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Connor finds himself standing inside Hank Anderson’s bedroom at 3:45 am. Connor knows, realistically, that he probably shouldn’t wake the lieutenant up for something as seemingly trivial as this, but his stress levels—which are currently peaking around 78% say otherwise. He glances back at the open doorway, lit up by the yellowing lights of the hallway, before looking back at Hank.
Being the efficient…machine…that he is, he usually wakes the police lieutenant up by slapping him in the face. Which works 100% of the time, just proving its effectiveness. However, Hank had gotten fed up with his behavior and scolded him, stating: “Bitchslapping people awake is rude as fuck and seems like you’re just asking to get hit. Do you want to get hit?”
Connor in fact does not want to get hit, so he refrained from doing so for the time being. However, he is faced with a dilemma: how to wake Hank Anderson up.
Connor has noted that surprising him awake works just as effectively when verbalized. He can totally wake Hank up. No problem.
Connor walks up to Hank’s bed and bends forward at the waist, leaving approximately three inches of room between the lieutenant’s face and his own. He breathes in, even though he doesn’t really need to.
“Lieutenant Anderson!” Connor shouts directly above Hank’s sleeping form. Hank’s eyes open abruptly and he jolts as he takes in Connor’s face hovering directly above his’ own.
“ Fucking — what the hell d’you want,” Hank groans as he tries to slow the frantic pulsing of his heart.
“I seem to have encountered a problem, and am in dire need of your assistance.” Connor replies, his face still inches away from the other man’s own. Hank blinks slowly as he groans again, using one hand to push Connor away from his bubble (you’d think the android with the most advanced high-tech social-module networking-whatever the fuck would know a thing or two about personal space, but the audacity of Connor seems to know no bounds) and the other to shift himself into a more comfortable position.
“Can this wait until the morning?” Hank questions.
“I’m afraid not.”
A Hank of any other day would probably have just brushed the android off and dipped back under the covers. A Hank of any other day would also probably have just flipped Connor off for waking him up at buttfuck o’clock in the morning and left him to deal with his bullshit by himself like a big boy. However, the Hank of today noticed the mix of yellows and reds cycling through Connor’s LED. Finding himself worried about whatever had caused his vaguely-recently acquired roommate such distress, he rubs the remnants of sleep from his eyes and resigns himself to his mere three hours of sleep, deeming his kinda-sorta-not-really android son more important than his desire to fall back into slumber.
“What’s up, son? What do you need?” Hank asks as he regards Connor’s fidgety form, eyes searching him for any sign of harm.
“Give me a few seconds,” Connor responds as he just pivots around and speed walks out of the room, before returning with Hank’s laptop in his arms. “I just needed to grab this,” Connor explains as he holds the laptop out for Hank to see. Hank squints his eyes before blinking harshly to allow his eyes to adjust to the brightness of the computer in contrast to the pitch black of his bedroom. As his eyes groggily scan his computer for whatever got Connor so worked up he felt the need to wake him up at three in the fucking morning , half expecting to see some sort of virus or whatnot, but seeing nothing except… oh Jesus Fucking Christ you’ve got to be kidding—
The screen stares at him with a blindingly white background, the only thing obscuring the pure light of the fucking heavens radiating from his computer is a single rectangular check box containing five simple words:
I am not a robot.
Hank stares at the screen. Blinks. Looks at Connor. Looks back at the screen. Blinks again, because there is no way that Connor woke him up at THREE O’CLOCK AT THE ASSCRACK OF DAWN for this…absurdity. He lets out a long suffering sigh as he turns his attention back to Connor, who looks unreasonably stressed about the situation, LED blinking an unreasonably alarming shade of red.
“Are you…fucking kidding me right now. This is what you woke me for?” Hank has to take a deep breath— in through his nose and out through his mouth —because it was taking an ungodly amount of strength to keep him from screaming and hitting the android’s face with a pillow. A reasonable crash out, if you will.
“Yes. It is very troubling, as you can see. I had noticed you ran out of ranch dressing, and while it isn’t the healthiest of condiments, I am aware of your liking of it. So I tried to place an order for it, but because I haven’t been able to fully enter stasis for some time now my internal networks and processing systems aren’t exactly, um, functioning at full capacity, so in order to avoid making any mistakes with the order, I was forced to use your computer instead of doing so wirelessly. However, as I managed to place the order, the computer asked me…this.” Connor provides as an explanation, sending the computer an honest-to-god glare as he regales his tale. At least that’s what Hank thinks he was saying. He ended up zoning out halfway through his speech, instead glancing up to the ceiling and praying for whatever god he doesn’t believe in to give him strength.
“You…can you not just click the box?” Hank says as he pinches his nose with his fingers, fighting off the minor headache that seemed to have appeared as his patience started to diminish further.
“I-but that would be lying! As an android, I cannot simply just confirm that I am not a robot—I am a robot! That goes against my programming—“ Connor stammers out excuses defensively, once again proving himself hopelessly moral. How the kid has survived this long he has no idea—oh wait, he does. It’s because he had Hank with him. Pussy.
“Aren’t you deviant? And isn’t deviancy just going against your programming? I don’t see what the problem is.” Hank cuts him off before the kid can send himself into a panic about this—which, really, is not that serious. Just, click the box. How hard can this be for him?
Is it an android thing? It’s not like anyone is going to get arrested for this, right? It can’t possibly be against the law, he’s a police lieutenant for fuck’s sake. Is it just the lying that goes against the programming or are they programmed to not be able to click the box to say that they aren’t robots? What even is the point of that? Well, Hank supposes if the robots could say that they weren’t robots, then the point of the confirmation would simply become obsolete. And what was the point of those boxes anyway? Are the androids going to be able to sap off private or personal information from fucking Amazon and use it for their nefarious plans to take over humanity and then the world? Why the fuck is the screen brightness turned up so high?
Connor cut off his thoughts as he scoffed. “It’s not that easy! Even as a deviant, my base programming still sticks with me, at least to provide a basis for my moral compass, but—“
Ah, so that’s what this is. Morals. Luckily, Hank knows a thing or two about those things. Specifically, how to ignore them.
“ Ap-bup-bup-bup , I don’t care. Just, close your eyes or something and press it.” Hank advises as Connor regards him with wide eyes and a slack jaw—which, hilarious. He wishes he had his phone in hand so he could snap a picture just to show Connor how stupid he looks right now.
“I-wh-no?” Connor replies, eloquently. “That would still be lying!”
“But with plausible deniability.” Hank counters, somewhat halfheartedly, because he still refuses to believe he’s actually having this conversation right now.
“I’m…not sure that’s how that works.” Connor responds, like the uptight little goody-two-shoes bitch that he is.
“Yeah, well I outrank you and I say that that’s how it works.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works…either.”
“Will you just shut up and click the box?” Hank finds himself at the end if his proverbial rope, grappling with the threads of his sanity.
“Can’t you just click it for me?” Connor asks, pleadingly. He even attempts to use his puppy-dog eyes on him. Well, too bad. Hank can’t find it in himself to feel anything but annoyance, and slight amusement because literally, what the fuck has his life become.
“What are you going to do the next time something like this happens and I’m not there to click it for you?” Hank counters, telling himself he wants to turn this into a little teaching moment, but really just being to tired to deal with this right now.
“That won’t happen.” Connor replies, confidently.
“Did you plan for this to happen?” Hank asks.
“…no.”
“Well there you go.” Hank says, bluntly. For being a state-of-the-art android, Connor’s kind of an idiot. Hank takes a moment to revel in his victory, however stupidly childish both the argument and his…reveling is.
Connor on the other hand looks like he’s having a little internet explorer moment. Hank can practically see that little buffering icon spinning around behind his big ol’ eyes. He looks like he’s at war with himself, and Hank briefly wonders if this is what he looked like when he was deviating. Was deviating this difficult? Was Connor finding this more difficult than deviating?
Taking in a deep breath and letting it out with an even bigger sigh, Connor looks to Hank for…something…before reaching out his hand and placing it before the mousepad with his eyes closed, his decision made. With a bit of hesitation, he practically bitchslaps the mousepad to click the box, and letting out another deep sigh as he opens his eyes to the little box loading.
Then the fucking pictures show up. You know, those ‘select all the boxes with an image of a bicycle’ or whatever the fuck it says. Yeah. That.
Connor freezes in place as panic starts to set in and his eyes snap frantically to meet Hank’s own.
“Go ahead, click the boxes.” Hank chimes, as Connor appears to be going through World War III in his head.
“I…I can’t.” Connor replies, softly. So quiet Hank had strain his ears to hear him. That’s just how quiet it was, not because he was going deaf, thank you very much.
“What…do you mean you can’t do it? Like, can you just physically not click the boxes, or—“
“There…there are bicycles everywhere…And nowhere. I don’t know where the bicycles end and where they begin. What—what even is a bicycle anymore?” Connor appears to be having a crisis. Good for him.
Hank, however, is suddenly hit by a wave of no-more-fucks-to-give as he decides that this is something for the Hank and Connor of tomorrow to deal with because, let him reiterate, it is currently three— no, he risks a glance at his alarm— four in the fucking morning. He is tired, and he is too sober for this.
“Connor, just. Just go the fuck to sleep.” Hank says, only a hint of barely detectable, unrestrained pissiness in his voice. Much better than he was expecting given his emotional state at the moment. He gives himself a figurative pat on the back.
“But I-“ Connor manages before getting cut off by Hank.
“Go. The fuck. To sleep.” Hank repeats himself.
“Well, technically, androids don’t sleep. They enter—“
“Yeah, yeah. I don’t care. Sleep.” Hank repeats again, this time gesturing out to the door of his bedroom with a finger, in case Connor doesn’t get the message already.
Connor briefly looks like a kicked puppy, but the Hank of today no longer has it in himself to care as he lets some other Hank take the reins and tuck himself back into his bed.
He vaguely hears Connor’s ever-hesitant footsteps stumble out the door as he starts to slip back into dreamland himself. He wonders if androids can dream. Maybe they dream of electric sheep?
He snorts to himself as he rolls over and goes the fuck to sleep. He dreams of bicycles.