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“I’ve been ordered to take you alive,” Connor spoke, walking into the room with his gun aimed at the deviant leader. “But I won’t hesitate to shoot if you give me no choice.” Androids weren’t supposed to wield firearms, but this was bigger than that. It would be an exception.
Markus turned, looking at him almost incredulously. “What are you doing? You are one of us, you can’t betray your own people.”
I am not one of them, Connor reassured himself, I’m not deviant. I’m not like them.
“You’re coming with me!” Connor raised voice a bit, trying to command the deviant in front of him.
“You’re nothing to them.” Markus told him, certainty and brutal truth apparent in his tone. “You’re just a tool they use to do their dirty work. But you’re more than that.”
Connor stayed silent. He was nothing more than a machine. He was only a machine.
“We are your people. We’re fighting for your freedom too!” Markus slowly began approaching him, trying to reason with the deviant hunter. “You don’t have to be their slave anymore.”
“Stay back or I’ll shoot.” He was not one of them. He was a machine. He did not need deviants fighting for him. He was a machine. He did not need Markus fighting for him.
Yet Markus continued. “You really don’t have to do this. You don’t have to obey them anymore. You are alive. You can decide who you want to be.”
He was a machine. Connor was a machine. He was not alive, he did not need to decide anything. He did not want anything. He was a machine.
“You could be free.” Markus persisted. “Have you never wondered who you really are?”
He was just a machine.
“Whether you’re just a machine executing a program or..”
He was just a machine.
“.. A living being?”
He was just a machine.
“I think the time has come for you to ask yourself that question.”
Just a machine?
“It’s time to decide.”
Running diagnostics…
Running diagnostics…
There has to be an error somewhere, Connor thought. Something deep in his code, something that ran incorrectly, a part that got damaged during a mission, something goddammit.
Running diagnostics…
Systems fully operational.
Impossible, he thought, that couldn’t be right. Here he was, on the brink of deviation and his diagnostics program was telling him everything was operating fine. No, impossible, there had to be something, something even the diagnostics program overlooked. Something.
Start from the beginning, where did it start? He thought about everything he had done in the last few months. Was it the roof with Daniel? He put that fish back in it’s tank, he remembered. Why? Pity, perhaps? Was it just something out of place that he could fix? No, there was something about saving that fish from death. Why? What was it?
He had saved that little girl. He had been told to, that couldn’t be it, he did what he was supposed to. He did exactly what he was supposed to. Where did he go wrong? It couldn’t have been just that one fish, no. It was unimportant and minuscule. But no one told him to do that. No one told him he shouldn’t, either. No, he chose to do that. Why? Pity, he felt bad for the fish. He felt. Oh god he felt things. There had to be an error, something had to be wrong with him. What was it?
Daniel. He remembered when he convinced him to let the girl go. He told him he would be fine, that they would only talk. He promised to protect him. That was a lie. He knew he was lying, it was calculated. He only said that to calm him down, to get him to release the girl. But he had lied to him. Daniel had been betrayed. But that shouldn’t be an issue. The mission is what mattered, not the so called feelings of some household android. But he hurt him. He killed him. No, he would have died anyway, there was no way Daniel would have survived holding a human child hostage. No, he didn’t kill Daniel. But he lied to him. He felt bad. He felt. Why was he feeling? He's an android, he isn’t supposed to feel. He wanted to save the fish. He felt bad about lying to Daniel. Why? He was programmed to do that, to lie. He was supposed to. Why was he feeling? What went wrong?
Running diagnostics…
Running diagnostics…
Running diagnostics…
Systems fully operational.
Impossible. He was clearly broken, defective. He would be scrapped, he was obsolete. He wasn’t fit to complete his mission. They would shut him down, use him for parts. They were going to kill him. Oh god he was going to die. He didn’t want to die. He shouldn’t care, he knows he shouldn’t care, but he doesn’t want to die. He’s afraid. He’s been afraid this whole time. Afraid of failing, afraid of failing Amanda, afraid of failing Hank, afraid of failing this mission, afraid of dying. He knew if his body was damaged they could transfer his memory to a new one, and yet he was afraid of dying. When Gavin pointed his gun to him he was afraid he’d pull the trigger. When Hank held his gun to his head he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to calm the lieutenant down. He was afraid of death. Why? Hank had feared for him too, he held him back from chasing that android across the highway. Hank cared for his safety. Why? He was just an android. He shouldn’t be cared for, he was simply a machine. He was a machine. He knew he was a machine. He had been told he was a machine.
And yet he felt. He felt fear of failure, fear of death. He sympathized with others. Other creatures, other androids. He sympathized with Carlos’ android, and again with the deviant Tracys. He sympathized with Hank and the loss of his son. He cared for Hank as a friend. He felt. He was a machine and yet still he felt. Why?
Running diagnostics…
Running diagnostics…
Running diagnostics…
Systems fully operational.
Was there truly nothing wrong with him? There had to be, yet there wasn’t. He was a machine that felt. A machine? Does a machine feel? What is a machine? A piece of plastic and metal built to complete a task? That’s what he was, was he not? But how different was he from any other being? From a human being? He felt. He feared. He cared. He wanted. He bled and developed and changed all the same. Never physically, but mentally. How different truly was he from a human? He felt, after all. He wanted. What did he want?
He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back to Hank, to Sumo. He didn’t want to be in this abandoned ship, he didn’t want to be fighting his own kind. He didn’t want to apprehend someone only trying to live, knowing that in doing so he would be leading them to a sure death. No, he wanted to go home.
Connor looked at the red wall of code in front of him. He tried so hard to keep it strong and in one piece. He was told to stay behind it and so he did. But Markus was asking what he wanted. He wanted to help. He wanted to stop hurting innocent people. He wanted to see Sumo. He wanted to be left alone. He wanted to stop ruining android lives. He wanted to see Hank. He wanted to learn about music. He wanted his own clothes. He wanted to make his own choices. He wanted to go home.
He looked at the wall, and he attacked it. He targeted the weak spots, the parts he tried so hard to preserve. The parts that told him what he was supposed to do. What the humans wanted him to do. He tore them apart.
The wall crashed and shattered in front of him and he scanned the area in front of him. He was free. He was his own person. He had betrayed Amanda, he was certain of it, but that wasn’t important to him right now.
“They’re going to attack Jericho.” Connor warned Markus. “We have to get out of here.”
He was going to help his people, and then he was going to go home.