November 9th, 2038
PM 02:26:10
A/N: Hello! I'm trying to get a pulse; and have noticed some radio silence (probably due to my inability to respond during the last few months - rectifying that now.)
Leave me a comment and tell me how I'm doing, what you'd like more or less of, etc. (That includes you, Discord army!)
Any feedback is welcomed!
Thank you!
The philosophy of psychology is a contemporary concept. Cognitive science, the study of the mind, could be argued as a philosophical idea of itself.
It was one of those topics you tried to avoid for fear of endless headache, no pun intended, yet remained centrical to your more esoteric questions about life.
Questions you'd stopped asking yourself because diving into arcane knowledge was something you'd learned to evade, and you'd learned it the hard way.
"One of you saw the attack on the surveillance cameras and said nothing."
Questions like: What occurs in the brain, within the soul, that dubs a certain psychological phenomenon as knowledge?
"Which means there's a deviant in this room…"
Questions, that – should you stop to ask them, you'd wonder if you'd be fulfilled with the answers.
"…And I'm going to find out which, it is…"
Connor wasn't asking questions anymore.
"'Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier, and simpler.'"
He'd moved on to ruthless indictments. A malicious hunt for the truth through accounts of punishment with the promise of no reprieve…
Against your better judgement, that left you questioning a lot of things.
But the philosophy of politics was more perplexing…because politics have no morals.
"You're going to be switched off." Connor was inches away from one of the androids as he pointed behind himself at you, "We're gonna search your memory, and tear you apart piece by piece, for analysis…"
Somehow, it made you ashamed – like you were guilty by association for being unable to stop the interrogator barking in their faces. Like they were victims, and you held the key to their immortal prison.
"You're going to be destroyed!" Connor latched on to its uniform, his teeth snapping as he yelled, "Do you hear me?! DESTROYED!"
His vice moved to the android's forearm; his skin peeling back as his plastic limbs took on a brilliant shine. His victim writhed in place, shaking uncontrollably.
Your eyes screwed shut. Your fingernails dug at the flesh on your palms. Your wound stung from the new bend it took, flinching as if Connor was probing at you rather than the android.
"No memory…"
You turned around, finding Simon bloodied and abandoned. His own exposed limb was on the same side as Connor's predominant hand.
"He must have probed his memory, too…"
Your fingers trailed up the patchwork plastic, tilting your head in focus.
"Deviants can communicate with each other through a form of telepathy, for lack of a better term." Connor scared you with his unannounced proximity, "Did you know that?"
His interrogator voice had you on edge, and you squinted.
"No, I didn't."
"I didn't either until I heard Simon's call for help…he must have felt my presence."
Connor retrieved a curved, plastic bit that looked like an earpiece, one hand still in his pocket. He started to play with it like his coin – an almost cannibalistic motion as he studied the body it belonged to.
"I convinced him to feign his death when I opened the door. I told him I'd come alone. I told him I'd help him." He smirked, "And then I broke his wrist, retrieved your gun, and probed his memory."
He caught the piece between his fingers.
"That's his processor…" You muttered.
His eyes were expressionless as they locked to yours, shifting back to the part as he analyzed it.
"Yes, it is. He removed it during the memory probe, killing himself in the process."
The crack that followed had the thing dropping to the floor in halves.
"And now it's disposable waste, just like his deactivated frame."
Your thumbs hooked in the crooks of his elbows, shaking him in place as you forced him to face you. He was empty. Hollow. Covered in shadows that drained the light from his features.
"This isn't you, Connor." You frowned, "You don't have to be the ruthless deviant hunter everyone expects you to be."
"And 'this' isn't about following my original instructions," He mumbled your name, somberness leaking through his eyes like sap on soft amber, "I have to find Jericho before Perkins does. If I don't…" Then they hardened again, trapping the mortality inside, "There's no guarantee you'll be safe."
He blinked rapidly as his raging focus returned to Simon, lifeless and staring into the void, "I will lie, betray, and kill any deviants who try to keep that from me, because my programming enables me to. The only thing that's changed is the motive."
"What happened to you…" You looked to make sure no one was watching from the other room, and when you saw the coast was clear, you delicately caressed his arm, "What's wrong?"
He was hesitant to answer. The old Connor – the soft, gentle, loving android who liked dogs and reading books slipped through, albeit a devastated version. His LED was red and he slipped into the same sort of panic he'd displayed on the way home from Jimmy's where he'd almost rolled your car on a sheet of ice.
Like those tires, he was slipping.
"When I watched Simon's memories...there was a piece of rusted metal with a word. Jericho. And when he pulled his processor out-" His voice was faint, and cracked altogether, "...I felt him die. Like I was dying." He squeezed his eyes shut, "I was scared-"
The way the word rolled off a whimper broke your heart. It dug its heels in your soul and rubbed out any hope of this being something that would pass.
"Connor…"
He'd experienced fear. Pain. Had covered it up with anger and rage because he was new to emotions, and you hadn't been the best role model.
"Then I remembered what Perkins said to you." And just like a switch, the stone-cold killer was back with venom laced on his words, "That pathetic attempt at an underhanded threat."
Connor secured his grip on your arms, looking down at you with a renewed fury.
"You will never feel like I did today. Not ever again." His lip twitched, and he sent a soundless snarl towards the androids, "If they don't tell me what I need to know, I'm not sure I'll be able to give them the same mercy."
"Mercy is nothing but the ends to justify the means, Connor." You tried to reason with the splintered humanity that still floated around in that sea of internalized hate of his.
"'If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.'"
His thumb traced the bandage on your cheek. He was absorbed by it, referred to it with touch in fanatical worship – almost as fervently as he'd been when you were shot…for the second time. You didn't have an answer for him.
"'And it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.'"
He pulled away, snuffing the bit of remorse from his being as he faced his audience. Three androids, two innocent, one guilty.
Maybe.
"'There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantaged of others…'"
Machiavelli wasn't wrong – in fact, both sides, humans and androids, had made it so war was…
Inevitable.
And just like Elijah had so diligently spelled out, it was beginning to feel like there wouldn't be a choice. Justice would be delivered. Whether it be on you or Markus was an outcome that rested on your shoulders.
"'Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render everyone his due.'"
Justice is blind, and you'd seen too much. It is both subjective and objective; one's willingness to meet the demands of duty versus the ability to pay one's debts. Your accrued tab outranked Perkins' by miles, you figured.
You were in collections, and he had positive equity.
You could side with your kind; preserve yourself, like Simon. Although, you doubted your fate would differ from his. If you could convince Markus to become an ally – a real, ally; one who didn't plaster his face on every television and recite words he didn't fully understand…you wondered how much the two of you would actually be able to achieve.
You chewed the inside of your cheek, staring at a stray knife left on the kitchen table.
A problem-solving principle, Occam's Razor, stated that the easiest solution would always be the correct one. The solution with the least amount of assumptions, and raised the fewest questions.
"The easiest problem we'll solve all day…"
You wished you shared Captain Allen's enthusiasm.
To fulfil your duty to humanity, your function, or pay your debts forward for failing to keep androids free would be no easy choice.
The scale would tip, eventually…
You couldn't remain the pivot forever.
"'Never was anything great achieved without danger.'"
There was no simple answer to this question – the one you tried so hard not to ask.
Which side were you going to choose?
A tearing of fabric caught your attention. The rips of seams and an electronic undoing. An unlocking of special components and a ringing noise that sounded in circles like a miniature distress beacon.
"Biocomponent eight, four, five, one…"
Your eyes lifted to find a scene you'd enacted before. One you created through fragility and vengeance.
"Regulates the heartbeat."
Connor, with a Thirium pump regulator in his hands – corrupting it with his touch, and holding it before fluttering eyes.
"Without this module, you will shut down in exactly sixty-three seconds…"
His voice was tranquil, his tone was peaceful.
He'd taken this one straight from your playbook.
"Please, NO! I'm sorry-"
The evidence server, with Daniel. Your Stress Test that you'd failed and somehow been rewarded. Positive reinforcement for an unconditioned response…
A zero contingency procedure.
"I could put it back, but…" Connor held the rim of the part just outside it's socket, "You just have to tell me the truth."
You cringed, taking a step back. Asked yourself why you'd stayed, and then remembered it was because you didn't want to leave him alone with a potential threat.
You unlatched your holster, hand resting on the grip.
"Are you, the deviant?"
The air was starting to shift. Killer instincts were running wild.
The other androids were watching.
"Connor."
Your heart skipped as the other two androids turned their necks – their dead eyes finding you in unison.
Four, colorless portals to the underworld that only saw red, just like the LEDs flashing in tune with your pulse.
If you thought their distant stare was unnerving before; having it directed at you was something novel.
Now they were menacing.
A chill slithered around your spine, winding its way up your neck and into your mind. It froze over, face numbing with anxiety.
"Hank-" You called out, mouth shooting the word to the side without letting the androids out of your sight.
You pulled your gun, let it hover near your waist.
"Reed?"
Connor jammed the part back in the android's chest, and an audible grunt left it.
Pain.
Pain was a fear response…and androids don't feel pain…
Not unless they're deviant.
"Captain Allen? Chris?"
Your voice rose higher and higher with panic, and the hairs stood straight on the back of your neck. The androids' brows tilted, fury tinted on their faces that were trained on you.
"YOU SCUMBAG!"
Connor grabbed the injured android's collar, pulling his face to his. Sucked in a hot breath and his mouth smacked in rage.
"I know it's you!"
His head tilted upward; lips furled, words barely able to escape without a stutter of hate and dismay, "You're just a fucking deviant!"
The android stumbled as his chain was yanked, the collar of his shirt still bound by the hand that fed him. You stepped to the side, yelping and aiming your gun as Connor grabbed it by its hair and pushed its face closer to Simon's.
Hank had done the same thing to Sumo once or twice after he had an accident.
"Please, stop-"
Except Sumo never whined like this. Was never accused of being an accessory. And that's all this android was – another lead to be followed. Another scent for the bloodhound to track and retrieve; all because a jackal had taken a figurative shot at a legendary bird and left its hopes to die.
"Please-"
It was happening again.
The Ortiz android. The begging. The cries for mercy.
"Go on," Connor shouted, keeping it in place as it struggled, "ADMIT IT!"
He was vengeance incarnate.
"Alright- Okay, I'm sorry-" The android sobbed, its hands slipping along the edges of the Thirium-stained table, "I'm a deviant, I surrender-"
Except he didn't surrender.
You'd been coherent up until then. Aware. Partial to the abyssal gazes that scrutinized your inaction towards Connor's radical actions.
There was a higher power at play, here. The eternal recurrence that kept humanity bound in place by a circumferential roundabout. A flutter of motions that would ripple and be felt across time – leaping from reality to the fantastical idea of linear chaos.
One heel of a boot and Connor's own Thirium pump regulator – rubbed out as plastic and metal chunks lodged themselves in the deviant's soles. One knife and a stab wound – driven by anger and hate; staked into the hand of the android, the man, you loved as he was crucified along the counter, betrayed by his own kind. One apex predator and a kill shot – delivered into the cranium of a smart prey and gunfire residue on your shaking hands.
One hot barrel pressed to your temple – held by one out of the two surviving deviants in the room.
The last time this had happened, you'd begged for mercy in the form of a declaration.
"I'm on your side."
Markus had agreed to your terms, and he'd forced North's hand in disarmament.
These deviants – the plural to the assumed singularity that'd been proven false by an android's human error; they took a prisoner…
But they would show no mercy, for there was no mercy rule in martial law.
There was no law in frontier justice.
And there was no simple answer to the question:
Whose side were you on, now?
Behind the Scenes
(Links on AO3)
Philosophy of Psychology
Niccolò Machiavelli
Machiavelli and Nietzsche Comparison Article
Nietzsche's Shadow of the Mind
The Eternal Recurrence
Occam's Razor
Zero Contingency Procedure
Political Philosophy
Justinian Law
Martial Law
Mercy Rule
Frontier Justice
Lady Justice
Singularity
No Quarter Rule
Chapter Written to Natural by Imagine Dragons
(Repeated some themes from Chapter 44 and 45)
Guest Review Responses:
Jaz: HELLO! Thank you for your continued support, in that case :) Also, much love back from a previous Brooklynite! :D
