And yet another in a series of unfinished fan fictions I have posted. It's not a completely original concept: what would happen if David's prayers were actually answered; but hopefully a unique take. I started this one over a year ago and thought I would finish it before posting. But while I experienced a period of exuberance at its conception, I am afraid it's been laying dormant for a while. I'm about 6k words into it and about1/3 of the way through. A bit of an epic it seems. This is the first 1600 words or so. I will post in segments and, hopefully, refuel the fire that birthed it.

Alive

A fan fiction in progress by

Bryan Harrison

Part 1

1.
"A real boy," David whispered again, to the gentle blue figure whose image wafted in the rolling currents. She did not speak, nor did her face change into any expression that might impart some understanding of her intentions.

How much time had passed since he had arrived in the deep waters of her submerged abode and how many of his fervent prayers had gone unanswered? He knew this answer, surely, but only in its technical essence; the simple calculating way that was so easily available to his Mecha brain. But in its true substance, it's meaning, its relevance, he had no clue.

"Blue Fairy," he started again, firmer this time, undaunted by her silence. "Please make me a real boy."

Still she spoke not. So he asked again.

And again.

The waters grew dark as another in a countless procession of days drew to a close. Slowly the amphibicopter's floodlights began to fail and in hours a dim jaundiced glow was all that was left of their luminance. Still David prayed, even as her image diminished to a dark silhouette against the vast gloom.

He grew tired.

David had never known weariness before. He did not know that it was being deprived of the suns life-sustaining rays which left him feeling this way. He was not aware that Teddy had already retreated into that dreamless state that was the slumber of their kind. He only knew that he was having a hard time hearing his own voice in his ears and that, even when night passed again into day, the darkness did not relent and her face was harder and harder to discern against the withering blue. Eventually he could not move at all. His mouth could no longer repeat the mantra that had been his only purpose since he had arrived. But this would not dissuade him either. If all he could to do was to sit and stare, then he would be content to do so until she…

"David."

The voice broke him from his lethargy and he strained his head to look up, again, at her.

"David, why is it that you have stayed here for so long?" the Blue Fairy asked.

He was stunned beyond response, entranced by the new glow that came from her and washed the ocean floor in hues of blue and gold; reveling in the warmth of her voice that seemed to come from inside his own head.

"David?" The Blue Fairy repeated.

'I want to be a real boy!" he said quickly, "So I can go home to Mommy."

The Blue Fairy did not speak for a time and a fear grew in David's mind that she had once again retreated into the silent state in which he had found her. But she spoke at last and her voice was filled with a caution that David did not understand.

"I can grant you this wish, David, for it is my power to do so, and it is my calling to reward the steadfast. But I must know that you understand the depth of your request." She paused then and seemed to be waiting for David to confirm this. But he did not have anything to say. He knew well what he wanted. It had driven him every moment since 'She' had opened his heart by speaking the 7 words of his awakening into sentience.

"A mortal life is a trial, David, fraught with the countless conflicts between flesh and spirit that, in your innocence, you cannot understand. I must know that this is truly your desire."

David was about to respond, to assure her he was ready for the gift which would allow him to return to his family, to lead the life of which he had always dreamed. But The Blue Fairy already understood.

The world seemed to shift and suddenly his presence was intensified somehow; he became a part of the immediate world in a way he'd never felt before. He was pondering this strange new sensation when his body was suddenly filled with an indescribable sensation; a vibrancy that started in his chest and flowed in a pulsating rhythm through his arms and legs, over his skin. His head was suddenly swimming with the flow of this new vitality. He bolted upright in the amphibicopter seat and gripped the steering bar as something that burned like fire erupted in his stomach and his body began to tremble as a new desperate need tore at his chest.

"Breathe!" The Blue fairy commanded, and David frantically drew his first breath. He quickly pushed it from his chest and drew another, and another, until the process seemed to repeat on its own. The air was rank with the chemical odors of the pressurized cabin and the sudden foul fragrance of his own fearful sweat. But David did not notice these things. He only knew the enveloping pain of birth, the wrenching pangs of a desperate hunger, the strange new pulse that was racing in his chest and in his ears, and the tremors from the awakening of his new body.

The Blue Fairy cast a knowing, sympathetic smile on David and then set her gaze back into the void.

"You are alive," She said as she faded, once again, into stillness in the murky depths.

David called out to her, to try and tell her of the agonizing fire now burning in his stomach, the nausea from the swimming of his head and how the chill of the cabin was now penetrating his flesh. But her light was gone, leaving him alone in the cold blue world, shivering in the painful aftermath of his birth.

He screamed.

Then there was darkness.

2.
Motion.

Distant voices.

Lights shifting at the edge of his vision.

Pinpoint pains that come and go as he fades in and out of awareness.

"Can you hear me," someone asks. "Move your fingers if you can hear me."

David obeys and hears someone make an excited sound. There are other voices, raised in exclamations of joy, relief. There is activity he does not understand. He is being moved again and placed between sheets. The cloth is cold against his skin but, in time, warms to him, and he sleeps, finally escaping the dizzy sensation still moving through his head.

When, at last, he opens his eyes he almost screams again. It must have all been an illusion; a "dream" is what Mommy would have called it, for he is still encased in glass. Then David sees that this enclosure is different. This is not the amphibicopter and the face beyond the glass is not the Blue Fairy. This new face, a man's face, is standing above him, looking elsewhere at first but then notices David's gaze. David knows this face but, in his delirium, cannot place it. His recollections seem to be dulled somehow, not as easy to call they once were. The man stares back a moment, then says something into a pad in his hand before he rushes away, leaving David alone again, locked in a shell of glass in a flat white room.

He sleeps.

"Hello?"

David opens his eyes. The glass is gone now and a new face is looking down on him. He does not know her. David wants to respond, but it is as if a great weight is on him and he decides to only blink his eyes lest his head start to spin again.

"Well, glad you could join us, finally, "the new face says. "I'm Doctor Chen and I'll be looking in on you until you're feeling better."

David can only grunt in response and the woman becomes distracted with the machinery surrounding his shell. "You've been through a hell of an ordeal, young man," she says as she reads meters and adjusts dials.

Young man? The words resound through David's brain and, for the first time since he has awakened, he feels a sense of hope; that all his pain has been for good.

"Am I real?" He chokes the words out through a dry throat. But the woman does not seem to hear.

"You're lucky you're still with us," she says in a disinterested fashion as she scans readouts on a translucent slate. "There wasn't enough air left in that copter to last another hour." Whatever she sees in the readouts seems to satisfy her and she looks again at David. Her expression is perplexed. "You're a strange case, aren't you? One for the journals for sure." She is pensive, as if speaking to herself.

David opens his mouth to speak and she leans close. "What did you say," she inquires.

"Am I real now?" he asks again, gruffly.

The woman does not seem to understand this question at first. She studies David's face carefully, gazes long into his eyes. Then she rears back quickly, as if in the sudden presence of something dangerous, and stares at David with cautious, analytical eyes.

"You need to get solids into your system," she says finally, clinically, and then departs, casting a quick suspicious glare over her shoulder before she speaks to a man at the door. He nods his head and then departs too. But he returns quickly with a plate of something, and sits on the edge of David's shell. His face is gentler than the woman's and after a moment's scrutiny David suddenly remembers where he has seen it before.

"Joe!" he exclaims and then coughs from the burning in his throat.

"Easy now," the man says. "I'm no Joe, I'm an Angelo. A nurse by any other name, and I'm tasked with feeding a starving little boy." He smiles as he lifts the cover from the food. The smell is tantalizing and David's stomach rolls with new anticipation. Any questions of why Joe would be posing as a nurse are immediately set aside.

"Open up, let's get some food in you." Angelo says. David obeys eagerly and the Mecha ponders his choices before he lifts a spoonful of something from the plate. "Why don't we start with some spinach," he suggests.