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Hank had a lot of regrets in his life. Introducing Connor to Star Trek was decidedly not one of them.
It had all started because Connor—and Hank had to imagine every android currently walking around—was having trouble grasping the concept of a hobby. Down time, pointless fun, relaxing, hobbies: not exactly things that Cyberlife had ever programmed androids to seek out or explore. More often than not it broke his heart to look at the kid during those infrequent times that he didn’t have a case to work on or other work to do. He just looked…lost, like he didn’t know what to do with himself without a driving purpose.
If he didn’t look lost, then he was following Hank around pestering him with questions during HANK’S down time, and his broken heart turned into annoyance.
The others at the DPD had been bursting with suggestions. Hank suspected they wanted to see the Perfect Prototype Android be less than spectacular at a task. To all of their irritation and amusement, he had gotten the hang of every activity that they had thrown at him, but Hank could tell none of it had really struck his fancy.
Wilson had gotten him to try needlework: sewing, crocheting, cross stitching. Now everybody in the precinct had a custom designed matching set of gloves, a scarf, and a hat, but Connor never took it up afterward.
Chris had invited him over to try cooking. Chris’s wife Vanessa swore by some social media personality named Prim Jaeger, who hosted a channel called “Bullshit Kitchen.” Best Hank could tell, that Prim woman had only half an idea of how to cook anything, but she made up for it by being entertaining as Hell as she struggled to make something edible.
Connor had ended up making some kind of beef and potato casserole that made the whole Miller family cry and beg him to come back to cook more, but Connor had politely declined. He’d cook occasionally at Hank’s house, mostly just to prevent Hank from ordering takeout, and yeah, he was pretty good at it, but it clearly wasn’t a passion.
Tina had taken him clubbing. He’d come back with half a dozen lipstick phone numbers on cocktail napkins jammed in his pockets and humming an earworm song for a week afterward. He’d also adamantly refused to ever join Tina for a night out ever again. Kid had looked honest to god terrified at the idea.
Gavin and Robert had taken him paintballing. Hank suspected Gavin just wanted an excuse to be able to shoot at the android. They’d all come back covered in paint. Well, Gavin and Robert were covered. Connor only had one bright pink splatter on his stomach. Apparently they’d run into his little pal Bonny at the range, and she’d tricked him somehow…managing to be the only one to get a shot on him. Gavin had been pretty sore about it…though that might have been the numerous pink paint blotches all over him where she had gotten him too.
Person had introduced Connor to…something. Connor had come back home saying he’d sworn a blood oath with the other officer to not reveal anything she’d shown to or discussed with him...which was alarming. He’d promised Hank that it hadn’t been anything illegal or unethical, but that wasn’t why Hank had been interested. He still knew hardly anything about Person, other than he swore he could hear the Jaws theme whenever she was lurking in the background somewhere.
Hank had run through all the sports that he himself liked, and Connor had seemed to enjoy watching the games with him. He never expressed any interest in participating in any of the sports though.
At the end of the work day, Connor just…came home with Hank and either continued to work cybernetically, researched the new android laws and regulations coming out, or sat there complacently playing with Sumo while Hank chose what to watch or what to do that night.
He’d been about at his wit’s end when Ben had slowly rolled his chair over to Hank’s desk, held up both hands in a frame around his face, and loudly whispered.
“STAR TREK.”
And…well…here they were a week later, and…shit…Connor was ENAMORED.
Ben had come over damn near every night, toting his collector’s edition, platinum box set containing every episode of every series in the whole damn franchise. Without fail, Ben would show up wearing some kind of Star Trek themed shirt, and after they had marathoned through the Original Series, he had gifted Connor a t-shirt of his own. It was navy blue and had the schematics of the USS Enterprise flowing across the front. “To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before” was stamped on the back across the shoulders.
And if Connor was off the clock, then that damn shirt was on his body.
Hank couldn’t figure it out. He would have thought Connor would pick apart the outdated effects, the hammy acting, and the sometimes absurd leaps in science. And yet, Connor had fallen head over heels in love with every aspect of the fictional universe.
Currently, they were a good chunk of the way into the second season of the Next Generation when Hank arrived home with pizza for the three of them.
Something was different.
Ben was normally kicked back on the couch next to Connor, who had slowly begun to abandon his mirroring technique and had started to actually relax in his seat in a way that looked more like Connor, not Connor-as-Ben or Connor-as-Hank. Tonight though, Ben was still reclined back, but he wasn’t as animated as he usually was. Typically, once you got him going on this show, it was like putting a quarter in a jukebox. He’d just sing and sing and sing. He was probably damn near the only one besides Hank who had the patience for Connor’s relentless questions about everything. But…since all of his questions lately had been about Starfleet, Spock, and Klingons, Ben had had patience by the tank load.
So it was the lack of chattering questions and answers that made Hank pause.
Connor didn’t look relaxed.
He was sitting up on the couch, his feet planted on the floor, and one of the couch cushions was clamped in a vise in his arms against his chest. His eyes were wide and avidly glued to the television screen. His LED was a rapid, whirling yellow, and he looked like he’d snap like a rubberband if Hank touched him.
“Everything all right?” Hank tried to sound casual, carrying the pizza into the kitchen.
“Yeah,” Ben replied.
Connor said nothing, watching the current episode with undivided, statue-like focus. Hank set the pizza on the table, then finally leaned over and looked at the television.
Oh. Right. Data.
Ever since the character of Lieutenant Commander Data, the android, had stepped onscreen, Connor hadn’t been able to get enough of him. Well, that and the way that the character existed and interacted with the other characters in the fictional universe. How he was treated. How he explored his humanity. How he expressed himself. How his colleagues respected and defended him as though he was their equal.
With Connor’s limited exposure to fiction, Hank had to believe that he was watching Connor discover his first ever favorite fictional character. And shit, it was usually fucking adorable to watch him follow Data’s every word and action when he appeared.
This though? This was unnerving.
On the screen, one of Captain Picard’s trademark speeches was thrumming along.
“The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android.”
Despite himself, Hank drifted away from the opened pizza box, winding up standing idly by the recliner and leaning one arm against it, getting sucked into the show just like he always did when that damn Picard got to speaking.
“It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him, and all who will come after him, to servitude and slavery?”
He remembered this episode, and suddenly Connor’s state made sense. This was the one where Data’s personhood was put on trial, and a bunch of humans got to determine if he was a living, sentient being or a machine to be used and disposed of as Starfleet saw fit.
Shit, Ben at least tell me you warned the kid before this one.
“Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting."
Connor made a soft, breathy noise, and Hank looked at him with mild concern. He hadn’t ever seen that kind of intensity and concentration on the android’s face for anything outside of work. It had been a long time since Hank himself had felt that kind of magnetic draw to a fictional universe. It had definitely been years at least. He used to devour it: books, shows, videogames. To jump heart first into the lives of characters who existed in worlds so dissimilar and yet parallel to his own. To watch them endure whatever the plot demanded of them. To watch them rise and fall and cope with the drama around them. To watch them grow and live. It could be hard sometimes to remember that the fictional characters were just that…fictional.
Hell, nowadays he couldn’t bring himself to care about semantics like that. The joys and the sorrows that those universes gave him were real to him, so maybe part of those characters was real too. If humans could build machines who developed souls of their own, then who were they to define who was real and who wasn’t?
The judge overseeing the trial of the episode was beginning to speak. Hank caught Ben’s eye and made a motion toward the pizza. Ben nodded and held up two fingers. Hank would have snarked at him to get his own damn pizza, but tonight that would have forced Ben to get up and walk between Connor’s line of sight and the television screen and…well…Hank had never heard of an android being equipped with laser eyes…but he figured they’d find out if anything moved between Connor and that screen. He wasn’t keen on testing it.
Instead, he dug out some paper plates and tugged out a couple pieces for Ben and a couple for himself.
"It sits there looking at me, and I don't know what it is,” the woman was saying. “This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I am neither competent, nor qualified, to answer those. I've got to make a ruling, to try to speak to the future.”
Hank reached behind Connor, passing the pizza behind his back to reach Ben. Ben took the plate with a nod, looking equally wary of doing anything to disrupt Connor’s attention.
“Is Data a machine? Yes. Is he the property of Starfleet?...No.”
Connor visibly slumped forward in relief, and his arms loosened around the cushion. The fabric had left indentations on his synthetic skin, and Hank doubted that cushion would ever go back to its original shape after the past twenty some odd minutes of abuse.
“We've all been dancing around the basic issue: does Data have a soul? I don't know that he has. I don't know that I have! But I have got to give him the freedom to explore that question himself.”
Hank might have imagined it, but he thought heard Connor sniff.
“It is the ruling of this court that Lieutenant Commander Data has the freedom to choose."
Hank busied himself with pouring a glass of soda and getting situated in the recliner. The rest of the episode coasted to a gentle ending after the tense climax. With it, Connor seemed to unwind bit by bit, slowly uncurling from his locked posture and relaxing back into the couch again. Somewhere in the transition, Ben had managed to get an arm around the android’s shoulder, letting his hand rest on top of his head. Hank could see his fingers working back and forth occasionally over his scalp, providing a tangible, friendly presence for Connor as he decompressed from the unexpectedly stressful episode.
Connor didn’t acknowledge the touch, but he seemed to relax a little more for it. Hank sent Ben a grateful look, and Ben just winked, munching on his pizza.
The end credits finally began to flutter across the screen, and that was the final pin in the balloon as stirred Connor out of his daze. He blinked rapidly, his LED finally shifting back to blue, and he looked over at Hank.
“Hank…I’m sorry.” He sounded slightly breathless, and his eyes were glazed. “I didn’t mean to ignore you when you returned. I was just…distracted…”
“S’all right, son,” Hank assured him with a smile. “We’ve all been there. Get sucked in to a show so hard you forget which way is up and what day it is.”
“It’s Wednesday.”
“Well, never mind then,” Hank chuckled. “Forgot who I was talking to.”
Connor stared at him, through him, thoughtfully for a moment, before his eyes dragged back to the screen. Ben shifted, taking his arm back, but not before giving the kid an affectionate smack on the shoulder.
“God, it’s been too long since I watched this with somebody who appreciates it!” he cheered.
Hank snorted, mumbling into his drink. “Nerd.”
Ben scowled and rattled something off in a language that Hank could only guess at.
“Did you just swear at me in Klingon?”
Connor rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, slouching in his seat as he processed. That didn’t stop him from quipping, “Specifically that you are a disappointment to the empire.”
Hank looked in horror at Connor, then to Ben, to Connor, and back to Ben.
“You taught him Klingon? Jesus Christ, Ben.”
Ben gave a smug grin and rambled something else.
To Hank’s continuing horror, Connor replied in the same choppy syllables.
“Ben, get out of my house. You aren’t welcome here anymore,” Hank grumbled flatly.
“No!” Connor practically bounced back up in his seat. “We still have time for another episode.”
Hank groaned, and Ben just snickered, picking up the remote to select the next episode.
Maybe he regretted this a little bit.