gotosleep_idiot | September & October Test Drive

And now it's Markus' turn to look lost, because if his memory wasn't wiped, then why doesn't Connor know who he is besides being the deviant's leader? Maybe they hadn't just seen in each other in terms of minutes, but they'd just seen each other, had just talked to each other.

They knew each other better, now. "It doesn't make any sense, why you wouldn't know me, unless your memory has been wiped. I only saw you a little bit ago." But Connor was right, they would have just started from scratch. That's the problem with the humans, they see them as machines, not as the people they were. They're not machines. Markus scowls in anger at that thought for a moment.

"You're not some machine who should be wiped or replaced in the first place. You're more then that. We all are."

Connor knew a possibility. For all Nautilus drives him nuts, he's been learning how it worked. Despite how hard of it is for him to get his programmed chained head around. He knew there was a possibility of time differences.

Unfortunately he refused to believe that was the case because there was no way he turned deviant. He didn't he didn't he didn't-

"We have never met," Connor insisted. "And my memory has not been wiped. Even if Cyberlife did do something despite all practicality," because he was replaceable, just another part that either worked or was thrown away ~~he didn't want-~~, "then they'd go ahead and remove the person who was sympathetic to your cause and remembering him isn't important to my mission."

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"I'm a machine, nothing more," Connor insisted.

Though there's a new tension as he looked around quickly. Like he expected something to happen.

But it doesn't and his eyes focus on Markus. "I don't know why you think this game will work, but it's not going to. I have my mission and even if this place insists on being a constant roadblock, I'm going to find a way to do it."

And....technically, stopping the civil war was an in the moment objective. It's NOT his longterm one. Hmm....

The time difference was still something he wasn't getting, something that hadn't processed itself as a thing just yet. He would get it, he would, but Markus was still thinking that he'd just seen Connor off to go on his new mission.

Wait. Something was there, something tugged at his process server.

"You're not just a machine. You're one of us, Connor, and it's not a game." Markus took another smell step forward before stopping again, looking down at the poochyena, then back at Conner. "You pointed a gun to my head, but you knew it was wrong. You couldn't pull the trigger." And he couldn't know how happy he had been when that trigger hadn't been pulled.

"...Connor, this may be a strange question, in light of everything, and kind of random. But how long have you been here?" He just seemed too settled in to have been here for a few hours, maybe a few days. Too settled with everything, and if Markus had his LED still, it would be rapidly flickering yellow in his confusion.

"I'm not a deviant," Connor snapped, actually snapped. LED flickering betweeb yellow and eed, frustration more than evident. Like he's been saying this on repeat for a while. "If I had a gun on you, I would have pulled the trigger if I had to. I would complete my mission!" He would, Markus wasn't a simple rogue android. He was the leader, there was no way he could let him go.

And...well, its a detail a human would miss. But an android? The jacket Connor's wearing isn't in peak condition. Along the shoulder and arm are stitches. Careful and done with precision, but obviously not done by someone who thought they could easily replace the jacket

"....two months and twenty-two days," he said. Nearly three months, unable to do a single thing to further his mission. "Time is inconsistent. This is another dimension." He can really only state itnas a matter of fact.

"You're right! You're not a deviant, because there are no deviants, Connor, there's only our people. A group you belong to, because you're one of us." Markus tilted his head slightly, watching Connor carefully. He snapped at him. He hadn't been expecting that. "Doesn't it make you frustrated, to have to take orders to do things you know aren't right? You've seen how the humans have been treating us, what they've done. All we want to do is live in freedom. How can that be wrong?"

While he was talking, he was taking small step forwards, every so often. He wasn't close, but he was getting closer then when they had first started talking. And while he was talking, he was taking in the details of the person in front of him.

Stitches. Done by someone who had been in this world for longer then what Markus was prepared to hear. "You've been here almost three months?" His eyes widened, worry shown in blue and green. "How can that be?"

He remembers. He remembers talking about Cyberlife as an outside observer and wondered if they were evil. All the people who wondered at Amanda's guidance. His own concern for his 'android partner' and how the human feelings didn't feel as foreign as they should have.

"I'm trying to stop the war you're trying to start. Regardless, I'm a machine. Right and wrong don't matter." But they do. They really, really do.

Connor gritted his teeth and then held out the bag to Samurai. "Take that....home," he said, unwilling to say the place. Samurai whined and he shook his head. "I have Fiona. Go," he insisted.

Samurai whined again, but took the bag and dashed off. Connor is still staring hard at Markus, frustration lining his face. "You and I need to talk somewhere private," he said, not wanting the interruption as he figured this out.

But at the very least, Markus gets a message. A copy of the IC guide and a link to the proper one. "You'll have arrived with an external device. You can view the Network throught it." Sadly no direct robo telepathy to it.

"I'm not starting a war. It's a revolution." War and revolution were not synonymous. He knew that some of them wanted it to be a war. North... for everything she'd been through, she wanted it to be a war, where humans got hurt in the process. That's not what Markus was trying to do. That's not the kind of person that he was, even if sometimes... sometimes violence might be easier.

He was about to say more and then Connor was talking to Samurai, and Markus just watched them quietly, waiting for him to get back to him. That's when he feels the buzzing against his leg. Looking down, he put his hand on his pocket and pulled out what looked like a smartphone.

"I see." Robo telepathy was going to be missed, damn. "Okay. We can have our existential life talk somewhere private." He was tempted to ask that no one brought any guns with them, but no. He trusted Connor, no matter how long he'd been in this place and not back home with their people.

"Where did you want to go?"

"People are going to get hurt either way," Connor insisted. "Chaos always brings pain." Of course, androids were already getting hurt. But that doesn't matter. They're not alive, it doesn't matter.

...stupid Nautilus and that weird switching places storm nonsense, he keeps thinking what he said as a human. What he's pretty sure Hank feels. It shouldn't matter what Hank feels. Its not true. He just had to keep reminding himself that.

Of course Connor doesn't intend to point out robot telepathy does work with the smart phone. And after being changed twice, he finally gets the point. If he lost the ability to connect wirelessly, such as a storm, he wouldn't be able to connect to the Network at all. Thus an external device as a proxy.

He'll let Markus figure that out on his own.

But at least he has no gun. He only ignored the law when he had a specific plan for the gun's use. So everytime he's gotten a weapon, he's ditched it and by the time he came to regret that tendency, he hasn't gotten a weapon that's easy to carry.

"Follow me," Connor said, turning and starting to walk. He knew of a few emptt buildings in the area. The population was too low to avoid such occurrences, but its useful now. And walking there gives him time to think.

"We're already hurt." Says quietly, because it was true. The androids didn't start all of this, they just were finally fighting back against an oppression that sought to stomp them down and keep them lying in the dirt. Didn't Connor care about that? Markus knew that he did.

He was so used to giving orders now that there was a part of him that didn't want to take them. But Connor was starting to walk by the time that feeling became a thought, and so all Markus did was follow Connor wherever he was taking him.

Still, it would be nice to know where that was going to be. "If this was a movie, I might start to feel a little uneasy." Markus said lightly, keeping an eye on Connor but also looking down at the phone every so often, as he got used to the different features that it had.

It was said a little jokingly as well. Like a defense mechanism, something humans used that could be adopted. He and Carl used to joke at times; he could tell some pretty stellar knock knock jokes, if anyone ever asked.

Connor just barely fights off the urge to flinch at the comment. He wished human him hadn't talked so much. His life would be so much easier if he hadn't talked about why he thought his partner refused deviation. He wished the events had been far more different.

~~He hates this place.~~

He pushes the thought from his mind and focuses on what he's going to do. Can't capture, can't kill, what does he do?

"If you could feel for real, then you'd be right to be uneasy," Connor said, his voice back to cool professionalism even if his LED was stuck on yellow. "If not from where we are, I'd be following through on my mission."

His denial has a lot more to stand on when he doesn't have to actively factor in mission completion would mean android genocide.

"Hm." He couldn't see his LED for the moment, but he would guess that for all of the calm, business-like demeanor that he had draped back over himself like a cloak, he was sure that it was in the yellow. His was still in the blue, not that it could be seen, but it was starting to flicker a little.

"I know you say you would. And I know you think, right now, that you would." Markus said calmly as he looked down at the phone in his hand. "But I know that when the time comes... I can trust you to do the right thing. To follow your conscience. I know you've been here awhile, and some things have become... problematic."

He paused. "But you're more then one thing, Connor. We both are. You are more then just a mission, more then just the single piece of machinery they think you are." Markus fiddled with the phone a little bit. "I'm not going to feel that uneasy. You won't hurt one of your own."

"You say that like I haven't hurt androids," he said, keeping that cloak of business wrapped tight around himself. "I have the remains of several in evidence." Of course, he didn't actually kill them himself. He'd just forced the situation where someone was pulling the trigger.

But that didn't seem to be much ofba difference. Just because he didn't shoot the Traci's or Chloe didn't mean he couldn't do it ever. He could have gotten more from the Traci's later if he found them and there was no point with Chloe. That was all.

"I just follow my programming. If I can't complete a primary objective, I move down to lower and lower tiers until I have something," he said. Which is why he's taking care of Miguel. Make sure a child doesn't die in a fire is an in general priority. And the best way to do that was to just make sure Miguel never cooked. Perfectly logical.

Connor turned and approached a building, opening the door. It looked like an anbadoned restaurant. "This will work."

"You didn't want to hurt them, though, right? It's something that they wanted, and so that's what happened. It doesn't make it right." Sure, he didn't know specifics, but he had to believe that it was the right thing to think.

And even he could say that he'd hurt an android before. By being in that junkyard, he'd had to make the choices to take from androids that could have still been alive. He'd done his damnedest not to, but when survival was on the line...

"Following programming doesn't mean you're just programming, you know." Says gently as he puts the phone back into his pocket, once they reach the building. Hesitating for a moment, he followed him inside, looking around once they were in.

"So what now, Connor?"

"Cyberlife wanted them alive. A mostly functioning android provides more information than a mostly destroyed one," Connor said. It was dodging the question. Even he's not sure if its intentoonal. He's never wanted to destroy an android, but he was supposed to try and take them alive. It wasn't about want.

Right?

"I'm made of programs. That's all I am," Connor insisted, closing the door behind Markus. And he's still a few moments. What now indeed? He reaches into his jacket.

And pulls out a quarter of all things. He starts flicking it between his fingers and now he can listen for sounds of door and windows and creaking floors for Markus' movement. It frees him up to, well, pace because there's that feling of too much and nowhere to go. "There's no Cyberlife here. And with the chaotic natures of storms, I can't guarantee imprisonment. Capturing you does nothing. And destroying you....the chances of that accomplishing anything meaningful is too small and causing hardships too large." So what does he do?

But he's had a conversation like this before, hasn't he? "But....stopping the civil war was a mission that came up because it was pressing. It wasn't why I went to the DPD," he said, stopping in his pacing to look at Markus, coin still moving, LED spinning yellow yellow yellow.

It was dodging the question, and he wasn't going to let Connor get away from that one. "That's just dodging the question. A skillful dodge, but still, not an answer." Not an answer from not just a machine. Didn't Connor understand how every question had an answer, how every answer had a question attached to it?

It's what being alive was all about. Looking for answers to the questions that he knew, that he knew Connor had.

What Markus didn't know was that Connor was going to suddenly pull out a quarter from his jacket and start flipping it over and what was this. Watching him flick it around was such a human thing to do, and despite the semi-serious nature of the situation, he couldn't help but smile at that.

"The rebellion hasn't been happening for very long. But we're gaining too much momentum to be stopped just like that." It could fall apart at any time, such was the nature of rebellions, but so long as Markus was there... except he wasn't there, now. It wouldn't stop it, but without him to direct it in the right direction, he had no idea what people might do.

"You know that you don't have to do anything. If Cyberlife has no influence here, then why bother letting them influence you?" Turning away from Connor and his coin, Markus looked around the restaurant and went to go take a seat at one of the tables. He was more of a sit still and think kind of android, not a pacer.

"And there's a difference between not wanting to destroy something and having no inclination for causing unnecessary damage," he said. Yet another dodge, but he could pretend it was an answer.

"It could be forced to crash. You're an oddity. There's been deviants on the rise for months, but if you deviated during the altercation at the Manfred estate, you haven't been deviant even a week. You should be lost, uncertain. Instead you started all this almost immediately while other deviants were still aimless after much longer. If you disappeared, things would likely fall apart very quickly," Connor said. Which is part of why this was....bothersome. If not for the nature of Nautilus, he could end this. But he can't.

The coin tricks continued. Connor has never chosen to be still on his own. He did it when expected, but idleness didn't sit well with him. Caliberation was important and it helped focus his thoughts when he had too much data. And if he fidgets more these days, its because this place has a constant stream of new, chaotic data.

"Cyberlife created me for a purpose. I'm supposed to fulfill that purpose. If I can't, then there's no point in my operation." He remembered telling Hector all the ways a prototype investigator doesn't have a long shelf life. He fails, he's deactivated. He succeeds, his prototyping phase ends and they'll likely get rid of him for the final product. Or ge succeeds and androids everywhere are deactivated. He told Hector there were only so many options that ended well for the prototype.

That had been a broken human talking about his android partner. Now he's the android and its still true. There is a flicker of red in his vision and he shakes his head. It doesn't matter. He doesn't matter. "Everything I do is supposed to be for my function. To accomplish the mission. I need to find out what causes deviancy."

It was another dodge, but he'll let that one slide. It was close enough to a real answer, this time, and Markus shook his head, still watching him. There was nowhere else to look, really, and that wasn't a bad thing. It just meant he put more focus on Connor then on anything else in the area, which hopefully wouldn't make him uncomfortable.

Or maybe it would, in their own uncomfortable not quite feelings but also feelings kind of way. It was guesswork, when it came to what would cause deviancy. Obviously, Markus had not made a formal study of his 'oddity', he was just going with it. Like if he thoiught about it too much, thought about it too hard, it'd become a problem. Because it didn't make sense, unless you knew what his home life had been like.

"Not as quickly as you might think." He would have to agree with Connor that they would fall apart, but not before certain things got done. That's what happened when you had other people to back you up in this regard. He might be the leader, but he had subordinates. It was a problem getting those subordinates to agree on things, though. That's where things might get stalled, in Markus' opinion.

"And doesn't that make you mad?" Markus asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "To know that that's all they expect you to do? Cyberlife created you for a purpose, but you outgrew that purpose long ago." He paused.

"You're a very conflicted person, Connor. That's easy enough to tell. I can help you with that. Tell me, what happens if you find out the cause of deviancy? What happens then? What happens to you? Does it worry you?"

At least Connor didn't mind the staring. It's happened often enough. No, it was everything else about Markus that was uncomfortable, but at least it wasn't the staring.

"Quick enough," Connor said. "Or at least stall things long enough to deal with the situation." Honestly, he has no idea what the plan is for after Markus is taken care of. He knew the government was getting impatient, he knew Cyberlife was impatient. And scared, impatient humans never went well for whatever the cause was.

"No," Connor said and for the first time, it's an honest, straight answer. He's not mad. He's not sure he's ever been really mad. It was one of the feelings that human him had felt that he just....didn't. It had been completely foreign. "My purpose is to be an investigator. That's what I do. Even given a choice, I'd choose it." Which, well, was also another truth. Even human, it's what he choose to do.

The question is, has what he been doing been an actual investigation?

"I'm a prototype. I perform my test run. Once I'm done, whether I fail or succeed, I'm studied and whatever works is kept and whatever didn't is discarded for the final product," he said. "And I'm-"

He drops the coin.

He looked down, staring as the quarter hits the floor and rolls away several feet, looking confused such a thing even happened. He doesn't even notice how his hand shakes. Slight, very slight, but more than enough to throw off the calibration.

So, anger is not really the cause of anything for Connor. That was good to know, that anger wasn't the feeling he was dealing with. Markus was learning about what to do and what to say for certain things; he was still learning. Still trying to figure out what the right words were. Because all he really had was his words, in the end. Words and convictions.

But then Connor drops his coin, and Markus' eyes widen, blue and green watching it roll away before he looks at the other android's face.

"...It's okay to be upset." Markus said slowly, and he got up from the chair, taking a step closer to Connor. "You can be upset about being discarded. Because it's not just being discarded."

He paused, taking another step closer, eyes on his face. "No one alive wants to die. You don't want to die. And that's okay, Connor. It's okay to not want to die."

Markus didn't want to die. He'd sacrifice himself for this revolution, sure, yes. But he didn't want to die. Not like he almost had before, and the thought of doing it all again actually sends a real shiver down his spine.

The closest thing to anger Connor has felt has been frustration. Frustration he couldn't complete his mission. Frustration at not knowing what's wrong with him. But anger, rage, that wasn't what cause his instabilities.

Connor stared at the coin. Missed notes and dropping coins. He wants to say its the injury he had taken to his shoulder, a slight imperfection, but this happened with Miguel before that.

His head snapped up as Markus spoke. "I can't die. You have to be alive to die and I'm not alive," he insisted. However, instead of the cool declaration he knows he made before, there is a tightness in his voice. His thirium pump is pounding and everything feels dangerously tight. "We're not alive. No matter what you or this place says, its just people being kind and not understanding!"

Because Markus is not the first to say this to him. Not by a long shot. And Connot may just hate how much it makes him want...want....he doesn't know the words for the lightness that's buried under the tightness. All he knows is it makes him freeze and uncertain and has the urge to both run and see why the person keeps saying that.

The lost look is back on his face and he doesn't back away from Markus. But he's also not watching him, not really, more like he's seeing through him.

Edited 2018-10-18 08:05 (UTC)

He's not seeing him, and that's okay. It's okay, sometimes, to not be seen, to only be heard, and so long as he continued to hear him, that's good. There was only so much he could do, really, to change someone's mind.

Connor wasn't just anyone, though. He was another android, here, and from what Markus was getting about this place, there weren't any others around. Maybe they weren't friends back home, but they were definitely something to each other, just like Markus was something to a lot of androids. You didn't set androids free not to mean anything to them, after all.

He takes another step forward. "We are alive." Markus said softly, but firmly. "I know that I'm alive. I feel things that only someone alive can feel. I don't know what this place is saying, but if it's saying that we're, that you, are alive, then it's just further proof to me that we are."

Markus didn't need them to tell him he was alive to know he was, but the reassurance was nice, and welcome. He'd take it.

"You're the one who doesn't seem to understand. Not them."

"I understand how androids work!" Connor insisted with a sweeping gesture and he finally moves, turning away from Markus and he starts to pace. "I'm supposed to solve deviancy. Find the cause, figure out how it works and Cyberlife made me to find that truth, gave me the data I'd need." Except he had reason to doubt that now, didn't he?

"We're not alive. We can't feel." Except what he felt as a human feels similar to things he does now.

"We don't feel....feel joy or love or fear." He was afraid on the rooftop, he was afraid against the monster, he's happy to hear Miguel play, he wants Hank to approve of him.

"Anything that makes us think that is just an irrational instruction," he said, and there is heat in his voice, and he's not looking at Markus, moving. Fidgeting, seeming unable to keep still.

"Just because AIs from other worlds don't follow the same rules....just because everyone here insists on being kind, on humanizing something that just acts human to be comforting doesn't make it true," he said. More ranted, a hand running through his hair, needing to do something with his hands, needing to do something as his stress slowly climbs up higher and higher.

"I don't feel anything. I don't have free will, I'm not alive. I'm just a machine, designed to accomplish a task," he said, a repeated mantra. "And I'm going to accomplish my mission," he said and turned, eyes intense as he stared at Markus. "And you're going to help me."

Edited 2018-10-18 18:16 (UTC)

He stopped walking closer when Connor went on his rant, instead standing there and watching him with some worry. Was this what he'd been dealing with, for however long he'd been alive? Or here? Markus knew he himself would be pacing so much that he would wear a hole in the floor, and he wasn't a pacer.

"It's a very human thing to do, to lie to yourself to try to make yourself feel better." Finally says after a moment, and he looks at Connor like he's finally gone off the deep end.

Help him what? Find the cause of deviancy? Was that going to benefit him in anyway, he had to wonder. And if it would benefit anyone around here, to know what it was. Why couldn't they just be as they were?

"How am I supposed to help you?" A pause. "And why should I help you?"

All that and more. Because he could almost, maybe consider it. Consider that Hank was right. That maybe there was more to this than what Cyberlife said. But empathy is as much a strength as it is a weakness. And admitting there was something to this meant there was innocent blood on his hands.

The thing that made him want to believe made him terrified to believe.

"I'm not lying to himself. I test myself regularly, I know what I am," he said. At least he did whrn Amanda was here. Now its a lot harder to test himself.

And there's a shift at the question. The lost desperation melting because in the end, stopping the war was an in the moment added objective. It wasn't what he was originally supposed to do. He can at least make progress on that.

And he knew how to get it. "Because you want me to deviate," he said, confident and challenging. "You want me to think I'm alive. You want me to not be a threat. Killing you, capturing you, neither of those have a point here, but you're still a deviant. The first who can only run so far. You want me to change. I want to know what broke your program. Only way either of us gets that is interaction, so the question becomes who gets what they want first."

Because that plan can only go well for Connor.

Markus doesn't say anything for a little bit, because he has to process the possibilities that come from accepting, or denying something that they both know will happen. There was no way that either of them could go about their lives in this place and not interact with the other. Connor was the only person from back home that Markus had, here, to his knowledge anyway. He was the only other android in Nautilus.

He was the only other person he trusted, so far, here. So there wasn't a way for him to just ignore him, even if there was a part of him that wanted to say 'no'.

"I know you're not a threat." Says confidently, because at the very least, he knew that. Even if he didn't already trust him, there ewasn't much Connor could do here that made sense, like he said.

"So what you want is for me to tell you everything about me? Not just what my programming was, you want to know what makes me, me." Do you understand what you're asking, Connor? "You're right though. I want you to deviate; I want you to stop fighting yourself. If I help you, then what I require in return is the same. I want to know who you really are, not what they tell you to be."

Markus didn't see any way he could lose in this situation.

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Let him figure it out on his own? Ugh, you jerk :P

He's a very rude denial boy

Very rude, Markus disapproves.

He'll eventually get better. He's realized he's had some emotions and its The Worst

But emotions are what shows you're alive and all those good things!

But I'm not alive!

Tell that to your emotions~

Re: Tell that to your emotions~

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The difference not needing to worry about genocide makes to enable denial

Oh Connor, Markus sees those cracks and wants to help

Boy is a disaster, there's a reason he went 'kill me if you don't trust' to suicide mission

Gah, yes, that scene