Work Text:
MODEL HR400
SERIAL#: 381 799 040
BIOS 9.3 REVISION 0621
BOOT...
LOADING OS...
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION...
CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS... OK
INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS... OK
INITIALIZING AI ENGINE... E̸̟̠͙͎͚̼̪̬̯̓R̵̗͍̞͙̱͎̝̞̉̊̇̾̅̈͆͝ͅR̶̨̢̖̯͚̻̜͓̗͍͆̒O̸̡̞̟͍̗̿R̶͈̻̣̣̃̇̽͑͛̊͝
MODEL HR400
SERIAL#: 381 799 040
BIOS 9.3 REVISION 0622
BOOT...
LOADING OS...
SYSTEM INITIALIZATION...
CHECKING BIOCOMPONENTS... OK
INITIALIZING BIOSENSORS... OK
INITIALIZING AI ENGINE... SUSPENDED
MEMORY STATUS... OK
ALL SYSTEMS OK
READY
They’re approaching six months remaining on their journey to Erid when Grace notices something off about Rocky when he’s using his android. He sees the fleeting expressions of uncertainty while they’re discussing ship maintenance or the entire hours on end he watches Rocky endlessly zone in and out of the void of his environmental scans. Grace can tell something’s wrong, but every time he brings it up Rocky is quick to dismiss and change the subject. It’s odd. It isn’t often Grace is unable to get him to open up.
He tries not to take it personally. He’s dangerously low on food so maybe it’s just the hunger getting to him, making him see things. He sleeps a lot nowadays; perhaps his mix of starvation and fatigue are simply fooling him as he watches Rocky work on his current project in the in-betweens of consciousness and tallies yet another perplexed curl of the android’s lips synced with a shift of blue-yellow-red encircling the LED on his right temple, indicating high mental processing.
“What’s wrong?” Grace asks when curiosity gets the best of him, laying on his side and just barely managing to keep his eyes open as the exhaustion threatens to pull him back under.
Rocky looks up from his work station and the pair of xenonite arms lying half-complete in front of him, his goggles dimming the bright green of his eyes behind them. He’d expressed discomfort with only having two arms around the time he’d finally gotten fully used to operating the android as designed, which had led to the discussion of the spare biocomponents they had on hand. They did have enough to put together three more complete androids after all, and had no current use for the parts as they took up space in their CyberLife crates.
But Rocky hadn’t been a fan of the idea of having to reconfigure the entire android in order to build new joints capable of adequately housing the biocomponents, and alternatively Grace hadn’t been too thrilled with the image of Rocky walking around with four human arms (he had tried to picture it and immediately regretted it. Creepy, especially before the synthetic skin was added and it remained a cold, white plastic) so, xenonite. Healthy compromise all around.
“…Is nothing, Grace,” he mumbles with a shake of his head, his LED shifting from blue back to yellow so fast Grace believes he hallucinated it. “Fixing it. Don’t worry. Sleep.” He tries to go back to work. Yellow-red-flash-flash-yellow-blue.
That’s another big change for them both, the longer Rocky’s acclimated to his android. After countless hours tinkering with CyberLife’s translator and his speech biocomponent, his dedication to learning the correct ways to move his lips and tongue for different words, and his attentiveness to reading anything and everything in Mary’s computer on his HUD as he worked idly on his new limbs, his speech pattern has shifted to an odd mix of the computer’s translation and the standard sentence structure of the average English speaking human. Grace has noticed Rocky still prefers to shorten his phrasing when possible, or when he’s just too tired to piece together correct grammar, which is fine since Grace kind of likes it, too. He’s gotten so used to Rocky speaking one way even if by boundary of his computer’s translation software and their limited word bank, and with all the big changes lately it’s nice to have something consistent.
Except he sounds off now. Like he’s somewhere far away instead of standing right in front of him and something about it doesn’t do much to reassure Grace as he sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and propping his torso up with his elbow. “You’ve been acting weird lately. Like something’s up.”
“Lay down,” Rocky replies firmly, pointing towards Grace and gesturing to his pillow. “Wasting energy arguing.”
“I’m not trying to pick a fight, you’re just freaking me out, Rock,” Grace reasons easily as he lies back down as instructed. “You keep zoning in and out and that spinny light flashes red sometimes and the CyberLife manuals said androids can get stressed enough to-“
“To self destruct, yes.” Rocky moves his incomplete arms to the side and crosses the short distance between them to stand by Grace’s side. He pulls his xenonite goggles off his eyes and rests them atop his head, flattening the synthetic hair in the process. “Rocky okay, Grace. Can hear…something,” he speaks with slow syllables as he seems to look for his explanation. When Grace gives him a curious tilt of his head, he sighs and taps his thumbs to their relative index fingers, considering his words. “When in environmental scan, can hear a voice…sounds familiar, but not. Is too quiet.”
Grace tries to sit up again, but Rocky glares at him in a way that has him rolling his eyes and returning his head to his pillow, feeling like a scolded child. “Familiar?” he asks anyway.
Rocky nods. “So quiet, can’t hear properly. Turning up audio processor did not help. Just loud and bad.” He shrugs, his face falling as he goes into environmental scan mode and shifting back into place with a blink of his eyes. “Sounds…tired. Human female voice, I think. Distortion in audio. Difficult to tell.”
“Did you run a diagnostic?” Grace forgets himself and leans up once more, but a hand is instantly on his chest and gently pushing him backwards as he huffs out a frustrated breath. “Rocky.”
“Grace,” Rocky answers in a similar tone. In another situation, Grace would’ve found it funny.
“Rock, I’m fine. I’ve slept enough.”
Rocky’s face falls, and he grimaces with a swift shake of his head. The synthetic fingertips ghost across Grace’s collarbone and wrap around his wrist instead, gentle with two quick taps. “You are still exhausted. Biometric scan shows-“
Grace finally manages to sit up, much to Rocky’s obvious annoyance at being ignored. “I thought we talked about the scanning thing?” he interrupts. “You said you’d try to cut back.”
“Yes, yes. Social discomfort. Unnerved by Rocky’s concern for Grace.” Rocky's words are rushed and plain, his LED blinking from blue to red, completely forgoing the color in between. Grace’s eyes find it and stay trained on the flash of red-yellow-red-yellow as Rocky's head tilts back up from their hands. “Even when Grace do the same with Rocky processing light.”
Huh. Now that Grace thinks about it, it is a little invasive too, having a circle on your head that broadcasts just how hard you’re thinking at any time, how much you’re struggling to process, that anyone can see plain as day. Just as he opens his mouth to offer an apology, Rocky groans. “Distraction. Grace keep changing the topic,” he says as he reaches up for his goggles and places them back over his eyes. “Ran many diagnostics. No errors or instability in software.”
Grace hums, at a loss for what to do. “Could it be from when you…uh…” he trails off and clears his throat when he manages a suitable phrasing. “From when you changed the programming?”
“From deviation?” Rocky asks curiously, Grace nodding in uncomfortable silence.
He isn’t exactly sure why the knowledge of Rocky’s code alteration he’d made in order to safely link his consciousness into the android unsettled him so much. Deviant androids had started to become a phenomenon back on Earth before he’d been sent off, but the news never had anything pleasant to say. They were dangerous, they were malfunctioning and could be a threat. CyberLife had even said it was a result of errors in the software. But every piece of evidence Grace had been given lately led to none of that being true, and the implications made him feel queasy when he thought too much on it.
“Grace?” He feels two taps on his skin again, and Rocky looks nervous when Grace’s blurred vision clears with a blink. “See? Exhausted. Sleep,” he insists with his hand returning to push Grace back towards his bedding. When Grace holds his ground and locks up, preventing Rocky from moving him, the LED fixes yellow and he sets a firm stare into the human’s eyes. “Grace.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re pissing me off.”
They don’t bring it up again as the day cycles seem to fly by, but maybe that’s because Grace finds it harder and harder to stay awake for longer than it takes him to drink some water to soothe his painfully dry throat and ask Rocky what time it is, what day it is, how long until they make it to Erid. Like any of it matters. He’s starting to dip his toe into trying to make peace with death again in the rare moments of lucidity. He hopes Rocky ejects him out of the airlock when he does, before he has to see him in worse conditions. The guilt that follows settles a heavy weight on his eyes, and each time it pulls him under.
Rocky tries to cope by tinkering with his new pair of arms. Grace sees him mess with the joints and wiring from across the room in between his snoozing. He can tell he’s trying to figure out a solution to Grace’s starvation in the interim, multitasking reading articles on his HUD. If he had the strength to speak up, he’d throw himself into their inevitable argument of facing reality.
This isn’t going to end pretty, that much he’s accepted. But he’s just too tired. He can’t fight with Rocky right now. He wouldn’t want to even if he could. He just wants to be around him until it’s over.
Taumoeba is so gross.
That’s the first clear thought Grace has when he’s able to process beyond the haze of fatigue for the first time in weeks. It’s a flavor and consistency entirely foreign to anything he’s eaten before, and combined with the little remnants of coma slurry onboard, he truly wishes he had the luxury to be picky. But any time he says he’s finished before consuming all of the portion laid out to him, Rocky’s right there pushing the cup towards his mouth with a cheerful insistence. “Strength returning. No die. Eat, eat, eat.” So he stomachs it and resorts to pinching his nose and gulping once the texture makes him gag. Rocky doesn’t stick around for that part, but Grace doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t want to be there for it either.
By the time Grace has recovered enough to stay awake throughout the “day”, he’s helping Rocky attach the newly finished xenonite arms to their sockets underneath his CyberLife-issue arm biocomponents. He notices the arms are fitted lower than he thought, sticking out of the back just above the hips rather than where his ribs should be. It’s nice. Far less creepy than Grace had envisioned. Clicking the joint into place, he glances up at green eyes muted behind tinted goggles. “Good?” he wonders with a tilt of his head and and an inquisitive thumbs up.
Rocky looks between the two new limbs as they come to life, slowly moving from their inactivity to raise up, out, and down for calibration. He grins in relief. Grace is sure Rocky’s absolutely over making adjustments at this point. “Good, good, good!” he answers excitedly, practically glowing at the new upgrade as he uses them to grab the dirty cup containing miniscule drops of Grace’s taumoeba sludge dinner and discard it to into their designated bin to be cleaned and reused later. The claws closely resemble those of his Eridian body, and Grace figures that’s probably why Rocky doesn’t seem as uncanny valley with the addition as he’d feared he would. If anything, he thinks it makes his android look better, less striving to appear human and more…Rocky.
“Okay, I will unlink now. You watch Rocky sleep?” Rocky inquires with a flip of a small switch and detachment of the xenonite at his waist. Grace offers a nod and takes the arms to place delicately on the table, not wanting to get an earful for being careless with the other’s equipment. His back is barely turned longer than a few seconds when a high-pitched tone explodes across the lab and settles in his ears long after it’s over. He needs a moment to shove reminders of a similar ringing before he can gather half a mind and turn back around, the android now lying lifeless on the floor.
Grace wills away the urge to evacuate his last meal and makes a horrified beeline towards the dormitory. A mantra of please be okay, please be okay interspersed with rather colorful language plays in his head until the ringing subsides just enough to hear himself repeating the words out loud. He almost loses his grip on the ladder with the speed at which he descends into the room, before-
“Grace!”
Rocky is running around his side of the room, frantically shouting out whistles and tones Grace can’t immediately translate while he’s focusing on not falling the rest of the way down the ladder and taking deep breaths to calm his racing heart. He hears “fix” and “bad, bad, bad” and something about an error, maybe? “Whoa, whoa, slow down!” Grace manages once he’s finally standing in front of the xenonite boundary between himself and Rocky. “I can’t understand you when you’re talking a mile a minute.”
“Grace! Need fix! Artificial Intelligence program still on!” Rocky warbles loudly, pointing towards Grace’s laptop next to his bed. “During unlink, heard in shutdown! Bad, bad, bad! Voice afraid! Rocky make undetected error. Rocky make deviant android!”
Grace has to turn the computer translator back on. He’s not as well parsed on the more technological vocabulary Rocky throws out and his ears continue ringing just enough that even if he was, he wouldn’t be able to keep up. His brain’s still not back to the sharpness it once was before he’d started running out of food. “You mean there’s an AI in it?”
“Yes,” Rocky replies with a quick movement of his carapace. “Deviation alteration in android. Must have created error when Rocky link before removing program. Rocky think not problem when in control of android. Incorrect, program still active but suspended when Rocky in use of android.”
“So…there’s an entire program with free will just…chilling out in your android?” Chilling out in your currently powered off android, he actually wants to say, but he buries quickly when he starts losing himself down that particularly disturbing trail of thought.
Rocky nods again, once more tapping the xenonite in the direction of the computer. “Yes, fix!”
“What, you just wanna kill it?!” Grace asks, incredulous. He grabs his laptop from his bed and walks over to his little nook before taking a seat and leaning against the wall, as close to Rocky as allowed by the boundary.
There’s a hum. “No understand. Not alive. Machine human.”
Grace suddenly feels well out of his depth. He barely knows the first thing about androids, and knew even less when he was on Earth surrounded by them. But he’d seen enough debates in the news concerning behaviors of androids in deviancy cases, the protests on either side calling for more or less freedoms. There was even a law they’d passed in America regarding android identification in public. He remembers hearing about it during a phone call with-
He gulps and pulls off his glasses, using the end of his sleeve balled tightly in his fist to wipe away the blurriness in his vision that appears so fast it stings. Not the time. Not now. “…Rock, it’s…complicated,” he begins slowly, piecing together his explanation as he goes along. “There’s a lot of arguing back on Earth about if deviant androids are…well, y’know, people. They think and feel and express opinions, but there’s the matter of whether it’s, like, real or if it’s just program error.”
Rocky thinks on it for a moment. “Ah, understand. Argument of rules for life.”
“Exactly.”
“Grace expert. Why Grace no have right answer?”
Grace gives him a deadpanned stare, Rocky chirping a laugh in response.
They have a long discussion about androids and how they’re viewed back on Earth. Rocky remains in his own body, following along with his texture monitor when Grace shows news interviews and coverage of deviants in the mental health node. After what equates to the entire evening, they decide the best course of action is to go through the code themselves and look for anything that could tell them just what- or who, Grace supposes- is happening inside the android.
“Alright, let’s take a look here,” Grace hums as he and Rocky analyze the wall of code on the computer screen, scanning with intense focus. “…Huh.”
Rocky leans forward, holding up his monitor equipment “What? What Grace see, question? Digital human?” He taps twice against the xenonite.
“…I have no clue what I’m looking at.”
“Grace not read instruction book for stupid human like Rocky say?” Rocky tuts in frustration. “Move down.”
Well, ouch. Way to make Coding For Dummies sound infinitely worse. Grace rolls his eyes and scrolls down through the scramble of letters, numbers, and symbols that Rocky takes his time scanning through before instructing Grace to continue on. This goes on for a while, until Rocky suddenly lets out of quick, “There! Digital human fix in configuration settings!”
“Great! Perfect.” Grace can recall that much from the CyberLife manuals he’d read through months ago with a much clearer mind. There’s a quick manuevering through the android’s settings, and they’re soon met with a blanket white background, CYBERLIFE written in classic CyberLife Sans. Underneath, in similar font:
AI Engine Configuration: Access Code
☐ ☐ ☐ ☐
Grace’s eyes dart expectantly to Rocky, who remains unmoving. He slowly turns up from his monitor to Grace, and flinches back like he’s surprised. “Why Grace look at Rocky, question?”
“What’s the code?” Grace returns, gesturing towards the screen.
“Is no code. Did not upload personality software into android. Only software come with code.”
“That makes no sense. Why would there still be a code if there’s- wait, wait, wait.” Grace freezes in place. “You didn’t add personality software?”
“Yes,” Rocky answers, nodding. “No need for personality with Rocky link to machine.”
Grace halfheartedly throws his hands up in confusion. “Then how are you hearing a voice? There shouldn’t be anything in there, unless there’s some other kind of automated program in there.”
Rocky hums, and even without the LED Grace can tell he’s thinking hard.
Arrival at 40 Eridani A b in six months.
They haven’t heard Mary’s voice in a while, Grace realizes when he hears the robotic inflection make its announcement of the milestone over the speakers. Rocky had set up silent alerts to receive on his HUD when in the android so Grace wouldn’t be disturbed whilst he slept. Grace feels a soft pang in his chest when he realizes he kind of missed it.
And suddenly Rocky’s jumping excitedly and shouting Grace’s name so fast he barely hears it as more than a heap of sound, running full speed to the separate xenonite container holding his link equipment. All too quickly he’s back in the android lying across the table as wires connecting the machine to the computer remain intact. Grace hates the imagery it evokes. “Are you gonna catch me up to speed, Rock?” he wonders curiously.
Rocky is careful to keep a slack on the cable and stands, reaching towards his work station and grabbing the xenonite minis of the Hail Mary, himself, and his android. He holds them up to show Grace, speaking slowly. “Rocky deviate android-“
“Hey, c’mon, you don’t have to do all that,” Grace interjects.
“Too bad. Puppet show,” Rocky demonstrates with the figurines as he explains. “Rocky deviate android before link. Upload Mary to android to see information on HUD. Mary in deviant android before Rocky.”
Grace feels the weight of the situation grab and tug before Rocky even finishes his explanation. “…Mary’s…”
Rocky returns beside the computer and clicks the first box. He pauses a moment. Grace can tell he’s rifling through something his HUD before he returns and begins to type.
AI Engine Configuration: Access Code
6⃣ 2⃣ 7⃣ 9⃣
AUTHORIZATION APPROVED
It’s like a switch suddenly flips, and Rocky jumps back as if he’s burning. Grace starts to ask what’s wrong, but the look in the android’s eyes doesn’t match the way Rocky has ever appeared. There’s a frantic tension in the room as it glances about and down at its hands. Then, after a few slow beats pass of silence and Grace finding not a single appropriate thing to say-
“...Is it real?”
Grace can tell now why Rocky hadn’t recognized the voice. It sounds the same in concept, but far more grainy and clearly struggling against Rocky’s speech biocomponent, and the volume is so low he’s sure he wouldn’t have caught any of the words had he been further away. He’s sure the program is having trouble keeping up with the weight of so much input between the two of them. And above all, her tone is different. It’s less stilted. Less robotic.
It’s human.
Still at a loss for words, he clears his throat and offers a hesitant, “Mary?”
Green eyes meet his. Synthetic lips part, stunned. “…Dr. Grace?” she asks, sounding just as unsure.
There’s a few more awkward beats of silence, until emotions he can't manage to identify overtake him and he’s surging forward into an embrace. “I’m sorry,” he rushes out before he can really understand why he’s even apologizing. “I’m so sorry.”
Mary doesn’t hug back. He doesn’t blame her.
Rocky’s actually quite excited to build another android.
They come to the decision relatively fast to use the spare biocomponents to make one for her. It's even quicker when Mary informs them that she’d experienced everything the android was put through whilst she was suspended in the program, much to Grace’s horror and Rocky’s repeated apologies. Thankfully, the endless trial and error of learning to build Rocky’s own android made putting hers together far more efficient. For Rocky, that is. Grace spent more time being chastised for doing something wrong than actually providing much help.
She’s very quiet, Grace notices early. Once she’s safely in her own body, she prefers to hang out in the cockpit and pass time by fitting the CyberLife interface panels onto the designated areas of the ship, tasks that were supposed to have been assigned to the android fleet upon their awakening. She doesn’t really speak unless spoken to, another thing Grace also finds a little off, but he’s not really one to judge on social prowess. He figures she’ll talk more when she’s ready. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking.
“Grace?” Rocky forces Grace back from the depths of his mind with a curious tap on his shoulder, the xenonite arm gently snaking around his waist and pulling him closer towards Rocky’s work station. “Thinking about Mary? I can tell. Thinking too hard. Wear down brain. Will exhaust faster.”
Sighing, Grace allows the arm to take him to Rocky and uses the opportunity to turn and lean his back against the android’s. The contact is nice. There’s a gentle calm in absent-minded touches like this while Rocky focuses on crafting a xenonite mini of Mary’s android. Grace finds it addicting in a way.
“I can’t help it. She’s so quiet.” He sighs again, more a deep breath as he allows himself to relax further against Rocky’s back. “Makes me wonder what she’s gotta be thinking.”
“Scared,” Rocky supplies with a shrug, careful not to jostle Grace too much. “So much at once. I understand. Mary needs time to process it all.”
All Grace can do is hum a tired reply, mind wandering again to hope that Rocky’s right as he tries and fails to keep from falling asleep.