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Every day was worse. Deadlines encroaching and he could do nothing but stress. The doctors were trying to give him advice for his own health, but how could that take precedence now? He had far too much to do, nowhere near enough time… time. If only he could figure out a way to create that. There were only a few months left, said the doctors, although he judged it more to be weeks. Christmas wouldn't be seen, that’s for sure and when would he accept that there was nothing left to do? He had abused his funding for personal reasons, for sustaining life, for time... but it hadn’t got him any further. Time was marching on and it was leaving Nigel far behind.
It wasn’t even his own life he was sustaining and yet he was still losing this battle. His son grew weaker every day, just wasting away in a hospital room he couldn’t realistically afford right now and with treatment he would be paying off for the rest of his life if he didn’t find something to make or sell. But that didn’t matter now, he didn’t give a shit if treatment was costly or the room was expensive, he wanted his son to live - he needed his son to live, there was no doubt in that. Nigel was a father and if there was even a conceivable dream of an idea that could have his son’s diminishing health transferred to himself to allow his son to live on, he wouldn’t take the time to think twice. But, of course, there was nothing like that and even the best synthetic organs on the planet would do nothing when his son’s brain failed. There would be a beating heart and rising lungs, but without brain activity, that would mean nothing - just an animated corpse in a room filled with toys. And that was the thought that kept him up at night when he battled with himself - should he give in and start prepping his son for surgery for these synthetic organs? In the hope that they might just give him enough time? Or is he right in thinking that the end is near and once his son’s brain gives up the fight, there would be nothing left anyway, synthetics or not.
So he had shifted funding from his android projects to his son’s health care since Nigel wasn’t going to be paid until someone saw an end result - and where were those to be found these days? Sure, he had his warehouse with his test tubes and successful androids running it, but where was he? At the hospital, arguing with doctors, convincing his quiet son to take pills too big for a child’s throat to take. Pills were not the only thing going into his son that, at the age of six, shouldn’t be. There were the drips, lasers, radiation, nanobots, hopes, ‘cures’, experiments and all the effort of six top class experienced doctors and himself. With nothing to show for it.
There had been no improvement, no joy, no hope and his son could tell things were looking dim, despite Nigel’s attempts to convey the opposite. Some days, just to torture himself, he calculated things like ‘how many pints of blood have they taken from him?’ and ‘How much radiation has he actually been subjected to?’. Of course, the results always had him in tears. A boy of six should be outside in the sun, playing sports and developing - not horizontal in a hospital with tubes, wires and needles poked into him every hour of the day.
It was safe to say Nigel was no closer to accepting the death of his only son now than when he found out his son was dying. All this time later, a year and three months, and there was still no diagnosis - no prognosis either. Just organs were shutting down, refusing to function as they should be, inflamed brain, inflamed everything, occasional internal bleeding for no reason and bones decaying the way someone who was ninety-three would see, not a child of six. Of course, autoimmune diseases were discussed first but nothing could be found, his immune system was deteriorating with the rest of him, but not especially so. Everything seemed to be dying and no one could see why. Frustrating was not a fitting term for this type of anguish Nigel had built up.
And his work had been all but abandoned. He checked on it now and then, late at night when he felt that leaving his son for the hour would be okay. It was a quick dash to his warehouse, read up on what’s been happening and give out orders for something to be done to fix the problems there. He spent most of his time answering long-ignored messages, returning comm’s to angry funders and police chiefs before returning to the hospital to lie on the camp bed, awake, until his son woke up.
The issue with his work was that it was missing something. A spark, the heat of humanity, the soul. Sure, anyone could build an android these days - but they wanted his androids - and his next generation of androids had been suspected and foretold to be incredible, out of this world, so close to human it would be almost impossible to tell them apart. Except this hadn’t been predicted by him, it had been predicted by his now invisible legal team to very rich investors who were still very rich, but also very angry at his lack of product.
Nigel often wondered if they would be understanding if he told them about his son and their troubles, but on the other hand, he couldn’t live without their funding - even if it was now only a trickle of what it used to be. Maybe once his son was ...gone he could begin again. The mere thought of that day has his throat tight and eyes wet. Holding the tears back was something he was accustomed to now, especially with the constant stream of bad news, one day after another. It was all too easy to take that breath from outside his son’s door, readjust his expression and step in, like an actor into a role.
“Morning, I’ve got your orange juice.” A small luxury that the doctors weren’t sure was doing any more good than harm, but at this stage, what really was the harm? His son just looked up to him, his skin almost transparent and his eyes a sickly mix of bloodshot and jaundice, his expression as empty as his father’s well of hope.
“Do you know what we’ve got for today?” Nigel asked, trying to keep his tone light and cheerful. With a shake of his son’s head, he placed a caring hand over his son’s head, gently caressing the bald skin. “We have your favourite movie and the doctors have some more tests to run, they have some new ideas.”
His son said nothing, just rolled the small toy train over his legs that Nigel had found for him amongst dusty toys from his own childhood.
“Son, don’t you want more juice?” Nigel had spied it sitting precariously by his son’s leg, untouched and briskly forgotten. It wasn’t the first day his son had left the juice he used to be so anxious for, in fact, it was the seventh. Another shake of his son’s head and Nigel rolled his lip between his teeth to bite back the misplaced anger. “Do you want water? Anything?”
More shaking of the small bald head under his hand only broke his shattered heart more. He would give everything he had, every breath he would ever take again for his only child to heal and grow and leave this sanitized grave for the almost-dead. It was clear now, to Nigel and the doctors, that all those months of strong will and hope that came in waves from his son were now gone. Nigel had been denying it for the past week, but the moment his son didn’t reach out for the fresh juice to clear his mouth of medicine and blood was the day they had truly lost the battle.
Now it was a waiting game as Nigel removed the juice, sitting it down on a table to his left, trying to ignore the significance in the act. A waiting game for his son’s body to match his mindset and give out under the want to just not be sick any longer - not to be healthy, but just to not be so sick. It hurt Nigel as much as he could bare, but he couldn’t say it hurt more than what his son was going through since he was sure that the muteness was only a coping mechanism for the pain and discomfort.
For the rest of the day, Nigel sat up beside his son, watching movies and sports and trying not to show how broken he was by celebrating when teams scored and laughing at bad jokes in the films. He could barely form the emotion to care, but he powered on, hoping that if he was strong enough to look positive for his son, it might make the day more bearable. But, what was the point? Children could sense magnetic fields, his son knew how he was truly feeling, so why did he hide it?
Days like these were hard, but then again, every day was the same. When Nigel reached his warehouse that night he let his tears drip to the desk below as he typed up messages to send off to funders and officials that he had missed during the day. Of course, this would all go away soon. His son had less time than even his worst estimate now he had given up as much as the doctors, so what was another week or two of angry messages? He could deal with two weeks of angry messages before he came back to fulfill his contracts. And after that? Disappear. Most likely as far as he could go. Somewhere rural and hidden. Fulfilling his contract would give him the money to pay his medical bills and anything left would fund his escape.
Scrolling through the messages, there was one that caught his eye. No sender, anonymous even to his ability, but the notes attached were radical. The idea of complete clones in action, working, functioning human clones living together with a common cause for their genes to survive. The notes vanished down onto further pages, but Nigel’s brow dipped in anger - this wouldn’t help him. Whoever sent him this had a twisted sense of humour - what was the point in cloning someone with the same genes that were killing them? Maybe he could cut and filter his son’s genes, but with no diagnosis, how would he know where to start or what to look for? He crossed out the page in a rage, throwing his arm to fling papers and folders off his desk with a flutter and a bang. His temper had caused a few of his androids to look up and ask him, ‘Nigel, are you okay?’ in their monotonous tones, but Nigel didn’t answer, just sat with his head in his hands and cried.
Ten minutes later he had pulled up the messages again, hoping that with the emotional outburst over that he might be able to concentrate a bit more on other correspondents. Yet, pulling up that tab again, he was automatically drawn to the anonymous notes. He read through it quickly, just skimming the main part until he came across an interesting phrasing.
“Cloning was simple, it was the transference of consciousness that was the intricate part, but as with most things, it happened with a spark.”
The notes returned to talk about electromagnetic fields, electromagnetic impulses and electric-psychic impulses from the brain. It had, in turn, sparked something in Nigel. Before his son’s health diminished so much he was moved to a constant care unit, Nigel had been working on that ‘special Vaughn touch’, which had been that burn of humanity the next generation of android had demanded. A synthetic soul would be his life’s work, the peak of his career, the piece that would retire him early and let him jet off to an island with his son. Well, alone, now. But this spark, these impulses, they could be going somewhere. He was in need of a miracle, he needed something real - he had the souls in small cylinders sitting in a freezer, waiting for him to figure out how to give them that touch of life and maybe, he just did.
But that touch of life would have to come from somewhere and part of him didn’t think he was worthy of it himself. He built it, he worked on it, he abandoned it and left it to freeze, angered funders and officials and slowed their hope of catching the surge of crime while it was still manageable. He was definitely not in anyone’s good graces, but if this spark was the answer, the cure he had needed, maybe he might be able to make it all work after all. With the money coming his way, he could pay off his bills - and who needed an island if he could save his son? With all that money, surely he could find something to get a cure or a solution… all that was so far away though, all he had done was read someone else's notes and found an interesting line.
His comm buzzed in his pocket and he answered without looking at the identifier.
“Doctor Vaughn?”
“Yes? Is that you, Matthew?” Nigel recognised the doctor’s voice at once and immediately, a spike of cold ran through him.
“Yes, but, I think you should come back now, Doctor Vaughn, complications have developed - it’s… it’s not good.” Nigel didn’t need to hear any more as he jumped from his chair and ran to the door. He had his hand on the car door before he looked back to his warehouse, considering taking the souls that sat in the deep freeze. His son, with his struggling breath, could bring life to a new wave of androids. Rushing back, he took the tray of them, a few jump cables and threw them into his car before rushing back to the hospital. He could see the police drones catching him for speeding but he could barely care, he’d pay the fines, the fines were nothing, he just had to get to the hospital.
Thundering up the hallway, his steps echoing was the only beat in his head as he made it to the door, the doctors were all huddled around outside but none of them offered a word as he burst into the room. His son was spread on his back, mindless to the noise Nigel had created, his breathing was laboured, heavy, harsh, and his eyes fluttered between life and death.
“Son? Dad’s here, it’s okay, son.” Nigel dropped to his knees at the side of the hospital bed, his hand reaching the wipe the sweat off his son’s forehead. He stayed like this until his son’s eyes closed to sleep while his heart remained under a steady beat. He stepped outside then under an air of calm resignation - there was absolutely nothing to be done now.
“Well?” He asked the doctors, all standing around with their tech and and equipment with not an answer between them.
“I’m sorry,” One started, but the fire in Nigel’s eyes stopped him from going any further - apologies were not welcome in this discussion. Nigel may has resigned from hope, but that didn’t mean he wanted to admit it aloud.
“Nigel, we’ve tried everything from every direction, we’ve had the experts, we’ve had teams, divisions, duo’s - we’ve had entire university classes attack this problem and you know what it turned up.” The doctor shrugged, lost for anything beyond brutal honesty. The rest of the doctors stood in silence, nothing else to add to what worked as a letter of resignation from the team. Nigel nodded, quietly accepting that all those months and weeks he had been quoted had been reduced to hours.
“I want to try something.”
“Nigel, listen-”
“No, you listen, it’s not a treatment, it’s something… for me, for everyone else.” He wasn’t asking for permission, but privacy. The doctors knew what Nigel did, they knew who he was and from this gave him the space he needed as they turned to leave him, standing in the flickering artificial lights of a hospital corridor with exactly one hope left. If there wasn’t a cure, no solution, then there must be preservation. If there was any way he could keep memories of his son forever, keep that essence of him with Nigel at all times, he would try it.
Walking back into the room with his small case of all the synthetic souls he had, still freezing to the touch, he let them rest beside the cup of room temperature juice that had been fresh that morning. His son was no stranger to electrodes on his skin and certainly not to wires hanging from him in every direction. With gentle fingers, lacking that distinctly medical touch, but with everything parental, he placed the electrodes carefully around the most active regions of his son’s brain before attaching the wires to follow. After that, he attached them to a conductive hoop at the top of the case the souls sat in. There was a chance nothing that came from his son would be strong enough to do anything to the souls, but it was his very last chance, and one he wasn’t going to miss.
“Son?” There was no reaction, not a twitch or change in his breath. “...Henry?” His eyelids fluttered and Nigel sighed in slight relief at the display of recognition. “Henry, do you remember when we went out to the beach with Bax?” The family beagle, Baxter, was never without Henry and Henry never without him, even mentioning his name made Henry cry for four weeks after Bax died, but Nigel needed brain activity and nothing was more stimulating than treasured memories. Flicking the small receptors on, he continued to talk to Henry. “And we went to get ice cream, yours fell and Bax ate it? You cried before we got another, then you gave it to him again, anyway?”
The machines that Henry was hooked up to in the hospital and had been for weeks were beeping rapidly, the heart monitor had increased as had the machine recording brain activity. It was a good sign.
“What about when we went to the zoo? Do you remember when the butterfly landed on your hand? Or when you came to work with me, do you remember DRN Three? Whose shoulders you sat on for the afternoon?” The monitor continued to increase with the memories, Henry obviously flicking between them as Nigel spoke. “Do you remember when we sat under the tree and learned about numbers? Do you remember what six plus three is?”
Before Nigel finished the question there was a snap of electricity running over the the tray of synthetic souls, like a small clap of lightning.
“Nine plus two?” Another flash jolted the tray. “Okay, Henry, sing along now,” Nigel shut eyes eyes, rocking gently by his son’s side as he hummed and muttered a lullaby his wife used to sing a much younger version of Henry to sleep with. They had been quite the family until his wife eloped, and while he didn’t mind being a single father, he wasn’t sure who he had hurt enough to deserve a karma like this. A vanishing wife and a dead son and a future spent alone - or with androids - was not what he had imagined as a younger man fresh out of college. Even now as he sat here, his hand running down the back of his dying son as he sang and electricity clicked over the souls on the table, he wanted none of this, but he wouldn’t leave his son behind. At least this way, there would be a part of him living on.
#
When the doctors left the next morning, Nigel sat on an empty bed, a cup of juice sitting in his hand with no one to drink it. His son's brain had been too viciously inflamed and damaged that by four that morning, he died. Nigel wanted to say he was devastated with all the gravity that word could grant, but in truth, he just felt numb. He hadn't been actively preparing for this moment, but he knew the conclusion he was facing and now, he was here, at the end of his son’s story. A funeral was to be planned, but other than the team of doctors, himself, and some androids, who else would be there? He wasn't religious and he hadn't raised his son to be, so he decided on a graveside memorial with nice words, flowers and black suits on a sunny August day.
Through the brief service Nigel held that toy train loosely in his hand, turning it and really looking at it for the first time in years. The white paint was scuffed at the rounded edges and the stripe was chipped. The wheels still turned but the tiny axel they rested on was rusting. It all fitted into his palm, just like Henry did on the day he was born. His wife had given him into trouble for holding him on one hand but he was so perfectly tiny, Nigel couldn't get over the novelty.
His intention had been to lie the train on the small coffin before it dipped into the ground, but when the time came, he didn't have the heart. He carried it with him on a mindless stroll around other graves before turning to his car and driving back to the hospital. His room had been left untouched and Nigel hadn't wanted to see the material remains of his son’s life, but today he had no choice.
With boxes under his arm, he stood in the doorway of the room for a moment, finding it difficult not to just run away now and leave everything to someone else. It took some self-convincing, mostly telling himself that Henry wouldn't want his things left, before Nigel started shifting toys and books into the boxes. He worked his way around the room, starting from the door and moving anti clockwise around the bed that was stationary in the middle of the left wall.
When he got to the last bedside table, he found the souls he had so desperately clung to in one last try to preserve his son before he left. But it had been hopeless. Unless there was a microscopic change, Nigel noticed no difference. He had been expecting something, anything at all to be different, but nothing had changed. Tipping his souls into the box with a careless sweeping arm had him feeling nothing, when before he was convinced those tubes would be his saving grace. He paid them no further attention as he lugged three boxes back to his car. He stopped in at the staffroom to thank the doctors and nurses alike for their care and help. A few of them clapped his shoulder and hugged him, all apologising for his loss. But their words didn't improve his situation or his grief, so he left with his head dipped and drove straight to his lab.
Grabbing the cool case of souls had his hand retracting automatically at a shock it gave off. He tutted before he thought why he didn't get one earlier, but he had used his sleeved arm to scoop them into the box, not his hand. He reached out again, thinking that perhaps the charge had been neutralised now but got another shock for his trouble. In a brief frustration, he picked up the box of all Henry's things and trudged inside with it, sitting it on a desk in front of him.
Nigel had started to remove some of the smaller things within the box, examining them with small smiles as he remembered where they each came from. After placing the small train on top of his computer with honour, the last thing in the box was the case of souls. Dull, lifeless tubes looked up at him in mockery. He had such a desperate hope in those last moments, all those pulses of electricity running over this case had him almost rejuvenated with hope for preservation over healing. Henry had no idea what Nigel was trying to do other than test his patience with maths and lullabys in his last moments.
And now he was gone, he was no longer a father. He was just Nigel. In debt, in grief, lonely, and no idea how to make the small army of unconscious androids hanging in the back work with the shine he wanted them to, he didn't bother biting back the tears and let them run onto his desk. Just the act of crying was making him cry more, just trying to relieve the emotion. Nigel leaned forward, his sobs now vibrating through him as he supported his head on a balled fist. His tears dripped over the box, and as one landed on his case of souls a loud snap echoed in the warehouse paired with a bright flash of electricity that blinded him for a second. Immediately the souls changed before him. What had been a dull grey series of microfiber and technology in tubes was now a glowing, actively charged soul before him. He reached for the tray and opened it, finding the excess electricity gone. Under closer examination he began to smile. It was there. His souls, his synthetic souls were alive and all it needed was a reactor, something to jolt the current enough and kick the life into it. Each tube, previously dull and bland, was now glimmering and moving, like light on water.
His grief had changed. While he was still reeling with the loss of his son and would be for the rest of his life, what he was holding was visible hope, a visible tie to his son. Every DRN would be with a piece of Henry which, in Nigel’s eyes, made him feel like he was about to gain five hundred more children. This was more than a silver lining, this was a hot beam of sun and a clear blue sky after a catastrophic storm. Henry had given Nigel the one thing he couldn’t give his son and that was the will to keep going and the knowledge that it would be okay. Henry gave him life in his death and Nigel was alight with passion.
#
At the first mention of the Lugar Test, Nigel was in pieces. His androids that had once been seen as ‘the future’, ‘the most incredible’, ‘beautiful’, ‘Michaelangelo in today’s world’ were now ‘emotionally unstable’, ‘disrupters’, ‘unable and unfit to complete active duty’. The MX’s were already kicking him in the profits and draining his creative muse, but this test was unfair, prejudice and unrealistic. The questions were designed in such a way that any answer from the DRN’s would put them under suspicion. The world had wanted human-like androids and he had given them to every police department in the country. Now, the world decided that this was too weird and that the DRN’s were struggling too much with police work. Nigel, in a way, wasn’t surprised at this outcome. Every soul was perfectly different and from this, experience was everything - not every human was cut out to be a police officer, and when given the choice these DRN’s could be functioning members of society in other professions, but no, they wouldn’t be given that choice. They were to be decommissioned, or so the officials were campaigning for.
Decommissioning wouldn’t just rip Nigel to pieces but it would ruin his company, his work and the memory he worked so hard to keep. Decommissioning all the DRN’s, taking them out of what they were made to do and not giving them to choice to find peace somewhere else, was shutting down the life his son had given. And Nigel, yet again, could do nothing about it.
When the final call came from the Supreme Court that DRN’s were no longer fit for duty and all active DRN’s, Lugar Tested or not, were to be decommissioned, Nigel was distraught. He lost everything, everything he held dear was gone for good and he had never felt helplessness like it. At least, when his son died, he still had that flash of presence from him in those souls but now those souls were just as dead and lifeless all over again.
Instead of wallowing in the grief that had overcome him, Nigel found a fury. At first he tried to repress it, knowing nothing good would come from a fury, but it became too much for him to take. He let his rage loose over a new model for the next generation of DRN’s, something he had been playing with and when it came to the soul, he used his own electric impulses. When he was finished furiously tinkering for weeks on end, he had recreated her from the head down, making something crafted from the fury he bore for the officials who shut him down. The XRN was a mistake he regretted before he had shown her off. And, when she kicked off, he hid. He hid until Danaka was in custody and forgotten about, but it wasn’t enough. People still knew, people still knew his face and paired him with all the lives lost in the battle. And that? Made him angry.
#
When Rudy found the organic files in Dorian’s memory banks he was curious. These were definitely very real, very authentic. The subject matter had happened, there was no way to doubt that, but that made him worried. Androids were bullied by being called ‘synthetics’ for a reason - they were constructed, not biologically created - they were an engine, a computer, not human. As much as he loved Dorian and considered him a dear friend, he was still an android and androids had memory banks for recorded files, not memories. When androids were asked if they ‘remembered’ something, they searched their files - their files did not jump out at them when triggered, like in humans.
When John came, Rudy expressed the issue before telling John not to tell Dorian and especially not anyone else. Rudy knew all too well the results of the imposed Lugar Test, and the thought of submitting Dorian to a second was numbing, which meant that Dorian’s ‘flashback’ remained between Rudy and John and no one else. Or, at least, until he figured out where they came from and why, maybe then they could tell Dorian. In the meantime, Rudy deleted the files but that didn't stop him from worrying about them. If they were memories then maybe the simple act of deleting them would only ‘repress’ them - but that was radical theory since androids having memories was still absurd. He supposed that they would only find out if Dorian brings it up again - if Dorian brought it up again. Dorian was made to feel and his uncertainty and worry over the alien files had been written all over his face.
Rudy’s suspicion, however, landed on someone he had only ever had the utmost respect for. Nigel Vaughn, to Rudy, was a God. Rudy, of course, had his respect clouded after Danaka’s second wave where John and Dorian were both almost killed. But for skill, technique and ability, Vaughn was still incredible. Yet, these memories were real, and Nigel would know that using human DNA in androids was illegal. Questions of ethics and Vaughn’s character spun around Rudy’s mind, but ultimately he had no answers, just a hope that one day Nigel might have the chance to explain himself.
And what else could he hope for? That he hadn’t jumped the wall? Hadn’t stolen all those XRN souls? And didn’t have an army of androids waiting to retaliate? Well, yes, Rudy hoped for that too, but he also wished that none of this was true and Nigel, meek but forcefully creative, was just somewhere rural and hidden and far away from the storm that was brewing in the city.
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