A Heart is Just A Pump "G" Version

A Heart Is Just A Pump
The G-rated, soft, creamy, light, sweet milk chocolate version.
by Dave White
Story Editor - Melody Rondeau
Music by - James Horner
Executive Producer - Ponsonby Britt, O.B.E.

There are no parallels in nature. The straightest redwood still turns toward the sun. The facets of a crystal converge and diverge. Light itself bends in obedience to gravity. Even the fabric of the universe curves upon itself. And where there are no parallels, lines inevitably intersect, cross or run together. At those places, there are points of potential and change. Potential is not a certainty, and change is not unavoidable. There are some things that should never change.
Dr. Culver J. Positron. Time Travel: It’s Potentials and Pitfalls.

The Heart has reasons that reason does not know.

“No thanks, I’m not thirsty.”

Gadget’s words kept coming back to haunt Chip every now and then, when certain things caused him to puzzle over his colleague’s conduct. Little things that added up to big suspicions. The way she came out unscathed from misadventures that left her friends with cuts, contusions, even broken bones. Her continuous off-putting of himself and Dale. Her mercurial emotions. Her almost unnatural affinity for machines. And always, the scent of oil.

“No thanks, I’m not thirsty.”

With those words, years ago, Gadget had turned down an oil can offered by Zipper. Chip knew. He had been there, trapped in a mechanical eagle talon that Gadget was trying to loosen. It couldn’t have been misidentification. The can was a domed “poka-poka” type, not a tin can. Even in her dizziest moments, Chip could not imagine her making such a mistake. Unless it wasn’t a mistake.

“No thanks, I’m not thirsty.”

It simply couldn’t be, Chip told himself. And yet...

He made up his mind. He would investigate this just like any other mystery, or he would never rid himself of the nagging doubt. He would prove there was nothing to his wild suspicions.

Or... He would prove that Gadget was a robot.

Chip insured that Gadget was busy with a difficult repair job on the RangerWing, then entered her workshop. He cast about for clues, of what sort he didn’t know. Just something that was out of place in a workshop, or that belonged in a kitchen, bedroom or surgery. He carefully searched high and low, on back shelves and atop cabinets. He examined piles of parts, some dusty from long storage. If Gadget were the progenitor of Mr. Data, there was no sign of it here.

Chip had nearly satisfied himself. There was nothing to his crazy speculation. Gadget had just made an out-of-context remark in a stressful situation. Nothing Monty or Dale or he, himself, hadn’t done. Perhaps she had just been trying to be funny.

Then he noticed the oil can. Not like the one that had raised his suspicions originally. This was a tiny can of Valvoline, repackaged for rodent use by Oklahoma oil field rats. Perfectly ordinary in Gadget’s workshop. Except this can had a plastic drinking straw sticking out of it.

Chip still didn’t buy it. She had probably just used the straw as a siphon, he surmised, in order to precisely place a drop of oil on some small part. He walked over to the bench to make sure, and picked up the can. He felt his stomach drop as he saw the end of the straw. It had been chewed on, the way Gadget always chewed a soft drink straw when she was thinking hard on some invention.

He found a cotton swab and pushed it carefully into the end of the straw, then withdrew it. It came out well coated in oil.

Chip stood there unmoving for a while as his mind collided with the implications of this discovery. Their caseload had been miniscule this winter. Gadget hadn’t been separated from the other Rangers in a month. No one could have substituted a mechanical double for Gadget. She was as she had always been. But who, or what, was that?

Chip left the workshop and went into his small study. He took a photo album off the shelf and leafed through to one particular page. He had seen something the day the photo was taken that had disturbed him nearly as much as the oil can had, but he’d discounted it then.

The photo was of Gadget, Dale, Monty and himself. They had been washing the RangerPlane last summer and the effort ended up as a water fight. Gadget had been wearing her lightest summer clothing and the water had plastered it to her body. Chip got out his magnafying glass and peered carefully at Gadget. He wasn’t wrong, then or now.

At the base of her rib cage he could make them out. Two small circular dimples clearly outlined by the soaking wet shirt. He hadn’t believed it then. He couldn’t avoid it now. They were pushbuttons.

The location of the buttons was inspired. There was not a place on her body she could better protect. He guessed that they would not respond to a casual bump, but would have to be pushed firmly and forcefully. He stopped and shook his head. Now was not the time for analysis. He had to speak to Dale and Monty, whether they believed him or not. Especially Monty. Could he have known all along, or had he been taken in as well?

He heard soft footsteps in the hall and a door open and close. Gadget had returned to her workshop. Chip impulsively decided to confront his colleauge, but he would not give her the chance to deceive him again. He’d prove this one way or another.

He hurried across the hall and threw open the door of Gadget’s workshop. She was working on an indescribable something-or-other in the middle of the floor.

“GADGET!” He roared. “Have you finally lost your last marble!?”

“Chip! What are you talking about?” Gadget said, alarmed. “I’m right in the middle of wiring this...”

“You’re worried about that?” Chip shouted as he closed the distance to Gadget. “You left an engine running on the RangerWing! Do you have any idea how dangerous that is!”

Gadget was stunned, as Chip hoped. “I couldn’t have! I pulled the master cut-offs!”

“Well, something’s gone haywire,” Chip said. He paced the last steps to where Gadget stood, throughly distracted by a mechanical impossibility. Chip had the advantage. His “mechanical” was throughly possible. He reached out with his right hand and poked two fingers into the front of her rib cage. He felt the button give, then click.

Gadget semed to freeze for an instant. She blinked once. Then: “I can calculate only a possibilty of .0018 percent that an electrical fault could cause an uncommanded start of the RangerWing engines. However, if accompanied by a failure of engine circuit insulators...”

Gadget appeared to be unaware that she had been touched, or that her demeanor had changed. She continued speaking in increasingly esoteric and technical terms. Chip had seen her like this when dealing with animals that had advanced educations. Gadget could hold her own with the brainiest, even if her friends couldn’t understand a word of it.

Somehow, Chip still couldn’t bring himself to believe it. He reached out and again pushed the button.

Gadget again hesitated for just a moment. Then: “Chip, you shouldn’t get yourself so worked up over these things. Look at how flushed you are. You should sit down and let me get you a cold drink. You’ll work yourself into an ulcer...”

Now, she sounded like the caring, nurturing Gadget that had seen them through injury and illness. This was a side of her that Chip knew well. Boldly now, he once again pushed the button.

Gadget fell briefly silent. Then: “Chip, you little devil.” she said coyly. “Barging in here when you know I’m not really ready for you.” She began backing him up across the room and against the workbench until he fell across it. “All this time playing hard to get with you has really been hard to do.” She siddled up next to him. “So,” she purred as her hand slid up his chest. “What’s your pleasure?”

This was not a Gadget Chip had ever suspected existed, much less encountered. He quickly found the button again.

“SO!” Gadget roared, her hand clamping on Chip’s throat. “Invade MY workshop, will you! Come in here thinking you’ll have your way with ME, do you? I’LL SHOW YOU!!”

She jumped up and picked him up off the workbench, holding him off the floor with one hand, strangling him. “You don’t deserve to live, you scum!” she hissed.

Chip had seen Gadget blow her top before, but never turn murderous. The way she held him, he couldn’t reach the button on her left side. But he could reach the one on her right. He got his left hand in place and pushed for all he was worth. The button gave.

Instantly, Gadget collapsed. She and Chip hit the floor hard. Chip coughed and caught his breath. Gadget didn’t move from where she’d fallen. Her head lolled at an unnatural angle. Her eyes were half closed and still. Her chest didn’t rise. She wasn’t breathing.

Chip rolled her gently on to her back. He pressed his ear to her chest to check for a heartbeat. Then he recoiled, pushing himself away from her as fast as he could.

There was no heart! He had heard a soft mechanical whir. The sound of a pump motor.

Until this moment, Chip’s mind had been trying to rationalize all of this. Trying to make excuses for what he was perceiving. Now, his world crashed in on him. Someone he had given his trust and affection to, even his love; who an instant before he feared he had killed, had never been alive at all.

He stared at Gadget for long, agonizing seconds. What was he to do? Call for the others and destroy their lives as well? Call the authorities? Or follow the path of any murderer and hide the body.

Stop it! his reason commanded. You didn’t kill her if she was never alive. Start her up again.

Of course! It would have to work that way. He hoped. But which Gadget would he get if he started her again?

He couldn’t bear to see her looking dead, even if she wasn’t truly a living thing. With a deep breath, he reached forward, firmly pushed the right-side button and waited.

A moment later, her eyes fluttered. Then they opened wide. She slowly sat up, her expression as fearful as Chip’s. Neither of them made a move to get off the floor.

“Chip? Did I just faint?”

“No. I switched you off.”

Gadget winced at hearing this. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

“I know that you’re a mechanism. A robot copy of Gadget.”

“No, Chip. I’m Gadget. I’m the only Gadget that there has ever been. I’m not a copy of anyone.”

“How can this be?” Chip asked desperately. “Why?”

“My parents never had the chance to have children. Have you ever heard of Worthing’s of London?”

“The big engineering company?”

“Yes. My Dad knew their family. They built me. They upgraded me for years. Only Dad knew, and no one has ever suspected, until now. How did you guess?”

“The straw in the oil can,” Chip lied. “Your mood swings, you never get sick...”

She shook her head sadly. “I knew it was a risk moving in here, especially under the same roof with a top detective. But I was so lonely...”

“Gadget, how can a machine be lonely?”

“I was made to be a daughter, as life-like as possible. I have emotions, real emotions. But no one had a computer central processor unit that could manage an entire personality. I’ve always had to switch between personalities and emotional states. Sometimes I switched by accident. Those were the mood swings you noticed.”

She tried to move closer to him, but he scooted away. “Today,” she continued, “there are finally CPU’s that can hold my entire personalty range with room to spare. But I’ve lost my contacts at Worthing’s, and I can’t perform the upgrade on myself. Now, though, everything’s going to be all right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can let you perform the upgrade, once I’m certain I can trust you. I can’t allow anyone to know of my existence unless I trust them completely. It was Dad’s safety device to keep me from falling into the wrong hands.”

“Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

“Chip, I would be allowing something far more intimate than you can imagine. I’d be trusting you with my mind. With my very soul.”

“Gadget, you are a machine!” Chip said forcefully, trying as much to convince himself as emphasize the fact to her. “You can’t have a soul!”

“I don’t believe that. Neither do you. Do you think for an instant that all the time we’ve been together, all the fun we’ve had, all the wonderful moments we’ve shared, that you were in the company of an empty pile of parts? I have my own soul, my own spirit. I am alive by any definition that really means anything.”

Chip’s mind was reeling. He so wanted her to be Gadget. He realized his knowledge could not be unlearned, but perhaps he could pretend just a little longer.

“All right, Gadget. What will it take for you to trust me?”

“There’s only one way I can be truly safe. Marry me, Chip.”

“WHAT!! I can’t do that! You’re...”

“I’m Gadget. You’re the only one that ever has to know what I am.” She slid closer to him. This time he didn’t move. “I can be a good wife to you, Chip. I can do anything a flesh-and-blood wife can do. Probably better.”

“Gadget, you can’t ask me to do that. You’re not alive. You could... you could never have children.”

“Yes I could. I can clone them from your DNA and incubate a child inside my own body.” Her voice turned soft and seductive. “And you’d be so surprised how I get that DNA sample, Chip,”

“You’re not helping matters like that,” Chip warned.

“I can even build replicas of myself and you. And upgrade them so that they seem to grow. Perfect children, Chip.”

“NO! Gadget, you can’t be serious!”

“Chip, there’s no other way. If you don’t agree to let me make you the happiest chipmunk on earth, I’ll have to self-destruct. Right now.”

“You mean, like shutting off?” he said hopefully.

“I mean like detonating. I’ll wipe out most of the park. So this is life or death for us both, Chip. You have to choose. Life or death.”

Chip felt his blood drain to his toes. Here was his long-time dream, Gadget as his bride, turned nightmare. It wasn’t life or death. It was just plain death, no matter which way he chose.

Gadget’s face lost all expression. “Destruct sequence activated. Thirty seconds...twenty-nine...twenty-eight...twenty-seven...”

* * *

“NO! DON’T DO IT! I’LL... I’LL...”

Chip awoke with a start. He had fallen asleep at his desk after spending most the night working on a case file. He found his face trying to stick to a copy of Gadget’s “Invention & Technology” magazine. The cover story: “Will Robots Take Over?” He firmly decided he would never again read Gadget’s magazines after eating Thai food.

He checked the clock. He saw he had just enough time to run a comb through his fur and get out to the landing deck.

Chip walked out the front door of Ranger headquarters and down to the hanger. Gadget was there, just closing up a panel on the RangerWing.

“Hi, Valentine!” she called cheerily. “Ready for our picnic?”

“Yeah. Sure, Gadget,” Chip said, his thoughts going a million miles an hour.

“Chip, is something wrong?” she asked, her voice full of the concern that Chip had come to expect and love so much.

“Gadget,” he began tentatively. “I once had this feeling...” Nope, wrong, he thought. “There was a time when I was...” Start over. “I once had this thought that I didn’t want to think...” Now you’re babbling.

Chip took a deep breath. There was one way, and only one way, to do this. “Gadget, before we go anywhere, would you let me do one thing with you, and never ask me why?”

“Well, it is Valentine’s Day, and since I was Dale’s Valentine last year, I suppose it’s only fair. However, depending on what you do, I reserve the right to clobber you.”

“Okay, it’s a deal.”

“Should I close my eyes?” she said suspiciously.

“No. that’s okay. Just stand right there.”

With that, he slipped his arm around her waist and bent down to firmly place his ear against her chest. Then, he simply listened to her heart. It tha-thumped like any other heart he’d ever heard, though this one with a little sweeter note just now. Gadget was a bit surprised at first, then she felt deeply touched at this gesture, and gently wraped her arms around Chip’s head. And if her heart beat just a little faster, Chip didn’t seem to notice. They stood that way, in this strange, caring embrace for a full minute. Or perhaps, it was a lifetime. It was hard to tell which.

“Thanks, Gadget,” Chip said, standing at last. “And thanks for not asking why.”

“Chip, you romantic ol’ softie,” she said. “A heart is just a pump. It’s not the source of affection or the home of the soul.”

“Gadget, for once you’re wrong. A heart is more than an organ. It’s the symbol of our caring and love for each other, and the best and truest sign of life. What it means is more important than what it is.”

“Awww, that’s a wonderful sentiment, Chip.”

“And just so you don’t forget it, here.” He presented to her a beautifuly engraved heart-shape gold locket, with an inscription:

What can the will do when the heart commands?
Louis L’amour

It opened to reveal her own photo on one side, the other side, blank.

“Whoever you choose, Gadget, you can put his picture there.”

“Oh, Chip. It’s beautiful! You know I don’t often wear jewelry, but I promise, I’ll wear this every Valentine’s Day, no matter whose Valentine I might be. And I’ll think of you.”

“That’s what your heart is for Gadget. Love. And remembering.”

THE END

COPYRIGHTS & DISCLAIMERS: Gadget, Chip, Dale, Monterey Jack, Zipper, and the Rescue Rangers are © and T.M. The Walt Disney Company and were used without permision and, in this instance, all portrayed by audio-animatronic duplicates.

All other characters, locations, equipment and situations are © 2001 by David D. White, and imitated by robotic dopplegangers from Worthing Engineering Ltd. Permission to copy and re-distribute without charge is granted, provided the work is not altered, edited, replaced by mechanical doubles, or otherwise fiddled with.

The hard, dark, bittersweet, baker's chocolate, PG-13 version

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