Chapter Text
“Android or gynoid?”
Nicolas Wolfwood sat in the safest chair of his apartment. His back was to a wall with no windows. The chair itself was pushed back against it. The living room was sparsely decorated with one other chair, a bookshelf, and a simple low table. None of them were in the way of the room’s exits – a door out to the hallway and a door to his bedroom. Not that Wolfwood thought that Meryl Stryfe, sitting in the aforementioned other chair, would let him leave until she was done.
“What?” Wolfwood hadn’t quite kept track of the conversation, as it was mostly things that he had heard a few times before. What the trial ending meant, what the conviction meant for the rich wrinkled men that would suffer it, what he could do now that he had no more obligations to the State’s attorney. Now though, Meryl was taking him down a path that he hadn’t mapped out a script to.
“For the service robot.” Meryl stifled a sigh. “The models come mimicking a human male or human female. Well, the ones my department has access to do.”
“I’m an adult. I don’t need another babysitter, robot or human.” Wolfwood did his best not to slouch.
“Barely. We both know that you’re younger than you look.”
After everything that happened, Wolfwood had the body that he should have had ten years in the future. It should have been something that was grown upon him bit by bit. Muscle growth here, bones lengthening there, filling out gradually and slowly. The drugs and modifications made puberty shoot through him like it was fired from a salmon cannon. Thankfully he was a guy. Wolfwood couldn’t imagine what it was like for the girls who were pumped with testosterone and came out the other side looking like men. Their crying still haunted him, if he let himself dwell.
Back to Meryl’s question. “Whatever, I don’t care. I can take care of myself.”
“The fact that you’ve been a shut-in since the trial says otherwise.”
Wolfwood gave up on trying to be upright and slouched further into his chair. That was an accusation that he couldn’t deny. It had been a while since he left the apartment Social Services had assigned him, and this was the first meeting he had had with Meryl that was not at the courthouse or her office.
“Which was what? A week?”
Meryl gave Wolfwood a long look of disbelief.“Try a month, Nicholas.”
Oh.
Meryl stood up, brushing down the front of her white pencil skirt. “As your social worker, and someone who cares about your well-being outside of that, I want to make it easy for you to care for yourself and feel safe. A service robot will help. It will be able to cook, clean, keep track of your medications, and accompany you outside.”
Wolfwood stared straight ahead.
“I’ll put the paperwork in and it should be delivered next week.” Meryl said as she headed towards the door of the apartment, which she shut behind her with a solid wooden thump.
Wolfwood stared in the direction of the sound fo r a long moment. It had taken him a while to get used to that sound over the grating metal of a cell’s barred door as it scraped against squeaky wheels. Once more he was alone.
There’d only be a week to enjoy it.
Wolfwood’s muscles relaxed in phases. The tense small knots in his neck gave way first. His back muscles followed, with his limbs after that. When his fingers finally released his knees Wolfwood felt like he could breathe again.
The door was closed. He was alone. It was safe.
For ages the cell had been the only place that he could actually relax, and the same could be said now for this apartment. There was no way that Wolfwood could deny what Meryl had said. As usual, she was right. Losing time was as normal as breathing. Even the trial, which had things happening at a comparative breakneck pace, had lasted longer than Wolfwood guessed.
Wolfwood breathed in and forced himself to get up. There were things he should do; eat, for one, continue to page through the books and laptop that he’d been assigned – no, given . He was given those things. They were his. The clothes on his back were his. The body, his body, was his own. He owned things. And soon he would own another.
A rock felt like it settled in Wolfwood’s stomach. He’d seen some robots walking around the courthouse: little black boxes on wheels that patrolled the halls, messengers with inhuman-humanoid bodies,and the security robots that looked so human. Wolfwood hadn’t even guessed what they were until Meryl pointed out the glowing green eyes, and the thin black seam that outlined the side of their necks, bisecting them into having a distinct front and back.
If the robot that Meryl was getting to babysit him was anything like those… Would it make him any different from the Eye of Michael bastards that had owned him for so long?
Wolfwood went to his bedroom, closing the blinds against the early afternoon sun. There wasn’t any use in eating, and if he stayed awake his mind would just turn over itself in circles. In sleep, he could escape the present and the future into the horrid, comfortable, familiarity of the past.
Silence was broken by a steady ting of metal on metal. A running figure’s shadow broke and lengthened the shadows of the factory’s machines. It dodged between the half-built torsos and arms. A string of eyes watched as it tripped over a raised door jamb. A rolling wave of sound, more metal on metal, urged the figure to scramble back to its feet and go forward.
There was no exit. Unless…
The room had rows upon rows of shipment packaging. It just needed to find one that hadn’t fully locked yet.
It was a long shot, but if it worked, then then the figure would be able to escape and be hidden for a good long while.
Meryl had said a week. Wolfwood paced around his living room, going from corner to corner while waiting for the delivery guy. With every step it felt like his freedom was slipping through his fingers like grains of sand. Even though he was expecting it, Wolfwood still jumped when the doorbell went through its jingle. If anyone asked it was because he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a while.
Wolfwood wiped his hands down the front of his shirt. His palms stayed sweaty anyways, making the handle for the door feel slick as he slid it open.
“Package for Nicholas Wolfwood.” The delivery person passed Wolfwood a tablet. “Sign on the line, please. Your finger is fine.”
Right, right.
As Wolfwood made a squiggle that barely resembled writing, a robot wheeled in a six-foot-tall box. Knowing that there was probably something human shaped inside, the box was more like a coffin. Fitting.
The delivery robot looked part humanoid and part machine. Instead of legs it had a trio of heavy-duty tires, the top half was a dark plastic chest that encased its hardware in its torso, with two long arms and a rectangle for a head that had what looked like camera lenses stacked vertically. The delivery person kicked the base of his robot to get it moving causing it to squeal as it lurched forward. It was little more than a cart to him. Having the robot meant that there’d be less wear and tear on the human from carrying heavy packages. Damn shameful way to treat something you owned, Wolfwood thought.
There was no way for Wolfwood to know if the delivery robot processed it, but he gave one of its arms a thankful pat after it deposited the box in the middle of his living room and started to roll backwards towards the door.
Wolfwood watched through the door’s peephole to make sure that the delivery person and his robot had completely left the hallway before he felt safe enough to start opening the box. It may have been his imagination, but he thought that the delivery robot’s arm gave him a wave as it turned the corner.
Figment of his imagination. Had to be.
The box seemed to not have any sort of handle or seam that Wolfwood could get his fingers under to open it. He ran his hands over the pale, opaque sides. It really should not be this hard to open a fucking box , he thought. Maybe the top? Nah, can’t reach .
Wolfwood’s hand easily was able to lay flat on the top of the box when he reached up.. He still wasn’t used to the several inches he gained. Right .
Feeling around on the top of the box, Wolfwood was able to snag his fingernails against a seam that raised up easily, exposing the button that should open the box. He pressed it and backed away, unwilling to stand too close while a new unknown entered his space.
A thin cloud of steam hissed out from the widening seam where part of the box pushed out and away from the rest. The lid divided in half and pulled back to nest along each side. The android inside was beautiful. Wolfwood couldn’t think of another word for it — him . He — it — was packed in the box with a form hugging tub that was surrounded by what looked like dry ice.
The torso — chassis? — of the robot was dinged up. Wolfwood could only call the dark lines scars, and they criss-crossed over the robot every which way, and there were a few places that looked like a rather major dent was hammered out, or a sheet of off colored metal covered an area like a patch of scar tissue. The left arm definitely came from a completely different model. It was a dull grey color, the change sharp from the pale pseudo-skin. Though the fingers were fully articulated, the joints were not seamless, the head of the bolts sticking out like little hills. Same with the elbow joint.
Wolfwood wrinkled his nose. For some reason he had expected a new one. Stupid . The government wouldn’t want to spend much on one of these. Even so, the robot was beautiful, even in its imperfection. Its — his? — face was finely carved, and the yellow colored hair looked soft to the touch. If it weren’t for the chassis that the head was attached to, one would have thought it was the head of a living human, Same with the right hand and the feet.
Now how did this get turned on…