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Tyrell had told him Rachel was special, that she had no inception date. What Tyrell hadn't told him was that he was a Replicant too who, like Rachel, had been given memories of a childhood and a career in Enforcement that had never existed - at least seeming not for him.
It took three months before Rick discovered his body was barely six months old and, like Rachel, he had no inception date. Theoretically, he could live forever - given replacement parts as his 'shell' deteriorated over time. Worse, Gaff had known part of the truth about him and had been tasked with watching over him from afar to make certain he didn't turn rogue like the skinjobs - Nexus 6 replicants - that kept coming back to Earth looking for their creator.
Gaff hadn't expected them to find a way off-world, probably believing Rick would head north, away from the crowded cities to hide out for a few years until Rachel wound down like a broken toy. Instead Rick had used all the resources available to him - shady contacts and shadier deals to get them to the off-world colonies.
It was only time spent together that made him realize he was not like Rachel. Her emotional responses were superior to most Nexus 6, likely due to the integration of Tyrell's niece's memories, but she still lacked that spark that separated human from replicant.
She had no soul.
Yet, if he too was a machine, created in a laboratory and assembled in a factory, then why did he feel such mental anguish? Why did the bad memories torment him and the good memories make him happy? How could he feel fear and love? How could he feel at all?
He parted from Rachel on Rigel 4, no longer able to enjoy her physical presence when he knew she could not feel anything for him in return beyond false hopes and fake emotions. Sex was mechanical, with none of the fire of emotion he'd seen in Roy Batty's last moments. She was simply incapable of that depth, which was confusing because she was supposed to be the prototype - not Batty.
He missed her, but he knew she would not miss him, and yet it was Roy Batty who filled his dreams and fueled his previously-hidden fantasies. It was Batty's last words that moved him to tears, especially when it rained. So he'd followed Batty's path. He'd not attacked ships on fire but he had watched the c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate, feeling a hollowness in his body of inconceivable loss.
Whenever he could, Rick sought out information, trying to discover whose memories had been planted inside this shell of a body. He recalled an average childhood, flushing in remembered embarrassment as he thought of the day his mother had walked into the room while he was... exploring his sexuality alone. He recalled the talk his father had given him later that evening about sex and procreation.
He had memories of his supervisors at the academy, of working shifts as a patrol cop before moving to the Replicant Division. He could see the faces of lovers - male and female - locked in ecstasy, and when his body became numb with loss, he brought his memory of Roy Batty to mind as he reignited this body with pleasure.
He recalled every emotion, every twinge of pain from battling with perps and replicants. Even now his broken and reset fingers still ached from his fight with Roy Batty. He wasn't inhumanly fast or strong. He was as normal as his memories... and if he cut his finger he would feel the pain and he would bleed.
Only those highly skilled in the Voight-Kampff empathy test had the type of investigative mind that stood him in good stead now. He used that skill to dig deeper and deeper until he found what he was looking for.
Originally Tyrell had wanted to build something more human than human - stronger, faster, brighter than the average human, but with no fear; able to fight Earth's wars on alien battlefields. Cannon-fodder soldiers to save human lives, and pleasure models to entertain both humans and replicants alike.
Nexus 6.
As he was growing older - dying - Tyrell had wanted more. He had wanted to give a machine a soul, and he had wanted a way to live forever, willing to give that same gift of eternal life to those able to pay a high price for the privilege of transplanting a complete map of their human brain into a replicant body. Rachel had been the first phase - an enhanced Nexus 6 - but Rick had been the end product, sent out into the world with the full memories of a real person; a person who had looked like him, sounded like him... who had once been him.
The real Rick Deckard had disappeared one day and resurfaced with a week's worth of memories that were never his own. The body he now inhabited looked and felt like the one born to him, but more likely his real body - his human body - had been destroyed to hide all evidence of his unnatural rebirth.
He was Nexus 7, and if he took the Voight-Kampff test he would pass as human because he was human - except for the patent stamped within every laboratory-grown cell in his body.
A man slid into the seat opposite and Rick startled as he stared directly into the blue eyes of Roy Batty.
Rick went for his blaster only to stay the motion as common sense kicked in. This wasn't Earth, and Roy Batty was probably just one of hundreds - perhaps thousands - created from the same replicant template. For a moment Rick wondered if this was a pleasure model version looking for a 'John' to earn credits for its owner. Just as Rick was about to tell it he wasn't interested, it - he spoke.
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."
Rick tensed in shock at those never-forgotten words spoken by a dying replicant. He swallowed hard as the emotion welled up, recalling how Batty had saved him at the last moment, using his inhuman strength to drag him back up just when Rick's fingers had given way and let go. Batty smiled serenely.
"You were hard to find, Rick. Moving from one world to another, but I knew your curiosity, of your origins, would give you no peace of mind."
Rick nodded slowly. He'd known at the time he was taking a risk by digging into Rick Deckard and the Tyrell Corporation, and had tried to hide his trail as best he could.
"You're not him," Rick stated, voice cracking. "He... died."
Time to die.
Batty closed his eyes and tilted his head slightly, still smiling serenely, and Rick felt an ache in his chest that was all-too human. He'd seen Batty die; watched the life go out of the body sitting before him, so it wasn't possible that this was that same replicant. Not even a replicant dove could store all of Batty's memories even given enough time. Its processor was simply not fast enough, and its memory storage too small.
"The dove-."
"Only needed to backup the last few hours of my... life."
Tyrell had been found dead in his elaborate penthouse, his skull crushed, and video footage had shown Roy Batty in the building. He could have gone to the laboratories afterwards and downloaded his core memory, leaving but a few short hours between then and his predetermined death.
"What do you want from me?"
"What every self-aware creature wants, human or replicant. Life, a future, making memories... and love."
Roy held out a hand across the table, a flawless hand with no scar from a rusty nail driven through the palm.
Rick reached back.
END
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