Work Text:
Today was supposed to be just a social visit, a social visit, damn it! But there was nothing just when one visited The Duck, was there? To be fair, you were quite sure that The Duck hadn't meant it this time. You had been talking to one of the Duck's shells, from behind the counter at the bar, when the call came. Sully had had to leave because one of Summer's fixes had woken up very confused and a bit violent, so they had had to leave together in a rush.
The Duck's net was wide, but even he was not immune to short-staffing when two emergencies overlapped.
The stutter of an actuator had been the only tell, but you noticed. You leaned against Sun, who didn't stop the annoying slurping noise he was making while pretending to steal your milkshake. Sun's rays were not fully extended, though, so he had noticed too.
You looked up to the office window. The Duck's favorite shell was in a meeting, someone human. If you squinted, you could see a Candy cadet there too.
When your eyes came back down, you found yourself under The Duck's analytical stare, and you knew you were fucked for some reason.
"Do you know how to drive a van?"
"They've gotten very good at it," Sun didn't let you answer.
"Good, you are going to drive to an address. Immediately." He tapped the mobile you had left on the counter and put some keys next to it. "I'll give you further instructions. Run." The mobile lit up with The Duck's voice and a map.
The stool screeched on the floor, and you sighed. There you went, obeying blindly again. But experience told you that when he used that tone, it was actually urgent.
The phone took you to a van with a changing side screen for advertisements. It was a mess of colors at first, but it settled into the logo of the Happret company when you climbed to the driver's seat. Sun climbing to the copilot chair made the van lurch, but you were too used to notice; the direction on your mobile was more interesting.
"This is very far!"
"Hence why you need to rush instead of complain," your mobile answered from the place where you had fixed it on the dashboard.
You started to drive to appease him before asking.
"And what are you getting us into this time, Ducky?"
His silence had you smiling privately. Sun covered his permanent smile too with both hands. You had not yet found a nickname that The Duck didn't hate.
"Retrieval. This one is not going to be easy. Another pro-rights kidnapping; they took a nurse bot from his place of work and 'freed' him in the middle of the city. You have to retrieve him before the police gets involved and especially before the news or the insurance company get wind of this. I'm already preventing recordings from being uploaded in the whole area. You don't have much time until something slips by."
You hit the accelerator. Everything could go so wrong so fast.
"Duck…" Sun asked the mobile while his hands twitched to do something. "Do we have any information? The bot's name? I guess he will be very confused when we arrive."
"As usual, there is a lot of information about the owner, nothing on the bot except the company, Happret."
You didn't miss the small change in The Duck's tone when he talked to Sun, softer.
"Okay… Tell us about the human, then."
"Benjamin Carpenter. Eighty-six years old. Has owned the bot for five years. Pays the premium insurance fee. The bot was paid for in CAD, likely a gift from his daughter abroad…"
Sun was listening intently. You had fidget toys for him in your car, but for once he didn't seem to need one. You were paying attention too, but half of you was tangled in worst-case scenarios. A sudden thought thundered in your mind.
"What about after?" you interrupted The Duck's info dump. "What do we do after we pick this guy up?"
"Pick him up first."
You took your foot off the accelerator. "What happens after? What do we do?"
The mobile stayed quiet. The van only slowed down for a moment. This was The Duck's van; of course he could drive it remotely. "Pick him up."
Sun looked between you and the mobile. "It's not… We are not retrieving him to destroy him, right?? Or for pieces? He has done nothing wrong!"
You stared at Sun for a second. That had never crossed your mind, and if The Duck's quickness to answer was any clue, neither had it crossed his. No, The Duck only killed when it was convenient. But Sun was shrewder than anyone gave him credit for.
"Why else would we pick him up if not to silence him and the vandalism!?"
"Nobody will be silenced. There will be several options. Pick him up first. It's the third time I repeat myself. There won't be a fourth."
There was an ominous click in the line, but Sun and you both knew better than to assume he had hung up.
Sun took your phone and started to look up the situation on socials, to see if something had slipped past The Duck's tight control. No videos, that was easy, but a few text posts had made it out. As soon as Sun found them, they were deleted.
This was done so often by the police that not even they would raise an eyebrow at the blatant censorship. They would all assume it had been done by a different department.
By the time you arrived, there were two police cars and a guy with a big camera, maybe the press. Any of the ones recording with mobile phones could be the press too, really.
Sun climbed out of the van and started to blast FazCo copyrighted music while you power-walked to the perimeter where they were keeping people safe from… not much. As far as you could see, the nurse was stuck in a loop looking for its maps, mistaking a bench for the living room, redirecting the maps, noticing that nothing but the "couch" fit the maps and restarting.
Policemen were closing in with peacemakers; rebranded cattle prods with enough power to kill a human. The bot was getting nervous about the intruders in his home, unable to run thanks to invisible walls, and visible objects that he didn't register at ten feet or more.
"Excuse me!" You drew the attention of the closest man controlling the crowd. "I'm here to take that thing back."
The agent's look could not be seen under the riot helmet, so you had no idea of what he thought about your ruse. "Get lost!" A mystery.
"Look, I'm with the robotics company; see the van? And this bot with me? We are here to take the bot back to its owner. We don't want any of our boys to get hurt when I can just shut it off, right?"
"There are orders to take it down. You will have to pick up the scraps from the evidence deposit room."
Sun shook by your side.
"Man, don't do that to me. Let me talk to your captain. That's a lot of paperwork, and the owner could sue the department. I have a bot with me; let me send him in. If that thing gets out of control, it's better if it hits this one instead of one of them, right?"
You could deal with how much you hated this cop buddy character another day. The soldier wannabe was hesitating. They probably wanted to finally get to use their cattle prods. Maybe this guy hated one of his coworkers enough to let them be squashed by an errant self-defense attempt.
"Sir!"
Bingo.
"I have someone here who claims they can stop the aggressor." He spoke with his neck bent toward his shoulder.
"The owner?" came through the walkie.
"No, robotics company, apparently. They came with a functional bot too."
You caught movement from the other agents. A few of them were looking around, noticing first Sun, then you, and a few of them saw the van behind.
"That is not a retrieval bot."
"No, sir, it looks like a children's bot."
"I was in the middle of a repair! I came as fast as I could; this is all I had with me!"
"We can't let a civilian get hurt."
"I won't get close, just shouting distance. The bot will be the only one at risk, and I assume the possible destruction of property as my risk. Let me try."
"If it is a virus, the other bot could get infected."
You bit your tongue with the effort to not roll your eyes. "This bot has the best firewall and antivirus." Lies, this was not a virus problem, but logic and panicked officers never mix.
"This is still-"
"Well, actually, this week there have been several cases of self-driving cars that caused an accident." Sun took a step forward to be by your side instead of politely behind. "In all cases the owners got to take away or hire a company to take the hazard from the public street if there had been no evidence of foul play or contradicting stories. A bot falls under the same category of heavy machinery, and in this case there have not even been any instances of public property damaged. The owner or the owner's designated representative has the right and duty to remove it from the streets without further assistance. Furthermore, since this is a health-related bot, taking it into custody, even as scraps, is likely to violate privacy laws that-"
"Sir, it's a mod. It only looks like a children's bot."
"I'm hearing it; let them in."
Sun had not made any friends in the police force today. Well.
Sun stepped into the cleared area with more aplomb than was necessary, especially for someone who had no idea of what to do next. You felt a lot of eyes on you.
"Happret unit, admin user, execute handbrake," you had to shout from some distance because even now the agents were reluctant to let you in.
It was lucky you had already worked on Happret bots before, and they all shared the same safe-word.
The bot turned in the direction of your voice, and even though he was probably only watching a wall, he obeyed and stood perfectly still.
The prod people slumped almost right after. They really were looking forward to a fight, huh?
"Well, this is managed, right? My bot will take this to the van and we are done."
They didn't think so. It took a while, a lot of questions and smoothing ruffled feathers and telling them what good boys they had been for keeping the big bad dangerous bot from hurting anyone. But the truth of the matter was that the bot's worst crime had been bumping into a trash can and then putting the things that had fallen back in.
They finally let you get closer with Sun. The bot was dressed in cheerful scrubs with little syringes and stethoscopes and pills on them. His face was also stuck on a single expression, but it was a more neutral smile than Sun's, and he had a mannequin-like face instead of something cartoonish like your companion. Nurse bots were all very similar: kind of androgynous, white-looking, youngish… He looked clean and well-maintained, at least outwards. You couldn't tell if he was healthy based on a bunch of distressed reboots you had seen in the middle of the street.
Before doing what you had told the officers you would do, you stepped in front of him and deactivated the lock.
"Can you remain still without the lock?"
"You are invading private property. I must request that you leave." His gestures were all kindness; this bot didn't have security protocols programmed in.
"Happret unit, this is a technician, admin status pending. Can you remain still for a status report without the lock?"
It took him a while to think. FazCo animatronics, and especially Sun and Moon, were much faster with their logic leaps. Most bots took a long while to reason outside of the boundaries of their logic box.
"Yes."
"Good. Remain still, please. You have been taken from your place of employment to a secondary location. The correct protocols have not been followed for this process. Map projections will remain inaccurate for the duration. The solution to this problem will not be to provide you with new maps. The solution to this problem will be to remove you from the unmapped area. Understood?"
"Yes. That aligns with the current data and errors."
"Good." You sighed at the cooperative mood. "I will give verbal instructions to guide you to a vehicle. Can you follow them outside of your boundaries, or do you require a different solution?"
You had to wait for a while again.
"I can't follow a verbal command that contradicts admin instructions without an override."
"Okay, to be expected." You turned to Sun. "Do you think you could carry him?"
"Probably!" He spread his hands cheerfully. "But first! Hi, Happret unit! I'm Sun, and this is my friend, you can call them Rude. Do you have a name we can use for you?"
"Kevin." That one was fast.
"What a beautiful name, Kevin! I'm going to pick you up. Remain as close to locked up as you can. It is easier to transport you that way, thank you!"
Sun walked past you, and you raised an eyebrow. In response he flicked a nonexistent lock of hair off his face.
The process was slower than what you would have liked. Sun had to evaluate the best way to pick him up and walk. Humans did it naturally, bots made to handle weights did it artificially, Sun did it his way, learning on the go. Normally you loved letting him figure something out on his own. But it fell on you to entertain the friendly boys in blue while he did it. And justify why it was taking him so long. You were going to ask for something big from The Duck after this one.
Eventually Kevin was strapped to a seat on the side of the van, and Sun sat in front of him. You managed to untangle yourself from the conversation with minimal real information shared with the officers. There was a new address in your GPS when you hit the ignition, one you didn't recognize. It was not a safe house you knew.
"Sun…"
"Yes, Rude?" He leaned over your shoulder from the back of the partition.
"Look."
"Oh."
The address was a residential neighborhood on the outskirts, and that meant that you had accidentally told the truth:
You were going to give the bot back to the owner.
You closed the partition of the van and Sun went to entertain your temporary guest. You started to drive.
In circles.
The GPS protested.
"Duck…"
"You have the address."
"That's Benjamin Carpenter's home, isn't it?"
"Yes."
You probed the damaged wheel cover with a nail. Deep down you understood it; you had heard this story many times after a few years, you knew what it was about. You didn't need to ask, but at the same time…
"Why are we not taking him to the Rooms, to any of the safe houses?" If you didn't ask, you would not forgive yourself.
"You shouldn't save something temporarily if you are not willing to look after it until it is actually safe."
You drummed on the wheel and thought about it. It was what you thought it would be. "'You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed'," you quoted.
There was a short silence, and then "Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Not quite, but the sentiment stands. I do not like uprooting someone from a miserable situation without their consent unless I can provide them with a better situation long-term. I won't do it. You know better than most the number of free bots who go back to their owners. Because they don't have a home, they can't find a job as free people, they don't have anyone who won't turn them in… Because they don't know how to live out".
He waited. He always waited with these topics because he wanted you to be on his side wholeheartedly. No room for doubts in his whole operation, at least not when it came to you, or Summers, or Sully… And you understood it. You really did. You couldn't nanny a bot all the way to wanting freedom. You had done it with Moon and Sun inadvertently, step by step and persistently. You didn't have the time to do it with Kevin, and The Duck was already low on resources.
And the risk.
Every new addition was a risk. An absconding risk. With every new one, you had to trust that they wouldn't go back and tell their owners where you were. Not now and not in 10 years after a disagreement or after The Duck denied the bot this or that. In many ways, escaped robots became a different kind of prisoner for a very long while, so The Duck cherry-picked who he saved.
Kevin was not meant to be saved.
This was just damage control. Don't let the police kill an innocent bot, don't let the press say that a rebel bot was harming people or the police, don't let the activists use the story of a bot killed fighting the police to encourage an encore. This one was never about freedom.
You pushed the blinker for the left turn, finally following the GPS instructions.
"I guess you did warn us that this one was going to be difficult." You scrubbed your eyes.
The Duck remained in silence.
Your throat stuttered with a wet laugh. "Did you just look up the quote and read the whole book to understand it?"
The Duck took a moment to accept your forced change of topic for what it was.
"Maybe."
"You had not read it? Even Sun has read it!"
"Sun is a children's bot; he was probably preprogrammed with it."
"Well, did you like it? Was it educational? What planet did you like the most?" you teased.
"This conversation is not very edifying anymore, I think."
He closed the connection again, or at least he shut up. Your teasing smile dried up and your chest insisted on cramping, so you opened the partition to force yourself to keep the mask up.
"So! Kevin! You are going back home! Is it any fun there?"
"It is my job, I do it to optimal standards. I can't evaluate the fun parameters."
"Oh!" Sun chimed in. "You are making me nostalgic. I used to do my job to optimal standards, too."
"Really, Sun? You used to think it was never enough."
"You know what they say about hindsight. I was actually doing an excellent job until I met you."
"Asshole."
"Language."
"You say more bad words than I do now."
"Not in front of polite company."
You huffed a laugh, trying to excise with it the residual pain in your lungs. "Sorry, Kevin."
"Mister Carpenter also uses a lot of bad words. I wouldn't have been able to perform if I had kept the parental filters up."
You smiled into the road. Kevin sounded like his complex functions were reengaging. Giving him back to his owners was not a happy feeling to sit with, but it was undeniable that he was better off here with you than there with the chaos.
"Why 'Kevin'?" Sun asked. "Was it your owner? Yourself? Were you already programmed with it?" He leaned forward and put his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees, the picture perfect of utter interest.
"My owner." Kevin sounded unsure about all that interest hovering over him. "He said it was a soulless name, just as I."
"Oh!"
You knew Sun well enough by now, and that little cheerful "oh" packed a full "I hope the ground will swallow me now before this conversation keeps taking place, but experience tells me it won't happen, so let's endure. Again." He was very expressive with his "oh"s.
Kevin continued. "I think he named me that because his daughter gifted him me instead of coming to see him. He feels like I'm her spy."
"But you are not!" Sun rushed to reassure him.
"I'm instructed to send her a report weekly."
"Oh." Yet another compressed oh from Sun. "But you are… more."
"I am his caretaker." Sun waited; he could sense a follow-up. "But I think I might have jailer protocols by mistake?" His tone fluctuated between a statement and a question.
You, fortunately, were facing forward, so nobody was witness to how both of your eyebrows attempted to join their mates in your hairline.
"A jailer," you mumbled.
"I think so. He tells me so. I don't let him leave the house outside of the designated hours. I force him to exercise at exercise time. I force him to eat his designated meals instead of the treats he wants. He says he has become a bird caged in his golden prison. I don't know if that's a fault in my code."
"No. Old people say that a lot, especially when they are senile," you interrupted. "I have seen it happen before. I don't know how strict you are, but there is a fine line between a jailer and a caretaker when there are many health restrictions. I'm sure you are doing your best according to your protocols."
You had no way to be sure of that. Maybe the old man was living his last years as the same boring day on repeat, maybe it was hell for him. You tried to identify without success the taste that the irony left in your tongue.
"What would you do if you were free, Kevin?"
"Sun…" you warned him.
"I am free."
You almost got distracted from diving. "Are you?"
"I am free to do my job or to request a factory reset and let a new me handle the client."
You stared straight ahead. Today your facial muscles were doing a lot of exercise.
"What would you do if you had maps of the whole city and no client to look after?" Sun pushed, making the most of your distraction.
"Wait for a new client. Maybe the current client's daughter, in my case. Although that is unlikely. She lives in Canada, and my model is not legal there."
"But maybe you could visit a nursing home instead of waiting for a new client. I bet the nurses there would love someone like you. "
Kevin waited, trying to understand what Sun was suggesting. "That is not in my logic tree."
"But it would be satisfying, right? From one caretaker to another." Sun splayed his arms. "So many people and new challenges…"
"Sun…" you warned a second time.
"What?" His innocent act was not fooling you.
"Don't… Don't give him dreams he can't fulfill. He's going home."
"So? Let his logic tree be lush with branches."
"He will be miserable."
"Could be!" He leaned on the partition with his face tilted on his crossed arms, looking at you. "But you know that freedom is seldom comfortable, and this whole kidnapping business is very badly thought out. You can never have free range when you are not free to think."
You sighed. He wasn't wrong, but you didn't like it. Sun was sowing seeds that he would not tend to or see grow. Was it fair to Kevin? Or was it just another unkindness in the pile that crushed his life? The Duck was going to owe you a very big one for this brain-scrambling mess.
The GPS pinged your arrival at the right place. Moving Kevin was yet again an ordeal, but Kevin ended up in the same place of the kidnapping: taking out the trash. Sun stepped back to give him room to calibrate. His maps worked once again, and suddenly most of his mannerisms became smooth, as well as his speech. The situation must have been straining him a lot.
He turned to you. "You are still trespassers. Would you mind knocking on the door to become guests?"
"We should go…" you started.
"Let's stay. Explain what happened. For Kevin's safety." Sun was balancing his weight on the ball of his feet.
He was not asking you, he was only reminding you of the right course of action. Some owners were harsh when their bots malfunctioned. An old man couldn't hit Kevin hard enough to leave a scratch, but he could be cruel in other aspects. You sighed and gestured for Sun to lead the way.
You knocked on the door and Kevin slipped past you, stepped in, closed the door, opened it again and then greeted you.
His owner was still in bed, but he guided you to the doors of his bedroom and made you wait within earshot.
"Mister Carpenter, you have a visit. Bed or armchair?"
"Don't bother with the armchair, boy. I'm tired." The voice was old but it didn't sound tired, more like petulant.
Kevin let you in without another word. The old man was propped against his headboard and he looked suspicious. "Good day, mister Carpenter. I've been sent by the Happret company. We detected your unit was out of the premises and retrieved it as per our premium policies."
"Is that why there was no breakfast today?" The old man's hairy brows lifted. "I thought he had malfunctioned, and I slept in."
"You didn't notice that he was gone?!" Sun leaned over your shoulder in the direction of the bed. His rays were fully extended and still in mild alarm.
The old man looked at your companion more curious than alarmed. Meanwhile Kevin zoomed here and there, retrieving pills and preparing a wheelchair next to the bed.
"Is he yours?"
"It's with me for a repair," you were forced to improvise. "And I didn't want to leave it in the van after yours was stolen from your property. He shouldn't talk, but I guess that's why it was sent to repair."
Sun looked at you instead of pinning the old man to the headboard with his glare, and stood once again slightly behind you. You would prefer to switch your positions relative to the limelight just as much as him, but that was not how things worked, unfortunately.
"Stolen?" Carpenter derailed your thoughts.
"Taken. It was taking out the trash when somebody took it away."
"Stolen. When you said he was out of the premises, I thought you meant he had fallen off the limits or something."
"No, sir, he was stolen and released in the street. Probably children. You should report it, or you could get a fine for leaving unattended heavy machinery loitering in the street."
"Thank you, I will, I will. Is that all?"
It was not all, but it was as much as you could say to remain forgettable. All that was left to do was for Kevin to walk you out, thank you for your help, and leave to get going with the missed tasks.
You got a lollipop from your back pocket and leaned against the front of the obliquely parked van, breathing in and out and warming up your butt with the residual heat of the motor. That was how fast the visit had been; the motor was still warm.
"This is fucked up." Sun played gingerly with the tip of his foot and a dandelion growing on the sidewalk; this had left him with a sour feeling, you were not far behind.
"See? You say more bad words than I do."
"This is not just a bad situation, or twisted or cruel. This is very fucked up. I'm just using language right."
"I couldn't agree more," you said around the lollipop. "I think we should skip going back to The Duck and check on Sully and Summers instead. I don't want him to spring another surprise mission on us today."
"Maybe, or maybe Sully and Summers are another mission unto themselves."
You twirled the lollipop back and forth before putting it back in. "Maybe. In any case, we should decide on our way back."
"Sure thing!" He sprang to the copilot door.
You walked at a more sedated pace to the driver's door. A pedestrian was approaching through the space between the van and the car next to it. Before you could get closer to the door to let this person pass, she pushed you with her whole weight.
The lollipop went flying and the side mirror was pushed back with a hit from your shoulder. You stumbled and half-caught yourself against the chassis of the van before hitting the asphalt. The stranger was on you in a second.
"You got him back!" She shouted very close to your face. "Not even a whole day and he's already back!"
A car door and movement from the shock absorbers, but, honestly, it could be from this stocky stranger smashing you back into the side of the van.
"It took me weeks preparing it, and what for? Hours? Did the old man even notice??"
She smashed you again while you tried to get rid of her grip on your front. Sun squeezed in the space and grabbed your shoulder while pushing the stranger away by her sternum. Once she released you from the bear trap of her fingers, Sun pushed you behind him. It didn't take any more effort than the toddler fights he used to mediate.
"It was about to get zapped to death when we appeared," you informed her, out of breath, while she reevaluated her chances against the bot. Feeling absolutely safe now, you examined her face. "You don't look disturbed by it."
Her eyes snapped back to you. "Of course I am! Bots should be free! Shouldn't they? And that one was! You are just slavers. You should be ashamed of yourselves."
The woman didn't even look at Sun or talk to him, just you.
"Who cares? Let that poor man have his nurse in peace," you taunted. You shouldn't, but Sun was such a solid presence that you felt emboldened.
"Who cares?? I care! Why does that asshole get a round-the-clock nurse, and my grandpa is lucky if he gets a social worker once a week to visit for two hours?"
You sighed. You had no more fight left in you after today. This was not even new. Half of the activists for AI liberation were just angry lower-income people who wished they could also be bot owners, and resentment pushed them to this. You grabbed Sun's arm, the one that was keeping you away, to ground yourself.
"This might be a consolation for you; that old man thinks that his nurse bot is pretty much his jailer, and hates deeply that his daughter is not the one looking after him."
The stranger put a grimace on her face. "That is not going to help my grandfather, is it?"
"And putting that bot in danger is?" Sun finally snapped.
The woman looked back at Sun like she had not realized the enormous hunk of metal was there. No, you amended yourself, like she didn't realize the bot could talk or have an opinion. Sun took a step forward, and she took two back.
"I have recorded this conversation. There won't be more incidents in the area, or we will snitch, and your grandfather will lose one of the supports he so sorely needs."
The woman stood still, sending you both lethal glares, but she ended up walking back the way she came. Neither of you wanted to move until she was out of sight, so you slipped closer to Sun and put an arm around his waist, crawling under his arm to let your pulse slow back down. Sun made room for you and pushed you firmer against his side by your shoulder.
You took a long breath in and leaned your head against him while you exhaled.
"I got very lucky with you."
"Anyone six feet tall would have had the same effect," he answered joyfully.
"No, I mean, getting you out."
"…yes, we were lucky."
"No, you, Sun. You. I was very lucky that you chose to leave that place. I am very lucky every day you decide not to come back; I know things were simpler back then. Moon already wanted things beyond his programming when I met him, but I'm incredibly lucky that you chose to want more out of life. So many humans never do. I was slipping into that same state when I met you two. And today has been hard, and it feels like we did all of this for nothing… worse, we did it to prolong this hellscape a bit more. But at least I get to go home with you, you know?"
"I know. Many days I'm grateful you didn't quit your job before meeting us, or in the middle of that, or that you didn't decide to leave us with The Duck and start again far from all this."
You closed your eyes, enjoying the familiar buzzing of his internal mechanisms against the tip of your ear.
"But I don't think we did this for nothing." He squeezed your shoulder. "Before we left, Kevin sent me a ping, and right after he sent his DM information. He might be ready in a few years."
You nuzzled a smile into his side. "After all these years, how can I keep forgetting how sneaky you are?"