"You said there was nothing wrong with him, right?" Mikey's voice sounded weirdly far away, and Gerard had to strain to hear him.
"Are you peeing right now?" Gerard screwed up his face. "Could you not while you're talking to me?"
"Can you
hear
me peeing right now?" Mikey asked, right before Gerard heard the toilet flushing.
"Oh, gross." Gerard felt like yanking the transmitter right out of his ear for a second.
When Mikey's voice came back, he sounded like he was grinning. "Hey, when nature and you call at the same time. Not my fault."
"Ugh, you're a dick."
"Whatever. So, you were saying that there's nothing wrong with Frank, right? So why are you freaking out?"
Now Gerard could hear him just fine, of course. He sighed and waved his hands around.
"Because I think that there
is
, I just can't figure out
what
. He's running hot a lot, like the cooling system's not working properly? And he wouldn't, uhm. Boot up this morning. It was freaky."
"Mmm-hmm."
"But, the thing is, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong
mechanically
. Everything is running perfectly. Everything is calibrated, everything
works
." He felt his own voice rising again.
"All right. So, what else is wrong with him?" Gerard could hear the fizz of Mikey's soda in the background. He wished he'd gotten himself a coffee before locking himself up in the lab.
"His hands did this weird repetitive motion thing…"
"Again?"
Gerard shook his head, then remembered Mikey couldn't see him. "No, not – not yet. But why wouldn't he boot up this morning?"
"Stop freaking out."
Gerard laughed almost despite himself. "Is that an order, or what?"
"It's for your own good. Frank is fine. All…machines have something weird happen to them every once in a while. He'll be okay."
Gerard so badly wanted it to be true. As he and Frank settled in to watch
Dragon Riders
later that day, he thought he could almost believe it. When he got up to pee in the middle of the night and watched the moonlight slither slowly over Frank's features as he lay, powered down, on the couch, Mama snoozing at his feet, he thought he did.
It wasn't until he was sitting in Ray's waiting room on Monday morning, his fingers still numbed from the fall chill, that the possibilities started scrolling through his head once again.
The siliskin was being rejected by the mainframe. Was it melting and somehow affecting the connections?
Something about the movement programming, maybe.
Maybe. Maybe he hadn't checked the cooling system properly, after all.
Were the calibrations destined to fail?
"Fuck, Jesus, shut up," he mumbled just as Ray's head poked out of his office.
"Gerard? What is it?"
