The Madness in the Hearts of Men

He'd given her space. Bradley believed that perhaps having a giant walking, talking toaster suddenly appearing in your living room was a bit of a stressful situation--though he personally didn't really understand why--but it was approaching the second hour that Alesha had locked herself in the bathroom.

At this point, Alesha wasn't just trying to calm down: she was hiding.

Brad left his chair, where he'd been grumpily drumming his fingers on his knee, and walked up to the bathroom door, resolving to keep calm as he tried to reason with his wife.

"Alesha," he sighed, one hand wringing the back of his tightened neck. "Could you please come out? At this rate you're going to end up sleeping in there."

"No. No way," Alesha growled back through the door, violently flailing her arms despite the fact that Brad obviously couldn't see them. "Not... Not if that thing is still out there."

With a firm upper lip, she paced away, wandering the bathroom as if she were a caged tiger--ironically, a tiger quite happy to be caged.

"This is absolutely ridiculous, Alesha. It's not a thing, it's a she, and she's not going to hurt you. I programmed her with strict human relations protocols, she's going to harm you about as much as your mother would!"

"Yeah? My mother, eh? The one that wouldn't even let a cellphone into our house growing up she hated electronics so much? Please, do tell me, how is that thing like my mother again?!"

"You're missing the point!" Brad was starting to become very frustrated. "There's no reason to be afraid of her! You're hiding in there for no reason!"

Alesha smirked. "Yeah, just because you say she's safe doesn't mean she is, Brad. There's a reason my mom hates technology. It's not safe. It goes wrong. It destroys."

"Yeah, and when was the last time I designed something that went wrong, honey?! You're just throwing out excuses!"

"Me? Making excuses?! How about you start making some as to why you made something like that in the first place! Without even ASKING me if it's what I wanted, first?!"

"What?! Alesha, there is nothing I need to answer for. You were desperate for a nanny. We both are tired of looking, and we wanted someone perfect. Someone we could trust."

"Yeah, well, I wanted a person, Bradley! A human being! Not a cold box of bolts and screws! This is our daughter we're talking about! She's not a toy!"

"And neither is Lilobot! You don't seem to understand, she's not just a chunk of hardware and software. She's more! And you're not even giving her a chance to prove herself! You know what? Whatever. I don't care what you think. I made her, I'm the head of this house, and she's doing the job I built her for. So you're just going to have to live with it, alright?"

"Yeah, so long as it doesn't stay under the same roof as my bed and my daughter," Alesha said, rolling her eyes at the door as she turned away. "You can just do whatever you want, Brad. But when it blows up half the house, don't you dare expect me to have a lick of sympathy!"

Brad could feel the anger welling and bubbling inside him as he forced himself to step away from the door. She was impossible, sometimes.

'I go to all that trouble to make something this special, this important for her, and this is the thanks I get?!' His fists clenched so tight the blood waned from his hands, sending his fingers numb and lifeless. If he had the energy, he could've torn that door down, could've screamed right into her face about how terribly unreasonable and ungrateful she was being...

...but no. 'This is all my fault. I never listen. I never pay attention. Of course she doesn't want a robot, she doesn't even know how to use a computer properly! You're an idiot, Brad! Idiot... Idiot idiot idiot...'

The light sound of miniature fans whirring reminded Brad that he wasn't in the room alone. His heart hung heavy in his chest, but he still managed to stumble over to his newest invention. Much as he might like to, he couldn't just leave her there so he could go and sulk.

"Have I done something *bzz...zzrrr...nk* wrong?" came from the machine's head, her eyes audibly refocusing on Bradley as he approached, head buried in one of his hands.

"No, no it's not your fault, Lil," he murmured, still entirely distracted trying to find a way out of this that wouldn't involve sleeping on the couch tonight. "It's mine. I messed up... So... So stupid of me..."

For a moment, she remained silent, but like a child still learning and processing new information, she innocently, emotionlessly, voiced, "It would appear that my presence has increased the tension of this household by a detrimental percentage. If you would like me to leave--"

"No, no, Lil, no one's asking you to leave. Just give her some time, alright? Alesha's a good woman, and she'll grow to like you, she just... doesn't adapt well to things like this."

Still, as Brad really looked at his creation... he became lost in it's movements. Lost in it's existence. He had just created something that recognized it was a problem. That thought of a solution. That asked his permission--albeit, awkwardly. 'I'll have to look into improving her language processing,' Brad thought to himself as he tried to re-focus on what she was saying.

"--lovely, it appears more appealling to my visual cortex than my synapses originally predicted upon activation! It truly is brilliant--" Her words paused, and then was replaced by a recording of Brad's own voice. "--Mr. Bra*bzzzt*dley Kane."

"Just Mr. Kane please, Lil. And please, use your own vocal processes, the voice-overs are likely only going to spook her more."

"Yes, Mr. Kane." Lilobot's response was prompt; it took little time for her to adjust to his request, although her mechanical brows wiggled to indicate confusion for his insistence. "However, I must request I retire to recharge and process all this information; my positronic relays inform me I require approximately 7 hours, 6 minutes and 3..2..1.. seconds to adapt to this environment and initiate total synaptic reactivation."

Maybe he was worn out--or maybe too stressed--but even though he understood what Lilobot was saying, the words just frustrated and tired him. "Yeah, I'll... I'll set up some place for you to er, recharge, in my shop. Just wait here, alright? I'll come get you when I'm finished."

"O-K," Lilobot responded with the eeriely descending pitches of two different voices. However, after he'd nodded and begun to walk away, Brad caught her mouth move again out of the corner of his vision. "Mr. Kane?"

"Yeah?" he asked, his body nearly halfway out the door.

"Is this... guilt?"

Bradley couldn't help but smile. Emotion. He'd loaded every emotion recognition software he could find into her relays, but it was bittersweet, knowing that this one had to be her first to experience. "Yeah, Lil," he said with a pained sighed. "This is guilt."

Brad had had an old bed up in the garage for relaxing between tinkering, so it didn't take too long for him to make it up, as well as a little space, for Lil to "dwell". Hopefully it was far enough away not to bother Alesha, but close enough that Lil didn't seem put out; her full on "guilt experience" was causing her to act quite depressed, however, so Brad felt even worse when he did show her where she'd be living.

"Well... It's not much, but, um... If you need anything, the house is just a few steps away. Feel free to come get me any... anytime."

"Perfect! Thanks a *bzz...* bunch, Mr. Kane! You're the best!"

Brad flinched; he was going to have to tweak her emotion matrix a bit more in the morning to not flip-flop so much--and he was going to have to do something about the buzzing in her vocal processes.

"Well... Um--" Bradley paused. What do you say to your robot the first time you leave them alone? It was awkward--but probably not as awkward as for her, coming into the world only to be treated in such a way. "Sleep--er, recharge--well, I guess, then."

Lilobot respectfully waited for Brad to disappear before her oiled joints loosened and sat her bulk down on the stiff, unrelenting matress that was her bed. She could feel the emotions flooding into her positronic brain, but she didn't understand them; everything was so strange, bizarre--exciting--all but this... this feeling. It was not the same as the rest. It... hurt.

So this... this is what it was, to be alive.

---

Fury--embarressement--flooded through Travis' veins. His own sister had made a fool of him; granted, he couldn't argue that he was making enough of a right fool of himself, but he thought he could at least trust her enough not to make a scene.

This is Amelia we're talking about, though.

"Are you insane?! You're drawing attention to us, Amelia!" Travis growled under his breath, only moments after the woman on his arm had stormed out of the joint in a huff. "Can't you be quiet for like, 2 seconds?!"

"And why should I be?! Am I, like, supposed to be preserving your image or something? Shoulda thought about that before you started wooing someone behind your wife's back, stupid!"

"Stupid?! Stupid?!" Travis had a hard time keeping his voice down; the bar was virtually empty at this point so it likely didn't matter, but shame still forced him to try to be reserved. "Amelia, what would you know about my marriage? Don't you dare judge me when you have absolutely no clue going on!"

At this point, Naomi threw up her hands in disgust; she wasn't buying it. "Yeah, and I doubt Jade has any clue what's going on either, from the looks of things."

"Look, I just--" Travis froze. If one could calculate the embarressment and guilt of being caught with your hand in the cookie jar, this was a good thousand times worse. Here they were, his little sister and her girlfriend, berating him for being a sleeze. They had every right to, but as reality came back into focus and the nectar in his system slowly ebbed away, he lost all excuses he could think of. "I just... I'm just hopeless."

A truth, painful to admit.

"I'd say hopeless is the least of your worries," Naomi exploded, her tolerance level to his bull' already long gone.

"Just please, please don't tell anyone, alright? Especially Jade. We're trying to work things out, but if she knew, it'd just throw everything we've been working on out the door. I made a mistake... It won't happen again, I promise."

"Travis? If you honestly think I believe you, you'd be a right piece of idiot to let that thought pass your brain. This isn't the first time, and it won't be the last, I'm not stupid..." Amelia scowled, but, the glimmer in her eye betrayed the love she had for her brother. It was easier to keep a secret then to hurt him. "... but I won't say anything. It's your job to fix this, not mine." With a roll of her eyes and a hand to her hip, Amelia glanced away.

So, Travis then turned to Naomi. "And... and you?"

"I'm not promising anything, Travis, except that Jade's my friend, and the last thing I want is to see her hurt. So for now, I won't say anything, but if you hurt her any more than you already have..." Naomi raised a hand in frustration, turning her face away to prevent herself from spitting in his. "... you're toast."

Travis flinched. If Amelia's words of scorn had cut the skin, Naomi's had stabbed his chest. It was one thing to hear all this from Mia, who not only was a sister he frequently fought with but a woman who could never keep her mouth shut... It was another to hear it from someone as reserved and restrained as Naomi. For her to have said that, she had to be very, very angry.

"Now if you'll excuse us--" Amelia began.
"I came here to take your sister on a date, and I'd prefer the rest went unspoiled," Naomi finished.

With a heavy-hearted sigh, Travis nodded to the blondes and turned to move away. There wasn't any reason to stay any longer, anyways; the sooner he left, the better. He'd already made such a fool of himself, it wasn't worth chancing making it any worse...

... and his craving for drink had already taken it's toll.

---

Jebidiah's face ran hot. There was anger, but he caged it, fighting back his initial impulse to skewer his leuitenant on a spit. But as his lips ran dry, Jeb finally spoke, his voice cold. "I'm disappointed in you, Notorious."

"There's no way we could've forseen this, Mr. Kane. No one else was supposed to know where the shipment was being held, outside of my boys, Shark, and yourself. It just... doesn't make any sense."

"Well, why don't you try making some sense of it, then, Junior? Who do you think it was?"

"A nobody. One of the employees there, maybe. Nothing was even taken, there was just a couple of opened crates, they probably didn't--"

"Notorious, it doesn't matter if anything was taken. They know the goods are there. They know what's in them." Jebidiah raised a hand to his face, rubbing it to try and soothe himself from losing his temper. "It's possible they didn't even find what they were looking for. In cases like this, you make no assumptions."

"I wouldn't be making any assumptions if you weren't asking me to, Jebidiah! What do you think, I just left the crates there unguarded?" He didn't take being spoken to in such a way lightly; Junior was a Notorious, not just another one of Jeb's petty thieves--if it weren't for Jeb's connections, he knew it might be him in that place of power. Connections Junior would happily break, if there weren't so many. "It's not my fault that my boy decided to run off snogging his girl when he was supposed to be watching the goods."

"Yes, Junior. Right now, it is most certainly your fault."

"Yeah, well it wasn't my bright idea to seperate this shipment from the rest. Or to hide it in your wife's shack of a business."

"Don't be an absolute fool, Notorious!" Jeb spun around in a wave of sudden fury, coming very close to shoving his henchman down to the ground for his spite. "Those goods are worth more to me than to have your head still resting safely on your neck, so don't you dare belittle my wife's generous offer to keep them safe. Which they still would be, if you knew how to do your job!"

"My job isn't to babysit your treasure, Kane."

"Well it soon will be, if your gang can't mind 8 bloody crates."

You could nearly see the steam rising from each men's skin; if it weren't for their mutually beneficial relationship, their hands would be latched firmly to each others throats. It was lucky, then, that Junior took a moment to compose himself before responding.

"Look, I don't know how anyone might have found out about your little present from Simcott, or that you were keeping it at the Bottega," Junior responded, his stance firm. "And it's not my job to find out. Nothing was taken. Nothing will get taken. That's all I can guarantee."

"Fine," Jebidiah snapped. "If you have to, move the goods someplace else. Mindfully. Place some decoys, and put someone you can actually trust in charge of watching them. If whoever it was comes back... Then we'll know who broke into them. Understood?"

"Right, so I have to spare someone I need to do your dirty work..." Junior rolled his eyes, but knowing there was little he could do to get out of agreeing, he stiffly nodded while glaring back at his boss. "Fine. I'll spare one man a night to watch your precious fake cargo. But for two weeks. That's it. After that, you'll have to get your pretty little wife to install video cameras in her garage."

"Just make sure they do their job this time, Notorious," Jeb growled, his patience long since spent and his tired eyes growing weary of Junior's face. "Without another word about my wife. You're a replacable commodity, son, don't think I won't send you to the bottom of Simslaus Lake if it means I don't have to listen to your tongue any more."

Junior, amused, simply smirked back. "Sorry, boss. I'll try to keep in mind her... generosity."

"Good," Jebidiah responded with an equally evil, equally dire glower in his eyes. "With any luck, it'll be our mysterious intruder with concrete shoes instead... Let's just hope the bait is enough to get them to come back."

And if they knew what it was--and the thief was who Jeb thought it might be--the lure would be far too great to resist.

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Surprise!

She could feel the nervousness tugging at the back of her throat. Amelia didn't usually have a hard time expressing herself, but a lot of things had been changing about her, lately--things Naomi couldn't, or wouldn't, understand.

Deep breath, release. "I just don't think this is a good idea," Amelia said with an anxious, shaky voice. Her eyes were cast downwards, averted from what she knew would be displeasure in her partner's eyes.

"What isn't a good idea?" Naomi asked; Amelia knew, though, that she was just feigning confusion. Naomi wanted Amelia to say it to her face--but it wasn't that easy.

"Us. Coming here," Amelia stuttered out. "This isn't Bridgeport, Naomi. People will talk. People won't understand. Won't understand... what we are."

A look of irritation crossed Naomi's eyes; clearly, she was not as affected by this as Amelia was. Since she'd finally confessed her feelings for Amelia, she'd been reluctant to hide them. Naomi wasn't a 'let the cat out of the box and then try to stuff it back in' kind of gal. The hardest part had been taken care of, leaving Naomi very little resistance to pursuing Amelia. Amelia, on the other hand...

... well. Naomi had tried to be as sensitive as possible, but there was only so much she could do. This wasn't something they could hide forever, as much as Amelia might want to.

"Look, Mia," Naomi began slowly, trying to sound calm. "You won't know how they'll react until we try. Besides, this is hardly different then us just going out together as friends. No one will know the difference, and even if they did... There's no way you can know that they'd actually care."

"Plleeeaasse, Naomi, please don't make me," she begged in response. "I'm just... not ready."

"Not ready? Not ready?!" It wasn't like Naomi to become angry, especially not in public, but this was different. "Amelia, we've been seeing each other for almost six months now. Six months! And I have bided my time, waiting for you to be ready to be seen with me in public, and I have been terribly accepting of it all considering how long I waited just for you to even see me this way, and now, I can't even go to a bar and get drinks with you because you're afraid of people finding out you might just happen to be dating a woman?!"

"It's not tha--"

"Look, if you don't want to be here with me? Fine. We can go home. I'll pack my things, and I won't force you to have to deal with this, because if you can't even be seen with me... it's obviously not what you want."

"No, no please Naomi, that's not what I want, at all." Amelia was overwhelmed with horror. She didn't realize how frustrated Naomi had become with their 'relationship', but in reality, she couldn't blame her. This was all Mia's fault... All Naomi wanted was to be happy--and Mia deserved to try to give her that much back. "I... I feel for you deeply. And I need you. I need you more than I need anyone else in my life right now, but it's just--it's just not easy, okay?"

"I understand it's not easy, Mia, but that doesn't exactly make it a good excuse," Naomi cast with a roll of her eyes, rolling her knuckles against her hip bone.

"No, it doesn't... And I'm sorry. I'll give it a try, alright? Just please, don't... don't talk about leaving me. You're the only thing holding me together, and if I lost you--"

"Mia," Naomi said firmly, swiftly moving her hands to indicate that Amelia needed to stop where she was headed. "I'm not going anywhere. Even if you never wanted to be seen with me, I still probably wouldn't go anywhere," she admitted with a sigh, almost frustrated with her own dependence on Amelia. "I just didn't know what else to say. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I've got a thick head, sometimes I need a kick in the butt to get it working right," Amelia mumbled, toeing the ground with her foot.

"Well... I wouldn't love you if you were any other way," Naomi offered with a weak smile.

"I know." Amelia lifted her gaze, a smile finally beginning to grow on her own lips. "And I probably wouldn't love you the way I do, if you weren't a hard-headed, stubbornly committed woman who can actually put up with me."

"You're lucky," Naomi smirked. "I get the feeling not many people would."

"'Probably not. It takes a skilled matador to tame the bull, ya know! Not just anyone can!"

Naomi rolled her eyes. "Man, how did I end up with someone like you," she  muttered, now beginning to laugh.

"Aw c'mon, you know you like it! You sure liked it last night when I--"

"Yes yes, I get it Amelia--can we just go inside now? I'm getting hungry."

Amelia violently shook her head, sending her ponytail flapping from side to side from her sudden rush of excitement. "Nope--I got something to give you, first!"

As their lips finally drew apart, Naomi's eyes slowly opened again to see Amelia's grinning, blushing face. "You really are a piece of work," Naomi muttered, before briskly taking Mia's hand into hers, tugging her off towards the double doors of the bar.

"Aw c'mooonnnn!!" Amelia giggled as she was dragged inwards--but her laughter subsided the second they crossed the threshold into the Steel Stallion.

"See? The place is practically empty," Naomi chuckled as she released Amelia's hand and let her gaze travel left and right, scanning the bar. "You were worried for nothing."

"Yeah, I s'pose," Amelia said, still feeling a bit fidgety. "But at least I could disappear in a crowd..."

Naomi rolled her eyes as she spun around to face Mia. "You're impossible, you know that? Anyways, I'm gonna go get us some drinks--try to keep yourself out of trouble for five minutes, alright?"

"I think I can manage," Amelia smirked, though the sound of drinks lifted her spirits a little. Once she had a little nectar in her, this would be a lot easier. Inhibitions were such a pain in the butt, sometimes!

Naomi--clearly trying to suck up to Mia after her earlier outburst--reached out and squeezed her hand before she disappeared off to the bar, plopping up on a barstool to wait for the tender to take her order.

Left alone, Amelia began to take a better look at who was around, tonight. It mostly just looked like the usual Stallion crowd; a few drunks, a few rednecks with nothing better to do, some younger folks with some time to kill, and--say, wasn't that her brother?!

When she spotted Travis dancing just on the other side of the room, her spirits instantly lifted; maybe it wouldn't be so bad, with her bro, here!

But as she began to consider approaching him and giving him a publically awkward bear hug, she realized that the woman Travis was dancing with was definitely not his wife...

... but what they were doing sure made her look like she should be.

"Holy Plumbob!" Amelia gasped into her clasped palms, a tragically failed attempt at keeping her words inaudible to the rest of the bar. "Travis, what are you doing!?"

---

If it was possible to spark any more fire into Brad and Alesha's relationship, their new home had managed it. When you don't feel like you're living in a closet, it's amazing how much more inclined you are to be... ahem. Romantic.

The sheer size of it had made things a lot easier for them. They were no longer invading each others' personal space or tripping over each others' toes, and they were able to get their distance from Margo--not to say that being around her wasn't the joy of their life, but it's hard to be inclined to smooch when you've got a baby gurgling a few feet away. And not only that, but no more pesky neighbors intruding on their business, no more sounds of traffic...  They were far off in the surrounding hills, overlooking Twinbrook like a watchtower.

But this house--it fit like a glove. The pictures Meredith had taken were already sitting on their mantelpiece, which kept the house warm on the chilly nights up on this hill. Some nights all they did was sit by the fire, silently immersing themselves in each others' company.

But things weren't perfect. Margo was not settling to the new house well--or rather, not settling well to sleeping in a seperate room from her parents. Night after night, Bradley and Alesha had to wake to her screams, when Margo would open her eyes and realize that her parents were nowhere in sight.

They knew they'd have to wean her off of such attentions eventually, but both parent's mornings were beginning to turn into the most painful event of the day: recounting how neither of them was able to sleep the night before, and moaning at each other about how they needed to do something about it.

Since Alesha's job at the school required her to be awake earlier, Brad had taken it upon himself to make sure Margo didn't wake her mother too much at night. It was only a few more days before Alesha was due to go back to work, and he wanted her to go back rested and recooperated; but unfortunately, that meant sacrificing his own precious sleep to tend to Margo's constant nighttime cries.

Alesha begrudingly agreed to let her mother, Eva, play nanny for Margo until they could find someone more permanent to watch her, but neither of them were happy about it. Neither Brad nor Alesha felt comfortable letting their parents do this long term--so they needed to figure out something to do that would be long term.

Luckily for them, Brad was already on top of things.

Since Lamont had teased him about "paternity" time off of work, something had clicked inside Brad's mind. He couldn't take time off, no, but he did have a certain set of skills that would prove invaluable in fixing their current dilemma. It wasn't going to be cheap, but it was much cheaper than having a nanny until Margo was old enough to care for herself.

Like Lamont said--all they needed was another pair of hands...

... so another pair of hands, Bradley got to making.

But as his project had continued to develop, Bradley realized that this wasn't just an opportunity to create hands. It was an opportunity to put all his skills to the test. And it wouldn't be just enough to give this set of hands a mind: it had to have a heart. He was doing this for his wife, for his daughter; it had to be the best, most complex, most intricate thing he'd ever made, so into it he poured his soul, and his love.

So when the day finally came when the last gear was put into place, and the last spark was ignited in his invention's core, the amount of pride that flooded into Bradley's chest could have sent him to the moon.

Bradley couldn't contain his enthusiasm; as soon as he could, he raced down the steps of his workshop and threw himself through the front door of the house, barely even taking the time to wipe the grease off of his hands.

"Alesha!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Alesha, you need to see this!

Alesha seemed relieved to have something to break her from her reading, so when she saw her husband, she carefully tucked a bookmark into the pages and tossed her book to the coffee table. "What is it, honey?" she asked with a light smile.

"You know how you've been needing a nanny? Someone to watch Margo while we're at work?"

"Yeah?" Alesha's face instantly perked up. Had he found someone?

"Well--Alesha--you're going to be thrilled. I decided, before we even moved in, that I needed to get someone special to watch our little girl... And well, what better a way to get someone special then to make them, right?!"

"I'm... not following you," Alesha said, confused.

"Alesha," Brad said, the excitement practically bubbling out of him at this point. "I want you to meet XR-1010--or as I like to call her: Lilobot!"

As Brad waved his hands, something moved out of the corner of Alesha's eyes; it moved around the corner with a very mechanical *thud* *thud*, stopping just at the edge of the room to look at Alesha with a set of curious, whirring eyes.

Alesha felt the air escape her lungs violently.

With Alesha still speechless, Bradley continued. "Lilobot--meet Alesha."

It was with a quiver in her eye that Alesha watched it's mouth open, and a noise--not unlike a voice, but colder, buzzing and tonally challenged--emit from within it's metal skull.

"Hello, Mrs. Kane. It's a... *bzzzrrt*... pleasure to finally meet you."

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