Learning to Dance

he saw her again. She looked up at the observation room
above. A number of doctors and scientists had gathered, no
doubt out of some twisted curiosity to see if the Admiral’s
experiment had succeeded. Was she the only one who cared
about the person they had come to save?
“Begin the ascension process, Junior!” Dr. Space-Claw
proclaimed with a kind of sick delight.
A rather red-eyed young assistant flicked a few switches
and pulled a lever. Machines, whirring, beeping, all
unintelligible to Taz. Her eyes stayed locked on the figure
in the tank.
The top of the tank slid open, and two large robotic arms
reached in to unhook the wires and tubing and carefully lift
the figure out of the goopy mess, laying him shining and
naked on the operating table. Taz drew back as Dr. Space-
Claw’s assistant ran forward to clean him up and drape a
blanket across him from the waist down. She looked up at
her doctor, who Space-Claw had called Dr. Tripp, and the
woman nodded, a heartbroken look on her face. She seemed
to understand the silent request, and helped Taz to stand
unsteadily from the chair as the room buzzed around them.
“You’re Rosie, aren’t you?” Taz asked quietly. “Tripp’s
wife.”
A single tear escaped her doctor’s eye, and she put her
hand on her belly. “I don’t know what my husband would
have wanted either,” she said. “But if there had been a
chance for me to see him again – for him to hold our son
once more, see our daughter born-” Her face hardened. “I’d
have taken it – even from Space-Claw. Robot or not.”
Taz understood perfectly.
She stepped shakily up to the table and looked at the
man she loved.
She didn’t know what she had been expecting, some sort
of monstrous half-Up, half-robot gargoyle, but it was just -