[continued from previous message]

Her robot used bigger batteries for the motors, but the control computer just needed two triple-As. She could swap those out quickly.
With fresh batteries in place, Cammy switched the robot's computer on. Ever since her robot fell, switching the computer on had no effect. No
matter how hard she looked at the boards, she never saw what kept her robot from coming to life.
This time it came on. The LED screen showed the word "LOADING" with a flashing cursor. It was something she didn't think she would ever see again. She wanted a closer look...when Cameron wasn't around...but from what she
could tell...
"He fixed her," Cammy whispered.


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Editor's Notes:

Andrew initially wrote about two thirds of this without expectation that it would fit into ASH at all, but after reading it I could see how it'd work
in the framework of Coherent Super-Stories and its "one step removed from reality" meta-approach to writing about a world in which ASH stories were published as comics (among other media).
I was inspired by how DC's "Future State" books were salvaged from an abandoned "new generation of heroes" plan, although in the case of Future
State they already had completed art before deciding to backpedal about five thousand miles away from the plan. So, I reasoned, maybe a similar change in plans happened at the fictional Coherent Comics, albeit with only some
pitches and maybe a few scripts ending up unused? As another DC nod, I took Andrew's actually-called-Benefactor character and changed that to be a placeholder name, with a hero to be determined later being thrown under the
bus by the event (Armageddon 2001, Millennium, etc.) as the hero referred to throughout the above story as Benefactor. (I'm inclined to think Solar Max I would've been picked, as a powerful second-stringer with a lot of connections and a natural way to reach out to alien invaders.)
Anyway, because of the meta conceit, I tried to keep a light editorial touch, mostly just making sure that the format was Usenet-compatible. At
over ten thousand words, it's probably the longest single post done for ASH, but it's been a long time since we really needed to keep posts below a
certain size to avoid choking servers. :)


Author's Notes:

Nightcore YouTube playlists are a hell of a drug. The song “Daddy’s Eyes” by Zoey Wees got in my head last week, and got me thinking about what a reunion between Fleet (from LL&DD #9) and Cameron would be like. Then that morphed into an unspecified daughter being separated. Suffice to say it went through variations until we ended up here.

Fun fact, the only other story I ever wrote to break five figures is
about another McKay trapped in a cave.

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For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art,
and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH !

http://ash.wikidot.com/ is the official ASH Wiki, focusing on the Fourth Heroic Age, but containing some information about other Ages.

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