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English
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Part 1 of All my Hermit angst,,,sorry :D
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Published:
2021-09-20
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2,043
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1/1
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I make Geiger counters click!

Summary:

Mumbo is having a bad day, thinks about how he got to this point and why.

Now his base is ticking and he cant stand it.

-Set in S7, This is about C!Mumbo however he still has a yt channel via the 'cam accounts'-
TW- Panic, surgery, fatal illness and Vomiting.

Notes:

Beta'd by Someonenamedaname! big preesh! hope you enjoy :D

Work Text:

Today was too much for Mumbo. Nothing truly terrible had happened but there were so many little bits like how this morning he had woken up to his covers halfway off the bed, he was cold so his morning wasn't comfortable. Earlier he had tripped, ending up falling to his death from his base, he got so distracted afterwards he forgot what he was doing then he didn't have any food left in his base so he had to ask Grian for some, who then wasn't home and he went to the shopping district to find most golden carrot stores were out of stock. Eventually, he found a shop that sold some quartz and bought a stack to tide him over the next few days, future Mumbo could deal with getting proper food.

He was headed home and his elytra broke, plunging him to the freezing waters between the shopping district and the jungle. He obviously didn't have a boat on him so he had to swim the distance that seemed infinitely longer than it did when he could fly it. Reminded about how he had no clue how he survived before his circuits had been made waterproof. Now he was tired, grumpy, sopping wet and that quartz did a terrible job at recharging him.

Land was in sight but a drowned stood between him and getting to finally dry out his heavy suit. The mob raised its trident and Mumbo highly considered just letting it impale him there and then, the effort it took to drag his soggy clothes and the annoyance that was already buzzing under his skin was beginning to take its toll.

The trident was let loose, embedding into the android's shoulder water mingling with the damaged circuits and sending painful jolts through his systems. The soggy boards got more confused as sparks and movement of the trident messed up more connections, spasms and misconstrued pain signals took over before he fully gave in to the water. He regretted getting the code and upgrades that allowed him to even feel pain in the first place, but there was a point in time where he missed being human.

Mumbo laid in bed, his head spinning lethargically. He was only 16 but already was so gravely ill. His hair had all but fallen out, his vomit was now a dreadful dark red and even sitting up would lead to him passing out for a good few minutes. His guts constantly felt like they were exploding and the doctor that was visiting from a public server was failing in his attempt to help him.

Radiation poisoning, he had been told, from being such a tiny kid working with such dangerous radioactive materials without proper equipment. Redstone didn't seem that bad at first, he had been designing and creating for years, he had been recognised by some pretty cool people who used his ideas in their own creations and it filled him with nothing but pride. But now all that creativity and pride he experienced was being ruined by the fact he was dying.

When it was official, the doctor actually telling him that this was going to kill him, that living and breathing something that was literally made of uranium wasn't healthy, all Mumbo thought to do was to announce to the audience he had made through showing off his creations - that he was going to die. A post was all that was needed, a picture of a Geiger counter and a brief telling of how dangerous redstone was to the inexperienced. Hovering over the post button, re-reading his short paragraph covering his illness, he made sure it wasn't too pity inducing. He did this to himself, this was all his fault.

After 10 minutes of the post being up, Mumbo received a message. It read:

Do you wanna be a robot?

Mumbo pondered it for a moment, it was sent by someone he looked up to, someone he knew for a fact could do something like what they were suggesting. Did he want to be a robot? Would he lose what was meant to be human if he didnt tire, didn't hurt, if he didnt feel?

What's the catch?

There isn't one, i like your stuff and I've been designing one for a while, haven't had a willing participant.

and you would do it for me?

if you wanted

can we talk in person about this? If you are for real?

ill come to you?

They agreed on a time that Doc would come over, Mumbo made a mental list of what to ask, anxiety consuming him. He hadn't eaten in days, stomach betraying him everytime he tried to even take his medication. But the date Doc had promised was only 3 days after the original conversation so he wasn't waiting long, having slept for the majority of the wait, his body too weak to even stay awake for more than an hour.

Doc showed up at one point while Mumbo was asleep, electing to read over the charts and statistics the doctor from before had left about Mumbo’s condition. When Mumbo did wake up all he had to do was sign a form to consent to testing. He could barely grip the pen and his signature was unrecognisable, but it was still enough for Mumbo to get treatment from Doc.

Doc found it heartbreaking, watching the charmingly awkward walk throughs he wouldn't have guessed that 1, Mumbo was 16, and 2, he was getting this ill. He had heard of redstoners getting sick after not wearing proper gear for it, respirators being forgotten or gloves needing to be replaced, them needing to go into detox, stepping away from creation for months as they recovered. Mumbo had never been seen wearing PPE, viewers assuming he took it off for the camera.

Blood tests and tissue samples were hard to do, even more so on a child that stirs awake crying every few hours, sobbing in pain and asking for it all to stop. Doc felt terrible. The designs for the android were already sketched up and half-built, plans on how to actually transmute the kid’s consciousness into the machine in the works. A message to Etho who then immediately shot back a ‘gimme 15 minutes’ and then a sketch with added details were pinged through. The instructions made sense and were quickly incorporated into the already complex design.

It was a tireless day, but only a day later the design was done and fully built. All that was now needed were a set of electrodes to be connected between the faux brain and the real one, with a high dose of anaesthesia that Mumbo would hopefully never have to wake from and a small drill, Doc went to work fitting the electrodes into the correct parts of the boy's brain.

6 hours later and the boy was pronounced dead. His body slumped and useless, the rotting had started days ago while he was still in it. The robot breathed to life, a special request from Mumbo was to come across as human, a fake heartbeat, a breathing algorithm and even the sensation of pain was hooked up. Red lit eyes scanned the room, a fresh tailored suit and a slicked back mop of black hair with a matching curled mustache. Mumbo made a faint whirring sound as the joints of his arms moved for the first time, his face pulled up into a smile as he muttered:
“It doesn't hurt anymore.”

Mumbo woke with a jolt, he didn't really understand how respawn worked as a robot, but he wouldn’t question it, arm still twitching with the remains of the impaled death. It was all just too inconvenient and now all he could hear was an obnoxious ticking noise. A ticking noise that increased and decreased as he wandered around his base, gathering some things to bring to pick up his stuff where he died. The noise pierced his very soul, one of those noises that just irritates your ears and goes right into your brain. It was scratching his brain in a bad way and if it didn't shut up sometime soon he was going to cry.

Just as one source of the noise stopped clicking, another picked up immediately as if there were proximity sensors tucked between his chests and under his bed. The noise was familiar, something that he figured he heard long ago and yet never wanted to hear again, the increased clicking noise sending nothing but pure dread and panic down his motherboards.

Just as he approached his valuables chest to grab out a spare set of diamond armour the clicking picked up, playing either side of him at a heavy rate when it clicked in his own head where he had heard it before. It was a geiger counter, one for checking radiation doses, one he had sat constantly next to him while he was sick. One that ticked endlessly when he was too weak to ask them to remove it. At the summoning of the memory, he felt the lethargy in his bones, felt the bile in his throat, the pain that made him feel like he was being pulled in half.

Dropping to the floor, he didn't need to but he could breathe, panic seizing all his joints, grasping his throat before falling over and curling into a ball. His shoulder shook with his sobs, his throat murmured for it all to stop, that it hurt so bad and he couldn't do it anymore. He felt all the pain and suffering wrack through his body as the ticking and clicking invaded his ears, sending his brain on overdrive.

Grian watched from above, seeing his prank play out, he thought it would be funny after he learnt about how Mumbo was slightly radioactive due to the redstone components that made him up. What he didn't notice was how increasingly upset the man was getting over the constant noise. Grian was just out of ear-shot, laughing to his camera bot about how successful his prank had been up until Mumbo slammed his hands over his ears and fell to the ground gasping. Immediately turned off his recording and glided down to the man who was curled into a ball, whispering incoherently.

Grian did not question what was happening, immediately diving into support mode as his friend suffered a panic attack in front of him. Grabbing the Geiger counters that were within triggering range and turning them off into a nearby chest then crouching close to Mumbo.
“Hey Mumbo, I’m sorry about all the noise, can you hear me?” Grian spoke lightly, quiet but loud enough to hopefully get through to the panicky puddle.
“Grian?” Mumbo was quaint, his voice breaking at the one word but it was enough to let Grian start on the first grounding technique that came to mind. Asking Mumbo to picture a kitten in his mind, let it spin in a circle before letting it sit and face him. As Mumbo followed the activity, his breathing algorithm slowed.

“Can you describe to me the way the cat looks right now?” Grian questioned, fiddling with his hands in his lap waiting for a response. Tentatively and still quiet broken Mumbo started,
“A brown tabby, they have green eyes with a large yellow patch over their eye.” Taking a breath, “He has a very fluffy tail, it's wrapped around his front paws and one of his ears has a chunk missing.” Mumbo was sitting up now, his cufflets more interesting than Grian was tenfold.
“That's good, want to talk about what happened?” but Mumbo was already shaking his head, leaning against his friend in a tired daze. “Okay, what about nap time?” A laugh followed the question but Mumbo nodded, sitting up and off of Grian, pausing to let his friend give him a hand up and guide him to his bed.

Once Mumbo was asleep Grian sighed, adding a mental note to not mock Mumbo’s radiation again, but also to prompt him for an answer on why at a later date. He patted Mumbo’s hair and settled down next to the bed on the floor. Mumbo might need him when he wakes up.

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