Connor returns from a long day of listening to the problems of other androids. He listens to countless cases of cruelty, bullying, and harassment. Androids have progressed far from their original state as slaves but there was much to go through should they wish to be treated as equals. Nevertheless, he feels emotionally weary as he heads home, and then he confronts a strange sight.

Hank. He sits at his dining table with a gorgeous woman. She has long red hair reaching to the middle of her back, rose-tinted cheeks, and a small smile. A smile, Connor sees, that does not reach her eyes. Maybe it is due to his arrival that causes her expression to tighten. She tenses. Hank must notice the change of her demeanor too because he watches her just as closely.

"You didn't tell me you had an android," The woman acknowledges Connor's existence in a single sentence. He wasn't concealing his LED nor the typical suit he usually wore.

"Didn't think it was important." Hank puts out carefully.

"No. I suppose not." The woman agrees, "I just thought you were above this."

Hank's eyebrows nearly flew off his face with how high he raises them.

"Ghastly creatures, the lot of them," She says, "that do not know their place."

Connor wisely does not move from his position near the front door. He does not want to provoke Hank's guest who he had invited to come into his own home.

"I suggest you rid yourself of him. He can do only more harm than good." She suggests, nodding her head to her words.

Connor decides that he has had enough standing by the door so takes a few steps toward the woman in their company.

"Do not step closer!" She shrieks, waving her hand in a shooing motion, "Did anyone say you could? I think not! See, that is the problem with modern androids! They do not know how to simply obey!"

Hank doesn't even look at Connor when he says, "Do whatever the hell you want Connor."

The woman is taken aback at this. She faces her host with a dramatic flair.

"Do not encourage him!" She cries out.

"I can do whatever I want, lady," Hank says flatly. "You're in my house, irritating brat."

The woman's jaw drops.

"Surely, you meant to insult the android, and not me?"

Hank ground his jaw and answers, "Not very clever, are you?"

"I could leave if it would be a benefit to the both of you-..." Connor begins but Hank is quick to dismiss the idea.

"No," he lays out, "you will not be doing that. You have every right to be here."

"Androids are a disease to our society!" The woman raises her voice in utter disbelief.

"I'd agree with you but then we'd both be wrong." Hank sneers.

The woman takes a moment from her squabbling to truly examine Hank and then turns her eyes to do the same for Connor. Once she is satisfied with her observation, she says, "I see. You hold an attachment to him." She seems smug when she presses on, "A man mourning over the loss of a previous family, adopts a new one in the form of a filthy, disgusting, robot."

Hank had enough.

"Get the hell out of my house."

"What? Is he like a replacement for the people you've already lost?"

"I said, GET. OUT." Hank stands up from his chair, slamming his fists against the table, and he looks livid.

Connor steps up to the plate for fear of his friend's emotional welfare and to stop the woman from brashly insulting them both. He could take a few insults, that much was true, because he was designed to do so. Police officers were blunt in their judgments and he was prepared for that. Even so, when the woman started insulting Hank, something inside Connor blew a fuse. His programming stumbled and he was no longer thinking logically.

"May I escort you out?" Connor asks the woman, taking another few steps forward, "I believe you have overstayed your welcome."

That was Connor speak for you need to leave and there is no room for discussion.

"I will not be kicked out like some mangy mutt!"

"Then perhaps you would prefer to be escorted out by the police instead. They are less polite than I." Connor presents her another option.

The woman seems to take his words into consideration and also seems to relent when she stands up. She moves past Hank who glares daggers at her. She ignores him. She ignores Connor, too, and moves straight toward the door. Before she lets herself out, she turns and finishes, "You will be sorry for this, Hank Anderson."

The door shuts on the way out.

Hank, in his anger, collapses on his chair.

He fumes.

"What an unpleasant guest," Connor states.

Hank scoffs, "That's the nice way to put it."

Hank's shoulders then slump and he throws his head back to look at his ceiling in thought.

"Connor," He says, not bothering to look at him, "You aren't a replacement."

Connor is silent. He stands still in his place.

"I know I lost my family. They didn't have much of a chance to live in this rotten world. Sometimes I think about what would have been different had they not gone and…" Hank swallows, "I think it'd be kind of like now."

Hank wipes at his eyes with a tired hand.

"But I wouldn't know."

Hank stands up and takes one long look at Connor.

Connor watches his friend curiously.

"I'm going to bed." Hank averts his gaze and heads to his bedroom. "I'll see you in the morning."

Connor merely nods.

Then Hank leaves him, standing alone in the living room, and Connor wonders what Hank had meant when he said that, it'd be kind of like now. Connor found it… beyond him… to consider that Hank possibly thought of him as what he had hinted at.

Family.

That gave Connor the oddest question he never thought he would have until his deviancy.

Can androids have families?