The Big O and all of its settings and characters are owned by Bandai Visual, Sunrise, and Cartoon Network.

THE BIG O:

ACT 39

ROGER THE DOMINEUS

Big-O!

Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!

Big-O!

Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!

Cast in the name of God!

Negotiator

Ye not the guilty!

Android

We have come to terms!

Butler

Big-O!

Officer

Big-O!

Big-O! Big-O! Big-O!

Big-O!

Big-O! Big-O! -O! -O! Big-O!

Chapter One: Memories are Like Nightmares

Forty years ago a terrible disaster took place. The world as we knew it ended. The world's end was so thorough that the survivors couldn't even say what the world used to be.

"Major, you've broken formation!" a woman's voice came over the earphones in his bomber hat. "Major come in! Dammit Roger, answer me!"

It was the end of the world. The enemy advanced too quickly and was now in the city. Roger worked the pedals of his megadeus to make the giant robot move faster. "Come on, Big O!" he grunted. "Hurry! We've got to get to the convention center! Hurry! Ahh!"

One of the enemy had seized the Big O by the arm and was cutting through the relatively slender upper arm of the black megadeus. "Leggo!" Roger growled as he activated the purple particle beam weapons in Big O's eyes. A missile from a purple megadeus called Big Rex hit his attacker and exploded, sending the Big O staggering forwards but free. "Thanks Mike," Roger muttered to himself. "That's one I owe you."

Roger frowned. The left arm wasn't responding. No matter; he still had the right. There it was: the convention center. It was no good. A white amorphous mass was oozing out of the bottom floor of the seven story high hotel. There was no escape now. A lumbering behemoth lurched from behind the hotel and shot arced forks of electricity at Big O.

Roger screamed as he pulled the joystick back along the arm on his right. He let go of the joystick as it disappeared into the arm and was replaced by second one with a basket hilt and trigger. With an animal grunt he brought the joystick back to the front of the curving arm and pulled the trigger.

Big O's forearm split open like a banana to reveal four massive cannons arranged around the robot's fist. With a squeal and a whine the cannons rotated around the megadeus' spinning hand as bolts of lavender energy poured out the cannons in a thundering crescendo of fire.

His foe concentrated the electricity on the Big O's open forearm and arcs of electricity played across the surface as tiny explosions of smoke emerged from the spinning guns. A warning chime was heard in the red cockpit as the purple pulses quit but they had done their job. The enemy was on the ground and would fight no more. Roger was free to advance on the hotel.

As he watched a roof hatch opened and a tiny human form dashed along the rooftop patio towards him. It was a slender redheaded girl in a white dress. "Roger!" she cried as she waved her hands. "It's me! It's me!"

"Dorothy!" he smiled as he marched the Big O forward. "Dorothy, I'm here!" He frowned as he pulled on the joysticks. "Dammit, the arms don't seem to want to work! Hold on Dorothy! I'm going to move Big O closer!"

The red hatch on the megadeus' collar rose to cover Big O's head and exposed the control room as he moved Big O right up against the damaged hotel. The face of the building was crumbling as the white amorphous blob seeped through the structure's cavities and expanded. Pretty soon the hotel would collapse into a heap of debris, but if Roger hurried he could save at least one occupant.

The roof of the hotel was almost eight feet above the floor of Big O's control room but it was close enough. The curved arms rose around him as he got out of the cockpit and hurried through the control room to the balcony that had been created by the space in the Big O's chest. "Come on, Dorothy! Jump!" he ordered as he held his arms up to her. "Don't worry, I'll catch you!"

The girl's face was pale as she nodded back to him. "All right," she said as she climbed over the three foot wall encircling the roof of the doomed hotel. "Here I come!" she announced as she leaped over the edge.

At that moment Big O tilted backwards sending Roger staggering back. Down below the white amorphous blob had seeped out of the building and was attacking Big O's legs! The ground wasn't level anymore and Roger wasn't at the controls to compensate. Big O was leaning backwards causing the distance for Dorothy's leap to be more than they calculated.

For Roger the scene was played out slowly in excruciating detail. He saw her hit the edge of the entryway, her feet desperately trying to find a foothold as her hands searched in vain for something to grab onto. When he leaped forward towards her, he slid forward on his chest as he saw her head and shoulders disappear over the side. "Dorothy!" he gasped as his hand grasped the very tips of her fingers. "Dorothy, I can't hang on! You've got to give me another hand! I…"

As she reached up with her free hand, her dainty fingers slipped out of his. Roger couldn't even hear himself screaming as he saw the terrified girl falling down to the malevolent ooze below, her white dress fluttering like a billowing ghost…

"Aaah!" Roger's eyes opened and he found himself in a strange chamber filled with control panels and people in white lab coats. His limbs were restrained and he was standing, but leaning on some kind of platform. Some kind of helmet was on his head that was removed with a pneumonic hiss. "Where? Where am I? Who are you people?" he shouted as he struggled against the metal bands pressing into his bare skin. "Dammit, I don't care who you are, let me go!"

One of the figures in a white lab coat was a short slender woman. Her skin was deathly white and her short bobbed hair was jet black. Fine cheekbones framed a sensual mouth that was adorned with blood red lipstick. Her left cheek was decorated with what looked like three beauty marks, but on closer examination were three six pointed stars. Her large heavily mascaraed eyes stared at him in a mixture of awe and glee. "Roger darling!" she grinned widely. "It's me! Do you recognize me sweetie?"

"No," he whined as the fight went out of him and he started crying. "Leave me alone," he gasped between sobs.

The happy look on her face vanished immediately. "Nerts," she snorted as she put her hands on her hips. "Oh well. The Union wasn't built in a day was it?"

Roger spent time with the doctors, but he also noticed that he was being watched, almost as if he was under guard. Guards weren't necessary. Where was he going to go anyway? He gave them his name, rank, and serial number and in return they gave him a number: Two. They asked him lots of questions, especially questions about how much he could remember. He thought that was grossly unfair: He couldn't remember squat. For Roger his past was riddled with holes like a piece of Swiss cheese. Like he cared. For some reason, he really didn't care about anything. Nothing seemed to matter but the girl from his memory.

Who was that girl from his memory? Her name was Dorothy. Who was she to him? Wife? She looked kind of young, but it was possible. Sister? Not a chance. They didn't look like they were related. Fiancé? Judging from the amount of pain that thought caused him, fiancé was as good a guess as any. She felt like a fiancé. Thinking about her hurt, like she had been taken from him before they could be together. Fiancé. That had to be it. He wouldn't be surprised if she had died the day they were supposed to be married. That would be doing it just about right.

He wouldn't be surprised if Dorothy's ghost woke him from his nightmares every morning from now on. His last memory of her was in that white dress when she fell to her doom. He didn't know if he could ever look at a woman in white again. From now on his favorite color was black. If he ever got married and had a family, he'd force everyone in his house to wear black.

Nobody around here was dressed in white, thank God. The people here seemed to sport an amazing array of casually tacky fashion. Black and white in contrast seemed popular, as well as startling combinations of red, yellow, blue, green, white and orange. Both the men and the women favored pullover shirts, either in a solid color or with horizontal stripes. Slacks were the daywear of choice, either in beige or some other bland color. Shoes were either loafers or deck shoes. To a man they all seemed to wear hats. Caps of all types were popular as well as straw boaters. None of the men wore ties and none of the women wore skirts. It was as if Roger had waked up on another planet.

Roger himself favored clothing in that was as dark a monochrome as possible. He chose a dark jacket with a white trim over a dark sweater and beige pants. His torso and arms were clad in a dark shade of blue but it looked like black in dim light. He noticed that he wasn't the only one that liked this style. The one who seemed to be in charge dressed the same way. She was an attractive blonde in her late thirties or early forties who called herself Number Twelve. Well, she would be attractive if not for that eye patch. Roger still remembered his first real interview with her. It was held in a huge semicircular futuristic chamber where a she sat in a circular chair behind a control panel that bristled with buttons and flashing colored lights. Roger sat in a chair that had just come out of the floor at the push of a button on her control panel. Very James Bond. Or James Bond Villainess.

"Velcome Number Two," she greeted coldly.

"Number Two?" he couldn't help sniggering at her accent. "That me?"

"Jes," she frowned. It was obvious that she was not used to being treated so lightly. "For official purposes, everyone has a number. Yours is Two. You associate your old name too much vith your old life. Until you are given a new name, you'll be known as Number Two."

"Does that make you Number Twelve?" he asked her. "I notice that your badge has a twelve on it. Does that mean that you don't you have a name either?"

"None of us do until you get a new name," she announced. "Ve are all equal here. Von for all and all for von as zuh zaying goes. Do you understand?"

"Yeah I get it," he shrugged. "So vair… I mean where are we? Nazi Germany? What's with the Gestapo act?"

"Number Two, do you know vair you are? You don't recognize zis place?"

"No," he shrugged again. "I just asked you. Didn't you hear me?"

"You don't remember us zen," she stared at him suspiciously. "You really don't remember. Or are you pretending?"

"Nope," he shook his head. "So what day is it anyway? How long have I been out?"

"Do you remember Paradigm City?"

"No," he crossed his arms and slouched in his chair. "What is it? An electronics store?"

"No it is a place vair the fascist state known as zuh Paradigm Corporation rules," she spat. "Zey have divided their people into zuh rich and zuh poor and zen decide to do away vith zuh poor by eliminating zem. It is a place ruled by a few and the vill of zuh people go unheeded. A city so corrupt zat zair own ruler decided to destroy it zo he could build a vorld zat exists only vithin his own mind. For zuh good of all mankind zey must be overthrown before humanity is destroyed."

"I think I see what's coming next," Roger sighed. "Look I've been a soldier but I just don't care anymore. Good luck with your revolution but I'm sorry. I just don't care. I wish I did. I wish I cared about anything right now but I'm afraid I just don't. You understand that don't you?"

"I understand," she said. "Zleep on it. Perhaps tomorrow you may zee zings differently, Number Two."

Of course that wasn't the end of it, but Roger hadn't expected it to be. The doctors subjected him to tests. They hooked him up to lie detectors and other monitors while showing him pictures loaded in a slide projector of people he guessed he was supposed to recognize.

"Who is this?" asked the doctor lady with the three stars on her cheek. Roger looked at a picture of a bald man with muttonchop sideburns and a horseshoe mustache. He was wearing a military uniform but with his hat off Roger could see that he was bald and one side of his dome was crisscrossed with scars.

"Don't know," Roger shrugged. "Never seen him before either."

"And this?" asked a second doctor, a man with a deep and commanding voice. Everything he said sounded vital, important, cosmic even. It was as if he was giving a speech or dictating military tactics. "Do you recognize this man, Major?" Roger was shown picture of an old man with thinning white hair and a handlebar moustache. The old man was in an archaic tuxedo and wore an eyepatch.

"That looks like Doctor Burg, aside of the eyepatch," Roger said. "I know his son, Norman."

"And this one?" the male doctor showed him a picture of a slender teenage girl. Her pale unlined face was crowned by brick red hair styled in a page boy haircut.

Roger sat up and paid attention. "Where did you get that one?" he growled.

"Do you know her?"

"Who cares?" he muttered bitterly. "She's dead."

"How did she die?" The man's voice was as grave and majestic as if God Himself was asking the question, but Roger refused to be impressed.

"None of your business." His tone indicated that the matter wasn't open to discussion. "I recognize her. Move on."

"How about this man?" He was shown a picture of a tall broad shouldered man in his early forties wearing a double breasted white suit.

"He looks kind of like Gordon Rosewater only ninety percent more evil," Roger quipped. "Who is he? His no good brother or something?"

"No that's his son, Alex," the slender woman in the while lab coat told him.

"Alex Rosewater?" Roger gasped. "Get out of town! Alex isn't ten! This guy's fifty if he's a day!"

"No one knows how old he is," the male doctor told him, "on account of everybody losing their memories forty years ago."

"Wait a second," Roger protested. "Forty years ago? What year is it? How long have I been out?"

"How long to do you think you've been out?" the lady doctor asked.

"That's what I've been asking you!" Roger's growled. "What's going on?"

"Forty years ago, everything we knew, was destroyed," the male doctor said in his rich deep voice. "The face of the planet changed forever. There isn't anyone who really knows what did happen. The survivors were left without memories. In the aftermath, new societies were formed. Here in the Union everyone is equal but in Paradigm City the rich close themselves in giant domes while the poor must live without protection. Worse yet, we have reason to believe that the only the Paradigm Corporation has access to the lost Memories."

"Everyone lost their memories?" Roger repeated in disbelief. "Is this a joke? How could everyone lose their memories? It would take a nuralizer the size of a megadeus and even then it could only affect one city at the most! Even Big Venus couldn't… Everybody? Are you kidding me? What about birth records?"

"There aren't any from before forty years ago."

"What about computer records?"

"Not from before forty years ago," the male doctor shook his head.

"What about history books?" Roger insisted. "Newspaper clippings? Diaries? Are you making this up?"

"It's all true. Nobody knows who their ancestors were. Nobody even knows what the world looked like or what all the countries were called."

"Is the world ruled by a bunch of damn dirty apes or something?" Roger protested.

"Of course it is!" the lady doctor giggled. "They're called men!" When Roger and the other doctor looked at her she blushed and cleared her throat. "I guess you have to be a lady to appreciate that joke."

"Seriously, Major," the male doctor continued. "The world that was is gone. So far the only surviving humans can be found in the Union, Paradigm City, and a few villages settled by people who've wanted to leave that corrupt metropolis."

"Is the Union such a village?" Roger asked. "I mean, this is a nice little town, but it's hardly big enough to be a city, let alone a country. This place is one of the villages settled by refugees from Paradigm City isn't it?"

"We like to think of it as The Village," the female doctor said proudly.

"Well it's great," Roger threw up his hands in surrender. "Aside of the fact that I can't get alcoholic beverages around here. Seriously, nonalcoholic beer? Who wants to drink that anyway?"

"You can't just drink your problems away you know," the lady doctor chirped.

"Why not?" Roger growled. "My memory's got so many holes in it that I can barely remember my name anyway."

"You can't just give up Major," the male doctor insisted. "Fate has given you an opportunity to make a difference for all mankind. You can make the difference and lead us all to a brighter future."

But Roger was no longer paying attention. "Who am I?" he moaned. "What happened to me? How did I even get here?"

On a desk filled with hourglasses a phone rings. Roger's hand picks up the receiver and a sinister voice says:

Next: Daily Affirmations