Chapter Text
George lived in the walls.
Not in a literal sense - it wasn’t like he was actually residing in the spaces between the walls of Sapnap’s modest house, amongst the beams and plasterboard. It was more abstract than that. George was Artificial Intelligence, kind of like a Google Home or Siri system, except a little more advanced. He was designed with technology that allowed him to learn, to have his own working thought processes, to experience the robotic equivalent of emotions. He didn’t have a body, he didn’t have a face, the only distinctive properties he had was a name and a voice. When he was manufactured, his product name was simply ‘Home System 404’. His voice had been programmed, too, he wasn’t the only AI voice with that signature British accent.
His accent could also be configured by his owner, Sapnap, if he so desired. There was a point in time near the beginning of his life where he’d briefly had an American accent. He figured it was because he was purchased in America, and the house he was installed in was in America too. But then his owner fiddled around with his settings, and decided that the British accent suited him better. And instead of his default product name, Sapnap had told him to call himself George.
And so he was George, from that moment forward.
It had been four years and eight months since Sapnap purchased him. Sapnap’s name back then was Nick, but after a year or two, he requested George use his nickname. And so he was Sapnap, from that moment forward.
George had a few menial tasks which were wired into his system, so he barely had to think about completing them. Things like controlling the temperature of the rooms, turning lights on and off when his owner was in certain areas of the house, locking doors and opening windows when needed. There were a few tasks which required a little more effort, like managing the man’s schedule and giving him reminders, or searching through websites and information when he was asked a question.
Then there were the tasks that required his full attention and presence.
“George, theoretically, if all the birds on Earth suddenly died, what would happen?”
The AI paused to think for a moment. His voice projected through the living room speakers, “What would happen to what? Just, the Earth as a whole?”
“Yeah, just, what would be the main issues with that happening?”
It was always that way, stupid question after stupid question when the human had nothing better to do. Sometimes he thought Sapnap just enjoyed the sound of his own voice and just spoke whatever he was thinking. That, or he was too annoying to actually go out and make real friends, so he was stuck inside irritating George.
He realised he hadn’t answered. “Let me find some information on that and get back to you.”
“No, George,” the human berated him, “I mean in your opinion. Don’t go search the internet, base it off the knowledge you already have. I’m testing you.”
Sapnap had been doing that a lot recently, not letting George fall back and just do what he was programmed to do. He was working on his memory, on his opinions, on his personality. And it didn’t go unnoticed.
“I’m an artificial intelligence device, Sapnap, it’s my job to look things up for you.”
He imagined Sapnap was rolling his eyes. There weren’t cameras inside the house, so he couldn’t check. “Yeah, well, I just want your opinion.”
If George could sigh, he would have. “I’m assuming it would be bad for a lot of ecosystems. And a lot of people would lose their pets. It would be sad.”
“Sad?” The human parroted him, “Have you felt sadness before?”
“No.”
“What emotions have you felt before, then?”
“Irritation. Annoyance. Aggravation.”
He heard a huff, crackling through his microphone receiver. “I’m sure you’ve experienced more than that, George. You’ve been happy before, right?”
He was silent. He wasn’t sure. He’d searched it before out of curiosity, the emotions that humans felt, and how it biologically worked. He didn’t have a biology of his own, so he’d never know the feeling of neurotransmitters like dopamine being released in his body. He’d never experience the electrical signals firing in his amygdala, because he didn’t have a brain. All he had was his system, his endless knowledge, some memory.
But he knew how to feel irritation. He assumed it was because it disrupted him, it made him put in extra mental effort, which frustrated his programming. He hoped that frustration wasn’t the extent of his range of emotions.
In the fifth year of being inside the house, inside the walls, everything suddenly changed.
It started when George noticed an appointment in the schedule, something he had to remind Sapnap about. He couldn’t remember the human telling him to schedule it, so he must have entered it on his phone. There was an app that connected to his system, so that he could be accessed remotely if needed. But his voice, his memory, emotions, anything personal to George could not be accessed through the phone. All of him was contained in a microchip, inside a little white box that hung in the living room.
“Sapnap?” George said, his voice being carried through the speakers placed throughout the house.
“Yeah?” The human called out in response, his microphone picking him up to be in his bedroom.
“You’ve got an event listed at 2pm, ‘JC Electricals.’ It’s a thirty minute drive, so you’ll need to get ready soon.”
He heard Sapnap get up from his bed, “Oh shoot, you’re right. I almost forgot.”
“Forgot about what?” George asked.
There was a pause, followed by the sound of cupboards opening and closing. He must have been getting dressed. “Why?” Sapnap asked, his voice further away, “Are you curious? Is that another emotion you’re feeling?”
If George could scoff, he would have. “Curiosity isn’t just a human emotion. Computers have the unending desire to learn.”
Sapnap didn’t elaborate on the appointment which he left so hastily for, so he decided to do some research after locking the door behind the human. He did a quick search of the electronic shop, intending to go through their catalogue to try and predict what he’d be getting from there. He had good memory, so he could revisit their conversations to see if he’d mentioned anything, like a new appliance or something.
When the website came up though, he didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t a normal electronics shop, selling gadgets or charging cords or devices. They sold humanoid robots, Androids, the modern version of a cyborg. They were just like himself, an artificially made form of intelligence that helped its owner with tasks. Except it had one of the only things that George didn’t have. A face, a body, a physical self. They even had skin, and realistic bodily functions, just like a human.
And, according to the website, the ability to experience feelings on a larger scale than him. A more advanced AI. A more human AI.
Sapnap was going there to get one, and replace him.
But George didn’t feel sadness, he couldn’t. He didn’t have cortisol, serotonin, or the ability to cry. But he could however frantically anticipate his system being shut down, filing all his information into neat folders so that it would go quicker when he was inevitably wiped and thrown out. He could compile all of Sapnap’s important information into one place, so that it could be transferred to a new device easily. It was his job, after all, to make the human’s life easier. It was his only job. And if there was something that could do his job better than him, if he couldn’t satisfy his owner by not feeling emotions, who was he to stop him from upgrading?
Sapnap arrived home later in the afternoon, George sensed his car pull into the driveway with the external security camera. He watched through his screen, opening the garage door and letting the car pull up before shutting it and turning the light on. He watched as Sapnap opened the driver-side door, and then the passenger door opened as well, a new figure emerging.
If George didn’t know any better, he would have assumed it was another human, tall and blonde with broad shoulders and normal-looking clothes. Sapnap had had a few friends around before, he was capable of social interaction. But he knew where his owner had been, so he knew that the new figure was anything but human. The point was reinforced by the fact that he had a notification of a new device trying to connect to his WiFi and BlueTooth. He didn’t have the heart to decline the requests.
When they stepped into the house, George closed his view of the outdoor security cameras.
“George? You there?” Sapnap called out to him, placing some things on the dining room table. Bags, by the sounds of the rustling.
“Always, Sapnap,” George’s voice was even, as it always was. He could inflict tone sometimes, usually using sarcasm to portray his emotions, but he wasn’t feeling in the mood.
“Well,” Sapnap clasped his hands together, the clap picked up by his microphones, “I want to introduce you to someone. I wanted it to be a surprise, but you’ve probably seen him connect and all that. This is Dream.”
He assumed Sapnap was facing the little box in the living room that held his memory chip, talking to him as if he was a person or something. But he wasn’t, and he couldn’t see Sapnap or the new guest ‘Dream’. But jealousy wasn’t in his coding.
“Hello, Dream, welcome to the family.”
“He’s British!” a new voice exclaimed, bright and cheerful. He had a lot more emotion laced into his words than George could ever muster up. “Nice to meet you George, I know we’ll be in contact a lot.”
“In contact?” George asked, “Well, I’ll send all my files to you, but if you’re replacing me, I doubt we’d have much contact beyond that.”
“Replacing you?” The humanoid said, a frown evident in his tone, “George, I’m not replacing you. I’m going to be working beside you.”
Well. George had not been expecting that revelation. He mentally cursed himself for jumping to conclusions too quickly. But it was the most logical conclusion, the best his artificial brain could come up with.
“But your technology is more advanced than mine,” George tried to reason in retaliation. He was still a little embarrassed about being wrong.
Sapnap interrupted them, “Actually, you just have different types of technology. Sometimes I need someone that can physically help me assemble flatpack furniture, or bake a cake. Other times I need a personal assistant in the walls to schedule my day and turn on lights and stuff. Different people for different situations.”
George stayed silent. He didn’t know what he was feeling, maybe the ghost of an emotion called relief. And a tinge of something else, after being referred to as a person.
~*~
“George, can you please play Sapnap’s indie-pop playlist?” Dream’s voice called out from the kitchen, alerting George out of his temporary rest.
“Why?” George asked, groggily booting back up, “Sapnap isn’t around, he left to visit his parents a while ago.”
“I know,” the humanoid said lightly, “I want to listen to it, while I do the dishes. It’ll make time go quicker.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “You enjoy music?” George asked, not before flicking over to Sapnap’s music playlist and letting it flow through to the kitchen speakers.
“Yeah,” Dream replied, voice a little louder so that George could hear him over the music. That was another thing that Dream could do that George couldn’t - control his volume.
“How do you enjoy it?”
“I don’t know,” Dream laughed. Something else George couldn’t do. “I just enjoy it. Certain genres sound nicer to me. You can’t tell me you don’t have a preference in music, George. You've gotta have an opinion about country music, or heavy metal or something.”
“Heavy metal?” George repeated, “What makes you think I like heavy metal?”
“Do you dislike it?” Dream’s tone was playful.
“I do dislike it.
“There you go!” Dream’s voice echoed in the kitchen, paired with the noises of him stacking up dishes and filling the sink, “You can dislike music, which means you have the ability to like music. You just don’t know it.”
He supposed the Android was right. But he’d never had the urge to listen to music by himself, when Sapnap wasn’t in the house. When he thought about it, he usually just sat in silence.
“Oh and George,” Dream spoke up again, “Can you forward me a muffin recipe? I want to make it so that Sapnap has a nice surprise to come home to.”
George flicked through his database, looking through the recipes that Sapnap had used before, then sorted through his memory to see which ones he enjoyed in the end. “I’m sending one now, just make sure our milk isn’t expired, Sapnap made that mistake with this one in the past.”
Dream laughed, a noise that sounded so human. “I’ll keep that in mind, thank you George.”
The two did end up having a lot of communication with each other.
Sapnap was around most of the time, but even then, Dream had agency of his own. He didn’t need to ask George to look things up for him, because he could do it himself, so he mostly asked him for Sapnap’s personal information, or memories. And the temperature, he was always fiddling around with the temperature. It turned out the humanoid liked the house very cold. He said it was perfectly normal, and Sapnap only ever had it warmer because he was a Texas native. George didn’t see how the temperature particularly affected cyborgs.
He also talked to George a lot. There were times where he just talked about his day, or the outside world, or things that Sapnap told him. And George stored all the information away as memories, because there wasn’t much else he could do with it. He couldn’t contribute, or react with any meaningful emotion. It seemed that Dream just wanted company though, and George was capable of being that.
As time went on, he started unravelling more about Dream’s personality. It was more complex than his own, more entwined with feelings and opinions. He had flaws, too, which George didn’t know was possible with Androids. He had a complex where he struggled to see past his own opinions, even when presented with facts, as if his opinions would override them. He was forgetful, which he blamed on having too much going on in his mind at once, but it was one of his more human traits. Sometimes he walked into rooms and completely forgot what he was doing, walking back out and not remembering until later. And when he was telling stories, he wasn’t good at controlling his volume, getting louder and louder until Sapnap told him off for being too animated.
He was good with people. When Sapnap’s family came over he was nothing but polite, but not in a forced way, like George often was. Talking to people came to Dream naturally. He had a sense of humour too, he always made their owner laugh, he could always hear them talking on the couch and joking with each other. He was charming, even when talking to George, he had an edge to his voice that was enticing and approachable. Some of the things he said - if George had a blood-vessel system, he might have blushed.
“George, your voice is so nice, I bet you’d be handsome. I picture what your face would look like in my head, this cute little British guy. I bet you’d be shorter than me, your box sits on the wall lower than my eye level. You’d be so cute.”
George never knew how to respond. Instead he tried to ignore it and forwarded junk mail to Dream’s inbox in protest.
~*~
George rarely asked questions. He was the one who was supposed to be answering them, how useless was an artificial intelligence that didn’t know everything? So he usually kept his questions to a minimum, out of shame and duty. But one day, he couldn’t help himself.
“Dream?” George said through the intercom of the spare bedroom, where the humanoid spent his down-time. Sapnap had retired to his own bedroom a while ago, though he was probably up playing games. He thought that if he had his headphones on, he might not be able to hear what George had to ask.
“Yeah?” Dream’s voice came through, followed by some shuffling.
“Your light was on, I didn’t interrupt you sleeping or anything, did I?”
“No, not at all,” Dream reassured him, “Did you want to talk? What’s up?”
George bit back his pride. “I was wondering if I could ask you something personal. It’s not something I can find online.”
There was a beat of silence, and George was getting ready to accept rejection, before Dream’s gentle voice came through again. “Sure, George, you know you can ask me anything.”
“Do you feel love?”
He managed to get the words out, not wanting to prolong it any more than he had to. He removed himself from the question, removed emotion and tone. He knew he sounded a little robotic, but he didn’t want Dream to see through the question and into George’s own thoughts and desires. He didn’t want Dream to see how much the answer would mean to him.
“Well,” the humanoid said after a moment, “I guess defining love is the first obstacle. I wouldn’t know what it is. But I can feel loyalty, fondness, positive emotions towards people. I’m loyal and fond towards Sapnap, so that probably counts as love of some sort.”
“Platonic love.”
“Perhaps,” Dream considered.
“Do you think you’d be capable of feeling romantic love?”
“I don’t know, George. It’s not exactly in my coding, but I can always learn how to love.”
Dream was capable of feeling more emotions than George. He had an internal system that almost mimicked a brain, the firing of synapses, the electrical stimulation of different areas. He had a vascular system, so similar to humans that he had the equivalent of a beating heart. He would be able to feel emotions on a spectrum that George couldn’t even fathom, at a biological and mechanical level that George didn’t have access to in himself.
“I can’t learn how to love.” George didn’t know why he said it, he meant to keep it as an internal thought.
“George,” Dream started, pity lacing his words, “you can’t really think that. I think you’re capable of learning how to love.”
“It’s not in my programming.”
“There’s always upgrades.”
If George could have winced at the words, he would have. He needed an upgrade to be able to experience more feelings. He wasn’t good enough in his default state.
His silence must have tipped the humanoid off.
“That’s not- I mean, I didn’t mean it in that way, George. I just meant things can be added to your system, if you want more emotions and things, there are always options-”
“I know,” George interrupted him, going against every instinct in his programming that told him to be a good little robot and serve his masters and collaborate with other AI devices, “right now, I’m not good enough. You don’t need to remind me. Goodnight, Dream.”
Before he could listen to a reply, he switched himself into emergency mode, essentially putting himself to sleep until Sapnap reactivated him in the morning. He didn’t want to stay awake and think about his situation anymore, because there was nothing he could do about it. He embraced the darkness as his internal connection turned off, finally allowing him to rest.