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theknightmarket · 1 year ago

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"I think this belongs to you."

In which Google and Bing experience some flaws in their code. Part 1 - Part 2 TW: cursing Pages: 22 - Words: 8000

[Requests: OPEN]

It was funny to realize Google had developed that classic android trait of ‘ew humans’. It was funnier to see happen in real time. You went from Titanic to The Shining to The Truman Show, before you ended on the Sound of Music. That last one was a treat for you, especially because you were hiding a pen at your side to mark on your arm the number of times Google grimaced in the course of the movie. It wasn’t hard to predict his distaste for musicals, which was half the reason you were tempted to show him the illegal ones filmed with a shaky phone and constant background chatter. The other half was because this was likely to be the last time you would spend quality time with him.

Sure, it was a little odd to call part of your job ‘quality time’, but you were enjoying yourself, and Google had yet to leave in a huff, so he couldn’t have been that off-put by random bursts of song. It gave a hint as to why you felt so bad when you saw the email notification pop up on your laptop just a couple hours after the quant movie festival.

You were finally doing the worst part of building anything electrical – transferring the sketchy code, with all its inside jokes and midnight ramblings, to the formal logs to send off to the company. Clean it up and stick it in a file, really, that was all you had been planning to do for the night, so that you could gradually wind down from the stress and excitement of the day. Plus, you needed a break from Google’s philosophical questions, and typing on your keyboard a toned-down version of what was already there was about as mind-numbing as it got.

And then, as the click of a square bracket showed the end of an instruction, the notification pulled itself out from the corner of your screen. You barely had time to read the address line before you paled, swallowed, and then promptly ran out the lab altogether.

Your mind was racing just as fast as you were. You swung yourself out the door and up the stairs, aiming for the bowl where your car keys were thrown every morning. You felt like you were going to have a heart attack. It ached like you were already going through one. How long did you have until it gave out? Minutes, seconds? Nothing registered until you were in the driver’s seat of your car, hands on the wheel and the keys jammed into the ignition, albeit untwisted. You weren’t planning to go anywhere. Where would you go? Where could you go where you could get away from the consequences of your actions?

In the end, you let your head fall to the top of the wheel and held it there while your shoulders slackened, and your breathing evened out.

You knew this was going to happen eventually. You had known since that first email the company had sent you.

Your time was up, and so was Google’s. With you, at least. You hadn’t read the full thing but there was no doubt that the email contained the dates he needed to be completely finished and polished by. Deadlines always made you feel queasy, but this made you feel sick to your stomach.

It only got worse when you returned to the lab after your little freak-out.

You had taken ten minutes by yourself to think it all through. You were alone, the car was quiet, you were protected by the metal casing from the reality of the situation. Still, you should have known that the android designed to care for people would be concerned by your rushing out of the house like a bat out of hell. Google didn’t have the mother-hen instincts that you had first assumed anything domestic would need – he had traded in the hushes and smiles for sarcasm and deadpans, instead – but that didn’t mean he was completely ambivalent about your state. If he wasn’t going to chase after you, then he was going to fix the problem at the source.

The door to your lab, which you had left open, teased you as you stumbled towards it. You weren’t at your best yet, and you had a moment wherein your vision swam and your throat went dry before you forced yourself down the stairs again.

Damn it.

Google stood right in front of your laptop, back facing to you and head fixed directly to the screen. Despite not having opened the email, it would take less than a literal super-computer to access it.

Tentatively, the softest you had ever spoken to him, you called out, “Hey, Google?”

You grimaced at your own voice, and then ever more so at the silence that followed. Did he have the ability to be angry? This was the most you had ever cared about another’s emotions, and you didn’t even know if he could have them.

“Google?” You stepped forward as you tried again, and then took another step when he stayed silent. “Are you back to shutting off?” Another step. “Look, I know the neighbors are loud, but Abigail is just a baby, and you’ll find out how hard they are to keep quiet…”

You regretted the joke the second it was past your lips. It both fell flat and reminded you exactly what you were worried about. You were just great at comforting people, weren’t you?

Now standing only a few feet away from Google now, you could feel something coming off him. You thought you imagined it until you stopped assuming the metaphorical; it was warmth. It was then that you noticed the whirring of his fans in his chest, ineffective if the heat streaming from his was anything to go by. The last time you had seen something like this was when you had first given him mobility in his legs, and he spent the first day and a half looping the lab’s tables and machines. You had been overjoyed back then.

You were plagued with regret.

“Eleven-fifteen, April 12th—” Google stayed perfectly still as he read out the email, “—‘Dear Chief Engineer, the android project has been arranged to be showcased at the Ladia Electronics Center on April 20th at four-thirty PM. Members of staff are due to retrieve the android project form your residence at twelve PM on April 15th, and we trust that everything will be in order by then. Sincerely, David Plymouth’.”

Well. You were right. It was the deadlines. But what could you do about it? Nothing. Nothing at all. You were helpless. Google spoke with such formality that, if you weren’t the one to build him, you would think he were running off a script. But you were the one to build him, and you knew that, beneath the metal faux skin, nestled in the wires and pumps and tubes, he was livid.

“Google, we’ve been over this,” you muttered. You wanted to sound confident, convincing, calculated, all the things you weren’t. “You were created to be a service android; they’re going to want to show you off to potential buyers of investors. I, I can’t do anything about it.”

The word service left a sour taste in your mouth, because he wasn’t just some microwave or vacuum cleaner. He was alive. It was your mistake, but you couldn’t change it now.

Even as your throat tightened, as if to strangle itself so the words wouldn’t get out, you kept talking. “It’s either I let you go, or I blow off an insanely powerful company, one that could easily get me arrested for breach of contract and take you anyway.”

He still wasn’t talking – why wasn’t he talking? He was capable of speech, he was just being petty. When he couldn’t form a word, he was more responsive. You hated this. The feeling of disappointing someone you cared about was exactly why you went into robotics in the first place, and then you’d taken the stupid job of creating an entire person, with all those feelings that you hated. You regretted it. If you were able to go back, you would have trashed the email and blocked the number immediately.

Except you wouldn’t. Obviously. Google was the best thing that you had ever made, that had ever happened to you. You wouldn’t give him up for the world.

You just had to convince yourself and him that you weren’t giving him up.

“Why don’t you want to go?” you asked. “It’s just one afternoon.”

Silence. The air was stifling, and the room was closing in.

“Hey, I know you can talk now, so give me an answer.”

“I don’t want to go.”

Finally. You sighed in relief, unaware of yourself as you moved beside him. From there, you could see his eyes better. They were transfixed on yours, those blues the same shade as everything else about him. So robotic, and yet so vibrant.

“Why not?” It was easier to be reassuring when you were face to face. “I know it’s not going to be fun, but it was bound to happen eventually.”

“Your prime instruction allows me to deny any other instructions that I do not want to follow.”

As proud as you were of him for figuring out the concept of want, this was an inopportune moment, and for all your preaching of his freedom to choose, everything was falling down around you now that neither of you could.

“I know, but not without explanation, I…” You felt something snap within you as you averted your eyes. Immediately, everything went out of focus, and your thoughts took over. Google stayed watching you, never moving, never blinking, never removing his attention. “Google, you’re going to have to go eventually.”

Permanently. That was the word that chocked you in your throat. A hand wrapped around your neck, squeezing with a vengeance, like it was your fault. Was it your fault?

“I am aware,” came the response, slow and steady, “but, and I apologize if this is inappropriate, please, do not let them take me, for now, at least.”

His tone shattered your heart; if you had been told an hour before this moment that the sarcastic, teasing android who would sigh and roll his eyes if you were drowning, would ever say please, you would have asked if you were talking about the same guy. And yet, there he stood, close enough that you could wrap your arms around him for comfort, hesitant desperation coating everything.

“I’ll try.”

His eyes softened, you could have sworn you saw the edge of his mouth twitch upwards for the briefest second, but the fans in his chest still whirred as if they were tasked with cooling hell. In fact, they seemed to pick up in speed.

Gently, you patted his arm. “We need to get you checked out.”

He nodded. You swallowed. The pair of you assumed your positions at your desk.

You promised that you would try.

But apparently you didn’t try hard enough.

“With all due respect, the robot is a robot, it can’t think for itself or make decisions.”

Every time you thought it was as bad as it could get, it got worse, and every time you thought it was the end, it started up again. You had responded to that email, went back and forth with the company, compensations, exchanges, bargains – at one point, you had lied to them that Google had a severe glitch in his system that made him unsafe to be around families, but they shot you down by pointing out that he’ll just be on show for the first few months. Now that the framework was complete, they could build the rest of the features into him with updates from a team of engineers.

They were taking Google and leaving you behind.

“It has no authority here, and, frankly, neither do you.”

The staff member that stood in front of you was pissing you off, plain and simple. She wore that classic, stuffy get-up of a black suit, sunglasses, and an earpiece – as if you needed any more reason to glare at both her and the rest of her posse as though they would keel over if you tried hard enough. The woman, presumably the leader, had already sent two of her colleagues down to your lab, while another two stood behind her. If they thought it was for her protection, they were damn right.

“How do I not have any authority? I built him!”

“Yes, and, as you can see, he has been built.”

Familiar clunky steps covered the sets that accompanied them. Google didn’t say anything as he was escorted to the door, but that didn’t make it any less painful. In fact, you would have preferred he did. You knew he should have been making snide remarks at someone, even if it was you. Instead, he stared at nothing in particular, mouth closed and marching forward like a toy that had been wound up at the back.

“That means that, really, you aren’t needed anymore,” the woman continued, ignorant to or uncaring of your disgust. “It’s fine, you can let him go.”

Your blood was boiling beneath your skin. Google and the men had gotten to the bottom of your driveway, where a white van was parked. Your body reacted automatically, and you were taking steps forward and out of the house before you could process it. The thing that stopped you was a hand on your upper arm. This was spitefully similar to a kidnapping, except you were watching it happen, and the victim wasn’t fighting back.

“And what happens,” you spat, “if he breaks, if he gets damaged or something goes wrong? Who are you gonna turn to then?”

A mocking smile crept onto her lips. “That’s why we have the code logs, isn’t it? Every detail is there, so if anything goes wrong, we’ll just check it.”

“And mess him up even more?” Just the thought of someone else getting their hands on Google’s wiring made your stomach churn and your fists clench. It had taken you months after he became conscious to get that far. You built up a relationship, you listened to him, you made sure to be safe and gentle. There was no way to make sure that the cold scientists he was going to be delivered to would pay attention to him.

But that was in the future. In that moment, you could only bargain.

“Why don’t you just bring him back after the conference and then I’ll be able to check him over?”

She didn’t respond immediately, and there was enough of a pause for you to catch Google’s look over his shoulder. It wasn’t long, and it was overshadowed by the sunlight framing the scene, but it was the first time you had met his eyes since those crooks had arrived. The pure panic would stay with you for the rest of your life. There was no anger, no sadness, just a fear that made your mouth go dry.

And you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

The woman put her hand on your shoulder. You fought back the urge to snap her wrist.

“Look, I get it.” Her tone was a poisonous mixture of faux-comfort and smugness. “When I was younger, I had this pet gecko, and he lived on my bedside table. I took care of him like the son I never had.”

What the fuck?

“One day, I came home, and my parents were putting him in the wild because they didn’t think it was good for me to be so attached. And they were right. So, even though I was sad, I let them take it. And look at me now, I’m better than I was when I was a kid, right?”

Your only thought of ‘what the hell are you talking about and what substances have you taken today’ was translated to her as, “What’s your point?”

The gentleness fell out of her voice as quick as it had arrived. “Let us do our jobs, and let the damn robot go.”

The sliding door to the van slammed shut, followed by the opening and closing of the front doors. The other three that were left didn’t say a goodbye before they were walking to their own car, and, soon enough, you were the only one still standing on your doorstep.

You were alone.

Google was gone.

What were you supposed to do now?

You cried. For the next two weeks, you cried in every room of your house. The worst places were your bedroom and the lab, for obvious reasons, until it got to the point that you turned out the light, locked the door, and simply stopped going down those stairs. You didn’t have any work to do – getting the message from your bank to say that the payment had gone through made you dizzy with regret – so you had nothing to distract yourself with. You wandered through the halls of your empty home like a ghost.

Before the company had commissioned an android to be built, you had lived alone. Going from a college student who only just managed to take care of a Roomba to checking up on a whole fully functioning person was a drastic change, and so was returning to square one. Everything was so quiet. Google didn’t always talk, but there was a whirring that accompanied him wherever he went, and he had no chance of moving quietly with all the stuff packed in him. When he did voluntarily make noise, it was a sarcastic comment or a philosophical question that made you think about your own life. They were gone, and so was he.

It was weird to admit that you missed him.

You were sitting at your dining table, fiddling with a finance spreadsheet on your laptop, when the mail icon appeared at the side of your screen. Your hand sprang into action and made to close it, the wound from what happened before not fully healed yet, but you stopped when your curser was hovering over the ‘x’ button. It wasn’t from Google.

And yet the subject line was eerily similar to what had kicked everything off all those months ago.

Figuring you could deal with actual work later, you opened the email and skimmed the information. Time, sender and grammar all checked out, so it wasn’t a scam. That didn’t ease your nerves much, and you were left with furrowed eyebrows and heightened shoulders by the final signing off.

It seemed that Microsoft had caught wind of Google’s little project, and, instead of fruitlessly searching for another engineer who could construct an android to the same quality, they went straight to the original source; you. They offered a six-month deadline, free reign over your work, and a $400,000 payout. Still riding high from certain recent events, you would have needed half of that to start working. The only problem?

You would have rather gouged out your own eyes that go through the heartache again.

Two trains of thought ran through your mind as you sat at the table. On one hand, getting attached to another of your creations would put your mental health into the red. You would be risking your sanity and your happiness because there was no way mega-corporation would let you keep the android. You would just end up in the same place as you were now, sitting alone in an empty house. But, on the other hand…

Who said you had to get attached in the first place?

You got close to a cold and calculated bastard of a bot, so, in theory, if you did a 180 and went down a completely different design path, you shouldn’t run into a problem. The email didn’t specify a personality, and there would be no need for two sarcastic pricks on the market – said with the most affection in the world, of course.

Tentatively, you opened up a new model creator on your laptop with the plan in mind to screw around for an hour or two and see what came of your experimentation. If nothing worked, that was that; you would reject the offer and go about your wallowing in your misery. If something did crop up, you weren’t going to fight it.

You were almost disappointed in yourself at how quick the ideas came to you, but not as much as you were at how quick you actually built the android.

It took you half the time to get to where Google had been at the six-month mark. You reused most of the physical assets from before, the body-shape, the circuitry, all the diagrams that you had safely tucked in a draw were spread out like a nest on your lab’s desk. The difficult part was the personality, because you planned to take the completely opposite path than you had with your first. Google treasured logic? This one would take the fun routes. That single comment about not liking the Vans Triple Crown? You plugged his storage right into YouTube’s Top 30 Epic Skateboarding Tricks. You went so far as to challenge his color scheme so that not a single drop of a cold palette would be seen.

After the fact, when you were wiping iron filings off your gloves and splattering yourself with orange paint, you couldn’t recall a single thing you had done in the last three months. Everything was a blur, but you had the code sitting on your laptop, as well as a fully complete android in front of you to prove it had happened.

Bing was ready.

And the very next day, you were ready to show him the world.

That led you to the local skatepark. It had been a while since you had last stepped outside your house, and even longer for something other than groceries. You weren’t sure if the place was still open before you were walking with Bing down to the metal fencing, but the skidding of wheels and uproarious laughter of children assured you that you didn’t need to turn around in shame.

The android bounced on his heels as you looked around the park. There were plenty of ramps – all with a healthy collection of graffiti, as you had expected – and a few groups of youths hanging about. Hell, you saw what you were pretty sure was a six-year-old glide down a stretch of tarmac in front of an ambivalent junior. Aside from the fact that Bing was slightly jacked for a teenager, he was going to fit right in, so you pushed him towards the closest feature and scanned the edges.

You noticed a bench underneath the leaves of a larger tree, so you made that your base of operations while Bing had his fun. You didn’t know how to skate yourself, and you were more than content to do work in the background. The code wasn’t going to transfer itself, right?

Your hand stilled over the trackpad. Damn it.

No, it wasn’t going to turn out like last time. You weren’t going to get attached. You weren’t, otherwise you wouldn’t have been allowing yourself to continue the project. You pledged that the minute you started to feel close with Bing, you were going to pass him off to one of Microsoft’s internal engineers.

Your own thoughts made you grit your teeth. ‘Pass him off’, like a chore that you didn’t want to deal with, like a job? But he was a job. You were commissioned to build an android for a powerful company. You didn’t need to care about him.

But it had happened last time, and you didn’t realise it until it was too late. What was stopping you this time? Your flimsy boundaries that you were already running over with a tank?

You slammed your laptop shut. The snap made you wince.

Everything was fine. You were capable of fulfilling an order without getting off track.

“Yo!”

The yell came from the ramp some distance away from you, but you still had a clear line of sight to watch Bing rocket into the air. Panic flooded you, pushing you to your feet and propelling you forwards. He was going to crash against the tarmac, he was a two-hundred-pound man of literal metal, and he was in the air, and he was coming down, and you couldn’t stop him. You stumbled over a spare skateboard in your flurry to get closer, but it didn’t matter because, when you skidded to a stop, Bing was back on the ground.

What was it with robots and putting you into mortal peril?

A cheer erupted around you. Most of the kids you had seen in the skate park at the beginning had convened around the newcomer, including a group of eighth graders who dashed to meet him in the dip. They gestured to parts of the ramp, exchanged some skater jargon that you were not young enough to understand, and then they all backed away again. Bing was left there, staring at the opposing concrete with a determined expression.

Your heart picked up again as you realized his thought process, but you didn’t try to stop him. He wanted to do this, and you weren’t going to be the one to stop him.

He clambered up to the higher platform while the kids continued to watch on. You tapped your fingers at your elbow, a nervous habit you never seemed to crack, and thoughts ran rampant in your mind. None were helpful, so you ignored all of them and simply shifted your attention to the excited grin drawn across Bing’s face.

He was encouraged by the whoops and whistles of the spectators, but he took a few seconds to run some calculations in his head. He wasn’t an idiot, at least, not in this situation. He understood the risks and consequences of sending a heavy – and, not to brag, expensive – piece of machinery down an eight-foot half-pipe. If he didn’t protect himself and everyone around him, things had the chance of going south real quick. That, and you were watching. He couldn’t mess up in front of you! The whir of his internal fans reached his ears at the mere thought of failing at something he was built for while the one who had actually built him for it watched.

He had to get this perfect.

Bing took a step closer to the edge, eyeballed the distance, which, for an android, was correct down to the millimeter, and then propped the skateboard a quarter into the air.

One last look at you revealed your obvious trepidation, but there was also a layer of pride underneath.

He took an unnecessary breath in and out, and then dropped off the side.

When you had been programming Bing’s skills and personality and everything else about him, you went in with the idea of going completely against your instincts. Unfortunately, that also meant going completely out of your comfort zone, so a good majority of what the android did wasn’t anything you had intimate knowledge of, and – as much as you would have liked to beat the nerd stereotype – you knew absolutely nothing about skateboarding.

Hence why your jaw dropped to the ground when you saw Bing’s trick.

Hell, it was more than a trick; it was a performance. He tipped off the edge and, with more force than normal because of his whole being-a-block-of-metal thing, picked up a lot of speed, which let him fall into the dip of the ramp and shoot up the other side, barely giving enough time for him to become more than a blur of amber. When he was in the air, everything moved so fast that you didn’t see his hand wrap around the board and only processed his 360 spin and then the complete flip of that same board. In your mind, warning lights flashed, and sirens blared. That panic reemerged with a vengeance – until Bing caught your eye and winked at you before rocketing back down to the half-pipe and gliding gracefully onto the other side’s platform.

Luckily, the cheering of the kids was enough to cover up the vicious beat of your heart that was in no way tied to that sneaky wink and had all to do with the danger he was most definitely in.

Obviously.

“Your boyfriend’s real cool, dude.”

“What?”

The kid at your side, no older than twelve, nodded towards Bing, who was trying to perfect a kick-flip with the guidance of the bunch of gremlins that surrounded him. For a moment, you regretted not programming him the ability to blush because it would have made the image so much better. For now, you had to be content with Bing’s nervous grin, orange rings flitting back and forth between chattering children and trying not to accidentally break the board in half – not that this was that bad in the first place. You deserved it after the things he put you through.

You looked back at the kid, barely able to open your mouth to ask, “Wait, boyfriend—?” before your feet started moving on their own. Or, more accurately, two pairs of tiny hands wrapped around your wrists dragged you towards Bing, who looked just as surprised that you were getting closer as you were.

Another third grader tapped on his elbow, prompting him to lean down so they could whisper in his ear.

A feeling of acute dread settled in your stomach at his sudden and worryingly devious smile.

It only took you another two minutes to start screaming, and it wasn’t some dignified, heroic yell. No, it was very much a shriek that translated how much you thought you were going to die.

“Oh, my god, oh Jesus goddamn Christ!”

In context, it was even more pitiful. You were moving around 15 miles per hour in a straight line with Bing on the board behind you to hold your waist. You weren’t in danger, and, in theory, you knew that. The problem came with your inability to steer the damn thing, which intensified when your pseudo-instructor decided that now was the best time to hop off and let you go forward without him.

“Bing, I swear—!” You only restrained your language because there were kids around.

Bing didn’t let that dissuade him, and he wouldn’t let your fear discourage you, either, if his encouragements were anything to go by. “You got it!”

“No! No, I don’t!”

“Sure ya do!”

You sure did not, because you crashed right into a park garbage can, and you might have assumed that calling it a crash was an exaggeration. It was not. Your stomach was pressed into the metal top – slightly warmed by the sun – but your legs curled around, so you ended up sliding right off and into the tarmac, which was as equally hot as the can. Neither of them compared to the burn of your face, spreading down to your neck and up to your ears, that you hoped you could blame on the humidity.

After flipping onto your back in an attempt to lessen the contact between you and the ground, you preemptively squinted to block out the sun, but you were, instead, greeted by a cooling darkness.

A groan dragged itself out of your throat when you noticed the utterly smug smirk on Bing’s face.

“You good down there?”

“Shut up.”

He was laughing at your plight, but he put out a hand, nevertheless. You were more begrudging to take it, even though take it you did.

“This doesn’t make you cooler than me,” you muttered, swinging your legs around.

“’Course not.”

“Because you aren’t cooler than me.” You were about halfway up now, crouched but no longer feeling like select parts of your skin were on fire.

“Totally.”

One final tug had you pulled forward into Bing’s chest. Really, you had to stop colliding with stuff or you were going to look like you’d lost a paintball match, it was getting to be a bad habit, a truly serious problem, and you weren’t using the beratement as an excuse to not think about how close you were to Bing. The metal casing around his circuits wasn’t the superheated danger you imagined it would be, but then you heard the whirring of his fans beneath that shell. They seemed to be working overtime in the end of July weather, but you’d had far hotter days in the peak of summer. Were they malfunctioning? Distantly, a memory from months earlier knocked at the back of your mind.

However, had you looked up, you would have realized that the cooling system wasn’t having technical difficulties. You would have realized that Bing’s eyes were buffering, the orange rings dipping in and out of focus through his sunglasses, as he struggled to process the situation. You would have realized that the trouble came not with his body, but in his understanding of his body. He was stronger than he assumed, and he had put a bit too much force into pulling you to your feet.

It was in that moment, that both you and Bing had a similar epiphany.

This was bad.

“Comfy?”

“Genuinely, yeah.”

You hadn’t put much stock into that thought at the time. Instead, you had taken a step back from Bing, ignored his hands that stayed on your upper arms to make sure you were steady, and moved on. You left the skatepark with a wave to the kids, while he had taken a few seconds to promise to return. He seemed to have had fun, so you wouldn’t mind going back every week or so. When you had offered, Bing accepted with none-too-little excitement. It had put a smile on your face that lasted even to eight o’clock that night, when the temperature and the lights dimmed into a peaceful atmosphere.

With no other projects to occupy your time, you were able to take the night to relax, mold yourself into your sofa and get your mind off current events. And future events. And past events.

It was a good thing the old college game of throwing food into someone’s mouth and scoring points based on how close you got was the perfect way to forget yourself, for the time being. That meant you were leaned on the arm of the couch and Bing was at the other end, a bucket on the floor and a pile of popcorn in his hand, as well as the remains of everything that missed tucked into the divots of the cushions. His feet were propped up on your lap, a weight that should have been heavier than it was.

The TV had been on since you had flopped down, but you didn’t switch over the channels, so it was mostly an indistinguishable background to the chatter between you and Bing, whenever you weren’t chewing on a kernel.

You were in the process of swallowing one, because you didn’t want to just grossly spit it out, when you unintentionally picked up on a news report. Going from the teenage-dirtbag experience of your little game to listening to that, you froze and hoped beyond all hope that it wasn’t what you thought it was.

Out of the corner of your eye, a newsperson relayed the most important stories they could fish out for the day from behind a white desk. A shot of a skyline backdropped them as they read from the teleprompter behind the camera. All of that was what you expected. You did not expect to see your first ever android appear where the buildings had been in the background.

You adjusted to sit up straight and turn your body to the TV.

It had happened that very day, apparently, at a conference meant to showcase Google’s domestic abilities. Just that mental image made you internally scoff. You had programmed him the ability to cook, sure, but you weren’t about to be the one to test them out. He hated making a meal more than he hated cleaning, and even then, he had grumbled and groaned the one time you made wash the kitchen floors.

He had hated. He had hated making a meal.

Despite the distance put between you, both city-wise and time-wise, it appeared that little fact hadn’t changed, because the order to make a pot roast resulted in a broken cutting board, a smashed light fixture and two separate fires. The conference was cut short, obviously, and Google was returned to storage while representatives apologized to everyone present. Investors weren’t so forgiving, and neither were the press. Insults were tossed left and right, some of which made your brow furrow, especially those aimed at the programming.

Yet, with all that, you weren’t sympathetic. You weren’t even sad. You were split between vindicated and totally and utterly pissed. Had they listened to you, none of that would have ever happened – and, sure, it didn’t affect you anymore after the company stripped your name from everything and anything attached to Google, but you had made him, dammit! He was good. He had been good.

You were silent in your anger and pride, staring intently into the screen, before a piece of popcorn hit your cheek and you slowly turned to look at the offender.

“You made that old man?” he asked. The teasing came with a concerned tone.

“Oh, yeah, but that was months ago.”

You sat back into the couch, softness embracing you. It would have been a lie to say you didn’t miss him. Anytime that your thoughts wandered close to your memories of him, you threw a lasso around them and tugged them back. You took a risk going down to the lab at all, and, even though you hated the comparison, Bing was an android just the same as Google was. You had built both of them. Their personalities were miles different, but they were both yours.

“Are… are you okay?”

You blinked back to reality. The android actually present had taken his feet off your lap and moved closer. The gentle frown was not the first thing you noticed about his face; the lack of sunglasses covering his eyes was much more shocking.

You muttered back, “Of course, just, uh, thinking.”

Once more, the room fell into silence, besides the report that had moved on to the weather, but it lasted only a moment before Bing piped up again, “What’d he do?”

“What? Bing, he didn’t do anything.”

“But he’s not here anymore, so he must’ve done something.”

Maybe it was sweet for him to assume it was someone else’s fault, and you could have allowed him to believe it, but you knew the guilt would gnaw at your heart until you caved in.

“No, he didn’t,” you sighed, “I- I let him go. The commissioners wanted to store him in a warehouse for conferences, and I couldn’t say no to them. You’ll have to go, too, when your company wants you.”

The unspoken question hung in your mind; would you be able to handle it, when that time, as it surely would, came?

Bing didn’t seem too worried about it though. “Nuh-uh! I’ll just use my charisma and good looks to make them let me stay.”

He said it like it was the obvious solution, with so much confidence that it rivalled Lord Byron, and maybe even Microsoft. There was a part of you that wanted to believe him.

“You’re going to bat your eyelashes at the retrieval staff, and, what, seduce them into leaving empty-handed?”

“Bet.”

Sometimes, you regretted hooking him up to Urban Dictionary to save time.

“Or would you rather me leave the seducing for you?”

And sometimes, you really regretted it.

Your heart was going wild in your chest. It batted against your ribcage as though it were trying to escape a lion, but it would have jumped into the danger of the shark-like grin on Bing’s face. Still, it only sped up when one of his hands came up to rest on your waist and the other dragged up your arm.

Bing may have been the android, but you were the one who short-circuited.

Whatever coolness remained in you after that whole skateboarding debacle dissipated into the surroundings, because your eyes were wide, and your heart was pounding, and Bing was getting closer and—

And he was laughing.

He pushed himself back onto the arm of the couch and clapped his hands together, violent glee racking his body. “Ha, gottem!”

The blush didn’t die down on your face, even as you took deep breaths in and deep breaths out. Of course, they weren’t to calm down your embarrassment, they were actually to convince yourself that literally pulling the plug on a three-month long commission for a mega-corporation wasn’t a good idea.

Your mind still wasn’t made up when a knock sounded at the front door. Bing was plastered in the cushions, so you were free to answer it without him trying to act as an ineffective guard dog.

His call of, “I’m sorry!” was interrupted by more giggles.

Shaking your head, you added another factor to the ‘pros’ column as you pulled open the door.

“I think this belongs to you.”

You weren’t given enough time to process the view on your doorstep before a heavy weight was thrown into you. 200 pounds pressed against your front, which you struggled to pivot into the wall. When you were able to let go, though, all of the redness in your face drained out of it.

“Google?”

The android himself spared a pleasantly apathetic look down at you – one you recognised as being the happiest you had ever seen him in his time with you. What the hell had happened?

“Did you see the news?”

The voice, familiar enough to make your blood boil at the intonation of it, snatched your attention away to the sight of that woman from before, who wore the same black suit and sunglasses.

“Yeah, the conference—”

She cut you off, as if you needed another reason to hate her, “Was a complete failure because of some bug in its code that you’re responsible for.”

“How can I be responsible for something that I wasn’t given the chance to cause or fix?”

She stepped closer to you and through the doorway, and you could have sworn you felt Google tense up. “You’re the Chief Engineer, aren’t you? That means you’re in charge of the coding and- and whatever else goes on with that robot, right? And that means that its faults are your faults, too.”

You paused for the moment. You made no noise as you thought it through. You could have rolled over, could have nodded, said ‘yes, ma’am,’ and gone back inside the house, could have fixed Google up right as rain and then sent him off to the warehouse again. You should have let him go.

But you had already let him go once. You weren’t going to do it a second time.

“No, it doesn’t,” you stated roughly, “considering I haven’t spoken to anyone affiliated with Google in four months. In fact, I assumed this freelancing gig was over and done with.”

“Obviously, it isn’t, and we need you to sort out the robot before the conference next Tuesday.”

Oh, how kind of them to give you until Tuesday, when your calendar showed it to be a Sunday.

“There is no way I could figure out the problem and solve it in two days!”

“Oh, because you have anything else to do?”

“Hey, hey, hey—” In your brewing fight with the cliché of a super-agent, you hadn’t noticed the clunking steps of someone approaching, but you were proud to catch the slight look of confusion on Google’s face, “—chill it with the arguing.”

From around the corner, Bing swung into view. One of his hands grasped the border of the doorway to the living room, and his feet separated so that he filled more of the space. He reminded you of an owl puffing up to intimidate another bird.

The frown on Google’s face became more apparent as Bing spoke, “Look, lady, if the smartest person in the room says they can’t do it, then they can’t do it, ‘kay?”

The woman addressed you with stern distaste. “You made another one?”

“Yes, I did.” You leaned back so that she could see him better, and vice versa. “And this one was not commissioned with the laws of robotics in mind.”

In reality, you had made sure Bing didn’t have the ability to hurt anyone because you faced the very real risk of being arrested, but her paling face made the lie worth it.

“Is there anything else, or can I get to my work with a reasonable timeframe?”

Her eyes flitted behind you, but you didn’t pay much mind. You were too busy reveling in the panic you were causing – even if it was a tad mean – to notice what your boys were doing.

Bing was naturally a sweetheart; his guard dog attempts normally looked like a chihuahua who was biting off more than he could chew, and they never failed to make you smile. However, he was still a six-foot tall box of metal that was able to generate enough force to move a large truck. A lazy smirk and orange sunglasses weren’t going to easily distract from that, especially when he was purposefully showing off his teeth.

Google, on the other hand, maintained a threatening aura without having to be physically imposing. He looked much the same to Bing, but those factors were overshadowed by a glare that could make hell freeze over. A human body between him and a target was like putting a puddle in front of a raging wildfire, and his time at the warehouse had done him no favors. Any bartering for a sense of ethics or morality was better spent on dolphins.

You didn’t question why the woman was so quick to spit out an answer. “I can give you three days, then.” A glance over your right shoulder. “Four.” A glance over your left shoulder. “Five?” Her shivering gaze returned to yours. “A week, and that’s my final offer.”

“Alright, then, I’ll see you next week.”

And, just like that, she scuttled off to the white van that was waiting at the end of your driveway. You didn’t bother watching her drive away, and, instead, slammed the door shut and spun around to look at the now-two androids that stood in your home.

Bing was smiling brightly – not that you would have known he ever looked any different – and Google was as nonplussed as ever.

“Welcome home, Google.”

“It’s good to be back.”

Getting a hug would have been too much, and you knew that, but you assumed that was all you were going to get, a nice comment and the briefest twitch upwards of the corner of his lip. You weren’t even aware that a handshake was an option, but he definitely chose it.

Google’s hand was colder than you remembered, prompting you to briefly wonder how much the other engineers tampered with him before you brushed the question off in favor of tightening your grip. He nodded, and you nodded, both certain that this was the best outcome.

You parted slowly, and the warmth of a summer night swarmed your skin again.

“So, introductions are in order?” you asked. This wasn’t something you had prepared for, and you were already worried about how this would play out. With such drastic personality differences, there was bound to be friction. Hell, you had intentionally created Bing to be the opposite of Google, everything he…

Everything that he would hate.

As it turned out, spite always came back to bite you.

Still, you gestured to the orange android now stepping closer to lean against the wall next to you. “Google, meet Bing—” Your hand switched sides, “—Bing, this is Google.”

“’Suh, dude?”

Internally, you were screaming. Externally, you were waiting with bated breath. Neither were good sensations, and it only got worse in the seconds that were filled to the brim with tension.

Google didn’t say anything in response; he simply set his jaw, spared a glance towards you, and then promptly marched through to the living room, leaving you and Bing behind in more silence.

But he didn’t kill him, so you’d take it as a win for now!

“We can always try again in the morning.”

“Definitely,” oh, you knew that tone, “little Chief Engineer.”

And you were right.

“Shut up,” you huffed.

You smacked his arm, winced at the sting afterwards, and then dragged Bing back to the living room, the android laughing all the while.

If he was going to be like that, he was going to have to figure out there was only one recharge station himself, then who would be laughing? Although, you would undoubtably have to deal with a petulant Google in the morning, so, just maybe, it wouldn’t have been any of you.

But that didn’t mean you would stop smiling.