Room 307, Monday Evening

[dollpocalypse]

So Topher's room was what one might call 'aggressively unclean' at this point, and the extremely hyper and curious robot puppy running around was probably not helping matters. However, Topher had a very good cleaning strategy to prepare for coding funtimes with Victor: kicking the majority of his stuff under his desk, into the closet, or over towards the other side of the room. It was such a great strategy, he couldn't believe no one had ever thought of it before!

Once that was taken care of, he removed his drawer of inappropriate starches from his closet and placed it beside his desk for optimal snacking, set Broca II the robot puppy on his bed to "nap," and then settled at his desk and began looking up ELIZA applications to play with. Whee, coding!

[[open, expecting one!]]

Comments

[ultron_junior]

Victor wandered in a little later, prepared something intelligent to say and ... pretty much immediately got distracted by Broca II.

"Dude, is that a robot dog?" he asked, tentatively reaching to touch it.

[dollpocalypse]

Oooh, compliments on his work. Possibly the only thing Topher preferred to coding funtimes!

"It is!" he confirmed brightly. "His name's Broca II. I made him... yesterday? Yes. Yesterday. He's sort of awesome."

Broca II, for his part, was waking up from his nap and happily greeting Victor by trying to climb into his hand, so, yes. He was awesome.

[ultron_junior]

"He's trying to sit on my lap," Victor noted, a strange note of delight in his tone. On the one hand: impressive. On the other: uncanny. "Okay, wow, this is a way cooler project than anything we can do with ELIZA."

[dollpocalypse]

With that, a thought struck Topher. A thought that was so earth-shattering, it was kind of awe-inspiring in its brilliance.

Or maybe just a normal thought that was most likely going to be rejected. Probably that one.

"Ohhh, dude, do you want one?" he asked. "I mean, I'm telling you right now, there has never been anything more awesome than an android with a robot puppy sidekick. Supervillains would, like, line up around the block to get their asses kicked by you."

This was unlikely.

[ultron_junior]

"..."

Give Victor a second. Sometimes there just weren't words.

"I think I'm fine without one?" he said. "I mean, he's awesome, but I'm not sure I'd want to drag a dog into fights, you know? Kind of not fair to the dog."

[dollpocalypse]

"But don't you guys have a--" Okay, no, even he had to acknowledge that that was a flawed argument. "I guess dinosaurs and dogs, not really the same thing."

[ultron_junior]

"Plus it's not like the dinosaur was my idea," Victor added, a bit defensively. "Kind of came as a package deal with this one girl, way before I joined the team."

[dollpocalypse]

"Also a valid point," Topher conceded. Sigh. It seemed poor Broca II would have to be friendless for a bit longer.

"Does that mean you wouldn't have okayed it if you'd been around?" What, he was curious.

[ultron_junior]

Victor took a moment with that question. "If I were time traveling and looking for animals to genetically engineer into protecting my kid, I probably wouldn't have picked a dinosaur?" he tried. "But it's not like you could take Old Lace away from Gert, so."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher seemed to accept that answer. "Well, if you were time-traveling and looking for animals to genetically-engineer into protecting your kid, obviously the only choice would be a shark," he decided. "Or a penguin, maybe. If you gave it fangs."

[ultron_junior]

"Not a shark, it has to be in water," Victor pointed out. "A penguin with fangs would be pretty cool. You could, like, engineer one to be okay with the heat."

Because that's what would totally strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. An attack penguin.

"Maybe a goat."

[dollpocalypse]

"You could engineer a shark to have feet or something?" That was probably stretching it, Topher. "And just be okay with living anywhere near an ocean with decent enough moisture in the air. So... here or LA." How convenient for him! "But you're right, if it's you, then it would definitely have to be a goat."

Cabrón had made an impression, it seemed.

[ultron_junior]

"Name it chupacabra and feed it on the blood of my enemies," Victor said, and shook his head. "Sorry. Weird mood tonight."

[dollpocalypse]

Topher held up a hand at that. "Weird thing to plan for your birthday present?" he checked.

Jokingly. That should be very clear.

[ultron_junior]

"Little bit," Victor said, also joking. "But if you could get an attack goat together in five months, I'd be impressed."

[dollpocalypse]

"...I did make Tony a coffee robot for Christmas last year in, like, a month..."

The main lesson here was that Topher needed to expand his universe of potential gift-giving options.

[ultron_junior]

"What exactly does a coffee robot do?" Victor asked, lazily playing with Broca.

[dollpocalypse]

Broca was a very big fan of this arrangement, if all the happy panting and attempting to climb up Victor's chest were anything to go by. Topher might have overshot just slightly when he decided to make him perky and hyper.

"Serves coffee, mostly," Topher said. "Also breakfast. Which was a thing because otherwise Tony eats, like, twice a week. And I think it had a sprinker system?"

He shrugged.

"An attack goat would take way more time."