♛Awaken, O Princess ♚
By Excelsa
By Excelsa
Once upon a time, there was a boy named René. He was a prince. He had not been born a prince, but his parents, diplomats, had died of food poisoning at the court of the robot king. Since the robot king obviously could not have children of his own, he adopted the lad. All of this happened before René was two years old, so he was still tiny and cute, rather than a moody, hulking teenager. That had likely made the adoption a bit easier to contemplate.
René had been brought up as best befit a parenting experiment prince. He wanted for nothing, he was taught as well as the best tutors of three species (as well as his own robot subjects) could teach him, and he was looked up to and admired by all.
He had been raised from preschool with the knowledge that he would eventually marry one Princess Antoinette. Antoinette was heiress to a neighboring kingdom, and her mother had chosen René, of all princes, to be her betrothed. René had been eight before he’d thought to try to get to know the princess, and he had written her a letter. She’d sent one back, and they had begun a long, mutually-cherished relationship as pen pals. They had a lot in common: favorite pastimes (reading), favorite type of magic (technomancy), a proclivity for painting, favorite color (silver)… the list wasn’t endless, but it was long. She was a year his junior, but he found her to be well-versed in fields of knowledge many weren’t, like sewing (who sewed anymore?) and physics (his bane). They met in person several times, and she bloomed into a lovely teenager, while he was gawky and bespectacled and increasingly tongue-tied in her presence.
All this, however, happened against a backdrop of conquest. Antoinette’s mother, Empress (formerly Queen) Rose, was ruthlessly pursuing a fairy in an attempt to get her to revoke a mysterious curse placed upon Antoinette at her christening, annexing all nation-states that got in her way. Eventually, there was nowhere left, save the robot kingdom, and even René’s father allowed Rose to nominally annex it in order to search it relentlessly for the fairy. When René was fifteen, he found out what the curse entailed: Antoinette would prick her finger and fall into permanent slumber, and all her subjects would fall asleep until they died. Since most of the world was conquered by now, and the curse would have horrific repercussions for pretty much everything he stood for, Prince René joined the search, to no avail, until he was about seventeen, when he found the fairy, entirely by accident, while at an inn on the other side of the world…
“I know you,” he said, and regretted it instantly.
“Oh?” she replied. “Then who am I? I certainly don’t know you.”
“I am His Royal Highness Prince René Auguste-Pierre Francois Joaquin Torvaldson of Cyberia!” he shouted. “And you are the fairy Belladonna, who has laid a curse upon my betrothed and beloved Antoinette! Raise her curse, of we shall all perish!”
“Cyberia,” the fairy muttered. “Isn’t that the robot kingdom?”
“It is indeed!” he confirmed, only now remembering his stunner and belatedly whipping it out.
“Whereas you’re human,” the fairy observed. “Which may explain the name. Linux knew where he wanted to start and forgot to finish writing. Completely in-character for him, I must say.”
“How dare you insult my father!” he shouted.
“Quiet, squirt. This is my room. For now. And I can call your father whatever I bloody well please.”
René reddened. He could’ve sworn it was his room, but he could also hear his companions’ raucous, half-drunk and thus very loud ‘planning’ in the next suite over.
“You say she’s your beloved?” Belladonna mused, looking him over. “So you’re their backup plan. I have no idea why they sent you to me. Rose and Linux must be stupider than I thought they were.” Before he got up the volume to defend his father again, she shrugged. “Eh. Makes the threat that much more potent.” And she’d pointed a finger at him and pain had wracked his body.
“You’re worth more to Rose alive than dead, and I intend to thwart her again,” he heard, through the agony. “Sorry about this, Your Royal Mouthful, but you’re about to go where no one in your family has gone before.”
♛-----------------------------------------♚
You can see why, when he woke up, he was hugely surprised about it. He was in his father’s palace, in the infirmary. So he didn’t need to ask, “Where am I?” Instead, he swore for a bit, and then for a longer bit when he heard his own swearing. It didn’t sound like his voice. He covered his eyes with a bandaged hand and asked, “What the Trojan just happened to me?”
“It didn’t ‘just happen,’ René,” someone said gently. He lowered his hand, turned his head, and saw his old nanny, a big robot called Phi. “You’ve been out of commission for three months.”
“What? But – the fairy – ” It all came back to him. “Belladonna! I saw her! She was the one who hurt me! Did you catch her?”
Phi shook her head. “Yes and no. Yes, we caught her, but she’s asleep now. Like every human, fairy, elf, and whatever else is sapient on this Earth. Antoinette’s curse was triggered.”
“Oh, no,” René moaned, closing his eyes. Then they flashed open. “I take it Father revoked the temporary annexation, then?”
Phi looked grave. “Negative, Your Highness.”
“Then how am I…” René gestured to himself, and then caught a glimpse of his arm. He stared. What he’d thought to be bandages was actually shiny white plastic. “Oh, my. Oh, my – oh – spam! What happened to me?!”
Phi’s comparatively expressive face winced. “My prince, I had hoped not to be the one to tell you this, but you… died.”
“I what?!?!”
“Well, Your Highness, your body did. You suffered too much damage. We couldn’t save you, so we transferred your consciousness to a robot body. I’m sorry.” She would have looked miserable even to an inexperienced eye.
René tore off his sheet, staring at a sleek, attractive android body that was about his body’s size and shape, covered in neutral white plastic. “How did this happen?” he cried. “I should’ve died – I was on the other side of the world! Not that I’m not grateful,” he hurriedly added.
Phi looked away. “Belladonna wanted Your Highness to die in front of your father and Their Royal Highnesses Rose and Antoinette. The curse was delayed. We managed to prevent your death through quick thinking and risky technology. It has placed great stress on your father. He would have been here, but he is overseeing the rescue attempts of the sleepers. He would love to see you up and about. Do you think you could go to him now?”
René hesitated for a second. But he reached out to his legs, and they responded as if they’d been his organic ones. So he stood up and followed Phi, wondering how come he didn’t need any physical therapy.
In the throne room, His Highness King Linux of Cyberia embraced his son. “René! I’m so glad you’re up and about.” He held the prince at arm’s length and looked him up and down. “I’m so sorry about your loss. How are you adapting?”
Rene winced, effectively, for he’d found he had a very flexible face. “Physically, the transition has gone smoothly. Emotionally and mentally, I’m a bit amazed that I’m not faring worse. Finally, I’m like you, Father…” He looked at his feet.
Linux nodded slowly. “It will be difficult. All that matters is that you’re alive and awake. Few other humans can say the same. And you will be able to break the curse! We are so very fortunate.”
“Yes, we are. Kind of.” René looked at his hands, turning them over to see both sides. Belatedly he realized what his father had said. “I can break the curse? How?”
“True love,” Linux explained. “When Antoinette’s true love kisses her, she’ll awaken, and with her, her kingdom.”
“Oh. My,” René stated. He fell into a seated position. “Father, I don’t think I’m her true love right now. I don’t feel like myself, and I don’t know how long it’ll take for the shock to wear off. Until then, I should probably try to figure out how to adapt my old mannerisms, habits, and needs…”
“Of course! Brilliant thinking,” Linux praised. “You can’t eat, and you don’t need to sleep, but you could wear clothes. And we’ve already resized your crown.”
That was a… strange priority… René stopped himself when he remembered exactly how long he’d been unconscious. Linux must have seen his confusion, so he clarified. “It is good for you to maintain as much touch with your human side as possible. Only a human prince can break Antoinette’s spell.”
René frowned with his highly humanlike mouth. “But I am no longer human, Father.”
Linux smiled. “Ah, but you still think like one. You can still break the curse, René, and you’re the only one who possibly can do so. I want you to save the world. Perhaps then our neighbors would stop disrespecting us.”
“I’m still human? Even like this?” the prince whimpered. “This has been a long day, Father. I should like it if I could sleep on everything for a while.”
“You’ll need to learn a lot of things about robots. But you need to stay human just a bit longer,” Linux pleaded. “Just do your best, and try to break this curse. Just once. Then I teach you what you need to know as a robot.”
René would’ve raised an eyebrow, but his face didn’t currently have them. “As opposed to… what, exactly? Won’t I learn the hard way?”
Linux nodded. “Yes, but I seek to give it to you, pure and undiluted. Easy. And I want the world to awaken, and I believe you are our last hope.”
René stopped arguing, but inside he was still disturbed. His father was supposed to guide him and teach him, no matter what. And now he was acting as if his continued love were contingent upon waking Antoinette and the world. René was going to do that anyway, but he was a little disturbed by his father’s behavior’s implications. “Yes, Father. I will do as you seek. But I really think I need some time to sleep on this.”
“That’s what I was talking about, René: Robots don’t need to sleep.”
“I should like some time to myself to think over everything, then. I have learned several shocking things today, and I merely desire some time to absorb them properly.”
Linux nodded sagely. “Of course. You are dismissed.”
René left the room alone, mind racing. He was a robot. The curse had taken effect. His father was treating him as a cursebreaker first and his son second.
Strangely, it was that last that was bothering him the most.
♛-----------------------------------------♚
René lay on his bed, covered up. His room was dark, and the wing was quiet, but he couldn’t sleep, and not just because he was a robot.
My father is treating me as if breaking the curse is more important than anything else. No ‘I was so worried.’ No ‘I’ll have someone look in the archives to see if your case is unique.’ Just cursebreaking, he thought, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. His hand froze, feeling his face. His face was made of rubber. It didn’t resemble his human face, but it did have lips. Very flexible lips. One might even dub them kissing lips.
At least some parts of his robot body were designed with breaking the curse in mind. He grabbed that thought and teased it out, seeing where it would lead.
He had no idea when his face’s design was okayed, whether it be before or after the curse took effect. But it had nevertheless been added; his designer had apparently intended for him to continue his betrothal to Antoinette. René was no longer sure what he felt towards Antoinette. He was incapable of physical intimacy, so marrying was likely out. She was still a spunky, determined person, and he was glad to know her, but he doubted that he could really qualify as her ‘true love’ any longer. But he’d still try, especially since he was the only one capable of doing this. There weren’t any other conscious guys around, let alone princes. And only a few of his robot subjects were capable of truly comprehending romantic love. Nope, it had to be him.
Not for the first time, he cursed his future mother-in-law’s persistence and ambition. She conquered the world in an effort to find Belladonna and force her to give in, but apparently the fairy was as stubborn as the queen. Hence their situation. Cyberia was the only nation that had been taken nominally, and that hadn’t been revoked in time to save them.
Wait a minute. If he, Antoinette’s true love, were really Queen Rose’s failsafe, then why had she annexed Cyberia? It had searched already. The borders were monitored. The fairy would be hard-pressed to get in. And still his father had agreed to something that would ensure his human son would be put to sleep, just like the rest of them.
René found this hard to believe. His father was smarter than that. In a way, his being turned into a robot was a boon. Rose couldn’t have planned it better if she tried. He toyed, briefly, with the idea that Rose and Belladonna (and maybe his father) had conspired this, but rejected it as too paranoid. Belladonna wouldn’t offer the means of breaking her greatest spell. Or would she? She might’ve known she was trapped, and wanted a way out. Why had René, the key to all this, been allowed to join a search party to look for a dangerous fairy? Did Antoinette have another true love, one he didn’t know about?
He put a pillow over his head and triggered dormancy, trying to get the questions to stop.
♛-----------------------------------------♚
Even though he was perfectly capable of walking the distance without tiring, René opted to ride a motorbike to Antoinette’s palace. Even though he didn’t need it, he put on his best clothes, which, fortunately, fit perfectly: if he were going to break a curse, he wished to do it in style. He declined his old partners – all partners, really – taking only with him, at his father’s insistence, Bit, a search-and-rescue bot who was basically a hovering searchlight. But if he remembered correctly, Bit had a bit of a mouth (no pun intended), so he raised a question once they were what he judged to be a goodly distance away from the palace: Why did King Linux allow Cyberia to be annexed, even nominally, if by doing so they ran the risk of sending their only cursebreaker into permanent slumber? Bit, uncharacteristically, kept his mouth shut. René looked around at the view. There were no humans to be seen, not anywhere. Fields were becoming overgrown by weeds. Wild animals were roaming out, enjoying the lack of humans. A harassed-looking robot was yelling and screaming at a bear for it to get away from a beehive, which looked like a regular interaction for the two. The prince asked another question: Why wasn’t René himself safeguarded a bit more on his last, disastrous quest? No answer. The blue sky was strangely empty, and the cities were quite quiet, which gave him the creeps. Something very wrong had happened here. At least all the humans were safe. He asked Bit if this were the robots’ doing, and Bit happily confirmed it. Emboldened by his success, René asked another question: Why didn’t he need any sort of physical therapy for his robot body, and by the way, ‘robots are perfect already’ doesn’t count as an acceptable answer? More nothing. Eventually the prince clammed up as much as his companion, and that silence was only broken when Bit chimed, “We’re here.”
René gazed. It was a pretty palace, or at least it would be once those thorns had been cleared from it. They’d be there in about five minutes. So he plucked Bit from where he’d been hovering and hissed, “Things keep not adding up. Who’s crazy? My father? Me? Antoinette?”
Bit refused to answer, and so René carried him to the palace, through thornbushes that would have torn a human apart, through a pack sleeping courtiers who looked as if they had never seen anything live up to their expectations, and up a stupidly-large number of stairs. He stopped at the feet of Princess Antoinette, whose sleeping form had been moved to her bed, and forgot to be mad at Bit.
She was still lovely, although the flutterings in his heart had cooled somewhat without hormones to excite them. She wore a silver gown, a party hat, and a life-support tube attached to her arm; her dainty little glasses were still on her nose, albeit crookedly. She snored softly.
René, still staring, plucked Bit out of the air, preventing his escape, and asked, once more, “What’s going on, Bit?”
Bit looked contrite. “I’m afraid I have nothing to tell you.”
“If I were to pierce her in just the right spot with a spinning needle,” René heard himself saying, still staring at his best friend and betrothed, “she’ll die, and the curse would be permanent.”
Bit went nuts.
After a few minutes, René let him go, watching the little bot hovering up by the ceiling. “Well? Will you answer my questions now?”
Bit blatted out a raspberry. “What do you want to know, Your Highness?”
“Who’s crazy?”
“You are, Your Highness, although that’s not your fault.”
Well, at least that half-answer was a relief.
“Why am I crazy?”
“Your Highness suffers from delusions.”
In all the scenarios he’d played out in his head, this was not one of them. “What. What?! What am I deluded about?”
Bit was quiet for a little while. He was probably checking with others on the net about what to say. When he spoke again, it was with quiet resignation. “Your Highness was never really a human. Your memories up to yesterday were fabricated.”
René’s eye twitched. “You mean my father isn’t my father?”
Bit bobbed in the air, conveying a shrug. “I’m afraid not, Your Highness. You’re a new robot, activated for the first time just yesterday. You’re really a prince, though, to us; we put everything of that sort that we could into you. You had to be a prince to break the curse.”
“Is my father – is King Linux really a king, then?” René asked, fascinated.
“No, Your Highness.” Bit dipped closer to him. “We – the robots – are a lot more democratic by nature than are humans. Linux was chosen to play the king because he was well-respected and we thought he was a better actor than most of us.”
A horrible thought occurred to René. “Do I really know Antoinette, then?”
Bit bobbed up and down in rapid succession, ‘nodding.’ “Yes and no, Your Highness. Antoinette doesn’t know you; you weren’t activated while she was awake. But her letters are taken as much from life as we could research. She is, at least as far as our archivists could tell, exactly like the girl you fell in love with.”
René’s heart sunk. “So I’m really not her true love,” he whispered.
Bit nodded again. “We hoped that if you thought you were her true love, you could wake her up, Your Highness. We hoped that if we made you our prince, you’d fulfill all the criteria, getting around the awkward gender issues.”
René bit back a bitter laugh. “Well, that explains the lips.”
Bit nodded, saying nothing.
The prince pursed his lips, testing them out. After a minute of this he shook his head in disgust and snapped. “You can connect to the net,” he stated, eyes flashing. “I should like to ask all you robots why you did this to me.”
Bit’s light flipped on, and a holographic image of Linux joined them. The false monarch shook his head. “We wanted what was best for the world, my son – ”
“Don’t call me that.”
“We wanted what was best for the world, and to do that we needed to wake everyone up. Without that, everyone is going to die once the food supply runs out. We’re trying our best with agriculture, but it can’t last forever, not with most of us trying to keep the organics’ life support going. If we haven’t found someone, they’re dead by now. We don’t want any more dead bodies, René. We want to save everyone, and you were what we decided to do.” He looked down at his feet, ashamed, and mumbled, “If it makes any difference, the robots who designed you put a lot of themselves into you. I consider you my son. I guess I just have no experience being a father.
“I’m sorry.” And with that he shut up.
René looked from one robot to the other. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to forgive them for a long time, if at all, but that was no reason to doom the world. So he leaned over the girl he thought he’d been in love with. He looked up at the other robots. “I can’t feel physical love, and you just kind of turned everything I thought I knew about this girl on my head.”
Suddenly Bit and Linux looked nervous.
“Nevertheless, if she’s anything like what you stocked my memory of her with, she’ll be a good friend. Maybe – just maybe – I could love her.” He sighed. “I sure hope she’ll love me back. Cross your fingers, and pray this works.”
And with that, he stooped down and locked his lips on hers.
♛-----------------------------------------♚
Copyright Excelsa 2013. All rights reserved.
♛-----------------------------------------♚
Copyright Excelsa 2013. All rights reserved.
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