Better Judgment:
The Dr. Wily Story

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 1

199X

I stepped out of the elevator and into the hallway. It was crowded here, packed with luggage like my own. I was not the only person moving into the dorm today. That was good, because it meant I wasn't late. I hated being late. Back at Cambridge, I had always been told how punctual I was, and I was determined not to let any expectations of my time here at the Monsteropolis Engineering University be in vain.

I caught glimpses of people I was certain I would get to know much better as the year pressed on, and I heard an almost musical cacophony of voices, in several languages. I spoke some of them, like the older Russian woman who was lecturing her unfortunate son. Apparently this would be his first time away from home, and she was certainly not going to let him enjoy the pleasures of America's largest city without feeling properly guilty about it first.

This was actually my first time in America as well. I was raised in Germany. Berlin, to be precise, under the auspicious heritage of Germany's somewhat sordid history. I was sent away to Cambridge by my father as his dying wish, and it had become my home until I received an invitation to tour the MEU's campus. I had missed the tour, but I was accepted into the university anyway, which was lucky, I guess.

I made my way down the hall and into my room, marked as 88. Inside, the half-unpacked belongings of my new roommate lay strewn about the bed he was obviously claiming as his. He looked up from the small refrigerator the campus had provided to us that he was putting small perishable items into and smiled.

“Ah! You must be my roommate!” he beamed, standing up to his full height. I was immediately struck by his eyes and the way they twinkled with energy and mirth, which was only reflected and amplified by his smile, which was infectious.

“Albert Wily,” I said, offering a hand.

“English?” he responded with an arched eyebrow and we shook. “That's a relief. I was worried I wasn't going to be able to talk to you.”

“I did my homework and brushed up on my major languages before I got here,” I grinned.

“Not quite able to shake the accent, though,” he smiled. “You were at Cambridge for a while, weren't you?” He grinned at my expression, which must have been one of mild surprise. “I may not speak seven languages, but I can recognize a hundred of them.”

“In fairness, I only speak about four, and I can fake two others,” I shrugged, putting my suitcases on the bed I figured would be mine, since it was the only one left in the room. “I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name...?”

“Oh! I'm sorry, that was terribly rude of me,” he exclaimed, his round face turning red. “Thomas Light. I'm from Seattle.”

“What are you studying?” I asked, only slightly interested. If I was going to be in the same room as the man for a year, I should at least be able to make conversation with him about things that aren't languages.

“I'm excited about Robotics Engineering, and I'm also taking quite a lot of Program Design to back it up. What about you?”

“I was studying Psychology and Political Science back at Cambridge, but they weren't very challenging to me. The Computer Engineering and Applied Physics courses here grabbed my interest, I have to admit.”

He brightened up, if that was even possible. “Interesting! Maybe we can compare notes over the semester and collaborate on a few papers. Should prove helpful.”

“Indeed,” I smiled. Thomas Light. Not a terrible fellow, all things considered.

As the moving frenzy of the day passed, a few people moved from room to room to introduce themselves. No one really left as much an impression on me as Thomas, but the Russian boy, Mikhail Cossack, seemed nonplussed by his mother's admonitions enough to see if we were interested in hitting the town. I politely explained that a 12 hour plane ride and jet lag precluded my joining them, but Tom (as he insisted I call him) was all for it. He returned that night quite late and apologetic for waking me with his noise, and aside from that I slept quite well that night.

Better, in fact, than I had in years.

20XX

I awoke with a start. The nightmares again. I wiped my now hairless brow of the almost unbelievable amount of sweat it had generated and sat up. This was beginning to upset me.

I got out of bed and stretched, listening to the cacophony of cracks and pops that accompanied my old, weary bones. It was entirely possible that I was getting to old for my active lifestyle, but I wasn't ready to admit that yet.

I clapped my hands twice and the room around me sprang to life. Warm light filled my bed alcove while the workshop beyond lit every surface in a flash of wireframe information. Tables littered with various projects popped virtual windows above them listing statuses, parts lists, and literally thousands of notes and asides from myself to... well, myself.

I grinned to myself the way I always did when my lab came to life. Eat your heart out, Tony Stark.

I stepped out of my sleeping alcove and into the workshop proper, and the room tracked my position, bringing numerous windows into the air in front of me with information and notices that had built up while I'd been asleep. I was still shaking sleep out of my head as I sorted through the numerous Robot Master updates, perimeter alarms and missed calls from various underworld contacts. Some of them I chucked aside, a virtual trashcan appearing to catch them as they careened into one corner of the room or another. Some of them I chuckled at or sighed heavily in response to. Others surprised me.

“Tom called? Seriously?” I found myself saying out loud. This was a strange development. We hadn't spoken a word to each other... willingly, at least, for several years. I wondered briefly if the fat fool was going to try and reform me again. Just because I'd left enough of the Roboezna cure behind when last I had escaped to remove my programming annoyance from the whole of Monsteropolis didn't mean he should trust me again. Lord knows I've done enough things to him and his little 'family' by this point that I wouldn't blame him if he was trying actively to murder me.

Hell, that would almost be preferable.

“Doesn't he ever learn?” I sighed. I set the message to play as I walked over to the table that currently held the scrap remains of my first Mega Man Killer series. Tom's voice began to stumble over a prepared speech about the virtues of his work and how he would move mountains to reinstate my credentials and get me back on the right side of the law. I had heard this speech three or four times, now, and quoted along specific sections of it and rolling my eyes at the more saccharine sentiments. I scrolled through a list of pre-generated order forms and information on replacement parts for Enker as Tom's voice prattled on.

“God, but that little blue bastard of yours doesn't leave much behind anymore,” I commented snidely to Tom's unknowing voice. “Quite the war robot you've built there.” Replacing that damn Spear Enker relied on so much was going to be the hardest part, not for the rarity of the materials, but mostly because the people I would need to go through to GET those materials were always a pain in the ass. I looked over the other occupied tables in the lab, seeing the remains of both Punk and Ballade, who I'd also lost to the stealing son of a bitch the world kept praising as a hero this last time around.

I swore. Loudly. I batted Tom's message away and his voice carried into the garbage bin on the other side of the room. I raised a hand and made a small gesture with my fingers that my computer read and opened a new window before me. I tapped the space of air a few times and loaded up my personal memo-pad.

“Note to self: Double check the firewalls on the Virus server. I can't have fractions of my work leaking out and causing havoc and attracting attention like that again, flu or no flu.”

The whole Roboenza mess had been just that: a mess. While Tom and I had been playing this game for years, I had not intended to show my hand this early. Fortunately, for all I knew, Tom thought the Roboenza epidemic was the worst of it, and he wouldn't catch on to my grander designs. I would have to double check and be sure he was unable to get in touch with Mikhail or Noele in the near future, as collaborating with either of them might let him in on the fact that the Roboenza had only been a small fraction of a much bigger and decidedly more... let's say violent, malware program designed for something a hell of a lot more sophisticated than robots.

Tom was a genius, but he was also an idiot. I still stood a very good chance of winning the arms race as long as I played my cards right. I smiled to myself. Leaving the Mega Man Killers to themselves, I took a brief walk through my rather cavernous underground bunker to my pet project. My penultimate Mega Man Killer, Forte, assumed it was some sort of girl because of the hair, but to me the hair was representative of a sort of evolution. Entirely symbolic in its way. Plus, hey, I'll admit, it looked pretty bad ass.

And never let it be said that I was one to sacrifice style for substance when I could easily have both. Hell, I've made quite the career out of it.

It was only now that I noticed what time it actually was. 3 in the morning. I had been asleep for almost two hours. I blinked a few times as the weight of my fatigue washed over me again. The older I got, the more tired I became. I wondered briefly if Tom was experiencing a similar crushing fatigue, or if the illusion of happiness and security he had literally built for himself helped him sleep better at night.

An alarm window popped into existence next to my hand, and I looked at it with only a passing level of concern. Of course. I wouldn't be getting anymore sleep tonight, because the army of competent, intelligent, dangerous Robot Masters I surrounded myself with was too busy acting like Larry, Moe and Curly to leave room for anything so mundane as a moment to rest.

I tossed the window aside and stormed out of my lab and into the bunker proper to shout at Stone Man and Hard Man... AGAIN... and as the wire frames and windows blinked out of life behind me, I found myself wanting a simpler life, just like I always did at 3 in the goddamn morning. The amount of time in my life lost to these ridiculous distractions... it honestly made me wonder why I never kept these weapons of mass destruction in stasis or something until I needed them.

Then again, I usually had a lot of time on my hands, and while I would never admit it in front of them, the antics of my various Robot Masters usually amused me. Time spent in their presence was never a complete waste, I suppose...