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

THE BIG O:

Paradigm City is a city without Memories. But that doesn't mean that the past can't come back to haunt you.

Everything was scarlet, like he was looking at the world through a crimson lens. He was sitting in a chair in a control room of some kind. His feet were in pedals, but he wasn't on a bicycle. Between his feet were three circular cathode screens. The center one displayed a moving line resembling the readings of an electrocardiogram.

My name is Roger Smith. Eight years ago I quit the military police and became a professional negotiator. When words aren't enough I turn to Big O, the massive metal giant known as a megadeus. When pilot and megadeus are in sync there's nothing we can't do, but if one of them is off their game it only leads to disaster.

Roger Smith rubbed his face and tried to get back to reality. Various knobs and switches were arrayed around him. In addition two arms curved around his chair to end with a joystick within reach of each of his hands. The curved wall directly ahead of him seemed to be made of a partially translucent red material, but his vision was too blurry to show him the outside world.

His boyish features showed the strain of an inner battle. His broad shoulders hunched as he bent his trim waist in an instinctive attempt to protect himself. He ran a black gloved hand through his jet-black hair as he clenched his strong jaw. He loosened the black tie was bisected by a gray stripe and opened the collar of his crisp white shirt before opening the black polo jacket he wore over it.

Jason Beck, a small time crook, has somehow gained access to lost Memories. Memories not only about how to build and operate a megadeus, but he also seems to know everything about me.

A tall thin man with a blonde pompadour hairdo wearing a canary colored double-breasted suit was in a similar control room, this one all done in gold. "Hey Roger," Jason Beck smiled. "Catch you at a bad time?"

The mysterious woman who calls herself Angel told me that Paradigm Company's new chairman, Lester Young, ordered Beck to capture her to find something called the Repository of Lost Memories. But is Beck really working for Young? Or for himself?

A beautiful blonde woman in a black dress and a pink jacket danced before Roger's murky vision. "I… I found them," Angel gulped. "The Memories. Gordon Rosewater showed them to me. They're stored in a massive computer system called the Repository of Lost Memories. There's a control system that can erase or restore everyone's Memories. There's a surveillance system that monitors nearly everyone in the city."

Has Beck already gained access to the Repository of Lost Memories? He seems to possess information he couldn't possibly have.

"I don't know what he's up to but he could do a lot of damage with what he knows," Angel had said.

He knows things that I've told no one. He has access to all my personal demons. Somehow he has possession of the Memories I myself have lost. Who I am. Where I come from. How it is that I can pilot a megadeus. And my deep connection to a girl named R Dorothy Wayneright.

"Are you in love with her, Roger?" a slender, teenage girl had asked a few weeks back. She had been wearing a reddish black dress that had a white ruffled collar and formal white cuffs at the time. A set of black stockings and shiny black shoes completed her ensemble. Her red pageboy haircut had been immaculate, her bangs broken by a black barrette.

"I don't know if you understand," he had replied, "but sometimes it's hard to tell if you really love someone or if you just want what you can't have."

"I understand," the girl had replied coldly. "I understand intimately."

R Dorothy Wayneright: an android I let into my home after her creator was murdered last year. She seems to have some link to both me and the megadeuses. Once, when I was lost in never-ending nightmares, she used our connection to Big O to enter my subconscious and bring me out of it. Her devotion is absolute: but can an android truly know love?

"Roger, if you love someone, isn't it normal to want the person you love to be happy?" she had asked him that very morning.

Is Dorothy actually human enough to want more?

"You think of me as a child, remember?" she had retorted when he questioned her. "You think of me as a dependent. Despite the fact that I have the maturity level that belongs to that dead girl I was modeled after you still think of me as being two years old. You've made it quite clear."

Is that what could turn an R Dorothy into a Red Destiny?

"Raw… JER!" Dorothy's homicidal twin had bellowed almost a year ago as she fired a pistol at him.

Can we trust anyone when we can't even trust ourselves?

Angel and the teenage android were walking briskly through an alley to avoid pursuit. "What's going on Dorothy?" the mysterious blonde asked the robot girl. "What did you mean when you said that just now?"

"Roger is in trouble," the android said. "Beck has set a trap for him, just as he has set a trap for you."

"A trap for me?" Angel repeated. "How does he even know where I am? Are you sure, Dorothy?"

"Yes," the dainty android said as she discharged a small handheld electroshock weapon against Angel's neck. "Quite sure."

Beck spent weeks planning this, and I've fallen right into it.

"Roger! Hey Roger!" Beck's voice called over the speakers as the dazed negotiator helplessly sat in the cockpit of Big O. "You still with me buddy? You see the numbers I put on your screen?"

9 701330 570415. It was the number that was under the barcode in the eye in Roger's nightmares! He couldn't even see the screen anymore; all he could see was the bar code. The eye. Bald children staring into the flames. Books burning on the shelves. A doddering old man named Gordon Rosewater offering him a tomato…

"Recognize that number Roger?" Beck's mocking voice asked. "Do you remember the Ellen Waite case where little Dorothy's identical twin was killing off people in their twenties who claimed they had Memories from forty years ago? You found a hit list right? Do you remember? Next to every name was a barcode that had a number under it. Do you remember the last name? The next person to be targeted by the killer? Do you? Huh?"

"R-D," Roger muttered as the memory of the hit list flashed before his eyes.

"That's right," Beck cooed condescendingly. "And who did she go after next?"

"Me!" Roger gasped as the specter of a maniacal gun toting Dorothy Wayneright assaulted him. But it wasn't Dorothy Wayneright; it was an android that looked just like her. The killer android he had called 'Red Destiny'.

"R-D," Beck's voice taunted. "It couldn't have been the name of Dorothy's twin sister now was it? It makes no sense to put herself on her own hit list does it?"

"No!" Roger shuddered as images from his nightmares assaulted him.

"'R-D' doesn't refer to the assassin Roger!" Beck chortled from cockpit of the golden megadeus. "Her name's not R-D! It never was! It refers to the victim! Haven't you figured it out by now? I've got your number!"

ACT 36

WHAT WE REALLY WANTED

Chapter One: Defeat of the Black Megadeus

The black megadeus known as Big O was over five stories tall. Two vaguely humanoid legs supported a barrel shaped body. The enormous arms of the megadeus were in reality massive piledrivers with huge mechanical hands instead of chisels. The head of was an impassive face that was dwarfed by the megadeus' humungous body. The megadeus' face was topped by a red crystalline crown and the top of its chest was covered by a red collar that concealed the cockpit.

It was facing a golden yellow five story tall robot with a strangely shaped head that was crowned with three sharp points. Its arms were open and bent up at the elbows as if it was surrendering or telling the black megadeus how big of a fish it caught. Inside the yellow robot were Jason Beck and his two cronies Bobo 'Dove' Jacobs and Lou 'T-Bone' Torelli.

Bobo AKA 'Dove' was a skinny man whose greenish black hair, chalk white skin and thick red lips made him look like a clown. Lou AKA 'T-Bone' was a tubby little man who dressed like a beatnik. Jason Beck was dressed in a canary yellow suit complete with a double breasted polo jacket. The three of them were in a circular control room seated at consoles.

"You know Roger," Beck said as his cohorts moved the yellow robot towards the Big O, "I know stuff about you that I'll bet money you don't even know! For example, do you know why you can pilot the black megadeus? Yeah I know. You've got Memories. But that's not the whole story, is it? I mean honestly, it takes three of us to control this thing but somehow you can run yours with just one pilot? There's gotta be something going on here, you know what I mean?"

He grinned at his cohorts and spun his finger in the air. The arms of the golden robot pointed at Big O while the hands spun around and turned into giant drills. Beams of energy shot out of them and raked the chest of the black megadeus, but when they hit the red crystal collar they were reflected back the attacker. The gold robot staggered backwards as the armor on its chest was cut open.

"Whoa!" Beck cried as he and his lackeys worked furiously at their controls. "This is no good fellas. We're just going to have to take this megadeus apart the old fashioned way."

"Right boss!" Dove squeaked in his high pitched voice.

"The upper arms look like a good place to start," T-Bone offered. "They look like the least protected part of the megadeus."

"Good thinkin'," Beck grimaced as he activated the radio on his console. "I gotta keep crow-boy reeling so the black megadeus doesn't flatten us! Hey Roger? You okay in there? You still with me old buddy?"

"Ungh," Roger grunted from the cockpit of Big O. His arms pulled on the joystick and his feet pressed on the pedals but they refused to budge. The black megadeus refused to move. That was okay. Roger was lost in his own private world anyway.

"Where was I?" Beck's voice said over the speakers as sweat rolled down Roger's twitching face. "Oh yeah! How do you manage to have such fine control over the black megadeus? It's almost as if that thing's an extension of your own body. Well guess what: It really is!"

Roger's eyes darted left and right in what is known by sleep researchers as 'rapid eye movement', but he wasn't asleep. His eyes were wide open.

"It seems that inside your body are these little robots that were injected into your body by the megadeus," Beck continued while the gold robot used its drills to attack Big O's forearms. "Let's call these little guys 'nanodeueses'…"

"Nanodeuses?" T-bone repeated. "What are nanodeuses?"

"Why not call them 'minideuses?" Dove piped.

"Because nanodeuses sound a whole lot cooler that's why!" Beck snapped. "Now you've done it; I've lost my concentration. What was I telling him?"

"Uh… somethin' about the black megadeus being an extension of his own body," T-bone offered.

"Oh yeah!" Beck smiled. "That's right." He activated the radio again. "As I was saying Roger. You got little robots in you that keep in contact with the megadeus. It's not just your skill at the controls, Crow-boy, that megadeus knows what you want it to do! It's practically a part of your own body! No wonder it was impossible to beat you! It's as if the two of you are one!"

Roger clawed at his temples as he tried to clear his head. The cockpit wasn't really filled with tomatoes. The city wasn't destroyed and littered with the wreckage of destroyed megadeuses. His eyes were closed so he wasn't really seeing a barcode flash by with that damnable number. Old Gordon Rosewater, the first chairman of the Paradigm Company and the founder of the city wasn't really standing over him wearing bloodstained surgical scrubs smiling beatifically down at him. And Roger wasn't really standing in a train tunnel as a cloaked figure in a red hood exploded into a wave of fire that engulfed him and burnt him to a crisp.

Meanwhile the golden robot turned its drills on one of the forearms. Compared to the rest of Big O, the forearms looked fragile almost slender, easily the least protected part of the megadeus.

"You forget everything, don't you Roger?" Beck's voice mocked. "You don't remember what they did to you! What they took away and what they gave you! You could have had it all but you knew there was no point! That's okay! Sometimes it hurts too much to remember! Speaking of hurting too much, let me tell you something about sweet innocent little Dorothy. Little Dorothy might be sweet, but I'd hardly call her innocent."

At that moment the slender red-haired android put the unconscious Angel into a yellow van that was parked by a curb. Overhead, behind the buildings behind her one could see the gold megadeus severing the left arm of the black one.

"Little Dorothy has secrets that she shares with no one," Beck continued as the dainty android got in the driver's seat and started the van. "Let's start with the reason she can bring lost megadeuses back from the dead! It's a real pip!"

"Ah!" To Roger's eyes, the cockpit seemed to be filled with tomatoes. Even the joysticks had vanished to be replaced with two unopened tomato cans. He could still see one of the monitors though. That monitor showed a silhouette of Big O and revealed that neither one of its arms was working.

"It seems that Dorothy has nanodeuses in her system just like you do," Beck crowed. "Only hers aren't bonded to any specific megadeus; that's why giant robots come back from the dead and go after her when she's around. They're all trying to bond with their domineus but their domineuses are long gone!" Big O's second arm was severed under the restless attack of the gold robot's drills. Now the black megadeus was literally unarmed. "Since Dorothy doesn't eat, her nanodeuses don't rebuild her as much as yours do. She heals more like a normal person than like a lizard like you do Roger! Of course she does. Otherwise, you'd have needed to give her new skin every few weeks wouldn't you? No, her nanodeuses just repair her scrapes and cuts and run maintenance just like whatever normal humans have. It doesn't seem like much but she doesn't have to worry about wearing out and rusting away like a normal android. If you blow her foot off you still gotta build her another one though! It's not like it is with you after all. I figure with you it might take months to years but someday you'd be standing on your own two feet sooner or later."

"Augh!" Roger cried out as the black megadeus fell on its back. The gold one straddled it and attacked its chest with its drills.

"Who knows? Maybe the little critters remap her brain so she can truly be 'alive', or as alive as any android can be," Beck chortled as he and his men operated the controls. "By the way, did you ever tap that? I really hope you did. But let's get back to you, shall we? The point is that the black megadeus monitors and controls your little nanodeuses to keep them from malfunctioning. With enough vitamins, minerals, and protein, I figure those little guys could keep you alive forever as long as the megadeus was functioning. But you know what? In order to heal you, you gotta survive your injury in the first place! Let's see you get out of this, Roger!"

"Argh!" Roger gasped as one of the drills dug into the crimson collar that protected the cockpit. He had managed to pull himself away from visions of burning books and children staring into fires long enough to see that threats were coming at him in the real world! But did he even know which world was real anymore? He better figure it out fast or he just might die in both of them.

At that moment the gold robot staggered back after being hit by an artillery shell. "What the hell?" Beck gasped.

From down the street a number of mobile artillery vehicles fired at the gold megadeus. "Keep firing men!" a grizzled officer with a horseshoe mustache and muttonchops sideburns ordered. "Get that thing off the black megadeus! If it pierces the hull and kills the pilot I'll have your hides!"

A man wearing civilian clothes, a gas mask, a raincoat, and fedora was standing next to him. "This looks bad Colonel Dastun," the masked man said calmly. "The black megadeus has never been defeated like this before."

"Do androids do nothing but state the obvious R Fredrick O'Reilly?" Colonel Dastun, the temporary head of the military police snapped. "Use your android brain to direct artillery fire! I don't want to hit the black megadeus on accident!"

"Will do Colonel," the android nodded.

In the control room of the gold megadeus Beck and his men were shaken like maracas at a Mexican Hat Dance as artillery shells exploded on the hull.

"Aaah!" Beck screamed as yet another shell hit the giant golden robot.

"We can't take any more while our armor's compromised boss!" Dove whined.

"He's right!" T-Bone agreed. "We split open our own armor when the black megadeus reflected our beams back on us!"

"What should we do, boss?" Dove sniveled.

"What do you think we should do?" Beck asked sarcastically. "Run away you morons! Let's amscray! Vamoose! Go!"

The gold robot rotated its waist until its torso, arms and head was facing away from Big O before it rolled away on it's the treads on its feet. For such a big robot it could move surprisingly quickly.

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

Next: Reinstatement Orders