Live Like You're Alive

In the four days since Kevin had been laid off from his job at the power plant, he’d taken to spending his days walking the city on foot, stopping in at any business with a “Help Wanted” sign in the window and filling out an application as he went. He spent his nights filling out job applications online, but there wasn’t much else he could do to fill up the empty time. It was well into the evening and he’d given up for the day, turned towards his tiny apartment, when the sky opened up in defiance of the weather reports he was receiving in real-time which promised clear skies through the weekend and drenched him in seconds.

He gave a moment’s thought to continuing on the two miles in the rain before ducking into the nearest bar instead to wait out the deluge. Wet and cold wasn’t pleasant even when you were synthetic. Thankfully, it was early enough that the crowd was still light. He took a seat near the end of the bar and hoped he’d pass mostly unnoticed.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked, heading his way almost immediately. The lack of a crowd meant the service was unfortunately swift.

“Whatever you have on tap is fine,” Kevin said, hoping it was the right thing to say. He’d never actually been in a bio bar before. It seemed to be close enough, though, because the man headed down the counter for a moment before returning with a tall glass of amber liquid. Kevin nodded his thanks.

“Another peaceful protest in support of Synth Rights is being held in front of the federal courthouse tonight,” a voice said, drawing Kevin’s attention to a television mounted above the bar. Behind the reporter on the screen was a mass of people, some chanting and others just screaming. Most of them were bios. The synths were all radicals, ones who had stripped away skin from parts of their bodies until the metal underneath was showing from half their face or one of their arms. One of the synths picked up a car and hurled it into the front doors of the courthouse. The reporter’s smile tightened uncomfortably but didn’t drop. “As you can see, the protestors are very passionate about obtaining equality for all.”

Abruptly, the coverage switched over to a hockey game. Kevin glanced over to see the bartender tossing the remote down with a disgusted glance at the screen. He shrunk down a little more on his stool, glad that his group of synths had been so well-designed as to be essentially indistinguishable from bios without an actual bio-mech scan.

A glass thudded onto the counter next to him suddenly enough that he started in surprise, followed by an older man in his sixties taking the stool to his right. “Buy you a drink?” the man asked.

“Um, thank you, but I’m fine,” Kevin said, gesturing to his untouched beer.

“You drink that, you’ll be hearing colors and seeing musical notes for days,” the man said. “Funny as hell to watch, but I’ve been told it’s no great joy living through it. I’m Nick, by the way.”

“Kevin,” he responded automatically, before what Nick had said fully registered. “Wait, how did you know…”

“That you’re a synth?” Nick asked. “I was a cop for forty years. Tends to make you a little more observant than most. Anyway, no need to suffer in here. It’s a mixed bar. Jack’s got a decent selection of synth drinks along with the bio stuff. My partner always liked the Danger Will Robinson, but that might have just been because of the name. He had a soft spot for that old show.”

Kevin looked at him in surprise. “Your partner was a synth?”

“Sure was,” Nick said. “Not like you, of course. What are you, seventh, eighth gen?”

“Eighth,” Kevin said. 

“Davey was first gen,” Nick said. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and slid a faded picture from one of the folds. A young version of Nick in a policeman’s uniform stood next to a synth, also in a policeman’s uniform. He was definitely a first gen. A large barcode was visible on the left side of his neck and his eyes were an unnaturally bright shade of blue.

“I thought the first gens didn’t have names,” Kevin said. “That what they always say on the news. That they weren’t really treated like anything more than tools.”

“People are always rewriting history to suit the story they’re telling at any given time,” Nick said. “They paired all the synths with us young cops first. More adaptable, less set in our ways. Sure, they just had serial numbers when we first started, but those synths weren’t like the bots that people had been using before. Synths were different. They learned, they felt, they thought. They were people. What was I gonna call him, 5349-DVY? Course the first thing I did was ask him if he minded if I called him Davey.”

“What about the other synths?” Kevin asked. “Did the other police officers give their synth partners names too?”

“See, that’s the basic misunderstanding a lot of people had, then and now,” Nick said. “Those synths were police officers. Every last one of ‘em. Bio cops might have ragged on synth cops, and vice versa, the same way as cops rag on each other for all kinds of reasons. But when it came down to it, we had each other’s backs, bio and synth. You know, it got so bad, about a year into the whole synth cop experiment thing, management called a meeting and yelled at all of us bios. Seems we kept forgetting that our partners were bulletproof and were supposed to act as a shield when people were shooting at us. We kept acting like they were bio partners and taking punches or knife wounds or sometimes even bullets meant for them. Our synth partners were even more exasperated with us than our bosses were.”

“You treated them like they were human,” Kevin said softly.

“They were, in all the important ways,” Nick said. “Davey wasn’t a great cop because he was programmed that way. He was a great cop because he was intuitive and compassionate. He also cheated at poker, loved crappy old sci-fi shows, and was constantly bringing me stray cats to take care of because he claimed having pets was good for me emotionally.”

“Did he leave the police when the Synth Rights made them give the first gens a choice about where they worked?” Kevin asked.

“None of them left,” Nick said. “Not a single one of the first gens. I don’t know why it’s different now, but that first group, they liked being cops. Most of them were mad that anyone would even suggest they should go do something else.”

“You talk about Davey in the past tense,” Kevin observed.

“When those Synth Rights groups started with the marches and protests, everything was pretty good at first,” Nick said. “We went, provided security, traffic control, that sort of thing. Then after a few years, more and more rights were granted, and it seemed like everything would just kind of peter out. Synths could hold any of the same jobs as bios, they had the same rights and protections, there didn’t seem to be much to protest anymore, right? So it seemed like everything would be good.”

“Except it wasn’t,” Kevin said softly.

“Except it wasn’t,” Nick repeated. “I thought, great, it worked, they got equality. Davey and all the other synths deserved that. But it turned out it wasn’t equality they wanted after all. They wanted more. And that’s when it got ugly. It wasn’t just synths against bios, either, not then, not now. In fact, I think Synth Rights has more bio members than it does synths. Lots of synths like Davey didn’t like what they became, either. And Synth Rights had no problem at all going after any synths that didn’t support their tactics.

“The thing about first gens is that they don’t have the EM shielding around their core processors that you later gens do. So pretty much the first thing Synth Rights did when the cops tried to stop them from burning down buildings and attacking innocent bystanders was to set off EM pulses. We had no warning at all. Davey got caught in the first wave. And just like that, the guy who was supposed to live forever was dead.”

“I didn’t know they killed synths,” Kevin said.

“The media wouldn’t report it,” Nick said. “Wouldn’t count them as officers killed in the line of duty, either, because they were ‘only first gens.’ Now how’s that for hypocrisy? These same journalists that are out there telling everyone how important Synth Rights is and they won’t even report on the deaths of some of the finest synths to ever live. All because it doesn’t fit the story they want to tell.

“Anyway, they were going to just take Davey’s body back and put a different core in it. No need to waste a perfectly good synth when the only thing that was fried was a tiny little chip, right? Me and a bunch of the guys broke into the factory that night and took his body, set up a funeral pyre out in an empty field. Made sure there wasn’t going to be some other guy out there walking around with his face. It was the only memorial I could give him.”

“You could have gotten into a lot of trouble for that,” Kevin said. “But if it was me, I’d hope someone would do the same.”

“My lieutenant knew, I’m sure,” he said. “She never said a word, though. I took a leave of absence the next day. Was going to go ahead and retire, since I already had my time in, but I wound up teaching at the academy instead.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Kevin said.

“What about you?” Nick asked. “What do you do?" 

“I was commissioned three years ago to work at the nuclear power plant outside of town, since synths don’t have to take all the safety precautions bios do to work there so it’s more efficient,” Kevin said. “But since the Synthetic Equity Act passed last week, they had to lay off all the synths. Something about them not being able to have us doing dangerous work if bios weren’t doing it too, even though it isn’t dangerous for us.”

“Yeah, I know all about good old SEA,” Nick said. “So what are you doing now?”

“Looking for a job,” Kevin said. “Whatever comes along, I guess. I’d go back to the plant if they let me.”

“Did you like the work?” Nick asked.

“I didn’t mind it,” Kevin said. “I liked that I was doing something useful.”

“There are a lot of ways to be useful in this world,” Nick said. “But for what it’s worth, you might consider being a cop.”

“Me?” Kevin asked, surprised. “I don’t know anything about being a police officer.”

“Most of us didn’t before we went to the academy,” Nick said. “That’s why the academy exists. And look, it’s not for everyone. You’re a synth. Unlike us bios, if you’re careful, you’ve got a pretty good shot at living forever, or at least for a really long time. Being a cop may put a sizeable dent in your life expectancy. But it’ll also give you a chance to be useful, and even better, you might just learn a little bit about the real world and how most people actually view synths, instead of that crap they try and sell you on the news all the time.”

“You really think it’s better than they say?” Kevin asked. He’d always taken the reporters at their word when they’d said that bios hated synths and had kept to himself as much as possible over the three years since he’d been commissioned. It hadn’t been hard. The other workers in his part of the plant had all been synths too, after all.

“I do,” Nick said. “Just don’t try and pretend you’re a bio like you were in here tonight, and don’t act like you’re better than anyone else just because you’re a synth. Because the truth is, when push comes to shove, no one really cares about any of that. All you have to do is be you. Let them get to know you as a person, not a synth or a bio. If that’s what you want.”

“Can I think about it?” Kevin asked.

“You probably should,” Nick said. “Here’s my card. If you’re interested, give me a call and I’ll help you get started. If not, I hope you find something that works for you.”

And then he was gone. Kevin stared at the card he’d left behind for another five minutes before picking it up, leaving enough cash on the bar to cover his drink and a tip, and heading home. Thankfully, it had stopped raining while he’d been inside.

That night, sitting on the small bed in his equally small apartment, he stared at the card Nick had given him and considered. All he had ever wanted was to be useful and to not stand out. To blend in. Because he had believed that everyone hated synths, and that if he didn’t blend in and make himself forgettable, they’d hate him, too. But Nick hadn’t hated him, and if Nick had been telling the truth, there were a lot of other bios out there who wouldn’t care that he was a synth, either. Looking back over his past, he couldn’t find any personal examples to prove Nick wrong, only words from reporters and journalists that were beginning to ring false in his mind.

He propped the card up beside his phone. Tomorrow he had a call to make. He’d spent the first three years of his life worrying about the differences between living as a synth and living as a bio. It was time to try just living as himself.