Fleshing Out a Cyborg's Ultimatum-Part 2

"Okay, boss, what's first?" Reuben only looks at me briefly before making a face at a sibling crawling up him to play with his ears.

"Ah... well..." I rub my knuckles over my thighs.

"Oh, you know what," Stella said. "A chair was a bad idea after all. You need room to pace."

"Scene change." Reuben snaps his fingers, and all the furniture disappears. The machines direct their colorful lights at spinning disco balls, and everyone starts dancing to bouncy music that blasts from speakers in the corners.

I didn't even know my mind had corners...

"How did you do that?! I'm the author, only I can change the scene," I shout over the bass.

Dancing frantically, Reuben shrugs. "How should I know? You made us. You figure it out."

"Reuben!" Stella screams. "Not cool! You know she gets sensory overload and can't focus with background music on."

Ah, Stella. I can always count on her to speak our mind. "Thank you!"

"What background music?" Reuben moonwalks across the color-strewn floor. "You mean background thoughts, right? Yeah, it distracts me, too. That's why I turned the sound system up. Isn't it great?"

The racket pulses into my brain. Ugh, why did I invite extroverts into my headspace?

Stella frowns at me. "Sorry. We can move the main committee into a different room, if you'd like."

I appreciate her empathy. The number of distracted people in her family is more than I can handle, which might be one of the reasons I've stuck by Uriah so much in the past couple of years. He's an orphaned only child.

Stella walks over to Reuben and starts screaming in his ear. He won't stop wiggly-dancing, and instead of replying to her, he snaps his fingers after her every lecture, turning the sound up by increments. I clamp my avatar hands over my avatar ears (I have to become a mini version of me to interact with others in my brainspace) and slink to a door in the dancing room. I find refuge in the empty room inside, and a couple minutes later, Stella throws the door open and storms inside, followed by Reuben cheerily wiggling in time to the music and dragging a wide-eyed cyborg behind him.

The door slams shut, muffling the noise. Stella taps on a down arrow next to the door, and the volume lessens until it's muted.

Ah, finally. Now maybe we can do our brainstorming.

Stella crosses her arms, signaling the official start of business-only-from-here-on-out. "Alright, Author, what's our first order of business? What's missing from the spark? You're awful about overanalyzing, so surely you have some ideas."

I pick a stretch of floor and start pacing, trying not to get distracted by how Reuben's still dancing frantically in the silence.

"Well, one of the biggest issues with the idea is that I've not taken enough advantage of the genre. Sci-fi has so many opportunities for inventing cool technologies. Cyborg in particular should be more... I don't know. Cool. Exciting. Out there."

"Cyborg," Reuben interprets for me. "Author hates you."

My poor little cyborg shrinks.

"No, no, I'm sorry! That's not what I meant. I like you perfectly well. It's just that the critique partners saw some room for--ah... they thought you were nice, but maybe I could... what I mean to say is..."

Reuben leans close to Cyborg. "The critique partners hate you."

"Reuben!" Stella shrieks. "Stop using the h-word!"

Something bangs against the door, and a digital gurgle of speech comes muffled from the other side. We all stare at the door.

"Robot 2128 wants inside," Cyborg whispers. It's the first I've heard from the confused fellow all day.

Reuben pokes out his bottom lip in a pensive frown. "Mmmm.... he crazy. Mute him, too."

A second pair of up-down arrows appears next to the first one, and Stella turns it to zero.

I heave an exasperated sigh and entrench my fingers in my hair. And they wonder why I'm so far behind on brainstorming. "You guys. Stay focused. This isn't a time for hurt feelings--"

"I don't have feelings." But Cyborg sounds uncertain.

"--or distractions of any kind. None of us can afford to take this personally. We have to think about the story, okay? That rush of adrenaline, that driving plot, the moments that make you grin right out. The tense scenes with every texture harsh against your skin and every emotion gripping you at the throat. That is what we're looking for. That's the spark, and all of you can expect to change in some form in order to create that spark and shape it."

All eyes are on me now, all faces serious. Reuben has finally stopped dancing. Thank heaven!

"So yes, Cyborg is our place to start. As the central character, it is vitally important that every part of him lends to that story spark, so we should do some experiments and see what we can come up with."

I meet eyes with my Cyborg, then. He's always been a timid one, feeling at a loss for who he is and what he needs to do. Hopefully the process ahead will help him find that. "Hey, borg? You ready?"

He puffs out his chest and nods. I snap my fingers, and he is suspended in a prism of blue light inside a machine that looks like a standing electrical can opener.

I stretch my imagination and smile. "Cyborg, let's try a new look."

**To be Continued**