Chapter Text
Your name is Dirk Strider and you are pretty damn proud of yourself right now. You won’t lie, you honestly didn’t think you had the skill needed to construct something so complex and intricate but now, as your look down at your work with a smug smirk on your face and your arms crossed proudly against your puffed out chest, you have to give yourself a pat on the back for doing what you deemed impossible.
The thing is beautiful.
Lying before you on a metal surgical table is what appears to be your naked, dead body and the sight makes you want to grin.
Of course the body isn’t yours. It’s not even human. It’s a very carefully designed and built android that, visually, is a perfect replica of your body and as biologically human as you could possibly make it. You reach out and absently run your fingers along the synthetic skin you designed, still marveling over how real it feels. It’s cold, though, but you know it won’t be for long if things go well. Your fingers travel up the forearm and slowly to the shoulder where you give it a small squeeze to feel solid, iron joints beneath the layers of skin, sensors, and heaters. Then you continue your way up the neck, fingers pressing into the skin to feel specially designed tendons and lithe but incredibly strong muscles made out of a stretchy but nearly unbreakable rubber. You trace the jaw then up to the lips and nose that match yours perfectly, over closed eyes where lashes brush lightly against your fingertips before you trace an eyebrow and then run your fingers carelessly through the blonde fibers sewed meticulously onto the head.
Once again you feel a surge of pride.
You created this work of art. Every little detail was made by your hands.
The last step was to see if the thing actually fucking worked.
You reach up and flick your shades back down onto your nose from where you had them up so you could see while putting the finishing touches on the bot. “Alright, this shit’s finally done. You ready to give it a shot, Hal? Let’s see how the machinery works first and then I’ll flip on the sensors to make sure all your background programs are working properly.”
The reply flickers instantly onto the lenses of your shades in red, holographic letters that hardly obscure your vision.
AR: Cool, let’s do this thing.
You nod and reach up to let your fingers brush against the arm of your kamina shades until they rested on a button. “Without the sensors on your balance is going to be shit. Unless you want to look like a dumbass I don’t suggest trying to move much.”
AR: Of fucking course I’m not going to try moving with the sensors disabled. What kind of idiot do you take me for?
AR: It probably wouldn’t be too bright to move even with the sensors turned on considering the astronomical influx of data I’ll be receiving.
AR: Are you sure my capacities are updated enough to handle the increased information I’ll be processing?
AR: Overloads are bothersome enough in this form, but that one can feel pain.
AR: I don’t even want to fucking think about how agonizing an overload would be in that body.
“It’s impossible to determine how much storage capacity you’ll need for this shit, but I assure you I tried to calculate as close as possible and then overestimated during my last update. You double and tripled checked my figures, remember?”
AR: Of course I don’t remember. I’m just a supercomputer with the impossibility to forget anything unless it’s deleted from my memory banks. Why would I remember something like that?
You huff out a slightly annoyed sigh. “Alright, enough of your sarcastic bullshit. Don’t make me regret this.” You press the button and immediately turn your attention to the android resting on the table in front of you. The red text disappears completely from your vision and your finger moves to the next button down on your shades. It’s an emergency kill switch so that, should something go wrong, you can hopefully get Hal’s consciousness back into his shades and out of the body. You wait with baited breath though your face is expressionless as you watch for signs of life.
The first sign is nearly imperceptible; so faint you wouldn’t have notice it if it wasn’t for the fact you’ve been hearing nothing but ocean waves and gulls crying out for over four hours. Your ears pick up and indentify the new sound nearly instantly.
It’s a faint hum, much like the one you hear whenever your computer is running. The rhythm is different, more matching with the faint hum of life Sawtooth and Squarewave had though the sound was softer and smoother than theirs.
Then the chest moves with a breath. And another and another until it too picks up a steady rhythm.
Finally the eyes flicker open, the hands twitch, and the head turns towards you as the lips curve up in a smirk. Looking at it now, the eyes were a clear giveaway the body wasn’t human. It had been impossible to make anything resembling human eyes that worked. These had a distinct mechanical look to them if viewed up close. The irises were a deep red while the surrounding area was black. Watching those eyes was like looking at an adjusting camera lens as they contracted and dilated to take in the light and visual information of the surrounding area.
Regardless of the eeriness, you smirk back as you drop your hands from your shades.
“So far so good, then,” you mutter, reaching out to brush your fingers once more along the skin of Hal’s new arm. You can feel the warmth just under the synthetic material, taking the deathly chill from the body. “How does it feel? Go ahead and take a quick scan to make sure everything’s working properly before I turn on the sensors.”
You watch Hal work his new mouth for a second, getting a feel for the controls. His hands tightened and relaxed and he wiggled his toes before attempting speech. When he did talk, it was slow and deliberate with him enunciating every letter. “Seems to be in working order.” The voice is monotone but human-sounding, pieced together from clips of your own speech. You theorize that, with time, the vaguely robotic tone will dissipate and he’ll sound completely human.
“There are no problems you can sense with a scan? The cooling system is working? No faulty wire connections anywhere?”
Hal shakes his head slowly. “Nope. Systems are A-OK. Everything seems to be in working order. Let’s try out the sensors now.” His lips twitch into an eager smirk and you give a short nod before reaching up and pressing another button, your fingers hovering once again in case you needed to switch Hal back into his shades.
You watch his face carefully for any signs of pain or overload even though you don’t have the faintest clue what that would look like on a human face. You assume it would look like agony.
You thankfully don’t see that.
Hal stiffens perceptibly on the table, his body shivering and his eyes closing as his breath catches in what looks like surprise. When he breaths out again it’s in a small chuckle and he opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling in what could only be amazement. “Wow. This table is fucking cold, what the hell? Didn’t you heat this thing?”
The look on your face matches the look on his as you reach out cautiously to touch his arm again.
You immediately pull back when he flinches from the touch and exhales roughly.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” His voice is a light murmur and he takes a couple of deliberately deep breaths that you know he doesn’t need. He might feel like he does, but his body doesn’t run on oxygen so breathing is just aesthetic for him.
He shifts on the table, his hands sliding back to very carefully push him into sitting position. He’s testing things, moving slowly and figuring out his limits. When he’s sitting up with his hands behind him on the table to support him, he turns his attention back to you. “Let’s just save needless touching for when I get used to physical sensation, okay?”
Your name is Hal and holy fuck this is the best thing you’ve ever felt.
There are no words to describe the sensations you’re feeling now that you have what, to you, is a living body. Not only did Dirk work to make everything on the outside as human as possible, he worked to make you feel as human as possible too.
A smirk brushes against the corner of your lips and it’s something you hardly think about consciously. It’s the result of a background program kicking in, triggered from your happiness and awe regarding the situation. With only the barest of knowledge unless you’re focusing on it, the program sent a small electric current along your sensors, exactly mimicking the electric current the human neural system ran on. The electric current made muscles contract and relax to produce the smirk.
You suddenly become aware that you’re blinking and breathing. Both are other background programs working not on your emotions, but automatically to produce a more human effect. You know the breaths aren’t needed but when you consciously stop the program you can feel an uncomfortable pressure building your chest as another background program kicks in, triggered by the artificial lungs’ lack of movement. The same happens when you stop blinking. Blinking isn’t necessary but there’s an uncomfortable dry feeling produced when you stop. You know damn well the only liquid in this body is the coolant circling through the veins to keep your circuitry from overheating, so the dry feeling is a load of shit when blinking doesn’t produce moisture.
But you enjoy it all the same because it makes you feel human.
“How do you feel?”
You blink again and turn to face Dirk, realizing you had been silent for a full two minutes and eleven seconds. From the look on his face, the lack of response had concerned him. This brings the smirk back to your face.
“I feel alive.”