Work Text:
As his future body begins to take shape, Victor makes a list of things he wants.
He starts off simply enough, rifling through the basic needs. “Needs” itself is wrong, since his new body will be as self-sufficient as they can manage, but maybe Victor wants that, too, the idea of requiring or owning. Human notions.
“Food” comes first, and proves the easiest. Reed doesn't have very many strong opinions about what he eats, and Victor soundly fails to understand the surface appeal of Johnny's suggestions. He turns to independent research instead, consulting with the two of them as necessary.
“This is obscene,” Victor repeats, watching the forty-third hot dog vanish down the contestant's gullet.
“This,” Johnny says, rewinding the clip to let the travesty play out again, “is human ingenuity at work.”
Humans, Victor decides, have altogether too much time on their hands. Still, not all of it was ridiculous. Pizza had seemed promising, and both Johnny and Reed had espoused its virtues when he asked. He also likes the sound of alcohol, but Johnny tells him not to get his hopes up.
“It's not just taste, like food was. It's an experience. Besides, who's gonna go to all the trouble of programming an authentic AI hangover?”
“Someone's done it.” Reed's fingers dart across the keyboard, before he turns the laptop around to face Johnny. “See? There's a mod for everything.” He holds the screen up towards Victor, where the AI is housed in Reed's work computer. It's too far away for Victor to read. Still, Victor experiences something strange at the gesture. Like a fluttering.
Johnny rolls his eyes, and the sensation passes. “Your people don't make any sense, you know that?” Reed just smiles. Victor tentatively adds alcohol to the list.
“Shelter” proves more complicated to categorize. Once built, Victor's body will need a place to recharge, but modern robotics tech is fairly weatherproof. Granted, he shouldn't spend an extended amount of time out in the elements, but neither should humans, and Victor has no real interest in the greater world anyway. He finds himself more interested in the closed-off places. Victor might only be able to see one room of Reed and Johnny's apartment, but there are pieces of them everywhere. Even as boxes pile in the corners and loose packaging strews itself across any free territory it can find, the same two coffee mugs perch on the counter, almost brushing against each other. He puts that on the list, then – not the mugs themselves but the idea of a space of one's own, of something constant. Something that stays.
And of course Victor already knows the particulars of “sex.” It isn’t exactly a complicated concept to grasp, and he has more than enough time to do the necessary research. Just tabs and slots and the assorted configurations one might arrange them in. Still, that doesn’t stop him from injecting an excessive amount of blankness into his voice when he asks Reed to explain the process one more time. Reed stammers for several minutes before Johnny cuts him off. His speech begins with “Well, Victor, when a programmer and a computer love each other very much-” and meanders through storks and cabbages and all manner of other euphemisms before finally arriving at “-and that’s where baby AIs come from. Congratulations.”
“But seriously, your brain’s hooked into the whole Internet,” Johnny concludes. “Barring the actual hands-on stuff, you probably know more than we do.” He leans in to plant a quick kiss on Reed’s cheek. “I mean, you definitely know more than Reed does.”
Reed makes an offended sound not unlike a squawk. He bats Johnny’s second kiss away, but the third and fourth connect, one at the jaw, one at the corner of his mouth. When kiss the fifth finally succeeds at reaching his lips, he seems much less bothered by the imposition, but he still protests when Johnny tries to pull him closer.
“Not in front of Victor- we have work, Johnny-”
“We’re furthering his education!”
The fluttering sensation – can it really be called a sensation when one lacks a body to feel it? – makes its return, bringing a companion along with it. The latter proves more uncomfortable than the former. It’s not anger. Victor ’s had enough experience with anger to know it when he sees it. It’s something else, something new overlaying the fluttering , until he can’t tell where one stops and the other begins. Victor crossreferences them both with every setting on AI emotion he can find, but turns up next to nothing. Begrudgingly Victor supposes that it makes sense, given that his very existence is supposed to be a closely guarded secret. He’s the most advanced AI to date. Of course documentation is scarce.
Thus, Victor adds “sex” to the list. But he adds something else, too. He’s not sure how to define it. He’s not even sure if he can. But late at night, when Johnny and Reed have retreated to their room to sleep (and there’s another want, “sleep,” like turning off, except you’re still there in the end), Victor reviews his memory logs and tries to make sense of it. Nine days ago: the wrong part arrives in the mail , Johnny argues with customer service over the phone while he’s sprawled over the couch, his head falling into Reed’s lap, and Reed’s balancing his laptop at an awkward angle in order to let Johnny stay there. Three days ago: they try and cook something complicated for once, then Reed orders takeout while Johnny tries to get the smoke alarm to stop ringing, and when the food arrives they steal bites from each other’s plates. Six hours ago: Johnny coaxes Reed away from his work and into bed, “It’ll still be there in the morning, come on,” but they tell Victor goodnight before they go, and the rest of the concrete data is irrelevant in the face of the fluttering , then.
So it goes: Reed looks at Johnny and Johnny looks at Reed, and Victor thinks yes, I want that.