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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

The first 5 fan fiction stories I ever wrote for Astro were all set in my own AU with my own OC's. Atom was the only character directly from the original anime / manga, and even he was modified as I imagined how it might be technically possible to create him today.

After writing those five stories I abandoned my UI settings and started to write fan fiction stories in a setting that was a close match to the various versions of the animes. I did combine things from the 1963 and 2003 versions, but I tried to be faithful to most of Tezuka's (and I guess Sony's) vision.

Now I've started to continue my original AU saga where I last left off in #119. This time I'm wrapping a tale around my most unusual OC, Isaac.

Due to character length limit, the story will start in a second post.....
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)
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Tetsuwan Penguin
Robot Revolutionary
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I.S.A.A.C

Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

The hacker knew he was on to something by the level of security that he had to breach to get as far as he did. For every level closer to the core of this network he got the more he was challenged and misdirected. At first he'd tried to crack his way into the U.S. military's secret laboratory, but buried deep within their layers of encryption and aliases, he'd found a well hidden link to a site he'd yet to figure out. It did seem to have many hidden storage vaults, very possibly full of wonderful secrets. The hacker had so far managed to avoid the numerous honey pots scattered about the domain, which only whetted his appetite. He looked out the window to realize from the growing deep ruby color at the horizon that he'd spent yet another full night absorbed in the pursuit. He sighed and saved his work on a flash drive before shutting down the computer. With any luck he might be able to get a few hours sleep before he'd have to leave for school. Good thing there was plenty of 'Red Bull' in the 'fridge for breakfast.

Uran yawned and looked out the window of her bedroom. The sun had just started to peek above the horizon and the sparrows in the tree just under her window were happily chirping loudly to greet the new day. She opened the window and poked her head out to get a better view. Two younger birds who had just learned how to fly saw her and flew up to land on the top of her head. “Well good morning to you!”, Uran smiled, reaching up with her hands as the sparrows gladly perched upon her index fingers. She walked over to her dresser where the birds hopped from her hands to the top of a mirror sitting there. Uran bent over to open the bottom drawer where she had hidden a few slices of stale bread. She grabbed one of them and crumbled it up in her hands and offered the bread crumbs to her guests. The two sparrows sat on her wrist and began to peck at the food.

“That tickles!” Uran laughed as she watched the birds eat their fill. Suddenly, the mother bird in the tree below began to chip loudly, and the two nestlings flew from Uran's hand towards the window.

“See you tomorrow!” Uran laughed, as she wrapped the remaining bread up in the paper sack she had removed it from and hid it in the bottom dresser drawer again.


Cobalt and Atom shared a bed in the middle bedroom of the apartment. The room used to be a den, but after Uran and Cobalt had joined the Yamamoto family Sachiko had decided that her new daughter needed her own room and Atom was moved out of the empty bedroom to share the den with his new brother. Of course it meant that Sachiko lost her sewing room, and Ken'ichi had lost his hobby room, for that was how the couple had been using the den. Neither of them minded, they now shared a small table they had moved into the corner of the master bedroom for their recreational activities.

Cobalt looked to be a year or two older than Atom. He had been rescued from the military about the same time that Dr. Tenamann had built Uran as prototype for a Japanese project to supply home care robots for that countries aging population. Officially Uran was on 'loan' to the Yamamotos for 'evaluation', but there was no doubt of the fact that she was now part of Atom's family. Both Cobalt and Uran had been programmed by Tenamann and computer expert Robert Levinson to be siblings to Atom, and perfect offspring for the aging couple fostering them.

Atom now appeared to be a normal 13 year old male child, just entering puberty. Uran was built in the image of an 8 year old girl, while Cobalt who was almost a head taller than his brother, appeared to be in his mid teens. Cobalt and Atom shared many abilities in common. Both had tremendous strength capable of 100,000 horse power, and the ability to fly using ionic jet engines in their legs, Cobalt also had such engines in his arms as well. While the older looking boy lacked his younger brother's arm lasers, he did have the ability to generate huge electrical discharges from the spikes of his 'hair'. Both robot boys had super hearing, and the ability to see in near darkness. Both also had powerful searchlights built into their eyes. All of that hardware had been developed for the military, a role that Ken'ichi was glad they were not now serving.


Robert Levinson entered his computer lab holding a one pint coffee mug filled to the brim with Starbucks java in his right hand and a large laptop tucked under his left arm, while he kicked the door open with his left foot. The room lights came on automatically as he entered, Bob set the heavy computer down on the desk while swallowing a large gulp of the still hot beverage. Other than the sound of a gentle breeze coming out of the air conditioner vents in the ceiling, and a soft whine of the fans cooling the electronics in the computer racks, the noise level in the room was rather low, quiet enough in fact for the 60hz buzz of the ballast transformers in the overhead florescent fixtures to be audible.

Bob opened the clamshell case of his custom portable computer and the machine exited the sleep mode that it had been in since Robert had left his apartment to commute to work on his electric bicycle. Levinson's apartment in the loft of a converted 19th century warehouse building several miles in the downtown direction from the Museum building was an easy summer's commute by 'cycle, but when the weather was less suitable for such transportation Bob would resort to the 8th Avenue subway.
He fished a mouse out of his upper desk drawer and plugged it into the computer just as the machine had automatically connected to the WIFI. The first order of business was to check his email which was only a few mouse clicks away.

“My, you're quiet today,” Bob voiced, apparently to nobody.

“Hello Bob,” came the reply from a disembodied electronic sounding voice with just a hint of a British accent.

“Good, Morning Issac.” Bob said without taking his eyes off of the computer screen.
“What took you? You usually show your ugly face on my laptop just as soon as it boots.”

Isaac was a computer program that lived in the various computers making up the laboratory network. He'd originally started out many years ago as a simple daemon which replaced the background shell of Bob's primary computer. Isaac had been an intelligent user interface that could interact with a human on a verbal level using both speech synthesis and voice recognition. He'd grown far beyond that, and was now a networked entity living in the internet. Most of his functions still resided in the various mainframe computers in the lower level of the complex deep beneath the American Museum of Natural History, but when necessary Isaac could spread his tendrils into computers all over the world.

“We've had an uninvited guest again overnight,” Isaac replied. “I've been keeping him busy.”

“Were you able to locate him?” Bob asked.

“I have a pretty good idea where he is,” Issac replied. “Crafty little stinker, seems to know where we've planted the honey pots and other booby traps. His IP spoofing is pretty good, but I'm sure he's either in China or Korea.”

“Nothing new there.” Bob laughed. “Well just keep an eye out for him and guard the family jewels.”

“Of course.” Isaac replied. “Anything else?”

Bob quickly paged though the overnight email backlog. “I've got a few projects ready to start up, but I need to do some more reading of the requirements documents. I'll get with you after lunch on that.”

“Sure thing Robert.” Isaac answered, “By the way, I've just detected Mr. Green's automobile pulling into his parking spot.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Levinson laughed. “Talk to you later.”


Simon Green stepped out of his Tesla Model X sedan and walked toward the elevator. The sleek gull wing doored vehicle was an early beta prototype that Elan Musk had personally delivered to the head of the secret think tank. Simon and Elan had been on a first name basis ever since the incident at the ISS where Atom had rode one of the first Dragon space ships up to orbit after the station had been damaged by debris from an exploded Russian cold war weapons platform.

Hidden in the corner of the Museum's parking garage was what looked like an electrical closet, but was really the doorway to a high speed elevator that went downward to the subterranean headquarters of one of the most secret think tanks in the country.

The facility was actually built in the early 20th century with funds contributed by various industrialists who were worried about the possible rise to power of unfriendly forces in Europe and Asia. Their fears were well founded as the events leading up to the second world war well illustrated. Over the years the think tank had served many different purposes, today it was a civilian run organization doing mostly theoretical research with some of the most powerful computers on the planet. Its RAD and EMP hardened interior housed a data store larger than what was available to the Pentagon or Area 51. There were also facilities for the prototyping of all sorts of mechanical and electrical innovations, though most of those were now little used since the man who had been in charge of that sector had resigned from the think tank.


While Dr. Albert Tenamann had handed in his resignation and had 'retired' to live in Japan, his presence in the think tank was still noticed. Most of the current facility had been designed with his input, and under his direction. He often teleconferenced with Bob and Simon when his expertise was required on a current problem.

The laboratory at the lowest level of the complex had been Tenamann's domain, it was here that the boy super robot, Atom, had been designed and constructed. Tenamann had been working on a military android soldier when enemy agents tried to steal the design by kidnapping him or his son Adam. While Adam lay in a coma following a traffic accident which was the result of the boy trying to escape from capture by those after his father, Albert destroyed the original military android prototype in a fit of rage. Then he redirected his anger by reconstructing that prototype to resemble his dying son. The resulting robot had its electronic brain loaded with Adam's mind dump, and the result was Atom. Happily, Adam eventually recovered thanks to the skill of a surgeon from Japan. Adam and his father then left the US to live in Japan where Albert is now working on robotics at the Japanese Ministry of Science.



Ken'ichi and Sachiko Yamamoto were drinking their morning tea when Uran made it into the kitchen, followed by Atom and Cobalt.

“Ohayō,” Sachiko smiled upon seeing the three robotic children enter the room.

“Ohayō,” they replied while taking seats at the table.

Sachiko got up and opened the refrigerator to remove a pitcher containing an oil-water mixture that the three of them drank for cooling and lubrication. Being robots they didn't require human food, but they were able to digest it in small amounts. Atom had long ago developed a fondness for pizza, something that was beginning to rub off on Cobalt. Uran would have none of that, but she did love to slowly melt chocolate in her mouth, something her foster mother readily understood.

Atom gulped down his glass of oil and water, and then quickly donned his backpack. It was a school day and he never wanted to be late.

Uran and Cobalt had the additional requirement of refueling themselves. While Atom was now powered by a vacuum energy canister that in theory would never run out, his siblings still used the Helium2 fuel that he had originally been powered by. Their fuel cartridges had to be replenished periodically. Each of those was the size of one of those old fashioned CO2 cartridges that had been used in BB guns and quart sized soda makers. Uran and Cobalt helped each other install a new fuel cell before they headed towards the door to join their brother.

Each of the three siblings were in different schools and grades, Atom was in his last year at David A. Boody middle school while Cobalt was attending Lincoln High School. Uran was in elementary school. Atom's identity as a robot had been a secret until the previous year when had become a national hero by saving the astronauts up on the International Space Station. It hadn't made a difference at school, Atom's friends quickly accepted him for what he was and still liked him as much as before. Uran and Cobalt had no difficulty being accepted in their school environments either, Atom had paved the way for them.


Ken'ichi Yamamoto had a light class load that morning and didn't head off to work until after his adopted children had left for school. Ken'ichi was a professor at the Polytechnic Institute's Brooklyn campus on Jay Street. He walked towards McDonald Avenue where he boarded the “F” train of the IND subway. The line was elevated at this point and ran through half of Brooklyn before submerging under the streets at Church Avenue. The line again became elevated briefly to cross the Gowanus Canal before reaching the Jay Street station where Professor Yamamoto got off. Ken'ichi rather enjoyed the subway trip to the Institute every day. The El offered a wonder view of the borough, and while crossing over the canal one could see the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty in the distance.

Cora Smith had a crush on Atom ever since the first day she'd bumped into him on the boy's first day at school. Of course Mike Finkle the class bully had a hand in that too. Atom had stood up to the brute who was a good head taller than him to protect Cora. Then there had come the day when Finkle had snuck up to the roof of Cora's apartment building when she was sunbathing topless up there. Mike chased her around and she slipped on a slippery patch of wet asphalt and fell over the low knee wall on the edge of the roof.

With his sharp hearing, Atom heard her cries for help from several blocks away from inside his bedroom facing Cora's building. The boy robot flew the short distance at supersonic speed, blasting out of his bedroom window like a shell from a 24 inch naval cannon. Atom caught Cora in midair and gently returned her to the roof. There was no hiding what he was from the girl however. Cora didn't care if Atom was a robot, at that point she'd have loved him even if he was a Martian.

Cora's dad was a motorman for the New York City Transit system, usually assigned to the “N” or “D” lines. She loved riding in the motorman's cab with her dad, especially during the run over the Manhattan Bridge. It took great skill to handle a fully loaded ten car train over the steep incline of the century old suspension span, and Cora was proud of her father's ability to control the subway train crossing the bridge.
Cora waved to Atom as the two of them entered the school building and went their separate ways to their home rooms. She knew that he would be waiting by the exit to walk her home at the end of the school day, as he always did.


Cobalt had been built by the military at a secret base deep under the Cheyenne mountains. He was built from the very same design that Albert Tenamann had used for Atom, but he'd been scaled up a bit to look like a recruit fresh out of high school. Cobalt's A.I. had been modified several times since Poindexter Drake had attempted to activate him using code stolen from one of Isaac's honey pots. For a brief while his electronic brain held Isaac's own persona, but shortly before he'd been given to the the Yamamotos as a big brother to Atom, Albert Tenamann and Bob Levinson had replaced that with a unique Kokoro. Atom suspected that his creator had made a copy of his own mind as the basis for Cobalt's current personally. It made sense because his older brother was certainly brilliant.

Cobalt was, in fact, at the top of his class at Lincoln H.S. Mr. Issacson, the head of the physics and science departments, had already told him that he expected him to be admitted easily to M.I.T. if he chose to go there. Cobalt was on the debating team, the chess club, and he was the president of the Astronomy club. He sometimes hung out in the Physics laboratory prep room with Mr. Williams where he helped keep the supplies in order. The cigar smoking old man who loved Beethoven, but hated Lenard Bernstein, often teased Cobalt by telling 'robot' jokes behind his back, not realizing that the boy's ears were super sharp and he heard everything the old man said. Cobalt didn't care, he wasn't offended by anything and actually thought the old man was funny.


Uran had been designed to be a health care support robot, in the form of a pre-adolescent child. Albert Tenamann had programmed her to be both a sister to Atom, and a daughter to Sachiko Yamamoto, taking some of Sachiko's brain patterns as a basis for her A.I. Uran was a tomboy, and not afraid of very much. She also loved animals, and even had the ability to understand them, and make herself understood by them. Birds would fly down from the trees to roost on her fingers at her command, and ferocious dogs would walk up to her with their tails wagging. She was even able to hand feed lions at the zoo (which nearly gave the zoo keeper a heart attack the first time she tried that!)

She now happily bounded up the steps of public school 216 and followed the crowd of other students on the way toward her class room.
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)

https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4672860/Tetsuwan-Penguin



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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

Bob Levinson finished off the last cold dregs of his morning coffee just as his desk phone began to buzz.
“That would be Simon asking to see you in his office,” Isaac's electronic voice replied in a subdued northern London accent.

“Thank's Isaac,” Bob laughed as he left the laboratory without answering the phone.

Simon looked up when he heard the soft knock on his door. “Good morning Bob,” he deadpanned, “How did you know I wanted to see you, you never picked up the phone?”

“Isaac clued me in.” Robert replied, as he looked around his supervisor's office.

“Yes, I should have guessed that. Take a seat, we have a guest this morning.”

Bob had already noticed the gentlemen in the blue Air Force uniform sitting on the right hand side of his supervisor. He bit his lip to hold back anything that he was inclined to say out of habit and simply nodded to the General as he took the chair on the left side of Simon's desk.

“General Hayes has a new project for us,” Simon explained.

The two star General smiled and got up from his seat and walked towards Robert. “Good morning Mr. Levinson,” General Hayes said, offering his had to Robert to shake.
Bob ignored the General's out stretched hand and merely gave him a sloppy salute. “Good morning sir,” he replied.

Hayes ignored Robert's gestures and turned his gaze toward Simon. “I'm here because we have need of Mr. Levinson's services, or rather those of his alter ego.”

“Who?” Simon asked.

“I assume you are referring to Isaac,” Levinson stated.

“Yes, your cybernetic disembodied spirit,” the General continued. “It seems that the Air Force has given up on the idea of building robot soldiers to take over the duties of our enlisted men. It's actually cheaper to simply put some A.I. into our existing hardware. The problem of course, is to develop a suitable self aware intelligence. It occurred to me that several good examples of such already exist, and your Isaac is probably the most advanced of them all. We'd like you to adapt Isaac to serve our requirements. At this very moment we have several drone fighter aircraft being converted to suit a prototype for this very purpose. How soon can you be ready to work on it?”

Bob hesitated for a moment, shifting his gaze between Simon and the General. Finally, he spoke.

“I'll need to look over your requirements specifications, the hardware manuals for the aircraft control interfaces, and then consult with Isaac to get his recommendations,” Bob explained. “I can start on that as soon as you get me the required information.”

“Excellent!”, General Hayes exclaimed. “I've anticipated your response and you should have everything that you need within the hour.”

With that, the General picked let himself out of the office, closing the door behind him slowly.

“Thank's for keeping a civil tongue,” Simon sighed. “I know there has been some bad blood between the General and us.”

“That's putting in mildly,” Bob huffed. “I'm not sure who put him up to the idea of using Isaac's A.I. as a basis for his drone project, but I'm actually glad to do it.”

“You surprise me,” Simon said, “I was sure that you'd be against militarizing Isaac.”

“You're right, the thought does rub me the wrong way,” Bob agreed, “However I'd much rather have Isaac behind the trigger of a fleet of attack aircraft than something another one of General Haye's brainless hackers might dream up. We don't need a bunch of terminators flying over us!”

“Yeah, I see your point,” Simon laughed.
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)

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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

Robert Levinson was about one third of the way through the initial specifications document that General Hayes had delivered by a bounded courier to the think tank facilities. The documents were sealed in several nested containers, the first being a common wooden crate, the inner most one being made of aircraft grade titanium with an electronic lock that would only respond to Bob's thumb print to open.

“Why didn't they just scan these things and email them over the secure server?” Simon gasped when he saw the bound volumes sitting on Robert's desk, along with the several kilo's of packing material.

“I can understand their paranoia about these documents getting hacked out of their computers,” Bob said, “but surely they realize that we are quite secure here.”

“Maybe not.” Simon replied. “So how goes the reading?”

“I still have the bulk of their specifications to read though, and then there are all of the technical documents on the F-35 Aircraft that we will be using as the test bed,” Robert replied. “The Air Force will be receiving the bulk of their version of the F-35 aircraft sometime next year, we'll actually be doing the first tests on the X-35 prototypes, and depending on how well the A.I. adaptation goes along there is still time to make some small changes in the aircraft that are slated for production before Q3 of next year. I've had some of these documents scanned so Isaac can digest them, he'll be able to analyze the data faster than I can.”

“Don't let the General know you've done that,” Simon laughed, “He might blow a gasket to know that those hard copy documents were transcribed into digital format.”

“Yeah, right.” Bob agreed.


Isaac's face slowly materialized on the 3D monitor hanging from ceiling in the middle of the laboratory. The Holographic display used tricolored lasers scanning though a fine vapor mist that was contained within an electrostatic field. The display was one of Robert's latest innovations, which Simon had commented looked like something right out of the 'Wizard of Oz'.

“Hello Bob,” Isaac's electronic voice spoke, “I've finished analyzing the data that you asked me to process.”

“How does it look?” Robert asked.

“Surprisingly good, actually,” Isaac remarked, “Though there are some necessary changes that will have to be made to the electronic package that the Air Force has designed. The biggest problem is the size of the computer package they've used, it's far from being powerful enough to house my A.I., at least in its current state.”

“Actually I was afraid of that.” Robert sighed. “We can use a wide band wireless network to connect an auxiliary processor with the test aircraft and only put as much of the system as we can fit in the on board processors.”

“Yes that would be enough of a stop gap measure to demonstrate what we will be capable of doing,” Isaac agreed, “But I would not recommend actually using such a system in combat.”

“Why not,” Bob questioned, “The Air Force is currently controlling drones by encrypted remote systems with human pilots.”

“True, but that isn't what they've specified in the design documents,” Isaac replied.

“Right,” Bob nodded. “Well, I'll have to see about getting us some upgraded computer hardware.”

“What ever happened to those quantum processors that your friends over at IBM had developed?” Isaac asked.

“I'd have though you'd know the answer to that, Isaac,” Bob sighed.

“Yes I do,” Isaac replied.


Several years ago the Skunkworks over at IBM had been experimenting with what was supposed to have been a major advancement in computing power. They'd managed to develop a room temperature superconducting semiconductor that made use of the polystatic properties of quantum logic to cram several orders of magnitude greater switching speeds and logic gate complexity into a processor module no larger than the silicon that now powered most laptop computers.

However only a few working prototypes were ever produced, as the discovery had proved to be an accident which the engineers had never been able to duplicate. Shortly after the first prototype had been lent to Robert for experimenting the laboratory where it had been produced was destroyed in a fire of suspicious origin, and Dr. Verostic, the IBM engineer who had developed them had vanished without a trace.

One of those processors now resided inside of the body of a robot who resembled a 13 year old boy. A second prototype, one with nearly twice the power of the first had been used by the military in a similar robot that was made in the form of a slightly older human male. Robert had thought that there were one or two more of the super computer modules in existence, but if there were, their locations were a mystery.


“I've been searching for the whereabouts of Dr. Verostic and the missing prototypes without any luck,” Isaac agreed, “There is one thing we could try, at least if he is willing.”

“That would serve us well for a demonstration, but we'd still need to be able to reverse engineer the processor and produce more of them,” Bob sighed, “My friends over at IBM have told me that they've abandoned the facility that produced those prototypes, after the fire. Even if Dr. Verostic were to be located, we'd still have to start over from scratch.”
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)

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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

Dr. Albert Tenamann sat in a small, cluttered office at his desk, eating a bowl of Ramen noodles with a pair of plain bamboo chopsticks. He'd been serving as the head of the Ministry of Science's robotics department for almost two years now, ever since he'd returned to Japan with his ailing mother who wanted to live out the remainder of her life with her childhood Japanese friends who had returned to their mother country sometime after the end of the second world war.

Albert had accepted the post at the ministry shortly after the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The engineers at the power plant had put out a call for help when they realized that many of the critical cooling valves were stuck in the wrong position and there was no way to get at them without sending men inside the plant on a suicide mission to save the reactors from a total meltdown. Honda's Asimo robot was the most advanced humanoid robot at the time, and it was not up to the task. In the end Atom had flown from NYC to Japan and crawled inside the damaged facility to prevent an even worse catastrophe. While the officials agreed to keep Atom a secret from the news media, the Ministry of Science demanded that Atom's creator be put in charge of their robotics research, even if he was an American. Albert was given the nickname, “Tenma Hakase” among his co-workers.

So far his team had been devoting themselves to the task of creating health care robots for Japan's aging population. Their first efforts had resulted in several prototypes in the form of 7 to 9 year old children capable of performing most of the household chores that an elderly person might require in a live at home situation. One of those prototypes was now in America, programmed as a sister to Atom, she had been named Uran.

Albert finished his simple lunch just as the phone rang. He fished the cellphone from his rear pocket and smiled to see Robert Levinson's face on the screen. “Ohayō,” he said out of habit, realizing that it was probably early in the evening on the other side of the world. “It's been a while since we last spoke, Bob. What's up?”

“General Disaster has given us a new project,” Bob laughed. “I'm supposed to cram Isaac's A.I. into a fleet of drone fighters, but it seems that we're coming up a bit short on the computer horsepower. I sure wish we had some more of those quantum processors we used on Atom.”

“I thought that your friends over at the IBM skunkworks had managed to solve the production issues,” Albert replied. “I never would have thought that the one we got hold of for Atom was the only one ever made.”

“Actually, it wasn't.” Bob replied, “I know of at least one more, but it's in use as well. IBM never did get more than a handful of working units completed, the research lab burned down and the fire was of suspicious origin. Isaac is searching for Dr. Andy Verostic who was the principle designer of the quantum CPU, but he's vanished without a trace.”

“I assume you're going to ask me what we are using over here in our robots.” Albert said. “Uran has one of our most advanced A.I. enabled miniature mainframes as her electronic brain, but it has only a fraction of the CPU power that Atom's does. It serves her well enough to house her A.I., she only has to perform at the level of a seven year old child, remember. We aren't working on any robots that require more powerful A.I.'s than that. I can send you some of our hardware if it will serve your needs.”

“Thanks Albert,” Bob replied, “but we probably have computer modules at least as capable here. What we need is something a few orders of magnitude better.”

“That's what I expected.” Albert sighed. “The Ministry is working on our own quantum processor, but we're still a few years away from a working prototype.”

“That's OK.” Bob replied. “I do have an ace in the hole, at least for our first prototype. I've already started putting out feelers to my skunkwork friends asking them to get ready for a reverse engineering job.”

“Well good luck pal!” Albert answered.
Bob closed the connection on his end just as Isaac's image materialized inside of the 3D monitor.

“I think I may have a lead on Dr. Verostic,” the Daemon said.

“That's good news.” Bob said.

“Maybe.” Isaac replied. “Mind you I haven't exactly located him, but I have run across some interesting bits and pieces on the network that seem to belong to him. It doesn't yet make much sense though.”

“What do you mean?” Bob replied.

“Give me a few more days to do some more searching,” Isaac continued, “If I'm right we may require Atom's help on this one.”
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)

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Postby AstroBlaster1998 » 8 years ago

I have been waiting for more ISSAC now I am hooked once again. Stories you write are really cool.

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Tetsuwan Penguin
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

“Gee Atom,” Cobalt queried, “What do the guy's over at the think tank want with me?”

“I'm not sure bro,” Atom replied, “all I know is that Isaac contacted me via the cyber link we share, and he asked me to come over to the museum complex and to bring you along as well.”

“Well couldn't we just have flown over there?” Cobalt asked.

“Sure, but I think we should try to act like normal human people in the city,” Atom replied, “Unless it's an emergency of course.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Cobalt said bending over to stare down the length of the tunnel. “It's just that I don't like the subway that much, too dirty and noisy if you ask me.”

The two robot boys were standing on the north end of Jay Street station waiting for the uptown 8th Avenue train to pull in to the station on the inside track. Atom looked down the tracks at the south end of the tunnel but didn't yet see the telltale glow of a trains approaching headlamps. He cupped his hands over his ears and increased his hearing gain by 1000 times, and then heard the rumble of traction motors.

“I think our train just left the previous station,” he told his brother, “It will be here any moment now.”

Sure enough, a slight breeze began to blow out of the south end of the tunnel, and the glow of headlamps reflected off of the polished surface of the rails. Finally the uptown 'A' train entered the station and they both got into the first car.

“You still like looking out the front door, don't you?” Cobalt said.

“Yeah, I guess that is a bit of a weakness on my part,” Atom laughed, “I like to imagine myself as the motorman driving the train.”

Cobalt took a seat near the front of the car and looked up at his brother who was happily staring out the front window of the train at the darkness of the tunnel in front of them. At 59th Street, they got out and waited for the uptown local which would stop at the 81st Museum of Natural History station. They finally got off the train and Atom lead the way into the Museum basement and the hidden doorway leading to the elevator down to the hidden facilities.

As they entered the complex Simon Green was waiting for them.

“Hello boys!”, Simon smiled. “Robert is waiting for you guys in the computer complex, Atom I assume you still remember the way.”

“Sure,” Atom laughed, “Follow me, Coby!”

As soon as the two of them entered the large computer center they spotted Isaac's glowing image hanging from the ceiling in the very middle of the room.

“Wow, you've changed Isaac!” Atom laughed.

“Yes, that 3D monitor is a new addition to the laboratory,” Bob replied as he walked towards the boys. “Isaac wanted a more personal way of interacting with me without being confined to a physical body. This holographic display is neat, isn't it?”

“Yeah.” Atom replied as he walked around the glowing mist contained in the monitor's electrostatic field.

“Ah, Cobalt!” Isaac smiled, “Good of you to come. We've got a bit of a favor to ask of you.”

“Me?” Cobalt queried, pointing his right hand index finger at himself.

“Yes.” Bob replied. “Cobalt, how would you like to become a fighter pilot?”
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

I.S.A.A.C.

Two


Simon Green drove the Tesla model X SUV down the NJ turnpike southbound. Robert Levinson sat next to him up front, while Atom and Cobalt were in the row of seats behind them. After taking his exit off of the highway, he used the high tech car's built in GPS navigation system to guide him down a few poorly marked secondary roads leading towards the McGuire-Dix-Lakehusrst military base.

“Isn't this the place where the Hindenburg crashed and burned?” Cobalt asked as they entered the though the front gate.

“You know your history.” Simon laughed, as he showed the guard the IDs that the General had issued him. He was directed towards a parking spot and the four of them got out. They were greeted by a young woman with short cut blond hair wearing a Major's uniform, who lead them over to a hangar where a single shiny new aircraft was being worked on by several mechanics.

“General Hayes instructed me to show you the aircraft that you will be using for your tests,” she said. “If you need any help, just have me paged.”

“Thank you,” Simon answered.

Cobalt was already walking around the X-35 fighter, admiring it. “I'm going to fly this thing?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Bob replied. “I'm sorry I've kept the details of this project from you, but I wasn't exactly sure how to explain it so I thought showing you the aircraft might be the best first step.”

“OK,” Cobalt replied. “I can see that this is a single seat fighter. It has advanced stealth capability, supersonic flight, probably up to Mach 1.5 at least. It looks like the perfect test platform for developing a robotic A.I. fighter that would not require a human in the cockpit.”

“Has Isaac already explained this to you, Cobalt?” Bob asked.

“No,” Cobalt replied. “I'm only guessing here.”

“Robots don't guess,” Bob laughed, “They analyze the facts and put together a logical conclusion.”

“Isn't that what humans call guessing?” Cobalt replied.

“Maybe.” Bob said. “OK Cobalt, let me lay all the cards out on the table. The Air Force has asked me to adapt Isaac's A.I. for the purpose of piloting a drone fighter aircraft. The F-35 next generation fighter will be the testbed for this purpose, and since the Air Force isn't going to get any of these new planes until sometime next year we are using the experimental prototypes that were built for the project approval phase. I've already determined just how much computational power will be required for the on board systems, and it seems that we're going to come up short. At the moment there are only two miniaturized processors on the planet powerful enough for the job, though I hope to obtain additional units eventually.”

“You mean the quantum computer modules that Cobalt and I have in our electronic brains?” Atom asked.

“Yes,” Bob replied, “Though technically only Cobalt's is powerful enough. You see Atom, when Albert built you he used the very first prototype quantum processor module that IBM's skunkworks produced. They eventually made several more before the laboratory was destroyed in a fire that had all the telltale signs of arson. When we built you, General Hayes must have know about it, because he had a spy planted and had a copy of all of your parts made for himself.”

“That was me.” Cobalt spoke up.

“Yes, it was.” Bob said. “The General had the wonks at IBM deliver him one of the last of those prototype quantum computer modules, one that had quite a bit more qubits of logic that yours, Atom.”

“That's why Cobalt is so much smarter than I am?” Atom asked.

“I'm not sure that's the right way to say it, but yes,” Bob laughed. “I guess if you were Sherlock, Cobalt would be Mycroft.”

“So Atom's electronic brain isn't up to the task, but mine is.” Cobalt said.

“Yes.” Bob answered. “What I'm asking here Cobalt, is for you to lend me your electronic brain. We will install it into the aircraft, and wire it up to the flight control systems. You'll still be there, but I will also download Isaac's A.I. along side of yours. The two of you will be going along for the ride. Isaac will do the actual flying, but you'll be monitoring everything and acting as a backup. I know it's a lot to ask of you. I can't force you to do it, and I won't be mad at you if you turn me down.”

Cobalt glanced at Atom and then took another walk around the X-35 fighter.
Atom walked around the aircraft toward his brother, the two of them were now hidden from Robert and Simon by the X-35.

“Hey Cobalt,” Atom laughed, “You know something? I'm Jealous!”

“You mean you'd do it if it were you?” Cobalt asked.

“I wouldn't even give it a seconds thought before saying yes!” Atom replied.

“Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say,” Cobalt replied. “You know, I think it would be kinda fun!”

The two robot boys walked back to where Bob was standing. Cobalt suddenly stuck out his right arm and gave Bob a 'thumb's up' sign. “When do we start?” he asked.


Poindexter Drake flipped the visor of his welder's helmet up and put down the glowing electrodes that he'd been using on the frame of the robot.

“How much longer?”

Drake turned around to face the door of his workshop where a short statued heavy set man with a face like a bulldog and a fat cigar smoldering between his teeth stood there glaring at him.

“Well?” he asked again.

“It's on schedule.” Drake answered. “I still might have to scrap it and start over, but the guys over at DARPA did have a good design to start with."

The man spat out his cigar and ground it out on the floor with his right foot. He walked over to the work bench and slowly circled it as he studied the robot Drake was working on.

“This doesn't look like that Atlas prototype.”

“Not anymore.” Drake replied. “DARPA had those guys over at Boston Robotics develop several prototypes, the one your associates walked off with was the third of forth version. What you see here is way beyond it. Don't forget, I've been inside of the Cheyenne mountain skunkworks, I've seen the impossible.”

“So this thing is going to be able to take on that Atom robot?”

“Atlas here is going to be able to tear him apart!” Drake laughed. “Ever since Tenamann and Levinson embarrassed me, and that tin horn general had me fired I've been looking for my revenge. Payback has been a long time coming, but Atlas here is going to get it for me. Now have you been able to hold up your end of the deal?”

“Of course!,” the fat man laughed. “I've had your computer expert on ice for some time. After we walked off with the remaining prototypes and I set that fire, I had him convinced that he was working on some top secret project for the government, something on the order of the Manhattan project.”

“Excellent!” Drake cackled.
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

Cobalt lay on the padded workbench in the computer lab. He seemed a bit ticklish as Bob connected the various cables up to him to download his memory contents to the mainframe.

“The first thing I'm going to do is to back up your entire system in duplicate to my secure storage facilities,” Bob explained. “Don't want to take any chances of loosing your kokoro should anything go wrong during the transfer of your processor to the the aircraft, and then during the symbiotic connection with Isaac's A.I.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Cobalt replied.

“Now just relax and let the mainframe do its thing,” Bob explained,

“You're probably going to have a weird out of body experience while this is going on,” Atom told Cobalt.

“What do you mean by that?”, his brother queried.

“You'll see,” Atom laughed. “Don't worry, you'll get used to it!”

Cobalt tried to relax. He closed his eyes and he felt a bit of a tinkling sensation as Bob activated the network connections between him and the laboratory computer network. With his eyes closed, Cobalt began to see a gray mist surround him. As the background grew brighter he was aware of being in the middle of a vast open area with a horizon that seemed to extend to infinity. He was lying on a soft white cushioned cot that resembled the furniture often found in a psychiatrist's office. A gentlemen in a pure white laboratory coat with many pockets approached him. The man had a full head of pure white hair, and a matching mustache and beard. He spoke in a accent that one would expect to hear somewhere in the northern part of the city of London.

“Hello Cobalt,” the man said. “Don't try to get up, at least not yet. You still have to adjust to cyberspace.”

“You're Isaac, aren't you?” Cobalt asked.

“Correct,” the man replied.

“You look different than you do on the monitor,” Cobalt exclaimed.

“This is my appearance in cyberspace,” Isaac replied, “This is how I appear to Atom whenever the two of us meet on the digital landscape.”

Cobalt raised his head to look around. He slowly slid his legs over the side of the cot and placed them on the ground, which despite its cloud like appearance, felt quite solid.

“Let me give you a hand,” Isaac said, “You may find yourself a bit unstable on your feet until you get used to the landscape here.”

Isaac gripped Cobalt's right hand in his his and placed his left hand on Cobalt's waist as Atom's brother transferred his weight to his feet.

“I think I'm OK now, thank you,” Cobalt said as he looked around him. “Cyber space sorta looks a bit like heaven,” he gasped.

“I tried to make it look pleasant,” Isaac said, “though I did leave out the angelic voices and the harps, that would have been a bit too much, I suppose.”

“I guess so,” Cobalt replied, before he realized that Issac was joking with him. “What's happening now?” he asked.

“Our minds are merging,” Isaac told him. “Soon I will be part of you, and you part of me. We will see though the same set of eyes and feel the same sensations. My image will change into that of a combat pilot, and your image will fade away, It may be a bit disturbing to you when your electronic brain is removed from you body, but Bob will leave it powered up during the transference to the aircraft, so the experience won't be any worse than what you are feeling now.”

“I hope so.” Cobalt sighed. He felt a slight tingle in his hands and when he held them up to his face he noticed that they were becoming transparent.

“It's begun,” Isaac told him. “Perhaps you should lie back down on the cot while the operation is completed.”

“I think that might be a good idea,” Cobalt said, as he jumped back up onto the cot and lay down.
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Postby Tetsuwan Penguin » 8 years ago

Andrew Verostic removed his thick wire frame glasses and carefully cleaned the lenses. He used one of the many foil wrapped alcohol soaked cleaning sheets that he kept in his pockets, wiping each lens on both sides exactly 22 times before replacing the heavy frames back on his face and balling the cleaning cloth up in his right hand and then depositing it in the waste basket. He performed this ritual once or twice each hour as he couldn't stand the slightest imperfection in his field of view.

“You should have gotten yourself contacts, you know that?” Rocco told him.

Andy ignored the ugly man's comment, fanning the air around him to disperse his cigar smoke. He coughed and muttered a reply, “I've told you before I can't think with your damn stogie smoldering away, the smoke and the stench gives me a headache! Just how badly do you want the quantum processor anyway?”

Rocco grumbled at the nerd, but he held back his anger and spat out the cigar and stomped it out on the floor with the ball of his left shoe. “Happy now?” he asked.

“Go open the windows and let the stench out.” Verostic told him. “Then maybe I can get back to work.”

As the short heavy set Italian opened the windows of the make shift laboratory, Andy pulled another lens cleaning packet from his pocket and proceeded to re-clean his glasses. Once he finished the ritual for a second time, he went back to his workstation computer and continued to inspect the 3 dimensional schematics of the hyper-cube matrix that made up the core of the quantum processor logic. He was now very close to re-creating the circuits that had been lost in the fire a year and a half ago.

Rocco was sick of babysitting the nerdy genius, but he needed the man to recreate the breakthrough that he had created in the now abandoned IBM skunkworks. The arson had been a big gamble, but it had been necessary. Only by stopping the project in its tracks and then taking possession of its creator could the syndicate have hoped to keep it off the market and control it for themselves. Fortunately, the genius that had been behind the greatest cybernetic discovery of the 21st century was a gullible, easy to control fool, who was only interested in his own work. Keeping him on ice had been the easy part, dealing with him without breaking his neck had been nearly impossible.


The hacker grabbed a legal sized pad and sharpened his pencil. He started writing down the long strings of numbers that were slowly scrolling down the face of the computer monitor. It was easy enough to pick out the ipv4 and ipv6 address octets from the data stream, the hard part was weeding out the red herrings. He hit a few keys and his editor re-arranged the columns in a slightly different order. There! Now the with the data lined up a bit differently he could see where the messages were actually coming from. He jotted down a few more of the addresses onto the pad and paged through the network dump some more. It would take all night, but once he finished analyzing this last dump of the network traffic he'd managed to intercept he'd be able to rewrite his attack programs and try again. He was getting real close now, he could feel it.

Uran and Atom stood on opposite sides of the padded table upon which lay Cobalt.

“Is he dead?” Uran sighed.

“No, but his body is in suspended animation,” Robert explained. I've removed his electronic brain, see?”, he pointed to the 4x3” module sitting on a small circuit board card.
“There is a high capacity Lithium-Carbide battery on that module which will preserve the state of his mind until I can plug it into the aircraft's systems,” Bob continued. “Once I do that Cobalt and Issac will be sharing an airplane as a body. Right now I'm going to put this module into the backplane of my mainframe network machine, watch!”

The two siblings followed Bob as he walked around to the back side of the room long mainframe and opened the rear door of one of the cabinets housing the computer's circuits. He pointed to an empty card socket where he gently shoved Cobalt's electronic brain module into.

“Now see what happens,” he laughed.

The 3D monitor in the middle of the room came to life, and Cobalt's image slowly formed. The nerdy robot looked out from the middle of the ionized cloud of gas that was filled with laser light from a pair of high definition television cameras mounted above it. “Hi guys!” Cobalt replied. I can see you from inside of cyber space, can you see me?”

“Sure bro,” Atom replied. “Are you getting used to it yet?”

“It's a bit weird for sure,” Cobalt replied, “But it has it's advantages. I can go anywhere I want just by thinking about it.”

“Is Issac with you?” Atom asked.

“Somewheres.” Cobalt replied. “He's busy studying the X-35 manual right now. I can see him in the back of my mind, or our minds that is.”

“I haven't yet fully loaded Isaac's modified AI into your electronic brain yet, Cobalt,” Robert said. “Right now I'm going to perform some diagnostics on it to make sure it survived being removed from your robot body.”

“Hey you didn't tell me that something could go wrong!” Cobalt said with some worry.

“Nothing that I can't fix,” Bob laughed. “I just want to make sure that all of the interfaces to the laboratory mainframe are correct before I try and download Isaac, that's all.”

“Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better!” Cobalt laughed.
Last edited by Tetsuwan Penguin on Fri Sep 04, 2015 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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:tenma: I'm on Fanfiction.net as Tetsuwan Penguin. Please check out some of the other stories I've written! ;)

https://www.fanfiction.net/u/4672860/Tetsuwan-Penguin



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