Unplugged

There's a tune she's been working on, a little half-finished melody that she can't get out of her head. It's not for Murdoc-- it's not for anybody, really, except maybe herself. But it's elusive, incomplete, dancing just out of reach no matter how carefully or skillfully she picks or plucks or strums. This shouldn't be so hard, she thinks. Didn't she write most of Demon Days herself?

Well, no. She remembers doing it, true, but the memory is distant, flat, like remembering a movie, or a story that happened to someone else. And that's precisely the problem, a small corner of her mind whispers. It did happen to someone else.

It's not like you're the original, after all.

The guitar twangs painfully and she presses her hand to the strings, muting the sour note before it can echo too far. She's been "on" too much, she decides rationally. Too long between chargings, too long between reboots. It makes her think strange things, being awake so much. She almost longs for the white-noise oblivion of charging, when she doesn't have to think and there aren't any dreams.

(She remembers dreaming, in a vague sort of way. But sleep mode, she's aware, isn't really like sleep, and her neurons don't need to fire off random images when she powers down the way Murdoc's or 2D's do.)

She realizes that she's been strumming the bridge from El Manana for the last two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and her own lapse bothers her. She puts her hand over the strings again. Really, she should tell Murdoc that she needs another reboot. Maybe there's something wrong with her CPU after all.

She picks at her melody again, but just like always the ending dances away just out of reach.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh, titles with double meaning, how I love you.

My second (third?) attempt at Cyborg! I really think this one came out much better. I am oddly pleased with her boots. They look so... boot-ish. Also, I love painting clouds. It's just so fun. And stars! Stars are fun too.

This can be thought of as a companion piece to my Noodle picture: [link]

Of course, I don't know if Cyborg dreams or not... Do androids dream of electric sheep? I was just letting the writing go where it wanted to go.

Cyborg Noodle (c) Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn.