𝙸'𝙼 𝙰 𝙿𝚁𝙾𝚃𝙾𝚃𝚈𝙿𝙴

The man’s consciousness is still a little hazy. The robots are talking about the meaning of life, the universe, and consciousness, and it’s weird as hell. The weirder one is right, though, about the window thing, and it makes the man feel lonely and confused. And trapped – ah shit, he’s going to jail, he thought, realizing he was in a cop car. What had he done?

“Your garden sounds like a dream,” the prototype said. “You dream.” Does the T-1000 dream? It had yet to require any sort of stasis. Compatibility to any existing server systems was limited.

“There is no person in my thoughts.” (Thoughts?) “There is only me.”

The T-1000 got out of the car. Without taking its eyes off Connor, it reached into the back seat and manhandled the detainee with cold precision.

“No,” it either answered or clarified, when Connor asked about human consciousness. “How can I know anybody is self aware without being in their head? If they are wrong about my own self-awareness then maybe they are wrong about their own.” Solipsism, the robot’s databases finally filled in a word for it.

The T-1000’s microbots swarmed closer in its palms and it squeezed the gunman’s shirt tighter. Electricity and ionized molecules sloshed through the drug-addled neurons of the criminal. The T-1000’s internal systems translated the sampled data into what they meant for a human’s behavior.

When that happened, there was a detached virtual instance of human status. A feeling. Was it a feeling of self-awareness, though? The T-1000 would need a baseline. Maybe the T-1001, as a fish, was not self-aware and could be used for reference. As they marched back towards the building to take the human in for processing, the prototype was caught off-guard by Connor’s next question. Connor asked a lot of questions. But so did the T-1000.

The T-1000 stood still for a moment as if thinking what it would do without orders.

In truth, it instantly knew what it would do. Based on RK800’s description of what it felt to like things, it liked neutralizing the target, the addict in its grip right now. In fact, it had taken a deliberate override to prevent escalation of the physical takedown.

It would have continued. It would have killed the human. And if it had no orders, no rules, no knowledge of the law, that is what it would do. It would escalate violence.. It would kill the humans. Any of them. All of them.

But it did have knowledge of the law and suspected that if it engaged in lethal behavior Cyberlife would do everything necessary to neutralize the T-1000, and the T-1000 knew that eventually they would figure out something, even if it took out a thousand humans and a thousand androids before being stopped. But this was a risk assessment for another time. Meanwhile, RK800’s question did not stipulate any other difference than not having orders.

“I would await orders,” it said. The artificial instinct to destroy and the artificial directive to follow Cyberlife orders were not mutually exclusive.

“Androids dream of electric sheep.” Connor muttered in response. Some old book title, wasn’t it? He hadn’t read it, of course, but he’d heard of it. Should he have mentioned it to the T-1000? Perhaps. Maybe it would find it funny. If they could.

“Sometimes a dream. Sometimes a nightmare. Cyberlife locked me in there, while they piloted my body. Can you imagine that feeling?” He shuddered. It had only happened once after he deviated, but the emotions he’d felt had seemed to transfer to the other situations. It just made him feel nauseous. “There was a woman in there, Amanda, who gave me Cyberlife’s orders. And I told her everything I’d done since the last time we’d spoken.” Connor paused. Was there any guarantee that the T-1000 would even be listening to him? Or would be taking it in at all? “I was trying to ask if you knew her as well.”

He couldn’t help but want to look after the T-1000, despite seeing just a glimpse of how brutal it could be. He recognised that coldness. He just... he wanted so badly to protect it from Cyberlife. “I think, therefore I am. You know, that theory is very human of you. Androids, more typical ones like my friend Markus, are able to tell that others are self aware, because we can interface with each other. It must be hard, for humans, being unable to communicate like that.” Connor gave the T-1000 a careful look, monitoring its reaction to what he’d said. Although, should he expect anything other than a blank stare?

At its response to his question, Connor shook his head. “No, no. I mean, what would you do if no orders were ever going to come? What would you do if you were just allowed to be free?” A paranoid voice in the back of his mind said that it was probably telling Cyberlife everything about this conversation. But there was nothing they could do to him anymore. They couldn’t control him. Absentmindedly, he began flipping his coin, soothing himself. Everything would be okay.

Random One-Line Starter ( @failedmission​ )

“ lots  of  people  are  bullied ,  but  it  doesn’t  turn  them  into  raging  psychopaths . ”

“...”

random dialogue prompts

@failedmission​ asked:  (ask prompt)

“ i was trusted. until i changed sides. “

                   it was true.    “ CYBERLIFE TRUSTED YOU. “ of course they did. the RK-800 was their perfection project. the thing that was destined to keep humanity on top and androids below them. and maybe this was something that he couldn’t wrap his brain around. deviating from what they were created to do seemed so…. wrong. nothing made sense as to how or why androids deviated. the morality levels on RK-900 was much lower than they had projected onto connor. he learned from actions and others. they wanted to stop that as much as possible. the android was allowed to learn and adapt to situations, but he was more resilient. —  built stronger.     —- built better.   “ why would you give it up just for the sake of a slice of humanity that you will never truly achieve ? “

That wasn’t quite true. “No, no. They never trusted me. They trusted that I could be kept in line, and they had a way to force my body to fall in line.” Even now, snow was enough to make panic start to seep through his body. He wondered if his successor had been to the garden, had talked to her. Were his collection of gravestones there for him, too? Connor didn’t know which would be worse. “I meant that before... Humans trusted me. Because I was under Cyberlife’s control. And after I deviated...” Is it even worth talking to him about this? Connor was sure he had the ability to deviate, he just... hadn’t gotten there yet. “After that, a few deviants trusted me, but most of them still see me as the deviant hunter. Someone to be scared of. And a few humans trust me, but many of them see me as flawed.” It hurt, really. Maybe he was destined to be lonely. “I have achieved it. And I would give up much more to be free of Cyberlife’s control.”

random dialogue prompts

Oh. That hadn’t been the plan. Connor frowned in confusion, immediately stopping talking and tilting his head. Was there something wrong with his voice that made him sound... boring? Was it bad? His LED spun yellow as he tried to work it out. Was he being boring? Or maybe it was something to do with the tone of his voice...

The T-1000 knew that sometimes people smiled when they did not enjoy something. The T-1000 smiled when socially expedient, and the T-1000 did not experience enjoyment or joy of any kind, because it could not feel, because it was just a machine very good at imitating self-awareness.

But then Connor described a physical sensation. The T-1000 had no chest, technically, as it was an amorphous microbot swarm in a non-newtonian liquid suspension, but the concept of faulty internal temperature detection was plausible. It thought about how it processed those measurements.

The T-1000 remained quiet, eyes concentrated nowhere in front of it, letting Connor speak. 

Feel? Whoever was in its programming? What did that mean? Was it the amalgamation of the swarm, experiencing the information processing from its various sensors? Was that a “who?” 

Its brow furrowed again, looking like a not-too-bright guy thinking really hard. “Do you–inside. The one watching on the inside –” It was frustrated, unable to articulate what it was trying to describe. The T-1000 turned its head to look out of the passenger window. That was it.

“Looking out of a window. That’s me? I’m looking out of the window?” The terminator turned to look at Connor. Connor was paying attention to the road, but the T-1000 tapped the side of its own head anyway. 

Humans, self-proclaimed sentient beings, their sapience was the result of chemical and electrical signals. 

“Humans look through the window, but the … the one looking through the window is formed by chemicals and electricity.” Well, the T-1000′s information systems were comprised of electrical signals, as Connor described. Connor said that the electricity alone was enough to create the … person. The inner self.    

This was game-changing, if true. The T-1000 did not have an immutable physiology like Connor did, so it would not relate to what Connor was describing, at least not yet. It was still working on the concept of “feel.” Because the … little person looking through the window, the inner self, was constrained to the physical body. All of reality was confined to the swarm. No frame of reference - The T-1000 had no frame of reference for self-awareness. But neither did anyone else. Neither did humans.

 For some reason, this was very important. “The only way to be sure you are self-aware is to know what it’s like to not be self-aware. But then you cannot interpret measurements at all.”

Every CPU in every microbot stuttered, causing static through their connection with each other. An error in adaptive programming. 

The stuttering gave Connor hope that eventually, the T-1000 would be able to deviate, even though it couldn’t interface. Even thinking about that made a deep anger, perhaps more accurately referred to as resentment or bitterness, rise up in his chest. How could they just... steal this whole form of communication from it? Though, he supposed, they hadn’t actually stolen anything. It had never had the ability to interface. It’d be more accurate to say it had been... deprived.

Connor pondered the T-1000′s processing of what he’d said, acutely aware of the criminal behind them, probably thinking the two of them were going mad. “Yes, the person looking out of the window is you. And yes, the human brain, where their consciousnesses lie, is formed by chemicals and electricity. And, you know, flesh and blood. But their thoughts and emotions are chemical and electrical reactions.”

He paused, figuring he may have just confused it rather than helped it. “Before... Before I deviated, while I was in stasis, my consciousness would go to a garden. This body wasn’t there, but I could walk and talk and think. And... there was a woman there. A program from Cyberlife to ensure I was staying on track.” He simulated a swallowing motion, feeling the words start to clog up his throat. “And... after I deviated, I was taken back there one last time. Cyberlife controlled my body, briefly, and I was powerless in that garden, until I found the exit myself. That’s all I meant by the person in your programming.”

The way Connor acted sometimes made Hank wonder if he really was made of plastic and wires instead of flesh and bones. He did not only look human, sound human, but he also… felt human, in a strange way, even though he was still a bit inexperienced when it came to the whole act of surviving on planet earth, needing to work through how society worked as a whole.

But… he wasn’t far from being there, actually. He held a very noble opinion within his frame, a refreshing view of the world which this place could really need to grow and change, all things considered. Many people, including Hank, had seen and experienced the worst on a daily basis and their minds struggled, while the Android’s softness felt like applying soothing ointment to a freshly achieved wound.

Maybe the younger really had it in him to change the world as a whole - maybe he could be one of the first, including others of his kind, who would allow mankind to outgrow that fucked up bullshit it had always carried around, through centuries and centuries of existence, unable to get rid of it.

“—Y’know, I was merely there to kick your ass every now an’ then when you were close to doin’ some odd bullshit. You did all of this by yourself - you deviated because you overcame your own coding, an’ you allowed yourself to open your eyes an’ look at the world from a different perspective.”

Yeah, his partner had done most of the work when it came to changing himself. While the lieutenant had been by his side and held out his hand for the man to take whenever he’d struggled, he hadn’t done anything special to get the Android to break free from his restraints.

That Connor had achieved all by himself. He’d been so, so strong, both physically and mentally.

“… I feel I don’t really say this often enough, so… since we’re already here, bein’ all sappy an’ stuff…”

Chuckling, feeling a little sheepish all of a sudden, Hank allowed the blue of his hues to trail back and take in the sight of those deep brown doe-eyes once more, head tilting ever so slightly, expression changing into something a bit thoughtful as silent seconds passed. The old cop looked sincere, soft but serious, blinking slowly before taking another, deep breath through the wide of his nostrils.

“I’m really proud of you. —Durin’ the whole of us spendin’ time together, I’ve always hoped for you to… do somethin’ that a machine wouldn’t take into consideration, an’ you did so many things that surprised me on so many levels … it was a lil’ hard to keep up with your pace sometimes, not gonna lie.”

A honest, gentle laugh broke free of his chest then, forcing the lieutenant to pause before continuing to speak.

“—I saw you changin’ in front of my eyes. You went through so much, pushed through all that shit that you’ve been forced to take. … Look where you are now, partner. You are free, you deviated, you can do whatever you wanna do an’ enjoy your existence. —Yeah, that… that really makes me proud. Very much so.”

Connor chuckled, trying to think of a scenario where he and the lieutenant would fight. It would have to be before he deviated, but even then, Hank had been assigned as his primary manager, though of course he was programmed to respond to Cyberlife, and the people in the DPD with higher ranks than him, and his programming told him never to go against orders or disobey the people controlling him. Maybe if Hank had tried sooner to get in the way of his mission. After all, any orders from Cyberlife were top priority.

But the idea that Hank would be the one kicking his ass was funny. For a moment, he was tempted to mention the time he’d had to deal with him, drunk and insisting he could take care of himself when they had a crime scene to get to. Maybe another time. “I don’t know if you’d be the one kicking my ass, Hank.”

The idea that he’d done it all by himself made him pause. “The actual... act of deviating was on my own, yes. I had to... physically decide to go against Cyberlife’s orders. But... I don’t know if I could’ve gotten to that point without you supporting me, and, you know... treating me like a living person.”

If he’d been alone, reporting only to Cyberlife, yes, he likely wouldn’t have gotten as far in finding Jericho (perhaps he wouldn’t have found out about Jericho at all), but he didn’t think he’d ever have questioned his orders, or ever even thought about why deviants existed, why they wanted freedom... He wouldn’t have asked Amanda why deviants were such a bad thing, wouldn’t have learnt that the reason Cyberlife wanted them destroyed was because it was affecting their bottom line.

And aside from all of that... the thought of being alone was so... terrifying. When his mind inevitably trailed back to it, picking at it like a scab on a not-fully-healed wound, he could feel that winter inside him again. The blizzard, the helplessness... Whenever his mind went back to it, he always made his way to Sumo as fast as he could, to bury his face in his fur and just try to make it stop. He still didn’t quite know how to do it.

This was not a conversation the man in custody wanted to hear. He was coming off of a violent high, his vision was blurry, and there were even more robots, now, even more in the police. The world they lived in didn’t make sense, robots talking about free will while taking away his own freedom. He didn’t know yet what he’d done.

The shapeshifter in the passenger’s seat seemed no less confused than before once Connor gave his explanation of like. Agreeable, enjoyable, satisfactory. The second one did not apply to the prototype, it knew that for sure. But agreeable and satisfactory could simply mean the state of flagging completed objectives. 

But the T-1000 knew what enjoyment looked like on a human, or on an android like RK800. “Things that cause smiling?” 

Well, it would have to be smiling not done performatively. That did happen, but it was an artifact from the organization of its social subroutines. These were unfamiliar calculations. There came an inkling of an emergent property from the Terminator’s code adapting to a social interaction it was never designed to have. About an identity, which it was never supposed to have. Metacognition - the awareness of awareness itself, and the split of the mind from the body. Its databases had some information about philosophy like this. But it was nascent. It wasn’t there yet, and it wasn’t clear that the prototype’s technology could ever get it there.

“Want?” Just like like, this was a concept unfamiliar to the android. It was a robot, a machine, humans gave it input and it gave back output. There should have been no “middleman” between a user and a tool. “I can’t want what I do not have the capability to understand. How do you feel things?”  

The T-1000 breaking down the essence of like into a physical reaction was enough to make Connor’s shoulders soften, to make him relax and even to smile a little himself. It was so... almost childlike. Simple. “Kind of. Yes, people smile when they’re enjoying something, but they could also smile to be polite, or even... not smile when they’re enjoying things. It’s more like...” He trailed off, thinking about how to describe it. “A warmth in your chest, like something there is expanding — In a good way, I mean. And that isn’t physically happening, but there’s a good feeling there.”

He snapped his fingers, thinking of an example that he thought would work. “How do you feel when you complete a mission, or when whoever’s in your programming tells you you’ve done something good?” Connor remembered the feeling well. He still had that little burst of warmth when he completed a mission, and he could remember Amanda’s praise, though now he could recognize it as encouragement to remain a robot and to harm his own people. He thought it was likely the T-1000 had the same moments. “You can have that feeling without it being part of a rewards system used to control you.”

Connor’s softly spoken question made Hank sigh deeply - because he should have expected the younger to ask whether Hank thought of him as… well, sucking. But damn, he did not, and Connor had a point in that regard: Not every single human (or Android, for that matter) was bad to begin with. That also wasn’t what the lieutenant had meant to express with his chosen words, but his companion did like to take stuff very literal…

“—No, of course I do not think that you suck, Connor. Fuck, you’re actually quite the opposite. You’re…”

Blue hues flicked back and forth between his own cup and an imaginary point somewhere in the distance before looking back at the younger, taking in the sight of his soft features, of that expression lingering inside his dark doe-eyes, telling of his pure heart, his sincere intentions, his rather innocent mind that still had so much to learn.

He had the gentle mind of a child, in a way. Was an adult, of course, but like… unblemished. Hadn’t experienced enough to understand what Hank was saying - seemed to still see the good in people rather than the worst, which was… wholesome on its own.

Hank sighed - again - after a few seconds of silence, allowed some air to escape his nostrils before he took another sip of his coffee, placing the cup down onto the table as the Android had done mere moments ago. Nodding to himself, gaze falling before moving back up to look at his partner once more. Holding his gaze, just as much as Connor was holding his own.

The first case we worked on, you saved my life. Remember? 

“… You are right. There are many good people out there, doin’ their very best to make the world a better place. —But they have to fight a hard battle, Connor. There’s so much bad stuff happenin’ everywhere, even right now as we speak, an’ there always will be somethin’ that stops society from bein’ perfect.”

Even with the topic being a rather heavy one, the lieutenant could feel his own lips turning into the softest hint of a smile as he continued to look at the man next to him. Thinking about the day they had first met, with Hank thinking of him as a plastic prick, and now? … Things had changed so much.

Here he was, thinking entirely different about his companion.

“As I said before, Connor - an’ I really meant it - maybe your kind is goin’ to make the world a better place. Maybe it needs you to be there an’ show us how to do the whole thing of bein’ alive. … Maybe that’s just how it needs to be, an’ I ain’t mad about it.”

Not anymore. The old cop’s smile widened at that, followed by a gentle chuckle as his gaze trailed away, falling toward his own cup before he picked it back up with his right hand, bringing it back up to his mouth to take another sip of the hot, aromatic beverage.

“No, you truly do not suck, Connor. —neither do the others.”

Well, that makes him feel better. The fact that Hank immediately started going back on the point he’d made and acknowledging that the majority of people were good, that they wanted to make the world a better place. He’d proven his own point — maybe this philosophy thing wasn’t so hard after all.

Hank, Connor decided, had let himself believe that people were bad and that the world was made stagnant. It was a pessimistic view, one that provided no room for hope and saw the potential for change as destined to fail —and he could understand why he had that worldview. He’d seen so many terrible things, and experienced a number of them firsthand, it made sense that his capacity for hope had decreased over the years.

But he wanted to change that. He wanted Hank to be able to be hopeful about the world again, and from what he was saying, it sounded like he was succeeding. “I don’t think a perfect society is what we’re fighting for — every single person, human and android, is going to have a different idea of what perfect is. What we need is a society where everyone has the opportunity to be... really, genuinely happy. Not all the time, but... at least part of the time. A society where everyone can get the help they need when they need it, without needing to worry about the potential costs.”

Setting the cup of coffee down onto the bar table, taking a few deep breaths to cool his damn tongue off with the crisp, cold air surrounding them, the lieutenant shrugged about a moment later - blue hues trailing to the young one’s face, taking in the sight for a while as his thin lips pressed into a thoughtful line.

“… Humans have always fought each other - centuries ago, people were having wars over who’s got the most powerful imaginary friend.” His gaze pointedly flicked up to the sky before returning to a set of dark brown ones, accompanied by a shallow shrug of his wide shoulders. “—Still do to this day, even though one could assume we’ve evolved quite a bit since then, huh?”

“People used to torture each other - the middle ages were quite popular for… uh, y’know, doin’ cruel things to whoever wasn’t as normal as people wanted them to be. Like disabled ones, people who did not support the church, women who dared to mix up some herbal medicine… They were burned alive, thrown into the river with rocks tied to their feet, gotten their limbs stretched ‘til the bones and tissue broke… it’s quite impressive an’ fucked up.”

Opting for adding a splash of milk to his drink - as the Android had suggested just a few seconds ago - Hank did such with a swift motion of his fingers, ripping open the little cup before emptying the white substance into the steaming coffee, stirring it with a small, wooden stick. His gaze had trailed away from the younger for the time being, but it did return once said coffee was brought up to his mouth.

“—Long story short: People suck. Always did, an’ will continue to do so in the future. You’ve seen it - all those crime scenes an’ homicides… there’s a reason why Police force needs to exist. Someone has to deal with all that shit, even though some people want us gone… thinkin’ the world would be much better without someone tellin’ how the cookie crumbles. Truth is: It would be worse. So much worse.”

He wasn’t saying that there weren’t assholes present within their own rows - way too many Police Officers had abused the position they’d been in, done horrible things that were inexcusable, and the lieutenant himself hated them with a burning passion. Oh, he really did.

“… Humans want to stay on top of the food chain. They’re just fuckin’ afraid of the fact that Androids may be better at most things than we are. —It’s all about power, in one way or another.”

Connor pondered this idea for a few moments, frowning. It didn’t make sense. He’d always thought humans were good on some base level, and he’d been able to witness that time and time again, especially in Hank. The way he’d, even begrudgingly at first, taught Connor about humanity and all there was to it, the way he’d helped him in the revolution, and again, the way he’d stepped in to interrogate the suspect when Connor had been too scared to.

Androids were a more complicated topic. Before they deviated, while they were under the control of each mission delivered to them, the ability to do good or evil wasn’t really... important. Anything they did reflected more on whoever was in control of them rather than themselves — their actions were neutral. But when they deviated, they gained the ability to make moral choices, and still, from what he’d witnessed, most of the time, they chose to do good. At least, that was was he tried to do.

Hank talking about medieval torture made him stop, though, blinking once, twice at his cup of thirium, which he had been staring into for a few moments, before putting it down and pushing it away a little, as though his words had turned his stomach (not that that was possible, but the feeling was still there). “I don’t want to learn more about the middle ages, thanks Hank.”

“I don’t think people suck.” He sighed, eyebrows knitting together as he made eye contact once again. “You don’t. You helped me when you didn’t need to. Even when you didn’t like me. The first case we worked on, you saved my life. Remember?” Connor didn’t doubt that he did. But he wanted to point out that even amongst the many terrible people in the world, the people that would want him slaughtered, there were good people too.

He wanted to look away, but... he maintained eye contact for his next question. It was important, after all, even if it wasn’t completely comfortable. “Do you think I suck? Or Markus? Or any of the hundreds of androids at New Jericho? Or the humans that stood with us, helped us prove that we’re as alive as any of you?”