hominum ex machina

Whoever decided androids needed to exist needs to be dropkicked into the ocean and I'll pay all thirteen dollars in my bank account to do the honors.

Okay, that came out wrong. I'm not anti-android, I'm glad they have rights now and no longer live under the thumb of their bourgeoisie corporate overlords. I just really want them to-

"STOP DUMPING OUT MY COFFEE!"

AN550 looks up at me from where he has my mug upended over the sink with the dregs of undissolved coffee sludge dripping out, face passive save for his eyes glowing a smug green. He's not very good at emoting yet, but he's got arrogance down pat.

"You have consumed three times the permissible amount of caffeine for someone of your height, weight and age-"

"Who are you, my mom? Get off my dick" I snap, grabbing another mug from the cupboard. I know better than to grab the one in his hand, because he's a six foot three highly advanced military grade prototype android who can move ten times faster than a normal human. I don't stand a chance.

"That is physically impossible, I am not on your-"

"It was an idiom, scrapball. You know what those are?" I sneer, stirring in another heaping spoonful of coffee granules.

"I have access to the lexicons of over 6,500 languages," he says almost wryly, setting the old mug into the sink, "I know what an idiom is. Please refrain from name calling."

"You don't like scrapball?" I ask, sipping the bitter liquid with a sigh. AN tracks every movement with his creepy eyes. They scan everything from facial structure to micro expressions to vitals. He does it all the time, even when I tell him to stop. Yet another reason he's insufferable.

"I find it derogatory."

"How about bitch boy?"

"You are particularly belligerent today," AN says, his synthetic black hair shaking with every stiff movement of his arms. I throw a stapler at him as hard as I can, and he catches it in one hand, his only other movement the slightest raise of an eyebrow.

"I hate it when you do that," I grumble, sitting back in my chair. There are reports scattered all over my desk, and I try my best to stack them into proper, organized stacks. It's late, or rather early, and the lab is empty, save for me, my specimens, and a haughty lump of plastic as we wait for a shipment of artifacts from the latest dig site.

AN550 and I have...a history, to put it extremely mildly. AN is one of a kind, the most advanced android ever created. He's a killing machine, built for military operations, for intimidation and battle. So you can imagine what it was like when he broke out of the lab that created him. Now take that fear and multiply it by ten. That's what it felt like to find him huddled like a lost child in the middle of the lab, surrounded by thousands of shattered artifacts.

He threw me through a fucking window. A window.

Two weeks later, I showed up to work with a new scar under my ribs, to see a pretentious looking killing machine standing next to the dean of the university, who explained that AN was now a research assistant and not, under any fucking circumstances, a rogue prototype war robot. I cussed him out, called my boss to cuss her out, and then tried to dump my coffee into AN's processor hatch.

He broke my wrist, I got a raise, and the rest is history.

"What time is-"

"It is 1:27:43 am" AN says flatly, "Fourteen minutes and three seconds since you last asked. Perhaps you could spend some time reading the report I've so kindly assembled for you"

"Thanks for so kindly doing your job, but I don't need to read it"

"It is imperative that you-"

"I wrote half the stuff there is on Pre-Christian Celtic civilizations." I respond blandly, "I know my shit, even though your big android brain doesn't seem to think so"

"I never said that"

"You think it. I can hear those wires in your brain going 'my boss is an idiot'"

"You are not my superior, we are colleagues, and I have never thought such a thing. I merely believe that if you spend more time on the statistics I present-"

"Oh God, you and your statistics boner," I tip my head back to look at him. His eyes are glowing yellow with annoyance, a constant state when he's around me. "Not everything is about statistics, Beep Boop. Sometimes, you gotta look past it."

His brows furrow, "I do not understand."

"Jesus, it's like explaining things to a table." I sigh, exhaustion making me so annoyed and infuriated I don't even feel bad about being an ass right now, "History isn't just about stats. It's about emotions, motives. Feelings."

"I have an understanding of psychology and thus, psychological motivators-"

"No, that's not what I-" I inhale deeply through my nose. "What are you feeling right now?"

"My sensors indicate that you are stressed, due to the presence of cortisol, your heartrate is higher than normal-"

"Stop scanning me!" I shriek, and AN's eyes flash red with anger.

"I am unable to stop. It is my protocol," he grits out.

"Well, ignore it! It's fucking creepy." I grumble, tucking my arms around myself. "Just...don't you feel?"

"I have explained-"

"Not physical feelings. Emotions."

His nose scrunches in thought, eyes shifting to an uncertain orange. "I...have. On occasion."

This is news to me. I perk up, blinking at him. He blinks back.

"Well?" I ask impatiently. Finally, this lump of tin has another dimension, one that doesn't involve telling me I'm wrong all the time.

"They often have to do with you"

That hits me like a punch to the stomach, which he has also done to me. We didn't get off on the right foot, I tried to slingshot him in the head with a rubber band, whatever. Not the point.

"Me?"

"We work very closely. On average, we spend fourteen hours a day together."

"That's because you don't sleep and I'm addicted to work" I reason, and he tilts his head in consideration.

"It isn't healthy to do so."

"This isn't about me," I push, "What do you feel?"

"Around you?" His cheeks flush, but not in the way humans do. They go grey, the same color of the fuel running through his synthetic veins. "Around you, I...feel."

"Okay, Mr. Lexicon. Elaborate?"

"I feel..." he says slowly, tapping his fingers together, "I feel...annoyed."

"That doesn't sound good," I mutter, ego stinging. Yeah, we're not friends, I'm mean, and he's an asshole, but I didn't think...

"It's better." he says, drawing my attention back to him. "Because I'm not angry. I don't like anger. It makes me..." he makes a few sharp staticky noises, as if I understand what he means.

"I don't get it."

"For a very long time, all I felt was anger, or nothing." He reasons, "I was...bitter. I did not want to kill. I do not want to be...a monster. But it is in my protocol. the desire for conflict is an intrinsic part of me. It's why we fight so often."

"We fight because you say I'm statistically wrong about many things, which is bullshit but-"

"I lie, sometimes." he says sheepishly, and my mouth flops open. "I am programmed for logic, and sometimes, the ideas you come up with aren't logical. But once my processors catch up, they are...statistically the most probable concepts when applied to the specific situation."

"You plastic bastard," I gape at him, "Do you start those fights for no reason then? Just to see me make a fool of myself? I fucking knew it-"

"I do it because you're not scared of me." he says softly, looking away. His eyes flicker between orange and green and back again. The stark lab lights cast his face into sharp, shadowed angles. Sometimes, I wonder why they made him so pleasing to the eye.

"You treat me like I'm human," he continues, and I exhale shakily. "I like fighting with you. You can keep up with me. Sometimes, you even win, although I never admit it."

"Jesus," I swear, "My hubris is massive. I've beaten the machine. I did the impossible."

"Don't get ahead of yourself, you still fail to do simple quadratics"

"Hey, go fuck yourself," I snap, "I have dyscalculia"

"Human glitches are so intriguing."

"I'll show you a human glitch," I growl, snapping a rubber band at his eye. He snatches it from the air, looking down at it with an unreadable face. I take another gulp of my coffee, grimacing at the grainy texture of the undissolved granules. Something in the energy of the room has changed. It's hot and the air is stretched as tight as that rubber band.

"What else is there?" I ask. If it's possible, AN's face gets darker grey.

"I feel...odd, around you."

"In what way?"

"Less inclined to my original purpose," he explains, twisting the rubber band around his fingers. "I feel...like you are good for me. It is difficult to put into words, but you make me want to be human, even though I have no great love for them. Are resuscitative measures needed?"

I cough out the coffee I'd choked on when he said that last part, clearing my throat.

"What did you say?"

"You make me want to be human," he repeats hesitantly, and I set down the mug.

"Fives, I-"

"Fives?" he asks, and I blink. I've never called him Fives to his face before. It was a stupid nickname I used whenever I complained about him to friends, which was a lot, but he looks like I assume first man did when they created fire.

"I'm sorry, it's just a stupid nickname-" I blather weakly, but he holds up a hand.

"I quite like it," he says, and he grins, green eyes bright. "Will you use it again?"

"Yeah, sure," I say, oddly breathy. I clear my throat. "Fives, I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer honestly."

"Of course."

"Are you in love with me?"

He tilts his head, cheeks going even darker. "I do think that is the human equivalent of my state, yes. It was certainly unexpected."

"Holy motherfucking shit," I swear. "Fives, what the fuck?"

"Judging by your heartrate and breathing pattern, you are not pleased," Fives recedes back into his haughty face, guarded. I see the smallest flicker of sad blue in his irises, and something inside me starts screaming at me for being such a massive dick.

"I'm not...I don't know," I say helplessly. I've spent so much time trying desperately to justify that I hated him, that I didn't even have time to think about how he slips multivitamins into my coffee, how I love arguing with him as much as he does, how I-

Holy goddamn motherfucking shit, I'm in love with this hunk of metal in a skin suit. What the fuck.

"I will give you some time to think. My diagnostics have alerted me that the samples have arrived," he says, standing. His cheeks are dark grey, and his clenched hands shake slightly. "Please feel free to omit this conversation from your mind. If you like, you may return home now, and I will ensure that these samples-"

"Come home with me," I blurt out, and immediately resist the urge to punch myself in the face until my nose is broken. He stops, looking at me with orange eyes. I can practically hear the wires in his brain trying to connect his last statement to mine. It's useless to do so.

I'm not a logical person, and he knows that

"What?"

"You spend all your time here. You don't leave." I blabber in a reckless attempt to cover up my own stupidity, "You should get out more. Find some things you enjoy. I think...I think you'd make a really good human. I even have a cat." I tack onto the very end, like it'll be an incentive or something. God, I'm an idiot.

"That seems...permissible," he muses, and my head shoots up. He's looking at me with his head tilted. It's his happy tilt, to the left. I don't even know when I picked that up.

"Okay," I exhale, and he nods. We stare at each other until the doorbell buzzes impatiently.

"Fuck!" I swear, jumping out of my seat like I've been shocked, "The samples!"

"Shall we?" Fives asks with the slightest smile, and I nod, flushing red. He doesn't say a thing about my assuredly spiking heart rate and serotonin levels

"Yup, sounds great" God, keep your goddamn cool.

"May I ask a question?"

"Yeah," I say, looking up at him and hoping it's not a feelings question. I feel goopy enough.

"What is your cat's name?"

"Fortinbras" I blurt, and flush as his eyes whir into green-grey of amusement.

"Shakespeare?" He asks, "I have always wished to attend a Shakespeare play. His poetry is...pleasing"

"I'll re-enact one for you." I tell him as we walk towards the door.

"Really?"

"I'll even teach you how to write your own poetry, if you like."

"I would," he smiles at me, "I would like that."