Chapter Text
They take a cab to Martin's flat.
Jon admits that he doesn't think he can handle the walk to Sloane Square, and Martin suddenly can't stop wondering if TFL could be tracking their movements. He's suspicious of even using his phone to call an Uber, so he digs into the petty cash to get enough to pay for a ride to Brixton. Then upon thinking further, grabs enough for the cab ride back, as well. He shoves the bills in his pocket and locks the manager's office behind him.
He catches Jon's bewildered look and explains, "sometimes we get Americans, and they tip. Few years ago, Sasha started banking her tips for petty cash, in case we needed, like, carryout. Now most of us do it –" even Martin, when money is tight "– and we can use it if we need cash."
"Is this a common practice?" Jon's staying plugged in until the last minute, and Martin is relieved – it almost seems like Jon's exerting power faster than he's gaining it, at this point, and he's a bit nervous at the prospect of hauling an unconscious android up the four flights to his flat. "I was under the impression that most employees in the service industry are heavily preoccupied with obtaining and keeping money, more than sharing it."
"Not even a bit. I – I don't think I've ever worked somewhere like this before. I'm not making quite as much as I did when I was a builder, but I prefer giving up a bit of money that I wasn't counting on anyway, and getting to share a curry with Basira sometimes."
Jon nods.
It takes Martin less than ten minutes to finish up the tasks he'd been lingering prior to Jon's episode, and he bustles Jon out the front door with a nervous look shot at the security cameras on the lamp posts.
"Don't worry about those," Jon advises, catching the glance. "Elias – he knows I'm here. Or, he could know. It's fine."
"That feels less fine!"
"No, I mean. If we go somewhere else, it's not like he can track me there. He has to know where to look." He grimaces. "And he knows I'm going to come back, so he doesn't care." Martin has some strong feelings about whoever this Elias is, and the idea of Jon going back to him, but he manages to bite down the curiosity that's clawing at him.
He waves a cab down and tries not to channel the part of his brain that's read spy novels, insisting that he should dismiss the first car that stops for them, and instead waits patiently as Jon lowers himself into the back seat and laboriously slides over to make room for Martin. "Thanks," Martin tells the cabbie, once they're both in and the door is closed. "Barrington Road, Brixton." It's only a twenty minute drive, even past nine on a Friday, and Martin can't find the words to say a single thing to Jon or the driver. He's beyond grateful for the top 40 playing on the radio, waves off the driver's offer to turn the music down. Jon is silent as well, and he's slumped back against the seat like he's just had a night of heavy drinking. "Thank you," Martin tells the cabbie again, as the car turns onto his road. "It's just up past the light on the – yeah, right there." And then they're both standing outside the block of council flats where Martin's been living since his father left.
"I'm really sorry, but the lift is out," is the first thing Martin says once the cab pulls away and they're alone. "I didn't think to say anything, but I don't know if that's a – a problem. If it is, I mean, I can –"
"It's fine," Jon says again. "My fine m-m-m-motor skills are not operating optimally –" what an understatement "– but gross movements are still within my c-capabilities."
"Right, um. That's good, because I live on the fourth floor."
"Ah. Right. Well, let's get on that, then."
Martin walks behind Jon, somewhat worried that the android will collapse and he'll have to catch him from sliding down the stairs, but they somehow make it to Martin's front door without incident. He rifles in his messenger bag for his keys and spares a thought for the state of his coffee table, stacked high with books and dirty mugs, but decides that Jon will just have to deal with the mess.
"Home sweet home," Martin says, clicking the bolt back and swinging open the door. "Welcome to my humble abode, I suppose." He follows Jon into the flat and locks the door behind him, double-checking the locks out of a continued sense of paranoia. When he turns back around, Jon is standing in the middle of the room and turning a slow circle, taking the whole place in. Well, not that there's much to make up 'the whole place.' It's a one-bedroom if you have an extremely generous definition of bedroom. The front door opens immediately into a small sitting room with a squashy couch and IKEA coffee table, and there's a galley kitchen on the far side of the room, washer tucked under the counter. Opposite the kitchen is his bedroom, just big enough for a bed frame and dresser, and a cracked door on the right shows off the bathroom, complete with narrow stall shower.
It's clear that he's done his best to make the place look somewhat homey – crocheted afghan from the charity shop draped over the back of the couch, cheaply framed art hung on command hooks, brightly colored mugs cluttering up the counter – but it doesn't do much to disguise how small and dreary his home is.
"I – I used to share a two-bedroom flat with my mum," he explains, fiddling with his keys. "Same building. It was on the ground floor, because she couldn't really do stairs. But, um. She moved out a few years ago, she needed more care than I could, uh, provide. So I took a smaller flat."
"Your port," Jon says, having finished his cursory examination of the room. "Where is it?"
"Oh. Oh! Right." Martin hastens to kick off his shoes and drop his bag on the couch, then walks across the room to his kitchen. He'd been somewhat… well, not expecting, but hoping that Jon would agree to come back to his place, to use his Solus port, so he'd begun the process of unearthing the thing. It was above the counter, where a small helper bot would be able to shut down without getting in the way; Martin had a microwave there, now bereft of the cans of soup which had been living on top. "Sorry, just give me a sec – I didn't expect to need to, hup –" He unplugs and lifts the microwave with little trouble, grimacing in embarrassment as it reveals a dirty counter beneath, and places the appliance on the table nearby. "You can, er – you can sit at the table. I left it here the last time I rearranged, when, um, when Gerry came over, so they could sit and charge without having to like, sit on the counter?"
Jon has followed him, and immediately steps to the counter. He takes a long, careful moment to examine the Solus port that's been revealed, but ultimately finds nothing to prevent him from plugging in. His hands are shuddering, but not so much that he isn't able to click-twist his dongle securely into place; he and Martin both give twin sighs of relief, and Jon sinks shakily into the chair that's in front of him.
"Thank you," Jon says. "This is sufficient for my needs."
"Thank God," Martin says, and takes the chair opposite to Jon's, looks at him over the microwave. "Do you just need to, like, charge all night? A longer time than you can at Coffee Pun? No," he answers himself, "you said you need to run some – some updates? To reboot?"
"Ultimately, that is what I will require," Jon answers. "But even if I had already completed a system diagnostic and were aware of all of my maladies, I would be unable to fix everything in just one charging period."
"I'm really sorry if this is too personal, but, um. Why not?"
"What do you know about the differences between artificial intelligence, and regular internet-enabled devices?"
"Um," Martin says again. "I know that you can talk and learn and grow, and that my laptop can't do that. Otherwise, I don't really know the mechanical differences, or anything."
Jon nods and his eyes seem to glow a bit brighter, and his voice transitions smoothly into the one that he uses when talking to Martin about deep water marine life, or the history of various buildings in central London. "If your laptop requires updates, you can run them all in one evening. It may take it quite a while, if you've been neglecting the upkeep, but it will ultimately be able to enact all of the changes that it requires in sequence, and end the period with an entirely updated device. AI, on the other hand, have a more active role in processing our systems. If there's even a simple update offered to my OS, I will have to both download and personally integrate it." He pauses, correctly reads Martin's baffled expression, and tries again. "Imagine, if you will, that you somehow become able to see a wider range of colors, by expanding the waves that your optical nerves can read. You would not immediately be able to go about your daily life, with simply more colors visible to you. You would need to reassess the way that you see everything, and there would likely be unforeseen changes in your regular functioning that would come along with that miraculous new vision. You wouldn't be able to just program yourself to understand it, you'd need to naturally learn that part through time and experience and integration."
"So… every time you update your software, you need to just… deal with it for a while, until it makes sense?"
"Close enough."
"So you can't run all of your updates at once, because that would be too overwhelming."
"Again, close enough," Jon agrees. "If I were fairly up to date, it would only take me a few days per data packet for full integration. At my current state, I –" he gestures helplessly, and Martin can see how forced the movement is. "I can't even begin to imagine how much work it's going to take."
"It sounds kind of like when I started therapy," Martin says, aiming for humorous but landing on thoughtful. "I didn't even know how fucked up I was until someone helped me think through all of the issues and find the problems to begin with."
"That is not an entirely inaccurate metaphor," Jon allows him, and Martin snorts.
"So, er – and again, you don't have to answer any questions you don't want to, but – where do you even start? Do you have a list of updates to choose from? Do you have to do them in order?"
"Amusingly enough," Jon says, "this is a place where I am more like your laptop. I need to defragment." Martin can't help it – he snorts a bit, and Jon doesn't look too annoyed at his response. "Yes, yes, your amusement is acceptable. It's a bit humiliating to have allowed myself to get to this state, but – that is where I need to begin. I must assess my current capabilities before I can even plan where to begin."
Well, okay," Martin says. "What do you need from me?"
"Nothing more than what you are already providing." Jon settles back in the chair and places his hands delicately on his thighs. "I will remain powered on through the process. There will be moments when my ability to communicate and process will be impaired, but this will not occur while you are conscious." Martin can't tell if that's an assumption that he's going to be asleep before Jon reaches that stage or a deliberate choice to not make himself vulnerable when another person – a near stranger, if he's being honest – could take advantage, but it's fine either way.
"Alright," Martin says. "Um. It's almost ten and I've got midshift tomorrow, so, um. I'm going to have some dinner and go to bed? Do you mind if I – if I use the kitchen while you're here?"
"I am a guest in your home," Jon says.
"I just want to – that's a yes, right?"
"Yes."
"Cool, right." Martin stands up from the table and over to the postage stamp of usually-free counter space, now crowded with cans of soup, and picks one without looking; he ends up with chicken and orzo. There's a moment where he tries to decide if he feels like finding a pot to heat the soup up on the stove, then gives up on that plan and just plugs the microwave into the outlet closest to the table, and places a chair over the dangerous length of cord that he'd otherwise surely trip over. He pours the soup into a large bowl, covers it with a piece of kitchen towel, and has hot soup two minutes later. It doesn't take him more than ten more minutes to eat that, and once his bowl and can are rinsed, there's nothing else that he needs to do.
"I'm going to get ready for bed now," Martin says, trying not to hover too close to Jon. "You can – you can do whatever you want, or need. If you want to – to leave, just lock the bottom lock on your way out, you don't have to like, ask me or anything."
"I will likely not leave overnight," Jon assures him. "And if it is necessary for any reason, I will not leave your home unlocked."
"Great. I'll just, uh – go to bed, then. My alarm is set for six, just so you're not surprised when you hear me then."
"I am aware that you might move around your own home, Martin," Jon says, with an unexpected bit of humor, and Martin gives a short laugh.
"Right. Well, goodnight, then." He uses the toilet first and brushes his teeth while staring wide-eyed at his reflection in the mirror, then gives another awkward wave to Jon as he steps out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. He usually doesn't bother closing the bedroom door, but that feels weird to do when he has a guest over, so he makes sure the latch catches and strips down to his vest and pants. He takes another twenty minutes or so to scroll social media while lying in bed, but he's exhausted enough that it's difficult to even remember to plug in his phone before his eyes close and it slips out of his hand. Before he's fully asleep, he takes a moment to think about how Jon is just on the other side of the wall, less than a foot from where Martin's head is smushed deep into a squashy pillow, and he smiles a bit.
When Martin's alarm goes off in the morning, he cracks open one eye just long enough to hit snooze, and slumps back into the mattress. He lies there for a couple of minutes, half dozing and chasing the vague memory of his dream, before a quiet beep through his bedroom wall reminds him of his houseguest and his eyes fly open.
"Oh," he says softly. "Right." Despite the early wake-up, he's alert in moments; he works opening shifts a few times a week, has to get to Chelsea by half past five, so a six ᴀᴍ alarm is practically a luxury at this point.
Martin doesn't bother getting fully dressed, just tugs on a pair of track pants and lets himself out of the bedroom.
Jon is seated where he was last night, tucked into a chair between the table and the counter, but he appears somewhat looser than he had when Martin had gone to bed. It's not exactly describable, but something about his joints don't look quite as locked into place as Martin had grown accustomed to. His eyes are closed and Martin can see the thin line where his eyelids shutter up, delicate as anything he's seen before. His hands are also doing something a bit funny – they're settled on his thighs, elbows and wrists relaxed, and his fingers are… they're twitching, just a bit. Like he's dreaming of typing, or moving small objects around.
Martin realizes that might be exactly what they're doing. Almost like a pianist, instinctively moving along with a piece of music that's playing; Jon is organizing files.
"Good morning," Martin says.
Jon immediately opens his eyes. His fingers still, which is a bit of a disappointment, but Martin doesn't have a chance to feel any kind of way about it, he's distracted by the clear brown of Jon's eyes, entirely fixed on him.
"Good morning," Jon responds.
"How did you, um. Sleep?"
"I did not shut down at any point," Jon corrects him. "So I did not sleep. But I am fully charged for the first time in many months, and I have a concrete grasp on the current state of my internal landscape."
"That sounds great!" Martin pulls a box of muesli down from the top of the fridge and pours himself a bowl as a concession to having a guest, but he still eats it dry, pinching small bits at a time. "And you said that's the – the first step to getting yourself all sorted out?"
"Yes."
"I'm really glad to hear that."
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Jon's fingers twitching minutely again as he unfocuses, and Martin crunching his breakfast. It's a nice bit of silence, not an awkward one, and Martin feels surprisingly comfortable with another person in his flat. A person he knows so little about, especially – it had taken more than a year of friendship before Gerry had come over after a late night, and even that had made Martin feel… crowded. A bit trapped with another person, in such close quarters. He's not sure what the difference is with Jon, but he's not unhappy about it.
Jon says, "I believe my ability to charge will not be broadly improved from defragmenting, though beginning from a baseline of fully charged will be helpful. I assessed the updates recommended for my OS, and it should take no longer than four sessions before my ability to operate reaches a state of cromulence. I will, however, require approximately five to nine days in between each update in order to integrate the changes most effectively."
"O-oh. That seems like a… a long time? To not be well, I mean."
"Martin," and now Jon was being a bit gentle. "I have not been well for a very, very long time." There's another pause as Martin tries to figure out what to say to that, but before he can figure it out, Jon continues. "I will continue to patronize your place of employment until I require another over-night period with a Solus port. Is this acceptable?"
"God, yes, of course," Martin says. "Here, I can tell you when I'm closing next week, yeah?"
"Yes."
Martin finishes his breakfast while Jon puts himself through a series of beeped patterns, flashing lights, and tiny movements, and then Jon stands up and detaches himself from Martin's port, lets his charging cord spool back into his neck.
"I will depart," Jon says, and Martin stands hastily, dusts his hands off on his joggers.
"Can I – do you need help getting –"
"No," Jon interrupts, but speaks carefully enough that Martin knows he isn't just being brushed off. "I have the resources I require to return home, and have no pressing work at my place of employment."
Martin knows he shouldn't say it, but the words come out of his mouth anyway. "Do you have to go home? Why can't you just – just stay here?"
Jon is stiff again, any of the relaxation and looseness that Martin saw, gone. "Suffice it to say that I must return. I will not stay here."
Martin notices he doesn't say that he can't stay here, but doesn't have any way to argue with Jon, let alone justification to do so. Jon is his own person, no matter what it is that Martin's doing to help him, and it's not his business to try and get him away from whatever 'home' means to him. Even if it's so – so – so something that he can't even charge there, let alone run the updates he so desperately needs.
"Okay," Martin says. "I'll see you on Tuesday?"
"Unforeseen complications aside, yes."
"Great. Okay. I hope you're, um. I hope you're well until then."
"Thank you, Martin."
Jon departs without fanfare, leaving Martin standing in the middle of his flat in his pyjamas, somewhere between pensive and hopeful.
The next time Martin is closing, Jon only comes in from six to half past and slips out before Martin locks up for the night, makes no explanation for it. Martin hopes that it's because he's so charged up that he doesn't need the extra time, and that maybe Jon came in just to see Martin? Unlikely, sure, but that would be nice.
On Wednesday, Jon stays while he's tidying up and rambles for an hour about neutrinos.
"No, no, wait," Martin says, holding up a hand. "You're telling me that they pass through solid objects, like people and the earth, but they're still detectable?"
"The ability to detect neutrinos is largely based on how they affect other substances, like measuring the radiation left behind when they pass through a body of water, or chlorine, or gallium."
Martin blinks. "Do they leave behind radiation when they pass through me?"
"If they do, it's not nearly enough to be detectable, let alone cause any harm. Radiation is ever-present in our galaxy, on our planet, and there are perfectly safe background levels existing at all times. It's possible that neutrinos somewhat contribute to that background level, but on such a negligible level that I have no record of it being successfully identified."
"I can't tell if I'm upset that I never knew there was radiation all around, or wish I still didn't know that," Martin mutters, and Jon's mouth quirks.
"If you desire, I can tell you more about latent radiation on earth when I next see you," he offers.
"That's – that's really generous of you, thanks Jon," Martin says. "I'll think on that and let you know if I feel like being even more afraid of the world around me than I already am." He says it with a wry smile, but Jon tilts his head a degree or two to one side and looks quizzical.
"Why are you afraid of the world?"
Martin laughs a bit, pushes his hair out of his eyes (and when did his bangs get so long?), and leans against the counter, broom in hand. "Less the world in general, more all of the things that… that happen in it, I guess?" He shrugs. "There's just a lot of scary stuff out there, and – and like, I'm a big guy. I'm not really scared of people. But I'm scared of people with knives, and cars, and of being robbed. I'm scared of getting the flu and getting fired if I can't come in, or losing my apartment because of some kind of administrative error. Not that that's likely to happen," he assures Jon, who is suddenly looking worried, too. "Just that things can happen, and I can't stop every bad thing that I worry about. So sometimes I want to know more about the things that I could be scared of, but sometimes I just don't want to know about it, if there's nothing I can do against it. Like radiation."
Jon looks pensive, and doesn't respond for long enough that Martin starts sweeping again. He's finished sweeping and moved on to mopping behind the counter when Jon speaks up. "What do you do when you are afraid of something, and can't change it?" he asks. "But you… you can't avoid the knowledge, or pretend that it doesn't scare you?"
Martin feels a glib answer rise to his lips, but he quashes it, waits until he has a real response for what he thinks Jon might be really asking. It takes him through mopping the whole café, down to the dry patch beneath Jon's feet, and he sits in the chair across from Jon with some care. Jon doesn't look impatient, but he does look – he looks like he genuinely wants to know what Martin is going to say. It's a bit heady, to see that expression on someone's face; it's not a common one. Not that no one likes him, of course. Just that, he fades into the background a bit. He's a convenient friend, and he knows that. So it's a new and incredible feeling, knowing that Jon is actively listening to him. That, even if he began coming to Coffee Pun for the Solus ports, that he's here now because of Martin. Probably.
"Well," he begins, tracing a finger over a scratch in the table. "A little bit, I just keep being afraid. But I don't let being afraid stop me from doing what I need to do. Not that I'm being stupid, or anything," he adds hastily. "If I'm afraid of people with knives, I try to not, like, walk into dark alleys alone, or walk down the street yelling about all of the money I have in my pockets. Not that I ever really have money in my pockets, ha. Um.
"But I mean, I don't go looking for trouble. And it's going to find me sometimes, and I can't always prevent that. But that doesn't mean I'm going to hide in my flat all the time, just to avoid possibly catching a cold from someone on the bus. Or quit, just so I don't get fired. Sure, maybe something I'm afraid of will come true. But maybe it won't, y'know?" Martin shrugs. "I'm not saying that I'm the person to listen to, if you're afraid of a thing. You should maybe talk to someone who isn't as afraid as I am – maybe they have some secret for you, or something, to being less worried. I guess I just… got used to being afraid, and I know that's part of who I am, and I keep living anyway?" He trails off, fairly sure he's said everything he means to communicate.
Jon doesn't take as long to answer this time, just says, "thank you," and lets Martin just sit there until the floor has dried enough for them to leave. Martin doesn't ask if Jon is going to come home with him, and Jon turns right where he turns left, walks off into the dark.
Martin has a spate of opening shifts and doesn't see Jon for almost a week. When they do interact, Jon stays through three closing shifts to charge, looking more and more run down each time. He's got the energy to natter on a bit about the process of oxidizing tea, and types of graffiti in ancient Pompei, but Martin can tell that his eyes are duller than they were that Saturday morning, and his hands are shaking enough again that Martin starts carrying his mug to the table for him. But he still goes home by himself.
Wondering if Jon is just being unbearably polite and won't invite himself over, Martin carefully tries to be explicit.
"You absolutely don't have to," he starts, holding Jon's tea hostage for an extra few seconds to make sure he has Jon's full attention. "But I want you to know that you could come over any night to charge and run updates. No pressure, of course. But you could. Even if I'm – even if I'm not closing. You can text me, or even just – just show up, and that would be fine. If you needed to, or – or just wanted to. But you don't have to."
"You said that already," Jon says, and there's a bit of a smile to it, but he also looks remarkably tired.
"Right, yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to repeat myself. Just – just wanted to make sure you knew that."
"I think I did know that," Jon says. "But I appreciate the reminder. And I will let you know if I desire it, or require it."
That's the best Martin can hope for, so he relinquishes Jon's tea and flees back to the counter.
He has another shift with Gerry before he sees Jon again, and Gerry spends the first half of their overlap complaining about a gallery they're working with.
"They insist that I need some kind of theme to tie all of my pieces together," they scoff, handing a mocha over the counter and poking at the next drink order sent over. "Like I'm some famous artist doing a full show, instead of kindly being granted a back room for a couple of weeks. I don't have a theme, I just... I dunno, paint what I want to."
"Maybe they're treating you like a famous artist because they think that's how all artists should be treated?" Martin offers, and Gerry rolls their eyes. "No, really! Maybe they hold every one of their artists to the same standard, so that when you become famous, you already have, uh, good habits engrained?"
"I appreciate the effort, Martin, but I highly doubt it. I think they just want to be able to look as pretentious as possible while showing how progressive they are to feature an AI's work."
"Is that very unusual, then? I – I mean, I feel like I see androids with students fairly regularly. Doesn't that mean they're at uni, and therefore, maybe... also studying art?"
"I wouldn't know," Gerry says, and Martin can tell they're aiming for casual, but not quite succeeding. "You know that I had as much of an opportunity to go to school as you did." Which is to say, none at all. Martin nods, and there's a gap in the conversation as the queue builds up, and both of them focus on the work. It's another few minutes before there's a moment to speak again. "There are a few other AI artists in London, but most of them work with digital media. It's easier, of course, because we can just... do that. If I had the processing space, I could be working on art right now." They snort, the sound carrying a fascinatingly mechanical undertone to it. "If I had the processing space, I could do a lot of things."
Martin isn't sure which part of that sentence he most wants to ask about, but he eventually settles on, "so why do you paint? Like, paint-paint, I mean. Isn't that harder for you?"
"Why do you write poetry on paper instead of on your phone?" Gerry counters, turning to slide a cold sandwich into the press. "It's nicer for you that way, yeah?" Martin nods. "I like that I have to... think about painting. Or like, I had to learn how to paint. I couldn't just download the skills – I had to build them up over time, the way a BI has to. Not that I wish I were a BI," they add hastily. "I just really enjoyed the learning process, mostly."
"Heavens forefend," Martin teased. "Biological Intelligence certainly isn't all it's cracked up to be, I can assure you." They both laugh, and Gerry leans against the counter as Martin handles the next few requests for black coffee and teas.
"You can ignore this question if you want –" Martin begins tentatively, and Gerry flaps their hand permissively. "– but why can't you just download the skills necessary to physically paint?"
"So you've probably watched The Matrix," Gerry posits, and Martin nods sheepishly.
"There are a few reasons why that doesn't actually work," Gerry says, and while they don't sound anything like Jon does when he's lecturing Martin, Martin is charmed at the similarity nonetheless. "I can download knowledge banks if I need to know, say, Japanese for something, or how to calculate the velocity of something else. Just pure pieces of information that require my knowing it, and nothing else. But the knowledge of how to do something is a little bit different." They pause in the explanation long enough that Martin serves a few more customers, and then they continue. "Like, if you can just google something, so can I, and I can memorize that information without actually expending any extra effort, except to allocate storage space. But you can't google 'how to paint' and learn how to actually do it, based on what you read, y'know?"
Martin nods.
"So in, I dunno, ninety-nine percent of cases, anything that a BI would have to learn how to do, so would I. I also need to build up muscle memory for tasks, and try and fail and try again a little bit differently and fail doing that, etcetera. It helps that I can memorize movement sequences, so if I get it right, I can perfectly replicate what I've done before, but that would just let me make exactly the same painting over and over and over again. Since that's not what I prefer to do as an artist, then I end up painting rather like a human would – I take the skills I've already learned and use them to try and do something different each time."
"That makes sense," Martin says. "And is that why most AI make digital art?"
"I don't know if it's most," Gerry allows. "But it's certainly easier, so all that a particular AI needs to make digital art is creativity, and not necessarily a set of physical skills built up over time. Well –" they backtrack. "It's not just creativity. Even if I downloaded the same sets of information that they had, I wouldn't necessarily be able to do the same kinds of digital art as they can. It's also connected to our experiences as people, y'know?"
"Sure," Martin agrees. "That's why poetry works at all."
"Exactly," Gerry says, and they're grinning. Martin is quite used to the artificial gleam of their teeth in the lights of the shop, and associates it with when he's managed to please Gerry, to feel like he's made them happy.
There's another hour or so of working in tandem, passing orders off, trading who's at the register and who's making drinks, and it's not until the lunch rush is well and truly over that Martin thinks to ask, "so what's up with the one percent of cases where you could download how to do something that requires skill and learning?"
"It's very unpleasant," Gerry says immediately. "Because you have to get it from someone who has built up that skill through practice, and recorded the process, and uploaded it somewhere, or passed it over to you. And that can be useful, but it's also awful."
"I – I'm sorry, I don't – what's... what's awful about that?"
"Every person on this world is unique, and that includes AI," Gerry says, and Martin nods. "As soon as we're created, we have unique personhood, even if we're stored in the same server or given the same inputs. Less unique than sibling BI would be in similar circumstances, because our digital environments are more controlled, but there's something about the spark that makes someone an AI that also makes sure that they're unique. So now, imagine that someone who is completely different from you took a – an imprint, or something, of how they learned how to dance, and transferred that set of memories over to you."
"I'm guessing I wouldn't be able to dance effortlessly?"
"Not in the slightest. That person might be taller or shorter than you are, they might be more muscular, or more practiced at moving their body. That's only the start of it, though. They might feel resentful that they'd been forced to learn to dance in school, or have a crush on their dance instructor, or remember how cold they were every time they entered the drafty studio where they learned. Learning to dance, for that hypothetical person, is inextricably tied into who they are as a person. And now, all of that is downloaded into your brain, and it's not your memories, and it's not a good fit."
"So... I might trip over my feet, if I tried to use those memories," Martin tries, "but also feel very weird about it?"
"Exactly," Gerry says. "But it would also affect every single other memory and skill in your head, because suddenly part of your brain feels wrong, or misaligned, and you need to integrate that set of memories through just... waiting, and doing your best to function through it, and it's – it's awful." They grimace. "Most AI try it, some time or another, just because we've got hubris and think 'it can't be as bad as everyone says it is, and I really want this skill without trying,' and then we have... well, essentially the AI version of a nervous breakdown, if we're unlucky. If we're lucky, it's just really awful for a few weeks... or months."
"Jesus," Martin breathes, and Gerry nods shortly. "Is that why – and seriously, stop me if I'm asking too many questions – is that why running updates is a bit difficult, too?"
"Not if you're regular enough with them," Gerry says promptly. "We really ought to be good about checking on updates every few days, weeks at the most, to make sure that anything new coming through isn't so different from our current baseline that it throws us off. Sometimes I fuck around," they allow, "or get distracted, and don't get a chance to run updates for a few weeks. That's when I look like shit, or take off a while to integrate."
"What would happen if you waited, uh – waited a few months?" Martin says, trying for casual and missing by a mile.
"I'm sure I don't know who you're talking about," Gerry starts, and Martin laughs a bit. "But if that were the case, well. I don't know why anyone would choose to do that, but they probably have a damn good reason. Because they'll either fall so behind on their necessary maintenance that they'll really start breaking down, or they'll have to go through an accelerated pace of updates, once they start up again, and feel a similar problem to what I described. Both options suck. I don't know which I'd choose, if I got months behind. Well, that's not true," they say, running a hand through their hair strands. "I like being alive, I don't want to break down. It would be like if a BI... if a BI just stopped getting, like, every kind of vitamin they needed, and suffered from extreme malnutrition. I might literally stop supporting my own software, if that were the case."
"And you – you are software, essentially, right?"
"Don't let other AIs hear you say that, but yeah." Martin opens their mouth to apologize, and Gerry holds up a hand, shakes their head. "No, no. I've known you long enough, I'm not fussed. But also, you're right. Some AI rights activists hate saying it, but we are created by humanity, and we are an advancement of what software as a concept can do. But that means that we're tied by obligation to what computers need."
Martin realizes that this is the kind of conversation that sparks more questions than it answers, but also doesn't want to just treat his oldest friend like a wikipedia page. "I'll just, er... Wow. That's a lot I'll just think about that for a while."
"Ruminate a bit," Gerry advises. "But if you do know anyone who's months behind on updates, well –" they shake their head. "I don't know what to tell you. They probably have a damn good reason, but it's not going to end well for them."
Martin takes a turn around the dining room, tossing trash in the bins and collecting plates that customers have left behind. "Why isn't he just coming home with me?" Martin asks once he's back behind the counter, a frustrated growl escaping as he drops the dishes into the sink.
"Whoah, whoah, watch the merchandise," Gerry jokes, rescuing a fork that's fallen to the ground and slipping it with exaggerated gentleness into the sink as well. "Those mugs have done nothing to hurt you."
"I just don't get it," Martin continues. "I mean, sure, I know, trauma, yadda yadda. But like, the alternative is dying, isn't it? Or near enough?"
"It's not just a trauma, yadda yadda situation, and you know it," Gerry admonishes. "How fucked up was I when you met me, yeah?"
"But you never refused an offer to charge at my place," Martin counters. "And you said you've been to shelters."
"No, but I did refuse to make plans with you for years after we met, and I met you with both of us spilling our darkest secrets in the group. I learned from Mary that any concrete plans were a way to manipulate me, so I never let anyone schedule me down. It's why I started painting, even," they add. "It was a way to make something that no one else controlled, and I could do it whenever I wanted. I mean, hell, not to be all 'poor Gerry,' but you've seen me after a bad week or two. I don't always charge up or run my own updates, because I hate being on a schedule that someone else has imposed on me, even if that someone else is my fucking hardware."
They take a break from the conversation when a gaggle of women come in, neither of them interested in letting the topic spill over to the customers, and then Gerry continues once they're all seated with drinks delivered.
"So like, I'm assume that whatever your mysterious friend is dealing with, it's big shit."
"From what I've heard, it's pretty big," Martin admits.
"And you were just as fucked up when we met," Gerry reminds him. "So have a bit of patience, will you?"
"I just – how can I have patience when you're telling me what waiting might just kill him?" Martin throws his hands up in frustration.
"I don't know. This is why I told you to mind your own business and not get involved with someone else's problems." Gerry shrugs, but his tone is gentle.
"Great," Martin sighs. "So now I can't help him, and also I know that pressuring him into letting me help him is a bad idea."
"'fraid so, Martin," Gerry says.
The shift ends on that note, and without another rush, but after Gerry folds their apron and slings their bag over one shoulder, they step over to Martin again and place a hand on his shoulder. Their smooth skin is as warm as Martin's own, and it makes him smile. "It will probably be fine," Gerry says, as reassuringly as they can. "And if it's not, that's okay too. Failing to solve one person's problems doesn't mean that you've failed as a person."
"Sounds fake," Martin mutters, but smiles gratefully.
"It probably is!" Gerry declares, and then they wave goodbye, and slip out the front door.
"Great," Martin says, once they're gone from view. "Thanks, Ger."
The next few times Jon comes in, Martin repeats Gerry's advice to himself. Jon looks worn down and sluggish, and Martin wishes that he could do more to help, but he bites his tongue from offering anything, just goes back to dawdling while closing the shop to give Jon extra time to charge.
It's a Wednesday when Jon is fixated on marine biology, and Martin is shockingly here for it.
"And we don't even know where eels mate," he's explaining, while Martin thoroughly sterilizes the register.
"How is that even possible?" Martin wonders. "It's the future, I mean. How can we just... not know where a creature that we study mates?"
"It's surprisingly difficult to affix a GPS tracker to an eel," Jon says, audibly amused. "And water makes cameras and radio trackers useless at longer ranges."
"What else do we know that we don't know?" Martin wonders, mostly rhetorically, but Jon responds promptly.
"Well, we've never seen a sperm whale fight a giant squid, but we do know that it occurs," he says, and Martin's eyes briefly unfocus as he imagines that battle playing out.
The next hour passes similarly, with Jon either sharing small tidbits of shocking knowledge and enjoying Martin's reactions, or rambling on about the lung capacity of blue whales, or the biodiversity between different zones of oceanic depth.
"And that's why, even though everyone laughs at them, the ocean sunfish is actually perfectly suited to its environment. It's human activity, from fishing boats to the effects of climate change, that causes the most damage."
"I guess I never had any reason to disbelieve the twitter threads on them," Martin says, somewhat thoughtfully.
"You really shouldn't believe everything you read," Jon scolds. "People lie on the internet constantly."
"Sure, and if it were about something really important to me, I might do some research for myself," Martin counters, not actually fussed. "But this is about some silly fish. I read about it, and it made me laugh to think about such a poorly-evolved creature. I had no cause to think that someone would lie about it. Or just be misinformed, but talk about it anyway."
"It sounds like you trust too easily," Jon says, and then looks down at his hands.
Martin shrugs. "Probably so. I usually give people the benefit of the doubt, and it doesn't always work out in my favor. But I'd rather trust people and get hurt sometimes than just be paranoid all the time that people are lying to me."
"It is fairly exhausting," Jon agrees, looking rueful. Martin barely manages to not respond to that comment, but he valiantly holds himself back.
His restraint rewards him the next week, after another three evenings watching Jon run down, and digging his fingernails into his palms rather than offer up his flat's Solus port again. He’s closed up the shop, and Jon is uncharacteristically quiet for just the two of them. He hasn’t started on about any obscure scientific fact, and has only spoken up to ask Martin about his day, looking like he’s paying half attention to the answer, at best.
Martin is starting to finish up his last tasks, moving slowly, but not sure if there is anything left to do to keep Jon in the shop when Jon finally speaks up. “What you said the other day," he says, drawing the words out slowly. “About… trust," he says. Martin nods, mouth closed. “I feel like that's something that I have to do,” Jon says. “Just trust— trust you,” he says, all in a rush.
“Well,” Martin says. “What's your alternative?”
“Nothing good,'' Jon says, looking coldly and horribly amused.
“I don't want to just be your alternative to something terrible,” Martin says, worried. “I want to help you because you want my help. My help, specifically.”
Jon shrugs. “I don't know if that's going to happen,” he says. “I like you. At least, what I know of you already. You seem like someone trustworthy, but I've hardly shown myself to be a good judge of character.” He shrugs helplessly. “So even if I do need help — and help from you specifically, I'm… reluctant, to say the least. But I don't have other alternatives and I do need help.”
Martin presses his lips together and thinks. He's stopped pretending to clean up the shop — Jon knows that there's nothing else that he really needs to do — and just thinks about the best thing that he could say right now. He could help Jon brainstorm other options to get what he needs, he could try to swear and promise that he would never hurt Jon, because he wouldn't, he really wouldn't. But that probably won't help Jon. And that probably won't be particularly good for Martin, either. It hurts to be disbelieved, and if he swears up and down that he would never hurt Jon and Jon still doesn't believe him, then that's not going to feel great for Martin, either.
“I think it's a leap of faith,” Martin says finally, simply. “I know that I would never hurt you deliberately, but you have no reason to believe me. And that's okay,” he adds hastily. “But you can't keep on as you've been going. Something has to change. You might just need to take a leap of faith.”
“What an odd thing to say to an AI,” Jon says, amused. “If there's one thing that we are famously known for, it's our lack of faith.”
“Well, that's because you actually know who your creators are,” Martin says. “We don't have that luxury. But that's a different kind of faith, and you know it Jon.”
“Oh, on a surface level, perhaps. But in a broader sense, they're both about — trusting that something you can't see is — is correct.” His words are so slow and halting that Martin would almost worry that he’s glitching again, except for the utter certainty on his face, no trace of fear or frustration in his eyes. “I do need help,” he says. “And instead of praying about it, I'm going to ask for it.”
Martian waits. He can't make any offers here, he knows that. Jon does need to ask.
“Martin,” Jon says finally. “May I come charge at your home again, and run updates this evening? I will need to shut down to do this.”
“Yes”, Martin says, unable to stop the relieved smile breaking across his face. “You absolutely can.”