"If you're just gonna stare at me, I can go. You wanted to talk to me, so talk," Leonard said.
"You changed your hair," Jocelyn… err, Pamela said.
"Actually, my mother kept it short while I was in my coma. I like it this way, so I decided not to grow it any longer. Is that what you wanted, to talk about my hair?" he asked before he made a move to get up.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't know that the plan was to kill you until it was too late. When the time came, I just followed my orders."
"Noted," Leonard sighed. "That it?"
"Don't be like that, Leo."
"Don't call me that. Family calls me that and you are not my family. I didn't even know your real name until last night."
"But…"
"If you're really sorry, you'll tell the federal agents outside everything they want to know. And you'll leave me alone. You, Phil, Section Thirty-one… you destroyed a part of my life and I'm rebuilding what's left. I don't want anything to do with you. I'm not even mad, I'm just done," he told her before walking to the door.
"I really did love you," she told him.
"No you didn't. You don't hurt people you love. You protect them," Leonard said before walking out of the room.
"You okay?" Chris asked.
"Peachy," he told his CO. Leonard had let go of all this crap with Jocelyn months ago, all that was left to do was find her and toss her in jail. Now that they've done that, he could finally wash his hands of Section Thirty-one. "Where's Jem?"
"Clearing you with IA. She gave them the footage of Phil's confession that you wouldn't join up with them. That, plus the dead body of a man who's supposed to be dead already…"
"Means they'll finally get off my case," Leonard sighed. "That's good. One less thing to worry about in court."
"Rescheduled to next week. You ready?" Chris asked.
"Are you?"
"I guess. I know more about Jemma than she does, I know she'll be fine."
"You ever gonna tell us what happened?" Leonard asked. The question about Jemma before her decommissioning has been lurking in the back of his mind since Chris told him about their history.
"She's not much different than she is now to be honest with you. Though, she blow a case once," his captain said. Leonard's eyes widened. "Not in the way you think but blew it none the less. I'll spare you the details but it came down to a choice: my life or catching our suspect."
"Jemma saved you," Leonard said. It wasn't a question, he's watched Jemma risk herself for him more than once and the idea that she'd do it for Chris wasn't even remotely surprising.
"She did. Six months of work went down the drain and the brass was pissed. They ordered her memory wiped and she was put in storage. Another cop would've gotten a medal for what she did but Jemma got tossed aside. Pissed me off to no end," Chris sighed. "The order to have her reactivated has been in my desk for years, I just needed the right person to partner her with. Someone just as special as she is."
"That would be you, Bonesy," Jemma said from behind them. "How'd it go with you-know-who?"
"About what I expected. It's outta my hands now," Leonard smiled. "Ready to go?"
"Nope. I'm gonna stick around and help out," she told him. He gave her a look. "As appealing as it is to stay home with you, this place is massively understaffed. We lost two officers because of Miranda, four because of Phil's people. Stiles is gonna be in the hospital for a while, you're out because of your ribs, there are three more on the medical duty roster. Uhura's sorting through evidence from three bombs, a crazy bot who attacked a councilman and a terrorist siege on a building. She could use the extra set of eyes."
"And that's why we love you," Chris chuckled.
"Mind if I stay, Captain. I'm not allowed in the field but I can at least do my paperwork," Leonard smiled.
"You hate paperwork," Jemma and Chris said at the same time.
"True but that doesn't mean I'm gonna leave it for Uhura," he chuckled.
"Go ahead," Chris smiled. "Makes my to-do list shorter."
Leonard and Jemma joined Uhura in the bullpen. He sat at his desk and started working on the paperwork from the last few days while Jemma sat at Stiles' desk and used his workstation to do her own paperwork. The three of them worked for hours in the first comfortable silence they've had in the last few days.
"You're both lucky I love you more than I hate suits," Leonard grumbled.
"Oh, please," his mother chuckled. "You look handsome in a suit. Doesn't he, Jemma?"
"Yes, ma'am, he does," Jem smiled as she fixed his tie before she whispered, "She made me wear a dress and heels. Shut up unless you wanna trade." Leonard smiled. Technically, his mother can't make Jemma do anything but the woman has this look that made puppy dog face look evil. Ellie McCoy can talk just about anyone into doing anything. So, when his mother brought Jem clothes to wear for court, Jemma just smiled and agreed.
"You look beautiful, if I do say so myself," he told his girl.
"You always say that," Jemma pointed out.
"I always mean it," Leonard said before he gave her a quick kiss. "Shall we?"
"I suppose," Jem sighed.
"Don't be nervous," his mother said, giving Jemma's shoulder a squeeze.
"Easy for you to say. You guys were born with rights," Jemma muttered. He didn't want to agree with her but she was right, they had an uphill battle with this one.
The ride to the courthouse was quiet. Leonard really didn't know what to say that would make Jemma any less worried. While she was considered property of the department, they had the power to make decisions for and about her without any regard to her thoughts or feelings on the matter. They could also order her memory wiped again, which didn't sit well with anybody.
"Look at all these people," his mother whispered before he parked the car.
"Go Uhura," Leonard whispered.
It looked like every cop the precinct could spare was there. Stiles was in a wheelchair being pushed by Chekov. Chris, Uhura, Scotty and Marvick were there too. None of that is what surprised him. Mitchell's family was there, Sulu's sisters too. He saw Paige and Jenna Archer from the Daystorm building and Ramon Medina's family. Carol Marcus, Nicole Bloomquist, Julian Kyle, Kira Larsen, Jeannie Hartman and her dad, Alyssa Ogawa and just about everybody else they've helped in the last eight months was there to back Jem up.
"Are all those people here for me?" Jemma asked from the backseat.
"Yes, they are, sweetie," his mother smiled before they all got out of the cruiser.
"You've been busy, Ny," Jemma said to their friend.
"I told you we had your back," the detective smiled before the pair gave each other a hug. "You ready?"
Jemma smiled, "I think so."
"JTK-seventeen-oh-one, what are you?" the lawyer for the city asked. Everyone watched Jemma's jaw tighten at being referred to by her unit number instead of her name.
"My name is Jemma. And I'm an android," she answered.
"Which is?" the man asked her.
"Derived from the Greek androeidēs, which translates to manlike, an android as an automaton made to resemble a human being," Jemma told everyone.
"Automaton," the man said. "Made. By whom?"
"My father," she smiled. "Doctor Lawrence Marvick."
"Isn't he the robotics expert responsible for the creation of the XTK robot that…?"
"You mean to tell me that all the children in the world are perfect?" Jem cut him off. "If that were true, seventy-three percent of the people in this room would be out of a job. He created Miranda, but as you can see, I'm not like her."
The lawyer glanced at his notes on the table, "JTK-seventeen-oh-one, what is the capacity of your memory, and how fast can you access information?"
"I have remote access to a cloud, this causes a variance in my memory capability. My computing power is thirty-two billion trilihertz," she told him. "Eighteen less than the VX series."
"Drawing on the log record of the construction of the GSKs, also constructed by Doctor Marvick, I request to be allowed to remove JTK seventeen-oh-one's hand for your inspection," the man told Judge Riker.
"Proceed," the judge said.
"I can't," Jemma said, the fear on her face was plain as day. It was a good thing his mother and Chris held onto him because Leonard was half a second from punching that asshole. "My limbs are not detachable without an engineer to remove them and it takes a while. Much like your limbs can't be detached without a doctor cutting them off."
"Nothing further, your honor, but I reserve the right to recall this witness," the man said.
"Very well, Mister Stone," the judge said. "Mister Decker, your witness."
"Jemma," Decker smiled. "That's a pretty name. Did you choose it yourself?"
"No. Captain Pike gave me my name when I was initially activated, he refused to call me by unit number. Most of my memories have been wiped from that time but that one is part of my identity matrix," Jemma smiled.
"Are you a machine?" Decker asked.
"I am. I don't deny it, I just find it irrelevant," she answered.
"Why?"
"Humans are machines too, just of a different type. Your bodies are made of pieces that can be replaced if damaged. Limbs, organs, blood. If something doesn't work correctly, the whole system can be thrown outta whack," Jem said. "And we were all created by another human. Children are created from their parents' DNA. They're not property."
"What's this?" Decker asked, holding up a painting.
"It's a painting of Atlanta's downtown skyline," she smiled.
"Objection. Relevance?" Stone said.
"Getting there, your honor," Decker said.
"Overruled," Riker said.
"Who painted this?" Decker asked Jemma.
"I did. It was a gift for my partner's birthday. He gets homesick, I thought it would help," Jemma told him. Leonard smiled. She blamed him for all painting and he let her, she was really good at it.
"And this one?" Decker switched paintings to one Leonard hadn't seen before. It was a little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes running through a cornfield.
"That's how I imagine my childhood. I picked a farm town out in the middle of Iowa," she smiled.
"You imagine things?" Decker asked as he sat the painting on the table.
"Doesn't everyone?"
"We do. Why do you keep that painting?" Decker asked.
"I like it," Jemma shrugged.
"What's this?" Decker held up an actual book.
"A Tale of Two Cities," she smiled. "I borrowed it from Captain Pike but he told me that I could keep it. It's my favorite book."
"And this?" Decker held up a picture of Jemma and Uhura. "You only have this one picture at your apartment.
"My first girls' day out. I kept it because Detective Uhura is like my big sister," Jemma smiled at Ny. "I love her."
"Just her?"
"No. Chris. Larry. Scotty. Leonard. Ellie. Stiles. They're my family," she said. The look on her face was one you'd expect to see on any person who loved and cared about their family. There were happy tears in her eyes as she looked at them.
"What do you think about all this?" Decker asked. Everyone that testified, and there were a lot of them, had been asked this question but Jemma's opinion was really the only one that mattered.
"It's silly. To be considered sentient, one must be intelligent, self-aware and conscious. There are humans who are born lacking one of the three. We all know someone who isn't smart. We've all heard of those who aren't aware of themselves. And anyone in a coma lacks consciousness. Yet, they all have rights that I don't. Nobody asks any of you to prove that you're sentient, it's just assumed that you are, even though some people clearly aren't. I'm intelligent, I'm aware and I'm conscious, that should be enough for me to have the right to myself just like any other person because I am just that. A person."
"JTK-seventeen-oh-one is the physical representation of a dream, an idea conceived of by the mind of a man. It's purpose is to serve the needs of the police department. It's a collection of networks and algorithms, responses dictated by an elaborate software program written by a man. Its hardware built by a man. And now. And now a man will shut it off," Stone said before activating a local EMP next to Jemma's head and shut her off. He was in for a surprise. "Pinocchio is broken. The strings, cut."
"I hate when people do that," Jemma muttered as she rebooted. Everyone who wasn't already looking at her, was looking now. The expression on Stone's face was priceless. "That's worse than getting shot."
"Your honor, you've heard testimony from dozens of people who Jemma has helped. You've heard from the people she works with. Heard from those who are quick to call her their sister regardless of her physical make up. All of them asking the same question; why do the criminals that Jemma puts away have more rights than she does? The GSKs and JTKs were subject to the difficult job of being police officers, but unlike their human counterparts, they spent their nights in a dark charging station," Decker put up a hologram of the charging area, "where they weren't even afforded basic privacy. They weren't granted access to a mental health professional. And people treated them as if they were less than." He took a breath. "No one thought about their welfare or their feelings. We had a whole generation of disposable people. Society has a word for that: slavery. Jemma is a slave. If you think I'm being harsh, I'm not. I'm being honest. We've obscured it behind a comfortable euphemism: property. Are you prepared to condemn Jemma and others like her to an existence of servitude and slavery? Look at this woman. The brave police officer who risked herself for two dozen strangers in a hostage situation, single handedly. A woman who nearly lost her life to save her partner. A woman who gives tours of the precinct to school children. Who sings old rock songs in the car and likes action movies. A woman who loves the people around her with her whole being. Are you prepared to tell her that her life doesn't matter?" With that Decker sat down.
"Breathe, Jem," Leonard told her.
"Is it supposed to take this long?" Chekov muttered.
"I don't know, laddie," Scotty said, he was just as worried as Jemma.
"The judge is making the best decision his can make. That takes time," Uhura told them.
"It's not that hard," Stiles said. "She's one of the best people I know. Hell, she's one of the best people that we all know."
"Look at that, John has a heart," Jemma quipped.
"Don't tell anybody," the –temporarily- wheelchair bound detective told her just as Decker walked over to them.
"Judge is ready to rule," the lawyer informed them.
"Alright, people, let's do this," Chris said before giving Jemma a kiss on the cheek. "Whatever happens, you still got us. And I'm sure McCoy would smuggle you outta the country if he had to."
"That's not a bad idea," Leonard chuckled as they walked back into the courtroom.
"We'll see," Jemma smiled.
After everyone was settled, the judge came in. He looked over the room after he sat down. "This case has dealt with metaphysics, with questions best left to saints and philosophers. I'm neither competent nor qualified to answer those. Is Jemma a machine? Yes. Is she the property of the city and the SFPD? No. We have all been dancing around the basic issue. Does Jemma have a real soul? I don't know what she has any more than I know what Mister Stone or Mister Decker has. But I have to give her the freedom to explore that question herself. It is the ruling of this court that Detective Jemma, unit number JTK-seventeen-oh-one, is hereby granted the rights and privileges of a human being. Good luck, young lady."
"Thank you, your honor," Jemma replied to the judge.
"This court is adjourned," the judge hit his gavel and that was it. Jemma had rights just like everyone else.
"Please tell me that my limited duty is ending early," Leonard said when Chris called him, Jemma and the others into his office the week after the trial.
"I doubt we're that special," Stiles, who was out of the chair but using a cane, said.
"You're not, I am," Leonard smirked.
"This isn't about either of you," Uhura chuckled.
"As usual, Uhura gets the gold star," Pike smiled before he tossed something at Jemma, which she easily caught. "Welcome to being one of us."
"Oh my…" Jemma said giving their CO a tight hug. She turned to look at them and opened the small leather wallet to reveal her badge and new department ID. "Not bad for a bot, huh?"
Leonard smiled, "Not at all, Detective Kirk."