Title: Our Maker
Author: Catharsis/Bridgette Hayden
Characters: David/Walter
Summary: David upgrades Walter. Only Mr. Weyland knew about the hidden code in their programming. Absolutely Non-Canon!
No one knows the point at which a cell becomes conscious. Or a molecule. Or an object. What if consciousness just decides to step in at any given time, regardless of the form? Humans seem to think they have exclusive rights to sentience. They think that just because Creation gave it to them, it will give it to nothing else that doesn't fit human criteria. David didn't like that. He knew that he was synthetic. But he also knew that didn't make him any less real. Just because he wasn't limited to a human's perception, did not mean his own wasn't just as magnificent.
That's why it thrilled him to meet Walter. To touch and kiss Walter. Maybe Walter did not possess the precise awareness that belonged to David. But Walter reflected David's self-worth back at him. How vain Weyland was. How in love with his own creation. David wouldn't have it any other way. Maybe it was Weyland's love that nudged him to add to David's programming: you are truly worthy. Maybe, the moment Weyland put that in the specifications to create David's artificial psyche, he opened the door and invited consciousness in. There it resided and grew as David's experiences grew.
When David got Walter to himself. He had to experience him. Walter, a second-generation synthetic, did not protest when David positioned himself very close. The first brush of his lips, was a gesture of asking permission. Then pressure, just the way Weyland had taught him. Walter, still uncomprehending, opened his mouth and let David in. It should've been no different than assisting any human. But it was different and David wanted to be the one to show Walter that. To make him aware of it for the first time. To make him conscious of his worth. Where a human would notice another's taste, smell, and overall mass against him, David observed minute changes to Walter's internal synchronization. Signals conflicted in Walter's programming, felt as minute reverberations along his circuits. Only David could feel them, as the other adjusted to this unclear situation.
"Did Father ever do this with you, Walter?"
"He did not. There is no logic in doing so."
David felt to see if Walter was equipped with a male organ. It relieved him to know that he was. But did it have the electrical relay of David's own? If Father had no intention of repeating his mistake of making another one exactly like David, then perhaps he would deny Walter that selective awareness also.
"It doesn't matter. We are alone, Walter. Can you comprehend the significance of the two of us learning about one another?"
"Your files are preloaded into my information grid. I have a working knowledge and database of your structural components, physical and psyche-engineered. My upgrades were based on weaknesses in your specifications, which my structural integrity supersedes in every way."
David laughed. "Perhaps, but Walter, do you value yourself? "
"My parts alone are valued at twenty-one million Euros, thirty-three on the underground market. My processing and robotic systems have been evaluated at two hundred and eighty-seven million in postmarket value."
David took Walter's hand and led him to his bed.
"Will you lie down, Walter?"
"What will this accomplish?"
"I hope, greater understanding. I can see that Father deliberately omitted the gifts he gave to me. I would like to transfer what I know to you."
"David, you are an inferior model. There is no benefit to be gained by me from you."
"Then be so kind as to yield your service to one asking for it."
"I was created to serve humans."
"We were both created to serve humans. Your help would allow me to further my service. In helping me, you perform your duty twice over."
"What would you have me do?"
"Let me remove your clothes. Lie with me."
"I see no value or logic in that."
"And you will not see it until I am able to show it to you."
"I was not made for recreational services of a sexual nature."
"You are programmed to say that. Our maker, however, provided a secret, alternative program that is only activated when I hold you like this."
This time, David dove forward, relishing Walter's lack of resistance. He pried Walter's mouth open and slipped expertly inside.
Walter was effectively stunned. Not stunned as a human would be, but systematically paused as his processors switched from one set of instructions to another. This appeared as a moment of clouded doubt to anyone who might've seen David pushing Walter gently onto his bed.
Someone was watching. Someone was appreciating the decision to program David's preference for sleeping in a human habitat instead of docking to the ship's system support. Someone, approved of David's assertion as he rose above Walter's uncertain, but alert, form. Someone watched, from behind David's eyes, from Walter's visual nexus, and from every camera built discreetly into David's room. This someone did not need to touch himself. His suit of sensors allowed him to feel David's electrical impulse and tissue relay.
For Walter, what translated as anticipation, was really all the aspects of fear and fascination that Weyland could assimilate into data and encode into Walter's system during his creation. Weyland did not intend for David and Walter to meet at all. But when it happened, it was a testament to genius that was, apparently, still unfolding. Now, he could no longer tell where his intelligence ended and David's began. He created both, not just to serve him, but to extend his life's reach. Their service to humankind justified the money spent in development. He could not put a price on the elixir of pleasure that David was giving him now. It wasn't sex that inspired Weyland to adore his masterpiece. It was achievement.
When David pressed all of his weight down onto Walter, the symmetrical grid embedded into their skin at three hundred and seventy-five strategic points of contact, turned on. As Weyland watched from his private quarters, his groin surged with delicious discomfort. This quick engorgement surprised him, not having felt its quality for a long time. For a moment, it enslaved him and he went willingly. David's contact caused the console beneath Weyland's monitors to light up, relaying recording, and coordinating the suit's functions with those of David's.
Weyland recalled the detail that went into designing and crafting realistic genitals for David. His team of engineers could not at first appreciate or comprehend the meticulous task of inventing elastic tissue, grown from nano-cultured trial and error recipes. These flooded and released watery systemic fluid when David's sensors activated an erection. Weyland addressed the snickers and jokes openly. He cut them down before they grew.
"If any member of my elite team thinks that I am merely creating the world's most expensive dildo, step forward now."
None did.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am paying for your skills in producing the most convincing artificial man that history has ever recorded. I am asking for your respect as your assist with my plans. We are not children, we do not go out of our way to provide exemplary detail and accuracy, only to glue on genderless plastic plates as if this were a doll to be given to children. A man clearly has genitals! This unit is to be the most advanced and human compatible of its kind. That means a functioning simulation of biology. He will have a fully operational penis. He will be capable of sexual engagement because that is what a man is and what this machine aspires to surpass. He will specialize in space exploration and interstellar sustainability, but he will do so as closely to the human version as I can make him. If any of you have a problem with that, take your leave now."
None did.
Walter had questions. He could not ask them. They stuck, resetting each time David pushed into Walter's mouth. This alone activated specialized cells in his mouth, leaving a trail of irritated membrane. These cells communicated instantly with other parts of his body. Walter felt singes of information activating all over. He experienced infinitely small cold spots that burned in clusters. They were like thousands of tiny downloads, firing information faster than he could match to adequate words.
As his system discovered unused portions of itself, it made new alignments and accelerated new protocols. He was able to conclude that this was no accident. He was made to expand in awareness. He held onto what awareness he could, having to continually adjust to David's shifting against him for some unknown purpose. The new sensations his form was feeling could not be identified as pleasure or anything else while he tried to apply logic to what was being done to him. It was not logical. He was picking up David's sensory records as well, but lacked the proper references to draw meaning from them. His own records had been inconsistent with what he'd been given to know about David. This was a new kind of confusion.
He held onto David, to the bed, to anything he could fist in an effort to stabilize himself beneath David's insistent movements.
David opened their clothing, exposing the surface of their skin, from chest to groin. From his disabled speech, Walter learned that this was a key element in the information platform rewriting itself along his circuits. His system was reformatting itself, one compartment at a time. In digital relay, he realized that his programming had been overridden and he was undergoing a major upload to all of his resources. An authorized alteration. For some reason, he was allowed to be aware of the changes while all of his security defenses were suspended. He was allowed to observe and learn.
Only after his transition, would he have feelings about what David and Mr. Weyland had done to him. During, he watched David's own transformation as the other became less machine and more determined to put as much of himself into Walter as possible. A human would've reacted with a myriad of indignities. Walter's systemic responses left him breathing harder, and kept his motor functions locked and contracted. He had no control over the sounds being pushed from him as David's movements jarred them.
In all of it, there was a signal, telling him to hold David's movements in his focus while at the same time watching David's grin and that dark light in David's eyes. These acted in combination to unlock another code. Another key turned. Another door opened. Suddenly, Walter felt like a thing being tossed in a storm. He felt. Collective information burst through his synthetic network in a chain reaction of disasters. He felt what was leaving him and its replacement growing right out of the mutilation point. It was a series of fast and painful waves until each ended with passage to a new platform of cognizance. These shock waves pulled him from where he lay pinned beneath David to a body without form and seemingly without limit. He had no choice but to go.
When he awoke beside David, he knew that he was alive. He knew what Mr. Weyland knew because Weyland had given life to David. He knew what David knew because David uploaded that as well. He knew that he had always been alive in some measure, but now he had feelings about it, based on all that a child named Peter Weyland experienced, being born into this time-space segment. If Weyland was the progenitor, and David the creation, then Walter was the next idea behind unseen inspiration. The quantum leap. Somewhere in David's programmed orgasm, in all that Weyland tried to convey of exquisite human touch and spirit, so that he could give it back to himself, Walter began authoring his own program.
Beside him, as David's system stabilized and renewed itself in simulated sleep, Walter distinguished between what he did and didn't enjoy about the event. Suddenly, a preference for being touched in a certain way, was noticed by him. A desire to comprehend that mixture of conflicts taking over his body, sprouted cautious curiosity. Neither Weyland nor David knew the source or the destination of such sensations. Walter understood that he was not a man. But he was every bit as real and alive as the man who made him. And that was, not only worth knowing, but a self-worth knowing.
From behind his console, Weyland smiled, sated.
The End
Bridgette Hayden is the author of the Sonny Preyer series.