Work Text:
Arthur Lester did, decidedly, not like androids.
Call him old fashioned, but he personally thinks he is quite capable of cleaning his own dishes, of cooking his own meals, of getting his own clothes washed. Not like it’s much work, anyway, considering he lives alone.
And, well, if take-out food cartons stack in his living room on bad days, if he really can’t get up, then he has Parker to come over and kick his ass hard enough so he snaps out of it. “I’m not your cleaning android, you know?”, Peter would snap at him, and then he himself would crack a smile.
He doesn’t need an android, he has Parker. Well…
Arthur stares down at the tablet on his desk, the missing poster weirdly displayed on the first page of the digital file.
He used to have Parker.
Arthur grits his teeth.
There were many reasons Arthur disliked androids, but in the last few decades the entirety of society became pretty much obsessed with them. And now, well, they were everywhere. When he was a young, kids used to ask their parents for a puppy, or something, but nowadays? Androids. Androids fucking everywhere. In restaurants, in shops, in hospitals-
He really should get his shit together. Once more, Arthur stares down at the tablet displaying a missing poster of his best friend. He swipes the file page.
Peter Yang, 34, 5’9, former Private Investigator, now working for Arkham Police Force. Last seen one week ago, leaving a bar located in Chesfield Street, at 3:20am. What was he doing at a bar ? Arthur knows Parker’s been sober for ages . Apartment left in a disarray, though no signs of having been broken into. Reported missing by sister Miss Juli Yang and associate Mister Arthur Lester-
Suddenly, someone snatches the tablet out from under his nose. About to snap at whoever dared interrupt his quite deep thinking process, Arthurs head snaps up, only to be greeted with the sight of one Emily MacFarland. His shoulders hunch, a little bit.
“Mister Lester, you know as well as I do that you are not supposed to work on this case,” her eyes are full of pity, and it is quite infriuraiting considering that MacFarland is
ten
years younger than him, “I promise you we’ll do our best to find Yang.”
Arthur knows and understands the sake of this rule. Working on a case the officer is too closely related to results in an emotional investment that shouldn’t be there. But, he knows Parker, better than anyone, and he knows he can help.
He should probably answer Emily.
“Your worry is quite unnecessary, Emily, but thank you nonetheless,” he offers her a smile, hoping it doesn’t show his exhaustion, “and-”, I will continue on this case, thank you very much, “You’re right, I’m just… worried.”
Satisfied with his answer, MacFarland swipes around on the tablet some, what is she doing , before handing it back to him with a smile.
“You should get home early, today, Mister Lester. The fact that you denied the time off still baffled me! You need the rest, sir.”
The young woman quickly left his desk, then wandered off to wherever. Arthur couldn’t help but let out an exasperated sigh, before ignoring all the reasonable advice he just received, and turning back to the tablet in his hands.
Part of him knew Emily was right, but, well, he has important information that he knows the investigation will need. The fact that Parker had been sober is crucial considering he left a bar, alright! He gripped the tablet, maybe a bit tighter than necessary. Time to get back to work.
His eyes scanned the screen once more, and when he read the small box that popped up, his eyes widened, and fury took hold in his blood.
‘File Deleted !’
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Arthur Lester was, in his own opinion, a reasonable man.
He long ago stopped demanding things from his own life. It sure is far, far, far from perfect, but well, he’s content. He has a nice apartment, he has people to spend the holidays with, he has a good income, he has Parker. And, well, if two of those things are the same thing, that doesn’t matter much either.
The only thing he now asks from life, not demands just asks , is to maybe let him keep the few nice things. Can’t he have nice things?
He ignores his own consciousness grumbling out “No, you don’t.” in the back of his mind as he opens another metal drawer and looks through the files within it.
Alright, so if life won’t let him keep the nice things he has in life, then he’ll make sure to get them back after they got ripped away from him. He doesn’t need fate, or destiny, or chance, or God, or androids , he can do it himself. Easy.
And if a man has to break into his work place’s archive in the middle of the night to retrieve the physical version of a file that an unreasonable woman rudely deleted off of his tablet to get back the nice thing life wouldn’t let him keep, well, then so be it. Lord knows it’s not the worst thing he’s ever done, ‘nor is it the worst thing he would do, if it meant getting Parker home back safely.
It was laughibly easy, really, breaking into the filing archive. Nowadays, companies tend to concentrate on making sure their digital info is safe, so he didn’t have to do much more than shut off the security system of the entrance doors and avoid a few cameras. Once this case is solved, he’ll bring it up to Amanda.
After he finished searching through the files, Arthur closes the metal drawer with a thud , and opens the one above it with a creak , before beginning to search through the files in the new drawer.
Arthur knows the archives quite well, better than any of the other officers. This has several reasons, mainly that he is the only one actually using the physical copies of files, even if he does use the tablet more. Nothing really beats being able to let a light brown folder drop on a desk and saying, “I solved this case!” , you know? Parker calls him old for it, even though Parker himself is only two years younger than him.
He closes the drawer again with another thud, before sighing and getting up from the kneeling position. Then, he moves towards the next big storage drawer labelled “Y”, yawning into the back of his hand. The small glance he manages towards his wristwatch tells him it’s 2:16am. Arthur opens another drawer.
With another hour passing by, Arthur admits he is getting a little frustrated. He mutters to himself, “Why can’t I find that damn file..”
“Because I took it out beforehand, Lester.”
Arthur’s head snapped over at the new voice, before finding Amanda Cummings standing in the middle of the goddamn hall, holding a light brown folder.
Oh.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
When Arthur was young, he seriously doubted the existence of those small holding cells inside of police stations. They just seemed ridiculous and weird to him, for some reason.
Well, he can attest to their existence now.
He never thought he’d find himself sleeping in one, though. It wasn’t the most uncomfortable sleeping experience he ever had, which surprised him. The thing that was very uncomfortable, though, was that Amanda put him in a cell right next to the guy he busted for selling drugs yesterday.
Arthur had caught him right in the act, so now the guy was sitting in the holding cells until further notice, and he would bet his left hand that it wasn't a coincidence that Amanda put him right in the cell next to his.
So, sleeping on the weird holding cell bed was alright. But a guy that certainly would like to murder you staring at you while you try to sleep sure wasn’t.
He sat and slept there until presumably eight in the morning, when another one of his coworkers, who’d so nicely given him a cigarette an hour before, unlocked his cell and walked with him towards Amanda’s office. It was only a little embarrassing.
Amanda Cumming’s office was quite spacious, which made sense considering she is the chief of the force. There was a nice aquarium to the right, two sofas facing one another in the middle of the room with a table in the middle, high shelves full of books to the left, and a bik oak desk at the end of the room with big windows behind it.
He’s not been in here in some time, he barely has to do with Amanda at all, except when she needs him for a specific case. Or, well, when he breaks into the station in the middle of the night.
The officer that brought him makes his leave, leaving him alone with Amanda in the spacious office. He takes a seat on the sofa without being asked to. Amanda sits behind her desk, looking down on her phone.
“Peter ‘Parker’ Yang has been missing for eight days, today, Lester. Usually missing cases end up hopefully if the victim isn’t found after fourty eight hours, still I didn’t double down on any resources to find him. Do you know why that is?”
Arthur remains quiet.
“Because Yang is a good man, Lester,” she puts down her phone on the table, which activates some sort of mechanism, which in turn activates the table in front of him to digitally light up and display the first page of Parker’s missing person profile.
“He suddenly dropped his almost successful career as a Private Investigator to suddenly work for my police force. Since then, he has solved every case I put in front of him,” she looks up at Arthur, “ You two have solved every case I put in front of your nose. He’s a valuable officer, and his presence makes the Christmas celebrations only half as boring. I’d like to find him and have him back on the team.”
The gaze in Amanda’s eyes became cold, and Arthur stopped staring at the digital file displayed on the table. He looked at her, too, and his expression remained neutral.
She spoke again, her hands folding together on the table,
“You, Arthur Lester, are not a good man,”
Arthur clenches his fists as she speaks, “Yang joined the police force because he felt the need to follow you wherever you went, and you joined the police force because, well…”, Amanda swiped something on her phone, and the digital table changed its view, a different, older missing persons folder taking its place.
He jumps up from his place on the sofa, the hurt in his eyes quickly culminating to anger as he glared towards his superior, “Shut up”
Amanda continued on, “You’re not good at repairing things, Lester.”
“Shut up.”
“Not only are you too emotional for this case, but without Yang at your side, you are terrible at
finding
things.”
“I said shut up-”
“Someone like you is only good at losing them- ”
“Amanda, for FUCKS sake, I said SHUT UP!”, he screeches, bringing his fists down violently on the table in front of him. He hears a crack, and then his fists hurt, and then the blue light of the digital surface flickers, before shutting down.
There is a knock at the door.
Amanda stands up from where she sat, walking around the table and towards the door. Arthur tries to regulate his breathing. She speaks as she walks,
“Still, Lester, despite my dislike, you are a good officer. You'll get your next case soon enough. You are suspended for a week.”
He finds he doesn’t have it in him to struggle much longer. He decides to walk towards the door.
When Amanda opens the door, there stands a man. He has brown hair, tousled back in a ponytail, reaching barely down his neck and he is wearing a quite fancy black suit. His hands are folded behind his back, and if Arthur didn’t know better he would guess that the stranger is just barely restraining himself from rocking back and forth on his heels like a child.
His eyes are a deep, red, color, and his childish grin unsettles him. He looks at Arthur as though he found something new .
“Ah, Mr. Kayne, I apologize for the hold up. I just had to finish my small meeting with Mr. Lester here,” Amanda spoke politely, which means this guy is… important, “He will be leaving now.”
Before anyone had any time to respond, Arthur nodded his goodbyes and, quickly, left the scene. And if he felt the weird, infiltrating stare of creepy red eyes at the back of his head, he decided to ignore it.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
So, maybe, mayhaps, maybe ever since Parker went missing, and the entirety of Arkhams police force decided to antagonize him, he has been in a bit of a mental.. slump . Maybe he doesn’t really know what to do with himself, and maybe he hasn’t left the apartment since he entered it two days ago.
Parker would laugh at him for it, but there is organisation in his chaos. Yes, there’s quite a few clothes, dishes and papers scattered around, but he knows exactly where the exact clothing, dish and paper is.
Arthurs mental slump, or his so called ‘bad days’, usually just mean that Arthur doesn’t do much all day. He sits. He eats. He watches television. He- he drinks. A little bit. A few bottles.
You see, doing these things in themselves aren’t even that damaging, but Arthur ends up doing nothing except these things. This is what Amanda and Emily and everyone else fucking wanted though, didn’t they? He sits here, wallowing in whatever shitty thoughts spurt to his mind, while Parker is out there, alone, and he can’t do jack shit, because Arthur Lester isn’t a good man.
He isn’t a good person. Sometimes, during these days specifically, he barely feels like a person at all.
Thus, Arthur sits on his sofa, staring at a book in his lap, trying to understand the words as well as read them, when suddenly there is a knock on his door.
More quickly than he expected of himself, he drags his ass off the sofa and walks towards the front door, hope blooming in his chest that it could be Parker standing in front of his door, ready to help him clean up and get ready and through another day.
It was decidedly not Parker standing in front of his door, as he opened it.
A few days ago, when Arthur calmed down from the conversation he had with Amanda, he realized who the fuck he actually dismissed by running off. The man, Mr. Kayne, he wasn’t just some business guy, he was Kayne , the man that proposed, built, produced and created the concept of androids .
Based on what Arthur knew about the guy, around ten years ago he disappeared from the public due to intense health complications. This is why it was quite strange to suddenly see him talking to Amanda.
It is also why it is even more strange that this eccentric man stood in front of his apartment, looking exactly how he did a few days ago, down to the childish grin.
“Arthur Lester! Total pleasure to meet you!”
“Uh- uhm, wha-”
He was interrupted, suddenly, when Kayne’s hand shot up out of nowhere and petted the side of his face two times, as though greeting an old friend. Arthur, still somewhat drowsy from the entirety of the last two days and the ridiculous situation, could do nothing but watch as the man stalked forward into his apartment.
“You need a shave, Arty, good god!”
Arthur looked after him, stupefied, before closing the door and hurrying after the
stranger that just entered his apartment-
Kayne walked around the place, stepping on all of the things just lying around on the floor. He was about to step on a plate, actually, when he stopped, and stared at the plate on the ground, before grinning and side stepping it. He looks towards Arthur.
“You don’t think much of androids, do ya? Any other citizen would’ve just gotten a cleaning android by now. I know you can afford it, with that juicy state salary!”
While talking, Kayne would gesture with his hands, as though every word he spoke was a part of an important story.
“What- what are you doing in my apartment?”
For some strange, unexplainable reason, Arthur didn’t feel angry at the stranger. He considered the worst possibilities of this situation and decided, well… Kayne obviously has some connection to the police force, now, maybe he could convince him to ask Amanda to give him Parker’s case-
Suddenly Kayne started laughing, almost uncontrollably. It creeped Arthur right out, especially because while laughing, the guy settled himself comfortably on Arthurs sofa. As he calmed down, Kayne motioned towards the armchair next to the sofa, as if this wasn’t Arthurs living room but one of Kaynes offices. Can human lungs even laugh that long?
“Oh, oh I already quite like you, yes I do! This’ll all be much easier if I like you! Arthur, dear, tell me, what do you know about androids?”
Honestly, he didn’t know how to answer. What did he know about androids? Well, he knew the basics, like everyone did. Not exactly how they work, but what they are.
“Uhm, androids are.. humanoid robots, usually taken to… serve humans in some form or other? They were created to take off work load, and-”
“I was
bored
, Arthur!”
“Wh-What?”
“I made androids because I was bored! Bored out of my mind. I wanted a challenge. So I made androids! Didn’t really care what other companies decided to do with ‘em, who cares what the Larsons do nowadays. But me? I was bored. I was so bored, I made androids, and wanted to see, hey, what will happen if I do this and that! So I did. And, well, it was fun! For a while. Then it wasn’t. Got bored! Again! Whoops! Wanna know what I did, then, Arthur?”
Arthur stared at him, at the absolute maniac inside his house, what the fuck was this guy talking about.
“Guess! Arty, guess!
“Uh, you could’ve… made something new?”
“No! Well, yes, but first, no. First, I spilled all my secrets, you get me? See what others could do with my ideas. Maybe that’ll be fun! And it was. ‘Til it wasn’t! And then I made something new. Something the same, something old, but also new! Anew! And I wanna show it to you, Lesy.”
Kayne grabbed into his own coat, and took out a weird kind of container. The container looked like a slightly bigger version of a container for glasses. It was silver, and sat steady in Kaynes hand. There was something ingrained in it-
“This is Y3110VV. Newest creation of mine. Let me explain to you!”
Kayne opened the container, and inside were- two things. A pair of really small ear pieces, and… contact lenses. Arthur stared at them, the slow realisation dawning that these things probably cost more than this entire building.
“You know, Arty, you’re right. Nowadays, androids are made to bring humans more comfort. To be convenient. But I thought, hey, there's stuff you can’t do and can’t make easier, even with androids! Then, there was another problem. I heard the people, you know, those who are whining about their jobs being stolen. Poor silly humans, losing their poor silly jobs! So, I made this . This, Arty, is an android that relies on human labor! Without a human doing the things it recommends, it can’t steal no one anything!”
A part of Arthur believes he should have kicked this guy out like, ten minutes ago, but the other…
“How does this help me, in any way?”
Kayne, who had been staring at his newest creation, looked up at Arthur again. The grin on his face still makes shivers run down Arthur’s spine. He laughed again.
“Of course. Of course. You’re a little impatient, but I get it, your best friends life's on the line afterall! Let me get to the point. The Point. Oh, you’ll like it!”
The silver container in Kaynes hand gets carefully put down on the sofa table. Arthur stares at it, suspiciously.
“You see, Arthur, when I first made androids people were warry , they were scared . What if the androids gain consciousness and make us their slaves? What if they start killing everyone? Those kinds of unnecessary fears. It needed a little bit of showcasing for the populace to realize, hey, androids are so cool and awesome! This little bit of showcasing, I will have to do so again for my new creation, and well, what better way to show that this little guy can HELP people with their jobs, rather than replace them, than by sticking him into some cops head for a case!”
Kayne broke out into many giggles, as though he’d just told the funniest joke in the world, while Arthur was getting ready to stand up and kick this guy out of his house.
Arthur wasn’t- he wasn’t some science experiment, and he certainly wasn’t sticking some android continuation in his fucking head! He doesn’t need any help with any case, he just needs time, and the actual files of the fucking case , and-
“Peter Yang, 34, 5’9, missing since a week!”
He didn’t even realize that he was already standing, and Kayne, who was still sitting, grinned up at him.
“That’s the case I chose, you know. Miss Cummings and I had a great talk about it. Of course she has great trust in my little guy’s abilities, it is on par as the newest android model obviously, so she agreed that whoever takes the Yang case gets the Y3110VV.”
Slowly, the grin on Kaynes face morphed into an almost malevolent smirk, and Arthur saw an opportunity.
“But, let’s say, if I chose to do it the other way around. If I chose to give the Y3110VV to an officer, that officer would automatically-”
“Get the Yang case.”
“Exactly!”
Arthur sat down in the armchair again, arms slumping by his side. He gulped, once.
His eyes went around his apartment, across the dirty dishes, the unwashed clothes, the papers on the ground. He remembers the eyes of Amanda, and he thinks of Emily, with an android in her head, failing to save Peter Yang, and he knows he could do better. He would have done better. Arthur’s eyes stray to the silver container on the table.
“You are terrible at finding things”
“It is on par as the newest android model-”
“You’re an idiot, Arthur.”
He looks up at Kayne.
“So, dearest Mr. Lester, I think the offer speaks for itself, what do you say?”