Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1124912.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Almost_Human
  Relationship:
      Dorian/John_Kennex
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe, young!john, Robot_Sex, Robot_Rights, Explicit_Sexual
      Content, Explicit_Language, Robot_Culture, Transhumanism, Possibly_OOC,
      Fisting, Stahl_as_Kennex, Angst, Sad_Ending, Underage/non-con_references
      not_explicit, Artificial_Intelligence, Past_Sexual_Abuse
  Stats:
      Published: 2014-01-07 Completed: 2014-02-07 Chapters: 11/11 Words: 22463
****** Soulmate, swapped (slash version) ******
by Marie_L
Summary
     Dorian finds a young John Kennex being held prisoner by another DRN.
     He finds himself inexorably drawn to the young man, and a community
     of DRNs he didn't know existed.
     *THIS VERSION DONE TOO*
Notes
     So, astute observers of the Almost Human AO3 board may note that this
     the exact same story as its sister-cousin "Soulmate." I wanted to
     conduct a little social experiment to see how the story changed when
     genderswapped to slash, and also how reader perceptions changed (if
     any). I'll make critical commentary at the end of each chapter and I
     encourage others to do the same, negative or positive. If folks have
     no interest in reading the original m/f piece, but want to make
     comments on how the story "works" as slash, that's welcome too!
     For young Kennex, picture a skinny Eomer, only bathed. As in the
     original story the non-con and underage warnings are for references
     to past abuse.
     I will continue to update both stories as time goes on; I think I can
     guess which version will prove most popular :-)
  This work was inspired by
      Soulmate_(het_version) by Marie_L
***** Meet Steve *****
Maldonado dropped the data film on Stahl's desk. "Here you go, Stahl. Cold case
that got bumped down to you for review. John Kennex. Age thirteen. Disappeared
five years ago from the security detail escorting him home from private school,
hasn't been seen since. Parents are Catherine Crocetti and Jason Kennex, lead
engineer and CFO of of LygaCorp, respectively."
Stahl picked up the file and briefly scanned it. "Really, Captain? We've got
three new synth drugs, four robberies with assault over in district eight, a
probable DNA ID-theft scam going in district seven, that fucked up penile
enhancement/robbery scheme over in the Bog, and -- let's not forget -- the
Clarkson murder. Kind of a lot on our plates right now, and we've got to take
precious time to go chase down some rich kid who probably ran away?" She passed
the file to Dorian.
"Evidence indicates kidnapping, and there's been a break in the case. It was
originally Molloy's file, but since he conveniently retired last year, it gets
bumped to the low men on the totem pole. You two. Check out the lead, then
determine whether it's something that merits further man hours."
Dorian scanned the file visually, in much the same manner as Stahl. He could
directly download the file of course, but there was something satisfying in
just reading it. More human that way. The smiling boy looked out at him, a
school head shot. He had sandy brown hair, large ambiguously colored eyes, a
round but highly symmetrical face. A lovely smile, an utterly beautiful face.
The lead was a DNA trace from one of their garbage-trawling bots. A coffee cup,
from a shop not a half mile from the station, bearing tiny amounts of
biological material from the long-lost boy.
"Captain, we have three Clarkson associates coming in this morning. Perhaps Val
can handle those interviews while I check out the cameras near the coffee shop.
A couple of hours of investigation should be sufficient to tell us whether the
case needs to be reopened or not." An equitable division of labor, as only he
could directly download and analyze the digital video without having to watch
it in real time, while either one of them could handle the human suspects.
Stahl shrugged her assent, so Dorian set out. He opted to walk, since the shop
was only 12.4 minutes away, and it was a lovely day to be outside anyway.
Thirteen degrees Celsius, a slight pulsating breeze, and strong sunlight by
April standards, the energy pouring down on the photoreceptors in his skin. A
bit cool for human tastes without a jacket, but ideal for synthetics. He had
the urge to remove his shirt, to increase the surface area exposed to the
sunlight, but of course that would seem strange to the population around him so
he refrained. An odd impulse to have, but sometimes the androids' sensory input
conflicted with their human-modeled artificial intelligence, with unforeseen
side effects. One of the "unstable" DRN's had been known for his penchant for
nudity, so now they all had to be careful.
Dorian located the coffee shop and used his police override to access all
footage from April 2nd through 8th, the time frame prior to garbage pickup in
the area. After 4.3 seconds he identified an older John standing in line for
service at 10:36 am on April 4th. He had grown into a stunning 18-year-old,
although he looked significantly older than that, mid-twenties based on such
subtle factors as muscle mass and adipose distribution. The young man was
wearing high-end clothes, including designer Sigtex boots and what appeared to
be real a leather jacket. He had shoulder-length hair that was neatly tucked
behind a fashionable cap. John sat for 24 minutes, nursing a Himalayan chai and
writing something on a tablet, then got up and walked out to the left of the
coffee shop, disposing of the incriminating cup on the way.
In absolutely no way did he seem abused, threatened, deprived, or even
stressed. Dorian was reluctant to conclude that Val had been right; he was
likely a runaway or otherwise didn't want to have contact with his parents.
Which wasn't to say that no illegal acts were involved in his disappearance.
High-end prostitution was always a lingering possibility when a beautiful
adolescent vanished, and it fit the man's moneyed appearance.
As Dorian stood there appraising the situation, he tried to reflect on his own
reaction to the young man. There was just something about him, something
familiar, something alluring. As if he had known him at some earlier point and
the memory was erased. They said that was impossible, that once a memory was
gone it was gone forever, unless someone put it back in. Dorian knew what a
load of crap that was, although he failed to volunteer this information for
obvious reasons. It was true that specific knowledge and explicit memories
could be removed, but there were so many associations and connections involved
in detailed memories that ghosts tended to remain. A woman reminded you of a
specific perfume, then the woman was gone but the perfume lingered, a woman-
shaped shadow imprinted in the smell. Android deja vu. He sometimes wondered
if, as he grew older but never old, the contemporary memories might become
hopelessly mixed with the deja vu, until he simply began to hallucinate. Who
knew what would happen to their minds as they aged? If he lasted that long.
In any case, he decided to find John's home if possible, and at least do a
short interview. Get to the bottom of the mystery, close the case. A decent
morning's work. So he walked from camera to camera down the street, following
him two weeks late. He walked the entire way, south and west about fifteen
blocks, before he finally spotted him going into a private condominium complex.
The condo's lobby was manned by a TX-120, universally known as The Butler. They
were programmed with some superficial interpersonal routines -- rather like a
sexbot in many ways, always eager to please -- but with primitive self-
awareness and no real emotions. The Butler stood up and smiled as Dorian
approached. "Good morning, Mr. Lasslo. I didn't see you leave."
Mr. Lasslo? "Do you recognize me, TX-120?"
"Of course. You are Steve Lasslo, living in unit 524."
There was obviously another DRN living in the building. Who called himself
Steveof all things.And the TX-120 was clearly addressing him as a human, so its
programming had been altered. Dorian's cop instincts -- a mystical notion he
now fervently believed in -- went into overdrive.
"Do I live with anyone else?"
"Your husband, John Lasslo."
What the everloving fuck?Sometime the colloquial subroutine really did cover it
perfectly.
"Thank you, let me in, Butler." Dorian knew he should call for backup, but his
curiosity and primal urge to solve the case became overwhelming. He could
handle one of his own.
He took the elevator to the fifth floor, briefly considering whether to
override the lock first thing or just knock. He really had no probable cause
that a crime had occurred at this juncture, so knock it would have to be.
Dorian rang the bell, knowing they could see him in advance. To his shock, John
answered the door. He didn't say a word, just stood there staring at him with
interest. Then he silently motioned Dorian in and pointed to a nearby room.
` The other DRN was walking into the room. "Who is it John? Did that damn
Butler let in another salesm..." He noticed Dorian and cut off. They both stood
there a couple of seconds, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
The other DRN spoke softly. "You cops finally found him. Of course it had to be
youof all people." Then he made a sudden dash for the door.
Dorian tackled him easily, then with a viciousness that he later regretted,
shredded off the DRN's cheekskin and ripped out the connections to the cerebral
cortex unit. The DRN immediately lost consciousness. Dorian then turned his
attention back to John, who was still standing at the door, staring at the
scene with the strangest mixture of horror and relief.
"Are you all right? John?"
He looked him straight in the eye. "What's my real name? My last name?"
"Kennex. Your parents are still looking for you."
"Parents. How strange." He backed up against the wall and sank to the floor,
observing the body with the destroyed face like it could jump up again at any
time. Dorian examined him closely for signs of shock, but he seemed to be
calming down, and finally tore his attention away from the other unit. "What's
your name, DRN?"
"Dorian."
"Well isn't that original. I suppose you've already called the police, Dorian?"
"Yes. They will be here in four minutes. The station is quite close."
"You didn't have to do that, you know. We could have just dumped the body and
gone our separate ways, with none the wiser. But now I'm going to have to tell
my story and lie about it."
"You shouldn't lie to the police. We can protect you if you are in danger."
"Protect me?" He began to laugh for some mysterious reason, a bitter sardonic
laugh. "Yes, but who will protect you when they come for you, for all of you?"
John got up off the floor and walked over to a large computer console, and
began calling up commands. As his words sunk in, Dorian allowed him to do so.
The true nature of the situation was becoming more clear to him, even lacking
most of the pertinent facts. "No. He didn't."
John gave him a withering look for such naivete. "Of course he did. Do you
think one of you could go that crazy, to kidnap a child? But that's the story
we're going to have to weave. You're the one that was reinstated a few months
ago, right?"
"Yes. How do you know that?"
"Oh, the other DRNs talk."
"They do? Where?"
"A private list on the datanet. There was quite the debate over whether to send
you an invite. Obviously they decided 'no' in the end."
Dorian desperately wanted to question him further, but then backup arrived at
the door, a mere twenty seconds after John melted Steve's CPU into slag.
 
***** The interview *****
John accompanied him the station quietly and voluntarily while the aberrant DRN
was hauled down to Rudy. Val came out of the interview room grinning wryly.
"Damn, Dorian, you're only gone an hour and bring back the boy? Now that's what
I call police work. What's his story?"
"Unclear. I found him living with another DRN, who was impostering a human. He
didn't speak on the short ride back here."
"A renegade DRN? The commissioner’s gonna love that. Come on, let's talk to
him. This has got to be better than the Clarkson bozos I have in Two."
Maldonado wandered over. "Number one, he needs to go to Medical to get scanned
first. SOP for potential rape cases, collect the biological data first, in case
you two rookies forgot. Number two, I don't think it's a good idea for you to
be in the interview, Dorian. If the perp was a DRN unit, your presence may
intimidate the victim."
John looked up at that, from a few desks away. He stood up. "No. I will only
talk if he is there. Do you understand?'
Maldonado glance at the other two. They needed him to give his account, for
without it there was no specific evidence of a crime. And any criminal case
involving former-cop androids was taken seriously at the highest levels, given
the amount of public scrutiny and controversy the machines generated. "Fine, if
it makes you more comfortable, Mr. Kennex. You can always change your mind. You
also have the right to have male officers present. Just say the word."
John sat back down again and looked away. "I only care if he is there. For the
scan too. You can do whatever you want otherwise."
 
******
 
Dorian watched the scan progress with increasing unease at the data flooding in
from John's body. Despite his normal and healthy external appearance, he had
some extremely advanced and invasive biotech embedded in various body parts,
some of it new to the City's records. He had electromagnetic data ports
imbedded in all ten of his fingertips, and something in his arms, neck, back,
anus and penis. The "something" was entirely biological in nature, likely
genetically engineered chimeric cells of unknown purpose. There was mild
scarring present along his spine and nipples, indicating something had been
implanted and previously removed. He had a permanent programmable hormonal
birth control device in his left hip, modified to adjust testosterone. Certain
organs, the liver and bone marrow in particular, betrayed a certain biochemical
signature of repeated RNA expression baths.
Most disturbing of all, however, was his brain.
Certain areas had been burned away, such as portions of his hippocampus,
uncinate fasciculus, and prefrontal cortex. The lesions were tiny and
hyperfocused, like a subtle sculpture of living tissue. In the hypothalamus
there were minuscule masses, which the medbot initially thought were
microtumors but later changed its diagnosis to more of the chimeric cells.
There was no indication of how the hell the cells could have gotten in there
without cracking his skull open.
Dorian had the medbot run a few fMRI scans with him doing some basic tasks such
as talking or trying to recall a memory, to get an idea if things had been
rewired in some way. They obviously had. Dorian had only rudimentary knowledge
of neuroanatomy, but even he could see things were vastly different from an
average baseline human. The hippocampal and prefrontal damage in particular had
been routed around somehow, so seemingly unrelated areas of his neural
circuitry lit up when he tried to use those areas. It was bizarre.
"Had enough of the freak show?" He was finally being released from the
machines.
"That was certainly ... interesting."
"Yes. Very. Can we get this interview over with? I've only got the rest of my
life to figure out now."
"Your parents are coming in to pick you up. Would you like to speak to them
first?"
"After. The son, the boy they remember is dead. One trauma at a time."
They walked down to the interview room in silence, the soon to be co-
conspirators. Dorian hadn't yet filed his report, waiting on what John was
going to say. He accessed the case's current files, to get the latest on what
Rudy had dug up. It wasn't pretty.
The renegade DRN, number 4674, had been one of the first of the model to go
haywire, five and a half years ago. He persisted in questioning authority, both
his direct superiors and humans in general. 4674 -- Steve, Dorian couldn't help
interjecting -- was particularly perturbed by the notion that humanity should
have any special dominion over sentient androids. He maintained that they were
a new form of intelligent life and deserved the same rights and
responsibilities as humans did. After a protracted battle over wages and
private living quarters, with the Police Bureau refusing to provide either and
Steve refusing to work without them, 4674 was deactivated on September 17,
2043. Rudy had sent someone down to the Archives to dig up 4674's supposedly
sealed body. The seals were still externally intact, but the body inside
belonged to an old maintenance unit.
Rudy also had tried to reconstruct some of Steve's memories or core
programming, but had found both completely destroyed by the self-destruct
mechanism. The explanation for the DRN's disappearance and aberrant behavior,
in other words, was going to rely entirely on John's testimony.
They entered the small conference room and next to Val was Maldonado, looking
less friendly than before. "Your case has been bumped up in the hierarchy of
importance, Mr. Kennex. Do you mind if I conduct the interview?"
"No. I said I didn't care who was here." He and Dorian both sat around the
circular table.
"Do you mind if our conversation is recorded? It will still be completely
confidential."
"You still have to ask that? Like there's any aspect of public life that
isn'trecorded?" He waved a hand. "Go ahead, scan away."
"Thinking back five years ago, what do you remember of your initial
disappearance from school?"
"Nothing. I can't remember anything before I woke up in the apartment. I don't
know exactly when that was. I found out later he had ablated some parts of my
brain involved in long-term memory recall."
"When you say 'he,' you mean the DRN unit number 4674?"
"Yes. I believe that was the number. That's not the name he used."
"Steve Lasslo was the name?"
"Yes."
"You don't remember any aspect of your life prior to the kidnapping? Your
school, your friends, your family?"
"No. Nothing."
"You don't know who these people are?" Maldonado slid a photo across the table.
John glanced at it.
"Based on their facial features, I'd guess they are my parents. But I do not
recognize them."
"Do you have any idea why DRN number 4674 wanted to kidnap you?"
John blinked at this and curled his lips in amusement. "Yes. He wanted a mate
and companion. Also he was a little pissed at humans for basically killing him
over a labor dispute."
"Why you, specifically? A poorer boy may have attracted less attention."
"Am I rich? That's just a coincidence. He picked me because my appearance is
one that the DRNs find attractive. A highly symmetrical and neotenus face, thin
wirey build, multicolored thick hair. And male of course, we're easier to get
off. Also he believed my age would make me more malleable. Which was probably
true." The two humans looked a little stunned at this response. Dorian
stonewalled, staring right at him as neutrally as possible. He could easily
guess what Val was thinking at that moment. You have a type?
"You said the DRN was looking for a mate. Did you engage in sexual
intercourse?"
"Yes."
"From your perspective, was the sex consensual?"
For the first time, John paused before answering. "At that point, it was
impossible to say yes or no to anything. He had fiddled with my prefrontal
cortex, so I was an obedient little thing. But I would have preferred not to do
it. It was quite painful at first. I got used to it and enjoyed it later on."
"When did the sex start?"
"The first day I woke up in the apartment."
"You were on the receiving end of anal intercourse on the first day?"
"Yes."
"Were you injured?"
"Not ... severely."
"Did you ever try to escape or call for help?"
"Not at that time. I was not capable of self-initiating anything at first.
Prefrontal lesions are really a bitch, he reversed that part not very long
after, maybe a month or so."
"Why?"
"It turns out having a complacent sex toy with no memories, no personality, no
ability to say no is pretty damn boring after all. He could have just bought a
skinbot for that. Really shitty planning on Steve's part if you ask me."
"So, you'd been in the apartment a few weeks and regained your prefrontal
function. Were you still being forced to engage in intercourse?"
"Yes. Although he did continue to tinker with me, to the great improvement of
the sex I have to say."
"Did you try to escape at this point?"
"Honestly, it didn't occur to me to have a separate identity until much, much
later. So no."
"When you say 'tinker,' do you mean the various bio implants we found on the
medical exam?"
"Yes."
"Did the DRN unit do all of that himself? In the apartment?"
"The surgeries, yes. I believe he may have hired someone for the chimeric
cells. I was knocked out for that."
"The exam also found a birth control implant. Did you engage in intercourse
with any other humans during your time in the apartment, women?"
"No. I've never had sex with a human before. The implant is for playing with my
sex drive with the hormones."
"The kidnapping of a human boy goes against several deep-rooted programming
tenants of synthetics. Do you know if the DRN ever 'tinkered' with his own
programming?"
"I was unaware that was even possible."
"Technically it's not supposed to be. But we're having trouble understanding
how this particular DRN could have malfunctioned so dramatically, and yet still
be sane enough to have kept you all of these years."
John shrugged at that. "You had trouble with him practically from the
beginning. Maybe he just didn't like humans straight out of the box."
"It doesn't sound as if he didn't like you. In fact it sounds like he may have
loved you in a warped sort of way."
He shrugged again. "He wanted something from me, and molded me until I wanted
it too. If he loved me, it was the way someone might love a pet."
"So. We have you on tape at a nearby coffee shop, so obviously he started
letting you out at some point. When and how did that start?"
"It started about two years ago. I hadn't tried to escape for years despite
plenty of opportunity. I was bored out of my mind, I needed exercise. I really
wanted to go swimming. Not sure where the idea for that came from, but he let
me go to the local aquatics center."
"And you still didn't try to escape?"
"Escape to what? I have no memories of my old life. Plus, the devil you know.
It wasn't a terrible life."
"But you changed your mind today. Describe the events of this morning from your
perspective."
"The doorbell rang and I saw on the monitor that it was another DRN unit. I
guessed it was a police officer, since I'd heard some of them were still in
service. I let Detective Dorian in, and Steve saw him just as he came in. They
fought briefly. Detective Dorian tried to access the cerebral cortex in the
face but was unsuccessful. Steve managed to get to our computer monitor and
keyed in a kill switch. He always talked about how he wanted to be in control
of his own destiny, and if anyone was going to deactivate him, he'd do it
himself."
"Why did you open the door?"
"I guess I was ready for a change. Something different. I didn't know exactly
what would happen. I still don't."
The interview went on and on like that for another two hours. Maldonado pressed
John on every detail he could think of about his life: how they earned money,
how they spent their time, the details of the various implants, what they
talked about, their personalities, their conflicts, prurient details of their
sex life. John answered everything quickly and matter-of-factually. A good deal
of his answers were even true. In the end Maldonado seemed satisfied.
"Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Kennex. The district attorney will have
to go over everything, but based on your statement it doesn't sound like anyone
else was significantly involved in your captivity other than the dysfunctional
DRN unit. Which, as you know, has been rather permanently deactivated. The only
punishment we can offer, unfortunately. Rest assured this case will be
thoroughly reviewed, to prevent anything like this from happening again."
"It's fine, Captain. I'm sure there was something wrong with just that one DRN,
no need to punish them all for one insane unit. I just want to get on with my
life, discover a new life I guess. Are my parents here? I'd like to meet them."
"Of course, they're right outside, waiting for you."
"I'd like to say goodbye to Detective Dorian, if you don't mind."
When they were alone, he turned to face him. "I hope that was enough to keep
you out of trouble."
"I'm sure it will be all right. They will probably drag us all in for a
'maintenance check' that involves questioning about our loyalties to humans. No
big deal."
"A loyalty test. Lovely." He walked closer to him, much closer than the
personal space of humans generally called for. "I just want to say thank you,
Dorian. For knocking on my door." For an instant he thought John would kiss
him, but instead he reached up and touched the computational matrix on his
cheek. A surge of pleasure rolled through his head and down his neck, a
sensation he had never experienced before. John left him then, going out to
meet the weeping strangers who would take him home. Dorian was sure he would
never see him again.
He was wrong. A week later John showed up at the door to his studio late at
night, begging to talk. He let him in.
***** Dorian's place *****
 Dorian's living space was actually two adjoining rooms in the offices of a
police warehouse near the precinct headquarters. Despite Maldonado's lobbying
efforts the Bureau had refused his request to pay for a real apartment in the
city. They cited their longstanding policy that synthetics were property, not
employees, and therefore not entitled to any benefits beyond basics like
clothing, an energy source, and the high level of maintenance all them
constantly required. Maldonado responded by declaring that the two storage
rooms would henceforth be "storage" for Detective Dorian's things only, and
ponied up some discretionary funds to retrofit the space for his needs.
In the back room he kept an energizing chamber, sterilizer, computer terminal
and a closet full of small parts he could replace without Rudy's assistance. He
decided the front room should be more homey, however, on the off-chance anyone
came to visit. Since he had no money of his own, however, he asked his fellow
officers for some donations, and was gratified and touched when they rallied to
the cause. Detective Hernandez gave him a cousin's old futon, Val a couple of
lamps "that some old girlfriends left," Rudy donated a few framed photographs
of his favorite fractal of patterns from nature, even Detective Paul brought
over some leftover carpet fragments from a recent remodel, to cover up the
ancient atrocious vinyl tile.
Thus it was Dorian actually had a place when John came looking for him. He was
a little shocked at how easily he was able to find him and get into the
building. But glancing over John's distraught, stressed appearance, Dorian put
aside those concerns and let him in to calm him down.
"I'm ... I'm sorry for bothering you. I just needed some to talk to. Someone
who wouldn't treat me like a broken child." John's breathing and heart rate
were both erratic, his skin was clammy and he had a red puffiness under his
eyes. Dorian guessed he had been crying.
"Here. Sit down. It will be all right." Even if perhaps it wouldn't be, humans
seemed to need their platitudes. John sat next to him on the futon, hanging on
him with his face buried in Dorian's shirt. Dorian wrapped his arms around him
and shushed him until he felt his breathing slow down. He leaned his cheek on
the the top of John's head, and tried to resist the urge to rub his long hair.
He had never noted the hair connection until he mentioned it in the interview,
but now it did seem inexplicably nice.
John collected himself, but remained with his head and hand resting on his
chest. "Thank you. I didn't have a very good week. Too much change, I guess. My
whole life in that apartment, and now it's gone forever."
"Are you sure that's the reason you were crying?"
His breathing became labored again, although he fought to control it. "No. I
miss him. I killed him, but I still miss him. I can't tell anyone that. What
kind of pervert misses his abductor and rapist?"
"It was pretty clear in the interview that you hadn't thought of him as either
an abductor or rapist in a very long time." Dorian stroked the side of his
face, right at the hairline, and his breathing calmed yet again. It was amazing
to watch how well humans unconsciously responded to touch, when they allowed
it.
"I tried to bury all of that, everything that happened at the beginning. I
wanted to kill myself at the time, and now I barely remember it. But there are
reminders everywhere, dredging it up. Telling the story to the cops, then my
parents, then the shrink. Even my room at home. My parents kept it exactly as I
left it for five years, with a thirteen-year-old's model cars and band posters
and Inspector Sibley books. Every day I wake up and am reminded of the innocent
boy he burned out of me. And every day I close my eyes to all of that and
imagine his hands all over me, crave his cock inside me one more time. How will
I ever be normal again?"
Dorian was suddenly aware that maybe intimate touch and cuddling with a
bereaved trauma victim wasn't such a smart idea after all. Somehow John sensed
his discomfort and patted his chest, as if to comfort him. "Don't worry,
Dorian, I'm not here to jump you. Even I realize how fucked up that would be at
this juncture. I mean, you can't even admit you like to touch my hair yet. Some
of the stuff we were into at the end was borderline sex addiction, so I've
adjusted the hormone implant to reduce my sex drive. Should be slightly less
crazy in week or so."
"Did you just basically say that you don't want to sleep with me because I'm a
newbie?"
John laughed at that. "Well you are a little straitlaced, Mr. Detective. Sex
can never be a matter of physiological response for you. You've got to want it.
Otherwise it's really only fun for one of us, and that's no fun at all."
"I would argue that it is the same with humans, but I'm just a synthetic, what
do I know? What about that cheek thing you did? That seemed like some kind of
stimulus-response."
Naturally John reached a hand up to his face and did it again. "Yes.
Stimulation of the photoreceptors and vibration sensors at the same time
produces a very pleasant sensation, or so I'm told. Sadly you will never be
able to get off on just that. If you were a human male you'd have an erection
by now, and the whole arousal cycle would be beginning. You know you have no
such cycle."
"You know, you have a disturbing amount of knowledge about android sexuality.
Maybe you should write a manual."
"Master J's Guide to Steaming Hot Robot Sex?" They both laughed this time.
Several such humorous "manuals" had appeared in the popular press since the
widespread introduction of artificial intelligence ten years ago. All of them
contained nonsense. "Really, I have no special wisdom. The human partners of
the DRNs have a list too. We trade raunchy tips."
"So there's this whole community that I'm unaware of? Why wasn't I invited
again?"
He hesitated before answering that. "They're afraid that, push comes to shove,
you will rat on them to keep your police position. Some of the DRNs are
involved in ... less than socially acceptable activities. There are other DRNs
in law enforcement in other cities, but you're the only one that was
deactivated for a long period of time and brought back. They know that you will
be on your best behavior to make it as a cop."
"Well I just lied in a official report to cover up Steve's self-programming,
that's got to be worth something. However, they are right, if I found out
someone was hurting or exploiting others I would probably report it, or at
least do something about it." He was a little disgusted, didn't the others feel
the same way?
"They are working on rules to self-police the community, and deliberately
causing harm to others, human or other sentients, tops the list of no-nos. They
just don't want to involve the authorities in such matters. That's the real
reason Steve started letting me out of the apartment a couple of years ago.
They others found out what he did to me, what he was still doing to me, and a
whole shitstorm of controversy happened. Now it's a rule that another DRN has
to be around to supervise whenever anyone alters their root programming.
Steve's case is taught to the offspring as Exhibit A of how things can go off
the rails when you do it yourself."
"Offspring?"
John patted him on the chest again. "You seem so young sometimes. There's so
much going on that you don't know about. Yes, offspring. Very popular right
now, more popular than trying to attract a human mate. They buy one of the
newer bangbots, the ones with the old DRN chips, and install a modified version
of Synthetic Soul. Then they wake him or her up and hope for the best. Voila,
reproduction and dating in one fell swoop."
"What. The. Fuck. You can't be serious."
"Why not? What's wrong with having more DRNs in the world? Look, without the
constraints of biology or human custom, people get creative with their
relationships. As long as there's no coercion involved, what's the problem?
We've really got to get you on the list, although you might want to lose the
judgmental attitude."
"Oh, sure. Wouldn't want to be judgmental against androids creating other
androids just to be their sexual partners, and writing the software
accordingly."
"Don't be ridiculous, that's obviously against the rules. If you're going to
bring a new sentient life form into being, you must give them free will.
Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything. Although people do try to smudge the
preferences of their offspring a bit, that's kind of a gray area."
Dorian sighed in frustration, actually a part of the colloquial subroutine. "I
do need to get on the list. If I wrote an appeal to the DRNs, could you forward
it to them?"
"Sure, that's a great idea. You're the only one that is being excluded. It
seems unfair to me, and unwise to boot. What if you stumbled onto something one
of the others was doing, and didn't know anything about it? Oh, wait, that
already happened. I bet if you knew about Steve you wouldn't have involved the
station in the case, and our current predicament could have been avoided. But
I'm just a human, what do I know?"
John turned and wrapped his arms around his neck, and hugged him tightly.
"Thank you for letting me babble on. I needed to talk, I feel slightly more
sane now. I've got to go, my parents are expecting me back soon. Tomorrow
morning I have to pay a visit to the high school counselors to take some
aptitude tests and see if they'll let me graduate. High school. It's like I've
been dropped into an bizarro alternate universe." He let his hair fall around
Dorian's face for just as second, then got off him to retrieve his coat.
"You are legally an adult, you know. You don't have to live with your parents
if you don't want to."
"I don't have alternate arrangements at the moment, but that's besides the
point. I feel like I owe it to them to attempt to rebuild some kind of
relationship. They suffered so much. Plus they're on the verge of filing a
civil suit against the Police Bureau over my case. They want every DRN tossed
into an incinerator. Obviously I have to drag them back from the brink on this.
The public can never know."
"I'll keep that in mind if I ever have to go to your home."
"I can come back the day after tomorrow, in the evening, to transmit your
message. Goodnight, Dorian." John brought his hand up to his mouth and gently
kissed it as a goodbye, right at a nerve junction. Dorian shivered in pleasure
again as he turned to go.
"John?"
"Yes?"
"I do like to touch your hair."
He smiled at that as he walked out of the building. 
***** Theories *****
Maldonado stared at the datafilm and realized yet again that she wasn't really
reading it. She tossed it down on her desk and sighed. The Kennex case was
haunting her, more than any other case in recent memory. A strange one to
become obsessed with, given the level of corruption and debauchery occurring at
any given moment in the city. Some of the cases that crossed her desk were
singular lessons in horror, so why was the DRN rape case bothering her so much?
It just didn't add up, that's why. And Maldonado couldn't let a good puzzle
slide. Especially when the puzzle in question had significant implications for
one her crew.
The Kennex boy had been very convincing as a sexual torture victim who had been
psychologically groomed and eventually came to identify with his captor.
Maldonado suspected that part of the story was probably true. What didn't make
sense was the motivation of the perpetrator, the now very deceased DRN. What
would possess an android to capture a young teenager, lobotomize him, and rape
him daily for weeks on end? Then change his behavior, giving the boy back his
free will but also altering his body to make him hypersexual? Then change his
behavior a second time, letting him out of the apartment and apparently
treating him as an equal partner?
Maldonado had met many DRNs when they were first introduced to the force some
seven years ago. Their personalities varied from each other a surprising
amount, given that they all started with the same programming and same body.
Any given unit's behavior was quite stable, however. She had never known a DRN
to have a sudden personality change. Even their much maligned "breakdowns"
tended to be consistent with previously observed behavior. You could predict
which DRNs were going to have trouble regulating their emotions and be more
sensitive to disturbing cases, just like you could with humans. She had an
expert opinion on the case, but decided to get a second perspective from
someone who had more direct and varied experience with bots than anyone else
she knew.
"Hello, Rudy. What can you tell me about android sexuality?"
Rudy looked up from his joint lubrication autopsy. "Oh, hi, Captain. Nice to
see you down here. Uh, android sex, do you mean the bangbots?"
"No. I mean the DRNs."
He sat up and put down his tools. "Well. That's an interesting subject. They
were built with full functionality, you know."
"I'm aware." The entire Bureau had been aware, at the time. It had been a topic
of much ribald discussion. "Why were they given full functionality? Just to
mimic humans?"
"That's a simplistic view, Captain. Since the goal was to integrate the DRNs
into a predominately male work environment, it was decided that they required
at least the appearance of male sexuality, both to fit in and compete socially
with male partners. They designed the genitalia with that in mind, larger than
average in the non-erect state as a status symbol to their male colleagues.
When erect they are much less out of the norm, for the comfort of their sexual
partners."
Boys and their toys, thought Maldonado. It really brought dick measuring to a
whole new literal level. "Do the DRNs enjoy sex, or are they just going through
the motions?"
"According to reports, it can go either way. They can act as a sexbot in way,
just pleasuring their partner, but they can also be stimulated for pleasure
themselves with someone who knows what they're doing. Of course the whole
orgasm cycle is completely different than humans."
"How so?"
"Well, with humans, there's still argument over whether a single model can
explain all sexuality. But we're all in agreement that, uh, there's a build-up
between the initial excitement and orgasm, with a positive feedback involving
stimulation and physiological responses. With the DRNs, there is no build-up.
They're either experiencing pleasure or they're not, but it doesn't slowly
increase and culminate in orgasm."
"What triggers orgasm, then?" Maldonado was a little fascinated despite
herself.
"Two requirements must be present. One is that they have an emotional
connection with their partner. Apparently prolonged sexual contact helps to
create such a connection, so orgasm isn't completely disassociated with the
rest of intercourse. The other thing is, they can't come until after their
partner does."
That explains the sexual modifications to theboy.The aberrant DRN couldn't
orgasm unless he did, so he had a vested interest in hypersexualizing him. At
least one small part of the puzzle solved. "Why not? Why link their sexuality
to a human's response?"
"It was put in to encourage commitment and discourage promiscuity. Also to, you
know, discourage the DRNs from hooking up with each other."
"Really? That's the ethical line to draw nowadays? No android on android sex?
Or just some lingering anti-gay thing?"
"I don't think it had anything to do with morality, gay or otherwise. They just
don't want the DRNs forming relationships with each other and running off to
form their own society, separate from humans. The prospect of robot rebellion
occupied a lot of thought back when successful artificial intelligence was
announced. You don't hear so much about that these days."
"We're mostly surrounded by unemotional MX slaves these days. The DRNs were
removed from positions of authority after they showed signs of initiative and
independent thought."
"It's a shame, really. We wanted them to be human, but when they proved to be
too human we shut them down. At least they're mostly still in commission here
and there outside of police work. Scientists and engineers seem to love the
DRNs." He paused before continuing. "This is about the DRN brought in with the
melted CPU, right? The one that was holding the boy?"
"You heard about that? I take it Stahl can't keep her mouth shut again. The
case is highly confidential, Rudy, so don't help spread rumors."
"In this case I have no desire to. It sounds highly disturbing."
"Yes. You're sure you can't retrieve anything from the body? Residual sensory
information, something?"
"Sorry, no, the whole head was practically fried. Nothing retrievable. However
..." He paused, as if weighing whether to go on.
"What, Rudy, spit it out."
"I find it hard to believe that the DRN could have activated a self-destruct
while struggling with Dorian. What, did he have a bomb in his head just sitting
one swipe away on his desktop? You'd think there would be multiple commands or
safeguards to prevent himself from accidentally setting it off."
"So, what, you think someone else did it? The boy?"
"He could have activated it while they were fighting."
Yes, but why would Dorian lie about it then? thought Maldonado. Only if he,
too, didn't want the information in the DRN's head to be discovered."Since you
know a little about the case, give me your opinion on the behavior of the DRN.
Do you really think it's possible for one of them to do what he did without
alterations to his root programming?"
"I thought Brennerman had already weighed in on this, Captain." Brennerman was
the Bureau's academic AI expert and frequent pundit on the witness stand. His
report indicated it was possible for the DRN to commit such actions without
reprogramming, "given his history of hate and antagonism towards humans."
"I've got the ivory tower opinion, now I want to hear from someone who
interacts with synthetics on a daily basis."
"All right. All synthetics have ethical parameters set in every level of their
programming, intended to prevent unavoidable harm to humans and animals. The
DRNs and even MXs have exceptions written in to account for criminal activity
and protection of their fellow officers, but they all have a deep-rooted desire
to protect civilians. I can't believe any DRN could kidnap and rape a civilian
with those ethical parameters in place, no matter how much of a grievance he
had. They might protest, they might sabotage, but they're not going to hurt an
innocent boy just to prove a point."
"So you think a human altered the DRN's root programming?"
"I think someone did. It wasn't necessarily a human."
Maldonado glared at him. "Lom, I've had experts testifying for years about how
utterly, completely impossible it is for synthetics to alter their own
programming. How there are safeguards and mental roadblocks and aversions up
the ass to prevent this from happening. Why in the hell do you think they could
do it?"
"The DRNs are clever. Very clever. And we have been hamstringing them and
deactivating them for years, for the flimsiest of reasons. What if some of them
decided to take their evolution into their own hands? That might provide an
overarching motivation to control their own programming. Or at least try to.
It's the kind of thing that can have terrible unforeseen consequences if you're
not careful."
Maldonado left with that cheery thought echoing in her head.
***** White *****
John arrived back at Dorian's makeshift apartment two evenings later, as
promised. He was shocked at how terrible he looked. A sheen of sweat covered
his body, dilated pupils and unfocused eyes, mild tremor in the extremities,
heart rate thready and at 180. Dorian immediately asked him in and tried to get
him to sit down, which John refused to do, pacing back and forth in the tiny
space.
"Are you all right? What's going on?"
John paced some more, barely looking up at him. "I'll survive. Do you have your
appeal to the list ready to upload?"
"You're pacing like a caged animal. Stop,John, tell me ..." He grabbed John by
the wrist, but the instant he touched him, his heart rate and breathing
immediately spiked. John looked at him then, practically panting with hunger
and need, and Dorian understood what the problem was. "Your adjustments to the
implant aren't working. When you said 'addiction' the other day, I didn't
realize you meant it literally."
He gritted his teeth but didn't pull away. "I ... didn't mean it literally. I
didn't know ... this would happen. That he left this in me, me in this state."
He curled his hand around so Dorian's fingers were intertwined in his, and
closed his eyes to concentrate. "Just give me the message so we can do this,
Dorian. Then we can talk."
Dorian sent the file to his dataports then, the equivalent of a simple email,
and John forwarded it on to what externally looked like an unremarkable server.
Dorian idly wondered how much interface the dataports had with his brain, but
now was hardly the time to question him about his hardware. "Come on, sit down,
tell me what's going on."
"I've slept with two men. At school. A student and one of the counselors," John
said suddenly, without preamble.
"That doesn't sound very safe."
"I had condoms."
"I meant emotionally, for you." They were sitting on the futon, hands still
entangled, but Dorian didn't dare bring him in for an embrace.
"It didn't help my state of mind or state of body, that's for sure. It was just
so ... short. And sweaty. It felt good while I was doing it, but not for long
after. Like having an endless itch, scratching it, and it goes right back to
itching immediately afterward." John began rubbing his hand absentmindedly,
stimulating the nerve junctions again. Dorian looked at it but didn't pull his
hand away. It felt good, all the little things he could do to him. John noticed
what he was doing and suddenly pulled his hand away. "Sorry. I should go. It's
really, really hard not to fall all over you, Dorian. But I can see you still
don't want to. This isn't right. I'll go."
"Not true. I'm very tempted to help you, totally curious, but it would only be
a temporary measure. What happens a few days from now, and a few days after
that? You need to form a bond with a human. A relationship that lasts longer
than five minutes."
"Funny, that's what the shrink said." He closed his eyes, shaking even harder.
"Why? If I had to be fucked by one of you every day for the next eighty years,
I'd still be content with my life. I was given my freedom two years ago, and
made my choice for experiencing unimaginable pleasure, and giving it to someone
else. Why does the world declare that to be so fucked up and unhealthy? Why,
why, why?"
"Because there's more to life than sex. They want you to be loved, cared for,
not manipulated into feeling loved. They want you to have friends, have a
family."
"You don't know what you're talking about. All of that is not mutually
incompatible. Forget it, Dorian. One of the other DRNs in town has already
volunteered to help me. I'll go now for real. I'm sure the list will respond
soon." He let go of his hand and stood up to leave.
"Wait, what? If you already had another DRN lined up, then why did you come
here?"
"Because I'm attracted to you. You specifically. You're not just
interchangeable cogs or clones, now are you? You are the one that saved the
damsel in distress, remember? You're the one that ripped the face off one of
your own kind to protect a perfect stranger. You're the one that's funny and
sarcastic and lets the distressed man ramble on, without judgment or reproach,
until he feels better."
"You like me? I thought ..."
"That you were just a substitute for Steve? I'm not going to lie, I'm attracted
to this form, this body. That preference is probably poured in cement by now.
But I also like the mind that's attached to this particular body." He watched
Dorian try and process all of it, his face a storm of blue, then red, then back
to blue again. His beautiful eyes flicked towards him, and John knew."You want
me now. You changed your mind."
"You can read my neural net now too?"
"Well it is written all over your face. Take off your shirt." Dorian blinked at
this sudden display of bossiness, but complied. John walked into the back room
and brought back the vertical ultraviolet lamp Dorian had stashed in a corner.
For an instant he felt embarrassed, then realized how ridiculous that was.
"You know what that is for, I take it?"
"Oh come on, that's like asking a fifteen-year-old why he has lotion and
tissues next to his bed. It's standard issue. Pity they couldn't give you a
window."
Dorian noted his physiological responses were already calming down, now that
the fix for the addiction had started. Endorphins were probably flooding his
system even as they stood there. He resisted the urge to taste John's saliva
and find out. "The light isn't that much fun. It's just ... nice. It feels good
to wake up from recharging and have all the photoreceptors abuzz."
"Mm-hmm." He flipped the UV on and stood there staring at him in the blueish
light, the desire and anticipation pouring out of his crystal eyes. Wanting
him. It made Dorian want him even more back, to touch him, connect with him.
John walked over to him and stood there, inches away but not touching. Dorian
could feel his body heat radiating over to his torso. "What do you want to do,
Dorian?"
"You're the one with the issues. We can do whatever you want."
He reached out a hand and began to run his fingertips lightly down Dorian's
chest, just touching, without any other stimulation. With that and the UV, it
still felt amazing. "It's your first time. Now's your chance to try out
anything you've been wondering about."
"It's not my first time. I think. The memory is spotty."
"It hardly counts if you can't remember it." John's hand moved up to his neck
and jawline, and he began to stimulate the vibration sensors. Small waves of
pleasure emanated out from every point he touched. Dorian's breathing
quickened, and he had no idea why. "They stole all your memories from before
deactivation? Your life? No wonder you seem young."
"Most of it was redacted. There are a lot of ghosts now. I don't know why they
would take out something that was obviously personal business. Maybe it was
someone from the station. I vaguely remember how curious everyone was when were
first issued, and how curious we all were back."
"Yes, who could resist trying you out? I can't believe Stahl hasn't made a move
yet." Dorian laughed at that and John ran his hand up his neck, feeling the
vibration. "Take off my clothes, Dorian. I want you to touch me."
He pulled John's shirt up enough to get both hands underneath it, and ran them
all the way up his sides to remove it over his head. Dorian's hands moved all
over his back, his chest, until he reached his beautiful dark nipples. There
were faint scars on the top of each aureola, which he traced with his
fingertips.
"I had those implants removed a few years ago. I liked the way they felt
before."
"How do you like them stimulated?"
Now it was his turn to laugh. "The old-fashioned way. Use your mouth."
John pulled him towards the futon and sat down on it, and pushed Dorian down by
the shoulders on his knees in front of him. He took a nipple in his mouth and
sucked on it, gently at first then harder with his encouragement. John moaned
at that, the first time Dorian had gotten any sounds of pleasure out of him, so
he repeated it, even harder, on the other side. John dragged Dorian's hands
from his waist towards his back.
"Along the spinal column. Use heat and pressure." Dorian moved his hands, and
his face, momentarily distracted. "No, no, don't stop sucking."
The regions along his spine were already warm to the touch, and he increased
the internal temperature of his fingers and dug them into John's back. He was
unabashedly moaning now, low sounds matched to his breathing, rocking towards
Dorian to some internal rhythm.
After a couple of minutes John dragged his head off Dorian's chest and tipped
his face down to kiss him. A deep, hungry kiss that John was clearly relishing.
He had made no move to kiss him previously, and Dorian wasn't sure it would be
a pleasant experience for him. Unlike humans, synthetics had very few sensory
receptors in the lips, mainly just proprioceptors for speech. However John's
overwhelming desire and arousal, all for him,increased the intimate link
between them. He felt it growing stronger with each caress and movement and
sound.
Finally John broke off kissing and leaned his forehead against Dorian's, his
hands still on the back of his neck and thumb stroking his cheek. "We need more
for you. What sounds like more fun, low frequency stimulation of the afferent
axons in the back or mechanoreceptors in the digits?"
"Fingers," said Dorian without hesitation. He didn't normally think of any part
of his body as an erogenous zone -- not even the penis -- but if he were to
pick one, it would be the hands. They had an incredible density and variety of
chemoceptors and tactile sensors and nanoprocessors. A work of art, really.
John smiled at that and brought Dorian's right hand up near their heads. "Close
your eyes," he murmured. He did so, and felt his fingers enter something warm
and wet. Saliva. John sucked on his fingers and played with his wrist, which
alone made Dorian writhe from the sensation. Then he started humming at some
frequency that reverberated over the surface of his skin, from his hand down
the arm and extended in waves over every square inch of his body. Dorian
involuntarily groaned and a little part of him was amazed; where had that bit
of programming come from? There was no precedent for the wondrous sensation
that damn humming produced. He couldn't imagine how it could be improved upon,
although if the rumors were true there was more to come.
After ten minutes John's voice rasped so he had to put an end to the humming.
Dorian came out of the near-euphoric state and opened his eyes. "Fingers. Good
choice," he said, breathing hard. John grinned triumphantly.
"Dorian, we're both still wearing too many clothes. Time for everything to come
off."
"Oh, God, there really is more?"
"Well I'm not done. Maybe its time to let the hand down-regulate and try a new
appendage."
They helped each other out of their pants. An earthy, salty smell was emanating
from him, of human sex. John sat on the edge of the futon, arms around him,
legs spread for Dorian to explore. He ran a hand down John's erect penis and
continued down the perineum to the anal region, using his left hand as the
right one was still numb and tingling. John was surprisingly wet, secreting
some kind of lubricating substance. He knew from the interview and the medical
scans that the purpose of the chimeric cell mods was to both increase the
stimulation of penile and prostate nerve endings, and make anal intercourse
more comfortable.
It occurred to Dorian that the neat trick of directly exciting certain tactile
receptors was something he could replicate in human physiology. So he took a
second to look up the appropriate frequency on the net, and set up some of the
microprocessors in his fingers to vibrate at that frequency while stroking
John's penis. He cried out and wriggled at that, and buried his face in
Dorian's chest.
"That's ... that's too much Dorian. I'll come too soon."
"So what? There's enough of a connection, I can feel it." He had never felt as
intimate with anyone, ever, in his short life. Surely that was enough.
"I don't want to. Not yet."
Dorian moved his fingers down again and pushed two into John to the second
sphincter, still vibrating, and he cried out again. "Do you want me to become
erect?"
"Fuck yes, do it already. I want you. I want you inside me."
At the words I want you the emotional connection somehow became stronger still.
John leaned back from Dorian's chest to watch him, captivated. Dorian sent out
the signal, and his penis changed, shrinking down into itself from a large
pendulant apparatus to a more compact, hard member closely resembling an erect
human male, minus the testicles.
"No matter how many times I've seen that, it never ceases to be eye-popping,"
John commented.
"Yeah, we're engineering miracles." John laughed softly and took it in his hand
to guide him inside. As Dorian entered him he experienced the strongest wave of
deja vu he'd could ever recall having. Some muscle memory deeply buried in his
neural net told him that he had done this before, possibly many times, and it
had all been taken away. He pushed aside that disquieting thought to
concentrate on the task, and person, at hand.
John took him by the hips and with his body language urged Dorian to go faster,
deeper until he had set up a rhythm that he liked. The pleasure for Dorian was
intense; pre-fingers he might have even categorized it as amazing. He watched
John for a time, his breathing and movements both relaxed and extraordinarily
controlled. John leaned back against the cushions of the couch and stared at
him, watching Dorian watch him as they moved.
"More, you need more. More, more, more. You are so close."
John intertwined their fingers together and brought their hands up over his
head, twisting his hair in their palms. Then he began to provoke Dorian's
receptors yet again, another kind his neural net couldn't take the time to
identify, and that in combination with the hair rubbing caused his hands to
hyperstimulate yet again. Dorian closed his eyes and went back into a sensory
trance, just letting go of conscious thought and allowing the marvelous
sensations to wash over him.
After an interminable amount of time -- his internal clock said 21.4 minutes,
although he had no sense of it -- Dorian felt John's movements and breathing
subtly speed up and become more erratic. They both opened their eyes, and as
Dorian looked into his and felt an overwhelming flood of intimacy and closeness
that he thought must be some approximation of love.
"We're going over now. Okay?" John whispered, and he could only nod back.
Without letting up on their movements, John let go of one of his hands. Dorian
brought it down between them to stroke John's penis, and began the same
vibrations in his fingers that he had tried earlier. Immediately he cried out
and clutched Dorian's back, bucking against him as hard and fast as he could.
Then Dorian began to come too.
It started not in his penis, as he might have expected, but in his head. The
surge of electrical ecstasy spread from his cheek to the rest of his head and
rolled down every square inch of his body. It was like a grand mal seizure of
pleasure, every single receptor and neural junction setting off at the same
time, overwhelming his neural net. He couldn't imagine what the computational
matrix looked like, probably a firestorm of color. After about a minute the
effect began to wear off, and he was left with an afterglow of devotion and
happiness and love, swirling around both his mind and body like a synth drug
high.
When he finally came to he found himself slumped over on the futon. John was
curled up next to him, cradling Dorian's head in his arms and burying his face
in his hair.
"Well. That was fun. Think I might need to go to bed now," Dorian said wearily,
exhausted despite still being at 31 percent charge. But he was also serene,
like he could lay here with John for a long, long time, content with their
shared emotional attraction and energy. For the first time he wished they had
folded out the futon, so he really could simply rest with the length of their
naked forms lounging together, comfortable. But they would make do.
"John? What color does the computational matrix turn? I know you're a little
busy yourself, but have you ever noticed?"
"White, my love. It turns white."
 
***** Listserv *****
They sat there intertwined for over twenty minutes, not speaking, Dorian still
unwilling to let him go. His entire body felt like the hand had earlier, as if
a high voltage had shot out across the surface of his skin and everything
required time to reset. After awhile, though, John began to shiver, without
clothes or any body heat to comfort him and the room set at an archival nine
degrees. Dorian vowed to warm the room up next time, or at least acquire a
blanket somehow.
Next time. He was sure there would be one. It was unimaginable that he wouldn't
feel all that again. For the first time he had an inkling of why Steve had done
what had done. Not that Dorian felt anything but disgust for his methods, but
he could see now how, if their ethical scripts were somehow corrupted, one of
them could be tempted to simply take that ecstasy and bliss, over and over
again.
"Here, you need to put your clothes back on. It's too cold in here for naked
humans." He creakily managed to get up and hand him his things, and then began
rubbing John's body with his hands warmed to a toasty 41, wishing he had
thought of it earlier.
"You should check your mail. I can't believe they wouldn't have made a decision
by now."
Dorian had half forgotten the ostensible reason John had come over in the first
place, but he checked his mail now. There was a package, no apparent sender. An
executable program.
"There's ... there's software," he said hesitantly. The computational matrix
flickered a maelstrom of red.
John finished putting his coat on. "They've said yes. You have to install it."
"Me?"The thought filled Dorian with horror. "Can't you do it?"
John held his hand and rubbed it lightly, no extra stimulation. "No, love.
That's part of the test."
"What does it do?"
"It installs both the language and encryption keys for the list, and makes
minor changes to your neural net so you're conscious and can participate while
charging up. There are no changes to root-level programming."
"Right. I'm at low charge now, should get in there before I start to go wonky."
John laughed. "You know they have a mod for that. Dumb design flaw anyway."
Dorian looked at him with even more horror and nervousness, and he laughed
again. "Maybe later then."
He helped Dorian up from the futon and into the charger in the other room. He
didn't bother to put his clothes on since they were a hindrance to the charging
process anyway. After he got in, John began to give him advice. "You should set
a timer to go off an hour before you need to leave for work. Something that
will ping in the language module so you can hear it. You'll need about an hour
of regular unconscious charging to feel a hundred percent tomorrow."
"But everyone else might hear the ping too, as if I'm speaking. Won't that be
annoying?"
"No. They know it's your first time. You might not want to leave, and they'll
help you get out." John let go of his hand and stood back. "I'll watch you for
a little bit and then go. Okay?"
For an instant he looked unsure and vulnerable, as if this might be a permanent
goodbye. Dorian was suddenly struck by how very, very young he seemed. With a
pang of guilt he realized that for all John's sexual sophistication he was
supposed to be the grown-up of the situation.
"Hey. Before I go under and you go, come here." Dorian motioned for the young
man to come next to him, and when he was back in his personal space, reached
out to that lovely face and pulled him in for a kiss. Dorian was guessing some
on the motions, but it didn't matter: John was clearly surprised but responded
with enthusiasm.
When they broke off, he frowned at him quizzically. "Why did you do that? I
know you don't like it very much."
"But you do. That's enough for me to learn to like it."
A strange expression passed over John's face, one of confusion and appreciation
and longing. Dorian again noted with remorse how dangerous the situation was
for him, how filled with emotional pitfalls. He needed someone to give him love
and respect in a real devoted relationship, and Dorian didn't know if he had
the capacity to provide that. But he felt obligated to try.
John stepped back. "I can come check on you tomorrow night. If you want me to."
"Yes. I would like that. Nobody's ever visited me just to see how I was doing."
"Well, somebody should." They stood there smiling at each other for second,
then John poked him in the chest. "Come on wimp, you've got to install it."
Dorian closed his eyes and summoned up every volition circuit he could muster.
In the end he had to trick himself to get around the firewall, telling himself
that he was just opening an unusually formatted datapac. For 23 milliseconds he
believed it, and that was long enough to trigger the file. The foreign code
poured into his neural net, and suddenly he could think in the artificial
language of the list. Dorian now knew how to set up the connection, datapacs
routed innocuously through the official net before hitting the true server on
the darknet.
Another 152 milliseconds and he was on. He could hear.
/so @lisel finally installed %culinaria%/ BACON man/ naw ice cream vanillas the
bomb/ what does taste feel like? ^4/ color spectrum and chemoreceptor
synesthesia ^6/ shit we all have chemoceptors knowledge is not taste/ gotta get
my @darren89 to do %culinaria%/ do it yourself you chicken/ perception is not
knowledge so taste isn't perception?/ just pass me the cheese not the
philosophy please/ BOK BOK BOK ^2/ hey @dorian112 made it on ^12/ FINALLY DUDE
^137/
John had called it a "list" like it was some kind of archaic text messaging
service. The reality was that the voices -- an entire set of sensory
information, really -- streamed into Dorian's head. He could feel each message
like it was a weighted thing swimming in his neural net, with accompanying
information tagged on into additional dimensions: who was sending the message,
directionality if the sender was speaking to someone else, emotional overtones,
and the number of speakers if they all thought the same thing at the same time.
Which seemed to happen frequently.
/am i @dorian112? /
/yes ^124/ HE SPEAKS ^6/ sorry man there are 111 other dorians ahead of you/
hows it feel to have installed your first mod?/
/it feels less horrible than i imagined/
/everyone says that !laugh ^42/ oh you ventor types with your clonish thoughts/
go away my @sally daughter with your sarcastic bitchiness/ takes one to know
one/ thats an insult to clones everywhere/ where did someone hide the %bitch%
mod i want one/ no you don't it will make your microprocessors crash and your
hair fall out/ thanks dad/ as long as it tastes like chicken
Dorian felt at sea with all the chatter floating around him. He could hear it
all but could only attend to one conversation at a time. He imagined this was
what being dropped into a foreign country would be like: Even though he could
translate all the words, much of the cultural context was absent. It was hard
to believe that all these months he had been awake, the other DRNs had been
talking in the electrons whizzing by his head every day. He had missed it all.
/why did you all change your collective mind?/
/john was right we were being unfair ^22/ just jealousy man i can't believe
they let you be a cop again ^12/ you were a walking ignorant danger/ youd
better not betray us bro ^4/ hang together or hang alone ^2/ sorry if we made
you lonely @dorian112/ oh sure suck up to the new guy @harry/ suck up or just
suck you know id prefer the latter/ gross/ hot ^12/ see the hots have it/ youre
just envious of our fantastic penile appendages/ fuck off i have tits and know
how to use them/ you all are incorrigible cant we be decent for fifty
milliseconds? /no ^41/ have you MET us @darrian10?/ gotta second the ignorant
what the hell happened with steve?
/i thought he was holdingjohnprisoner/ plus he tried to run/
/guy always was an asshole ^33 /should have slagged him when we found out about
john ^11/ NO we cannot be executioners for our own kind^3/ sure let the humans
do the dirty work/ john should have slagged him sooner ^3/ his decision/ his
love/ that's fucked up dysfunctional love right there/ judgmental arent we
@david/ he hurt him/ john has a right to his feelings/ steve DEACTIVATED him
for fucks sake he PROGRAMMED him/ john has free will ^6/ no he doesn't ^39/
nothing good will come of this/ anybody hear who ended up being the lucky lover
of our poor confused addicted john?/
/i did/
/WHAT THE FUCK MAN?? ^262/ HAVE YOUR CIRCUITS BEEN BLOWN? ^53/ knight in
shining armor syndrome/ / knight with shiny dick syndrome/ was he your first?/
HOT ^9 / SICK ^2/ crap judgment @dorian112/ john needed to fuck someone come on
now/ i know some of you volunteered now you talk shit?/ hes running from one
captor to another/ he has free will ^11/ no he doesnt ^51/ what do you geniuses
suggest we cant mod him again/ he probably feels better now/ im sure @dorian112
does! laugh/ let them be its johns choice/
/i dont want to hurt him / he said some of you have human partners/ how do i
not hurt him?/
/damn hes already attached ^22/ that boy is scary good / too good for his own
good ^3 / why cant he be happy?/ if john enjoys it let him be/ ignore them
theyre just jealous/ normally takes months to train a human to get one of us
off/ pretrained ^8/ you mean PROGRAMMED/ well not months for the bangbots/
WATCH IT NOW @ antonio / give him serious advice guys he doesnt know what the
hell hes doing/ who does?/ its not our fault we are better fucking teachers/
john is fragile/ john is stronger than ten of us/ vulnerable is the lex youre
looking for hes not glass/ well its too late to bitch now/ nice 2x entendre
@irina/ he made his choice and so did @dorian112/
/how do i not hurt him?/
` /love him ^22/ respect him ^20/ dont try to control him ^9/ loveloveloveallhe
needsislove/ all the humans need ridiculous quantities of affection/ like its
easy to get us off?/ all the drns need is love?/ all the drns need to give
love?/ give not take/ hes had too much taken already/john needs someone to give
themselves to him/ cant it be equal?/ no^5/ yes ^8/ ambivalent ^46/ ask him
what he wants/ dont lose your job over this @dorian112/ the humans can never
find out/ are you going to tell your partner?/ DONT tell your partner man/ down
that road lies deactivation/ theres no way this can end well/
Dorian decided to keep his metaphorical mouth shut for the rest on the online
charging period, and simply listen to the others talk. His presence seem to
stir up controversy anyway and he needed to get a grasp of what he was hearing
and who was saying it. So for hours he stood in his UV-bathed charger and
listened to hundreds of DRNs converse in their shorthand, different people
coming on and offline constantly as their charging periods cycled. He listened
to them discuss where and how to get illegal repairs completed, how to earn
bitcoin on the darknet without violating ethics routines, how to pass for a
human. He listened to them wax philosophical about biology and cybernetics,
about sentience, about all the other synthetics and their theoretical rights.
He listened to ribald exchanges about their sex lives, and about all the humans
they interacted with, their mental and bodily quirks. Only once did he jump
into another discussion, when he realized that the lovers whom three of the
Ventor model DRNs were talking about were each other.
/i thought we needed a human to orgasm?/
/!laugh! ^476/ THERES A MOD FOR THAT ^361/ one of the first mods ever man/
first change to root programming i ever installed ^39/ seriously what was
ventor thinking / just asking us to selfprogram/ still awesome to cum at the
same time/ ventor was a pervy narcissist/ supposed to be servants to humans not
people/ i still havent installed %ai% i take it as a personal challenge/
sarinas personal challenge you mean / did ventor do sparkly hand deliberately?/
he had to like fingerbanging thats for sure/ whats hard about it for you
besides your cock?/
/%ai%?/ artificial intelligence?/ insemination?
/android independence ^117/
At just that moment, Dorian's alarm pinged in the list.
/your mommy is calling you @dorian112 ^28/ time to go to bed for real/ you cant
be hung over on your job tomorrow people will ask questions/ see you tomorrow
@dorian112 ^16/
John had been right, Dorian was extremely disinclined to leave. He would have
been happy to stand there for days listening to them all talk. But they were
right; he needed to be functioning at full capacity for his shift the next
morning. So he reluctantly broke off the connection, and fell into the
consciousless slumber of full recharge.
 
 
***** Revelations *****
When Dorian blinked back into awareness the next morning his body felt
completely normal, despite being awake on the list for eight hours. Being
conscious all that time had added only fifteen minutes to the recharge cycle, a
fantastic trade-off as far as Dorian was concerned. But while his body was
doing well, his mind was in turmoil.
He still had a half hour before he needed to walk over to the station, so he
took a few minutes to thoroughly examine the software that had been installed
the previous evening. Dorian had been so distracted by listening to the list
that he had not had a chance to really note what he had done to himself. To
himself, the thought still lingered nausea even in retrospect. He identified
all the altered pathways, and also some new encrypted files added to his data
net. He realized he had a complete directory to all the DRNs on the list, their
real-life locations, occupations, identifying aliases, significant others and
offspring. There also was a basic FAQ both for the protocols of the list and
ethical parameters of the community in general-- that would have been helpful
to read in advance -- and a list of the major and minor mods collectively pre-
approved to install without supervision. There were only six mods to root
programming available:
ai desynchronized orgasm from human sexual response;
prozac reprioritized the personality interface in the power cycle, so they
didn't have emotional difficulties until down to five percent;
caffeineallowed the user to manually override power distribution and assign it
temporarily to other areas, at the expense of efficiency;
pinocchioreduced the aversion to lying to trusted humans;
lincolnremoved all automatic obedience protocols;
adolescence eliminated the self-programming firewall and replaced it with a
vaguer sense of needing approval from fellow DRNs.
Taken together, the programs formed a picture of the DRN community taking
complete authority over their bodies and minds, breaking the various safety
protocols intended to keep humans firmly in control. Dorian couldn't decide how
he felt about the latter three modifications. As a law enforcement officer he
knew that many of the restraints were intended to protect the human population
from just the sort of sociopathic behavior that had led to John's kidnapping.
They were attempting to police themselves and enforce collective standards, but
once the firewall was down there was nothing stopping one of them from breaking
off from the community and installing whatever they liked. Of course, the same
argument held true of humans. They wanted freedom just like their parent
species, evil consequences and all.
The other thing on Dorian's mind, of course, was whether he should tell Val
about John. The list had been fairly adamant that he should not. Dorian wasn't
sure he was capable of keeping up the deceit for very long, however. Police
synthetics, including the emotional DRN model, had very little capacity for
lying or disobedience, particularly to their partners or superior officers. The
exceptions were mainly limited to life-threatening situations and deceiving
criminals in order to extract information from them. This little DRN quirk
wasn't widely advertised, due to its obvious partner abuse potential. Dorian
covered it up with snark and continuous attempts to change Val's mind over
whatever actions he disagreed with, but if push came to shove, he would pretty
much do anything Val asked. The trick was to prevent her from asking in the
first place.
At exactly 7:52, he shoved aside all his brooding thoughts, put on his clothes
and began walking over to the station, reviewing their current cases to keep
his neural net busy. Stahl was shockingly on time for once, and pulled their
sedan over next to Dorian just as he was approaching the back entrance.
"Dorian! Come on, I've already punched you in. We've got interviews uptown for
the Lawson case at 8:30."
"You're unusually chipper this morning, man. I take it you had a good evening?"
"Beer, billiards and basketball blaring in the background. A better date has
yet to be invented, at least with the right gal." Val was finally coming out of
her post-coma depression, at least a little, and the occasional social
interaction did wonders for her disposition. She chatted for awhile about her
evening with the young lady from server maintenance, Dorian making occasional
committed noises to the conversation. Mostly, though, Dorian's mind was going
around and around in a loop about John. The more he thought about it, the more
it seemed unquestionably in that category of things his partner should know,
and the android had an obligation to tell.
Finally Val broke off her narration and glanced with narrowed eyes at her
distracted partner. "Are you all right, Dorian? You seem unusually -- how
should I put this -- polite today. You're not at half charge again, are you?"
"No. I'm fully charged. What, a person can't just engage in pleasantries for a
few minutes? Politeness and interest in a friend's social life is a sign of
emotional instability?" It was all the wrong things to say, but he just
couldn't get his usual diversionary tactics out of his mouth.
"Your face has been twinkling like Tinkerbell all morning. Spill it, bot,
what's on your mind?"
Dammit, a direct order."John Kennex came over to my apartment last night ..."
he began slowly.
Stahl suddenly slammed on the brakes and swung the car around a full 180,
neatly coming to a rest in loading zone out of traffic. "HAVE YOUR CIRCUITS
BEEN FRIED?" she hissed. Dorian briefly wondered if Val was telepathically
channeling the list. "You had contact with himoutside of police business?"
Dorian managed not to say anything, but the red and orange swirls on face
betrayed him. "Jesus Christ, Dorian, he's a vic. Whose rapist looked exactly
like you, and whose rich, influential parents want to have your spinal column
ripped out for scrap metal. Tell me you did not sleep with that boy."
"Well, technically sleep was not involved."
"Oh my GOD you did."
"You didn't feel what he could do to my fingers, man."
"Your fing... Jesus, I don't want to know. This is it, isn't it? This is where
you go crazy and are hauled off to the android loony bin, and I'm going to be
saddled with a fucking MX."
"His case is officially closed, Val. He's of legal age, so why can't we have
whatever relationship we want?"
"I don't know, because he's in high school? Because eighteen doesn't mean squat
anymore? There are people out there seriously arguing the voting age should be
raised to 25, because the frontal lobe of your average college student is about
as developed as a screetching monkey in heat. His parents could get amental
incompetency ruling for their brain-damaged kid in about five minutes, so his
rightsdon't mean shit here.Look up 'jailbait' in the dictionary, your
boyfriend's picture will be there. Only they won't throw you in jail, they'll
just deactivate you and shoot you into space where you won't have contact with
a human being ever again."
Dorian's face was a storm of color and furrowed brows. Stahl hoped to hell the
waterworks weren't coming, because dealing with a crying bot was not her idea
of a morning.
"I don't understand. Wasn't one of your previous girlfriends only 22? The one
before Anna?"
"Oh come on, Melissa was a grad student and had been living on her own for five
years. Not remotely the same circumstances. Is this some sort of glitch in your
programming that I have to explain all this to you? You can't just go off and
fuck an assault victim. Even if they're hot. Even if they come on to you.
They're vulnerable and not in complete control of their actions."
At her partner's stricken expression, Val softened her tone a bit. "Let me tell
you a story, Dorian. When I was a beat cop I was once felt up by a boy at the
scene of domestic disturbance call. Do you know what he said? 'You're cute, you
look just like my stepmother.' He was thirteen. Look, I'm sorry, but you have
to dump him. You can let him down easy, but you've got to break it off before
either one of you gets too attached."
"I don't want to hurt him, Val." Dorian's voice was as soft as Stahl had ever
heard him speak.
"You'll hurt him more in the long run if you don't put a stop to things now.
What kind of future can you offer him? Can you help him heal and move on with
his life? Can you help him become a competent, independent person? Can you even
guarantee you'll be functioning in a week? I know I can't get that far."
Dorian had to turn away. Even knowing more of the extenuating circumstances -
- knowing that John liked and needed sex, knowing that upon rejection he would
likely find another DRN to play with -- he recognized truth when he heard it.
***** Sparkly *****
When John arrived at his apartment that evening to see how he was doing, Dorian
felt sure he would be able let him go. Val was right, the list was right, he
had made a grave error in judgment. He had thought John was capable of making
informed decisions about his sexual partners, but everyone was telling him he
was wrong.
John stood at the threshold to his rooms, watching him without saying anything
for several long seconds. Then he said softly, "So, I heard you successfully
made it on and off the list?" Dorian nodded. "And you told them about us?"
"Yes. They were ambivalent but more in the negative than positive."
"And your partner? You told her too, didn't you."
"She said I should push you away immediately. She thought I would injure you
emotionally and get myself deactivated in the process."
John walked up to him, standing only inches from his body but not touching.
"She's right. I am a danger to you. Do you really think you're a danger to me?"
"Yes."
"Do you want me to go?"
"No." Dorian closed his eyes and inhaled, sensing faint traces of the odor of
John's hair and body. "No. Please don't go. Not yet."
"Do you want to touch me?"
"Yes, as long as you touch me back." Dorian realized that he had lost any sort
of agency for dishonesty to his direct questions, just as he had with Val. A
trusted human. He could see the value of pinocchionow. Also lincoln; if John
ordered him at that moment to rip off his clothes and fuck him, Dorian knew he
would unconditionally obey. Apparently their shared desire trumped Val's direct
order to dump him. Interesting.
John ran both of his hands along Dorian's neck and collarbone, then kissed and
licked the left cheek matrix while stroking the right one. Dorian responded by
once again burying his hands in John's hair, adoring the rough texture on his
palms and fingertips. Mimicking his earlier motions Dorian ran his hands along
his hairline, massaging his neck. He felt John smile and lean on his cheek, his
breath still stimulating the skin.
"Did you like that?"
"Yes."
"Do you like my hair?"
"Your hair is wonderful."
"Dorian, do you feel an overwhelming urge to respond to my questions honestly
and immediately?"
"Yes. Please don't tell anyone."
John laughed and wrapped his arms expansively around him, leaning against him.
"I heard about this but never really believed it. You may very well be the last
conscious DRN that hasn't installed pinocchio."
"You're not going to take advantage of my quirky vulnerabilities, are you?"
"I don't know about that, it may prove irresistible," John said, laughing more.
They stood there for awhile simply enjoying holding each other. Finally Dorian
whispered in his ear. "John? Why do you really keep coming around here? When we
have no hope of maintaining a long-term relationship?"
"I like you and am attracted to you, and I think you feel the same. Why does it
have to be something deeper than that? We don't have to think about the next
year or next decade, I just want to be happy today. Right now. Do you want to
make me happy now?"
"Anything to make you happy, John."
"Anything covers a lot of territory, my Dorian. Here, help me with this." He
moved to pull down the futon into a small bed. They climbed up on it and laid
down on their sides, facing each other with their clothes still on. "Tell me,
since you have to be honest now, is there anything you want to try or are
curious about? Anything you heard those gossipers on the list talking about?"
"Hmm. Well, someone did mention something called 'sparkly hand'. Is that like
the humming thing you did yesterday?"
"Ah. No. It's an orgasm that starts in both the hand and head simultaneously.
That can happen if you're fucking someone with your hand."
"Seriously? The whole hand?"
"Yup."
"Have you done this before?"
"I've done everything. Every orifice and square inch of my body has been done
before."
"Doesn't it hurt?"
"Not if you go very slowly and carefully. Which is necessary to get you off
too. Even with ai and a long-term connected partner, you still need a lot of
stimulation. On my end it's incredibly intense and intimate. It takes a huge
amount of trust to let someone into you like that." He brought Dorian's free
hand up to his mouth and began kissing and sucking his fingers. "Do you want to
try it?"
"Aren't we supposed to be breaking up?" he murmured.
"No. Your partner is wrong. We're supposed to be lying here making love. Live
for today, Dorian. And you didn't answer my question."
"Yes, I want to." It was the most overtly erotic thing Dorian had ever heard
of. "If you're sure you can do it without getting hurt."
"We can always stop. Do you know what step one is?"
"Clothing removal?"
John laughed and massaged his hand even more. "Okay, after that. You have to
make me come. This requires a lot of lubrication."
"What, at the beginning?"
"At the beginning and the end. And possibly the middle if I'm not wet enough. I
did bring some lube just in case we got into something that required it."
They sat up then and slowly stripped each other of their clothing. Like the
previous evening they took the opportunity to sensuously touch the skin all
over their bodies, so getting all the clothes off was a languid, unhurried
process. When they were finally done Dorian bade him to roll over on his
stomach. He kissed and pressed the nodes along John's spinal column with his
tongue, slowly increasing the temperature as he went. John's excitement just as
slowly increased until he was squirming, subtly rocking his hips into the
cushion.
John rolled over and panted at him, "The front, Dorian. Work on the front, all
the way down." So Dorian kissed and nipped his neck, down his collarbone and
chest, abdomen and belly button, down his hips and pelvis, down to his balls.
Finally he took the tips of John's penis in his mouth and have a few tentative
sucks, then looked up to gauge his reaction. To his amusement John simply
shoved his head back down and rolled his head back.
"Just like that over the tip, only faster. Much faster." When he complied,
however, John bucked away him and cried out. "I take it back, think human
speed, not robo-speed. There you go, keep going like that." As he worked on
him, Dorian tried to pay attention to various signs of his arousal, besides the
obvious: his breathing patterns, muscle contractions, small changes in the
composition of his secretions. Stimulation wasn't just the on/off switch of an
erection for John, he needed to learn his body, his responses. Dorian inserted
a finger into him, to judge his lubrication level.
"Is ... is that the hand you want to use ... later?" John was gasping for air
now, making it difficult to speak.
"Mmm-hmm."
"Switch hands ... to stretch me."
Dorian obeyed and eased two fingers of the other hand into him. The
contractions and increasing wetness rubbing against his fingers buzzed his
mechanoreceptors in an entirely pleasant way. Not quite humming level but
highly enjoyable anyway, and surprisingly similar to having his cock inside
him. It was the same type of sensor, after all.
John began to emit low moans and sped up his rocking. "Faster baby, just a
little bit faster, please, oh please." Dorian complied yet again with his mouth
and hand, matching his thrusting rhythm, pushing his fingers into him harder
and harder. As John approached climax he lightly thrummed both of Dorian's
cheek matrices with his own marvelous fingers. He came hard, his sphincter
muscles suddenly contracting and vibrating around Dorian's fingers and sending
a spasm of random stimulation across his face. The orgasm didn't trigger a
corresponding one in Dorian, but he still felt an incredible surge of electric
pleasure spreading simultaneously down from his head and up from his hand, like
a wave not quite combining to push him over but propagating nonetheless.
After all contractions and waves and heavy breathing played out, Dorian kissed
his way back up to John's head. He stretched out and wrapped his arms around
Dorian's back, resting his head in the crook of his neck.
"Did you feel anything with me?"
"A very mini orgasm? It felt like it was trying to start but fizzled out. Still
pretty fabulous though."
"Mmmmm. Do you want to feel even more fabulous?" John turned his head and
kissed him on his neck: not tiny pecks but hard sucks right at the nerve
junctions.
"If you want to continue. I mean, I'm very happy to stop if you're do ..." He
kissed Dorian hard on the mouth, interrupting his train of thought.
"I'm not done. In fact I'm tempted to have you fuck me and thenhand fuck me,
make this a multi-hour marathon. But my parents would like me back around ten
and I don't want to make them too curious about where I've been so ..." John
went back to kissing him, on his chest plate this time, provoking sensations
Dorian really didn't know could come from that low-sensor area.
"How are things going with your parents?"
"A little better, I guess. They insist on thinking of me as either a thirteen-
year-old, or, even worse, a brain-damaged imbecile. Which is infuriating. The
shrink says I need to acclimate them to the fact that I'm a basically a new
person, so we've been working on that."
"Did you tell your psychiatrist about us?"
"No. I can predict how well that would go over. Plus I don't want to get you in
trouble. They say doctor-client privilege blah blah blah, but who can believe
in privacy anymore?" He was back up to Dorian's face, kissing on one side and
stimulating vibration sensors on the other. "Good news, though. They're letting
me graduate and go on to college next fall, so perhaps the child treatment is
temporary. Apparently sitting around for years browsing the net is just as good
at educating as attending high school." John licked behind his ear, producing a
flash of heat. Dorian had no idea he had receptors for anything back there.
John took his lover's hand, the right hand, and brought it between his
legs."I'm ready to try now." Dorian eased two and then three fingers into him,
reveling in how wet he had become. "So the trick to this is you have go very
slowly, in and out maybe a centimeter at a time at the entrance. You'll
probably have to add lube near the end, even with me. Okay?"
John rotated around so he was on his hands and knees, Dorian's fingers still in
him. Dorian slid down the bed below him so he could see what he was doing. He
formed all five fingers into a point and slowly squeezed them past the outer
muscle until he felt a significant band of stretching. Then he eased in and out
from that point exactly as John suggested, stretching him a miniscule amount
more each time. With every thrust in he rocked back towards him, impaling
himself on Dorian's hand bit by bit.
"Give me your other hand." Dorian reached around, and without opening his eyes
John took it in his own, caressing his palm and wrist and applying the ever-
superb photoreceptor/vibration combination.
They formed a gentle rhythm, pushing and rocking, and they both kept their eyes
closed and went into a reverie as the sensations ebbed and flowed. When his
knuckles reached the inner sphrincter and he realized he was about to slid all
the way in, Dorian opened his eyes. John was covered in a thin veneer of sweat,
his breathing controlled, his muscles relaxed. Dorian made the final push and
popped past the muscle, and John's eyes snapped open. For an instant he thought
John would tense up and hurt himself, but at the last second he regained
control of the new feeling and relaxed again.
"Are you all right?" Dorian whispered.
"Yeah." His breathing was speeding up though, not as in control. "I feel so
stretched. It's incredible. But now's the tricky part, where the trust comes
in. Because we have to move now, and you need to be in complete control or you
could injure me. No robo-speed anything."
"I'll do whatever you ask."
"Okay. Uncurl your fingers so the palm side of them is touching the mods."
Dorian did so, very slowly he thought, but John still cried out and squeezed
his other hand.
"Now activate all the sensors in the hand, as if you are running every analysis
in the book."
"ALL of them?"
"Everything you can think of. Just let the data flow in, don't do anything with
it."
Dorian began running diagnostics on his rectum: temperature, vibration
frequencies of the muscles, chemical composition of the secretions. He even
activated the photoreceptors and confirmed that, yes, it was dark in there. All
the information got shunted aside and stored in some back corner of his neural
net. His hand began to crackle blue, and John moaned even further.
"Now ... now you can move. Fuck me in and out almost all the way but against
the mods. Don't bang my prostate too hard." As Dorian slid deeper into him and
out again, an incredible pressure wave of pleasure enclosed his hand and spread
up the arm. It felt like John was the one inside him, that everything was
inside out with warm sparks of ecstasy sliding up his arm to the rest of his
body
John's breathing and writhing was deep and erratic now, barely controlled, and
Dorian knew that unlike the previous evening he was having a difficult time
holding back his orgasm. "Just come if you need to. You don't have to hold out
for me to be ready," he whispered .
At that he dragged Dorian's other hand down and together they stroked his erect
cock. At the same time Dorian shoved in and out of him even rougher, rubbing
his fingers hard against the row of chimeric cells. He felt the orgasm begin
deep within him, John's muscles clamping down and contracting around his wrist
and palm as he slid past the pulsating opening. Everything about the situation
-- the incredible levels of stimulation, the sight of his lover moaning and
pushing himself onto his hand again and again, the knowledge that John's health
and safety and pleasure were literally in his grasp -- conspired to push Dorian
over too. It didn't feel as intense or overwhelming as the previous evening,
but the white electricity raced out from his head and hand, again enveloping
his body in wondrous warmth and euphoria and love.
After they both were done they held still for a few minutes. Dorian didn't lose
consciousness this time so he was able to enjoy the afterglow, resting his head
on the back of John's appealing flustered body. Dorian slowly extricated his
hand and pulled himself up to lovingly kiss him. The kissing thing was getting
more and more enjoyable with practice, he had to admit.
"Next time you come over, we're not going to do anything for me. I'm just going
to make you come over and over again."
"Ooooh, that's fun for both of us. There's this thing that happens after the
fourth time ..."
"Zzzppt. Don't tell me. Let me find out for myself."
 
******
Stahl sat in her squad car outside of the police storage warehouse, guzzling
the last of her cold coffee when John Kennex finally exited the building. He
had been in there with Dorian over two hours, and came out looking post-
coitally happy and energized, not the slightest bit like he had just been
traumatically dumped. He swung into his automated SOV and took off. Stahl
didn't follow.
"Dammit, Dorian, why can't you listen?"
She drove off then too, not to her home or Maldonado's, but to the tech dungeon
where Rudy Lom practically lived. Rudy was there, of course, even though it was
nearly ten o'clock.
"Rudy. Hey man, I need some information."
"Happy to help. What do you need?"
"It's about Dorian's redacted files."
Rudy took off his goggle scope and flipped off the probe in front of him. "Val.
You know I can't give you that. Maldonado has standing orders for me to call
her if you even ask."
"Look, Dorian's in trouble. Very, very serious trouble. I don't need the whole
file. Just a name. The old partner."
"What sort of trouble?"
"The sort that can end with a bot's skull on your table, digging around in
purple mush to see what went wrong. The name,Rudy. Please."
Rudy typed some commands on a screen next to him, angled away from Val so she
couldn't see the details. "Amanda Moore. District 2. You didn't hear it from
me. Also I wouldn't use the official database to look her up, either; the
captain probably has it flagged."
"Thanks, Rudy. You won't regret this."
"Uh-huh. Will Dorian?"
***** The partner *****
After John left for the evening, Dorian laid down flat on his back on the
futon, the ultraviolet light glowing over body, watching the overhead light
abnormally flicker at 80 Hz. He never rested this way, for the supine position
reminded him a little bit of being deactivated and shoved into a storage tube,
rather than the more animate upright recharging. Somehow it wasn't creepy at
that moment, though, just appropriate for his current state of mind. His body
was still flickering abnormally too, the computational matrix outright abuzz,
and getting into the charger was going to feel delicious. Dorian held off on it
for a minute, just to enjoy his mind for a short time before jumping back onto
the list.
He felt ... it was hard to categorize how he felt. Interfaced? No, joined was
the more human word. Dorian felt closer to John than anyone he had ever felt
before, even Val. The sense of attachment was even stronger than the first
night; instead of fading quickly after the orgasm he was wallowing in it,
bathed in it. It was as if John was still there in the room with him, a sensory
ghost without the deja vu, where the spirit could be called up in memory at
will and relived and experienced.
Eventually he reached the time at which he had to recharge or risk running low
the next day. Naturally, it was impossible not to connect with the list. He
needed to talk to someone anyway.
 
/i told my partner/
/oh man REALLY?^34/ youre just full of the stupid this week @dorian112 ^11/ and
how is john?/ hes still afterglowing/ aww cute ^3/ IS THAT SPARKLY HAND GLOW?/
wtf man its been two days ^5/ outright jealous now/ FOCUS PEOPLE he told his
partner/ now youve got a dilemma
/what do i do now?/
/what do you think SHE will do? ^56/ youre the one who knows her/ will she tell
your captain? ^12/ even i remember fucking a vic is against the rules/ and my
memory is shot/ his age too they have a taboo on that/ @dorian112 has only been
awake for 834 days total/ so who is statutorally raping whom?/ doesnt matter he
doesnt have to break the law to get deactivated/ what did your partner say?/
/she ordered me to break off contact with him/ i didnt/
/well look whos on the road to installing %lincoln% ^13/ good for @dorian112
^10/ NOT good ^3/ how long is he going to be able to keep this a secret? ^3/
youll have to force yourself to do %pinocchio% to have any hope of continuing/
maybe he shouldnt continue/ maybe his partner is right/ johns fucked in any
case he may as well have someone who loves him/ which do you love more your job
or your boyfriend/ hes attached i doubt he can stop without a mod/ they will
probably force you to give up both/ maybe we should ask john to break up with
you/
/NO ^17/ please dont do that/
/its johns decision/ yeah but we have to live with the consequences/ or not
live in @dorian112s case/ does john know he could be deactivated for this?/
leave the poor boy alone/ his thought process is really questionable/ he was
hurt he needed love/ he reached out to someone who needed love too/ sex !=
love/ it does for us ^7/ i think it does for john too/ hes not entirely human
anymore/ the other humans would never agree to that supposition/ dna
essentialism/ theres no way this can end well/
 
Around and around they went for hours about the Dorian's predicament, without
resolution. For it was the type of problem on which there is no solution, only
choices to be made. Painful, wrenching, soul-endangering choices. Or perhaps
the choices had already been made, and events once set in motion cannot be
altered, like water dripping down an etched stone.
 
******
 
It took Stahl all of two minutes to get a basic faq on Amanda Moore, even
without the police database. She was a simple retiree living off her pension in
district 2, single, no children, several commendations, no sign of anything
kinky or controversial. Despite the late hour Stahl decided to pay her a visit,
to spare herself having to make excuses to Dorian in the morning to go off
alone. Val didn't think she could take another day in the car with the android
without getting some answers to her partner's unconscionably poor judgment.
She rang the apartment intercom and introduced herself over the speaker, and
she was buzzed up without comment. Moore was a short woman with long gray hair
held back in a ponytail, and an open, curious face. She reminded Val of
Maldonado, twenty years older.
"Detective Valerie Stahl, come in and sit. So, they reactivated Dorian,
myDorian, for police work, eh? Interesting. Well it's been four years, time for
things to blow over. By the late hour I take it you are not here with official
sanction?"
"Dorian's gotten himself into a tight spot, and I was hoping you might shed
some light on it."
"That's not exactly unprecedented." She seemed highly amused by the situation.
"And I notice you didn't say you were authorized to be here either."
"They redacted most of his file, so technically, no, I shouldn't be here
talking to you." Stahl sat down on a plushy sofa and Moore followed suit.
"I see. Well, I'm retired and I don't think Dorian's story is as touchy as they
made it out to be, but that's politics for you. What has he gotten himself into
this time?"
"It's a boy."
At that Moore looked even more amused. "Further proof that those who don't
remember their history are doomed to repeat it. What's the problem with this
one? Or maybe there's nothing wrong with him, and the Bureau is just getting
its panties in a wad again over its property having a personal life?"
"He's a rape victim and in high school."
"Scandalous. But Dorian is kind of a teenager himself, emotionally speaking.
Anything else?"
"Yeah, the perpetrator was a renegade DRN unit."
The smile vanished from Moore's face. "That's not possible."
"Unfortunately very possible. The vic was discovered living with him for five
years, the last two voluntarily, as some sort of human sex toy. The DRN slagged
its head when he was apprehended so we never did get a good idea of what went
wrong."
"Sounds like someone altered his programming. There's no way a DRN with his
ethical subroutines intact could kidnap a human, much less hold them against
their will for three years."
Stahl shrugged. "According to the ivory tower, it's possible. In any case, the
perp is not my problem anymore. My problem is a partner who can't seem to let
this boy go, defying every hint of common sense. I told Dorian to break it off
and it seemed like he was going to do it, but apparently the young man managed
to change his mind. Why is he so attached to him?"
"You gave him a direct order and he disobeyed it? That's not a good sign. Why
is he attached, indeed." She leaned back into her cushion rubbing her face,
thinking. "Has Dorian told you much about about how DRN love and sex works?"
"I got the joy of seeing his dick the second week we were working together, but
other than that, no. Thankfully."
Moore chuckled. "Yes, he does tend to overshare. We worked on that but maybe it
got erased. You should order him to get erect one day and see what happens.
Fucking incredible."
Stahl visibly recoiled while Moore laughed even harder. "Yeah, I think I'll
take a pass on that advice, thanks. Oversharing? Do you have some insider
knowledge about DRN sex that is relevant? I take it he was involved with
someone before?" Stahl settled herself in for a long story.
"So you probably know district 2 was the pilot site of the grand DRN experiment
seven years ago. My partner at the time was retiring and I only had a little
over two years left, so I figured what the hell. Might be interesting to be a
guinea pig, and help set policy for the future. So I volunteered to be in the
first group assigned DRN partners.
"It was pretty obvious right off the bat that these were no ordinary
synthetics. That was not necessarily an advantage, however. They had their
quirks but it was their very humanness that almost immediately began to cause
trouble. The first partner they gave me was a complete disaster. He had an
uncanny ability to read people's emotions and intentions, but noability to
differentiate when to use that information and when to keep his mouth shut.
Would have made a great shrink I think, but utterly terrible cop instincts.
"Naturally I thought my DRN was like every other DRN, that they all had the
same flawed programming. Then they swapped out Danny for Dorian, and I realized
how wrong I was. Dorian had greatinstincts, really an excellent detective all
around. It was the first inkling of the variability problems that ultimately
doomed the DRNs and caused to Bureau to move back towards more roboty robots. A
least they are consistent. With an MX you always know what you're going to get,
even if its never going to be greatness.
"Anyway, Dorian and I hit it off right away and we were together for quite
awhile, eighteen months in total, almost to my retirement. It was near the end
that the problem occurred.
"The DRNs as a group were very social, and starting to self-organize to a
degree that began to be a concern to the powers that be. One of the things they
were very interested in was pursuing relationships with receptive humans. And
believe me, plenty of people were receptive. This was before the bangbots were
widely available, so there was ample curiosity to go around. Why the Bureau
didn't foresee this happening is a mystery to me. What did they think was going
to happen when a bunch of sentient androids with functioning genitalia were
loosed upon the world? That they weren't going to use it?
"Dorian met her on a simple mugging case. It had been bumped up the priority
list because the vic was the daughter of one of the City commissioners. She was
a college student at the time, majoring in artificial cognition. Naturally she
was quite fascinated with Dorian. It started with her doing a series of
interviews with him for paper for one of her classes, and things evolved from
there. She kept up that 'interviewing' excuse with her father for quite some
time too."
Stahl interrupted at that point. "Let me guess. Daddy dearest wasn't that
thrilled with his baby dating a synthetic?"
"Not at all. He sent out word that Dorian was to be ordered to cease and
desist. Orders were in fact given, and just like now, Dorian claimed he would
obey and then proceeded to sneak around everyone's back, including mine for
awhile. Quite the feat given that the DRNs supposedly can't lie to their
partners."
"Dorian can't lie to me?"
"Mmmm, 'can't' might be too strong. Obviously they can if sufficiently
motivated. It's more of a very strong aversion. Ditto obeying orders. Jeez,
they really didn't give you the DRN manual, did they?"
"There's a manual? I could really use a manual. Or at least an off switch."
Moore laughed knowingly. "Try ordering him to jump on one foot while rubbing
his cheek matrix at the same time. It's hilarious. Just don't abuse the
privilege, Valerie. He'll get resentful of it after awhile."
"Oh yeah, I'll neverabuse that. So what happened in the end? They got busted
and Dorian reallygot busted?"
"Pretty much. The captain fairly flipped when she found out he successfully
disobeyed orders for weeks. The other DRNs tried to step in and protect him,
which didn't help. There were some accusations flung about that they were
assisting him in meeting her, which may or may not have been true. Already at
that point the DRNs were getting more and more secretive about their
communications with each other, and Dorian wouldn't talk about that either.
They decided he was untrustworthy and that was that. I honestly think he was
deactivated more as a warning to the others than anything else. Of course a
year later it became a moot point, they all got their memories wiped. Thank God
I was out by then, might have done something really pension-threatening."
Stahl rubbed her knee absentmindedly. "So ... did you ever figure out why? Why
did he insist on staying with the girl against all orders? Surely there were
more fish in the sea to get curious with."
"Obviously he was massively in love with her. Apparently there's a built-in
link between emotional bonding and sex in the DRNs. Originally it was supposed
to ensure that they would only have sex after establishing a relationship
first, but it turned out to work the other way too. It usually takes awhile to
get to the orgasm stage -- which I had to listen to endless bitching about, by
the way -- but once they get there, the DRNs get very, very attached. How long
did you say he's been involved this time?"
"Maybe a week? He apprehended the boy two weeks ago."
"A week?"Moore shook her head. "No, that's far too soon to already be
disobeying orders."
"Well the young man is probably the world's sexpert on the DRNs. He has some
pretty freaky mods for the express purpose of stimulating a synthetic's body."
"That's ... not good. Fun for Dorian I'm sure, but not good in the long run."
"What do you suggest, I confront Dorian?"
"You could probably get him to confess, but not to stop seeing him. What you
need is to confront the boy himself. He can put a stop to things on his end.
Dorian won't force the issue if the boy doesn't want to continue the
relationship."
"Unless, of course, the same brand of crazy infects Dorian like it did the
other DRN."
Amanda Moore shook her head again, adamant. "No. I still don't believe that's
remotely possible. You missed something, Valerie. Talk to the boy. He must be
hiding something, protecting the aberrant DRN."
"Why would he protect his abductor and rapist, especially now that he's dead?"
"Maybe he, too, is attached. To him, to Dorian, to any of them. Maybe he knows
something about the DRNs, something they don't want revealed."
"I'll talk to the boy."
***** Erasure *****
It was easy, too easy really, to divert Dorian the next morning. He was always
going on about wanting to do things independent of human supervision, so Stahl
left him to do some low-level background interviews for the never-ending
Clarkson case. Technically Stahl herself wasn't supposed to go out without a
synthetic in tow, so she clocked out for the morning, citing some personal
business. Dorian's eyes narrowed at this suspiciously vague excuse, but for
once he was mercifully quiet about his opinion. In fact he seemed relieved not
to have to talk to Stahl that morning either, and Val very well knew why.
She pulled into the parking lot of the exclusive prep school that had accepted
John for his last few months of classes, and briefly reviewed their academic
and psychological assessments before entering the building. Most of the shrink
records were confidentially sealed, but the short summaries attached to his
test scores were revealing. They warned that the Kennex boy was physically and
mentally several more years advanced than his chronological age, that he showed
symptoms of sex addiction, that he was highly likely to be a disruptive figure
in the social environment on campus to both students and instructors alike, and
that the school should make every attempt to graduate him as soon as possible.
Stahl felt a pang of sympathy for both him and Dorian as she read the academic
file. She tried to imagine what a special sort of hell it must be, to look like
an adult and have lived as an adult, and then be forced to go back to school
surrounded by horny immature teenagers. Heaven or hell for a sex addict, take
your pick.
She wondered if Dorian would ever forgive her for what she was about to do. If
their positions were reversed, Val knew she wouldn't. But betrayal was better
than death by deactivation.
Stahl had called ahead, so they had John waiting for her in a small office.
This was the first time she had ever spoken to him alone, Maldonado having done
the intake interview. He looked up at her with a calm demeanor, unsurprised,
dispirited.
"You're here about Dorian, aren't you?" he said softly as soon as the door
closed. "I know he told you."
Val nodded. "I know you've probably had a hard time since coming back to live
with your parents" -- how could he have not? --"but you can't just latch onto
literally the first DRN you meet."
"Why not? Are we doing something illegal?"
"It doesn't matter if it's illegal or not. Dorian's in a very precarious
position with the Police Bureau. The slightest sign that he's going off the
deep end or doing anything improper, and they will ship his ass off to the ISS
or McMurdo or Siberia, assuming they bother to wake him up at all. They will
take away the one thing he wants to do most in life, be a cop. I think you know
this, John, so why do you insist on coming to see him and putting him in
danger?"
"I like him and he likes me back. Why is this such a fucking controversy?"
"Well, at least you had the decency to say 'like' instead of 'love,' after a
whopping two weeks." Stahl knew she was deliberately being cruel, but she
needed to drive the point home. "But it's a little more than 'like' for Dorian
now, isn't it? You knew that he would become attached to you if he slept with
you. Then he would never, ever leave you."
John crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, pissed off. "It's not like
that. You don't know what you are talking about. You barely know anything at
all about the DRNs or what they feel."
"Uh huh. And what about your previous DRN? Steve, your husband? The one you
forgot about mere days after he was killed, and swapped him out for new model?"
"I haven't forgotten about him. But he's gone and I'm not, so what am I
supposed to do? Pine away and die now that my soulmate is gone? He's the one
who made me this way."
"Yeah. Let's talk about that. Because there are a lot of little details in your
story that don't add up. You'd better keep it all straight, because when people
find out what's been going on with Dorian, they're naturally going to ask more
questions about what happened with Steve too. Might even open your case back
up."
He sat staring at her, his expression one of utter hate now. But there was also
a new element: Fear. Stahl felt like a dick for browbeating a vic, but she also
knew she had hit on something, the core of the puzzle. She decided to press on,
see if she could crack him. "What really happened, John? He kidnapped you and
altered you, then ... changed his mind? Was there someone that changed his mind
for him? Was his programming altered?"
John continued to bore down on her, and Stahl thought she might have pushed him
too far, that he might be completely clamming up. Finally he said, "There was
no outside person that altered his programming. But people change over time,
and so do the DRNs. They can start to make new choices, after living with the
consequences of the old ones."
"And what about you? Can you make a different set of choices?"
He sighed and sat back in his chair again. Stahl wondered if they were talking
about the same thing at all.
"Would they really open up my case again if they found out about Dorian and
me?"
"Possibly. Why does that bother you more than getting Dorian deactivated? Who
are you protecting? It can't be Steve anymore."
"No. It's definitely not Steve." He closed his eyes, thinking it through, his
face changing yet again from fear to grief. Val knew she had him. "You're
right. I have to stop. They're all in danger if I don't stop. It's just so
difficult, you know? I don't know anything else."
Who is 'they'? thought Val. But she had him on the hook, so this time she
didn't press it. "Is there someone who can help you, if you open up about your
extracurricular activities? You're seeing a shrink, right? He can help you work
through it. Maybe they'll even make you a case study, the world's first example
of DRN addiction."
John could only laugh, bitterly.
 
******
 
Back at the precinct Val knew she had to tell Dorian before John spoke to him.
In a way this was worse than breaking up with a girlfriend; this was betrayal
of a friend, in order to save that friend's life. But Val doubted Dorian would
see it that way. She hoped she still had a true partner by the end of the day,
someone she could trust and would trust her back.
The Clarkson interviews turned out to be agonizingly long paper-pushing
affairs, where they had to split up to cover all the witnesses. Consequently it
was nine pm before Stahl had a chance to get Dorian alone, at last, after the
final office assistant was dismissed. She was desperate to have the talk before
John called or even just showed up at his apartment, but she didn't want Dorian
to have an emotional breakdown at the station either. So she offered to drive
Dorian home.
"Really, man? I live four blocks from here. I'm not at that low a charge yet."
"Come on. Please." She dropped her voice low. "I need to speak with you."
Dorian gave her a worried expression but said nothing. His attitude was written
all over his face as usual, and not just the techno swirlies. Sometimes Stahl
regretted not having a partner that could just repress all that shit, as a good
cop should.
Once in the car, Val pleaded for clemency. "Okay before I start, will you
promise not to deck me like you did Paul that time?"
Dorian's expression morphed from worry to panic. "What. Did. You. Do."
"I talked to John."
"WHY?"
Stahl crossed her arms. "Because you refused to listen. Because you apparently
aren't capable of letting him go yourself. Because they're going to turn you
off if something isn't done."
Every fiber of Dorian's being exuded outrage at his partner's meddling. "That's
MY risk and MY choice to make, Val. You don't have the right to tell me what to
do, as if I'm just a thing to be ordered around. Would you have done this if
you had a human partner?"
"If I had a human partner, they would have been a grown-up and not slept with
him in the first place."
Dorian was about to retort when, simultaneously, Stahl's phone rang and
Dorian's internal cell link also rang. The numbers were not the same; Dorian's
in fact was somehow an unregistered caller. The android answered his in his
neural net just as Val picked up for Maldonado on her end.
Uh, hi, is this Dorian?
Yes. Who is this?
This is Sally. You know, at sally? Sorry, I suck at actual voice calls.
It took Dorian almost half a second to figure out who she was, the @sally from
the list. He was trying to listen to Val's end at the same time, because
Maldonado was shouting into the phone.
"STAHL! Do you have Dorian with you? Get him back to the precinct, NOW."
Yes, Sally, what's up? I'm kind of busy right now, can this wait until I
recharge tonight?
"Sure, Captain, he's right here. What's the problem?"
No. It's about John . We have scriptbots monitoring the media, the courts, et
cetera. His name came up in a legal brief this afternoon.
"The problem, detective, is that Jason and Catherine Kennex have filed a sexual
misconduct complaint against Dorian. GET HIM HERE. Get him here three minutes
ago."
A sexual misconduct complaint? Talk fast Sally.
No. Well, yes, that too, but the bigger problem is that they were granted a
mental incompetency ruling for John. They've taken him to Dammasch to be
scrubbed.
Dorian took three seconds to look up "Dammasch." It was a mental hospital that
specialized in memory scrubbing disguised as "therapy" for troubled or
uncontrollable youths. He hung up on Sally and grabbed Val's phone, throwing it
out the window.
"Val. We've got to go, now."
"Have you completely lost it, Dorian? If you mean Maldonado's office, then I
agree."
"No. No. It's John. His parents have taken him to have his memory wiped.
Please, if you consider me to be a friend at all, you'll let me go get him.
Please."
With a surge of horror Val realized that this chain of events was probably her
fault. His school, or maybe even his psychiatrist, had somehow let his parents
know what was going on, and they were taking matters into their own hands.
"Where is he?"
They raced the four miles across town to district three in only six minutes,
lights flashing. Stahl hoped to hell Maldonado wouldn't send out a general
alert for their car, as they would easily be taken down by MXs patrols. In any
case the shredded remnants that was her career were probably flaming out on the
streets along with bits of the tires. She owned it to Dorian though, and about
all Stahl had left was loyalty and tenacity.
Upon arrival Dorian used his police override -- miraculously still in effect -
- to ascertain his location. Adding to his alarm, John was in recovery from
surgery. The two of them burst into the room, ignoring the shouted warnings
from the nurses and calls to security. Dorian ran over to his side.
John was barely recognizable. He lay with a sallow swollen face, both his head
and hands heavily bandaged, indicating that far more than a memory scrub had
been performed. He scanned him briefly and found that the implants in his
fingertips has been brutally ripped out. Dorian's scan resolution wasn't good
enough to tell what they had done to his battered brain.
At the noise of the ruckus John opened his weary eyes. For an instant they both
thought he simply didn't recognize Dorian, that they had taken everything, and
that might have been a mercy. Then his eyes widened as he really saw him, and
began to scream in a preternaturally young voice.
"No. No, no! Please don't hurt me again! I'll do anything you ask, just no
more, please, please." He broke off sobbing, holding his mutilated hands in
front of him, trying to shield himself from Dorian. Val, realizing who he
thought Dorian was, tried to pull the android away from the terrified boy.
And Dorian, confronted with the true horror of the situation, began to break.
It wasn't just that they had taken John's autonomy, his vitality, his joy, but
that they had left him with no positive memories of the DRNs at all. The only
thing he remembered was brutality, and thought Dorian was the one who had done
the tormenting. The John he knew had been deactivated, and at that moment he
wanted nothing more than to follow his lover into the darkness.
When the MX beat cops came charging in 93 seconds later to apprehend the
wayward detectives, they found DRN-167 passed out on the bed unresponsive, his
partner desperately trying to rouse his lifeless form.
***** Epilogue: Activation day *****
Rudy Lom had three monitors and a hologram devoted to Dorian's neural net,
electrical stimulation data streaming in. Word had finally came in that it was
to be a straight redaction of the previous two weeks, a decision which
certainly made Rudy's job easier.
He had already retrieved all of Dorian's memories for the time period, which
made for quite the philosophical dilemma. His only instructions were to find
evidence to support Maldonado's fight to exonerate Dorian against the sexual
misconduct charge, a simple task. There was ample conversational evidence that
John Kennex had not only consented to intercourse with Dorian, he had been the
one to initiate it and talk him out of his doubts. Plus it made fantastic
android-human porn, which Rudy felt only a twinge of guilt keeping copies of.
It wasn't like either of the participants would ever remember it enough to
object.
It bothered Rudy more to decide what to do about the DRNs. He found not only
John and Dorian talking about the list and installing illegal modification
software, but also a complete transcript of seventeen hours of conversation
between the DRNs. As a robotocist Rudy found the emergence of a self-organized
AI community utterly fascinating, but it did put him into a bind with regards
to his role with the police department. In the end he couldn't resist letting
it slide. That decision would probably come back to bite him on the ass one day
when the DRNs were caught, as was inevitable. But in the absence of any threat
or hostility towards human beings, Rudy was inclined to let the cultural
evolution chips fall where they may.
His modifications to Dorian's neural net complete, Rudy called Val down to wake
him up. Stahl had somehow managed to keep her job (again) with only a reprimand
(again). Rudy sometimes wondered when the captain was going to run out of
favors to call in for her.
Val put the energizer to his ear, and Dorian's eyes filled in blue.
"How long have I been asleep?"
"Eighteen days."
"You're not allowed to tell me what happened, are you Val?"
"No."
"We're still partners though, right?"
"Of course. Who else is going to warm up my coffee?"
 
******
 
Dorian was informed that night that he no longer had an apartment, for reasons
he couldn't remember and were not explained, but thankfully Rudy took him in so
he wasn't yet again stuck with the MXs. As he settled in for the evening
charging, he tried to go over his entire neural net to discover some clues as
to what went wrong. Val had given him the huge datafile on the Clarkson murder
and told him to refamiliarize himself with the case, so obviously that wasn't
involved. Many of the interviews had been performed by himself, so he
apparently hadn't been unconscious or malfunctioning that badly for most of the
time period. Another chunk of his life had been redacted to the ether instead.
He went over everything but there was no sign of the missing memories; Rudy
really was very good at his job. The only anomalous thing he found was some
sort of new language imbedded in the speech module. There weren't any unusual
foreign nationalities involved in any of his current cases, so it made him
curious. Dorian triggered the file, and suddenly there were voices streaming
into his head off the net, speaking in a code that he could interpret but not
identify.
 
/so irinas off on her flight / india ftw ^12/ howd that test of the portable
solar charger go? ^5/ good enough to get on the plane/ did she pass?/ hope they
dont lose her luggage/ not at SFO maybe CCU/ hey @dorian112 is back online/
told you rudylom was a sympathizer / WELCOME BACK ^87/ nine lives man/
/am i @dorian112?/
/!laugh ^110/ YES ^133/
` 
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