well as several earlier takes, awaiting the practiced amateur hand of his half-skill in video editing.

“we’ve spent six months on this since the dinner. Even if you account for our experience from making household cleaning robots, this is still pretty... acceptable to me.” Marcus observed, the only other person with Bellamy in the room to keep the ambience down during the recording. “I’m sure Senator Bundt will be happy. But you do need to remind him, again, just in case, that this isn’t something he’s allowed to share or like on social media.”

Bellamy scowled a little. “Oh, I’ll put on the preamble and everything in the video editor. Some folks sure spooked bad when he posted that picture of the hand grasping an apple.” Project Goldfish had dragged the Brotherhood kicking and screaming into the same level of professionalism and opsec that the rest of Arendtcore had long achieved on its public matters, but some folks were still having a tougher time than others. Aymee would have a fit on realising that this amazing little performance would have to remain nothing but an attachment on a self-destructing message to their benefactor. Nothing to be done about it...

“So how are you going to top it. What’s your next rabbit from that hat?” Marcus asked. There had been a certain boredom in the project for him since he’d completed his bit and submitted the sculpt of an entire boy that the first full prototypes would be fitted into.

Senator Bundt had been clear on quite a few aspects. “His name will be Eillot... He will be slightly tanned and fit, in as much as a boy his apparent age of 10 or 11 can be fit from moderate physical activity. He likes eating apples and the color blue, because they remind him of the color of his own eyes. He despises the flavor of broccoli, but will eat it if you impress him sufficiently on how it will make him stronger, but will absolutely not even sniff at bok choye unless it has been cooked into a form that no longer resembles it, such as a soup or stew. Hazel hair, short, kind of like any ordinary boy. At a younger age, he once accidentally scarred his left knee in a small accident while walking. He has two or three moles as unique identifying marks on his body. He hates maths, and loves art, but he loathes it a little that he excels at Maths but sucks at art...”

Marcus had read through the entire four pages of descriptives. “You know, if I didn’t swear any better, he was describing someone who actually existed for real. Are we ABSOLUTELY SURE we’re not making a replacement goldfish for him, Bellamy?”

Bellamy shook his head as he deposited the powered-down flutist assembly into a box, sealing it with some tape in bright yellow and bold black letters reading repeatedly “DISPOSE SECURELY – DO NOT EXPOSE CONTENTS.” ... “I did a genealogical check, he was born an only child in the family, and he’s genuinely never had a family. If someone is lying and having a side-chick and the consequences of doing so, Geanio hasn’t filed the documents about it.”

“We don’t have a lifetime Gold subscription to Geanio from owning the company just for shits and giggles. I’ll bet you a limited edition copy of your favorite album that it IS a replacement goldfish and not just a creative writing assignment from a tryhard. Let’s have Aymee put a watchlisting on the Senator.” Marcus winked mischeviously.

Bellamy nodded absentmindedly. “Game on,” he said as he lifted what apparently weighed little more than a family’s groceries for a week, the box being apparently that light with all that it contained. “And if you win because you find something that genuinely proves Elliot actually once existed as a real human person related to Bundt? Whatever shall I gift you?”

Marcus paused to ponder. “... a favor. I promise it won’t exceed the value of what I’m betting against you, and if you think it’s still too much, I’ll let you back down from it, Bellamy.”

“You sure seem very generous there, Mr Manners.”

“I’m looking at it in terms of odds... I may suck at maths and statistics but I’ve bet enough to know that that kind of bet is easier to prove one way. In your favor, in this case.”

Bellamy nodded. “That sounds like a good reason.” An awkward pause formed. “Hang on, that’s not how you bet on things. There’s nothing in it for you and everything for me!”

Marcus deadpans. “I did say I was bad at maths and statistics. How often did you think I’ve won anything from the scratchies?”

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Another four months or so passed without any huge changes in Project Goldfish, as Marcus busied himself mainly with the day to day running of the factory, planning regular Thursday evenings for the artists in the Arendtcore fold: wine tastings, relaxing half-days off for picnicking, live drawing and speed sculpting sessions.

He would pick up his sculpting tools regularly of course. There was a schedule for deliverables laid out between the Four Brothers, and even if Seamus and Bellamy had fallen behind just a tad, he would keep up his side of the bargain, sculpting a second child form, this one a female. As usual, Senator Bundt also had a lot of details specified, the prose spilling across a few pages. He was admittedly a very decent writer in some ways, Marcus admitted. A shame he had fallen victim to politics, even if that had also resulted in him being so helpful in so many ways...

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Three things eventually happened that got him briefly on edge after all that time. All within the space of one single workweek

First, he actually won on a scratchie. He had blinked in disbelief as the $2 scratchie that he had purchased on a whim as usual at Monday lunchtime had transformed by the magic of three matching bell symbols into twenty dollars. It wasn’t a big win, but it was the first time he had gotten lucky. Admittedly, it wasn’t much – but it was still worth holding the receipt for. He had resisted the urge to just blow it all on some pointless celebration that would probably be forgotten in a week or two.

Secondly, The Arendts had involved Marcus and Aymee suddenly in a game of four-way Rock Paper Scissors, reducing the competition gradually until Aymee had beat him good. “What was that all about for, really?” Marcus had asked as Aymee had cheered their final victory. Seamus and Bellamy simply just... looked at him over their Thursday lunch trays. Total silence. No rhyme or reason apparently... All Bellamy had said was “clear your calendar from this weekend till the next.”

On Friday afternoon, the shoe dropped for Marcus. “Congratulations on your week off and on becoming a dad!” Seamus and Bellamy suddenly showered him with a pair of little party poppers.

Marcus whimpered softly. “Guys, first of all, I’ve been a virgin for the last ten years unless you count all the gay foreplay I’ve had with Aymee! Second, I’m damn sure my vasectomy jabs are still valid till this November... What do you mean, dad?!”

it wasn’t working. The Arendts were in full uncontrolled psychopath mode, together at the same time. While there wasn’t any physical injury coming or being threatened, Marcus felt a little uneasier with every ticking moment of the both of them looming over him.

Two thick carry-all bags, one twice as large as the other, and two thick grey-colored binders appeared in front of his table. “We’re giving you everything you need, and a list of what we want back! Enjoy your good times being a dad!” Bellamy put some sort of punctuation underneath it all by blowing a one of those little blow-up whorls they blew into at parties... Marcus loathed the irreverent noises...

As if to further emphasise that he was being given free time – time he could have made for himself anytime, given his status as a CxO at the very top of the company – his open work files suddenly all saved themselves and closed off on a forced policy command from the comapny’s IT networks... He tried relogging in with both his passkey card and his fallback password, which responded with a silly emoji on a beach chair gently patting the head of a smaller emoji, presumably some sort of progeny... Bellamy’s sense of humor was far superior to that of Marcus, in as much as it made people groan faster and harder, and he was now being exposed to it. He prayed that Aymee would notice this soon and ambush them with the emergency medications they had kept on standby for their variations of their condition, but it was clear he had other places to be.

The larger bag did seem a lot heaver than the extra heft would have suggested, Marcus briefly noted as he shoved his strange cargo into the back seat of his city runner jalopy, motioning to the AI in the car to drive safely and get him back to his randomly assigned little house within the Arendtcore corporate town of Little Sanctuary