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If/Then Chapter 1: Wire Frames
In which Good-Ending Connor's runaway predictive abilities cause him to start hallucinating the Bad Endings
Pairing: Hank/Connor
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7,000
Summary:
Would you, could you, did you: those are human questions, feeling questions, androids aren’t supposed to think like that. His processors aren’t built to question, they’re built to predict. To permute. If X, then Y. If Y then Z. If the probability of X is 0.72 and the probability of Y is 0.33 then the probability of Z…if, then, if, then, a hundred million times a second until the numbers cease to be numbers and become the golden wire frames of possibility sketched out across a thousand branching futures.
Connor thinks he got the happy ending, but there are so many other ways it could have gone. And when your mind is a computer built to predict possible outcomes…it can be hard to tell the difference between what did happen, and what could have happened, if something had gone a little different.
Excerpt:
“ Spare me.” Hank reaches for the creamer on top of the refrigerator, and has to switch arms with a hiss and a wince as his sore shoulder protests the reach. There’s a flicker of red in his peripheral vision.
“Still sore?” Connor asks softly. Hank winces and nods, rubbing at his shoulder. He waits for the flutter of eyelashes that means Connor’s scanning him, for new inflamation, new tears, new swelling…but it doesn’t come. Instead, Connor looks away, curling in on himself like he does when he’s cold.
“I’m sorry,” Connor says, barely audible. “I should have been faster…I…” he touches his fingertips to his temple, and there it is again. His LED goes dark for a second, and then stutters awkwardly to life, little blocks of red-yellow-blue blinking on and off, jagged and patternless. “The target escaped, I should have been–”
“Connor?”
“Your chance of survival was 89 percent,” Connor says, and the cadence of his voice is changing, flat and faster than a human’s. “If your chance of survival is 89 percent then I should have maintained focus on the target, the target should not have escaped. I should have left–” he looked up at Hank, eyes skittering across his face without really seeing him.
“I should have left you hanging. I didn’t–”
“You didn’t leave me,” Hank says softly, soothingly, trying to keep a lid on his rising alarm. He squeezes Connor’s shoulder gently, feeling the tension vibrating through his frame.
“I’m sorry-” Connor says again, and then he blinks, and his LED swirls back to yellow, then to blue, smooth and bright again.
“You okay?” Hank asks, searching his face, and Connor gives him a tired smile.
“Bad dreams,” he says, hops off the counter and straightens his tie. “We should leave now if we want to be on time for the meeting.
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glymr
