ExFic 8: The Lab of Wilson Dark

“Here it is,” Jaime said. She had led her twin brother Rion, Katrina, and Wearwolf, Katrina’s canine MultiPet partner, through the streets of Tekton all day just trying to find the place. While Jaime was practically buzzing with excitement, Rion and Katrina were worn about from trying to keep up with Jaime. Despite a complete lack of a sense of direction and the fact they didn’t know where the place was, Jaime just couldn’t wait to get here. “Dark’s MechaPet Lab!”

“Good, maybe I can sit down now,” Rion panted as he leaned against a wall. He wasn’t leaning on it for long before Jaime grabbed his and Katrina’s hands and tried to drag them into the store. Katrina wasn’t in the mood to be dragged anywhere, and as such Jaime found herself straining to pull them forward.

“Jaime, we’ve been running for hours,” Katrina said, struggling against Jaime’s pull. “I’m not taking another step until I can catch my breath.”

“But we’re here!” Jaime exclaimed, letting go of Katrina and Rion’s arms in order to flail her own about. Rion and Katrina promptly toppled over backwards. “How can you think about stopping when mechanical magnificence is not more than five feet away! Can’t we go in? Please? Please? Please?”

Jaime continued to repeat the question while simultaneously hopping up and down around them in a circle, her big, frameless glasses flipping up and down and her pleated dress billowing and flopping with each hop. Katrina watched the routine with great annoyance as she and Rion climbed to their feet.

“Geez,” Katrina replied. “If you wanna go in that badly why don’t you just go in yo…”

“Okay!” she heard Jaime say, followed by the jingling bell of the lab’s door as it opened and closed. Jaime had been right in front of her a second ago, and she disappeared in a blink of an eye.

“I knew Jaime was a tech-head, but I never realized she was so into it,” Katrina remarked. “She’s like a kid in a candy store.”

“Well, she is still a kid,” Rion replied. “Unlike you, me and Jaime don’t have our MultiPet partners yet.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Katrina said. She looked the place up and down. “This place doesn’t look like a lab. It looks more like a shop.”

“From what I understand, Wilson Dark makes money by selling his projects and the various components necessary to make your own,” Rion explained. “It’s kind of a boutique.”

“This man sells pets?” Wearwolf noted. “Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?”

“They’re just machines, Wearwolf,” Katrina answered. “It’s not like they’re living things… Right?”

“I dunno,” Rion said. “Sometimes, there’s a fine line between real and artificial.”

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Jaime wandered among the aisles of Wilson Dark’s Lab. Professor Dark arranged the aisles in a stark and decisive manner. His products cleanly transitioned from external components to inner workings, to assembled limbs, to pre-assembled robots. Everything was neatly arranged, alphabetized, and organized by price. It was almost like walking through a catalogue, except for the occasional component left out of place by a lazy customer. Jaime knew what each widget was and what it did without even looking at the tags, but she looked at each and every one of them anyway.

The bell on the door jingled again. Jaime peered over the racks and smiled to herself as she saw Katrina and Rion walked in. She already loved this place, and hoped they would enjoy it as much as she did. It was as if everything she ever wanted was right here in this store.

Browsing through a rack of body parts, Jaime discovered a limb that looked like it belonged to a wolf not unlike Katrina’s, only mechanical. She picked it up gently to get a closer look and, without warning, it started to kick its way out of her grip. Startled, she dropped the leg and backed away as it started to writhe on the floor.

She found herself backing into another person. She turned around to see him staring down at her and adjusting his own spectacles.

“Sorry abou…” the man got out before Jaime yelped in surprise. This startled the man, causing him to leap back into the racks behind him. This in turn woke up an idle mechanical eagle that started squawking and flapping its wings. Pretty soon, the shop was alive with the sounds of panicked robots screeching, beeping, blaring, whirring, running into other robots and generally making a big ruckus. Rion and Katrina rushed over to see the man hurrying about the completed robots section, trying to comfort the mechanical animals.

“What happened here?” Rion asked.

Chuckling nervously, Jaime scratched the back of her head and said, “My bad.”