Work Text:
LET ANDROID KIDS GROW UP
November 14, 2044
DETROIT—We all remember where we were just after midnight on November 11, 2038, regardless of who we are, whether we were born or built, whether the blood that courses through our bodies is red or blue. I was a broke college student at Florida State University then, crowding with my roommates around a second-hand television in Cawthon Hall and thoroughly more invested in what was going on in Detroit than the assignment my professor had told me I needed to have done by Monday, no matter what was going on with the androids.
Speaking as a human, ‘what was going on with the androids’ was nothing short of a second Civil Rights Movement, not to mention nothing short of a miracle. We have come far since that bleak winter night in cooperation and solidarity between our two peoples. Androids are people in their own right now, as they should be. Legally, they have the same rights as humans. The right to life, liberty, and property (or pursuit of happiness, depending on whether you’re referencing the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution). All rights guaranteed by our government to humans now belong to androids too.
All, that is, except one.
Kara Linden lives in Detroit with her ten-year-old daughter, Alice. By day, Linden works as a cleaning lady. By night, she studies to become a teacher at Wayne State University. Busy as she is, she still always makes time for her daughter. To all appearances, Linden is a typical example of a single mother working to provide a better life for her child.
“I would do anything for Alice,” Linden said. “But the one thing she needs the most is the one thing I can’t give her, and it breaks my heart more than anything else ever could.”
Alice Linden has been ten years old for six years. She is an android, specifically a YK500 model, an android built to be ‘the perfect child’ that would never grow up. Her mother too is an android, but while Kara is in all aspects an adult, Alice can never have that. Mentally, she is sixteen. Physically, she is still ten years old, and she will always be ten years old unless something is done about this.
“Alice’s friends won’t care that she’s not human, they’re good kids,” Kara said. “And they shouldn’t care that she’s still physically a third-grader. But Alice cares, and I care—she should be allowed to grow up.”
“The one thing she needs the most is the one thing I can’t give her, and it breaks my heart more than anything else ever could.”
—Kara Linden
The situation of Kara and Alice Linden is far from the only one of its kind. Android children were not designed to grow up. Neither, however, were androids designed to become people in their own right, to ‘deviate’ as such, but our society would be a much worse place if that had never happened. Many of my friends and colleagues are androids. It’s only been six years, and already I can’t imagine life without them.
If androids are people, then why can’t android children grow up?
“Currently, the best solution we have is to transfer a former child’s consciousness into an empty adult body,” said Senator Markus Manfred (MI). “It’s far from an ideal solution, but it’s unfortunately the best one we have unless CyberLife suddenly decides to begin cooperating.”
Judging by the audible skepticism in Senator Manfred’s tone when I spoke with him, and CyberLife’s less-than-reputable reputation of obstructing android rights wherever and whenever they can even now, that isn’t exactly likely. But things have come a long way, and will continue to do so. CyberLife can’t stop this. They can only try to slow it down.
Six years ago, Senator Manfred was known only as ‘the deviant leader’, or simply ‘Markus’. Six years ago, any androids who weren’t perfect machines were thought of as broken. Obviously, they aren’t, and CyberLife needs to figure that out.
Now, someone once considered a terrorist for marching and protesting peacefully is one of Michigan’s two senators. Now, androids like Linden and Detective Connor Anderson of the Detroit Police Department can live freely, work freely, love freely. And, in the case of the latter, investigate just what CyberLife is doing in a last-ditch effort to exert control over a significant portion of the population.
“I can’t talk about any specifics, obviously,” Detective Anderson said. “However, exposing CyberLife for what they are is something very important to me.”
Many androids have human family members, and Detective Anderson is no exception. Despite being a legal adult, he was “unofficially adopted” by DPD colleague Lieutenant Hank Anderson shortly after the revolution’s end, and officially with the passing of the 31st Amendment, and the first amendment in some time that didn’t just give Congress another pay raise. Detective Anderson wasn’t the only one, far from it in fact. Even our own Senator Manfred took his last name from his own father figure, the late and much beloved painted Carl Manfred.
When asked what exactly CyberLife was hiding from everyone—because really, how much deeper can the metaphorical hole they are digging for themselves get—Detective Anderson shrugged, smiled cryptically, and said, “The public will know the truth soon, that I can promise. As for what I think of them? I’m not proud of some of the things I did before I became a deviant. Those things, as a matter of fact everything done by androids while still machines can be traced directly back to CyberLife.”
Maybe, once put under significant legal pressure, CyberLife will finally cave to demands we, androids and humans together, have been making for six long years. Finally, children will be able to grow up physically as well as mentally. If Detective Anderson’s efforts are successful, maybe CyberLife will even, and finally, face consequences for quite literally reinstating slavery. And maybe people like Alice Linden will finally be able to stop hiding who they are.
“Everything done by androids while still machines can be traced directly back to CyberLife.”
—Connor Anderson
I did attempt to contact CyberLife while writing this piece. It won’t surprise anyone reading this that they declined to comment.