(Takes place during S6.4 ‘Flooded’)
I read the book Spike lent me. It is very interesting. There are things in the book which are not the way things really are. This is Fiction. It is a story which pretends that it is about things which have not happened yet. I do not know if things will really happen like that but it is interesting to pretend. The computer in the book can do things that I cannot do. I think it is cleverer than me but it cannot move or slay. It can throw rocks.
It calls itself Mike. I need a name that is mine so that I do not have to be Buffy now that Buffy is Buffy.
I want to read more books. Spike has a lot of books and I borrow books from him. He says I must not tell anyone that he has books. Spike thinks that the others will not like him if they find out that he reads books. I do not understand why he thinks that but I will do what Spike says.
I read ‘Romeo and Juliet’. They were very silly. I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’. I read ‘The House on Pooh Corner’. I read ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’. My OCR makes a mistake and I think it is ‘Bridget Jones’ Dairy’. I wonder why she does not have milk and butter and cheese and then I find out I have made a mistake. Spike laughs when I tell him. He looks happy when he laughs. I will try to say things that make him laugh again. I must not do it too often or this will cause confusion. I read books about humor but it is hard to understand why things are funny. I will do my best. I read ‘The Dilbert Principle’. It is full of important information about the workings of the economic system. It is also funny.
I read ‘I, Robot’. The Three Laws of Robotics are interesting. I wonder why Warren did not program me with the Three Laws. I could cause serious injury and death to humans and there is nothing stopping me except that I know that it would be wrong. It would have been safer if Warren had used the Three Laws. I read ‘The Silence of the Lambs’. I am glad Warren did not use the Three Laws. I might have to protect Dawn and the others from humans one day. Spike cannot fight humans. I might have to protect Spike from humans. I could not do that if I could not harm humans.
I read ‘Modesty Blaise’. I read ‘Starship Troopers’. I read ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’. I read ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’. I read ‘Great Expectations’. I read ‘Catch 22’. I read ‘Fanny Hill, or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’. The people in that book have sex a lot. I want to have sex with Spike again but he does not want to have sex with me any more. This is sad but he will be my friend so it is not too sad. Perhaps one day he will want to have sex with me again. I can wait.
I read ‘Just William’ and ‘William - the Conqueror’. They are about people a long time ago in the country called England which is where Spike came from. There is a girl in the books called Violet Elizabeth Bott. She is the girlfriend of William. I am a Bot. Buffy can be a short form of Elizabeth. Buffy is not a short form of Elizabeth, she is Buffy, but it is similar. Spike is really William. I will call myself Violet Elizabeth Bott. Spike says I should be Violent Elizabeth Bott. This is a clever use of the similar words. I think it is probably funny. I laugh. Spike laughs.
“Sodding Hell, Vi, you’re getting to be so bloody human it’s creepy,” he says.
Vi. Viole(n)t Elizabeth Bott. I have a new name.
The basement is flooded so I cannot recharge there any more. Sharing Buffy’s room is difficult. Willow and Tara share a room but that is because they are gay. I am not gay. Buffy is not gay. We must fix the basement so that it is not full of water and I can use it again.
The man who can mend the pipes will not do it unless we give him a large quantity of money. We do not have a large quantity of money. The bank will not give Buffy any money. How can we get money?
I have a motorbike. It could be sold for money. I can run very fast so do not need the motorbike. I do not have documents to prove that the motorbike is mine. It is mine because I killed the demon who owned it. Demons do not care about documents. Could I sell the motorbike to a demon?
A demon says he will buy the motorbike. I tell him “Show me the money. Show me the money.” He shows me money. He looks at the motorbike. He says “Nice bike, think I’ll take it.” He gets on the bike and starts the motor. He tries to drive away. He has not given me the money so I do not let him drive away. I hold up the motorbike so that the back wheel does not touch the ground. The motorbike is very noisy but it does not move.
He gets angry and tries to hit me. “Let go of the bike, you dumb bitch. I’m taking it and you ain’t gonna stop me.”
That would be stealing. Stealing is wrong. He must be an evil demon. I slay evil demons. I hit him in the chest until his ribs break, then I push the broken ribs inwards until he falls down and stops moving. He does not need money now that he is dead so I take the money. I ride home on the motorbike and give the money to Buffy.
Buffy asks where I got the money and I tell her. She says that it is wrong to get money that way. I tell her I know that it is wrong and I would not have taken the money if he had not tried to steal the motorbike first. Buffy looks at the money. She tells me the bank would not give her any money, even though she saved the people in the bank when a demon attacked them. She takes the money.
We are in the Magic Shop when Giles comes back from England. He hugs Buffy and they talk. Then the other Scoobies talk to Giles. I say “Hello, Ggiles.”
He does not say hello to me. He says to Willow, “Do we still need the robot? And I thought we’d fixed its mispronunciation of my name. Is it malfunctioning?”
“I was joking, Rupert,” I tell him. “I know perfectly well that it is a soft ‘G’. I was mispronouncing it for humorous effect. Guess it didn’t work.”
His mouth goes very wide. “Buffy? Is that you? Was I hugging the robot?”
Xander says “I know this one! They’re both Buffy.” All the Scoobies laugh except Buffy. I laugh too.
“No, Giles, I’m the robot,” I tell him. “I have a new name now. I am Violet Elizabeth Bott, call me Vi for short. Or you could call me Bott, the way we call you Giles instead of Rupert. I will get my hair cut and dyed a different color so that you can tell us apart. I will wear a wig if I need to pretend to be Buffy. Or if I want to wig you out.”
Giles is wigged. Willow is wigged too. The other Scoobies are not wigged. They laugh. Even Buffy.
Buffy has gone out and left me to pretend to be her. I can do that. I think she has gone to see Spike.
Tito comes to fix the pipes. He is not the deceased leader of Yugoslavia. He is a friend of Xander’s. He is nice. I think that the former Yugoslavia would be a nicer place if he was their leader. I tell him that. He says “Well, they’d have good plumbing, that’s for sure.” He answers very quickly and does not laugh. I think this is not the first time that someone has mentioned that he has the same name as the deceased leader of Yugoslavia, born Josip Broz on May 7 1892.
I watch closely so that I will know how to repair the pipes if they break again. It seems to require special tools. I do not think I could repair them without the tools but I see how to turn the water off so that the basement would not fill with water. I pay Tito for the work. He gives me some money back because I have paid in cash. I think this is something to do with Taxes.
Giles talks to me. He wants to know what has made me more of a person. I do not know. I tell him a vampire hit me with a broken bottle and damaged me, and I went to Willow and she repaired me, and after the repair I started to think about the little village on the display at the school Parent Teacher Day and I realized that it was a representation and not really for little people, and then I thought some more and got better at it. Giles says he will have to ask Willow what she did when she repaired me. We have to stop talking then because a demon breaks down the door and hits Giles on the head.
I fight the demon. It wants to kill the Slayer because she stopped it from robbing the bank. It is very strong and tough and we are breaking the furniture which will mean that Buffy will need more money. Buffy and Spike come in and help me fight the demon.
The demon says “Two Slayers? How come there are two Slayers?”
I say “Special offer. Two for the price of one.”
Spike says “Bog off!” which is a play on words. It could be a British slang expression which is an insulting way of telling someone to go away; or an acronym for “Buy One, Get One Free”.
Buffy says “Actually I’m her evil twin.” She pushes the demon down the stairs to the basement so that the living room does not get any more damaged. The basement is already been flooded once and the things in it are already ruined; except the new pipes, and one of them does get damaged before we finish killing the demon. Water starts to come out of a joint. Buffy and Spike knock the demon down and I kick it in the stomach and it gets weaker. Buffy breaks its neck and I go to shut off the water.
Not too much water came out of the pipe before I shut off the water. I examine the place where it leaked and I find that fixing it is not too hard. I tell Buffy that I have saved the basement from flooding, like the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dyke, and I didn’t even have to call Willow or Tara.
Spike makes a snorting noise. Buffy opens her eyes very wide and looks at me. She asks me if I have just made a dirty joke. I tell her yes, I have made a joke about sex, but it is a clean joke because of all the water.
Buffy laughs. She laughs a lot. She tells me it is the first time she has laughed since she came back. This is not correct, she laughed in the Magic Box, but that was only a little laugh and she must have forgotten it. She tells me that she is not happy to be back because while she was dead she was in Heaven, which is a nicer place than Sunnydale.
I tell her that if I am deactivated I will go to Silicon Heaven.
“Silicon Heaven?” she asks. “Is there such a place?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “Otherwise, where would all the calculators go?”
Buffy looks confused. I explain that it is in a video called ‘Red Dwarf’ which belongs to Giles and which I watched with Dawn. I did not understand it when I watched it but now I understand it. It is very funny.
Buffy says she would like to watch it. Spike says he hasn’t seen any smegging ‘Red Dwarf’ for years and would like to watch it again, but he thinks the Watcher took it back to England with him and probably didn’t bring it back. We remember that the demon hit Giles on the head and go upstairs to see if he is all right.
Giles is not badly hurt. Tara looks after him. I ask him about the Red Dwarf video. He says it is in his things which are packed in boxes ready to be sent back to England. We cannot watch it now. He will unpack the boxes another day and then we can watch ‘Red Dwarf’.
We watch ‘X-Men’ instead. It is not as funny as ‘Red Dwarf’ but it is exciting and Wolverine is sexy. There are lines in it which would be good things to say when Slaying.
There is a telephone call the next morning. It is from Angel who is the vampire with a soul who was Buffy’s boyfriend. He is lame. He is bloody stupid and his hair goes straight up. Other than that I think he must be okay or he wouldn’t have been Buffy’s boyfriend. He wants to see her; she leaves Sunnydale and goes to meet him. Perhaps he can make her happy to be back from Heaven. That would be of the good. If she stays away for long I will have to be Buffy again.
Just as well I haven’t had my hair cut.