"So you dress up nice in that tie and shit to try and impress me or…?" Tony looks the kid up and down, eyeing the way he was smartly dressed, nothing like a teen would usually wear, his age.
Connor tilts his head to show confusion, or at least what is meant to show confusion, and he answers after a few seconds of seeming thought.
"This is what I usually wear, Dr Stark," Connor said, confident. Tony responding without thinking.
"Mr Stark was my fathe- wait, Dr Stark?" Connor nodded.
"I was under the assumption that you had PhD's." Now it was Tony's turn to look confused. Of course, he had PhD's, but nobody had ever referred to him as that before, it was always just Mr Stark.
"Yeah, but- you're right? Huh, would you look at that." He looked taken aback and then laughed. "I like you already!"
"From now on, I'm going to shut down anybody who calls me Mr Stark out of politeness," Tony says, smiling to himself. He hadn't really ever given the PhD thing much thought.
He lets the kid go home, as it is around 9 pm now, and the kid did have a father to go back to.
—
"You can't just hire the kid," Pepper gives Tony a stern look, watching him sigh.
"It's my company." He gives his rather weak, rebuttal. She shakes her head, rolling her eyes.
"Tony, he hasn't passed the practical yet, he might not even be useful." Tony finally gives in, if it would get Pepper to stop arguing, then sure, he'll let the kid go through the practical trial, and once Pepper saw that he was useful, he'd hire the kid.
"Sure," He finally says, not meeting Pepper's eyes. She narrows her own eyes and sighs, once more.
"You're going to at least give the other participants a chance, right?" He once again doesn't dare meet her eyes and can tell that she's fed up with him. "You can't just do that Tony, they've got to be efficient before you let them work for you!"
This time it's Tony's turn to roll his eyes.
"We'll see about that, Pep."
—
It's a few weeks later, and Connor is no closer than he was before to building a quantum particle suspender, which he needed to create a divide that would collaborate near a particle collider, creating a wormhole that could hold, long enough for Hank and him to slip through.
MISSION: GET_HOME
PRIORITIES: MINIMISE_HUMAN_FATALITIES
If he used the exact right formula, he could produce a formula that would take them directly to their own dimension.
The thing was, that there was one key ingredient missing from the past to accomplish any of this, was that there wasn't any Thirium. He couldn't just create Thirium, although he could produce an alternative that acted similar, but didn't have the properties he needed.
He needed raw, unprocessed Thirium, which they didn't have access to.
He tells Hank, who frankly didn't seem to listen or care.
"Look, Connor, maybe it'd a good thing we're in the past. There's no deviants or machines or androids to hunt down. There's no dumb American Android Act saying you can't do what you want. Maybe the future is shit and the universe is doing you a fucking favour."
Connor barely spares a glance before responding with an automated reply. He pulls his beanie off.
"My present mission is to hunt down deviants and solve the case. None of these other things are really in my programming, there isn't a protocol for when you wake up years in the past, or from some research, in another universe. There was never a Stark industries in our own timeline, so we're stranded here for now."
Towards the end of his speech, Connor seems highly distressed and his LED flashes red for a few moments. He blushes, embarrassed at his slight outburst.
"I- I should go reboot. I'll be on the couch of the small bedroom." Connor then runs upstairs, ever so gracefully. Come to think of it, out of combat, Hank has never ever seen Connor fall down before, even a stumble.
MISSION: ?
His every move seems to be pre-calculated and his own being is self-balanced and graceful.
He hoped he'd be blessed with the scene when Connor finally did trip over, or even slightly stumble. He'd have a camera when it finally came to that fateful day.
Hank downed his fourth coffee and climbed his way into the master bedroom. Why couldn't Connor understand, it had been a simpler time, easier time. The future didn't need them, they could create hundreds of Connor's in a short period of time, or probably had backup Connor's waiting around.
If Connor wanted to be like that, then Hank would let him. He already knew that there should be no effort wasted when arguing with an android, if they said no, then more likely than not, their final answer is also no.
—
School the next day was alright, except for their first music class when they were told to pick up their violins and play a song. It's Connor's turn to go first, so he picks up the bow and the rosin.
OBJECTIVE: PLAY_TUNE
SIDE_OBJECTIVE: PICKT_TUNE
TUNE_PICKED: ORIGINALLY_COMPOSED_SONG
Almost like an expert, he swiftly pulls the rosin across the bow, with just the amount of pressure and stops when the bow has enough rosin. Satisfied, he starts to play a tune, and it's not one he's heard before.
It goes on for a few minutes when it builds up a lot of tension, before getting to the climax of the song. The music teacher looks so pleased with Connor and gives him a clap when he finishes. She looks at him, saying something, that Connor has been droning out.
He doesn't really care about his music grade, because the part of him that has been connected to the internet informs him that an email has been sent to him, from the Stark Company, telling him that there will be a practical interview in a week from the day after tomorrow.
Connor adds it to his schedule and remains nonchalant about the whole situation. He looks back toward to the music teacher and manages a smile. Apparently, that was the correct response, and as he walked back across to the place he was sitting, on the ground, he hears a few girls whispering.
"I always wanted a hipster boyfriend! Look at that beanie and that musical talent!" A few of the girls around her join in with her giggle.
The music teacher asks him to stay back, and so he does.
"What was that song?" She asks, apparently wondering if it was a song she could learn.
"I created it. Right there and then." He replies, fiddling with a coin in his fingers. The teacher looks surprised and asks him if there is any chance he could come back and play it again, this time with her recording it. Connor replies that he would if he had the time to spare.
As he walks back out, a girl approaches him. She's wearing a long-sleeved green flannel shirt, over a white tank top. She wears long jeans, and boots that look slightly mudded towards the sole. Her hair is long, full of volume and red.
"Hey, I'm Wendy Corduroy, wanna hang out with me and my friends this weekend?" She asks, not seductively or in a way that Connor was expecting, based on a lot of the other girl's reactions to him.
NEW_OBJECTIVE: FIT_IN_TO_AVOID_SUSPICION
It seemed like she genuinely just wanted to hang out with him. He nods and passes writes down his phone number on the back of the sheet music the teacher gave the class, to study.
Their music teacher never checked the homework anyway, so it's not like Connor was going to get in trouble for any of it.
Connor walked back to his locker and heard one of Wendy's friends, Tambry, who finally looked up from her phone, speak to Wendy.
"You know you're now the most powerful girl in the school. You got his number." Wendy smirks.
"Yeah, I figured, but hey, he could be fun."
—
Turns out Wendy wanted to play laser tag with Connor and her friends. They were going in teams of two, and Wendy had declared dibs on being in Connor's team.
Nobody objected.
Her other friends eventually paired up. Lee went with Thompson and Tambry went with Wendy's ex-boyfriend, Robbie.
The game itself was easy for Connor, as he had a night vision installed in him, and faster than humanly possible reflexes. Nobody had gotten a hit on Connor, and Connor had gotten everybody else at least thrice.
Wendy and Connor's team were declared the winners, and everybody was sweating, huffing and puffing, but not Connor. Connor was standing there casually, not looking tired out at all, or even thirsty.
Their parent's cars start to pile up at the entrance of the Laser tag business, and Hank is the first one to step out. He's smiling to himself as if there were an inside joke he hadn't shared with anybody.
He walks up to Connor and places his arm around Connor's neck, pulling him into a nookie. "Let's go home now, Hank."
"Whoa, you call your father by his first name?" Wendy says, incredulously. In western culture, it was often seen as taboo or even rude to call your parent by their first-name. Connor nodded, some of his unnecessary biocomponents working to dust a light blush upon his cheeks, probably helping to pull off the 'embarrassed' act.
Wendy raised an eyebrow, almost impressed looking. She downs another bottle of water and watches as Hank pulls something from the inside of his jumper, a metal canister with a strange engraving. 'Cyberlife' then it had a sort of glowing blue triangle insignia, a logo maybe followed by a series of numbers and letters. The canister looks similar to a water bottle or a thermos.
Connor screws off the lid and the contents have a vapour coming off from it, Connor downs it all, the unnatural blue liquid sliding down his throat. The way he pulls his head back and downs it all without stopping seems almost unnatural.
From where she stands, she identifies the smell of blood and gasoline.
Hank catches her stare and simply tells her.
"Connor is on a diet." The way he says it, is almost as if he doesn't believe it himself. Wendy catches herself asking why. He's physically fit, and slim, why would he need to go on a diet? She realises that she's never seen Connor actually consume anything before other than this strange liquid she's seen him drink at lunch.
Something is off, and supernatural about Connor. She searches and searches for anything to signify something off about Connor, and she can't find it. Only after everybody had left, and she was in her father's car on the way home had she realised.
Connor hadn't been breathing.
Who or what, was Connor?!
—
"Jeez Connor, how much of this stuff do you need?" Hand asks, washing out the metal canister that held Connor's concoction. Connor's blue LED blinks a few times.
"Twice a week, preferably," Connor responds, with a flat tone. He's preoccupied with the copious amounts of homework supplied to the high school students, and within twenty minutes he's finished.
For the average human, it should've taken around five hours to adequately finish the homework supplied to them from the different teachers.
"And if we can't get it to you twice a week?" Hank asks eyebrows raised, this stuff was starting to get expensive to just make.
"I should be fine, but the risk of needing mechanical assistance for my inner bio-components increase by point nine percent," Connor explains, now moving onto accomplishing another task, placing all of his books back into his messenger bag.
Grabbing the beanie he usually wore, he looked down for a second, LED flashing red for a moment before resuming a pale blue colour. Hank didn't question it but had an inkling of an idea of why he had flashed red.
Maybe Connor was tired of hiding his LED with that dumb beanie that made him look hipster and or grunge. Connor was more of a… efficiency type person. He didn't care much for the decorative aspects, and Hank had checked, the only thing Connor had changed about the room he occupied was the single green plant in the corner by the window.
Hank sighs, something about Connor was changing, although androids didn't really change unless programmed, Hank assumed that this change might be for the better, and maybe even welcomed.
"Are you okay, Connor?" Hank says to him, standing on the ground floor, looking at Connor, who was leaning against the staircase railing on the first floor above Hank.
ANSWER: PRE_SELECTED_RESPONSE/CONFIDENT
Connor took a few seconds longer than usual to process the question and answered with a preprogrammed response.
"All my main biocomponents are fully functional, and software instability detected is quite low, and should remain non-threatening." Hank shakes his head, almost in disappointed at the response.
"I mean, do you feel okay, tell me how you feel, not how you're functioning." Connor looks confused, and hangs his head like he didn't know how to act or respond to Hank.
"I'm fine." His tone is icy, and hard like he was so sure of himself, but his face betrayed him like he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Hank.
He leaves Hank alone as he walks into his room, probably to reorganise some of his research or purchase some more appliances they would probably need sooner or later, like maybe an actual vacuum cleaner would be nice, sweeping just didn't cut it all the time.
If they were back in their original timeline, in 2038, they'd simply hire a cleaning android, or better yet, wouldn't even be in this mess, to begin with. Since neither of those things are quite possible yet, so they make do with buying a vacuum cleaner from the nearest home appliances store.
—
On the afternoon of the practical interview, Connor arrives at the Stark Tower with five other people there, three girls and two boys. They all have one thing in common, which was they were incredibly scrawny and teenaged. The secretary in the entrance of the tower redirects them to a conference room, which they would wait for Tony.
The tallest girl immediately offers her hand toward Connor and introduces herself, saying that she went to the private school a few blocks away from Central Park. Connor takes her hand and she's surprised with the amount of pressure that goes through the handshake, and the strange feeling she gets from Connor's hand.
The next girl is blonde, and Connor recognises her from his databases, Gwen Stacy, the girl he met at the cafeteria at school. He politely smiles and greets her, addressing her by name, to which she smiles.
The first girl rolls her eyes and glares at Gwen when she believes Connor isn't looking. The two other boys introduce them to Connor, taken aback at his height, being six foot tall.
"Wow, you must be on your high school basketball team or something!" The shorter one of the two boys exclaim. Connor denies this fact and his program is registering some kind of praise coming from them, although they don't know a thing about himself, and seem to be judging him by solely by the way Connor looks.
There isn't much more time left to socialise because the next thing they know, Stark walks in, with a graphic band T-Shirt on underneath a suit jacket, with jeans to match.
Connor looks down at his own attire that consisted of jeans and a belt, a navy suit jacket, a white button-up shirt, and a navy blue tie to match the suit jacket.
The only thing that seemed unprofessional about his own demeanour was the fact that he was wearing a beanie, which seemed trivial and childish, but was very necessary to Connor and Hank's own private protection in fear of being exposed.
Tony has a file under his arm and opens it to reveal each of their personal information files. He looks towards Gwen and promptly asks a quick question.
"Does he usually dress like this?" Tony asks, gesturing towards Connor. Gwen nods, she's only ever seen Connor dressed in that kind of fashion, even on Wendy Corduroy's Instagram page when she posted a picture of them playing laser tag she noticed Connor was sporting his usual attire sans the suit jacket, and this time he's wearing a short sleeve dress shirt.
"This is the group interview!" Tony starts off, at a volume close to an excited yell. "If you got this far, it means you passed stage one. Out of a few hundred kids interviewed, and you're in the final six, I must say, great job." He congratulates them for making it this far, making it past the first interview.
"Three of you will walk through that door," He motions to one door which says 'HALLWAY - EMPLOYEES ONLY'. The door was made of glass and further down you could see an elevator and another door that said 'LAB ACCESS'. "
The other three will walk through the exit. If you make it through this interview, then there's the final one which is right after this one. There is only one position which means you'll have to fight for it!"
He chuckles at some inside joke he might have had, or maybe it was delusion.
NEW_OBJECTIVE: PASS_INTERVIEW
PROBABILITY_OF_SUCCESS_SO_FAR: 54%
"Let's get this interview started, winner takes the prize!"