Chapter 5:

Ten years earlier... Wires frey. Sparks fly. The banging of a hammer warps metal into odd shaped forms that generally represent the crude contours of a female form.

Dr. Igmus is hard at work on his most experimental project to date. Little did he know that his project would turn into a decade long obsession. After many months of labor and tedious research he is finally getting to the aesthetics of his creation.

An assistant. A loyal servant in his scientific endeavors. He could refer to it more as his self reliant, data retrieval system, but to the common man it is a robot.

After being stranded on the island he thought it best if he create something that could give him some sort of human interaction. He knows through fellow colleagues of his that extreme isolation drives one to bouts of dementia and hallucination and that will not further his chances of survival.

So he has developed this project where-in he is going to create a robot assistant. A self sustaining artificially intelligent, fully function and reacting robot. His idea is that it would both serve as data computer for his various experiments. While also doing the more remedial tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and maintenance around the house and laboratory.

The first of these many robots was creatively named "Ms. One". For a great mind of scientific imagination he was not the most profound at naming his creations.Like many prototypes Ms. One was crude and lacked the aesthetic quality of a Da Vinci sketch or a Michelangelo sculpture.

Ms. One did work for a short amount of time. Which to Dr.Igmus was considered a success since this was his first attempt with welding and robotics. She was infantile in terms of intelligence. She could stand up, sit down, and occasionally pick up the wrong object for the good doctor. Her vocal skills were something to be desired. He could not exactly figure out how to create her voice box. So he substituted her voice with a radio receiver, but the only stations it picked up were a Spanish channel based somewhere off the coast of Mexico and an evangelical minister's sermons that would interrupt him on cue whenever there were bouts of silence when the doctor was pondering some complex problem. This often frustrated Dr. Igmus since he was neither a religious man, nor spoke Spanish.

Although when all alone he slowly became accustom to the sermons and over the months he also began to gain some fluency in Spanish.

Ms. One fell short of many of her goals. Should could not go up or down stairs. She did not do any of the tasks that the doctor demanded of her. Plus, she failed to have the gentle touch to pick objects up without crushing them to pieces. Another major set back was that she would more often than not erupt spontaneously into fire. It became such a pattern that he ended up welding a fire extinguisher on to her arm. Ironically enough, that became the one skill she excelled at.

Over the months that Ms. One existed Dr. Igmus made many upgrades. Some more successful than others. What was to be her last upgrade was a chip that accelerated her movement by allowing more energy from her battery to be allotted to her separate appendages. Meaning she could walk faster, put out fires more quickly, and basically keep out of the doctor's way. Which worked for a couple days. Then she had one of her fires and in an attempt to put out the blaze. The fire extinguisher foam spray short circuited the chip that controlled her speed. Her arms began spinning like propellers. Her head spun around faster and faster as the Spanish channel and Sermons began to get faster. Louder. The two separate channels became an inaudible hybrid of ear mush. The doctor fearing his life to cover under a metal lab table and covered his ears. Then without notice she turned around and raced through the wall.

Dr. Igmus simply stood up in amazement. Dumb-founded. His eyes wide. Mouth open. He took of his eye glasses rubbing them with his lab coat as he squinted to catch her with his eyes. She faded into the distance as the blaring racket of Mariachi music and a Sunday Sermon became silent.

He put his glasses back on. Itched his scalp thinking maybe the energy amount was a bit excessive. He slowly began the long walk of falling miscellaneous gizmos and bits of scrap metal. He walks what must finally be a mile or so and come about the head sitting on the ground still smoking. The rest of the body seems to have been carried of by a pack of animals. Judging by the paw tracks he assumes it was a pack of wild dogs. They are known to inhabit this part of the woods. Luckily all of the main circuit board work and data was contained in the head. So he gingerly walks back to the house with smoking head in hand.

He considers Ms. One to have been an overwhelming success in all aspects. Excluding of course the random bouts of fire and her unfortunate demise, but with head in hand and a whole new list of improvements he decides to begin work on soon to be "Ms. Dos" letting a little bit of her Spanish influence his creativity towards naming her. So with out delay he makes it back to the lab walking through the hole in the wall and surpassing the door altogether as a reminder the power he has in creating this new assistant of his.

He places her head on the lab desk and tapes a little note on her head so as not to forget. it reads

"To Do List:

-more efficient use of power.

-build actual voice box.

-Figure out why she kept catching on fire!"...

Dr. Igmus awakes the next day with new gusto as he knows the task at hand is going to be trial and error for this project he has decided to under take. For the second edition of his robo-assistant he starts to get a better handle on the wielding of her and she begins to resemble more of a humanoid figure. Ass opposed to Ms.One which had more of a Ms. Robo-Frankstein look. The completion of Ms. Dos takes a mere couple of months as compared to Ms. One. He decided to keep some of the elements that made Ms.One unique. For instance, he kept the fire extinguisher attachment. Although now he runs the tubing through her metal skeletal structure instead of on the outside. Plus, he has kept most of her memories or data from the previous Ms.One as an attempt to build up her character and give her a bit of history. However he still has problem modulating her voice box so she still has the two radio stations that she picks up as her voice. Now she can control the volume and so can Dr. Igmus.

A new feature on Ms.Dos is that she now can better understand and respond to Dr.Igmus's voice commands, but she still has maneuverability problems such as stairs and running. His understanding of robotics has grown as well. Allowing him to add hands in replacement of her power wielding claws. Though she still lacks the touch of a surgeon often times crushing the most delicate of objects.

Dr. Igmus is slowly growing used to her quarks and is thinking one or two more upgrades and she'll be able to evolve into the robot that he will need. Her artificial intelligence is coming along quicker than expected.

After weeks of tinkering here and there on her nuances he thinks she is adequate. There have been no major glitches. So he figures while she is of somewhat functionality he will begin to work on a vocal word box to implement .

Then one day while he is inside the lab working Ms. Dos is repairing the second entrance that Ms.One decided to create when she short circuit and ran away. It slowly starts to sprinkle. Dr.Igmus pays it no mine deep in concentration soldering together some wires for her digital voice equalizer.

The pings of rain begin to happen more rapidly. Ms. Dos carries on slowly removing rubble and debris from the hole. She isn't the fastest worker, but Dr.Igmus has learned from his previous mistake and figures until he can adequately understand her power supply ratio it best "let her crawl, before learning how to sprint through walls!". As the rain goes from a light mist to heavy down pour Dr. Igmus's attention awakens from a sound he hasn't heard before.

A high pitch starts interrupting her radio signal which causes alarm. She shakes her head and the signal comes back and the sound disappears. Dr. Igmus smiles thinking she is slowly beginning to realize how to fix the things that are abnormal. This shows she is forming a heightened sense of self.

Dr.Igmus," That a girl. You show'em who's boss."

She looks at up at him. Then something happens... Her Spanish station starts breaking up again. Then it becomes complete static and through the static he hears a slightly distorted recording of his voice repeat back to him,"Boss..."

He is astonished. He eagerly awaits more forgetting that he installed a recording device onto her voice radio so that she may begin to record and play back responses like a child repeating the words," Ma...ma". Nothing more happens. The radio station returns and it as if nothing happened. Then she drops a piece of debris that she held in her hand and stops working all together. Her whole system shuts down.

Dr. Igmus puts down his soldering gun, gets up, and goes over to see what is wrong with Ms. Dos. His mind is racing with ideas. Maybe the rain triggered a short that connected the recorder to her data memory recognition. Or maybe she just learned it. Maybe her artificial intelligence is faster evolving then he anticipated.

He is oblivious to the soaking rain as he adjusts her head plate in the back so he can take a peek inside. In all Dr. Igmus's excitement he forgot to turn off the soldering gun which was lay on the desk has caught some of his notes on fire. He not noticing, it begins to smoke.

However, Ms Dos's emergency fire and smoke detection system does. She instantly awakens from her temporary robo-coma and springs to action. The only problem is because Dr.Igmus was tampering with her wiring during the rain some water has caused some electrical malfunctions in her response synapses. As she springs into action she knocks Dr.Igmus onto the ground. Her new enhanced built in smoke/fire alarm also comes equipped with a siren and flashing red lights with upon further anaylization are a bit loud and bright.

Now Dr.igmus is blinded by blazing red light and blaring siren horns. Ms.Dos approaches the small amount of smoke and fire growing on his desk. Which happens to be nothing more than a few lit embers and a small amount of smoke. She goes to town as if it's a four alarm fire. Spraying the entire laboratory down with foam and covering everything in an one inch coat of the stuff. She then precedes to turn around towards Dr.Igmus with Mariachi music at full volume as her face visor darkens. He realizes this look. He looks down then up. He is standing in the middle of Ms.One's homemade exit.

With ninja like reflexes he jumps aside as Ms. Dos bull rushes towards him and then passed him. Like her predecessor before her she meets the same ill fate. Dr. Igmus knows the routine and heads towards her trail of random parts that lead him to her. Fortunately she has not been greeted by a pack of wild animals like Ms. One. Must be the rain keeping them away.

This time he came prepared hauling his mechanized off road gurney complete with hydraulic lift. With the push of a button the metal arms pick up Ms.Dos and place her on the gurney. They head back to the laboratory and is deciding that top priority is discover this glitch of running towards her demise.