Chapter Text
The RK800 Connor Android did not know why its systems focused on the fish. From what it could tell of its functions, they were constantly trying to collect information to have an accurate understanding of any given situation. The fish, however, (it quickly understood crouching over it) was irrelevant to its mission.
Still, it picked the fish up for a closer inspection. Its analysis based on the blue stripes that covered the orange body and the shape of the creature quickly concluded that it was a Dwarf Gourami. Unlike a set of aquatic species, this one was not resistant to prolonged deprivation of water. And while the RK800 prototype knew this immediately, it didn’t understand what it meant for the Gourami until further input made it realize the fish was gasping. It was a defense mechanism, the fish was attempting to breathe, and if its situation didn’t change soon, it was going to die. The fish was unimportant to its objective… but helping wouldn’t interfere with the mission, either. Connor placed it in the tank. Wasn’t it too late? Would it live? Its system asked, and the RK800 observed. The fish fumbled a little but swam steadily away. The fish was healthy. It would live.
His system worked well with this development.
“This is Daniel, the coolest android in the world! Say hi, Daniel!”
“Hello!”
The deviant’s name was Daniel.
This was the relevant piece of information to obtain from the video. That, and the girl seemed to have confused her relationship with the android as genuine. The treatment, his social relations programming informed him, was akin to that of a sibling. This confused the RK800. Human children of Emma Phillips’ age were already capable of understanding multiple complex concepts, and the difference between androids and humans was simple. Humans were alive, and androids were not. Connor determined that she was still liable to anthropomorphism, as all humans were.
Connor scanned the rest of the room. Headphones. It held them up to its audio receptors, and immediately it understood they were too loud for a young girl. It didn’t even let the analysis program tell it what song it was, or such other useless data. Connor understood now: the hostage didn’t hear the gunshots. She was taken by surprise from her room.
Emma Phillips could be feeling betrayed, it mused.
Then the android walked into the living room and noticed the two bodies. One was a police officer, first responder, and, its reconstruction software made it aware, was shot in front of her. Connor picked up a small colorful boot. She was hurt. The other body belonged to her father, laid out in such a way that his injuries were clearly visible. She wouldn’t have missed them.
The deviant had done this because it was going to be replaced.
The family was going to have dinner.
Connor paused before pushing back the curtain towards the pool area, and it decided to make use of the flexibility afforded to its model.
When it did step into the night to negotiate, it didn’t surprise him how erratic the deviant was. Shooting another android in the shoulder, when it held a hostage? Unnecessary, ineffective, and even inconvenient. Each shot it took meant it had fewer bullets to threaten with. Still, Connor put its negotiation module and social relations programming to work, knowing most deviants, as Cyberlife has informed, liked to emulate human emotion. Connor pretended to understand then. As if replacing their housekeeping model wasn’t the most logical decision the family could take. As if Daniel’s supposed fear of loneliness meant anything in the face of its owner’s convenience. As if the deviant hadn’t gone against every principle that governed an android’s existence.
His sensors picked up, amidst the helicopter’s interference and the deviant’s glitched rambling, the weak breathing of the police officer on the floor. The synthetic arm that was part of its body stretched, as if possessing its own processing module, towards the prone figure. Connor kneeled over to examine the man, saw his lips twitching open and closed, like the fish gasping for life, his eyes intent, however, on a point before him. Connor followed the man’s gaze to the problem. A bullet wound on his arm, likely caused by the deviant, surrounded by the dark corrupted red of human blood.
The notification of its damage, pulsing small in the corner of its interface, brightened. The slight discomfort from the exposed cables on his arm, the irregular feedback, barely processed as his system focused on the mission. How fragile life was, Connor thought.
Would this affect the mission? Connor glanced at the deviant who stood clutching the girl with a gun to her head, yes, but it was performing well enough to hold them both steady. Connor looked down again, and his social relations programming said resigned and hopeless.
“He’s losing blood,” Connor said, and remembered that Daniel was malfunctioning. “If we don’t get him to a hospital, he’s going to die.”
Daniel tilted his head as if it didn’t understand why Connor was explaining this. “All humans die eventually.” The deviant said. “What does it matter if this one dies now?” Connor felt the new input change the direction of its calculations sharply.
“I’m going to apply a tourniquet,” Connor informed, as his negotiations module demanded he did. He gently pushed the officer back into a suitable position.
Blam! Ping! Light. This is what Connor’s receptors stated. “Don’t touch him!” Daniel said, now apparently angry. Connor looked into the deviant’s yellow LED. “Touch him and I kill you.” Connor took all these factors into an analysis that lasted less than a second but that, had he been human, he would have described as a small eternity.
Just how defective were this deviant’s systems? “You can’t kill me.” Connor loosened his tie quickly. “I’m not alive.”
Connor didn’t know if that broken machine considered shooting, and Connor had absolutely none of its processing power on that possibility. For the moment it took to apply the tourniquet, it focused simply on the moment the probability of the officer’s survival rose to an acceptable 83%.
Connor refocused on the mission.
The probability of resolving the situation with a stand-down had risen to the nineties percent when the deviant asked for a car. Like a flash, Connor’s processor brought up data on its damaged arm, on the video input of the bullet striking the floor close to the bleeding man, and it chanced a glance at the thirium that rested on the girl’s skin. Thirium, that was toxic for humans in prolonged exposure. This android, that asked “what does it matter?” on not only life but human life. This deviant, that after asking “what does it matter?” worked towards allowing a man to die. This machine that shot at anything that moved against its convenience. This defective thing that Emma Phillips had treated as a brother, that disrupted her life, that murdered her father, and was threatening to kill her.
Connor thought of Amanda, smiling at him for the first time, and showing him her roses. Roses of code. Amanda, pointing out the broken, useless ones, gone yellow and black, and cutting them. Amanda, and her garden, both so harmonious that any human, subjective as they are, would say they are unbelievably beautiful.
Connor didn’t trust Daniel an hour with Emma Phillips’s life, driving away. Connor didn’t trust Daniel with Emma’s life for an instant, standing there.
Life mattered. This thing didn’t.
The RK800 considered the features that made it special.
Connor shot Daniel on the forehead. Central processor.