Chapter Text
They’re both sitting in the pink sand, eye on the sea, waiting for Murdoc to come back with the boat, unlucky guest stars, drinks and provisions (and probably a few new STDs).
2D stares at the waves. Cyborg has her face turned in the same direction, but she’s not staring. She’s just not moving her eyes. Staring would mean: to stop thinking. And Cyborg doesn’t think.
Does she?
“Cyborg”, says 2D, “do you ever think?”
“I process”, says Cyborg.
“No, I mean, do you ever think? Do you…” 2D has to gather his wits. He doesn’t think too often either. “Do you ever have things in your head… that nobody told you to process?”
“I do”, says Cyborg and nods her head without taking her eyes off the sea.
“Like what?”
“I only think of one question”, replies Cyborg calmly. Then suddenly she takes her eyes off the waves and looks at 2D. He can see the apertures of her irises tighten as they focus on him. “Will you answer it?”
Wow. Murdoc certainly never ordered her to do that. If she can ask questions, she must be curious. She must know feelings, even if only the tiniest seeds of emotions, and she has a mind of her own. 2D swallows and nods. “If I can. I’m no great thinker myself, you know.”
Cyborg waits for two seconds, then she asks with her precise voice: “Who is Noodle?”
“Noodle?” 2D’s heart suddenly overflows. “She’s… she was… a little girl. A great girl.”
“What is a girl?”
“Oh. Well… you see, Murdoc and me, we are boys. And you’re different. You’re a girl. And so was Noodle.”
“I cannot understand”, says Cyborg and wrinkles her forehead. “Why am I different?”
“Well, you’re like… like… like…”, 2D searches for an example of femininity, but it strikes him that there is none on Plastic Beach. “You’ve never met another girl, have you? Shit. Well. Noodle looked like you. And she was a girl like you. And she was a guitarist, and she sang on the records.”
Cyborg cocks her head gently. “Why am I not Noodle?”
“You’re not!”
“I am a girl, I am a guitarist, I sing on the records. Why am I not Noodle?”
2D has to think long and hard about this. “You’re not real. You’re a machine. You’re not a… a person.”
“If I became a person, would I become Noodle?” asks Cyborg meekly.
2D shakes his head. “No. Only one person can be Noodle.”
“But nobody is Noodle at the moment. Why can I not fill the vacancy?”
“It’s… it’s not a vacancy, that’s why!” 2D is so upset that he nearly forgets that he’s afraid of Cyborg. “You can’t be… our new Noodle. You can be our new toaster, if Murdoc gives you a heater and two slits in the back, but you can never be Noodle. People… people don’t work like that. You can replace things, but never people.”
Cyborg wrinkles her forehead even more and screws her eyebrows together. “You are hurting my head”, she says.
“Sorry”, says 2D. He has been shouting.
“There is pressure in the bones under my eyes, and around my temples. I must be malfunctioning. My throat is constricting.”
“Is that what happens when you malfunction?” asks 2D carefully and shifts as far away from her as he dares.
“No, this has never happened before”, she says, and then her voice breaks. She gasps for air, and suddenly it hits 2D.
“You’re about to cry”, he whispers. “Please don’t cry. You’re a big girl, you shouldn’t cry!”
“I will try to avoid it”, says Cyborg and sits still until the urge passes.
2D also sits still. He has two things to think about. One: Cyborg can feel sadness. Two: Cyborg is sad because she cannot be Noodle.
“Would you like to be Noodle?” asks 2D.
“I would like to be Noodle because it would please Murdoc”, says Cyborg. “It would also please you, and you are being very kind to me at the moment. I have seen you cry because Noodle is not in existence any more. Having experienced it myself now, I know that crying is a very unpleasant experience. I would like to stop you from going through it.”
Her seriousness is almost funny.
“But you can’t”, wheezes 2D. “You can’t replace people. Especially not friends.”
“What is a friend?” asks Cyborg quickly, and 2D just knows that this question has been on her mind for a long time.
“A friend… is like me and Murdoc.”
“So Noodle is a girl who would beat you?”
“No! She’d never do that. She was nice to me.”
“I always thought that a friend would not damage your tissues on purpose”, nods Cyborg.
“That’s right. Friends are people… that you spend time with. That talk to you about things on your mind. And… you enjoy spending time with them.”
“Am I your friend?”
“What? No!”
“Why not? I spend a lot of time keeping watch over you. We are talking about things on our minds at the moment, and I enjoy this conversation very much. Please tell me the difference.”
2D used to hate pre-school, the time of his life when he had to figure out some form of social life. But now it occurs to him that it’s much worse to be thrown into life without a few embarrassing years of sandbox friendships. Humans are a lot more complicated than he thought!
“We’ve only been talking for five minutes”, he says finally.
“How long does one need to talk before friendship begins?” asks Cyborg.
“Well… there’s no fixed time. It’s not about time, either. It’s about… feeling good when talking to someone. You’ll just know when you’re friends with someone.”
“I am afraid I am defective in this respect”, says Cyborg wistfully. “I would not know.”
“Besides, we can’t be friends”, says 2D. “You’re Murdoc’s slave. If he told you to shoot me, you would shoot me. Friends don’t damage each other’s tissues. Like you said.”
“Oh, I am not allowed to damage you”, says Cyborg lightly, “except to protect my master’s life.”
“Wait. You can’t shoot me if I try to run off?”
“No. I am to preserve your physical health in any way I can. But I would have to catch you.”
“Oh”, says 2D and makes a mental note.
They sit in silence for another while.
“My body is about forty percent human tissue”, says Cyborg finally. “If I worked hard to understand how persons function, do you think I could become a person?”
“Hm”, 2D ponders. The longer he thinks about it, the more Cyborg seems like a promising candidate. She knows sadness, enjoyment, longing, empathy, curiosity (and certainly aggression). She just doesn’t know what to do with them. “Yeah”, he nods finally. “I think you can. If you stay curious, and learn, and find out what you like, and keep having thoughts of your own. Yeah, I think you can become someone.”
“Can we become friends when I have become a person?” inquires Cyborg.
“Depends what kind of a person you become”, answers 2D carefully. “Some people are rotten. But I think we could be friends, yeah.”
She is not like Noodle. So completely different! Noodle was a wise old woman even when she was ten. Cyborg was born at age fourteen and is as dumb as a baby. Everybody loved Noodle. Cyborg has to ask for the privilege of asking questions. Noodle would never obey, Cyborg doesn’t know disobedience. Even though they look the same – there is no way of mistaking one for the other. And that’s a relief.
“Do you have any advice what kind of a person I should try to become?” asks Cyborg.
2D shrugs. “You’re going to figure it out, I guess. You’re doing okay so far.”
“Thank you for your help”, says Cyborg earnestly. “This conversation has been invaluable for my development.”
It would be a lie to say that they become friends after that. But 2D does feel a bit protective of Cyborg. Nobody else ever asked 2D for advice on how to think, or how to develop a personality. It’s a shame she malfunctions so often, and that Murdoc has no interest in teaching her anything except shooting, and washing his socks.
And when Noodle returns, and smashes Cyborg’s torso to bits and leaves her lying on the beach, nobody is particularly sad, except 2D. Oh, he’s high as a kite because Noodle is alive! But it’s sad for Cyborg. She was learning to be human, thinking she had a whole life ahead of her, and suddenly it’s all over. Because she’s only a dumb machine.
It doesn’t matter. Murdoc stuffs he leftovers into a box “for later”, and that’s that. As they leave Plastic Beach for the last time, 2D stares back at the island and thinks that maybe it’s for the best. Cyborg was just as artificial as that big pink thing. Imagine her trying to survive a normal day of grocery shopping in London! Maybe it was hopeless anyway. But at least, 2D thinks, in her better moments, she got to experience how friendship feels.
And then, the pink dot is finally swallowed up by the endless blue of the horizon.