dualislogs | (no subject)

WHO: Hank Anderson | Connor
WHAT: Hank discovers he has a new roommate
WHERE: The Noobie Chicken Coop
WHEN: Connor's arrival
WARNINGS: 🎜🎝 General warnings for Hank's possible suicidal ideation. Will come back and add anything else.

Hank's shift goes on per usual. Today's grind isn't any different from the usual. He's occupied at the intersection next to a school during a science fair type of event, constantly directing the flow of traffic and both entitled parents and sweet old ladies bearing baked goods for the kids braving the sidewalk. By the end of it he's gained three muffins, a large chocolate chip cookie, two cupcakes, and lost four points of sanity.

He fuels himself up with two cups of coffee for a round of ticketing in downtown. He's relatively sure that, at some point, he sees someone that looks just like him buying fruit from a stand. Besides the bizarreness of Hank Anderson buying fresh fruit very well it being a doppelganger, a double-take proves it a false alarm. Though he's so busy staring and trying to fathom what he wasn't actually seeing (he thinks?) that the man who's car he was about to ticket is able to run out of the store and jump into his vehicle and rush away before Hank can scan in his plate number.

Figures.

As he's back at the station clocking out he passes by detectives discussing their cases and is surprised by how much he misses it, considering his willingness to throw it away back home. He really wanted to help people, but he also didn't want to play the games associated with the job.

When he gets home he nearly falls over when he comes through the door. The entire room's changed. Two beds. More drawers. More closets. Still a shower, though, that's good.

He reaches up and pulls the tie out of his hair that keeps about half of it up at work, letting it fall loose and into its usual aesthetic of crimped sheepdog shaggy. He's just standing there, in his uniform, staring in a state of confusion at changes he just fuckin' doesn't understand. That whole "matrix bullshit" theory is gaining ground in his head again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hank can recognize it as being *wrong*, and as someone who grew up in the shadow of the cold war and survived the harrowing late teens, early twenties he can remember how things seemed to be veering. But this sort of atmosphere is new.

It's growing up in that age, though, that causes his resolve to buckle. The You're joking, right? provoking a mental recoil, causing his neck to prickle up with embarrassment as if he'd just somehow compromised his manhood in front of this android that really has very little concept of gender as a useful mechanism of any sort.

"No I was-"

He just trails off and makes a dismissive gesture. "Whatever." Whatever is such a useful word to hide behind when one doesn't know what to do with their thoughts.

Connor physically recoils a little at Hank's reaction, LED going yellow for a moment as he stares, utterly wrong-footed.

"Wait, I thought--" he leans forward, hands out in a placating sort of gesture. "I thought you were making fun of me."

But apparently now Hank thinks Connor's making fun of him, and all his programming on integrating with humans didn't cover anything like this.

"If you weren't joking, I'm sorry - it just surprised me, that's all." Trying desperately to defuse the situation. "Androids don't...do things like that. That's the first thing I thought."

(If Markus had ever shared memories with him, he'd know that even without deviating, androids are capable of all sorts of things humans wouldn't expect of them.)

"Come on, androids do whatever they're fuckin' programmed with and you can make your own fuckin' programming. You learn. You're an AI. You were just tapping your fingers with the music. You know there's a beat."

But, he's still a little embarrassed.

"I won't bother you about it until you're settled in. It was just a thought." He might not even bring it up again. He doesn't want to admit how embarrassed he just was. But to add some humor, he says-

"If I were making fun of you I'd say you looked goofy again."

"Yeah, I should know that…" He knows he should. He spent days slowly destabilising, chose to deviate, chose to help a revolution for the right to do whatever he wants.

But as soon as he stops thinking about it, his default is still to go back to thinking about himself as he was before: a machine. Machines don't do anything they're not programmed for. Androids decide their own programming.

"I'm not used to it yet," he says, almost to himself. "To not being a machine, I mean," he adds for Hank's benefit.

"You'll get there." He promises, and pats Connor's knee before getting up. It seems like lip service, but he thinks of all the people that have to get over harrowing experiences. Connor's is just being an android, no specific form of abuse other than inherently programmed indoctrination.

It's not a lot. But it's meant as a lot.

Hank goes to the bathroom then, just because he needs a moment to pass over the euphoria of knowing his partner is alive, unharmed, and potentially someone who can help him get out of here, to the actual concerns of him being here. What could an AI do with an android like him?

As he's considering that, the song changes.

As soon as Hank's left, Connor zones out into thought. There's so much to unpack here he's not sure where to begin to go about it. So start with the most immediate things: Hank was missing, but now Connor's missing as well, so it doesn't much matter anymore. Whatever this place might be, they can leave it in a year. He's a deviant - and that by itself is something he hasn't even had time to put together yet. Back in Detroit it barely looked certain what his life as a deviant was going to look like after the revolution, but he'd wanted to know.

Here, his life could be just like anybody else's.

He looks down at himself. Maybe to everybody here, he's just a normal person. A normal person, sitting in his room listening to music.

A new song starts - and if the last one was despair, this one feels like a sad resignation, and it surprises him to realise he can feel anything, or recognise feelings, just listening to music. This is all one surprise after another, from the world-shattering to the painfully mundane.

When Hank emerges, Connor hasn't moved from his seat, but he's sitting with his eyes closed, a finger tracing the edges of the dog tag, just...listening.

It'll be confusing. If Connor came from a day later, he's hoping that he's right; he can go back and show up right after. That Sumo won't be there on his own too long, or have to wait for animal control to show up for him. He's always sort of trusted, though, that someone would notice. The neighbors love Sumo too much to just not notice him not going out.

His concerns for Sumo and Connor somewhat alleviated in his mind for the moment, he comes back to the room to find Connor with his eyes closed, holding that old dog tag like he's getting lost in the texture.

Hank assumes that he's off in one of his mental places, compiling or doing important things, so he lets him do that. He doesn't disturb him. Instead he starts picking up a few more things, making it a little neater, eventually humming along with the music to himself as he does.

He doesn't open his eyes again until Hank's been in the room a few moments, picking up more of his stuff. It's when he starts humming that Connor looks at him.

"If you want to go to sleep, let me know," he says, voice softer, someone who's lulled themselves into a reverie and just coming out of it. "I was thinking I'd go look around the city."

And not keep Hank up hanging around their room when he doesn't need to be in standby.