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Detroit was just a few days shy of Christmas, and the city was dissolving into the annual capitalist hellscape that the over-commercialized and over-hyped holiday season seemed to inspire around here.
Calder loved it.
Well…maybe not the ‘capitalist hellscape’ part, but the hustle and bustle and traffic and crowds and loud conversations and frantic energy blanketing the city…He did love that. He had been spending as much time as possible near the shopping malls and markets and stores, just soaking in the chaos.
The weather, by contrast, was mild, unseasonably warm and wilting anyone’s hopes for a snowy white Christmas Day. Connor would have been happy about that, but he and Julia had flown out of Detroit last week to kick start their belated honeymoon. Coda was obnoxiously cheerful at home, baking all manner of things for other people’s holiday parties. Apparently he had grown some kind of reputation working with Bert’s Baked Stuffs, and that reputation was that he was an excellent chef and baker…and so a lot of his regular customers had been placing bulk orders for food and treats to take to their gatherings. So the kitchen had been all but off limits for the past week as he joyfully bounced around mixing, baking, decorating, and bundling orders.
The rest of the house hadn’t been much safer. Hank had been coming over a lot more frequently, and there was nothing subtle about the way he and Penny were growing closer. It had been…a rough several weeks lately; Calder wouldn’t begrudge them finding comfort in each other’s presence, given their history. But holy shit, it was disgustingly soft to witness.
So Calder had eagerly made his escape at every opportunity. Away from the warm, familiar comforts of home to the madness of the city’s last-minute shoppers and forced cheer. Calder had never experienced the holiday season, but from what he’d seen so far, the whole month of December had been hijacked by humanity to manufacture some sense of peace and joy and unity to carry them through the end of the year. It was certainly not reflective of how humanity behaved for the other eleven months of the year, so it was hard for him not to see some level of fakeness or ham-handedness about it.
But…he wasn’t such an asshole that he couldn’t see the charm in it too.
Then again, earlier he had watched two grown adults fighting over the last what-cha-ma-call-it trendy toy of the season…So maybe it was all relative.
Every storefront window was glittering with tinsel and string lights, with heaping shelves of toys that lit up and talked and sang and moved around. Electronic screens flashing harsh lights to an almost seizure-inducing degree, demanding ‘look at me! Buy me! I’m shiny!’ Inside each store, shoppers were elbowing their way through, grabbing up things they wanted, only to change their mind and leave merchandise piled up wherever their desire ended. Suffering retail workers struggled to keep up with manning the registers, putting back displaced merchandise, keeping dressing rooms tidy, and keeping a pleasant demeanor while dealing with the most rude and entitled customers.
Gaggles of carolers were posted on street corners, sharing space with charities ringing bells very passive aggressively to guilt passersby into donating.
Coda had looked at Calder like he was INSANE for wanting to be out and about during all this, and sure, to Coda and Penny and Hank and Connor, this was probably a perfectly crafted Hell for them.
Calder loved it.
Admittedly, he was new to feeling…anything really, both physically and emotionally, but he knew that he loved this frantic vibe of the city right now, as much as he hated the stillness and the silence and the emptiness that would have been its opposite.
He meandered around, having no stake in any last minute sales or any of the shrieking electronic toys or happily drunk partiers bouncing from bar to bar around him. He wasn’t with the masses scrambling for taxis to shuttle around or cramming into restaurant lobbies waiting for their reservations to be ready for a hot meal. He was mostly just a spectator here.
He’d only made three purchases today in total, and they were all specifically for himself. First had been what he thought initially to be a traditional ‘ugly Christmas sweater.’ It was one of the misplaced merchandise items that he’d found abandoned in the home décor section of a thrift store. It was a deep green cable knit sweater, with a nightmarish reindeer with a red nose embroidered squarely across the chest. It was less ‘ugly’ than it was ‘poorly made,’ but it had made him chuckle, especially at the way that Rudolph’s eyes were clearly looking in different directions, and not in a way that looked intentional by the creator.
It hadn’t been until he was checking out that he’d spotted a little table just inside the store front, where a couple of teenagers were selling some of their handmade wares as a fundraiser for…some trip or other. He didn’t pay much attention to the cause. What did catch his eye was the similar stitching on some of the other sweaters that the teens were selling, along with some lumpy candles and itchy-looking mitten/scarf combos.
The teens looked so dejected by however their day had been going so far that he paid nearly double what they were asking for the ugly—um, for the unique Christmas sweater. The teen boy who had clearly been the creator of this masterpiece lit up like a Christmas tree when Calder bought it, and Calder had been compelled to pull the thing on over his clothes and wear it out of the store.
He was going to have to reinforce the stitching on Rudolph as soon as he got home. Christ, the stitchwork was amateur at best…but it was immediately one of the greatest things that Calder owned…which also wasn’t a lot, but whatever.
His second purchase of the evening was a pair of glasses. He didn’t need them of course. His Project Dawn body was not as strong or durable as the RK800 body that he had had once upon a time, but it was still an android body. Perfect eyesight included.
The glasses were almost purely aesthetic. They were simple black frames that fit his face nicely. The elderly woman running the eyewear kiosk in the shopping mall had eagerly encouraged him to try every kind of style and shape of glasses that she had on display. That included reflective aviator sunglasses, a pair of red frames shaped like hearts, a pair of yellow frames shaped like stars, and several frames with patterns imitating leopard print, plaid, and galaxy, all with different designs on the legs…studded with rhinestones or braided plastic for some extra flair.
He had had his eyes on a set of royal purple frames that had an ombre color to the lenses, starting out dark amber at the top and fading to clear at the bottom. But he had kept going back to the simple black frames. They’d match any outfit, and they didn’t stand out so much that they distracted from the green color of his eyes. The saleswoman had encouraged that line of thinking, maybe laying on a little thick how handsome he looked. Eh, he was not immune to flattery, and he bought the pair, tearing off the tags and wearing them as he moved on with the crowd.
Neither Connor nor Coda wore glasses, and he liked that these made him look different from them.
All of that transaction had involved staring at his own reflection quite a bit…which made it impossible to avoid the reminders that he was still wearing an RK800 skin program on a not-RK800 facial structure. To anyone not interacting with Connor or Coda on a daily basis, Calder’s face likely looked unremarkable and completely usual. There was nothing ‘wrong’ per se with his facial appearance, as far as faces go. But he could feel the way the skin projection didn’t sit properly over his facial structure. It almost itched around his cheekbones and temples, and he found himself often prodding and poking at it to try and make the sensation go away.
Penny or any of her colleagues would have been able to fix this without much trouble, but Calder felt that he had seen enough of them in that kind of clinical manner. This wasn’t a clinical, medical, or technical issue that needed fixing. It was…cosmetic. He was comfortable in this body, with the exception of just this parameter.
So he less meandered and more beelined toward the first skin program modification business that came up on his local search with a good review rating. It was a hole in the wall place that called itself “Freckles,” presumably the nickname of the owner of the shop. She was a chubby cheeked AX400 whose entire face and exposed arms and hands were covered in freckles, enough to overshadow the default color of her skin program. Her hair was heavily textured, almost frizzy, and a vibrant shade of auburn to match her freckles. The edges of a dark tattoo wound up under her shirt sleeve and peeked out from the neck of her shirt, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Her name badge read “Harry.”
“You’re not Freckles?” Calder had teased her during the consult.
Harry laughed and posed with her forearms up, showing off the impressive coloration pattern on her skin. “I am whatever I want to be, on any day that I want to be it, darlin’.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “And so today you’re…Harry.”
“Yep!” She had beamed and swung her ankle-length floral skirt up enough to expose her calves…her distinctly and unexpectedly hairy calves. “Like a yeti!”
Calder’s other eyebrow went up to the join the first, but she seemed so delighted with herself that he couldn’t tease her. Wasn’t that he was here? To feel more…’delight’ with himself?
“What would you like to be today, my good sir? Or madam, if you prefer?” Harry asked, folding her hands in her lap.
“Um…sir, but not—don’t call me ‘sir.’ That’s…weird. Anyway, I don’t…like my face.” He frowned as he sat across from her in her little office, which looked much like the inside of a tattoo parlor with its tools and devices carefully organized about. “I mean, I don’t want to change it necessarily, just…the way it fits. It feels like it doesn’t rest—”
“It’s an RK800 mold, and you aren’t an RK800,” she tutted. “Yep, I can modify it however you like.”
Just like that.
And so she did.
Within a short hour, Calder left Freckles feeling like—maybe ‘a new man’ was an exaggeration—feeling like he had a new face entirely. Harry had modified the coding of the RK800 skin program, tapping into a few of the built-in templates that came with the RK800 appearance algorithm…a vestigial piece of programming still embedded in Calder’s coding. The changes made the skin around his cheekbones and brow bones slightly softer, less sharp and gaunt than before. His face remained more angular and less warm than either of his brothers, but he was satisfied with that. He was never going to be identical to them ever again. Connor and Coda could continue to look like twins, but there would never be triplets. Calder was happy to look simply like a brother.
He practically skipped past a block of storefronts after leaving Freckles, grinning at his reflection and for the first time feeling like he was actually seeing himself, Calder, and not someone else. Between the adjustments to the skin program, the curly mop of hair flopping over his head, the dark rimmed glasses, and the derp-faced Rudolph sweater…he had never felt more like himself.
“You’re welcome to come in and view the art up close, sir?”
Calder blinked, coming back to himself. He realized that he’d come to a stop standing outside a small art gallery that was open to the public. His reflection in the glass had been wonderfully distracting after a day of avoiding looking at himself, to the extent that he hadn’t even registered any of the artwork beyond the glass.
The person who’d spoken was a human with greying hair and deep crows’ feet around warm blue eyes. The man wasn’t dressed like a fancy art curator; far from it, he looked distinctly Teacher-Shaped in his sweater vest and pleated pants. He smiled pleasantly and gestured toward the gallery.
“Please, if you like?” he invited.
Calder blinked again, glancing into the gallery. It was far less busy and chaotic than any surrounding stores. Far from it, it was well below capacity and hardly trussed up for the holidays at all.
“Um, I wasn’t planning on it. What are you selling?” he asked, because he was in just a good enough mood to spend some more money on some weird art.
The man chuckled. “Oh, nothing is for sale here, friend. The school district rented this space to show off our students’ art projects that they’ve completed throughout the semester.”
“Professional art school students?” Calder prompted, curious despite himself.
The man tilted his head one way then the other ponderously. “Aspiring, perhaps. This a collection containing works across all Detroit schools, all grade levels.”
Calder peered past him, spotting a series of pedestals against one wall, each holding up some misshapen lump of pottery or another. The gallery seemed to go deeper than at first glance, and beyond the first wall, there were a few glimpses of what looked like needlework and paintings.
Passing curiosity turned to genuine intrigue as his recently rebooted skin program felt the odd crumple of the Rudolph embroidery sewn across the chest of his sweater.
“Sure,” he found himself shrugging casually. “I’ll take a spin.”
The man looked cheered, rubbing his hands together and stepping aside. “Wonderful! It’s organized by medium. All of the pottery together, sculpture together, needlework together, etc. I can give you a tour—”
“No,” Calder waved him off politely. “I prefer to wander aimlessly, if that’s all right.”
“The best kind of wandering is the aimless kind,” the man smiled. “Well, wander on then. If you have any questions, the kids call me Mr. Greg.”
Calder bobbed his head in acknowledgement before wandering into the little gallery. The noise of bustle and music and traffic dulled significantly inside the building, but it wasn’t an oppressive silence that would have made his newly modified skin crawl. At any rate, any discomfort he felt over the muffling of all sound was more than offset by the color and motion exploding across the artwork that was suddenly surrounding him.
And so he wandered…aimlessly…through it all.
He started with the pottery, as it had caught his eyes first. An array of lopsided bowls with ragged rims. A few had cracked in the kiln and been glued back together for presentation and painting. They transitioned into more polished vases, cups, plates, and ornate pots.
From pottery, the art shifted into sculpture. Spreads of sculpted cartoonish animals that all ended up looking like dogs or cats but were labeled as “horses,” “tigers,” or “dragons.” They escalated into more refined and advanced sculptures, depicting motion of dancing bodies, wind whipping through hair and clothing rippling out of stone. Some became more abstract, nondescript shapes that were not recognizable as any object on Earth but still radiating emotion imbued by the sculptor’s hands.
The artists ranged in age from kindergarten to seniors in high school. The range of skill was far wider, with some students clearly only fulfilling class obligation to complete their projects, while some had thrown their hearts and souls and passions into their pieces. He could see physical fingerprints left behind, either by the artists or by those who had handled the projects on their way into the gallery.
Canvasses soon followed. Two-dimensional pieces adorned in paint, crayon, ink, pencil, and charcoal. Some capturing realistic images of houses, landscapes, sunsets, and oceans. Some beyond the abstract, as though the artist had attacked the canvas with their tools like an enemy…or had delicately caressed the canvas like a crush.
Needlework and tapestries were next, but Calder took his time meandering around the canvasses, reading each narrative provided by each artist regarding their pieces. He paused for a longer period to read the large block of text written for a painting that depicted hand drawn horses running across a beach combined with random splashes of glittery paint.
The artist had penned a colorful story to go with the piece. Although largely nonsensical and following no kind of story structure, it was frankly hilarious and imaginative.
Stallions Versus the Sea, by Bonny Jo Stevens.
Calder smiled affectionately, listening to the soft conversation of the few other visitors as they meandered around the gallery alongside him. The rustle of their coats and bags signaled their whereabouts, along with the giggles of any children that accompanied them or Mr. Greg’s voice giving them a tour. The clicking of heeled shoes and the squeak of sneakers and the plod of boots. The occasional chiming of jingle bells by someone who was clearly feeling the holiday spirit.
Calder was just stepping into the section of the gallery dedicated to tapestries and fabric work when he spotted the only other occupant of this area of the gallery. He came to an abrupt stop in his tracks.
Oh, for fuck’s sake…
The only other person in this section was a man dressed head to toe in a full Santa Claus costume. From the polished black boots topped with white tufts, to the richly red trousers and coat lined with matching white. The iconic red and white cap topped off a head of curly white hair and beard. The man’s back was turned to Calder, hands on his hips as he surveyed some of the hanging quilts and dresses and other artistic fabrics.
Calder considered just turning around and leaving without viewing this last section of the gallery. He had so far enjoyed the saccharine spectacle of Christmas cheer and the madness of people’s last minute shopping. He didn’t think he could stomach whatever undoubtedly concentrated holly jolly was contained in this man, parading around as Father Christmas here.
In fact, he was midway through pivoting when one of his shoes squeaked on the tile floor, alerting the other occupant to his presence.
The man dressed as Santa Claus glanced back at him, and his face was quick to flash a broad smile of greeting. Damn, he even had the rosy cheeks and twinkling eyes behind his spectacles.
“Hello there!” he chirped in a warm, booming voice, then glanced around at the hanging artwork. “Marvelous collection this season, isn’t it?”
Calder gave a detached, polite nod, keeping his distance near some very eccentric looking dresses crafted by a couple of junior students and made out of what looked like chicken wire and newspapers full of articles about the android revolution.
“Some clearly have more talent than others,” Calder remarked under his breath, eying a few other pieces.
‘Santa’ tutted at him, hands still on his hips as he looked at Calder. “Oh now…Art as a hobby has little to do with talent. It’s the joy of making the thing!”
Calder looked at him dryly, then pointedly looked at a canvas behind them. It was a mostly blank board, with the printout of the art assignment crudely stapled to one corner, and in the middle of the canvas was a hastily drawn stick figure with a frowny face and a speech bubble that said “Does this count?” in it.
Santa followed Calder’s eye, then laughed merrily at the piece.
Calder gestured to it. “I’m not getting ‘joy’ vibes from this one.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong!” Santa bounced over, leaning in to read the sparse sentences describing the piece. “Theresa felt great joy when her teacher begrudgingly accepted this as her submission. She even says here that she prefers music and hates drawing. Imagine her joy and relief when this piece did, in fact, count! And I believe maybe some satisfaction in the rebellion of interpreting the assignment in such a way.”
Calder deadpanned. “Saint Nick is an art critic then?”
Santa chortled and folded his hands behind his back, sliding over to the next piece to soak it in as well. “I’m an enthusiast for all expressions of creativity and creation. Look around…” He turned in a circle, spreading his arms wide to reinforce his point. “Before this school year, none of this art existed outside children’s minds! And now it exists! And maybe after this exhibit closes, the students will reclaim their art and take it home and hang it someplace special. Or maybe they’ll throw it away.”
“Theresa certainly will,” Calder snarked.
“BUT,” Santa raised a finger, “it will have existed. And there is magic in that.”
Calder felt a contrarian attitude creep up in his chest, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, looking at the other man more squarely.
“You say magic. I say redundant: creating something that won’t last just to throw it away later. Most of these kids won’t pursue art as a career.”
“And yet you bought that sweater,” Santa teased.
Calder frowned, looking down at his sweater, then back to Santa. Santa looked back at him. The reindeer on Calder’s sweater looked in two different directions.
Santa winked with a grin. “A child made that, and it brought you enough joy to spend money so you could wear it. I see nothing redundant about that. Art doesn’t have to be about crafting the best version of a thing to ever exist or justifying why you created something or even that it lasts…What’s your favorite food?”
Thrown, Calder stared at him. “Huh?”
Santa’s eyes twinkled as he straightened up. “What is your favorite food?”
“I’m an android.”
“Congratulations!...What is your favorite food?”
Calder frowned. He hadn’t eaten much thirium-grade food yet, but he didn’t feel the need to disclose that to this stranger. So he just went with his favorite of the short list of thirium foods he HAD eaten.
“Uh…garlic bread, I guess.”
Santa chuckled joyfully at that, standing back and framing his hands in front of him. “Wonderful! Now imagine, someone makes you a batch of garlic bread…And then later someone else gives you another batch of garlic bread. You’re not going to say ‘no thank you, someone else already gave me garlic bread.’ You’re going to say ‘Yes! Two garlic breads!’ That’s the magic of art; it’s always the more the merrier!”
What even WAS this conversation? Who was this weirdo?
Calder surveyed the colorfully dressed man for a beat longer, and then bobbed his head and started mapping his escape route.
“Right, sure, you’ve…changed my mind. Uh, well, I’m gonna…head out. Merry Christmas.”
“And a Merry Christmas to you!” Santa chuckled, waving at him. “And I wish you a Happy New Year full of magical creativity. You’re already well on your way with those very stylish glasses, may I say!”
Calder smirked, because dammit if this weirdo wasn’t oddly charming. Most lunatics were at least a little charming, he supposed.
“Thanks,” he snorted, glancing toward his exit path.
A soft breeze of snow was starting to fall just outside the glass doors, and Calder watched a few people huddling inside their coats as they shuffled along the sidewalk.
“Before you scurry off,” Santa tutted again, reaching into his coat pocket.
Calder instinctively stiffened and took a step back as the man’s hand disappeared into the pocket to retrieve…a weapon? A knife? An aerosol knockout gas?
He frowned at that being where his mind went, and he turned his eyes down to his shoes in internal embarrassment…especially when what the man plucked out was simply a little box wrapped in shiny gold wrapping. It was roughly the size of a cellphone, and it had a green bow on top, which somehow wasn’t squished from being inside a coat pocket for Hell only knew how long.
“Merry Christmas!” Santa boomed, holding out the gift with both hands.
Calder eyed the gift, then eyed Santa. “That’s not…necessary. I get it, you’re doing the whole—” he gestured to the man’s aura, “but, uh, save the holly jolly for someone who needs it.”
“Oh ho, I’ve got plenty of holly jolly for everyone,” Santa beamed. “Please,” he offered the gift again, waggling his eyebrows.
Calder grinned despite himself, trying to remain stubborn as he plucked the little box from the man’s hands. “Fine, but I swear if it’s some…gift card to—”
“SANTAAAA!” came a child’s shriek.
Quick as a whistle, Santa spun on his heel to greet the little boy who was sprinting through the art gallery toward him. A slightly panicked adult was following after the boy.
“Adrian, no—” the woman warned. “You can’t just—”
“Oh, it’s perfectly all right!” Santa cheerfully smiled to set her at ease. “Adrian, is it? It’s very nice to make your acquaintance, young man!” he said, holding out a hand to shake.
Adrian giggled and shook his hand. “We went to see you at the mall, but you weren’t there! The elf said you’d gone home for the day.”
“Well,” Santa chuckled, straightening up and putting his hands on his hips. “I couldn’t go all the way back to the North Pole without coming here to see all of this beautiful artwork!”
Adrian’s face lit up. “I MADE A HORSE. WANNA SEE?!”
Matching the child’s energy, Santa whooped. “You bet I do! Lead the way!”
Calder deemed the man to be sufficiently distracted, and he made a merciful exit toward the front of the gallery. Mr. Greg was chatting with what looked like some more parents, whose children were bouncing around the different sections of the gallery and pointing out their artwork to each other. Mr. Greg caught his eye and gave him a smile and a wave as he left. Calder returned an awkward nod and a smirk as he shuffled back outside.
He was nearly a block away, beginning the aimless wander in the general direction of home, when he remembered the little gift box in his hand.
He held it up with a frown, inspecting it as he hailed a taxi. He continued to ponder on it as he eventually climbed into the taxi and let it take him more quickly home. Tentatively, he unwrapped it, and he wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting…but this wasn’t it.
It was a travel-size sewing kit: small spools of thread and a couple of needles housed in a little plastic container.
Calder blinked, snorted, and turned it over a few times as though he was missing some detail that would explain this strange gift.
Strange gift from a stranger person…and Calder had simply accepted a gift from a stranger. It could have been a bomb for all he knew. And he’d just…accepted it.
His gaze drifted slightly, catching on Rudolph’s mismatched eyes on his sweater. The way the seatbelt rested across his chest, it had caught on the underside of where the weak stitching connected the embroidered reindeer to the cable knit fabric. It was effectively sawing it off.
“Shit—” Calder pulled the seatbelt away, but a lot of the damage was done.
The sewing kit slid across his lap as he did so, and Calder froze, staring at it, then staring at Rudolph…who was still staring in two different directions.
“Son of a bitch,” he wheezed.
What were the fucking odds?
He twisted in his seat to look back toward the art gallery, despite the taxi having carried him well beyond the point that he could see the building. Twisting back around, Calder looked down at his deteriorating sweater, touching the rough edge of the embroidery with a finger.
He’d never sewn anything before…but if he wanted this insane sweater to survive the night, he’d have to learn pretty fucking quick.
Honestly, the sweater probably wasn’t worth the value of the thread he’d use to mend it…but he still wanted to mend it.
Because it had brought him some joy. Just like his unnecessary glasses and modified skin program. Each art in their own way, some better quality than others, some probably longer lived than others. He mused on the way the sweater-making teenager’s eyes had lit up, at the glasses-seller’s eagerness to help him find the right pair, and Harry’s joy at her machinations across her own appearance. Even Coda’s unbridled enthusiasm for cooking and baking new and interesting treats for his favorite clients.
Just…art for art’s sake. Creation for the sake of getting it out of your head and making it exist outside of your imagination. Maybe even for the joy it might give others.
More garlic bread.
For a long time, he had only existed in the confines of a digital space, and now HE existed outside of that, in a physical body in the real world. Did that make HIM some kind of art?
Calder gagged in disgust at that gooey bullshit and rolled his eyes at his own inner thoughts.
All this Christmas holly jolly brain rot was getting to him now too.
Calder snorted and slouched down more comfortably in his seat for the rest of the drive, tapping his fingers along the plastic casing of the sewing kit.
There were worse things out there to rot his brain.
Perhaps he’d just let the holly jolly brain rot run its course for now.
Or at least until he got Rudolph stitched correctly onto his new favorite sweater.