A/N: New job means slower uploads unfortunately. I'll try my best to keep updating as regularly as possible. However, Followers/Favs and reviews help motivate me immensely!
Jade green irises were affixed towards the new humanoid, drinking in his features like a fish out of water on dry desert sand. A single look was all it took. A single look was all that was needed, yet her mind stubbornly refused to succumb to the revelation.
The surrounding sounds consisting of pained groans and grunts belonging to several new machine life forms that had recently come crashing in, and the intense admonishment delivered upon them by Mayor was drowned out, taking the shape of ambient noise while she focused nearly all of her processing power on the humanoid figure before her.
She studied every diminutive detail like one of those latest prying YoRHa scanner models would the object under the mercy of their insatiable scrutinizing curiosity, not allowing a single aspect to escape their attention regardless of how insignificant or relevant it was.
Small aberrations in the form of small scars, discolorations, and tiny swelling oily rosy bumps skirted across the epidermis layer of the skin.
Faintly uneven and marginally crooked teeth. Asymmetrical facial features including uniquely distinct eye shapes on each respective side as well as uneven eyelids.
Androids possessed perfectly symmetrical faces. For some reason their makers had sought to construct their creations to look as visually appealing as possible in all manners applicable.
Small strands of hair poking through microscopic pores all across the body, including the arms and backside of the hands. On the face they were uneven and unaligned in growth, coalescing into a patchy style, as if a few of the underlying follicles were still under development.
Androids did not produce follicles anywhere other than their heads. Male models with facial hair grew them evenly and aligned.
Shadowy circles stroked the under eyes, duskier than any known model could possess. Petite white splotchy spots dotted the faded pinks of a few fingernails. Cuts and knicks layered a knuckle. A healing gash.
Her vision magnified several fold, eyes mimicking the lenses on a microscope as she noticed the damage. No infinitesimal nanobots tended to the injuries, instead the fleshy tissue was nurtured by red and white blood cells.
Red knew.
She knew exactly what the creature gliding uncontrollably across the floor utilizing some sort of inefficient footwear equipped with a single set of wheels was.
No… she knew as soon as words left his lips without ever having needed to check for supporting evidence.
Android vocal sounds were modulated to emulate the voice boxes of their creators to as close as seamlessly possible, but it was not perfect, an electrical undercurrent still existed. A hardly noticeable and inconspicuous distinction, but still, it was a distinction that was extremely relevant. It would go undetected by humans, but the reverse was not the case. Any sane modern android would immediately have alarm bells ringing in their heads as soon as they heard this specimen speak.
There was no denying it at the present moment. No benefit in arguing against the irrefutable. Try as she might, there was no mistaking the evidence laid bare right before her despite the innumerable and implausible odds.
The notion was inconceivable and left her feeling dizzy.
Skaut and Spina may make the blunder of incorrectly labelling this being for a human, but she knew better. She knew secrets that would destroy their very hopes, dreams, and reasons to live. She knew about humanity's extinction and the eradication for any sliver of hope in regard to humanities survival.
This was a replicant.
A replicant that had somehow survived. A replicant that had escaped the fate of not only the extinction of its species, but had somehow lasted for numerous millennia, and all in the midst of several devastating, planet altering, machine world wars.
How was such a thing possible? Where had he come from?
Her mind raced to form educated conjectures, some borderline insane, others more reasonable. She settled on a few, mostly variations of the replicant being subjected to endure some sort of stasis or someone cloning replicants since typically, they would age and die under a century. Perhaps an android had been so overcome with grief that they refused to accept reality and decided that making copies of a copy was their only salvation, never mind that a Gestalt would not be able to merge with such a being.
Or perhaps one of the pairs of Popola and Devola models or another android had thought fit to salvage a single replicant in order to preserve them for the future, in hopes that one day, androidkind may be able to develop a solution to revive humanity.
But what would be the point? Without the corresponding Gestalt, it would be a fruitless endeavor. A replicant vessel and the Gestalt soul needed to be amalgamated and unified into one being in order to truly become a human. Every single Gestalt on record had relapsed once the original met its end.
And why had he spoken in ancient English? Perhaps a supercilious teacher model that arrogantly decided that English should be the language of choice? Perhaps even now, they resided in this city as the replicant's caretaker.
It was an exceedingly pestiferous and debated topic in the past. There were quite a few androids in those days with similar opinions, only with different languages nominated respective to where the androids in question were manufactured. The Northern Americans, Britons, and a few others contended for English, the Germans for German, the Chinese for Mandarin, and so on and so forth.
Eventually everyone agreed to an ingenious solution. A distinct universal language that would combine the greatest ingredients of every major language into a single unified blend.
The Chaos language.
The name derived after the sheer chaos the heated arguments the World Council of androids constantly had in determining which language deserved to reign supreme. She herself along with other teacher models had the honor to play a major role in its development and she thoroughly enjoyed it. Everyone left happy with no lingering resentment, so it simply did not make sense for the adolescent replicant to not be speaking it.
Her heart throbbed when she allowed herself to wander in nostalgia, educating young replicants. Witnessing their eager faces, their childish playful behaviour, warm happy smiles, days of peace spent practicing in anticipation of teaching the true abominable human beings. It was the only part of her human oriented programming she had willingly chosen to be kept. A silent reminder of what her once fated destiny was. A piece of a past and the only time where she had enjoyed true serenity along with a sense of fulfillment before she was forever cursed by human worshipping zealots and the demise of their progenitors. Her vocation, her meaning to life stripped away from her with no chance for reprieve.
She had to let those thoughts fade, too many reminders and she might break. She made it this far, lived too long to falter with life's purpose now.
She felt something soft and light land on her thighs. Looking down, the replicant was laid out upon her lap, his eyes shining brightly from the slits in his bangs, scanning and observing her, Skaut, and Spina with deep wonder that matched their own.
Despite Red's and her companions ability to multitask several thousand procedures at once and their own eyes visually tracking the replicant's every iota of movement, she was unable to process the fact that the replicant had somehow ended lying on top of them due to the unbelievably extraordinary, migraine inducing, turn of events. A torrential onslaught of revelation after revelation in a single day was wearing out her mind in exhaustion.
Red noticed a barely audible voice in her programming, a voice whispering suggestively that something was incorrect in her aforesaid hypothesis about the identity of said humanoid. When Skaut and Spina started muttering incoherently at first, and then full on screaming seconds later, the whispers became more pronounced. Still, she chose to disregard it.
She jolted from her wandering reveries and turned to face the couple.
Their faces were contorted to their limits in each and everchanging expression. They were overheating, the fact made evident by their arrhythmic passionate pained gasping, their bodies' attempt to cool itself as much as possible. Ever-growing panic wormed its way into Red's mind. She felt welded to the seat, her thoughts becoming disjointed and racing from one idea to another. Eventually her eyes widened in terror.
A logic virus.
Immediately she mentally prepared to open her inventory and de-digitize a few logic virus vaccines. With them on hand, the issue would be resolved almost immediately if they were administrated quick enough.
As she made the necessary preparations, her head snapped towards the machines, but quickly dismissed her pre-emptive accusations. Their leader and the rest of them somehow gave off the appearance of complete puzzlement at the development despite not possessing any of the features required to display such emotion, except Mayor. None of them had shown any signs of aggression and neither had they attacked them at all rendering any way for them to transfer the virus and her theory mute.
Then perhaps it was not a logic virus?
Red examined the duo closer.
Indeed the symptoms they exhibited were nearly identical, however, there were a few key inconsistencies that indicated the cause of their unorthodox behaviour may have been induced by alternative influences. For beginners, their eyes retained their original hues and not that familiar cursed crimson that would suggest they were a victim of its wickedness. While they expressed the intense pain attributed to a logic virus attempting to rewrite core programming, her facial recognition software identified an emotion that she had never seen before in her life in this much intensity, and one never seen previously in a logic virus. Pure primal and unrestrained blissful pleasure.
Watching them shaking, twitching, laughing, and then crying filled her with a sense of primordial dread. She was at a complete loss on what to do. She clenched her fists tightly and scrunched her eyes.
What was happening? How could she help them? And from where did they contract…
In the corner of her vision something shuffled along the edges. She directed her gaze to meet him and blinked. Once. Then twice.
The boy let out a yawn and rested his arms behind his head before shifting his body slightly in what she assumed a position that allowed him to feel more comfortable… on their laps.
He was making himself at home on their laps.
What was he still doing laying down on the laps of three strangers?
And especially in a situation like this where Skaut and Spina were losing their minds?!
Red had somehow forgotten about the boy in her ever-growing panic - if that was even somehow possible - and shot him a glare in an effort to not so subtly hint for him to remove himself. She would have made an effort to physically move him, but replicants were extremely fragile.
Once upon a time, androids were only slightly more physically stronger than their biological doppelgangers. But after several millennia of countless upgrades and scientific breakthroughs, their physical capabilities eclipsed androids in the replicant days by a multitude of magnitudes, ringing especially true for herself. She could nearly eviscerate her first body with a simple slap. Just one mistake, the smallest misstep, and she might end his life. Regardless of her perfect control over her exertion of strength, she was afraid she might injure him with the slightest touch.
His next reaction threw her off. He was pouting.
She could tell he was disturbingly mystified by Skaut's and Spina's outburst yet what was with this response?
Was he serious?
What was wrong with him?
Was he not taught any manners?
How was he acting so nonchalantly about all of this? A single out of control arm swing from either Skaut or Spina could possibly end his life. Did he not realize how fragile he was compared to an android?
She intensified her scowl to a death glare for his own safety and somewhat for his impolite conduct.
The boy let out a huff in resignation but reluctantly complied, and swiftly rolled off gracelessly onto the floor, landing with an uncomfortable thud onto his side.
Red could not comprehend why he had not simply stood up.
The boy promptly jumped up to his feet in one go, lost control, tripped over a piece of loose wood, and clumsily fell back down with his head directly colliding with the ground.
Red winced at that. While no modern android would suffer any sort of damage from that sort of event, she knew in the case of a replicant, it could mean the end of their lives depending on their age and health.
She watched as he hissed through his teeth and rolled repeatedly until he was at the foot of an identical couch sitting opposite to the one they were seated on. He wobbled to a stand from his sitting position before throwing himself onto the seat haphazardly.
The boy was strange. Something was seriously wrong with this child.
Immediately Skaut and Spina were snapped out of their disturbing behaviour and were now heaving for breath, mouths wide open, and upper torso hunched over completely. Their hands clasped the area where the cores were seated in their chests.
Red let out a sigh in relief, but the correlation did not go unnoticed by her. As soon as the replicant had left, they had recovered, and that piece of information greatly distressed her. Again, for the millionth time today, her mind was swimming its way through a flood of several millennia worth of knowledge as she struggled to make sense of it all.
For what reason would they have such a reaction to the replicant's near proximity? One that mixed the agony of a logic virus and send their reward circuits into a frenzy?
Humming to herself she thought it through carefully. Some portion of their programming was indeed being overwritten during the episode, that she was certain of. But why would their reward circuits – could it be? Had they… imprinted on the boy?
When the Independists began the process to remove their programming related to their human creators, a few revolting discoveries were made. One piece in particular that stood out to her was the concept of imprinting. Similar to how a baby bird would imprint on the first living being they saw and come to recognize it as its mother, so too did androids imprint on the very first human they had direct contact with, forcing them to behave in a pact of servitude and act as guardians for the remainder of their protectee's lifetime.
That simply could not be the case here. Replicants were not recognized as humans. Androids felt no sense of loyalty to them. In fact, most androids even disliked them for unwarranted reasons, believing them to be parasites refusing to give up their bodies. When it was revealed that a replicant was responsible for the demise of the Shadow Lord, the dislike was fostered into a superficial inherent hatred.
At first she felt the same. But overtime she realized, Androids and replicants were similar in a few ways. For one, they were both soulless. And they too would have shared a similar fate, no they would suffer a fate far worse had the project been a success. While androids would become nothing more than slaves to mankind; even if they enjoyed it, the replicants, they were designed to be sacrificed. Even after fighting to rid the world of the Legion, their consciousness would be doomed as spectators sealed within their own flesh. Their reward would be watching from a metaphorical window within a biological vessel while other entities would have full control of what was once their own bodies. Humans were cruel monsters.
As she scrutinized the pair of androids further, in their nearly recovered posture she saw the steadfast signs of wistfulness engraved onto their faces. Their eyes tracked the boy as if they were reunited with some long lost lover.
Red felt her stomach drop, a bag of stones weighing it down, now realizing that their conduct could have feasibly been a consequence of something more sinister, something far more devious in nature.
Relatively recent manufactured android models, she perceived, had shown more zealotry towards mankind, willing to fight without a shred of proof for their existence.
Those bastards, they truly had done away with the guidelines hadn't they? They've adjusted the parameters that all androids were to be installed with. Increased the loyalty limits to the maximum and subjected every new model to it. It made sense.
In order to motivate androids spread across the world and maintain morale to fight the machine network, the lie of humans residing on the moon needed to be as convincing as possible. With more programmed loyalty, newer models would be less willing to raise questions and more likely to follow orders blindly. Nonetheless, the way they performed their duties and fought for the supposed humans they had never even seen was genuinely concerning.
Back when replicants were commonplace, many androids off the assembly lines would often make the same mistake Skaut and Spina had upon meeting one for the first time. However, even when under the assumption that the humanoid in front of them was a human, there wasn't much of a reaction. In spite of the identical biology, a soul was needed for the connection to truly come into fruition.
But now, conceivably in Skaut's and Spina's minds, she formulated, they were so certain that the replicant was human and when combined with the heightened human loyalty levels, they had imprinted. That was the only conceivable answer, the final piece to this puzzle. It had to be. The alternative, she would not accept it without fool proof data and even then she would most likely deny it.
Her full attention was grabbed by the replicant once more. He was analyzing them, a hand cupped around his chin, brows knitted together, a thrilled grin, his pupils slowly moving left and right, legs swinging wildly back and forth off the edges of the couch in excitement. Every so often he took a different thinking posture. The boy refused to remain still for longer than a few moments at most.
Slowly, he glanced at the machines with a frown before returning to face the android trio.
He stuttered out a nervous greeting alongside a wave of his hands, apologized in slang for falling on them (and did not apologize for using them as a bed), and blames the broken wood for his loss of balance. She takes a peek at the machine lifeform responsible for the mess who suddenly found great interest in the rims of his top hat upon eye contact. It seems the machines had befriended the replicant. Given their amicable nature so far, it wasn't unbelievable. But the timing… could it be? She would need to acquire more information from them in the future.
Abruptly, the replicant's lips form a thin line. He raises a palm to massage his hair, shifts it to caress his face, then commences a comprehensive self-examination, inspecting several parts of himself. He sniffs with his nose, the corner of his lips twinge downwards, and once he meets their eyes again he flushes a beet red out of embarrassment.
Red could not help but be fascinated at the boy's gestures. They were all so vivid in her eyes. All androids were able to mask their emotions to an extent, but in the case of a replicant, her facial recognition software was able to categorize even the teeniest measure of micro expressions without fail. And right now, it indicated that he was thoroughly embarrassed, most likely because of his own appearance.
She took a moment to absorb in his exterior overall instead of simply picking him apart and came to conclusion that the boy had not undergone maintenan- was not well taken care after.
His hair was raven black and abnormally long nearly reaching his lower back, while the front bangs practically covered his dark brown eyes in its entirety. In her opinion the replicant was long overdue and in desperate need of a haircut.
He wore a plain black hoody coated in several different colored stains, his blue and grey checkered pants; she recognized them as pajamas, were ripped and torn all over. New clothes were needed as well then.
He appeared to be Caucasian with a medium skin color. However there was a grey undertone beneath and when combined with the deep sunken dark circles under his eyes, it did not paint a healthy canvas. This replicant looked ill. Whomever his caretaker was, they were performing their duties appallingly.
The replicant then slapped himself, complimented Skaut's choice of apparel, and then briefly mentioned a movie she is unfamiliar with involving heroic alien machines which she finds incredibly ironic and strange since replicants did not have access to any electrical inventions, but assumed his mysterious android caretaker must have shown him a few for unknown reasons. Given that the entire replicant project ended in failure, it was probably best for him to become familiar with as much technology as he could.
He continued to speak citing a few other concepts that are foreign to her in a crude manner but by the end of it all he shoots a compliment towards Skaut and all hell breaks loose when he finishes.
Skaut's returned to his manic state from before, albeit with less vigor. She struggled to calm him down and Spina, broken out of her stupor; but still dazed, attempted to hold him in place.
Red ran a quick and simple diagnostic scan. They indicated that this time, there was no pain, only reward circuits firing off relentlessly.
A single compliment from the replicant had set them off. It was a large data packet to swallow but the timing was far too immediate to have been a coincidence. Before she could probe his body further, Mayor, the machine lifeform spoke out.
"Jayce! You get go refreshment for guest?"
"Yes sir!" The replicant saluted casually.
So the boy's name was Jayce.
Wait.
Why did the replicant just salute a machine, and moreover address him as sir? Did he see him as a superior? She initiated a subroutine to ponder about it while she focused on the more immediate concern, Skaut's wellbeing. Thankfully, the stimulus running throughout his circuitry was dispersing.
"Ima bring some snacks for you all! Even got some old meds I never used I think might help your friend! I'll be back ASAP!" Jayce yelled.
Snacks? Meds? As in medicine? Did he think they were replicants? No in his case, he would think of them as humans. Replicants were taught that they were human beings and were never informed otherwise. She supposed his caretaker kept it that way as well, but why? There was no point in doing so anymore.
"Jayce! Window dangerous! Front door use! You High up!" The machine practically begged.
"Sorry old man, got no time to be safe!" He retorted before leaping out of the window… that was nearly four stories up… and potentially lethal, very lethal in fact, to something as delicate as a replicant.
Had… the replicant just offed himself? What?
Not a moment later she witnessed a goliath class machine model carrying and placing the boy with surprising gentleness for such a large machine, into a seat within itself using android-like fingers attached to one of its many arm shaped appendages.
Red let out an exasperated groan. This was all just becoming much too confusing to handle. Mentally, she needed to collect and organize her thoughts for at least a few hours in sleep mode, but not before receiving answers to at least a few of the foundation shattering phenomenon she suffered today.