No Such Thing as Accidental Infidelity

Oswin

"It's all a question of creating life, you know? And playing god. But what's the difference between playing god and becoming a god, really? What is a 'god'? People will worship anything if it sparkles enough. But I'm getting ahead of myself – take Nios, for example; her creator abandoned all the synths, just made them and got bored, didn't even want anything to do with the sentient ones. Isn't that what god did to humanity? And is creating life really 'playing god'? People create life all the time, does that make genitals some divine instrument? God makes people able to self-replicate and pisses off. But if you don't piss off, would that make you better than a god, or too weak to be one? Not that I want to be a god, let me get that clear, I can't think of anything worse than so many people forcing all of their aspirations and hopes onto me. But if I made something then would I have to listen? You know, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's nothing more than having a pet. Or maybe the message of Jurassic Park hasn't sunk in yet. You're a machine, what do you think?"

"I do not possess the capability of conscious thought, Miss Oswald," Helix's cool voice answered Oswin's stream of thoughts she was saying out-loud. She never normally thought aloud, because her mouth couldn't keep up with her brain, but she was distracted doing something else and multi-tasking slowed these processes.

"I'm just not sure that creating consciousnesses is the thing I should be occupying my time with, you know?"

"I do not know."

"Of course you don't…" she sighed. For a few moments only she went back to tinkering with a lot of little bits of gold-plated metal and clockwork, working through a magnifying glass. Then she resumed, "And if you create something that can't ask you for things, what kind of servitude is that? Like I've built myself a slave. And that's not full-consciousness, so it's pointless, something that can't ever ask for anything and doesn't possess the ability of want. No offence."

"I do not possess the capability of being offended."

"I think the desire to want anything is what draws the line between consciousness or not. Every organic creature wants something, even a fruit fly. It's a pretty typically-pathetic human thing to want something that never wants anything from you in return. And there it is again! Want! That's it, I think. It's want-plus-intelligence which equals… life. Organs are just, I don't know, icing on a cake that's already intricate enough without crap like bowel movements and burping."

"What is this, the smartest girl in the universe tackles human nature and religion?"

Oswin had been so preoccupied with watching her hands and speaking to Helix she hadn't heard the door to her laboratory above the console room slide open. Maybe she ought to make it ding, or something, whenever she had a guest. But this was a welcome guest, so she didn't mind – not that she had ever given Jenny a key. Who needed a key when they had a sonic screwdriver and a penchant for sneaking around, she wondered? She looked up from what she was doing and smiled.

"Hey!" she greeted Jenny brightly, "I've missed your ugly face showing up here unannounced while you've been off licking out that vampire of yours."

"Ugly!?" she exclaimed, ignoring basically everything else Oswin had just said. Probably on purpose.

"I'm kidding," she said, leaning on her elbows on the table towards Jenny, who stood with her arms crossed near the door. Then she made a show of eyeing Jenny up and said, "Everyone knows you're totally tasty."

"Wow, thanks."

"What brings you around these parts to see little old me, then? You're surely not just here to humour me by letting me think out loud at you?" she asked, Jenny walking over to come and stand next to her. Oswin was just smiling, watching her.

"I don't know, seems like a bit of privilege hearing your thoughts."

"Well I have some real gems sometimes, Jen – like, if I shagged your girlfriend, would it constitute masturbation?" she said mock-thoughtfully.

"You let me know when you reach a valid conclusion so I can take precautions to keep you well away from her. And don't call me 'Jen'," Jenny said, pulling out the stool next to Oswin's at the bench and sitting down.

"You'll be so busy keeping me away from Ravenwood you'll forget to keep me away from you," she said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That you swoon every time I walk into a room."

"I didn't think you did much walking anywhere lately," Jenny said. Oswin fake-gasped and leant away from her.

"That was a bit harsh to come from your new regeneration! Aren't you supposed to be all docile and non-snarky these days?" Oswin asked her. She shrugged.

"Why? Was that mean? I'm sorry..."

Oswin laughed, "Cute. Really, though, what do you want?"

"Where's your boyfriend?"

"Just one teleport away if you try any funny business."

"Ha, ha."

"He's setting up an orphanage," Oswin said, and Jenny stared at her, "Yeah, I know. It's so amazing. I think he might be the most pure-hearted person, like, ever. Next it'll be a school for gifted-yet-disadvantaged youth, or a hospice. Then again, having to date me seems like charity work sometimes. Maybe one day he'll make an honest woman out of me out of the goodness of his heart." Jenny seemed to kind of like hearing her say this stuff about Adam Mitchell. "What?"

"You have a healthy relationship, don't you?" she said.

"Yeah. Which always surprises everybody," Oswin said a little bitterly. She wondered if Jenny had just come there to talk to her. She could have done, she supposed. "Why?" Oswin turned back to her delicate tinkering through the magnifying glass. Her lab was full of all sorts of half-built, lazily constructed devices, a lot of which didn't have much purpose. But this she was working on now? It had purpose. Just not a name.

"Everyone thinks you're going to cheat on him with me."

Oswin raised her eyebrows but didn't look away from her work, "I'm not, so don't get your hopes up. I wonder what it is about Clara that they think is lacking in so much integrity? Whatever it is, it rubs off on me. Even when she and Jane Austen-"

"What about Jane Austen?" Jenny asked sharply all of a sudden, taking Oswin by surprise.

"They, um… my, you're very out of the loop. Hasn't anyone caught you up on what you've missed? She had her fight with Rose. Two fights, actually, but the second was just an argument. Not the pummelling like the first one," Oswin said, "They all went crazy, you know? Because of this… Project Crystal thing. While most of you namby-pamby Time Lords were off feeling sorry for yourselves because you caught cold. I can't be bothered with it all now – but it was a drug that made Rose go completely off her tits and try to murder Clara, dragged her through all sorts of time periods. It just so happened that in one of them she ended up smack-bang in Jane Austen's bed."

"And what did Jane Austen do?" Jenny asked in a very serious way; Oswin was not used to Jenny growing so serious sometimes.

"Kissed her. Then Rose tried to strangle her. Your dad keeps taking the piss about it," Oswin laughed slightly, "Why? You know what Clara's like."

"What's Clara like?" she continued with her seriousness.

"A babe-magnet. Or chick-magnet. Whichever one sounds more sexist, I pick that one," she shrugged, "Don't you start going on about how you think Ravenwood's going to cheat on you. She wouldn't do that in a million years – and the pair of you might have a million years if you don't go crazy-paranoid on – fuck!"

"What?"

"I'm trying to solder this thing and you're distracting me because you're my pretty friend whose relationship I'm invested in," she muttered, changing the setting on the electronic magnifying glass so that it zoomed in much more than it had been before. "You need a surgeon's hands for this. And Flek told me after I did that enucleation on you I should never try and perform surgery."

"Well what is it? I'll try," Jenny offered, "I have more finesse than you, and I can't get distracted by myself." Oswin sat back and eyed her for a moment.

"You and your dodgy thumb?" she asked.

"Yes, my dodgy thumb. My dodgy thumb has more collective grace than your entire body – not that that's hard," she remarked.

"Ouch," said Oswin, and then she awkwardly got up and stood at the side of the stool, baying Jenny to retrieve her cane from the floor where it had fallen as she did, so that she could stay standing up with relative ease. Jenny shifted over after that and stole Oswin's stool. "So what you're doing is-"

"Literally connecting components to this very elegant and bendy circuit board you've managed to make," Jenny finished her sentence, "I have a degree in advanced mechanical engineering. I know how to solder."

"Wow. Now you've managed to turn me on."

"You were turned on anyway."

"But now it's worse," Oswin complained, leaning on the desk next to Jenny with one hand. She was right next to her, too, invading her space, but only because she wanted to keep a close eye on what Jenny and her weird thumb were doing to her creation.

"Speaking of Flek, didn't you say she was going to get me some sort of brace for my thumb the other night?"

"I did, in fact; I've been conferring with Martha about it, we had a video call yesterday," Oswin said, "It was a bit cute. Quaint. Anyway. You know braces? As in teeth braces?"

"Yes…?"

"Well, the thing about your thumb is – according to two very attractive medical professionals – it's wonky. Hasn't healed right. Something to do with the severity of the damage combined with you running off to Ravenwood's sex dungeon for two weeks where your rapid healing couldn't be tracked," Oswin talked as she kept a sharp watch on what Jenny was doing with the circuitry, ready to stop her if she made the slightest mistake, "So they've decided that your thumb needs to be forced back into place. As in re-breaking it." Jenny nearly dropped the soldering iron.

"What!?"

"Oi!" Oswin leant over and grabbed hold of her hands before she could do any damage to the circuitry, "What do you think you're doing!? That's a very sensitive nervous system you're fiddling with made out of wirelessly-transmitting local data-nodes!"

"I'm not having anybody break my thumb again!"

"Pay attention to what you're doing, would you? That's a living thing," Oswin snapped. Jenny frowned. Somebody else cleared their throat, and they both glanced over, Oswin still tightly gripping both of Jenny's hands to keep her from ruining all her careful crafting. Nios was over there; she'd just come in. Oswin really needed to sort out the security on her lab.

"Hi!" Jenny smiled.

"What's up?" Oswin asked.

"Were the two of you just kissing?"

"Kissing!?" they both exclaimed, "No!"

"Why are you wrapped around her?" Nios asked Oswin. It had barely even registered with her that she kind of was wrapped around Jenny, holding her hands, having an argument with their noses barely two inches apart.

"She's damaging my circuits."

"I'm not going to damage them – let go of me."

"Do you promise to be careful?"

"I was being careful until you said someone's going to try and break my thumb again," Jenny snapped. Oswin narrowed her eyes at Jenny for a few seconds, then relinquished her, moving back slightly.

Looking at Jenny's hands every few seconds, Oswin asked Nios, "Did you want something?"

"That depends on if I'm interrupting some sort of illicit, lovers' rendezvous," she said wryly.

"Ha, ha."

"You said you would lend me a book."

Oswin was confused now, and it took her a few moments to remember what this was all about. She realised with a sudden, "Oh," and then moved away from where Jenny was at the lab table, taking her cane and half-limping to the other side of the room, where she picked up a book.

"What book is it?" Jenny called over.

"Don't be nosey," Oswin said.

"It's her brother's book," Nios answered, Oswin rummaging around with all sorts of things on the desk until she pulled a copy of Fyn's book with its smooth, synthetic pages out from the refuse, throwing it to Nios. Nios caught it, but Oswin was a rubbish throw so it was pretty much a miracle that she managed to.

"I thought you don't like Fyn's book?" Jenny asked.

"Because it's pretentious. I don't know, he's my baby brother – I practically raised him. It's just… odd. After being away for… well it doesn't even feel like for long..." Oswin became lost in thought for a second.

"What do you mean, raised him?" Nios inquired, turning the book over to read the blurb. There was no blurb, though, there wasn't much of anything except the name and the title. It had been procured by some obscure publisher, that was why. It was hard enough to get a budget for physical books at all in the 5100s, let alone afford to go printing fancy pictures and whatnot on them.

"Newsflash – my mother was a horrid woman who couldn't be bothered to raise her own kids. And here the lot of you are thinking I've always been unable to behave like a normal human being; up until I was seventeen I actually functioned very well as a member of a secluded and sheltered society. I was more a mother to Reker than our real one. He's named his two twin daughters after me."

"Aww, that's so sweet!" Jenny said, fawning.

"Pay attention!" Oswin snapped at her again.

"What is it you're making her do?" Nios asked.

"I'm not, she offered, because she was distracting me and I nearly messed up what I was doing," Oswin said, "It's a nervous system."

"Made from circuitry?"

"Well it's a very simple one," she said, "He's not alive just yet, though, I haven't finished the AI programming."

"Hang on, you're making an AI?" Nios asked her seriously, "To do what?"

"Help me," she answered, "Like… I don't know, like a pet. Not an AI like you're an AI – life is a spectrum, you know? It's not a contrast between intelligence and stupidity that draws the line between synthetic and organic life, it's purely a question of biology, and not every example of synthetic life has to equate to a replication of a human being. I'm not spoiling the surprise for the pair of you, so don't ask me anymore questions." Nios stayed, holding the book, watching Jenny delicately solder for a while longer.

"I'll take my leave, then. I don't want to interrupt your date."

"Yes, yes. Run along now and be sure to tell Donna all sorts of lies about how Jenny and I are having an affair," Oswin said as Nios walked out, "Make the details extra-filthy. Who knows what we were doing – but it sure did involve a lot of projectile vomitting" And then she was gone.

"Do you have to be like that?" Jenny asked.

"Like what?"

"You know. Disgusting."

"Um, yes. It's my whole thing. Haven't you noticed?"

"I try not to. I think I've done. Come and check," Jenny requested, so Oswin limped back over with her cane to scrutinise Jenny's work. "Well? What's your judgment?"

"Adequate."

"Adequate?"

"I'm a perfectionist. It'll do," she shrugged, "That's all you're getting. Don't hold your mechanical-engineering-whatsit over my head, I'm cleverer than you are, you're forgetting." Jenny made a grumbling noise of acknowledgement. "Anyway, did you want anything? That's got to be the third time I've asked you."

"Do you think I'm a bad person?" Jenny asked her abruptly.

"You? A bad person? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in my whole life."

"For using guns, though."

"Guns don't kill people, other people do," Oswin said, "Has somebody been having a go at you?" And then Jenny spun her a story of an ex-pupil of Clara Ravenwood's calling her a hypocrite for preaching pacifism and non-aggression while shooting someone in the head who 'could have been saved.' "That's crazy. That sort of mutation from an unstable SAI? Using the SAI again would probably just make it even worse. And a different SAI would have a different isotopic signature, they're all unique devices. Like fingerprints. The kindest thing after killing him would be to put him in a zoo."

"Zoos aren't kind."

"Did you miss the point I was trying to make? Don't beat yourself up. A black-and-white sense of morality is nothing more than a gilded cage."

"I'm trying to figure out if I should go and see Clara or not," Jenny said.

"Ah, so you came to see me instead, for some sort of over-the-clothes quickie?"

Jenny seemed to remember something that amused her, "My dad asked what a quickie is today. I told him to ask his wife." Oswin laughed. "But for the record, no I did not. Would it kill you to not make comments like that when everybody already thinks we're sleeping together?"

"Oh, please, people think you and I are sleeping with everybody we talk to for more than ten seconds. Not in the least my own sister – and just the thought makes me want to ingest old semen until I choke on it."

"That's revolting."

"Again, I feel like you missed the point I was making. But you only saw Clara – what? The night before last? Can't you just talk to her on the phone?"

"Says the girl who literally moved in with her boyfriend immediately after they got together," Jenny pointed out, and Oswin actually didn't have a way to argue with that. She tried, but ultimately stayed quiet, thinking about this, "Besides, stuff's happened. Maybe I won't even stay the night."

"You think Clara would let you leave her house without you sucking on her clitoris at least once?" Oswin said.

"I'm going to be sick!"

"The thought of sucking her clitoris makes you want to be sick?" Oswin asked 'innocently.'

"Shut up! Stop saying that!" Jenny demanded, and Oswin burst out laughing.

"New Jenny has a weak stomach."

"You know what, I will go see her. If only to escape from the filth that is your mouth," Jenny told her sharply, "You're being worse than usual."

"It's because I'm in a good mood. Don't worry, I'm manic-depressive. I'll want to kill myself again in a few days," she said, smiling, which cast an odd tone over that whole sentence.

"Plus, there's a whole alligator steak in Clara's fridge I need to do something with. Make meat balls, or something."

"Mmm, moist, meaty balls," Oswin said sultrily, then changed tact, "But, um, if you do want to go see her then who am I to stop you? You're right, I'm hardly ever away from Mitchell. As long as you're both on the same wavelength about it and you're not smothering her, there's no harm. And the best way to find out if you are smothering her would just be to ask."

"Right… thanks…" Jenny said, clearly taken aback by Oswin offering her a kernel of somewhat genuine advice, rather than more disgusting jokes only she found funny. "It's strange, you know, because being a teacher was her dream job. I feel bad for her sometimes that she can't do it anymore. But I wonder if Alpha Clara will ever get the idea in her head that she ought to try and teach?"

"As long as she takes the Doctor with her and doesn't leave me to babysit that old fogy."

"The Doctor? Teaching in a school?" Jenny asked incredulously, getting off the stool so that she could leave Oswin to her tinkering, "I wonder what that would be like…"