Fic! Sort of
6 January 2012 12:54![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hestia8Title: Stuff and Nonsense
Notes: Stupid title, I know. But: AU fics that are being posted here and abandoned to the ether. Just noodling about. The Spooks ones are mostly delgaserasca’s fault (hope you feel better soon!), the Luther one is my weird brain. Counting these as fic amnesty as well, so if you fancy playing about with the ideas, go right ahead. And obviously, unbeta’d.
--
“Where is it now?” Alice asks, and when John thinks about it, he doesn’t really know what happens to Justin when he’s not needed. They must all be in a room in the station, all the cyborgs.
“Powered down?” He guesses, although he has no idea if that’s true. Teller made sure he understood that having Justin as his partner was integral to his being accepted back, so he’s just accepted his presence and not thought to question the logistics.
“What’s it like? Having someone that devoted to you? Have you thought about all the ways you could hurt him yet? You could cut him every day, you could shoot him, stab him, and the next morning he’d still be there, still be loyal and faithful and ready to do whatever you say.”
“And why would I want to hurt him?”
Alice turns away from the window to smile at him. “People do. Haven’t you read the studies? Something about all that trust coming from a machine can make people do strange things.”
He’s not surprised that Alice has read the studies. Alice likes to read about the things people do to each other. Research, he thinks, and then he realises why she’s really interested in the subject.
“You were going to buy one until you figured out it wouldn’t actually get hurt.”
--
If I was going to carry this on: John actually learns a bit more about the police cyborgs, Justin still gets stick (from humans) for being so faithful (because even though that’s his programming, it’s for loyalty and not slavish devotion), etc etc series continues but with robots.
--
Tariq’s never worked with this many non-humans in one team before. Right now there’s only him and Harry wandering around with heartbeats, and Harry’s not the kind of person you can chat to about skin quality or how creepy it is when they don’t talk (he can’t chat to Harry about anything, really; the incredulous look he gets when he tries is worse than the blank looks he gets from the androids).
He met Jo on his first morning, outside the building, and she was sweet and smiled at him, and he wondered if it was intentional. If it was a test. He passed, obviously. He’s never guessed wrong. He’s been around androids like them his whole life – it’s his Dad’s business, so his childhood was a fertile testing ground – and he can just tell.
Jo’s the most convincing, because someone bothered to make her friendly. Lucas is so obviously a patch-up job that Tariq’s not convinced he should be here at all (Harry just tells him that Malcolm signed off on the job, but Tariq’s looked at the file and Malcolm helped build Lucas in the first place, so he’s not exactly convinced that’s a good thing), and Ros’ personality was clearly built by someone who was having a really bad week.
He’s impressed by how they work as a team. One of the problems that comes up again and again with the androids is how they naturally want to work alone because they all know they can do better that way, but Malcolm managed to get them to overcome that. Tariq can’t understand why some of the other techs think it’s a weakness.
--
After he’s been there a few weeks, someone new turns up on the grid, but she’s human and no-one bothers to introduce them, so Tariq keeps his head down and gets on with his work. Actual humans aren’t that interesting, really. Not when you’ve got your own robots to play with.
She’s in discussions with Harry for a long time (Ros has got herself right in the middle of a hostage situation, and Harry’s sent Lucas and Jo off after her; Tariq just knows he’s going to spend all of next week fixing them up).
“Um, hello? Are you –“
“Human,” Tariq confirms, looking up. A short brunette woman (human, obviously) smiles nervously at him.
“I was going to say ‘are you the new Malcolm?’”
Tariq smiled at her, “I like to think he’s the old me. Can I help you?”
“I’m Ruth,” she says, and Tariq realises he should have been paying a bit more attention, “I start back today. I’ve been…away.”
She’s been legally dead, Tariq knows, but for the last week there’s been talk about her returning, and he had wondered if she was an android too. He only needed one look to work out that this wasn’t the case, so it must have just been a standard faked death. Normal. Nothing unusual.
Sometimes, Tariq thinks his Dad was right and he should have stayed in the family business. At least things made sense there.
“So you knew Ros and Jo before? Did you have anything to do with their programming?” He asks, changing the subject because it looks like it’s uncomfortable for her.
“Oh, no. I’m an analyst, I don’t really do…androids.”
“What do you think of Lucas?” He asks, quickly checking around to make sure no-one’s listening in.
“I’ve only known him a couple of days,” Ruth says diplomatically, “are you concerned?”
Not on a level he can explain to someone who doesn’t do androids, Tariq thinks.
“It’s probably nothing. You know what happened to him?” He asks, and she nods, “eight years without any maintenance. It’s not great.”
He doesn’t mention what they suspect the Russians did to Lucas’ subroutines.
--
If I was going to carry this on: Finn Lambert still takes Jo hostage and Ros still has to shoot her, and even though it doesn’t make any sense right now, it still damages Jo badly enough that she ‘dies’. There is robot angst. Oleg Darshavin is also an android, so he turns up and still manages to screw with Lucas’ head because he activates whatever it was the Russians did to Lucas and messes with his memory. There is more robot angst.
--
Since Lucas went rogue, Dimitri’s been hiding out at Tariq’s place.
Technically, none of this mess is anything to do with Dimitri, but there aren’t enough people around who can be bothered to understand that they aren’t just some hive mind. And besides, Dimitri would be lying if he said he wasn’t slightly worried himself.
It’s his programming that’s getting to him. He’s supposed to be a loner, he’s supposed to move on quickly and quietly, he’s supposed to follow orders, whatever they are. He and Lucas aren’t supposed to be able to do the things Lucas did, not on their own, so either something went really wrong, or someone got to him.
They’ve been told that Lucas’ body has been taken away for cremation, that he won’t have a funeral, but no-one believes that. There will be tests, and scans, and attempts to drag answers out of dead flesh so that they can make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Dimitri’s beginning to worry about what Tariq is doing. There’s a lot of hushed phone calls, and he’s always checking the camera feeds, and he keeps changing the security codes and not telling Dimitri what they are.
Dimitri’s narrowed it down to two possibilities: either he’s going to be reprogrammed, again, or things are bad enough on the Grid that Tariq’s decided they have to get away.
He doesn’t want to be reprogrammed. It leaves you lonely and isolated, and people look at you differently when you tell them you can only remember back a few years. They know what you are, and suddenly they’ve got somewhere else to be. Tariq’s never been like that with him, and Dimitri hopes that he knows him well enough to realise Dimitri would rather run forever than lose himself again.
He could ask straight out what they’re going to do, but he’s too scared of the answer.
--
If I was going to carry this on: they’re sort-of genetically modified super-soldiers, and Tariq and Dimitri do indeed go on the run, and Lucas and Dimitri were not the only ones. Erin probably is as well, and if this just after Lucas died in canon, perhaps she’d be the one trying to track them down. Tariq and Dimitri would probably have to split up at some point because it would get too dangeorus.
--
Notes: Stupid title, I know. But: AU fics that are being posted here and abandoned to the ether. Just noodling about. The Spooks ones are mostly delgaserasca’s fault (hope you feel better soon!), the Luther one is my weird brain. Counting these as fic amnesty as well, so if you fancy playing about with the ideas, go right ahead. And obviously, unbeta’d.
--
“Where is it now?” Alice asks, and when John thinks about it, he doesn’t really know what happens to Justin when he’s not needed. They must all be in a room in the station, all the cyborgs.
“Powered down?” He guesses, although he has no idea if that’s true. Teller made sure he understood that having Justin as his partner was integral to his being accepted back, so he’s just accepted his presence and not thought to question the logistics.
“What’s it like? Having someone that devoted to you? Have you thought about all the ways you could hurt him yet? You could cut him every day, you could shoot him, stab him, and the next morning he’d still be there, still be loyal and faithful and ready to do whatever you say.”
“And why would I want to hurt him?”
Alice turns away from the window to smile at him. “People do. Haven’t you read the studies? Something about all that trust coming from a machine can make people do strange things.”
He’s not surprised that Alice has read the studies. Alice likes to read about the things people do to each other. Research, he thinks, and then he realises why she’s really interested in the subject.
“You were going to buy one until you figured out it wouldn’t actually get hurt.”
--
If I was going to carry this on: John actually learns a bit more about the police cyborgs, Justin still gets stick (from humans) for being so faithful (because even though that’s his programming, it’s for loyalty and not slavish devotion), etc etc series continues but with robots.
--
Tariq’s never worked with this many non-humans in one team before. Right now there’s only him and Harry wandering around with heartbeats, and Harry’s not the kind of person you can chat to about skin quality or how creepy it is when they don’t talk (he can’t chat to Harry about anything, really; the incredulous look he gets when he tries is worse than the blank looks he gets from the androids).
He met Jo on his first morning, outside the building, and she was sweet and smiled at him, and he wondered if it was intentional. If it was a test. He passed, obviously. He’s never guessed wrong. He’s been around androids like them his whole life – it’s his Dad’s business, so his childhood was a fertile testing ground – and he can just tell.
Jo’s the most convincing, because someone bothered to make her friendly. Lucas is so obviously a patch-up job that Tariq’s not convinced he should be here at all (Harry just tells him that Malcolm signed off on the job, but Tariq’s looked at the file and Malcolm helped build Lucas in the first place, so he’s not exactly convinced that’s a good thing), and Ros’ personality was clearly built by someone who was having a really bad week.
He’s impressed by how they work as a team. One of the problems that comes up again and again with the androids is how they naturally want to work alone because they all know they can do better that way, but Malcolm managed to get them to overcome that. Tariq can’t understand why some of the other techs think it’s a weakness.
--
After he’s been there a few weeks, someone new turns up on the grid, but she’s human and no-one bothers to introduce them, so Tariq keeps his head down and gets on with his work. Actual humans aren’t that interesting, really. Not when you’ve got your own robots to play with.
She’s in discussions with Harry for a long time (Ros has got herself right in the middle of a hostage situation, and Harry’s sent Lucas and Jo off after her; Tariq just knows he’s going to spend all of next week fixing them up).
“Um, hello? Are you –“
“Human,” Tariq confirms, looking up. A short brunette woman (human, obviously) smiles nervously at him.
“I was going to say ‘are you the new Malcolm?’”
Tariq smiled at her, “I like to think he’s the old me. Can I help you?”
“I’m Ruth,” she says, and Tariq realises he should have been paying a bit more attention, “I start back today. I’ve been…away.”
She’s been legally dead, Tariq knows, but for the last week there’s been talk about her returning, and he had wondered if she was an android too. He only needed one look to work out that this wasn’t the case, so it must have just been a standard faked death. Normal. Nothing unusual.
Sometimes, Tariq thinks his Dad was right and he should have stayed in the family business. At least things made sense there.
“So you knew Ros and Jo before? Did you have anything to do with their programming?” He asks, changing the subject because it looks like it’s uncomfortable for her.
“Oh, no. I’m an analyst, I don’t really do…androids.”
“What do you think of Lucas?” He asks, quickly checking around to make sure no-one’s listening in.
“I’ve only known him a couple of days,” Ruth says diplomatically, “are you concerned?”
Not on a level he can explain to someone who doesn’t do androids, Tariq thinks.
“It’s probably nothing. You know what happened to him?” He asks, and she nods, “eight years without any maintenance. It’s not great.”
He doesn’t mention what they suspect the Russians did to Lucas’ subroutines.
--
If I was going to carry this on: Finn Lambert still takes Jo hostage and Ros still has to shoot her, and even though it doesn’t make any sense right now, it still damages Jo badly enough that she ‘dies’. There is robot angst. Oleg Darshavin is also an android, so he turns up and still manages to screw with Lucas’ head because he activates whatever it was the Russians did to Lucas and messes with his memory. There is more robot angst.
--
Since Lucas went rogue, Dimitri’s been hiding out at Tariq’s place.
Technically, none of this mess is anything to do with Dimitri, but there aren’t enough people around who can be bothered to understand that they aren’t just some hive mind. And besides, Dimitri would be lying if he said he wasn’t slightly worried himself.
It’s his programming that’s getting to him. He’s supposed to be a loner, he’s supposed to move on quickly and quietly, he’s supposed to follow orders, whatever they are. He and Lucas aren’t supposed to be able to do the things Lucas did, not on their own, so either something went really wrong, or someone got to him.
They’ve been told that Lucas’ body has been taken away for cremation, that he won’t have a funeral, but no-one believes that. There will be tests, and scans, and attempts to drag answers out of dead flesh so that they can make sure this doesn’t happen again.
Dimitri’s beginning to worry about what Tariq is doing. There’s a lot of hushed phone calls, and he’s always checking the camera feeds, and he keeps changing the security codes and not telling Dimitri what they are.
Dimitri’s narrowed it down to two possibilities: either he’s going to be reprogrammed, again, or things are bad enough on the Grid that Tariq’s decided they have to get away.
He doesn’t want to be reprogrammed. It leaves you lonely and isolated, and people look at you differently when you tell them you can only remember back a few years. They know what you are, and suddenly they’ve got somewhere else to be. Tariq’s never been like that with him, and Dimitri hopes that he knows him well enough to realise Dimitri would rather run forever than lose himself again.
He could ask straight out what they’re going to do, but he’s too scared of the answer.
--
If I was going to carry this on: they’re sort-of genetically modified super-soldiers, and Tariq and Dimitri do indeed go on the run, and Lucas and Dimitri were not the only ones. Erin probably is as well, and if this just after Lucas died in canon, perhaps she’d be the one trying to track them down. Tariq and Dimitri would probably have to split up at some point because it would get too dangeorus.
--
