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Kaia stared at herself in the mirror. Of course she didn’t recognize herself in it. This wasn’t her body. Nothing that happened to this body mattered, because it wasn’t hers. Once she was done with her assignment, she could hand it back over and return to the server with some new stories and ideas for entertainment. Plus, she would have spent time with Jack and could pass along messages to their friends. The only downside was she’d have to give back the programming, and she liked the way this programming fit. If she was being honest, she rather liked the body too, but that was dangerous. People could do bad things to the body, and if she let herself feel like it was her, that meant they were doing those things to her.
It wasn’t a surprise to see Jack, and seeing Adam wasn’t really that strange, either. The fact that there was someone else with them, and a girl, that was odd. No one had told her to expect a stranger. Jack was arguing with his father about something, so Kaia stayed hidden, not announcing herself as she normally would. Instead, she carefully edged her way around to Sam, Jack’s dad and a Persistent like her and Jack. “Help.”
Sam wrapped an arm around her, talking to her in a series of beeps so quiet that Kaia doubted the humans could hear it. He led her to the kitchen, where… “I’m confused.” That was Jack’s father chopping vegetables, but Jack’s father was in the living room arguing with Jack. She beeped at Sam.
“This is Castiel,” Sam said quietly. “The man in the other room is his old college roommate Jimmy, who he swears is no relation that they’re aware of but they are very similar-looking. He comes by every few months to visit. We weren’t expecting him today or we’d have canceled the outing, but he’s had an emergency come up and was counting on us to help give his daughter somewhere to stay since she sees us as family more than Jimmy’s actual family.”
“I… I can go back,” Kaia said in a small voice. “Consider the outing canceled. I’m not exactly in the best space for a movie anyway, not after seeing that.”
Sam pulled her into a hug, gently and carefully to make sure Kaia felt like she could avoid it if she wanted. The kind of hug that made her feel safe. She melted into it, letting Sam hold her. “So, if you want to cancel, we can cancel, but if you want to stay, what if we put on a movie here? You, Jack, and Adam can watch something that you can take back into the server, while Castiel and I take Claire out for ice cream or something. Dean and Anna already took Leah to visit her grandfather, and Jimmy won’t be staying, so it would just be the three of you.”
Kaia thought it over. She disengaged from the hug and gave herself enough time for her wariness to come back after the hug, and the conclusion was still the same. “If you and Cas will stay with us, I wouldn’t mind if Claire did. I’ve always found my best fits to be with girls, and I haven’t had the chance to hang out with a girl like this where I’m not on an assignment. I think I’d like to.”
“Remember you have the ripcord, if you need it,” Sam said, and Kaia nodded. There were actually two emergency systems here: if she said ripcord, Jack or Sam would get her out of the situation and let her calm down before deciding if she was going back. If not, Electric Sheep Dreams had created a failsafe emergency eject system that would let them immediately return to the server over a dedicated wi-fi channel. It was expensive, and after the investigation either the Persistent who used it frivolously or the client who put them in that situation would be charged heavily for it. So far of the two uses Kaia was aware of, there’d been one of each, and she’d been specifically told that if she’d had it to use to escape the… the Bad Place… it would have fallen on the client, not her.
Claire did decide to stay, taking the seat next to Kaia on the couch. Jack was halfway settled on the floor when he jumped up. “If Claire’s here, we have an excuse to make popcorn!” He ran off, leaving Sam to scroll through NetFlix and find a good movie. When Jack returned, he had a tray with two big bowls filled with popcorn and four smaller ones. Claire and Castiel got the big bowls, while Adam, Kaia, Jack, and Sam got the small ones.
Kaia watched Jack settle in and take a big sniff of the popcorn. She followed his lead, smiling when the scent hit. It smelled delightful. The two humans seemed to enjoy eating it, but Kaia couldn’t bring herself to try that, justifying it when none of the other androids did either. The movie Sam had chosen – Mary Poppins – seemed a bit silly and Kaia was having a better time watching the others than she was the movie, but Jack was really into it and Adam had all kinds of thoughts to bounce off Claire, who had seen the movie as a kid and was enjoying seeing it with the androids for the first time. She kept throwing out ridiculous spoilers, only one of which had actually come true – the antidote to the laughter making everyone float.
Kaia tilted her head as she watched Sam pick up a piece of his popcorn and feed it to Castiel. It made sense, getting rid of the popcorn without wasting it, but it seemed to mean more. Out of curiosity, Kaia picked up a kernel and held it out to Claire.
The giggles were not the response Kaia had been looking for, but Claire ate the popcorn and reached out to squeeze Kaia’s hand. “So, being an android with limited human interaction and programming, I’m guessing you’re not aware that that’s flirting?” Kaia went red, and Claire grinned. “If it was intended that way, I don’t mind… and if it wasn’t but you want to say it was, that’d be cool.”
Kaia went even redder. Simulated to show her embarrassment, Kaia hated that she couldn’t control it. “I… I didn’t… I’m not… I’m not like Sam or Jack. I’m not real.”
“Of course you’re real,” Claire said, leaning in closer. “You’re sitting right here, aren’t you?”
“I… that’s not what I meant.” Kaia stared down at the hands of her chassis. “I’m on assignment. Once this outing is over, I’ll be pulled out of the chassis, deprogrammed, and returned to the server. If you’re here next time Jack asks for an outing with me, I’ll have a different body and my programming will have been tweaked. It’s how things work for us. I might not even remember you. We don’t really understand what makes something persist when we’re blanks and what disappears with the programming. Particularly traumatic memories, obviously. My friendship with Jack started while we were both blanks, so of course that persists, but it took a while before I remembered his family.”
“So if I want you to remember me, I need to make it really memorable, then,” Claire said with a smirk. “How do they decide which chassis to use for you?”
“For outings? They just grab whatever they have on hand that’s appropriate for the situation,” Kaia said. “For assignments, sometimes the client chooses the specific chassis, or makes requests for a type but not a specific chassis. To some extent, the chassis can be altered. It’s easy enough for me to change my hair from black to brown or blonde, but making me grow three inches is going to be a lot harder. Changing my anatomy is difficult.”
“So next time I see you, you might be a six-foot dude with muscles, or something else equally physically unappealing to me,” Claire said. She shrugged. “So? If I’m right and the connection’s genuine enough to persist, it’s genuine enough that some day I might want to do what Cas did for Sam, at which point I could request whatever chassis we wanted. If it’s not, then next time I see you, it won’t matter and I’ll be disappointed but get over it.”
“I…” Kaia wanted to protest, but something in her really wanted this. She glanced over at Sam, sending a hesitant beep his way. Sam didn’t beep back, but held out a hand with his thumb up, and Jack joined him. Adam ignored the whole thing. “I didn’t know, but if you’re willing to take the risk, I am too. How else do I flirt with you?”
Next time Kaia was called for an outing, she was rather surprised to find it was the same chassis and her programming was only slightly tweaked. It was one of those things where no one bothered to offer an explanation, so Kaia didn’t ask for one. Until she was given the outing briefing. “It seems Castiel and Jack think you have a chance at something interesting. Do you remember Claire?”
“I do. She was fun, and she liked me, and she thought we had a connection that might last.” Kaia blinked. She hadn’t really thought about Claire in the server, but now that she was programmed again, she skimmed through the briefing hoping there would be an indication that Claire would be there. That they could see each other again. There wasn’t one, but there wasn’t any indication that she wouldn’t be there either, so Kaia decided to hold onto hope since she was reprogrammed this way. She was curious to meet this Maggie that was mentioned. “Why do you ask?”
“As you know, your outings with Jack and Adam aren’t just about getting you out of the server and some time with your friend, although that is the main purpose.” Kaia rolled her eyes. Of course she knew that she was a research subject for them to try to understand the Persistents better and the best way to handle them. “Neither Jack nor Adam has yet met someone they’ve considered entering a romantic relationship with, which means that your connection with Claire is the first non-contracted Persistent-human relationship we’ve ever seen. We won’t interfere, and the same rules about blocking off memories you’d prefer to keep private will still apply when we’re sorting through the mission data. But we would like to see what happens.”
“So would I,” Kaia said. “What does this mean for my programming? Because I remembered her in the server, but barely thought about her.”
“It means that for ease of recognition, we intend to keep this chassis reserved for your outings and minimize changes to your programming. After all, what good does it do you to remember Claire if she has no way to recognize you? We suspect that you'll remember more about her when you get back to the server, just like the discussions about the stories help you remember them.” The programmer smiled. “It also means your outings will start being longer assignments. You’ll be gone for overnights, building up to days or weeks at a time. Unless you ask not to stay. Your code word and failsafe will remain intact, just like always.”
Paperwork signed, Kaia headed out to meet up with Jack. To her delight, Claire was there, and when Kaia ran to her for a hug, Claire was delighted to see her. “You remember!”
“I remember.” Kaia stepped back and twirled. “They’re letting me keep this chassis and the programming. We get a real chance.”