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“Absolutely not!”
Feet planted, arms out, Cass tries her best to block off the stairs. She’s not totally successful—Mochi slips right past her—but for the purpose of keeping her nephews safe, it’s enough.
“Oh, come on!” Hiro groans, rolling his eyes the way only a teenager can: like you’re the single most exhausting thing on the planet. “It’ll be fine.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Cass retorts, raising an eyebrow and earning a sheepish grin in return. She wonders which disaster he’s remembering—the ‘anti-burglary’ device that fired bath bombs, or the so-called ‘cat translator? “Not happening.”
“It’s perfectly safe,” Tadashi assures her, and for the first time since SFIT began keeping him too busy for these Doc Brown shenanigans, Cass remembers that he’s just as bad as Hiro.
It—today’s contraption—isn’t the most jerry-rigged-looking thing she’s ever seen; that honor goes to the ‘adjustable bunk bed’ they’d cobbled together in grade school. But it also doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. The Climber, they call it. Cass thinks A Broken Neck Waiting to Happen is more appropriate. “Look,” Hiro tells her, crouching beside the thing where they’ve already attached it to the back of Tadashi’s wheelchair. “The treads and support wheels move independently, letting you angle up or down at the press of a button. And when you’re done, it all slides right back up into the body here!”
“I don’t care if it folds the laundry and does our taxes, you’re not riding it up the stairs!”
“I’m not,” Hiro agrees. “He is.”
“Hiro. ”
“What he’s trying to say,” Tadashi cuts in. “Is that it would be a lot easier for everyone if I could get up and down the stairs by myself again. I mean, Baymax has been a huge help,” he nods to the robot, who blinks at him. “But he can’t be around 24/7.”
“Plus he’s slow as shit,” Hiro chimes in.
“Language,” Cass scolds. Even as she does, though, she considers Tadashi’s point. His chair is impressive—light and low-backed and not at all like the ones she sees on TV; he and his friends have already painted it a sleek cinnamon red—but it can’t do everything; since coming home from the hospital, he’s had to ride Baymax to get past stairs, something she’s sure got old fast. But a homemade stair-climbing…thing?! “Ahh…” she groans, massaging her temples. “Can’t we just get a stair lift?”
The glint in Hiro’s eyes tells her he’d prepared for this. “Those can’t bring the chair,” he informs her quickly. “So someone else would still have to be there to carry it.”
“And besides, it’s not exactly in our budget,” Tadashi adds. That’s certainly true—even with help from their insurance, just affording the wheelchair had been a challenge. Cass is still suspicious about the ‘sweepstakes’ that had changed that—the one they couldn’t recall entering, and that had paid out the day after they’d finally convinced Fred they couldn’t just take his money—but she won’t deny it made things a lot easier.
“And a stair lift won’t help him when he’s outside,” Hiro continues. “What do you want him to do when he has to go to the old library, huh? Float the books out with his mind powers? The government will experiment on him.”
Baymax raises a finger. “Most experts agree that the human brain is: incapable of relocating objects without the aid of the rest of the body.”
“Yeah, you’re right, he’s not that interesting.”
“Hey!”
Cass tries to hide her smile behind her hand; the moment Hiro thinks he’s won, it’s over. He has another point, though—San Fransokyo as a whole is very accessible, but some of the older buildings (their house included) could still pose a challenge for someone who can’t climb stairs. If their invention works, it could make life here easier not just for Tadashi, but for everyone who uses a wheelchair. That’s a big if, though, and the learning curve seems steep. The thought of something going wrong, of her baby ending up in the hospital again, hooked up to a dozen machines as he fights to stay alive, burned and crushed and dying…
Cass shakes her head. No—never again. She won’t allow it.
Coming back to the present, she finds her nephews are still talking. “—could fit them into the frame?” Hiro is asking.
“Maybe, but I can’t imagine they’d hold a charge for long,” Tadashi replies. Mochi’s in his lap now, and he’s stroking him like a Bond villain. “Going up three steps is one thing, but I don’t see a battery that size getting me enough air to make it up—”
“No hover chairs!” Cass exclaims, realizing what they’re talking about. “No. Hover chairs.”
“But the Climber’s okay?” Hiro asks hopefully. Cass gives him a deadpan stare.
“Why don’t we have Baymax walk behind me while I test it out?” Tadashi suggests, the negotiator to Hiro’s salesman. “That way he can catch me if I need it.”
“Which he won’t,” Hiro insists.
Cass bites her lip. “Baymax? Could you do that?”
“I am capable of lifting up to: one thousand pounds,” Baymax replies. “Furthermore, assisting individuals with impaired mobility is part of my healthcare matrix.”
“See?” Hiro gestures to the robot.
“And we wouldn’t even be testing it if we didn’t think it was ready,” Tadashi adds. “Well, I wouldn’t.”
“Hey!”
Cass gnaws her finger a little, at war with herself. Can they really be so sure it’s safe? They’re geniuses—incredible, brilliant geniuses—but can they really be sure? Their track record isn’t the cleanest—just ask the staff of the local ER. But they’re older now, and Tadashi’s in college, and now Hiro is too, and that’s got to count for something, right? And those mini robot things had worked perfectly before…he stole them. They’ve both learned from their mistakes.
Her inner conflict must show, because Tadashi smiles reassuringly. “It’ll be fine,” he tells her. “Trust us.”
“Oh…” Cass’s eyes screw shut. Then, she sighs. “This can’t end well.”
Hiro beams; he knows surrender when he sees it. “You won’t regret this, Aunt Cass!”
“Now hold on!” Cass exclaims, trying to reassert some control over the situation as Tadashi shoos Mochi away and Hiro springs aside. “Baymax, you stay right behind him, alright?”
“I will do that.”
“And you go slow, alright? And if you feel like you’re going to slip or…or blow up or something, stop and say so!”
“Will do,” Tadashi grins. Cass’s face is pinched with worry, but finally, she steps aside.
“Don’t forget to undo the lock first,” Hiro coaches, calling to his brother from where he stands beside the stairs. If Mochi knows the boy is only holding him to keep him out of the way, he doesn’t seem to care.
“Dude, I installed the lock,” Tadashi reminds him as he wheels himself forward. Once he’s at the foot of the stairs, he reaches back and presses a button on the device. There’s a soft hiss, and the whole chair shakes a little. Cass bites her finger again. “And the brakes, for that matter.”
“Which won’t ever be used because the sensors will know when the stairs end,” Hiro retorts.
“It never hurts to have a backup plan.” Looking up at the landing that marks the midway point between this floor and the attic, Tadashi takes a breath. Then, he pushes a button.
Sssss…
With a hiss, treads like what you’d find on a tank slide out of the machine’s metal frame, snaking under the chair’s wheels and lifting it up. Once they’re fully deployed, much smaller wheels unfold themselves from their sides. And then, the whole thing tilts back.
“Watch this,” Hiro whispers, his smile blinding.
Much more quietly than Cass had expected, the Climber begins to live up to its name. In a smooth, steady motion, it eases its way up the steps, slowly at first but quicker as Tadashi gains confidence. Baymax is right behind him every step of the way, and soon enough, he’s made it to the landing. “Yes!” Hiro cheers.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Tadashi reminds him, though from the bright grin he’s sporting it’s clear he’s just as excited. Rolling up to the next staircase, he starts climbing again.
“Ooh,” Cass mutters. She and Hiro take to the landing as soon as Tadashi and Baymax leave it, and they watch as he finishes the ascent. Was their room always this high up? “Oh, please be careful!”
But she needn’t have worried; a mere 20 seconds later, Tadashi has made it. Looking down at them from the top of the stairs, he spreads his arms wide. “Ta-da!”
Hiro whoops, racing up the rest of the way to join his brother and Baymax. Even Cass can’t help but grin as the two high-five; they did it!
“See?!” Hiro exclaims, spinning around to face her. “Told you it would work!”
Cass smiles, but puts her hands on her hips. “Now hold on, he needs to come down, too! I’m not OK-ing anything until I see it work both ways.”
Of course, her boys are two steps ahead of her as usual, already adjusting the treads. Once Baymax is in position, down they go.
“Come on, it can go faster than that,” Hiro urges, looking over Tadashi’s shoulder as they move.
“Let’s make sure it doesn’t launch me into Baymax first,” Tadashi tells him, keeping his descent slow and steady. Hiro groans.
When he makes it all the way down, because of course he does, he’s brilliant, they’re both brilliant and everything they make is incredible, he pushes another button, and the treads begin to retract. “I think that went well,” he declares.
“I think it went awesome,” Hiro counters. “I mean, you could give it a little more juice next time, but that was great!”
“I’d like to add a bit more shock absorption,” Tadashi admits. The treads are gone now, and he’s examining the body of the device as best he can when it’s right behind him. “The smoother we can make it, the better.”
“Hey, maybe we could adapt this for water! You know, add some plating, get the wheels to lift up, make a rudder—”
“Let’s stick with stairs for now,” Tadashi suggests, no doubt catching his aunt’s paling face in the corner of his eye.
“Fine…”
Her boys are so clever, so smart. They never cease to amaze her. It scares her sometimes. Okay, more than sometimes. But it also makes her so, so proud. They’re going to make great things, and help so many people. Both of them, together.
“Aunt Cass,” Baymax addresses her. She looks up. “Your: lacrimal glands are becoming: active. Would you like a tissue?”
“I’m fine, Baymax,” she tells him, wiping away a stray tear. Watching her boys hammer out the details of the Climber 2.0, a sense of peace washes over her. She smiles. “We’re fine.”