(( A little story about less public side or Dabblez. Please treat this as ooc information. Dabblez experiments are meant to remain secret for now, even to most other RUR employees. ))
Deep in the darkest hours of the night, the rain-drenched atrox walks into the laboratory. He is carrying slung over his shoulders the limp body of a cyborg. The atrox's name is Armpitt. He has been working for Rubik-Ka Universal Robots for several months now. His job description reads ‘security' though few people in the company seem to know exactly what he does. Indeed few ever even see him.
"Where you want him, boss?" asks Armpitt.
Dabblez examines the borg with a handheld med-scanner. "This one is dead,” she states flatly. "I have no use for it. I told you I need them alive."
"Sorry boss." replies the atrox, dejected. "Armpitt go get 'nother one from da truck." With that he dumps the dead cyborg unceremoniously on the floor and heads back outsides into the cold rain.
"Make sure no one see you!" Dabblez shouts after him.
In the darkness Armpitt stumbles in the mud, his tiny flashlight proving to be barely adequate to show him the way to his old pickup truck. When he does finally get there, he climbs up the back of the truck and lifts up the rainproof canvas covering a pile of crumpled, bodies. Armpitt squints at the borgs. "Anyone alive in der?" he shouts at them. No one replies.
Undeterred, Armpitt inspects the borgs, turning the bodies over one by one and finally settles for the least damaged one. Lifting the borg over his shoulder, Armpitt makes his way back the lab.
"Dis one good, boss?" asks the Atrox several minutes later.
Dabblez runs the med-scan over the borg and nods. "Yes, better. Put it on the examining table and strap it in."
“Okay boss.”
Dabblez slips on a pair of protective gloves and goggles while Armpitt secures the cyborg on the examination table. After adjusting the overhanging lamp and grabbing a laser scalpel, Dabblez proceeds to make a deep, precise, circular incision around the cyborg’s skull. Putting the scalpel to a side, she carefully grabs with both hands the borg’s head and removes the top, leaving exposed the part-organic, part-machine borg brain.
Dabblez gives Armpitt the cyborg’s scalp to dispose of and picks up a pair of electrodes which she inserts directly into the borgs brain. The borg twitches, then strains violently against the metal straps holding it down.
Dabblez takes a step back, waits patiently for the borg to settle down. Then she approaches the borg again, removes her goggles and stands directly facing it.
“Do you recognise me?” she asks coolly.
“Yes,” seethes the borg once again straining madly against its binds. “You are known to us.”
“Good. Understand this then, I’ve connected you my Multi-Vac Budget Mainframe computer. In the next few seconds all your high-level directives and instructions will be reset. That should take care of that nasty attitude problem.”
“You idle boasts do not impress me, weak meat creature. Cyborg technology is far more advanced of your. Our codes are unbreak-.”
The cyborg freezes mid sentence.
“You were saying?” asks Dabblez. “Okay, down to business. What is the version number of your positronic matrix and where was it developed?”
“Version Gqp237841b-001 developed in Hive C32, sector G.”
"How long as your postitronic matrix version been in production?"
"Version Gqp237841b-001 has been in production for 22 days, 4 hours, 23 minutes."
“Is that the most recent version in existence?”
“No. Hives M45 and M17 are on version Gqp237841f and Gqp237841g respectively.”
Dabblez frowns. “Well, close enough I guess.” Abruptly she removes the electrodes from the cyborg’s brain. She'd been looking a recent cyborg model for quite some time now but usually by the time Armpitt was through with borgs it was hard to tell the new models from the old. This one would have to do, though truth be known, at the rate cyborg technology advanced, it would not stay a recent model for long.
Putting down the electrodes, Dabz picks up with a helmet like device with numerous spikes and thick cables coming out of it and places on the cyborg’s exposed head. Then she says, “Armpitt, kill the lights please.”
“Okay boss.”
Seconds later the lab goes dark, illuminated only by the dull red emergency lamps and flashing lights from the many instruments. Out from a sealed temperature controlled compartment she retrieves a virgin positronic matix, the basic building block of all RUR’s robot brains. She places the virgin matrix next to on a QPT imprinting machine of her own design situated right next to the examining table.
“Start recording:” she calls out to the Multi-Vac Budget Mainframe. “QPT MK II experiment no. 23. Subject is a cyborg, v. Gqp237841b-001. Time is 3:17 AM. I am about to start stimulating the matrix to prep it. Meantime I’ll be extracting the Theta-derivative waves from the borg’s brain. The process should take approximately ten minutes. After that I will begin copying the raw matirx patterns of the cyborg’s brain to the virgin positronic matrix.”
Totally absorbed by her work, Dabblez moves from machine to machine adjusting settings and alternatively switching on and off the different devices, all the time describing out loud each step of the complex procedure. Armpitt looks on, bored. He's seen it all before, many times.
“Time is now 4:41, the console reads matrix crystallisation at 87%. Cyborg vital signs still stable. Correction, the borg’s pulse is rising, fast. I’ll try to compensated with 30cc of a cloropolyenthic solution.”
Dabz plunges the huge syringe into the cyborg’s neck. Here eyes move from the imprinter’s console to the cyborg vital signs display and back.
“Time is now 4:50. The cyborg’s body pules rate is steadily rising, as is its body temperature. Its heading for a catastrophic system collapse. The cloropolyenthic solution may however have slowed down the cyborg’s condition degenerating just enough as the crystallisation of the positronic matix already at 92%. Nothing more I can do now, it’s going to be close.”
Moments later, with a final violent spasm, the borg’s vital signs go flat. On the console Dabblez reads the dismal news, “Crystallisation 97%… Crystallisation 96%… 92%… 88%… 72% Warning: Positronic Matix unstable. Imprinting Process aborted.”
“Stop recording." whispers Dabblez wearily. "Armpitt, you can turn the lights back on.”
“No good boss?” asks Armpitt.
Dabblez rubs her tired eyes. “No, Armpitt. We’ve failed again. Can’t keep the damn thing alive long enough to get the new style QPT bring fully crystallised.”
Armpitt ponders over this a short while. “Kinda like ice-cream then?”
“Ice cream?” replies Dabz, confused.
"Yeah, like when it's a real hot day and you want an ice-cream so bad you so you go to da ice-cream guy and buy a cone with three scoops but before you even finished da top scoop it start melting and the melted ice-cream runs down da cone and makes your hand go sticky so you eat the other two scoops real fast to stop it from melting but by then you’re not really enjoying it no more."
Dabblez shakes her head. “Other than the fact we are dealing with state of the art cybernetics, illegal cyborg technology and potentially multi-million credit contracts, yes, I guess it’s just like ice-cream. " She allows herself a small smile. "Come on along, we have to clean this place up before people start waking up. With any luck I might even get to sneak in a couple hours sleep.”
