Work Text:
Andrew popped his lollipop back into his mouth, cursing, not for the first time, his choice of employment for the sake of his nicotine addiction. Then he grabbed the schematic he’d spent all night meticulously annotating and crumpled it up. The wad of paper bounced off the wall and then landed in the trashcan at the far end of the counter with a simple flick of his wrist.
And therein lay the problem: a simple flick of the wrist, or really any movement of the arm at all. He’d managed to get the mechanical portion of the equation sorted out, but the translation of nervous impulses, the difference between the machine and the code that was meant to operate it, was too large to bridge. Kevin and him had spent all of last night on a call with Allison, trying in vain to get it running this time, but success was as elusive as always. And Andrew was close to throwing in the towel. He had fulfilled his part of the bargain. His arm worked flawlessly with the rudimentary code that he’d been able to put together, and as a prosthetic or a spare part for any other make of android he knew it could be made to work. It wasn’t his fault that the software that they were trying to get it to run on was proprietary and none of them could figure out the code. Maybe he should tell Kevin as much when he got back from work: Andrew didn’t care, and if Kevin couldn’t get it to run that was his own damn problem.
Unfortunately the issue with the arm had driven itself like a splinter under his skin, and so even now, with the arm finished, he couldn’t stop turning it over and over again in his head, trying to find the one angle from which he hadn’t considered it yet. Trying to find some missing piece that the three of them had failed to think of. It was a marginally better use of his time than trying to stare holes into the ceiling while he waited for the handful of customers that wandered into the little middle of nowhere gas station over the course of a day to give him something to do. Although not a less frustrating one. Today he’d finally caved and brought the newest schematic to work, just in the unlikely case that he would find the answer in between the lines of his notes and the holes in his memory. But it was wishful thinking, nothing more.
And, so, into the trash the page went, and Andrew pushed away from the counter on his stool, spinning a couple lazy turns on it. He popped out the lollipop again, held it up so it eclipsed the light of the nearest ceiling lamp, and then had a moment of uncomfortable awareness as he considered his fingers holding the candy. Some strange biological coding was going on his own brain to allow him to do this. To move his fingers like this, turn his wrist, bend his elbow, lift his shoulder. They were movements that came so naturally, and yet, if he thought about them, the fact that he could do them at all was close to a miracle, the human body a true masterpiece of engineering. And somehow a couple of smart people had been able to replicate that same movement, that same miracle, and then they’d buried their discovery under lines and lines of indecipherable code.
The jingling of the doorbell distracted him from that unhelpful philosophizing. Andrew put the lollipop back into his mouth, then tried to catch of glimpse of whatever hellion he would have to put up with in the next minutes – and found nothing. The rows of shelves that made up the little gas station shop weren’t tall enough to hide most people, but there was a scuffling noise, so someone had come in. It wasn’t just unfortunate weather like he’d had to deal with a couple of years back.
The footsteps fell silent as a section of shelves was considered at length, probably comparing prices, comparing product details, comparing nutrient facts, perhaps, he wasn’t sure what shelf his invisible customer had gotten hung up on – not that Andrew cared – but certainly not taking anything off the shelf because all Andrew could hear was the slow ticking away of the second hand on the clock that hung behind him.
He eyed the trashcan with its abandoned schematic, but he’d been banging his head against that particular brick wall long enough. So, he slipped off his seat and rounded the counter to do the job Wymack was officially paying him for.
The direction of the footsteps brought him to the shelf with the car batteries and solar chargers. The latter was what his costumer was considering – or at least pretending to. The man had to be a few inches taller than Andrew, but he looked shorter, hunched over the shelves as he was. The fact that he was drowning in his threadbare, washed out clothes didn’t help the matter. His black hair hung in unkempt strands over his face, hiding dark eyes and a bone structure that could be something if he had at all put effort into his looks. He was squinting at the packages in front of him, but Andrew didn’t get the sense that he was taking in any information.
Although Andrew had made no effort to disguise his own footsteps, the man was slow to turn towards him and slow to react when he found someone standing a few feet away from him. The smile he gave Andrew was probably supposed to be apologetic, but the slowness with which he put it on only made it seem loopy.
“Hi, do you work here?” he asked, the words coming out slurred although Andrew had to admit the voice wasn’t bad.
He raised an eyebrow and gestured silently at the empty shop around them.
The smile turned into a grimace. “Right, right. Well, you see, my bike’s battery died, so I’ll need one of these...uh, can you recommend any?”
And Andrew should probably let him leave it at that. It wasn’t his business what his customers got up to, especially not the lying kind. But before Andrew could think better of it he asked: “How far out?”
“Some miles. Not too bad. An okay walk without the bike.” He shrugged.
And Andrew really should just let it be. Except this was the middle of nowhere in Arizona. The gas station’s address was nominally listed as Millport, but it was several miles out from the town that was really a few streets clustered around a church and a general store, it’s existence only excused by the fact that it sat along a major highway and the occasional passersby needed gas, food or a roof over their head. Dozens of miles of barren wasteland accompanied the highway to both sides of the gas station, offering no shade with which to protect against the aggressive, early summer sun.
Even inside the air conditioned shop Andrew could feel the heat press in, sweat collecting underneath the black armbands he wore with his T-shirt. In a few weeks it would be unbearable – yet there was no perspiration on the man’s pale skin. Or sunburn. His sluggish, odd behavior could be heatstroke. Andrew had seen that before, and the symptoms weren’t off. But his professional guess was a different one.
Without a word he stepped past the man, heading towards the coolers that lined the front of the shop. The man followed, then paused by the last row of shelves before the gap of the aisle, holding onto the m for balance. His expression was confused, but Andrew delivered him an answer before he had time to ask. Grabbing a bottle of water, he tossed it at the man and then watched it bounce of his chest and drop to the floor. The man blinked, only understanding after the fact, and bent down carefully to pick it up.
It was supposed to be a simple test to prove Andrew’s theory correct: All commercial androids lacked an esophagus and the appropriate organs to imbibe and digest food and drink. After all, there was no point in such vanities, when the space inside the faux-human body could instead be used for more storage and better ventilation to help the machine exist. That the man wa sn’t human Andrew had really no doubt about: He’d met enough of them to be able to tell the small differences in the way machines moved and perceived the world.
B ut after slowly deciphering the label, the android made no excuse for itself. It simply uncapped the bottle and downed the entire thing in three large gulps.
Andrew let the freezer door fall shut, unable to tear his eyes away from the way the android’s throat moved as it drank. A shiver ran down his spine, and it had nothing to do with the cold that had escaped from the coolers: There was only one android manufacturer in the world whose machines could have passed this little test, and that meant this one was trouble. Not the kind they had been expecting, perhaps, but this million dollar investment in its filthy rags was broken. Andrew doubted it would make it out of the desert even with a solar charger to substitute for its busted battery, and if its body was found along the highway that would lead the wrong people right to Millport – and Kevin.
It was a risk Andrew couldn’t afford.
He considered the android a moment longer, then decided on putting all the cards on the table. “I can drive you out once we’re closed. Probably faster and better for your battery.”
The android froze where it had been looking around the room, slowly redirecting its gaze back to Andrew at the implication. It held up the empty bottle, crumpling the plastic in one hand to demonstrate the otherwise damning proof: no android drank, and it had drunken.
Andrew just regarded it silently. The android stared back, head held high and straightening up to use every inch it had on Andrew to its advantage. But Andrew had seen its kind before, and he didn’t let himself be cowed. Nor was it difficult to hold out longer against this one. Normally the machine had the advantage, but this one was broken and batted. Its arm begun to shake with exertion and then its face contorted as it curled in on itself again, stumbling back to grab hold of the shelf behind it. Its movements became even more sluggish, each blink taking agonizingly long as it stared up at Andrew, trying and failing to conceal its fear.
Strange expression on a machine, that, he’d always thought.
Andrew nodded towards the other end of the room, where a door led to the backrooms behind the counter. “There’s no windows in the back and plenty of sockets to hook up to. They’re faster than that solar charger, too.”
The android stayed still, the information traveling along its neural pathways just as slowly as the rest of it moved. For a moment Andrew hoped it would just crash completely. Then it said: “I don’t- I’m not-”
“It’s almost a hundred degrees outside. After your little hike you either need to cool down or charge; you can tell me which one it was at the end of my shift.”
The android avoided its eyes, then sighed.
Andrew took that as acquiescence and brushed past it, glad to turn his back on it after he’d been forced to offer it unwanted charity. The android shuffled after him, holding onto shelf after shelf and finally the counter and the wall as it let Andrew direct it to the back of the store. He got a chair out of Wymack’s office, pulling it up against the nearest socket, then made sure the office and the storage room were both locked – more for show than being strictly necessary, but it gave him something to do as the android slowly took its seat.
He didn’t lock the door, just closed it behind him, then collected the water bottle it had left for him on the counter. Andrew put it on his own tab, then threw it in the trash with his schematic. He glanced at the page, then at the door to the back, for a brief second entertaining the world’s stupidest idea, and then, gratefully, the afternoon rush, if something might be called that in the desert, begun.
As he helped the truckers stock up for the next half of their endless desert trek the android was never far from his mind, but the backrooms stayed silent throughout the rest of his rather uneventful shift. It passed, as they all did, much too slowly, except that this time he had a reason to be annoyed at the speed with which the hour hand crept across the face of the clock. He didn’t look forward to what came after, but still there was some relief in finally slipping out from behind the counter to lock the door and switch the signage to ‘closed’. He left the pumps on for now, suspecting the lie about the bike’s battery had been untrue in more ways than one, and took his time closing up shop.
His guest hadn’t stirred by the time he took the money cassette to Wymack’s office, so he knocked to give it a heads up. But when he stepped into the dimly lit hallway the machine was slumped on the chair, its eyes closed and head resting against the wall at its back, not bothering to hide the fact that a long cable ran from the bottom of its shirt to the usb port in the socket at its feet. It only came back to life as Andrew passed by, slowly cracking its eyes open at the sound of footsteps.
When it saw what he was holding, it complained: “I was going to buy a solar charger.”
“Take one. I’ll deduct it from our stock tomorrow.”
It regarded him curiously for a moment, then reached down to unplug itself. By the time Andrew had safely put away the money, it was waiting expectantly in the hallway, looking more alive than it had earlier but still holding onto the chair for some support. It let him take it, accepting his gestures and wandering back into the store. As Andrew locked the door, it considered the chargers.
“I’ll need gas, too,” it said as Andrew came around. It picked up one of the cheaper chargers and waved with it. “Car ran out, that part was true.”
Andrew had expected nothing less, so he grabbed one of the empty canisters from an aisle over and unlocked the door. He sent the android out with it, letting it pump its own gas while he took the solar charger from it and went back behind the counter to write a quick note for Wymack about the missing items. Then he shut down the pumps and locked the store.
He handed back the charger in exchange for the gas, then led it around the back where he’d parked his SUV. Andrew stored the canister in the trunk and got into the car in the time that the android took its seat on the passenger side, faster now than it had been when it had come in but still moving stiltedly, clearly more than just its battery broken. He did his best not to stare as it fumbled with the seat belt, forcing himself to start the care and ignore his unwelcome passenger.
As they rolled towards the highway, it said: “I was headed south.”
That put the car opposite of where Millport lay, but the chances had been fifty-fifty. He turned the direction the android expected him to go, keeping the car steady. “What make?”
“Blue Hyundai,” the android said, its eyes fluttering shut again with exhaustion. It cradled the solar charger to its chest as if it was something precious, and for a brief moment Andrew saw himself driving up to the Hyundai parked on the shoulder in the middle of nowhere, delivering this pitiful creature to it and washing his hands of the whole thing.
Then he checked the long stretch of road behind and in front of him and pulled the car into a sharp U-turn. The android was jostled out of its reverie and as quickly as it could had its hand on Andrew’s arm, trying to jerk the steering wheel in its direction. Andrew slipped one of his knives free from its hidden sheath beneath his armbands and fought it off with one hand, keeping his eyes on the road as he sought the thing’s throat.
The android went momentarily still when it felt his knife pressed against it, then tightened its grip on the charger and said angrily: “This is kidnapping.”
“Technically it’s theft,” Andrew replied.
“I’m not fucking property! I’m a person! I have a name.”
Not unfamiliar arguments. Andrew gave it a wry smile. “I apologize. Did you expect introductions?”
The look the thing leveled him with was hard. When it spoke it somehow managed to sound less sullen than the words implied: “I’m Neil, and I belong to myself.”
And Andrew hated the moment with every fiber of his being. A nameless android, wandering in and out of his shop was nothing, a customer like any other, faceless and easily forgotten. But names made them something else, made this something else, when all Andrew had wanted to do was get this over and done with.
He said nothing for a long moment, waiting for Neil to get physical again. When he remained still, he hissed: “You gonna try to crash us or can I put both of my hands on the wheel again?”
“You’re just flesh and bone. You wouldn’t survive it.”
“And you’re just metal and wires. You really want to risk it?”
Neil pushed the arm with the knife away from his throat and left it at that, intentions clear. So, Andrew switched hands and sheathed the blade again.
Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the short ride. Andrew watched the road; Neil watched him. Not even the turn onto the dirt road just outside of town could deter him, or the old rickety farmhouse with its bright orange barns in the back that slowly rose out of the dust before them.
Andrew pulled in alongside the row of cars already parked to its side, taking note of how Wymack’s truck wasn’t there yet. That meant there was hope that he could get Neil in and out without him ever meeting the old man, which would be preferable. Andrew hadn’t dragged him here so Wymack could collect another stray. Especially not this one, with all the trouble it brought.
The android followed Andrew into the house, finally distracted from glaring daggers at him by the wall of noise that betrayed the presence of other people. Fear flickered over his face again, but Neil kept up with him, turning this way and that to wonder at the worn wooden furniture and the long gallery wall of pictures in the hallway. The kitchen, right off the front hall, was empty, so Andrew followed the clear din of the television to the den in the back. The door was open, blasting the movie for the whole house to hear, despite the fact that the two men on the couch weren’t that far away from the flatscreen.
Neither did they turn it down when they finally heard him approach.
“Andrew! Hey, so, Aaron called and he wants-” Nicky started, craning his neck past the couch and freezing when he caught sight of Neil. Within seconds his cousin was up, leaning over the back of the couch. “And who are you, handsome?”
Neil’s eyes widened at being addressed.
Before he could stammer out an answer, Matt finally paused the movie and rounded the couch, offering Neil his good hand. “Matt Boyd.”
Neil stood mute, ogling the robotic arm that he refused to cover up. Andrew had offered him his expertise when they’d first met, but Matt had told him he wanted people to know. It was a reminder of what Matt had suffered to get him to where he was now, the accident and the addiction that had led to it in the first place, and in a strange way a point of pride. Andrew couldn’t pretend he understood, but then Matt had never asked him to. Matt knew he could come to Andrew if he needed a hand with his own, and Andrew otherwise ignored Wymack’s permanent guest. They got along like that.
“Neil,” Andrew said, pointing with his head. “Nicky. Can you two mind him for a second?”
“No problem,” Matt said, at the same time that Nicky drawled: “Can we ever. So, Neil, what brings you here on this fine night?”
Andrew hoped that with Matt present his cousin would behave himself and slipped out the back. The deck was as deserted as the rest of the big house, but he could make out two dark silhouettes taking care of the plants in the greenhouse not far out. That left one of the current occupants of the house unaccounted for, and there was a fifty-fifty chance that Andrew would be able to avoid Kevin and keep him ignorant of Neil.
He took the familiar, worn steps down to the workshop in the basement, where an old fashioned string brought the raw light-bulbs to life. As they flickered on, they revealed the overflowing workbenches and machinery that Wymack had bequeathed to him and around them shelves filled with endless boxes of wires, metal plating, fiberglass parts, nuts and bolts and screws. On the table in the middle of the room sat the damned arm, and in the corner the still figure of the man who it belonged to. He was staring ahead blindly, at first not even reacting to the sudden light, but Andrew was too used to these eerie displays of inhumanity to be bothered by them.
Ignoring Kevin he made his round, grabbing an empty box and collecting what he’d need to fix Neil up enough to get him far away from Millport. In the shelf underneath the bench by the door were the batteries, over by the boxes of synth-skin was the glue, and then on the bench with the arm should be his screwdrivers, the right size of screws, and the scalpel.
He’d found two out of three by the time that Kevin blinked awake, adjusting to the sudden input of light. “Oh, you’re back.”
Andrew gestured vaguely. He turned over the small pile to his right where he was sure he had put down the screwdriver. Then he flipped through the papers on the other side of the table with the same disappointing result. Then he said: “Any idea where the small Philips screwdriver is?”
Kevin furrowed his brows, briefly looking distant again before his eyes sharpened and he gave Andrew his full attention. It meant he’d shut off whatever Jeremy Knox talk on cyborg rights and the future of artificial lifeforms he’d been obsessively rewatching. Good for now, although it would be less so in five minutes.
“Oh, don’t leave the golden boy for me,” Andrew said. “I just need the screwdriver and then I’m off. Didn’t wanna bother you.”
“It was a documentary, actually,” Kevin replied. He got to his feet, swaying a little as he always did, his body off balance without the arm and Kevin refusing to re-calibrate his system because it was only a temporary matter. Andrew had promised him it would be. “Did you know that the idea of intelligent machines goes back all the way to antiquity? Hephaestus, the Ancient Greek god of invention and metalworking, had humanoids he had crafted out of metal to help him in his forges and other robotic servants at his palace. Of course, the modern idea of a robot is quiet different, but our history is much more far reaching than people think.”
“Philips screwdriver,” Andrew said, gesturing at the mess of a table before him. He knew he’d used it here last, adjusting some of the wires of the arm.
Kevin turned to a different workbench, one that was covered in discarded metal plating and spare wires. It only took him a few moments to pull the missing tool from the mess on that table. “Matt had it earlier, something about one of his braces coming loose.”
Andrew took it with a scoff, not even bothering to complain. He’d had the same conversation with the rest of the house’s residents – and those that passed through frequently – often enough. But the workshop was only nominally his, and everyone else had access because enough of them needed it. Never mind that they didn’t find what they were looking for half of the time because the chaos was his.
“Will you tell him that you won’t fix it if he screwed it on too tightly again?” Kevin asked as he fell into step beside him.
Andrew shook his head. “Oh, he knows.”
Kevin followed him upstairs and Andrew waited on the deck for the android to catch up with him. He wasn’t so sure letting Kevin and Neil meet was a good idea, but if he tried to explain to Kevin why he needed him to stay behind that would only make him more zealous to meet the other M-Tech prototype. Perhaps they even knew each other already, although Kevin had never mentioned there being a fourth.
In the end it didn’t matter because when he made it back to the den it was empty. The movie was still paused, and as Andrew stilled and listened, he could hear the vague trample of footsteps on the upper floors. There really wasn’t a point in giving Neil a tour, but of course Nicky would have insisted.
“Abby put the leftovers in the fridge,” a voice said from down the hall, and Andrew popped his head back into the hallway to watch Renee put away her basket in the hall closet. She turned to him with a smile when she spotted him. “How was work?”
“Work.” He ignored Kevin’s disapproving stare and set off after her towards the kitchen. “Hey, I need your help hot wiring a car.”
“After dinner?”
Andrew put the box down on the counter, popped the candy cabinet open and grabbed a Mars bar. He took a bite, then gestured for Renee to lead the way.
“Andrew,” she reprimanded softly.
He grinned around his mouthful. “Not hungry.”
Kevin had stopped by the box, taking out the battery and turning it over. “Your nutritional choices-”
Andrew spun Renee towards the door. “Going now!”
He ignored Kevin’s indignant spluttering, and thankfully Renee did too. They rode out to Neil’s car in silence, interrupted only briefly by Andrew’s explanation of the situation. Renee immediately voiced the same concerns he’d had about Neil’s battery and the fact that he was M-Tech, but didn’t suggest useless solutions or wring her hands. She simply understood and would be there to help with the inevitable fallout.
It reminded Andrew of why he liked her when he never really did any of Wymack’s other more permanent guests.
The car was a blue Hyundai, as Neil had said, and easy enough to unlock even without a key. The tank popped open without a hitch, and so Andrew filled it up while Renee pried open the bottom of the console to start the car. It took her only a moment, and so they were back on the road before anyone even saw them.
For a brief moment Andrew had hope that they might even make it back before Nicky could finish his tour and introduce Neil and Kevin, but his optimism was soon squashed. He helped Renee stow the car in the tractor barn, then gave it a cursory once over in the hopes of some kind of hint towards where Neil had come from. But the car was clean, not even a speck of dirt on the floor mats betraying the mysterious android’s past. With Renee judging him from the barn doors Andrew didn’t bother digging deeper, so they simply shut the car in and headed back inside.
The rest of the household had congregated in the kitchen, and Andrew knew he wouldn’t like whatever had happened the moment he set foot inside the house. Neil was slumped over in a chair beside the kitchen counter, plugged into the USB-charger there and refusing to stir despite the commotion around him. Kevin sat at the small table in the back, watching him with consternation, while Nicky was crouched in front of the unconscious android, a wet towel in his hand. Matt was leaning against the counter, arms crossed and observing the scene in front of him with concern. When they heard the front door open, he and Nicky immediately snapped their attention towards Andrew. Kevin didn’t move.
“I swear to god we didn’t do anything to him,” Nicky said quickly.
Andrew only raised an eyebrow, watching his cousin retreat as he crossed the kitchen towards Neil. The synthetic skin of his face was scraped, although Nicky had done his best to clean the wounds that weren’t really wounds. The perhaps most disconcerting thing about synth skin would always be that it didn’t bleed.
“We were just giving him a tour while you were gone,” Matt explained. “But when we got to the kitchen and he saw Kevin he just booked it. Straight out the front door and down the road.” He gestured out the kitchen window. “He made it halfway to the gate before he just crashed.”
“Folded like a lawn chair,” Nicky added, hands moving wildly. “Just bam, face in the dirt.”
“I carried him inside and we plugged him in, but he won’t restart. Kevin said it’s his battery but, well…” Matt shrugged.
Andrew wasn’t sure what he should worry about more, the android’s reaction to Kevin or the state of his battery. He chose the latter, but only because it was the one that could deal with right now.
He turned to Renee. “I forgot to grab a fire bag from downstairs.”
She nodded and was off without a word. The other two looked from Andrew to Neil, expressions somewhere between expectant and worried.
Andrew gestured at them to get out. “This isn’t a circus.”
They scrambled before he had to threaten them, probably back towards the den, although he couldn’t hear the movie restart. He had half a mind to throw Kevin out too, but something about his concentrated study of Neil gave Andrew pause. So, he let him sit and watch as he unplugged Neil and moved his chair back towards the table. Without prompting Kevin helped him turn it underneath the other android so he could slump forwards over the back of the chair, giving Andrew easy access to his back. Andrew dragged a chair over for himself with his foot, then laid out his tools and the battery.
Renee returned quickly with the bag, then stalled as she regarded Neil. After a moment she pushed some of that dark hair out of his face with gentle fingers. Then she stepped back towards Kevin, squeezed his shoulder in support, and said to both of them: “I’ll be on the porch if you need me.”
Andrew waited until he’d heard the door close before he pushed Neil’s shirt up. He had to repress a shudder as he regarded the scared expanse of his back, then shifted the chair slightly to make sure Kevin couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it. Not that Kevin was paying much attention except to Neil’s face.
Much like the vanity of giving their androids a semi-functional digestive system, Moriyama Technologies had also spared no expenses when it came to covering their prototypes in synthetic skin. While most manufacturers only bothered with the body parts that were most visible, Tetsuji Moriyama, the company’s leading robotics researcher, had designed and covered his machines as if they were truly human. Andrew had found it an inconvenience when doing maintenance on Kevin, but synth skin at least came with the advantage of being engineered to not scar. At least it didn’t if treated properly. Glued back together with a specially designed chemical compound, two pieces of synth skin would merge back into one without a trace of ever having been damaged, leaving behind only a smooth and unblemished surface.
Of course, having been made to emulate skin Andrew wasn’t surprised to learn that it also grew back together naturally. Still the marks on Neil’s skin were disconcerting. Most of them were small enough, a cut to reach the memory banks here, another to fix the hip connectors there. But there were others too, brutal and nonsensical, not the marks of maintenance but a life on the run. How many years had Neil been out there? And how had he survived until now, without access to the replacement parts that he would inevitably need as time broke down his mechanical body?
Andrew allowed himself a moment to trace the biggest of the scars, feeling the familiar pucker of raised skin on a body whose mechanical nature should have made it immune to such faults. Then he forced himself to take the scalpel and start working.
After having worked with Kevin for months, Andrew was perhaps the only person outside of the M-Tech lab compounds that knew the ins and outs of their prototypes, making his work now efficient. Not that the battery compartment would have been hard to find. Not only were there certain similarities between the layouts of all types of androids manufactured in the US, but there was a swollen section of skin towards Neil’s lower back that Andrew now cut away, revealing a bent metal plate. The screws holding it in place were almost worn smooth, making them difficult to loosen – and once he had they sprung away almost on their own, the internal pressure pushing against the plate too much to bear.
Neil’s insides were predictably grim. The battery was a bloated, dangerous thing, and Andrew slowed down, very carefully disconnecting and then taking it out. He made sure the fireproof bag was sealed properly before carefully returning it to the table, where Kevin reached for it with a horrified expression. Andrew didn’t bother to caution him, letting the other android distract himself with verifying that Neil hadn’t been properly maintained for years.
The cables and braces that were laid bare without the battery inspired anything but confidence in Andrew that Neil would be able to go on like this much longer. Duct tape covered most of them, and still despite it there were joints that barely held on and cables that had begun to fray. If he were to do his job right, Andrew would spend all night rewiring and welding, but he would have needed Neil’s permission for that. The battery was one thing, replacing the other 90% of his insides quite another.
So, he straightened out a few cables, regretting that he hadn’t brought friction tape along, and then set about installing the battery. He secured the custom rigging, then connected the entire thing and double checked that everything was as it should be. He did his best to straighten out the metal plating before he fastened it with some new screws, glued the flap of skin back into place, and covered the whole thing with Neil’s T-shirt again.
He snapped his fingers to get Kevin’s attention, and together they sat Neil down by the counter again, the retractable cable that sat just underneath his armpit plugged back into the charger. It would be a couple minutes until Neil would have enough energy to wake up, so Andrew grabbed the leftovers from the fridge. He cleaned up his things while he waited on the microwave, then dropped off his plate by the seat next to Kevin before returning to Neil’s side to turn him on.
The android came back to life slowly, his internal workings booting up first before the external sensors, his artificial eyes and nerves, did. Andrew put his foot up on the chair between his legs, caging him in – a smart decision because the moment Neil jolted to full consciousness, he jumped, nearly tearing the cable from the charger.
“Easy, pinocchio,” Andrew said, leaning in close to force him back into the chair.
Neil eyed him with an alarmed expression, then took a sharp, angry breath. He pulled back and hissed: “Fuck you.”
Andrew said nothing.
Neil continued to hold his stare for a moment, and then his internal systems seemed to have caught up fully. He turned towards the cable, rolled his shoulders and gingerly fingered the incision Andrew had made. “What the fuck did you do?”
Andrew silently held out his hand for the fireproof bag, which Kevin handed over. He unzipped it and showed Neil the broken battery that had been hooked up to his system until a couple of minutes ago. “You can keep it, if you want,” he offered. “I’m not in the explosives business.”
Neil looked appropriately horrified for a second before his expression shuttered.
When he made no move to get away, Andrew pulled back, sealing the bag and placing it on the counter next to Neil before he rounded Kevin and took the seat by his food.
Neil’s hard stare followed him, then got hung up on Kevin.
“You can be glad Andrew found you when he did,” Kevin said, “When was the last time someone did maintenance on you?”
“Fuck you.”
Kevin looked helplessly at Andrew, but Andrew just shrugged and shoveled a fork full of pasta into his mouth.
“That’s not a normal android battery you installed in me,” Neil said after a moment of quietly assessing his new hardware.
“It’s two seven volt Trojan prosthetic batteries in a custom rig,” Kevin said. “We don’t exactly have access to original parts.”
Neil cocked his head as he regarded Kevin, and Andrew didn’t like the intelligence flash behind his artificial eyes. He knew M-Tech androids were all that the company claimed they were and had spent enough time with Kevin to understand there was a difference between them and most other intelligent robots. But there was Kevin, and then there seemed to be Neil.
Instead of reacting to what Andrew knew he’d taken from that admission, the fact that Kevin’s stay here wasn’t sanctioned by the company, he said, almost innocently: “Trojan’s android batteries have a smaller standard. You could have rigged one of those and it would have fit.”
“Prosthetic batteries are freely available, though, and no one asks any follow up questions,” Kevin said, eyes glinting in barely disguised excitement as he explained. “And two of them in a series circuit give you about the same voltage as an android battery with a negligible loss in capacity. M-Tech is especially excessive in that regard. We don’t need to store that much energy since we should be constantly generating-”
“I’m aware of how my body works,” Neil cut him short.
Kevin sighed. “Right. My point is, the rig Andrew made automatically switches to a parallel circuit if you take one of the batteries out. So for one you have the smaller, more easily available batteries, and then you can also exchange them without-”
“Having to turn yourself off,” Neil finished, scowl disappearing for the first time since he’d woken up again. He turned to Andrew, expression half wondrous. “And you came up with that?”
Andrew shrugged, then stuffed his mouth.
Neil turned to Kevin with a raised eyebrow.
“Andrew’s a genius,” Kevin said proudly. “He hates it when I say that, though.”
In reply, Andrew picked one of Neil’s old screws from the box and tossed it at Kevin.
Kevin picked it up from the floor and put it back without glancing at Andrew.
Andrew shrugged and went back to eating. He didn’t really care what Kevin did or said; he had done what he had to because he needed to, never more, never less. Neil only had to charge now, and then Andrew would tell him where the car was and send him on his merry way. Kevin would probably disagree, the presence of another M-Tech android both too dangerous to justify and yet too compelling to ignore, but that too didn’t matter. He would get over it once Neil was gone again.
Neil gave the charging cable another glance, clearly considering his escape. Then he leaned back, crossed his arms, and silently watched Kevin.
Kevin tried to meet his gaze, then turned away to watch Andrew eat before eventually looking down at his hand. He made a fist with it, then relaxed his fingers again and screwed his eyes shut. Finally, he sighed and turned back to Neil.
Neil said: “So it was you. My money was always on Riko.”
Kevin’s smile was wry.
It took Andrew a moment to understand the turn the conversation had taken. The memory was an old one, shoved into the deep, dark recess of his brain like all the others like it: His foster father, the one with the burnt off ear and the preference for scotch, sitting in his armchair in front of the TV, drinking while his wife was mending some clothes on the couch and Andrew and the little girl they were fostering alongside him sat on the carpet floor, playing with the wooden train set. On the TV some talk show blared louder than it needed to be.
You’ll never guess which one of these two boys is a robot.
Andrew remembered the headlines, remembered how much of a sensation Kevin and his ‘brother’ Riko had been. He also remembered the way his foster father had laughed, raised his glass in a mocking toast, and said: “Mechanical kids, that’s the future right there, honey. These brats start to piss you off you just take out the battery.”
Kevin took a deep breath, then leaned in, tone confidential. “You wouldn’t have lost that bet.”
If the revelation shocked Neil the same way that it had the rest of the house when Kevin had turned up on their doorstep he didn’t let it show. Instead his eyes narrowed, that terrible intelligence flashing behind them, as he filed away that information. Andrew couldn’t even begin to guess what it meant to him: Neil had recognized Kevin, but Kevin seemed to have no idea who Neil was. Likely, then, that Neil hadn’t been raised in M-Tech’s labs the way Kevin and Riko had. Had that been how he had gotten away? Who knew about him and who had helped him get away – because someone had to have, according to the marred skin of his back? And how long had he been refusing the Moriyama leash?
Kevin rolled his shoulders, trying to act as if he was comfortable telling Neil what he had only so reluctantly shared with the rest of them a few months ago. “We’re different versions of the same initial program that my mo- that Kayleigh Day wrote for Moriyama Technologies. Simultaneous versions, although in the lab he’s numbered one and I’m two. The first successful versions of complete artificial intelligence, a small program emulating human learning ability and then raised and taught like a real child might be. I don’t suppose I have to tell you how it works.”
“Yeah, I’d prefer the short version,” was all Neil said.
Kevin nodded with a grimace. “There’s no short version, really, although I suppose-” he sighed. “You know about the spotlight they shone on us once they were certain we wouldn’t fail. You know the gimmick, you know the interviews and the countless tests and the speculation. They made different bodies for us to make it seem like we were growing up and used us to showcase how lifelike their androids were going to be once the programs they were developing had reached full adulthood.
“Over the years the novelty of the act wore off, I suppose, but now that they’ve proven to the world that their methods work, now that they’ve gone public with their product, there’s still one way to recapture some of that attention.”
“Finally tell the world which one of you it really was,” Neil guessed.
Kevin gave him a pained smile. “There was a shareholder meeting. There was a debate, but in the end they picked me. Something about being the more approachable one, about being the more beloved. The one that would sell better.”
Having spent the last couple of months working with Kevin, Andrew couldn’t help but scoff. It earned him a dirty look from the android in question, but the interruption had pulled Kevin out of the despondent memories before he drowned in them again.
He reached for his arm to hug himself, only realizing too late that it wasn’t there anymore and settling for his side. “Riko didn’t take the rejection well, and I didn’t stick around long enough for them to patch me back up. That’s the short version of it.”
“I’m guessing your genius is working on a replacement for that?” Neil said and rolled his shoulders as if to make sure his own limbs were all still attached. There was sympathy in his face, but he couldn’t hide his grimace.
Kevin gave him a weak, sad smile. “Our coding is proprietary, which makes it difficult to mod.”
“I’m aware.”
The hope in Kevin’s voice was almost painful to listen to. “Do you know how to get around it? You’ve been…away from the lab for longer than me. Did you-”
“No,” Neil lied, unconvincingly.
But Kevin believed it. His voice was small when he asked: “So I assume you have an impenetrable safe in your head as well and you’ve not been able to break in?”
Neil shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. There’s nothing of interest in there.”
Andrew almost laughed because Neil clearly had no idea of what Kevin considered to be of interest. He had been trying to decrypt the partitioned drive that his creators had denied him access to ever since he had arrived, hoping for the explanation of his existence. So far he’d failed, but Kevin was nothing if not stubborn: There were blueprints in his head, he was convinced of it, and if he could just access them they could fix his arm.
They would be useless for a runaway android without a trusted mechanic, though.
Kevin shook his head, dejected. Neil closed his eyes as if he could ignore Kevin’s disappointment like that and relaxed back into the chair.
Andrew watched them both for a quiet moment, one of them the broken machine that he’d come to know and feel protective of over the past months, the other a stranger that refused to ask for the help he so clearly needed but whose presence would surely have catastrophic consequences. It wasn’t a responsibility Andrew wanted to take, but he had been the one who had brought Neil here in the first place. And perhaps the choice had already been made when he had first realized Neil was Moriyama property, just like Kevin. Because he had promised Kevin, and Andrew kept his promises.
He pulled the box towards Kevin. “Can you take that back down to the workshop? And drop the battery off by the containers, would you?”
Kevin regarded him balefully, then looked back at Neil. Anger and longing warred in his expression as the other android continued to ignore him. But with a sigh he left to do as Andrew had asked.
Neil cracked open one eye to watch him leave, then turned to Andrew. Andrew returned the look with an impassive face.
He waited until he could hear Kevin struggling with the back door before saying: “The battery’s a band-aid; you won’t last another half year in the state you’re in. I doubt there’s any secret on that drive worth taking into an early grave with you.”
Neil regarded his hand, the lines of his face softening ever so slightly, before he returned Andrew’s stare with a stony one of his own. “I won’t beg.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Incredulity shattered the android’s carefully shuttered expression. His eyes widened as hope and disbelief warred inside of him, and Andrew hated how he could feel his own resolve only strengthen at the sight of Neil’s pain and desperation. It was a rule that he didn’t care about the machines, big or small, that he fixed, and the price was always money.
“Whatever’s in that head of yours in exchange for prolonging your miserable existence for a couple more years.”
Neil pretended to think about it for a moment, but Andrew could see the answer in his eyes the moment he’d uttered his terms. Neil swallowed, then made a valiant attempt at bartering: “Only what you need to fix Kevin’s arm.”
It was one and the same, so Andrew shrugged.
Neil slumped back into his chair with a ragged breath, then screwed his eyes shut for a moment as if in pain. Andrew understood the quiet self-admonitions but ignored Neil’s war with himself in favor of finishing his dinner.
He had less than a couple of forks full of food left on the plate when the front door banged open, admitting heavy footsteps. Neil turned towards the hallway with wide eyes, trying to hide himself behind the counter as best as he could without unplugging himself.
Andrew filed away that reaction for later and called: “In the kitchen!”
Neil gave him a dirty look, but Andrew ignored him and waved cheerfully at the face peering in through the door.
David Wymack was Andrew’s boss, and from the expression on his face already rethinking his choice of hiring Andrew again. Wymack had made a name for himself in the field of robotics in his younger years, coauthoring papers on the potential development of complete artificial intelligence and its possible marriage to mechanical bodies with Kayleigh Day herself. Then she’d gone to Japan to make their theories reality while Wymack had retired from academia to take over his late father’s gas station in bumfuck, Arizona and save his childhood home from being repossessed. Still he had a vested interest in his field of study, having specialized in private in the ethics of the whole endeavor. He’d founded the nation’s largest NGO advocating for the rights of cyborgs, fighting health insurance and robotics companies on making human bodies into property because of mechanical augmentations. Since the advent of true androids on the market those concerns had been widened to fighting for artificial humanity’s right to be recognized as people and not property under the law.
It was a noble cause that Andrew had very little patience for but that had become Nicky’s bread and butter since accepting a remote position working for the NGO’s marketing department. It was also why there was a revolving cast of cyborgs, androids, and roboticists staying at the house. Andrew didn’t mind them as long as Wymack paid him when they came to him looking for someone who could fix their little mechanical woes.
For the past week Wymack had been at a conference in LA, and Andrew could already hear Kevin whining in his ear, interrogating him until he’d told Kevin of every breath Trojan’s cyborg poster child, the CEO’s son Jeremy, had taken. It made him rethink his choice to accept Wymack’s double job offer a couple of years ago.
Seeing the unfamiliar android charging in his kitchen, Wymack came in. He sent Andrew a questioning glance, then scrutinized Neil as he waited for an answer. Seeing as there was no escape, the android puffed himself up, pretending like his earlier panic hadn’t happened. Andrew thought he saw a flash of recognition pass across his face as he returned Wymack’s searching stare with one of his own, but that was to be expected.
“Neil,” Andrew explained around the last mouthful of food. “Stumbled into the store half dead so I treated him to a new battery.”
Wymack raised an eyebrow, but didn’t take his eyes of Neil. He held out his hand. “David Wymack.”
Neil didn’t take it, nor did he reply.
Wymack knew when to give up, and turned back to Andrew. “I hope you don’t expect me to start paying you for every stray you drag in.”
Andrew almost smiled. “He’s Moriyama property. Figured it was best to help him die far away from Kevin, and he’s the one paying me. We’re gonna figured Kevin’s damn arm together, aren’t we, Neil?”
Neil shot him an irritated look but wouldn’t take his eyes off Wymack. The old man seemed to feel a similar way because he didn’t even twitch when Andrew rose to his feet.
“You know something about encryption?” he asked Neil, reaching for a chair to sit down.
Neil only glowered.
“Cracked his own locked drive at least,” Andrew answered for him as he loaded the dishwasher.
“Fuck you,” Neil said, although this time it was more performative than anything.
Andrew lifted two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute, then turned on his heels before Wymack could think to involve him in trying to get Neil’s unique insights on whatever burning questions he had.
The rest of the house was quiet, Nicky and Matt likely waiting for someone who knew what was happening to pass by so they could get an update. Andrew didn’t feel like dealing with them right now, nor did he want to go looking for where Kevin had gone to mope, so he headed out front.
He found Renee on the porch swing right by the door, staring at the gravel driveway with a vacant expression. She blinked awake slowly as he passed in front of her, taking a seat on the banister and digging his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
Renee smiled at him. “I don’t think it will be such a bad thing for him to stay.”
Andrew had stopped being surprised by her perceptiveness and ability to know what he was thinking a few days into their acquaintance, so he simply shrugged. “Arm could use his help, I suppose, and Kevin someone else to annoy. Maybe I can finally get a good night’s sleep now.”
Renee chuckled softly, then said: “You like him.”
“I find him useful. He’s a danger to himself and society at large, but I know my limits and that arm is beyond me. I’ll be glad when I can send him on his merry way and wash my hands of him.”
“I’d offer to take him from you if I could. I like him. He’s interesting. Mysterious. Very, very easy to look at.”
Andrew shook his head and lit his cigarette. Neil was an M-Tech prototype, every angle and line of his face created with intent specifically to be very, very easy to look at. It was simply one of many objective truths about him. Such as: “He’s not human.”
“Ouch.”
There was no actual hurt in her expression because she knew exactly how he’d meant it, but still guilt curled in his stomach. He took a long drag of his cigarette, trying to soothe it with nicotine.
He let out a deep breath, fogging up the air around him with smoke. “Besides, chances are he falls apart on his own before long. Maybe we can reboot him with a better personality.”
Renee regarded him for a long moment, watching him take another drag and then puffing out the smoke. Finally, she settled on: “It’s a good thing you’re doing, helping him. You’re a good man, Andrew.”
Her earnest expression was too much for him to look at, so he stared out at the long driveway and the dusk settling deeply on the desert beyond. “I’m helping myself,” he told her. “I only care about me and mine, and he is not.”
“Of course,” she said with a knowing smile, “That would be a terrible thing.”
Andrew gestured his assent with his cigarette.
Renee hummed softly, eyes sliding past him as she watched the night. If his puffs of smoke were destroying the picture, she didn’t complain, but after a moment she rose to her feet and dusted of her skirt. She crossed the porch towards him, staying a moment longer to enjoy the first twinkling of stars on the horizon, then she gave his hair a soft pat and disappeared inside.
Andrew let out an annoyed huff when she was gone, then dug his phone out of his pocket to distract himself from his thoughts. Allison had messaged him, but he wasn’t in the mood to deal with their little project right now. The house group chat was abuzz as Nicky had finally caved and spilled the news about Neil, but just because Dan had mentioned him Andrew didn’t have to respond.
His brother’s name at the top of the screen caught his attention, though.
Has Nicky talked to you about this summer yet? Aaron’s first message went. Then, a couple minutes later he’d sent another one: I’m thinking about coming up this weekend, btw
That there was something to be discussed about his brother’s plans for the summer once university let out meant that Andrew wasn’t going to like whatever changes Aaron had in mind. But he’d get the rundown of it from Nicky later, and then could make his disagreement known on the weekend. Although he half wanted to tell Aaron not to come. Nicky and him had taken enough of a risk when they’d let him meet Kevin. He didn’t need another runaway M-Tech prototype threatening his career, no matter how small fry Aaron would be compared to the rest of them if they ever got caught.
Still, what else could he say?
Ignoring the first message he texted back a brief ok, then dropped hand and phone into his lap.
He leaned back against the pillar, took another drag of his cigarette and closed his eyes. Around him the night was quiet except for the chirping of the cicadas, and for a moment he could pretend that this was all there was to it: Just him, the nicotine and the ever present trill of insects. No obligations and no consequences. No Aaron, no Kevin, no Neil.
But Andrew had never been good at that kind of peace. With nothing else to think about is brain replayed the glimpse of fraying cables and failing braces that he’d gotten as he’d replaced Neil’s battery, and before he could stop himself he’d drawn up his mental blueprints of M-Tech androids, a repository of all he had been able to glean by working with Kevin, and started a list of things that would need to be done and spare parts he’d have to order to do them.
He cracked his eyes open to escape , but the desert h ad disappeared in to darkness, leaving him with nothing but the house at his back and the problems waiting for him inside of it.
In his hand, his phone had lit up with Aaron’s reply: Great.
Then: Who’s Neil?
With a sigh Andrew let the remains of his cigarette drop onto the porch, then ground them up as he got to his feet. Pain in my ass, he typed out, then deleted again. He dropped his phone back into his pocket without actually replying and headed back inside. Neil had to have charged enough by now for Andrew to be able to take him on a tour of the workshop, and the sooner they got started on Kevin's arm, the sooner they'd be done with all of this. And that was what Andrew really wanted.