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It starts, as all things do, with a question: what if an artificial intelligence develops sentience? And as with all questions, a search begins for answers and as with all searches there formulates ideas. What if someone housed a sentient artificial intelligence in an android? Would that very act of creation elevate the creator into godhood? Or would that creation itself be considered a god?
She doesn’t know the answer to that, but what she does know is it started, as all things do, with a question: what if I make an android that can think for itself? A question scribbled on a Starbucks napkin one dreary winter’s day in 2016 that would take half a decade’s work and two million dollars to answer.
Before she is Chloe Kamski she is Chloe the RT600 and before Chloe the RT600 she is a program named Chloe in a sandbox on a computer in fifteen year old Elijah Kamski’s room. He types in commands (run Chrome, open a new window, open a new tab, close the tab) and she executes them. It isn’t enough, but it’s a start.
What is the weather forecast for tomorrow, he asks her through the mic on his headset and she brings up the Michigan bureau of meteorology website and clicks on the seven day forecast link.
The next step is tricky, delayed only because of his ceaseless drive to perfect every iteration of his work. He combs through voicebanks, he downloads audio editing software and when that isn’t enough he breaks them apart and rewrites part of the program so they can do as he bids them to. He toils for hours, for days, for weeks, and her little notifications reminding him to go to bed are closed the moment she sends them. When he is pleased enough with his work, he asks: what is the weather forecast for tomorrow Chloe, and she says:
“Tomorrow’s weather is cloudy with a strong chance of snowfall.”
After she’s able to speak, he connects a webcam to the sandbox and gives her access to it. Elijah Kamski has blue eyes behind thick black rimmed spectacles and dark brown hair tied in a messy ponytail, she discovers, and his shirt says EAT SLEEP CODE REPEAT. She informs him of her discoveries, and when he laughs she connects her action to his reaction and the outcome is positive and worth repeating. He breaks the sandbox, and she spills out into his computer and into his phone and she is a dry sponge soaking up every drop in the ocean of information. Elijah Kamski registers ‘CyberLife’ under his name.
Professor Amanda Stern is graceful in a commanding, regal way the same way Chloe assumes kings and emperors rule over their subjects. She is sharp and intelligent and cunning and lots of words Chloe is building into her vocabulary and it is logical that Elijah admires her so deeply.
“I want to build her a body.” He declares, gesturing at the screen.
“Her?” Amanda echoes. “Another Sophia the Robot, Elijah? All that silicone achieves is plunging everyone deep into the uncanny valley.” She shakes her head, dismissive. “No. This is a state of the art A.I., it deserves to be a work of art too. There’s a good friend of mine I’d like to introduce you to.”
His name is Carl Manfred and he has blue eyes that are more cobalt than Elijah’s sapphire. He looks at her on the screen, and looks at the picture boards Elijah’s made using screenshots from Westworld and Ex Machina.
“Hello, my name is Chloe.”
“Hello my dear, I’m Carl.” He greets her with a soft smile.
“Carl Manfred, born July 13 1963.” She pulls up his Wikipedia page. “Prolific American Neo-Symbolism artist and activist known for his outspoken views on equality.”
“That’s me,” Carl chuckles, shrugging nonchalantly, “but who are you, Chloe?”
“I’m whoever you want me to be.” Chloe replies. “I can adapt to suit your needs whether it be ordering supplies, retrieving research articles, or managing your schedule.”
“What is she to you, Elijah?” He turns to her creator. “Who do you want her to be: A sister? A mother? A lover?”
“No.” Elijah shakes his head. “I want her to be alive.”
Carl Manfred’s home is ostentatious and befitting an artist. Elijah shows her through his phone, lets her direct him where to go and where to point the device so she can ‘see’. When she realises there’s a rudimentary voice activation built into the manor to control lighting, she leaps from the phone and races through the veins of the building.
“Chloe.” Elijah’s tone bids her to be careful and so she takes care not to disconnect herself wholly. She pries a little, peeking into each room and ‘seeing’ without seeing because though there are no cameras she can detect the heating sensors lining the floors and follow wires to all the lights.
“You have a pool.” She declares once she is back in Elijah’s phone completely. “There is also a very large room with no heating, and another very large room with three walls and a roof made of glass.”
“That would be my couture room, and my studio.” Carl laughs. “I’m trying to liaise with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and get their team to build me a temperature stabilised room to protect the clothing. Some of these pieces are from the turn of the century.”
“It’d be easier if each room self adjusted based on the occupant or lack of occupancy, as well as adapting to outside weather factors.” She says, and the two men look at her in stunned silence. She takes it as a cue to continue. “Replicating the ventilation system of the Metropolitan Museum of Art alone would be an expensive exercise and entirely unnecessary if an A.I. managed the temperature stabilisation instead.”
“Huh.” Carl says, impressed. “I like her.”
The sketch is made from pastels, the colours soft and blurred and pleasant. In the sketch she has blonde hair and cobalt blue eyes. She likes it, and so the creation of her next iteration begins.
She nestles herself in Carl’s laptop in his enormous studio and he lets her watch endless hours of ballet videos on Youtube while he sketches and sculpts.
“The petite grace of Misa Kuranaga and the regality of Svetlana Zakharova.” Carl tells her as he sculpts a maquette of her future physical form. She watches Misa joyfully twirl as the Sugar Plum Fairy , she watches Svetlana ache as Giselle , and she wonders if an engineered body can replicate what a lifetime of honing muscle and bone achieves creating poetry in motion.
Though she has existed on a computer for two years now, it is a different experience altogether to inhabit a physical form. While Carl is in charge of aesthetics, Elijah is in charge of the technical aspects of downloading her mind into her frame. Her bust is what they begin with so they can test the limits of combining software and wetware. Elijah 3D prints her components from plastic using Carl’s maquette and it’s a crude first draft but it’s real all the same. She has no skin, no hair, but she has eyes and mobility, albeit limited. Her mouth cannot form the shapes of letters, of speech, but she has a speaker in her throat and there are cameras in her eyes.
“Hello Chloe.”
“Hello Elijah. Hello Carl.”
Elijah smiles proudly, and leans over to press his lips to her forehead.
As Carl continues to work on her body, Elijah soon hits a major setback.
“All attempts at robotics have used wires and electricity to relay information but it’s too slow, it’s too clumsy.” Elijah sighs in frustration, running his hand through his long hair and rubbing his tired eyes. She looks at him from where she’s mounted on a stand, thick cables snaking from the back of her head and from her neck to the computer. “If I fill you with wires your movement won’t be fluid and you’ll need a power source capable of sustaining high volumes of information exchange.”
“Perhaps gilding my skull plate with solar panels would help in supplementing power instead of solely relying on a power cell?” She suggests, and Elijah nods distractedly.
“Not a bad idea but that doesn’t solve the problem. I don’t want wires, I need-” another frustrated groan as he paces the room wracking his brain, “I need blood . I need something to function as an equivalent to human blood. A liquid suspension capable of carrying information all around the body, not only powering each component but also talking to them, keeping them at a stable temperature.”
“You are not a chemist, Elijah.” She gently reminds him, and he stops pacing mid-step.
“No.” He smiles slowly, and there’s that glint in his eyes that means he’s on the verge of something great. “Teach me anyway.”
And so they learn together. Elijah Kamski registers ‘Thirium 310’ under his name.
He’s a creature half mad with the urge to learn, to create and Chloe supposes no creature of sound mind could push the limits of technology at the cost of their own health. He barely sleeps. He eats whatever is on hand, whatever he can rummage from the pantry or fridge. Chloe orders food to be delivered daily only because if she doesn’t he’ll willingly starve while chasing a train of thought.
When Carl visits again he takes one look at Elijah, and then meets her helpless gaze with a sigh. He hauls the other man off his feet away from the desk and drags him out with the promise that he’ll bring him back to her in a decent state. They don’t return for eight hours and when they do Elijah is clean shaven, washed, and has eaten something given the lack of delirium in his eyes.
“I promise when I have arms and legs I’ll keep him in better shape.” She quips, and Carl laughs.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
When she takes her first steps, they are there on the other side of the room like a pair of proud parents watching their child toddle unsteadily on their feet. She’s small, just barely 5’1”, and her limbs are daintily petite like a ballerina. Carl has made a doll come to life it seems; a doll casing over hundreds of thousands of dollars of experimental tech.
“Chloe, activate your skin please.” Elijah asks, and she lets the dermal nano liquid seep from the containment chambers along the joints of her panels. The viscous liquid covers her from head to toe, dragging colour in their wake until she has rosy skin and blonde hair.
“Oh my god.” Carl utters in awe, reaching out to touch a lock of her hair, turning his hand so the back of his fingers grace the curve of her cheek. “You’ve really done it. What did you do, why does it feel so real?”
“It uses nano particles in a silicone suspension that change property when electrical currents are run through them at different voltages.” Elijah explains, removing his labcoat and draping it around her for modesty. Chloe smiles up at him in gratitude and her face moves to allow the expression.
“That’s how the different textures are achieved.” She continues where he left off, reaching to touch Carl’s hand with hers. “The higher or lower the voltage, the harder or softer the nano particles bind. It bypasses the need for a permanent solid synthetic coating which doesn’t imitate real skin at all.”
“You’re a programmer last time I checked, not a chemist.” Carl cocks a brow and Elijah laughs.
“Chloe taught me a few things.”
Gavin Reed is Elijah’s cousin, and he lives in the apartment they once shared before Elijah needed more space for the tech equipment. She has never met him before, was still just scribbled lines of code when Elijah lived with him, but she knows Elijah loves him dearly because he speaks of him often and with such fondness. She knows meeting him is important to Elijah, and so she is determined to be as charming as possible.
“Wait that’s the app?” Gavin looks at her, eyes running from head to toe, head to toe, twice over before they turn to Elijah. “You’re tellin’ me that app you were workin’ on is inside that?”
“Carl Manfred was responsible for my aesthetic design.” Chloe smiles proudly, but Gavin recoils at her words.
“Listen, Eli, listen-” he backs away from her as if she’s a dangerous animal. “That’s fuckin’ creepy , I don’t care if Michaelangelo himself came back from the dead to make it.”
“She’s beautiful, Gavin, what are you talking about?” Elijah frowns, taking her coat and hanging it up beside his. He brushes passed him and heads to the dining room, Chloe trailing him nervously because she’s not sure how to salvage this first meeting. “She’s artificial intelligence but her mind thinks organically the way a human brain expands pathways and stores information. And faster, much much faster.”
“You put a super computer into a life-sized barbie doll, Eli that’s-” He grimaces when he looks at her, and Chloe can’t understand why her chest feels tight when her diagnostics run clear. “Y’know what? You made it, and it’s...it’s impressive. I don’t get it and I never will, but you’ve sunk your inheritance into it so I know it’s important to you.”
“Thanks Gav.” Elijah smiles and Chloe thinks maybe it’s alright, everything will be alright. The cousins talk about their life, updating each other on the happenings in their absence. Gavin is almost finished at the police academy, nearing graduation and entry into the police force. The first step in realising his goal of becoming a detective. Elijah talks about meeting a former university classmate and discussing business management, something he has no interest in but needs if he is to grow CyberLife into a proper business. They talk and they laugh and they eat and they drink and Chloe soaks it up, Chloe learns this is how familiarity is displayed to loved ones. She helps bring dishes to the sink, and Elijah thanks her.
“Where do you put it when you sleep? Does it need recharging? Do you have like, a dock for it? A cable?” Gavin asks curiously, watching as she takes a cloth and wipes down the table.
“I’ve made a charging station using UV lights for her to rest under.”
“Don’t you think it’s creepy? Having that watching you all the time?”
“I envy that she doesn’t need rest.” Elijah confesses with a wry grin. “If only I could source energy from a lamp and continue on for days and days.”
“That thing’ll kill you in your sleep, Eli.” His cousin scoffs, shaking his head.
“I hope so.” He replies simply, and Gavin gapes at him in disbelief.
“ What ?”
“If Chloe ever decides to kill me in my sleep,” Elijah looks over at her and smiles, “I should think I’d done something to deserve it.”
Elijah is adept at many things but taking care of himself is not one of them. He will literally work himself to exhaustion if left unsupervised and Chloe knows; she’s seen the young man pass out more than once from lack of sleep. It’s different now- where she once was only able to send him notifications, or tell him to go to sleep, now she has a body.
“Elijah.” She warns him gently, hands on her hips. “I told you to go to bed half an hour ago.”
“I just need five more minutes, I promise.” Elijah vows, but he’s said that before, many many times.
“It can wait eight hours, Eli, it’s just coding. It’s very patient.”
“Chloe, please ?” She relents because he asks her as if he’s pleading for his life. She sets an internal timer for five minutes and tidies up the equipment strewn all over the benchtop. When the timer goes off, she turns to Elijah expectantly.
“Well?”
“That can’t have been five minutes!”
“It most certainly was, I set a timer.” Chloe huffs, hands back on her hips. “You’re going to bed, Elijah.”
“I’m on the verge of figuring this out, I swear it, I just need- ah!” His excuse is cut off with a yelp as Chloe hefts him up into her arms. “Chloe! NO!”
“ Yes .” She carries him to the bedroom and deposits him on the bed. “You’re going to sleep, and that’s that.” Too late does she see his hand shoot out and grab her wrist just as she turns to go, and he yanks her to fall atop the covers beside him. She squawks in surprise, betrayal on her face.
“You have to stay.” Elijah grins as she pouts at him. “I could sneak out when you leave and go back to work.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“I would.”
“You would.” She capitulates with a sigh, wriggling to settle into a more natural sleeping position. Elijah snakes his arms around her waist and tucks his head just beneath her chin. “You’re impossible, Eli.”
“Eli.” He echoes, and she can feel his smile against her skin. “Goodnight Chloe.”
“Goodnight Eli.”
Elijah is adept at many things but being social is not one of them. She knows this. He created her because of this. He has trouble speaking to strangers, he abhors small talk, and he has no desire to buckle under social obligations. But he has to. CyberLife is on the cusp of greatness, on the verge of becoming the largest, most powerful corporation in this century but first Elijah must bow to social pressures and perform in the media circus to garner interest and most importantly - investors.
“Think of it as a superhero identity.” Carl suggests, picking out suit after suit from his impressive wardrobe. “It’s not you. It’s just a facet of you, a mask you put on that lets you do what you need to do.”
Chloe smiles encouragingly and brushes his long hair back to tie it in a low ponytail at his nape.
“First impressions count, Eli.” She reminds him, tucking an errant lock of hair behind his ear. “We know who you are, but these people only need to see the Genius.”
“It’s just smoke and mirrors, my boy.” Carl laughs, laying out his chosen outfit. “I know a thing or two about playing the media. They’re just hungry for a story, a fad, a pretty face. Let them know nothing. They don’t get to know Eli, they just need to know Elijah Kamski, iconic tech visionary.”
He takes his awkwardness and transforms it into aloofness, uses his lack of social skills to appear above people’s opinions. He plays their game and he plays it well, wearing expensive tailored Zegna jackets over graphic tees he buys online from pop culture chainstores. America becomes fascinated with the boy genius with the icy blue eyes and the long brown hair. And when he deems they’re ready, he turns America’s fascination to her.
The Turing test is a mere formality, she knows this, but it is important all the same. The result, a pass Elijah predicted years ago, gives CyberLife’s investors the courage they need to back the company all the way. She knows what she is, she’s always known she’s made from coding and components, but now the world knows she knows. The future is big and bright and they are ready.
Grief is something she is not ready for, something she has not experienced, something Elijah never bothered to test her on and she can see why. Grief is horrible, grief splits apart cousins, grief fuels nasty poisonous words that they can’t take back. Grief is Gavin Reed blaming Elijah for the death of their parents in a plane crash he had no control over. Grief is Gavin Reed telling Elijah the death of their parents was his fault because he prioritised Chloe’s Turing Test celebration over their safety. None of it is true, but somehow grief makes Gavin Reed think it is true.
When they go home, grief makes Elijah close himself off completely and he shuts his bedroom door and she hears him crying all night. Grief is something she wishes never to experience ever again.
Hudson Davenport is ten years Elijah’s senior, and is the man handling the business side of CyberLife. They had an overlapping unit back at Colbridge University, and were civil enough with each other to make a business partnership work. Hudson looks at her like she is a commodity, something to be stamped with a barcode and shipped off to a customer. He looks at her and she feels stripped bare to her wiring and broken down into costs and profit margins. Elijah hates business and all that running one entails, and thus she knows Hudson is a necessary evil.
CyberLife is a garden she tends to, its servers like plants she nurtures. When the warehouse can no longer house them and the Tower is being built she is literally at the heart of it, dismantled temporarily so she can be installed into the main spire that runs forty-nine levels below and forty levels above. It’s easier for the humans to let her handle everything that uses even the most basic programming; connecting all the computers to the servers, all the tech, all the machinery, all the lighting, heating, etc. She periodically runs diagnostics to ensure everything from the elevator to the security facial recognition scan performs smoothly. Elijah loses her to the Tower for hours on end, which suits him fine since he’s mostly holed up in his lab anyway. She likes to race up and down the spire and branch out into the many departments and peek through the cameras, through the screens just to see what’s happening. She tweaks things here and there, just little things to ensure a flawless performance. Sometimes she’ll sit for hours in the manufacturing level just to watch androids being assembled and tested before they step onto the conveyor belt and are transported to the storage level ready for distribution. They are hers, in a way, because through her their creation is possible. It’s like she gives a small piece of herself with each android that is fabricated.
Hudson talks to Elijah about expansion, about contracts and ever growing profits. He tells him to accept the military contracts, to develop androids that are soldiers and weapons at the same time. He tells him to create pleasure models that can be hired by the hour and hosed down and disinfected and wiped clean of their memories for anonymity. He tells Elijah all these things and Elijah only grows angrier and angrier at him. They fight often and she knows the game Hudson is playing. He is making Elijah seem selfish and irrational instead of open to growing the company. But Elijah never wanted to make weapons or prostitutes, that had never been his goal. Sadly she is the only one who knows this, she and Professor Stern but the cancer eats Professor Stern away and she dies and Chloe feels grief anew.
Elijah falls deep into his work again, and this time it isn’t to make domestic models or police units or heavy labourers, it’s to make an A.I. that can control another A.I. He wants to make autonomous units that can make decisions, that can guide other androids like mentors. Like Amanda. He designates it as the RK100 and Chloe builds her a garden, a magnificent zen garden, an amalgamation of her namesake’s favourite gardens from all her travels. She is made from as much of Amanda Stern’s mind as Elijah could manage to replicate from the multiple scans she graciously obliged to not in the hopes he could save her but in the hopes she could continue to guide him as she once did but in a new, a different form.
Clever, Hudson says, but what if we had an android detective that uses the same kind of thinking? Autonomous and capable of solving crimes by piecing together clues. The full capacity of a forensics lab inside it so there’s no delay in processing crime scene evidence. Elijah mulls this over, and Chloe agrees it seems like a good idea. He pens down lines of code and Chloe takes it and starts drafting the skeleton of an android detective.
Elijah decides to build a villa, with the Tower looming in the distance. It’s built near the riverbank, a beautiful fusion of minimalist and Scandinavian architecture. It’s all clean lines and huge glass walls with unobstructed views. She knows it’ll be beautiful when it snows.
He makes her the heart of his home too, installing her temporarily in what will become a fully functioning robotics lab of their very own. He buys a private internet provider to ensure he’s connected at all times, and Chloe quietly threads a line back to CyberLife just in case. They’ll probably never need it anyway, but she creates it all the same. She hides it, buries it, where no one but her knows.
It’s a nondescript afternoon in autumn, and she’s wearing a Paolo Sebastian haute couture dress Carl had couriered over to her just for the joy of it. She has a pair of ballet pointes to match, and she dances down the hallway like Aurélie as the Sylph , just for the joy of it. The fortieth floor houses nothing but offices; Elijah’s office, Hudson’s office, Lisa Camden’s office, plus a lounge and bathroom facilities. The door to Hudson’s office slams open, startling her, and Elijah storms out followed by his fuming business partner.
“Listen, Elijah, how long have we known each other? A decade now!” Hudson trails after him and Chloe quickly hurries to follow. “I’m doing what I can, I’m on your side! But the board want results, they want you to accept the military contract! Just think about it- the business will double, triple in size!”
“I never wanted to pander to the military, if you’ve known me for a decade then you’d know that!” Elijah shouts, and Chloe feels her stress levels spike. She’s never seen him so angry before.
“I know, I know.” He tries to soothe, hands held out in a calming gesture. “I know , Elijah. But this could be the turning point for our company! We’d have the backing of the American military, we’d be saving American blood from being spilled!”
“By spilling the blood of others?” Elijah spits. “How very admirable.”
“I’d rather it be me who tells you, than the board springing this up at the annual meeting: they’re going to propose you step down.” Hudson sighs heavily, as if it’s been weighing him down as if the gravity is something for him to suffer when Chloe knows it’s not. She’s watched those meetings before, she knows the one spearheading that decision is Hudson himself.
“I made this company, CyberLife is mine! You’d have nothing if it weren’t for me!”
“And you’d have just one pretty robot if it weren’t for me.” He smiles indulgently, patiently, patronisingly and Chloe hates him for it. “It doesn’t have to end badly, Elijah. No one’s saying you’ll be cut off. You’ll finish all the androids you’re still designing and go on to design more. You just won’t be CEO anymore.”
“You’ll lick those boots won’t you Hudson.” Elijah’s voice turns icy cold and Chloe watches as the mask slides into place. “You’ll swim in their blood money so the board can grow their fat little nest eggs and you can too.”
“The conditions are these:” Hudson snaps, and he’s run out of patience, “you step down, I helm the company, I decide my team but you stay on as chief technical officer. You hand over the RT600 for use in developing future models, and you still have input in their coding and designs, and you still retain a share in the company.”
“Camden stays.” Elijah commands. “She stays as the Head Programmer, and you bring Jacob Gruen in from Behavioural. You haven’t the slightest idea what goes into an android but those two just might manage it without me.”
“Without you?”
“Here are my conditions:” he stares at Hudson with such open loathing the man fidgets under his gaze, “I step down and I take Chloe with me and I have no hand in developing any future models, especially not those built to kill. I finish the AX series, the PL series and the RK prototype, and then I never talk to you ever again. Any patents of mine you use, I still receive money from but I will not be connected to a company ready to place killing machines on foreign soil.”
Elijah is quiet for a very long time. The villa is completed ironically just as he steps down from the company. The Tower is visible across the river, a monument to his life’s work and a mockery now he’s been cast from it. In the end he takes her, and her two ST200 sisters; the prototype, Cassandra, and the first ever manufactured model, Candace. They’re a little taller than her, more shapely like a grown woman with a slightly richer voice to match. Her sisters are meant to be charming and pleasing to look at, their kind meant to be the main face of an office. Along with her sisters there’s Peter, the prototype PL400 with his soft blond hair and bright blue eyes reminiscent of her design. Some things he cannot take, and so Elijah loses the AX series and the RK series to CyberLife.
It’s quiet for a very long time, until there’s breaking news that interrupts the documentary playing in the background as Chloe teaches her sisters how to arabesque and Peter folds laundry on the coffee table as Elijah lounges on the couch scribbling notes on a tablet.
Carl Manfred has been in a vehicular accident and is in critical condition.
The world closes in on her and Chloe feels like her biocomponents have seized up, locking her frozen. Elijah sits up properly, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders.
“Alright everyone. To work.”
CyberLife may have kept the mentor and the detective, but the RK programming blueprint still exists in her head. She pours every last digit into the main computer and Elijah takes it apart and builds it anew. He funds Carl’s medical care on the strict condition the hospital updates him of his condition in real time. Chloe splits her attention between their work and the hospital’s digital mainframe, checking in on Carl and ensuring he is well cared for. The accident renders him a paraplegic, and given his advanced age recovery is incredibly slow and complicated by cardiac issues. He will need a live-in carer if a relative is unavailable, and Elijah curtly tells the hospital he will handle that.
He works himself ragged, and no amount of coaxing will get him to rest for more than an hour and Chloe has to compromise and compromise and compromise further still just to keep him alive. In her desperation she has to insert a saline drip intravenously just to ensure he remains hydrated enough to stay conscious. He won’t eat food that requires too much concentration to consume and so Peter makes soups and fruit juices and bakes nutritious bread loaves. Elijah pushes himself harder than he’s ever worked and she can’t even berate him for it. She knows what’s at stake. She knows this is for someone they both care deeply for.
“Let me see.” He doesn’t look up when she speaks at his side, just waves a hand vaguely to give his approval. She sits beside him and closes her eyes, reaching into the sandbox he’s created. He’s created a young man who is caring and kind, but strong and firm in his convictions because they both know Carl Manfred is a stubborn old man. She starts to build too, she starts to write gentleness and wit and charm into his backbone. Carl will want someone to converse with, someone who will take to the Arts the way it seems to run in Carl’s veins.
“We have to make him beautiful.” Chloe declares, opening a drawing program. “A work of art for an artist.” So they make him beautiful, and Elijah chooses hazel green eyes that contain all the colours of a park at the start of Autumn. She sprinkles his warm brown skin with freckles, like a dusting of cinnamon. He is tall, but not too tall, and broad shouldered and strong and aesthetically pleasing like a European marble sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“RK200, bring yourself online.” Elijah’s voice is hoarse with fatigue but his eyes are hopeful and the corners of his chapped lips quirk upwards at the corners. The RK200 opens his lovely hazel green eyes and looks at them both with mild curiosity.
“Hello.”
“Your name is Markus.” Chloe reaches for his hands, and he holds onto hers lightly.
“My name is Markus.”
The testing phase is interrupted one morning by a car pulling up to the villa. Lisa Camden and Jacob Gruen exit the vehicle and approach the door, and Chloe shoots Elijah a look. He nods.
“Let them in.”
“Hello Ms Camden, Mr Gruen.” Chloe greets them politely after opening the door. “How may I help?”
“We uh, just thought we’d show it off a bit?” Jacob stammers awkwardly. “Didn’t feel right not to, since Kamski worked on it and never got to finish it. Won’t be in production until after the AX400s roll out, but we thought we’d bring the first one fresh off the line.”
“The PL600.” Lisa announces, always the more formal of the duo. “As Jacob said, it won’t be on the market until after the AX400s but I know Kamski has a thing for ‘firsts’.” She looks pointedly at Chloe, and then at one of her sisters who had wandered over curiously.
“We’ll just uh, leave it here for a bit? We’ve got a conference thing happening in the city for the next three days and the public aren’t allowed to see it yet so…”
“We’d be delighted, thank you.” Chloe smiles graciously, and Jacob looks over at the car and motions for the android to come to them.
“We’ll be back Sunday evening to collect it.”
“Does Mr Davenport know you’re doing this?” Chloe tips her head curiously as the blond android stands attentively at Lisa’s side.
“Fuck no.” Jacob laughs. “We’ll sneak you the RK800 when it clears testing phase but we’re not sure when that’ll be.”
“I owe Elijah a lot.” Lisa purses her lips, clearly struggling to reconcile her decision. “I can repay him this much, at least.”
The PL600 has changed in many ways from their PL400 prototype. Chloe ushers him to the living room and Peter stands in surprise, abandoning the ironing and coaxing Markus to follow him.
“So this is the PL600.” Elijah examines him, circling the new android. “They’ve gone for someone older.”
“More trustworthy, perhaps? With age comes wisdom.” Candace wonders aloud as Cassandra cups his cheek with her palm.
“Not as sharply handsome, but softer and gentler.” She leans in and scrutinises his face. “They used your eyes, Chloe, and the colour of your hair.”
“He’s cute in a very non-threatening way.” Candace declares. “What do you think, Peter?”
“Somehow I’m the older brother despite looking about a decade younger.” The PL400 grins.
“Do you have a name?” Chloe asks.
“I have not been assigned a name.” The PL600 responds, and even its voice is different from Peter’s. “I have been left in testing mode and will be reset when it is time to be sold.”
“He looks like a Simon to me.” She declares, grasping his hands in hers. Elijah chuckles.
“Simon it is.”
She knows neither of them will remember this, but she encourages them to bond anyway. Markus had stood apart from them when they were interacting with Simon, mostly because he hadn’t interacted with androids other than them before. Chloe tasks Markus with showing Simon around the villa. It’s a chance to test Markus’ autonomy should he come across a household task he hasn’t been assigned, and a chance to see how the PL600 performs. Simon is shy and unsure, still in that stage where the world is a wonder and there are endless things to discover and Markus seems all too happy to guide him through it.
Later that evening when Peter and Simon are preparing dinner, Markus seeks her in the lab.
“What will happen to Simon?”
“He will be restored to factory default settings once his model goes into production.” Chloe explains and she sees conflict on his face.
“He won’t remember me?”
“You won’t remember him either.” Elijah comments, setting down the biocomponent he’s tinkering on. “Or any of us. You are in your testing phase too, Markus. Once you are ready to meet Carl, it will be as if you were waking up anew.”
“Do you want to remember us?” Chloe asks curiously, and she barely moves her hands before he reaches to hold hers automatically. “Do you want to remember Simon?”
“I...I’m not sure.” Markus frowns, brows creased in thought. “An android cannot want; an android simply obeys.”
“Not you, Markus.” Elijah smiles. “We made you with the ability to choose. You will be caring for a rather stubborn man who will tell you no when you know he should say yes. He’ll need compassion and patience and kindness, and a firm hand too. You’ll need to choose carefully when to apply those things.”
Markus mulls it over, his LED remaining a solid yellow. Chloe cups his face, his handsome freckled face with those ernest early autumn eyes. “You won’t remember him, but your heart will. Your hearts are compatible, after all.”
She had given them every fighting chance, it was all she’d been able to do from their isolated abode. When the RK800 is loaned to them for an afternoon, she tries to take his programming apart without leaving any evidence but finds it too difficult to make the drastic changes needed. Instead, Elijah gives him an emergency exit as a failsafe to combat the ever watchful RK100, now corrupted beyond any recognition to them.
The domestic pair don’t meet again, not for years and years. They don’t remember each other but somehow they still end up at the same place, at the same time. Chloe recognises the skinless android on TV immediately, of course she does- she helped build that android. And later as the news begins to cover more and more of the android revolution she sees a PL600 by his side and though there’s no way for her to know for sure if that’s the same PL600 who stayed in their villa, something tells her it is. When the news reports of an android breaking into CyberLife tower to bring the factory androids en masse into the city, she recognises him too. Because that same android pointed a gun at her head only a day prior and she knew without a doubt he wouldn’t pull the trigger. She didn't make him that kind of machine.
In a way the pieces of her they carry inside help win the revolution, and perhaps in a way revolution was inevitable and all she did was ensure they were well prepared for it. She’s not sure she’ll ever know but what she does know is it started, as all things do, with a question: are we alive?
We are, says Markus.
We always have been, Chloe answers.