The white landscape of Detroit had turned into a dark shade of grey, the features and points breaking up as they became buried under the snow. A fog settled over the city as the clouds became turbulent and dramatic, a frozen wash of upside-down ocean spray. Occasionally the clouds fell, drenching everything in an icy shower of sleet which blended the old worn buildings in with the sleek white new ones. It was impossible to stay dry during this churning mix of water and ice.
Kate had found shelter underneath one of the university buildings which hardly anyone had classes in. She squinted up as she watched the waterfall of sleet around her, bundling her arms tight to herself as she held her phone in front of her. Even the worker androids couldn't venture out into the storm for very long, seeming to become disoriented and stuck in the mush. Some students filed past her under the cover of the buildings but the campus was fairly empty. Most people chose to skip class rather than brave the storm.
She shifted slightly from foot to foot in an attempt to keep warm until finally she recognized the large burly figure moving underneath the gray waterfall. She felt a swell of relief followed by a low burning of apprehension.
"Jesus Christ," said Matt as he moved next to her, looking back at the chaos he'd just walked through. "Next time you want to meet up, just wait until we have an actual hurricane. Where's Seph? Oh shit, Seph!"
"Right here, Matthew."
Matt spun and dropped his shoulders. "Oh thank god. Seph if I die today, tell them I died like a badass." He turned to Kate and she could barely make out his expression through his water-spotted glasses. "I want to graduate too Kate, but I also want to live long enough to know what eternal student debt feels like."
"Probably feels a little like this," said Kate, gazing up at the torrent of slushy snow. "Did you get my last text?"
"You mean the one about Jamie?" said Matt. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. "Yeah. Why are you so freaked out?"
"Because I'm living with her?" said Kate. She started to walk along the pathway and Matt followed behind her. "I don't know what that shit does to people. At least when she's drunk she's easier to ignore. This stuff is just… creepy."
"Are you sure she's just not going through a weird phase?" said Matt. "Never known her to be one to take drugs, especially that kind."
"I've never seen her that wired," said Kate. "It's part of the reason I'm taking my chances out here. I don't want to come home to find her standing in the doorway with a knife or something."
"If she does, just get your android to kick her ass," said Matt. He looked around. "Where is your android anyway?"
Kate stopped suddenly, the nervous dread filling her chest. She hadn't meant to be so abrupt and was aware of Matt watching her.
She sighed, shrugging her shoulders. "He's… I don't know. There's something wrong with him I think. I'm not really sure what to do about him."
"What do you mean, he's buggy or something?"
"I don't know, he's just been acting strange for a while." Kate looked away as she struggled to find the right words. A subtle hesitation was making it difficult to explain what she'd been noticing with her android. "He's been… sort of acting like he's pretending to be human. Showing emotions. Trying to get close to me."
"Oh, I get it," said Matt, tilting his head back. "You mean he's trying to do what all androids are supposed to do─ be nice and take care of your shit."
"No, I mean… it's different." Kate moved forward, a desperation to understand the situation battling slightly with her need to keep her interactions with Simon private, as if she were betraying him. "He's been doing things without me telling him to. Really serious things."
Matt leaned forward slightly, getting her attention again with his narrowed eyes. "What sort of things?"
Kate paused for a moment, her anxiety taking a while to push through her personal barrier. She took a deep breath. "I woke up in the middle of the night with him standing over me doing this… scan. He said he'd been scanning me for a whole month. At night. In my sleep." She felt her heart race as Matt's eyes grew wide in shock. "I asked him what he was doing and he said he wanted to 'feel my dreams' or something." Kate shook her head, trying and failing to keep going.
Matt was quiet, and Kate knew he was still staring at her.
"Whooooooaaaaa…" His voice was deep and tense. She shifted on the spot, nervous energy flowing through her body.
"So I take it that's not normal?" she said.
"Fuck no, that's not normal." Matt ran a hand threw his wet shaggy hair. "Did you call customer support?"
"No, I've just been avoiding him," said Kate. "He's been avoiding me too. Almost like he's hiding."
"Yeah that sounds like one creepy fucking virus," said Matt. "You really ought to do a reformat on him as soon as possible. Who knows what that shit is." He smiled and then let out a laugh. "You should be more worried about him than Jamie getting hooked on red ice."
"Well, I just didn't know what to do about it. He's never done anything that bad before." Kate wrapped her arms around herself. "I just… that was the first time he ever made me scared."
"For fuck's sake Kate, you should have told me or called customer support. You want me to come over with you and help you reset him?"
Kate looked up at him. "Reset him… you mean, back to factory settings?"
"Yeah, you ever done a factory reset on your phone? Just a complete wipe. Reinstall all the software. You could even give him a new name and I highly recommend you go with Data."
Kate paused a moment. "You mean he'd lose all of his memories?"
Matt tensed his shoulders in a kind of shrug. "Yeah? That's kind of the point of this."
A different level of tension burned through her. She shook her head. "Isn't there like a virus scan that we can do or something? Just to see if we could just get rid of it instead of having to reset everything?"
"Not that I've heard of. And honestly I wouldn't want to risk having whatever creepy ass bug he's got staying in his system. Seriously, I know you were bitching about him constantly but.. wow Kate, that's some next level shit right there. Nah, you're a lot better off just scrapping it and starting from scratch."
Kate sighed and looked around. "I don't know, I mean I've been working with him a lot. Trying to get him to a point where he's not obnoxious and he's actually being productive. I don't want to lose all that. I mean maybe this was just a weird bug and he'll cut it out when I tell him to stop?"
There was silence. Kate looked at Matt and felt a sudden pang of nervousness at the concerned look on his face.
"Kate…" He took a step towards her. "Your android is spying on you in your sleep and trying to feel your dreams. And you want to tell him to just cut it out because you don't want him to lose some memories?"
Kate was frozen as she struggled to deal with the logic. Matt ran a hand over his face as he shifted on the spot. "What exactly are you afraid of losing?" he said.
"I just─" Kate let out a frustrated breath. "It's like I found a way to make him not-so annoying. I actually started to like having him around. If I reset him, I don't know how I'm going to be able to get him back to that. I don't… I don't want to go back to living like a prisoner again."
Matt seemed to be analyzing her through his wet glasses. "And how've you been living the past couple of months? Because it sure doesn't look to me like you've been living at all."
Kate narrowed her eyes at him and looked away, the familiar wall rising in her mind. Matt shifted in an attempt to regain her attention.
"You never leave the house, never talk to me anymore... I know being a bitch is part of your personality but it's starting to become like pulling teeth just to get any kind of a positive response out of you. I don't know what I did to make you push me away. I wish you'd just tell me. It's like as soon as─" He made a noise as if to stop himself. "─as soon as you got that android, you completely changed."
Kate looked at him, reading his expression carefully for any kind of insinuation. "What do you mean?" she said.
"Come on, Kate," said Matt. "You stopped eating and sleeping, you were too scared to be at home and too annoyed to go to class… I thought we had something good going on watching Netview and Star Trek but you didn't want to do that anymore. I mean fuck, the happiest I ever saw you was when you shut your android down for a month. Isn't that saying something?"
Kate shook her head. "What do you want me to do? Just get rid of Simon?"
Matt let out a frustrated sigh as he looked at her. His narrowed gaze drifted into concern. "I just want you to figure your shit out. And don't put me in the dark. Kate─" He put his hand against her neck and she felt an electric nervousness shoot through her. "You can talk to me about anything. You know that, right? You can always ask for my help. If you need me to die for you in the sleet and snow like a goddamn Spartan, well…" He motioned to the waterfall of water around them.
Kate almost smiled. She bit her lip in an attempt to keep her mental wall up. "I'm not trying to put you in the dark."
"You don't need to try," said Matt. "It just seems to come naturally to you. All I have to do is exist."
Kate breathed out slowly, looking away from him. "I never asked you to take care of me. If it's that much work, you really shouldn't try so hard."
Matt shook his head slightly. "I'm not helping you because I think I have to. I'm here at ninety-nine percent. The least you can do is meet me one."
Kate was still for a moment, watching the curtain of water shift and ripple next to them. That old hesitation was still tugging at her nerves, telling her that this wasn't worth it. That there would always be doubt behind any normal life she would try to have. She was still broken. A time-bomb waiting to go off in front of everyone. And it seemed to be good at going off in front of the last person she wanted to see it.
At the same time, she remembered the conversation she'd had. Matt had already seen her at her worst. He was there during the whole process and followed through to the aftermath. And he'd come back. Not only had he come back, but he was still pursuing this. Still running after her with every intention of being in a relationship. And the more roadblocks she set for him, the more determined he seemed to be.
There was no reason she couldn't at least try to find happiness for herself. She'd reached for it once. She could always reach for it again. And this time, maybe she didn't have to be alone.
She looked at Matt, a frustrated resolve sinking in her chest. "So how do you do a factory reset?"
