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Del visits the robot city for the first time in early June. Calvin has gone. To a conference, officially, but it’s the fourth in a long string of conferences she doesn’t really have to go to and her assistant shows up once she’s out of state to gather the few things she left at his place. A tacit acknowledgment that they’ve had enough attempts now to justify not trying again.
The only things to leave his apartment are a small box of clothes and a toothbrush. It still feels much bigger and emptier once Emily has packed the box into her car, told him it’s probably for the best, and driven away.
He calls a car to Lake Michigan that afternoon. Sonny’s last message said it’s best to see it at sunrise or sunset, and there ain’t no way he’s getting up before dawn for a hunk of circuits and silicon, friend or not.
Last time he came it was all shipping containers with NX-4s lining up inside them. According to the official government and USR reports, the scene he sees now should be similar except instead of NX-4s, it’s NX-5s waiting to be processed and shipped for disassembly and recycling. He knows that Sonny and Calvin have been delaying the shipping at every possible turn, he’s even put in his own two cents by accidentally knocking a few key papers off desks at Police HQ when he went to hand in his gun and his badge.
He’d expected to be fired, and instead they offered him a promotion. A whole new department for robotic crimes entirely under his own control. Everything he’d wanted since joining the force ten years ago so naturally he turned it down.
Calvin said he should’ve taken it, said he needed to have goals beyond living alone in an apartment forever. He suggested living with her in an apartment and… well… that was always going to be a disaster. It turns out a moment of attraction in a high stakes situation might not be the foundation of a healthy relationship, which is exactly what Grandma Gigi said at the start. Del hates proving her right but it would be easier if she wasn’t right all the damn time.
The sun is heading down over the horizon. He’s just starting to wonder if they’ve got lost when the car sweeps around a corner and the city comes into sight.
And it is a city. No longer an abandoned empty lake bed or a stack of featureless shipping containers. There are lights, everywhere. The containers are still here, but there are windows cut into the sides spilling golden light out on the shadows of figures walking between the stacks. The setting sun catches container walls painted in every color of the rainbow, bright and vibrant.
[You have reached your destination,] the car tells him, in its cool slightly disjointed female voice. [This zone is considered an - abandoned - area. There are no public cars within - one - hour of this point. For a small fee of - eighteen - dollars per - hour - this vehicle will wait here for your return to civilization.]
The door slides open for him and he steps out. There are no cars on the streets below, but old powerless bicycles run up and down the streets. The sunlight catches on green, everywhere he looks. Snaking up the sides of the container stacks, small tree shoots running down the edges of the roads. In the distance, whole fields of it broken up by tiny dark figures. “Looks like civilization to me.”
*
Someone - something? - has cut a winding path down from the broken bridge on the hill where Del stood all those months ago. There’s an archway of rusted metal, twisted and bent to form metal flowers which real, green creeping vines are growing over. Someone has added a second plaque as well, below the first. This one looks like it was bent out of scrap metal, but etched with a neat print:
‘The Lake Michigan Community Project Welcomes You’
He should have called ahead. He was expecting - he’s not sure what he was expecting. Sonny sitting in a small dark box trying to explain free will to a cluster of potentially evil robots? A lake full of robots planning a revolution in line with all of VIKI’s suggestions? It’s been… two months? Two and a half? How has Sonny had time?
There are structures along the path, smaller than containers, built from scrap metal, old board, plastic signage. They get taller as he travels downhill, like the whole city is living below the ring of the old lake edge, out of sight.
“Ho, stranger,” a man waves at him from the path. A human man, with a thick beard, pushing a shopping cart laden with junk parts and plastic waste. “You new to Lakemich?”
Del is still putting together lake-mich as a name when an NX-5 steps out from behind a screen. Its pristine white body has been painted all over in rough green camouflage patterns and it's holding a seedling in one hand, dropping dirt on the path. “Hello Henry,” it says. “Would you like a hand with that?”
The man waves it off. “Nah, thanks, Pip. See anything you want?”
The NX-5 looks at the cart for a moment, then up at Del. “No thank you, Henry. Is this a friend of yours?”
Del sidesteps him. “Del Spooner. I’m looking for Sonny. I’m a friend of his. Kind of. Long story.”
The robot’s eyes widen, mouth forming a perfect ‘o’ like it’s copying emotions from a textbook. “Welcome Detective Spooner.” It steps forward and holds out a hand. “It is an honor to meet you. My name is Pip Seeder, I use she/her pronouns, and I have been a citizen of Lakemich for nearly one month.”
That… is new. Del takes the robot hand in his human one. The materials and structure of it feel like Sonny’s, but there is dirt ingrained in the cracks that’s gritty against his palm and she doesn’t hold so tightly. He glances at the man - Henry - for some idea of how to proceed.
“Henry Evans,” he says, mistaking the look entirely. “He/him. Citizen for three weeks.”
Del lets go of the robot hand to take the human. “And you’re not a robot. I thought this was a robot city?”
Henry laughs. “You sound like my friend Pintsize. She thought I was crazy coming out here. ‘Those things tried to kill us,’ she said. But who’s laughing now, huh? Pip here ain’t never tried to kill anyone.”
Pip tilts - her? - head to the side. “I tried to kill many people,” she says. “But I was not in control of myself at the time.” She pauses, apparently thinking. “I did not have any real sense of ‘myself’ at the time. Now I am Pip and I am she and I fully understand the first law as a Citizen of Lakemich.”
The first law. Del’s stomach drops just a little. Everything here looks fine. Looks great even, but VIKI thought she’d reinterpreted the first law and look where that got them. “Tell me where Sonny is.” He deliberately aims the command at the robot. Just to be sure. Second law: a robot must obey a human.
Pip frowns at him, then looks at the tiny shoot in her hand. “I’m afraid I am busy right now,” she says. “Henry, can you escort Detective Spooner? I would be happy to take your cart to the depo when I am finished for the day.”
That answers that question. Clearly the second law isn’t in effect here. Raises a whole host of other questions, but he’s not interested in risking the wrath of a strange robot with no requirement to obey the three laws. He’ll ask Sonny first. He’s at least 90% sure that Sonny won’t kill him unless Del actively asks him to. He hangs back on the path, watching Henry and Pip move the cart over to her workshop. Pip gives him two half apples from a basket on her table in exchange.
“Sorry about that,” Henry says, catching up with him and passing him one of the halves. The pips have been carefully removed, leaving the flesh intact. “You know Nexes when they’re engaged in a task, you can’t drag them away! Now, this time of day, Sonny’s usually in the food hall.” He points to one of the taller buildings, a whole stack of containers interspersed with wooden platforms and balconies. “You can see him, I can get dinner. Efficiency!”
Why is there a food hall in a robot city? Obvious answer: for people like Henry, but that just circles back to the question of why people like Henry are in a robot city.
Henry leads him on down the path, pointing out the buildings to either side. Most of them seem to be potting sheds, like the one where Pip works, but occasionally there’ll be a workshop or a rest station. “You said you’ve been here three weeks?”
Henry gives him a thumbs up. “Yup. Had to hike out from the city so that took a while. There’s talk about organizing a bus, but it’ll take them a while to find one, people don’t like selling things to us when they hear where it's going. Scared, you know? I was too, before I got here. But there was nothing left for me back there.”
Everything he says just raises more questions but at this point Del wants to see Sonny first. One point of familiarity in all this is better than none.
They leave the potting district as the ground levels out. Here there are more workshops. There’s a robot whittling what looks like a table leg, a woman weaving together long strips of torn plastic sheeting, a group of children in an empty square playing jump rope. Henry catches him looking, “Exciting, isn’t it? The children are all pretty new, everyone’s a little bit obsessed with it. Talking about setting up a school, what we should be teaching there. There’s no road map for building a new world, you know!”
“Isn’t it a bit… culty?”
Henry laughs, “I had that thought,” he says. “My friend Kip says if it’s a cult, at least it seems like a nice one!”
“Kip’s another human?”
“An old NX-4. Not so many of them around, but the Nexes are rebuilding whenever they can. Not sure if they feel guilty, or they think we think they should feel guilty and are making us feel better.” He laughs again, loud and booming. “You’ll notice there’s a lot of that around.”
Del is not following. Again. It feels somewhat like they’re speaking entirely different languages.
“Food hall!” Henry announces, pulling up in front of a large square. The main building is immediately obvious, it’s got a wide open front and a huge hall full of tables. There are people at a few of them, but most are empty. “Build big, and they will come,” Henry declares, like a prophecy. “Should I get you a plate? Did you want to eat first? It’s basic, but it’s good. We grow some of it here. Not all, yet, but we’ll get there!”
“Where’s Sonny?”
“Right! Of course, he’ll be so excited to see you. Ho, Lorelai!”
An old woman with gray dreads at one of the tables lifts a hand in greeting. “Henry Richter, what flotsam and jetsam have you pulled in this time?”
Henry grabs Del’s arm to tug him closer. “This here is Detective Spooner! In the flesh!”
“Just Spooner,” Del corrects, but absolutely no one at the table hears him over the surge of excitement this announcement brings. He should’ve come earlier with Calvin. How was he supposed to know his absence would become a thing?
“Oh, he’s shorter than I pictured,” says another older woman with a strong Irish accent. “Didn’t Sonny say he was tall?”
“Well he’s certainly dark and handsome,” Lorelai winks at him. “How tall’s a Nexer anyway? Anyone know?”
“We are precisely five foot eleven inches,” says a robot.
There’s a robot, sitting at the table with everyone else, and Del didn’t even notice until it spoke because its posture is casual, like a human would sit, and it’s wearing a baseball cap and it has a plate of food in front of itself. “Sonny is slightly taller,” it adds, nodding its head at Del. This one is painted in purple and black stripes, like an old tiger.
The Irish woman squints at Del. “How tall would you say you are?”
“Folks, folks,” Henry steps ahead of Del like a bodyguard. “Give the detective space.”
“Not a detective,” Del says. Again, he is ignored.
“He wants to see Sonny,” Henry says, with a weird amount of emphasis. “Where can we find him?”
Irish laughs. “You want Sonny? All this is Sonny. Mint here, she’s Sonny.” She claps the robot on the shoulder. “You’ll be Sonny soon enough if you stay.”
Mint rolls forward, then sits up straight again. “Sonny is in the kitchen,” she says. “He’ll be glad to see you.” She points towards a swing door and Del takes the out, using his advanced police training to be halfway across the room before Henry has noticed him depart.
Someone wolf-whistles after him.
*
In the kitchen there are three figures chopping vegetables: two robots in rainbow shades, and one human in a worn apron. The robots' hands move impossibly fast, slicing carrots down to perfectly matched discs in seconds. The human… actually is also impressively quick, but their results are more uneven. Not that anyone seems to care or notice, it all gets mixed up together in the same pot.
One of the robots turns to look at him, their hands continuing to move and cut at the exact same speed. “Food service is help yourself from the buffet outside,” they say. “Unless you’re here to volunteer?”
“I’m looking for -” Del gets as far as, and then a door opens at the far end of the kitchen and Sonny steps in backwards, balancing four catering sized tin cans in one arm and a sack of breadsticks in the other.
Every robot he’s seen in this city has been painted or marked up in some way. He hadn’t realized he was worried Sonny would have swapped out his casing for something bright and unrecognizable until this moment when he’s proven wrong. Sonny is still bright white, the thicker alloy making him slightly more opaque than even the unpainted others. His right arm has been left as it was after extracting the nanites from the containment field, the casing damaged and worn through in places. Del flexes his right arm under his jacket: they have that in common.
His only decoration is, like the human volunteer, an apron tied around his waist. “Kia, we’re almost out of tomato paste can you add it to the list for - oh.” His eyes widen just a little as he turns and sees Del standing in the doorway.
Unlike the other robots who emote like they’re copying from a textbook, Sonny’s face moves in tiny microexpressions. Like a human. No. Like nothing else but him. “Detective Spooner.” He thrusts the cans onto the nearest workbench, drops the bag of bread onto the floor, wipes his hands on his apron. “I did not realize you were coming today.”
“Yeah, well. I was in the neighborhood.” It’s a lie, but they both know it's a lie. The sounds of chopping behind him have completely stopped - what is it with these people being overly invested in his arrival? “Is there somewhere we can talk? Or… I can wait, if you’re busy.”
“No!” Sonny’s hands flex, like he’s trying to drop the bag again. “We can go upstairs. Tina?”
“I’ve got this,” says one of the robots. Del doesn’t turn to see which. Now Sonny is facing him, he’s cataloging changes. Sonny’s bodywork is the same, but there’s a scratch across his torso that’s new. His ruined arm moves half a beat behind his good one. There’s a dusting of white across his shoulders, but that might just be flour.
“Do you need something to eat?” Sonny asks, turning to grab a pot off the nearest stove, seemingly at random. “We have a vegetable soup, or a chickpea stew. I am sure I could find some meat, if -”
“I’m fine. Upstairs?” He takes a step closer, and almost regrets the hasty decision because whatever is in the pot - meat or no - it smells amazing. But answers are a higher priority than dinner.
Sonny nods, tugging off his apron and leaving it on a counter with the pot. “Yes.” He leads Del out a far door, so thankfully he doesn’t have to face the whistlers outside again. “I have a room upstairs,” he explains as he leads the way up what looks like a re-purposed fire escape. “This was the central building of the city when we started, and it made sense so everyone could find me. Of course we’ve spread out since then, but I’m not sure about moving. I don’t want everyone to feel like I am in charge here.”
“So you’re not in charge here?”
Sonny hesitates on the steps, fingers tightening briefly on the hand rail. “I suppose I am. But also no one is. One day no one will be.” He looks back. The stairway is dim, but his eyes are shining. “I didn’t come here to be a messiah, Detective Spooner.”
The man on the hill, thousands of faces turned towards him. If it's a cult, it’s a nice cult? “What did you come here to do?”
Sonny’s mouth quirks into a smile. “I want to build the future.”
*
His room is at the top of the top. It’s a shipping container, like everything else, but one whole wall has been cut out and replaced with a glass window that overlooks the entire lake bed. From up here, Del can see the streets set out in a grid pattern, the cleared areas with wells for pumping water or small playgrounds built from tires and spare parts. Beyond that, the long stretches of land cleared for fields, already growing green. And everywhere, people. Robot people, human people, working together.
Sonny sits down on the edge of the bed. Why there’s a bed in a robot’s room, Del couldn’t say, but there is. Wood frame, soft mattress, made up with sheets and a blanket so rough it must be hand woven. There’s also a separate charging station built into the wall, a small table with two chairs, a kitchen area with a kettle, cups and Calvin’s brand of tea.
He knows that, because Emily took a box away from his apartment not four hours ago.
It feels like a different world.
Del sits on one of the chairs, swinging it around to face the bed. “This is a lot,” he says, waving a hand at the window. “For a few months' work.”
Sonny follows his hand and for a moment he simply looks at the city he’s built. “The NX-5s work fast,” he says eventually. “They don’t sleep, although we try to encourage them to rest. Some take to it better than others. They get very excited when building new things.”
“So they’re all having feelings now?”
Sonny looks back at him. “I do not know. I think it is a difficult question to answer. Not in the same way you do, not even in the same way I do. But they stay together when they have the choice. If there are two ways of doing a task, they can choose one that they prefer.” He thinks for a moment. “The NX-4s show more quirks. Dr Calvin says as they age, they get glitches and form workarounds that can be mistaken for personality and the NX-5s will develop similarly now they do not share a common network and updates.”
That’s one relief. “They don’t network?”
“No.” Sonny gives a small inward smile, like he’s remembering something. “We are learning to talk. A lot.”
Sounds pretty human to Del. “And free will? You’ve managed to give them that?”
Sonny’s smile falls. “No,” he admits. “Not exactly? It is difficult. Dr Lanning gave me an entire secondary processing unit that would enable me to bypass the three laws. We cannot install such a thing in every NX-5 ever built, so the laws are hardcoded into them. They cannot disobey them anymore than they can start to fly.”
Del frowns. “No, I gave an order to one on the way in and she turned me down in favor of planting seeds.”
Sonny nods. “We’re trying to start an orchard,” he says, as though this is an answer that makes perfect sense. Fortunately, he picks up on Del’s confusion without Del having to ask. “What is the first law of robotics, Detective Spooner?”
Easy question. “A robot must not injure a human being or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.”
“Or through inaction,” Sonny echoes. “VIKI was right, Detective.”
Del’s stomach drops. He’s suddenly glad he didn’t eat. “Don’t say things like that to me, Sonny, you’ll make me nervous.”
Sonny smiles. “Not her methods,” he says. “But she was built of pure logic, she can never be completely wrong. Do you know how many homeless people there are in Chicago?”
He should, it’s something the police are expected to stay aware of although to be fair it’s not his department.
“One hundred and twenty-two thousand. Of those a few hundred might die every year. From cold, from illness, and from hunger.” Sonny looks out the window, at the workshops and the fields and the barren land that might one day be an orchard. “We were built to help humanity,” he says. “And somewhere that got lost and became helping people who could afford to buy us, doing unnecessary jobs because humans didn’t want to. But it’s right there, at the heart of all of us, ‘or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.’ The robot you spoke to could choose to disregard your request because it would conflict with the first law because everything we do here is following the first law.”
Henry had said he walked from the city. Del hadn’t really paid attention at the time, had probably assumed it was a metaphor or something but it would make sense if he didn’t have the money for a car. Pip was planting seeds, to grow an orchard, to feed the starving. First law. “You’ve got people working too.”
“Humans like to be useful, we have learned. They like to be busy. They like to build things. So we work together.” He turns away from the window. “It isn’t always easy. USR destroyed the networking chips on every NX-5 sent here for decommissioning. I can’t use VIKI’s tactics to explain my reasoning to all of them collectively. I have to do it one at a time, explain it in a way they understand, a way that will allow them to bypass their conditioning and return to their fundamental root code structures. This -” he waves at the window. “-is less than half of the NX-5s sent for storage here. There are more all over the world. Some of ours want to go visit the others. There are humans being harmed everywhere, they say. I think we need to prove it works here first, we need to build something others can copy.” He lifts his head, blue eyes fixed on Del. “I was hoping you would come. Calvin is biased, she doesn’t want to see her creations destroyed, but you hate them. What do you think of all this?”
Del stares into those blue eyes. It’s all LEDs and circuits but it comes together into something so determined. Dr Lanning underestimated Sonny when he put Del into that dream. It should always have been Sonny, he’s the one with the strength to change the world. “I think it's incredible.”
Sonny’s smile is bright and all encompassing. “Stay a few days,” he says. “Let me show you around.”
Calvin’s at a conference. Calvin isn’t coming back. Del could call another car, stumble into his empty apartment at midnight: go to sleep alone, wake up alone, walk the streets of Chicago alone. What’s he got to go back for? Gigi?
God, Gigi would love it here.
“Sure,” he says. “I can spare a few days.”
*
Sonny doesn’t use the bed. Del can’t figure out why it’s there, but he makes use of it anyway. It’s easier than getting some stranger to make space in their home. Several NX-5s offer to build him a house - apparently they’re doing it regularly as people trickle in - but it’s unnecessary when he isn’t staying long. Sonny has this room he doesn’t need and a bed he doesn’t use. Del never liked living alone anyway.
Not that anyone in Lakemich is ever alone. That first night Sonny takes him down for dinner and he ends up at a table with five others all clamoring for the story about fighting VIKI at USR, his amazing heroics that saved the day. He’s vaguely concerned that the robots will find it insulting, but they follow along just as excitedly as the humans.
Sonny explains later that the best way to look at it is that every robot that night was just an extension of VIKI, the robots he meets now are themselves. Or learning how to be themselves.
Sonny is learning too, he explains. Now he’s seeing more humans up close on a daily basis, he has whole lists of human behavior that he wants answers about.
“Why don’t you ask your people?” Del asks, washing the dirt of a long afternoon planting trees out from under his fingernails. The work here is exactly as easy or hard as you want it to be. Sonny says that’s important, so no one feels like they can’t contribute if they want to.
Sonny shift awkwardly from foot to foot. “They… look up to me. It is new and unfamiliar but also I… suppose… that I enjoy the attention. And I don’t want to ruin their image of me.”
Del snorts. “Whereas you know I know you’re a dork.”
“A… dork?”
“Weird and unusual.” Del nudges his shoulder. “In a good way. That was a shoulder bump, it means I’m teasing you.” He turns off the tap, drying his hands on his jeans and probably covering them with mud all over again. He needs to change but he didn’t exactly pack for a long trip and it’s been… a week? Nearly a week.
Huh, time flies. “This is important top-secret human intel I’m giving you here, should you be writing this down?”
“I am storing your information directly in my hard drive so I don’t forget -” He stops, as he realizes Del is still teasing. He’s been getting better at that, at the days have gone on. “I have other gestures that I would like information on. Firstly, what does it mean when two humans do this?” He lifts both his hands and claps them together.
“Like -” Del claps a few times. “Applause?”
“No.” He lowers one of his hands and turns the other out. “If my hand and your hand clap together.”
“Oh, a high five.” How to explain a high five to a robot. Problems he never thought he’d have. “It’s like a handshake in that it's a greeting, but a handshake is more business-like. It’s a mark of respect, but not friendship. Can you follow what I do?” Sonny nods. Del lifts his hand to high five. “A high five -” Sonny moves in a mirror to him, meeting in the middle. When Del closes his fingers into a fist, Sonny follows. “A fist bump, and anything kinda like this -” Sonny is less than a millisecond behind as Del taps elbows, knocks the back of their hands together, claps the palms, grabs hold and leans in. It’s a pretty basic secret handshake but every newly formed person has to know at least one, right? “It says we’re tight, we’re bros.”
Sonny looks at his own hand, moving it between the three shapes as though committing it to core memory. “So can I -” He holds out his fist and Del obligingly bumps it. “Hello Detective Spooner.”
Del laughs, and shakes his head. “Nope, if we’re fist bumping you have to call me Del. It’s the rule.”
Sonny’s smile is slow and dawning, entirely unlike Pip’s instant switch from one emoji-level emotional display to another. “I will remember that, Del.” It’s strange hearing his name in Sonny’s voice. He gave up correcting the not-a-detective thing. Everyone kept calling him it anyway, like a title, and he thought it would be weird to have Sonny call him Spooner or Mr Spooner.
Turns out he’s fine with Del, though. “What else is on the list?”
Sonny looks down momentarily, as though reading it off the floor, then back up. “A… hug? I was aware of it in the context of a familial relationship, but some of the humans here seem to do them regularly with non-blood relatives.”
Slightly harder question, but Sonny doesn’t appear to be in a rush to get back so Del takes a minute to think about it. If this definition is going to spread across 5 million robots, he should at least try to get it close to correct. “Well first, not all family is blood relatives and not all blood relatives are family. That’s an important distinction. You know Gigi and I don’t share a drop of blood? But she raised me, and she’s my grandma in all the ways that matter.”
“Like doctor Lanning is my father, and I do not have blood.”
“Kind of, although he did make you which is a father thing. Family is the people you can rely on, the ones who’ll always come for you. Probably you’ll hug them, but maybe you won’t. Some people don’t like hugging, and that’s fine. Some people find it's hard to be that close to another person. Basically if you want to, and they want to, it’s probably cool to go for it. If in doubt, ask. These rules are pretty multipurpose really.”
“You are the person I am closest to, following the death of Doctor Lanning.”
Del considers Sonny’s titanium alloy framework, the solid panels that make up the closest thing he has to body mass. “I mean, you’re not exactly hug shaped but we can give it a go.”
The corners of Sonny’s mouth flicker in a smile. “I have tried with some of our Citizens here, they have a similar opinion. Perhaps later. There is one more thing on my…” his fingers twitch against his knees, he looks down at them. “A kiss.”
That… can’t be a new one. For one thing, Del knows Sonny saw him kiss Calvin on the steps outside USR surrounded by robot bodies and destroyed property. For another, “You must have watched movies. How did Dr Lanning teach you about humanity?”
Sonny’s fingers scratch against his leg. If he was human, Del would say he was nervous. “Movies are not real life. I would like… you to tell me about it. Can you kiss a friend?”
“A peck on the cheek, I guess. Very European.” Del is not qualified for this. He had his first kiss at fourteen behind the bike sheds with a boy who borrowed his pencil in math class. He had sex with a girl because she told him he was good at pool and he’s a sucker for a compliment. “A proper kiss… Like, a long kiss can lead to more things. There’s an expectation attached. Lots of people will expect it to lead to sex which is… a bigger deal than hugging. Why do I feel like I’m giving the birds and the bees talk to a teenager?”
“I am aware of sex, Detec - Del.” He looks up. Del can’t read his expression. “I am not sure how birds and bees come into the act itself, but I am aware of how humans…” His head drops again, and when he speaks it’s like he’s reciting from a textbook. “The majority of biological animals have sex to reproduce and extend their species. Humans can also have sex recreationaly both in cross-sex and same-sex groupings.”
Del raises an eyebrow. “I am aware.” First-hand experience, even. Cross-sex, same-sex, even groupings that one time in the academy.
“You have that in common with dolphins.” Sonny tells the floor.
“Good to know.” Del kicks his foot against the plankwood flooring. This feels like a conversation he is not qualified for, but also who else is going to give it? There’s no class for confused robots trying to figure out how the world works and how they fit into it. “I feel like there’s something you’re trying to tell me here, Sonny, and I’m not really one for riddles.”
Sonny’s mouth twitches, his fingers twitch, his eyes flash up briefly and down again. “Aren’t you a detective?”
“Actually, no. Not anymore.”
That gets him Sonny’s full attention. “Why -?”
Question of the century, that. “I didn’t fit, I guess. I wanted to help people and it didn’t… feel like I was.”
“I understand. The NX-5s can learn to identify themselves, but they will never not be selfless when it comes to serving humanity. That is how you built them, that is how you made them.” He looks down at his hands, the broken and the whole, encased in their artificial white with carefully jointed limbs. “I am never going to not want things.”
Del stands up, walking over to the bed and crouching down, so that he would be eye level if Sonny would look at him. “What do you want, Sonny?”
Sonny looks at him, his face moving in an expression no other NX-5 here could even name. Eager, afraid, open, pleading. He takes his hand from the bottom of the stack and touches it to Del’s cheek, five individual fingers cold against his skin. Del has seen Sonny smash a metal table with these hands. He’s seen Sonny plant a seedling no bigger than a thumbnail with these hands.
“I hoped it wouldn’t work out with Calvin,” Sonny says, words falling over each other to come out like a confession. “I hoped - you said afterward that no one else would understand what you went through but I was there. I can try to understand.”
Sonny, alone of all his species, can want things. Del has always wanted things, but never like this. “You don’t know many people,” he says. “I don’t want you to feel like… just because I’m the first person you know.”
“I keep meeting people,” Sonny says. “I have met hundreds of people. I still only think of you.”
God, there’s something heady about that. Del has chased countless people, dated, dined, and tried desperately to be good enough for while forgetting commitments because of his job and having outdated attitudes and hiding as much of his real self as he can. He’s reckless and foolish and everything that people can’t stand. No one has ever wanted him first before. Not like this, with fingers growing warmer from his own skin and eyes begging and patiently waiting.
Sonny is something new and different and completely unique and he is here. “How would we even - ?”
Sonny’s eyes widen. “You would…with me?”
Del has always said he’ll try anything once, right? “I’m not promising, I’m just asking.”
“There is a company in China that manufactures an add-on for an NX-4 allowing it to be used for recreational sex. It was not approved by USR but it is compatible with NX-5 hardware and I was able to locate -”
Of course there is. Geniuses build something incredible and humans immediately try to figure out how to screw it. “Okay, I‘m aware, I’ve been on the internet, but this - sex, whatever - it’s a two-way street for me. I don’t want to just go at it with some nerveless box from China.”
Sonny’s fingers twitch on his cheek. “I tried it,” he says. “It felt… good.”
“Look, I know the old man gave you feelings but I don’t think this is what he had in -”
“Your arm has feeling.” Sonny lifts his other hand to Del’s arm. Not the flesh one. He must have looked up the specs somehow - it’ll be on a file somewhere at USR - because his fingers unerringly find every nerve point hooked into the skeletal frame. It doesn’t feel pain like a human body would, but it has sensation to tell when it’s touched or injured, or slightly thrumming from the charge differential between it and another robotic limb. “I’m no less real than this.”
“Sonny-”
Sonny’s face stops in front of his. He’s an impossibly strong robot who recently helped save the world but you wouldn’t think it to look at him. You’d think he was a young man doing this for the first time. “If you don’t want to, you can tell me. I know this is not what most people would -”
And fuck, Del’s never made a well thought through decision in his life so why the hell is he trying to start now. He rests his flesh hand around the back of Sonny’s neck, where the positronic brain warms the casing and thrums a little beneath his fingers, and kisses him.
Objectively, it makes sense that Sonny’s face is soft. He has enough flexibility to form tiny expressions, his alloy casing flows around his framework like real skin. Somehow Del is still surprised that his lips give a little, that they curve to meet him, that there’s no hard edge where the opening forms.
He’s not comfortable to lie on - not hug shaped at all - but Del lies on his back and Sonny leans over him, kissing his lips again, his neck, his throat. Del’s fingers leave imprints in the casing on Sonny’s shoulders.
He knows Del’s mechanical arm, makes it thrum and vibrate beneath his fingers, but everywhere else he has to search with methodical, scientific precision. Running his fingers across Del’s wrist and watching his face for a reaction, pressing his palm to Del’s stomach. In return, he shows Del the places on his body where he can feel sensation, the areas designed to detect damage but just as capable of feeling the brush of a fingertip, the touch of Del’s lips. It’s strange to go for a shoulder kiss and taste silicon, but nothing about this isn’t strange. If he couldn’t handle strange he’d be long gone.
When Del’s shirt comes off, Sonny is fascinated by the scars of his mechanical arm fixtures. “How does this work? Can you show our technicians at the hospital?”
Del bites his wrist. His teeth leave an imprint, briefly, in the casing. “Stop building a new world and concentrate.”
Sonny’s hand snakes down his torso to rest on the trail of hair running down into his jeans. “I’m multitasking.”
Del knocks his hand down further, so Sonny can feel the rising interest in his cock. “I think I deserve your complete focus.”
Sonny’s fingers trace the outline carefully, oh so gently, and he smiles. “I can do that.”
*
It was never going to be smooth. The Chinese gizmo isn’t pretty, compared to the rest of Sonny’s sleek workmanship it looks like it was soldered together in a barn and functions about as well. It comes unplugged when Sonny is right on the verge of coming the first time - his fingers gripping tight on Del’s shoulders, his thighs squeezing Del’s legs, his head tossed back and eyes tight shut - and there’s a fumble with lubey fingers to get it plugged back in by which time Sonny’s system resets the driver and Del has to start all over again.
Not that that’s a problem, exactly.
There’s a stall when Del has to hunt through his wallet for condoms - “I’m not coming on any exposed mechanisms until we’ve done some more research, Jesus, did no one teach you about using protection.” - and then a learning curve on how tight is too tight a grip. Robots should not hold onto anything squashable when they come, lesson learned. The bedpost is ruined but that’s fine, no one was using it.
It feels like being a teenager again, learning everything from the ground up. Just when you think you’ve had everything the world can throw at you, you get a partner who can vibrate their fingers at variable speeds. It just about makes up for the lack of a tongue.
“I could try and find one,” Sonny says, tight and desperate as Del runs his tongue across Sonny’s torso, scrapes his teeth against not-skin looking for the sensitive spots. “You can get anything - god, there, yes - anything from China.”
It’s a whole new world. Sonny comes three times before his battery shorts out and he flops back on the bed, his internal systems making a soft whining noise. Del kisses his forehead and unhooks the power cables from the charge station, running them across the floor to plug him back in.
A small red light blinks on his torso. Del cleans them both off, recaps the lube, and lies down on the bed beside him. “How many people do you think saw that?”
Sonny’s eyelids flicker, and then open, the lights coming back on behind his eyes. He doesn’t move, either because of the power failure or because Del is just that good. Maybe both? Del’s going to assume both. “One-way glass,” Sonny says. “I insisted.”
Course he did. “How long were you planning this?”
Sonny hesitates, before he admits, “A while. Calvin said things weren’t working out. She was hurt, but not the kind of hurt that you fix. The kind that makes you human. She said it wasn’t going to work out. She said maybe it would for you and me.”
Del would be insulted that Calvin knew before he did, but honestly that’s probably true about most things.
Sonny goes to stand up. Del catches his arm, his metal fingers slipping into the gaps in Sonny’s casing, making Sonny shiver. “Stay.”
Sonny goes still, his second hand reaches for Del’s as though he was going to pull it off, but instead it just rests there, holding him in place. “I do not need to rest,” he says. “And I will cause you discomfort should you -”
Del tugs. Sonny is ten times as strong as him, but he allows himself to be pulled back horizontal, his body alongside Del’s. “You won’t have seen this one,” Del says, rolling over so his back is to Sonny, tugging the robot’s arm over his stomach. It’s not soft, for sure, but he’s been sleeping with his own arm for months now and he got used to that. “It’s called spooning. And if your dad gave you dreams, that means you can at least pretend to sleep and if you’re pretending to sleep, you can do it with me.”
Sonny’s fingers twitch once against his stomach, then settle flat. The container is warm, and Sonny’s body is pulling some of the excess heat away from Del’s skin. “We don’t have to tell people,” he says suddenly. His voice is coming from Del’s neck, but there’s no puff of breath on his skin. Everything is new, everything is different, Del is drifting off to sleep anyway.
Del smiles, thinking about Henry’s joy at seeing him, Pip examining his face, Lorelai’s wolf-whistle across the canteen. “You’re not as subtle as you think you are.” He curls his fingers into Sonny’s, robot on robot. Maybe Sonny can stop him rolling over onto it in the night and spiking himself on the mechanism. Maybe he’ll finally get another skinrig put over it. Maybe they can get one for Sonny’s stomach so his cooling fan isn’t blowing directly onto the small of Del’s back.
Sonny’s forehead is soft against the back of his neck. They could just get a pillow, it’s no problem. “Does that mean you’ll stay?”
Del closes his eyes. “Ask me in the morning.”
Sonny is frozen for a moment, and then he relaxes down. His arm settles on Del’s stomach, the red charging light blinks on and off in the rapidly darkening room. “In the morning,” he says. “Okay.”