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Joy and Other Things Also
[Nick had never really thought of himself as a guy who liked drama, but damned it he wasn't getting used to it. Even without their various catastrophes the missions and errands they went on with the Vaultie weren't exactly walks in the park. He'd gotten up to more nonsense with those two than in the preceeding 80 years. Couldn't complain, though, he's also been happier than he's been in that whole span.
The last foray they took into the virtual space had been a rough one for a variety of reasons. (Not the least of which being how close they both came to being overwritten like a spare USB drive.
In truth, Nick felt he ought to be a little more hesitant to load himself back in, but he wasn't really. He was a little hesitant to load Hancock in with him, but once the ghoul had demanded to come along, Nick couldn't tell him no. Nick needed the interface to debug his emotional capacitance (Joy) and check the registry changes that program had written into him. The moment he'd casually mentioned that was what he had on the schedule, Hancock insisted, and so here they were. Nick had put it off for a week or two, just to give him time to convalesce, but he couldn't exactly put it off forever.
When he was finally starting to get buffering problems, Nick bit the bullet and hauled his paramour along with him to the seventh floor. Having those pods installed in Neon Flats was useful, if a little...tangentially traumatic. Without the drama, the VI turning things into a haunted maze, and the Vaultie dressed up in Hancock's skin with his rabid Id behind the wheel...well, it wasn't so forboding. It was just...a little dusty.
Nick loaded in first (after double checking the locks on the doors) and then Hancock did at his liesure, and despite all the strange errors, the environment seemed stable. The representation of his CPU, that great, big dark, domed room with a consetallation of thoughts and templates above, loaded in crisp and clean as anything. That was a good sign, even if the plinths and the walls failed to load in around them. ]
Don't say I didn't warn you: this is going to be one boring date.
[Nick stops at the podium and pulls up the menus and an array of windows. His processes are all running as intended, the only odd man out is Joy, so the only one who will load outside of him will be her...unless his thoughts start really wandering.]
Just doing diagnostics today, not a daring heroic to speak of.
The last foray they took into the virtual space had been a rough one for a variety of reasons. (Not the least of which being how close they both came to being overwritten like a spare USB drive.
In truth, Nick felt he ought to be a little more hesitant to load himself back in, but he wasn't really. He was a little hesitant to load Hancock in with him, but once the ghoul had demanded to come along, Nick couldn't tell him no. Nick needed the interface to debug his emotional capacitance (Joy) and check the registry changes that program had written into him. The moment he'd casually mentioned that was what he had on the schedule, Hancock insisted, and so here they were. Nick had put it off for a week or two, just to give him time to convalesce, but he couldn't exactly put it off forever.
When he was finally starting to get buffering problems, Nick bit the bullet and hauled his paramour along with him to the seventh floor. Having those pods installed in Neon Flats was useful, if a little...tangentially traumatic. Without the drama, the VI turning things into a haunted maze, and the Vaultie dressed up in Hancock's skin with his rabid Id behind the wheel...well, it wasn't so forboding. It was just...a little dusty.
Nick loaded in first (after double checking the locks on the doors) and then Hancock did at his liesure, and despite all the strange errors, the environment seemed stable. The representation of his CPU, that great, big dark, domed room with a consetallation of thoughts and templates above, loaded in crisp and clean as anything. That was a good sign, even if the plinths and the walls failed to load in around them. ]
Don't say I didn't warn you: this is going to be one boring date.
[Nick stops at the podium and pulls up the menus and an array of windows. His processes are all running as intended, the only odd man out is Joy, so the only one who will load outside of him will be her...unless his thoughts start really wandering.]
Just doing diagnostics today, not a daring heroic to speak of.
no subject
He blindly gropes until he finds Hancock's knee with his good hand. For lack of a more accurate term, Nick looks a little green around the gills as he tries to stabilize himself again. Hancock is talking, apologizing, but Nick's auditory processing is just catching up to the broken please, the demands that Joy stop. It conflicts with the ghoul's current cadence so hard that Nick can only wince.
It's another thirty seconds before the buffer is cleared and Nick can see again and he spends all of them hanging on to Hancock and absorbing the brunt of those memories. When that scene finally reaches its last itteration, it cuts off with Joy's--Hancock's--Nick's hands slippery with blood, right as their mother grasps their ankle. Then, almost as if it never was, the tsunami of turmoil is over.
The first words out of Nick's mouth are the original edition's, but the sentiment goes entirely unchallenged by the rest of his facets.]
Christ--
[Even without Joy, however, the echoes of her newfound complexity have already colored Nick's interpretation of events. It's perhaps the most rosate view of such a horrible day that it's possible to have and Nick, he's at a loss.
Nick's eyes finally manage to refocus and he directs his gaze to Hancock at his side. Nick wants to dismiss that apology, like he usually does with Hancock's tendencies for self-reproach, but the expression on Hancock's face undercuts that reflex. It's all Nick can do to lean in and pull him into a crushing hug, to cling to him like a child after a nightmare, like that horrible day had just happened.
What the hell is he supposed to say?]
--That was--is--I--I can see why that'd qualify as torture.
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He's only knocked out of his instinctive programming to comfort when Nick lunges at him and wraps him in that crushing embrace-- then all the pain Nick's feeling on his behalf flows into the ghoul, empathetic osmosis, and he has to struggle to keep breathing evenly.
This is absolutely worse than bearing this pain himself. He shouldn't have let Joy do this for him. Regret and guilt are very comfortable bedfellows. ]
Yeah... I can guess what memory she was runnin' through, not many with my old lady actually qualify for torture
[ He wants to take that pain away-- or take it back, but none of the placations that were ever passed to John ever helped him. He could say it was a long time ago, he could say those scavvers were probably dead in a ditch by now, he could say his mom wouldn't want him to carry these scars-- but none of that ever erased the pain of losing her how he did. ]
I'm sorry... useless right now, but... I wish I could take it back. That pain... that memory... that's not supposed to be yours to suffer with. I'm so fuckin' sorry, Nick. Didn't-- didn't Faraday say somethin' about how his new installs can delete memories? Maybe... I dunno...
Do ya wanna forget it?
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Hancock, at least, seems to realize what memory Nick's just crashed through several hundred times. It would have been an overwhelming experience with any memory at all, that many repititions, each identical, each distinct and separate. Any computer, even one as advanced as Nick, would have trouble with any file copied and pasted so many times and that experience was not insubstantial.
Despite his feelings of uselessness, Nick absolutely considers Hancock an anchor and the ferocity of his hug is both for himself, to keep from drifting away in that memory, and to provide some consolation to that raw edition of the man he loves. Nick listens, stares off at nothing, and Hancock...he apologizes again. This time, Nick hears it, hears the guilt in it, hears the dedication, and finally, finally he has context for that stubborn, protective streak.]
What?
[Nick draws back reluctantly, keeping his hold on Hancock but shifting to look him in the face. Lamplight eyes focus on Hancock's face and refocus again. Nick's brow dips and he's sure Hancock can hear the gears grinding in his skull. Nick feels--he's not fully sure--the scope of emotion he can experience is doing doubletime but, most of all, he feels the yawning, hollow of bereavement.
Does he want to forget it?]
Do you?
[It's not meant to be contentious, or angry, but that emotion was a crash course in the finer points of emotional turmoil. The instant Nick unlocked it, it shifted the foundations of what and who he is. So...maybe he sounds a little defensive, a little hurt, but it's not his hurt. He is a voyeur of a voyeur, but Nick has to believe that copies matter--he has to.]
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Hancock didn't really think before the suggestion left him-- god, every time the smallest bit of fear breaks the surface of him and dictates an action (or inaction) for him (like asking that question, like staying behind the skeleton of that stairway) it's a mistake, isn't it? The mental chains around himself get tighter-- not on Id, not on any of the triad Nick as met, but on the most restrained aspect of all: Hancock's Fear. The bondage bites, his teeth grind, he inwardly scolds himself for letting the impulsive offer off his tongue.
No, he wants to say. No, he doesn't want to forget.
But every junkie is running from something. Hancock is always running. The refusal he wants to give dams up his throat and behind it builds a terrible crushing shame.
Yes, part of him wants to forget. But he can't say that either, can't admit the bottom bedrock of his deepest shame when Nick asked in prickling defense. So instead the ghoul only looks away, pulls back into himself and locks down that shame that allows him to kill himself a little more every day. ]
Fair
[ Is what he finally manages to mutter, a dodge of that question much less tactful than his silver tongue typically grants him. ]
Dumb question, I guess [ It's not the same, Hancock reflects; he never had a fully functional, permanent 'delete' button. Best he got was mashing the 'snooze'; brief bits of chemical reprieve always guaranteed to fade back to the familiar pain. It wasn't so much running away as Avoid, and inevitable Approach.
Being unable to actually forget made it safe to Want to, to try to. It's different for Nick. Hancock swallows the knot in his throat. He tries again to give Nick the answer he wants to, to tell him that he doesn't want to forget, because that's what he's supposed to feel, isn't it?
But he can't. He shuts his mouth again. He fights the powerful cravings for any kind of escapism he could reach-- they're not real, the chemical comforts in his coat, not unless he Wakes Up, and he might just still be needed.
Even though he feels like he's only making things worse. ]
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As he pulls away in spirit, if not in actuality.
Nick doesn't have any platitudes to offer, even claiming that he understands is a raw deal and a spit in the face all at once. Neither of them have the words to explain this, but now that Nick has this context both for Hancock's...everything, and for what...all that feels like to a real, human person--
He can't let the conversation end like this.
Hancock hadn't meant to share that memory with Nick and, if he was a gambling synth, Nick would put money on the fact that he'd never have spoken of it again, not once for the rest of his life, not if there were any way to avoid it. Nick can't blame him for that...because that's precisely the same reaction that Nick Valentine had.
That's precisely why Nick, despite reeling from this seismic shift, has to prod at this old wound.]
I--uh--there's somethin' I gotta show you, two somethin's in fact.
[Nick releases him but only so he can try to rise. He stumbles a bit, still tangled in the vertigo of all of...that, but Hancock is close enough to lean on. He knows the ghoul would never let him just fall. That's--that's why he has to--]
Give me a hand? Got the rug yanked out from under me, there. Not sure I can get up without some help.
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'course. I gotcha
[ His inclination for gentleness returns like a tide, inevitable gravity for someone who has time and time again earned the very best of him. Even though that painful query of his is still bouncing around the ghoul's brain, demanding an answer he can't give. He sets it aside, stands and offers Nick his hand and his strength to pull him to his feet. ]
Easy does it
[ His smile is a small reflexive curl at the corner of his mouth; he's capable of tenderness whilst nursing emotional wounds; every ounce of gnawing uncertainty he's feeling is entirely his own. ]
Y'alright?
[ On his feet, if not in general. His hovering is not quite as apparent as Nick's can be, but he's here, he's close, he's not leaving Nick alone in trauma that doesn't even belong to him. Even if Hancock can't say what he feels he ought to (what he feels he owes his mother) he'll bite back the urge to drown out his own ineptitude as long as he can fucking bear to.
As usual, the ghoul finds the most comfortable target for the blame to be himself. ]
Take a second if ya gotta... don't gotta rush, I ain't goin' nowhere [ a promise to them both. ]
no subject
Eventually, he regains some balance and the lightshow above slows to a crawl.
Nick's got his feet under him but he almost stumbles again as Hancock gives him that gentle assurance. His careful, tender assistance is a whipcrack of difference from his anger, from the grief and fury Nick just lived through. He means what he's saying, Nick knows that, but it's not really--it doesn't line up right with the jagged pull of Nick's thoughts.
Hancock switched his upset off, like flipping a switch, and Nick--he has a moment, a flicker of cowardice, as he considers the ghoul. He could let it lie, never mention this whole fiasco again--no, he would eventually have to unpack Joy. He wasn't about to resign himself to an eternity without happiness--
Nick has to press his skeletal hand against his eyes. It doesn't do much to abate the sensation, not the pounding headache nor the swimming his vision was doing, but there's comfort in the motions. He's scattered but--he isn't. His thoughts are racing, disjointed, but all the facets of him are perfectly aligned.]
Yeah--I'm--[Nick starts and his voice hitches as he stops.]--I--no? Not sure how to explain it. Alright isn't--
[Applicable?]
[He takes the moment, waits for his disorientation to abate even a little, and his stare returns, pinning his gaze on Hancock's face. He seems manic--feels manic--just to the left of where he ought to be. So he stares, slackjawed like he's going to start speaking again, but the words still don't exist. It's a roadblock so frustrating, Nick could cry--if he could cry. Instead, his grip on Hancock's hand goes tight, a little crushing as he holds on.
His face takes a journey, through a dozen emotions or pantomimes of them, before Nick just huffs a breathy laugh. This isn't what insanity feels like--but he's not sure what this is apart from overwhelming.]
Ever have too much answer to a question? Like you can explain, but it requires a degree and a roadmap to follow along?
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Nick has already seen Hancock's proficiency with compartmentalization, and the skill operates on all levels of his brain; he's learned to switch off what doesn't serve the moment-- he just... doesn't always remember to switch it back on. If this was anyone else, any other circumstance-- well, Hancock's spent his life defaulting to Cut and Run. But he doesn't want to get away from Nick-- just the parts of himself that his paramour's question dragged into the light. ]
You're not gunna topple if I give ya half a step, are ya?
[ It's more a rhetorical explanation of his meaning than a true questions. 'Alright' might be too blunt a term here but at least, Nick doesn't seem like he's going to fall over. He looks like his mouth can't keep up with his brain, like he's learned a whole new language but isn't sure how to properly form the words.
He waits while Nick processes, the cool waters of his concern chummed with that truth he's working so hard to exist beside. Part of him wants to forget. Part of him would. Part of him tries. Part of him is still running away.
Her last words on this earth (meant merely as the only comfort she could cobble together while she hung between life and death) were a simple enough mantra to follow, and yet he's still standing here failing her final request. ]
... Sure, think I follow. Ya ask me how to make Jet outta Brahmin shit and plastic and I can tell ya, but unless ya get the chemistry, the explanations gunna be: with a chem lab
[ The concept isn't too hard to follow; is Hancock missing some kind of context and basic knowledge here? ]
Any chance ya can give me the map and degree, short version? Really like to know where your heads at right about now-- I'll do my best to follow along
no subject
[Nick's still thinking hard, turning thoughts over and over like flipping a rolodex, but he'd been lacking words before and he lacked them now. Nick didn't have any angle in on this topic, nor did Kellogg, nor did ViMa. Three distinct aspects, zero idea how to put this down on paper. Nick's frustration colors his mania in strange ways and, when he's ground down the gears in his head trying to find a way to--to explain this? Or what they need to do? He turns his attention back to Hancock--
Frustration becomes worry and then worry becomes some flavor of fear. It's written all over his face. Nick's emotional capacity has gone fully haywire and he's running the full gamut moment to moment. It's all genuine, but he needs to recalibrate. He needs Hancock to understand.]
Ah--there's nothing for it. I just gotta show you.
[Nick gently pulls his hand back--his fear becomes a sort of mournful resignation--and he grabs a window from the air above the podium. He hesitates, one last time, with his fingers poised over the blank screen. His eyes flick from the window to Hancock at his side. He can't possibly preface this aloud, he's been struggling for the words to encapsulate it since Joy manifested, but he still wants Hancock's consent.
Whether he's stalling or not, even Nick doesn't know.]
If--if you want to call it quits halfway through? I--that's okay. I promise it's okay. You just say the word.
THE SUSPENSE. IT KILLS ME <3
[ As he watches those vivid emotions pass across Nick's face like rolling seasons, the ghoul is left to his own racing guesses at what could be specifically amiss. ]
Keepin' me holdin' my breath over here. Don't tell me my memories flipped a six in your code or somethin?
[ It's a poor attempt at a joke, a reference to a thought he hadn't shared anyway, but he's trying to ease a little tension, fill the air with something other than the uncertain silence that is especially hard to withstand right now. He nods to his companion's explanation that he ought to be shown what's what; sure, he'll take a live demonstration.
Some back burner thought had already been percolating; not an expectation, but a contingency, a possibility. What if, for the purposes of some context that would be impossible to otherwise explain, Nick has a painful, corner-stone memory he'd like to share in kind? But the burning of Mrs. Mcdonough hadn't been shared willingly-- it had been inflicted, with the intention to cause harm. Harm Hancock feels, on some level, he allowed his paramour to take on his behalf.
His theory gets some gravity to it as Nick pulls up a window, and the list of the ghoul's guesses get shorter. He wouldn't be upset to be mistaken here (it'd be nice to be pleasantly surprised for once)-- but he won't refuse whatever Nick has to show him, either. Even though those words make a fun-house mirror of what his broken self had said to him. An errant, unnoteworthy parallel that still manages to sucker-punch him in the gut. Focus Hancock, focus up front. ]
... Gunna be somethin' rough, I take it? I'll keep that in mind... but it's not like that part'a you had the out you're offerin' me, here
no subject
It's not-- [Nick closes his eyes for a second, as though that will help him process more efficiently. Scattered as he is, disoriented by the shifting of his bedrock, he has to get this part right. There's no other option. Once he's gathered the words he wants, Nick finally says:]
It's not penance. I'm not trying to even the score, here.
[Nick takes a deep breath (habit) and lets it out slow. This first admission is close to the core of the problem, but there's no way to extrapolate it out and have it make any sort of sense, not on it's own.]
I just...don't want you to use me to punish yourself...and I'm pretty sure I can't stop you unless you see the whole picture.
no subject
But when Nick puts it into those words, specifically? It's easy to imagine how that could feel, how it could hurt. Whatever Hancock does for others, especially those he cares for, he wouldn't want them to carry it like a burden. ]
Hey, I don't wanna do that either... just hard to watch ya hurtin' when the memories are mine. I get she [ Jenny, Joy, his mother ] --you-- I get it happened cuz ya care about me. I wouldn't want a sacrifice I made worn like a scar, either. But ya get why I'm strugglin, here, doncha? Ya saw... ya saw what happens when I do Nothin
[ More poison stored up in the very core of him, bursting into his bloodstream like a menacing fever climbing. ]
I think I feel ya... I know you're not forcin' me here, I understand this ain't a trade off. This is just somethin' ya wanna give me, if I'll take it. And I'll give it a shot. Show me what ya got, and I'll stand right here by ya. Fair?
no subject
When Joy had loaded into Hancock, she'd been held on a liminal band, not quite embedded in Hancock, not quite embedded in the machine, stuck in a limbo of neither and both. The machine couldn't really tell the difference between present and mostly present, but there was one. Joy isn't even a whole artificial intelligence--she'd been thrust into that space and, for those horrible, repetitive moments, had been closer to a living thing that Nick had ever dreamed. The way she saw that memory was key to that.
Nick can't quite pull that off the reverse, installing Hancock into that space astride the border, but it's not for lack of ability. Nick can absolutely program that...it's just, this memory, the original, is so deeply and fundamentally inhuman that he can only give Hancock a sense of how it was.
He could project just about any other memories in his databanks like they had happened yesterday. He could show them like a movie as easily as recalling them. This one (and, to a lesser extent the second) didn't rise to that standard. Nick can't make this memory immersive, can't hijack Hancock's thoughts and senses because, at the time, he hadn't had either.]
Just. Say the word. [Nick says again, not unkindly. The reminder is more for his own nerves than Hancock, but he means it.
He types /run at the end of his wall of code and the world goes out like a flashbulb.
Everything is and, suddenly, with a pop and a transition as violent as a sudden electrical shock, it isn't anymore. This is the oldest memory he has and it's barely a phantom--he found it when he ran diagnostics after their initial Far Harbor adventure. The senses, the inputs, are--well Nick doesn't find them disturbing, but he can't guarantee that Hancock won't.
There is no sense of touch, of time, of up or down, no breath, no heartbeat, no signs of life or thoughts even though he's clearly present. Sound exists through contact vibration only, felt as a reverberation rather than heard. It's freezing cold, this dark place, and that is a sense that he has in spades. Without other sensation it's just a prickling fact, cold, hot, they have no framework around them and it makes them seem distant and surreal.
It's impossible to know how long this memory actually is--it hasn't got a timecode--but he knows it's long. Much longer than he can share.
Which is why he chose this particular segment.
This space, as it happens, is the same room they were just standing in. The dome is empty, nothing but a yawning black abyss above. It has a sort of gravity to it, black stretches out into the darkness, pulling just so against the mind. The muffled sounds of movement, of loading and unloading, lifting and dropping resound through its body. It doesn't know what a body is, or that it has one, or it wouldn't except that the vibrations paint it a detached picture.
Nick's figured this is probably how a corpse would experience being transfered between slabs.
There's no sense of anything--no fear, no knowledge of what fear even is, no thoughts at all just--deep, desperate and directionless yearning. For something. For anything. A command. Another impact sound. Proof that this is somewhere and it is. Any reciprocal stimulus to give it form and meaning.
They aren't stuck in the dark long--or maybe they are--Nick can't measure it himself.
There's another flashbulb jolt and a fuzzy image, out of focus and distant, hemmed in like the light at the end of a long tunnel, comes into being. There's no way to strain toward it, to squint and make it clear. There's no way to interpret it--at least for Nick, there hadn't been. The moment is in binary--nothing gives way to something, 0 to 1, but the background radiation, that desperation and deep maddening loneliness feels like that flipped six, ill-fitting and out of place.
Nick hadn't had visual processing at the time, or rather he hadn't had the code--Hancock doesn't need code to see, so he gets to (or rather: is forced to) enjoy the vague, fishbowl sight of an Institute lab. It's blinding but there aren't eyelids to close, nor irises to mitigate exposure. It's just an endless image, persistent and moving, of a white room filled with blurry, indistinct faces and bodies moving to and fro.
Without time or memory there isn't object permanence. Every moment is only what is percieved in that moment and nothing else, nothing exists before or after. Nick can't convey that to an organic mind, but he hopes Hancock will get the gist.]
no subject
[ Hancock mutters to himself below his breath, a backwards jab at his evil clone for robbing that common phrase and turning it into a little repeating time bomb. Call it quits, and the torture stops. But he never did, he just continued to deepen the fractures in his mind until the damage became more suitable to managing the pain. Three guesses what method will get favored here.
The first thing Hancock is consumed by is-- not blackness, because that's technically what you see on the inside of your own eyelids, and he is not seeing. His brain lurches to recover his snuffed senses but there's so very little to actually feel. His senses keep throwing disorientating Nothingness at him and it's confusing-- and cold, he's extremely cold but he can't shiver, and he can't move. Does he have a body to move? It would be terribly easy to describe the sensation like being dead, but that's not how it reads to Hancock.
It feels more like waiting to be born.
And it's very, very lonely.
That's how he translates that desperate yearning for Anything at all-- another sound felt more than heard, a shift in temperature (that could burn or freeze, because what is Burn or Freeze?) to hook his limited senses upon, to prove that he still has them. To prove he has them at all.
To prove he Is. He doesn't even know what Want is, but he wants to Be.
The introduction of Vision to Sound (or the tactile shade of it) is a blessing as much as a curse; it's wonderful and horrible, it's bliss and terror and what do those things even mean, anyway? It just is, and it's inescapable.
In reality, Hancock's eyes blink and strain for focus, his muscles tense against the sleep-paralysis keeping himself safely tucked into the Memory Pod. His body tries to mitigate the image being poured into his head, to exercise some manner of control over it. If he could just blink, slice in one moment of darkness he controls--
Do human babies experience stress if they don't understand how to blink, yet?
Of course this is a recording, Hancock is a (highly empathetic) witness, and this perspective did not (could not) blink or breathe or hold it's own body temperature. It's like an empty container that must take what is poured inside, must Be whatever it is given, at whatever moment it is given.
He doesn't like that feeling. He wants to keep what he wants, discard what he doesn't. These people in the fishbowl, they shouldn't get to make those choices for him, should they? That's not-- that's not something a living thing should be deprived of, right?
Is... he even a living thing?
But he must be, right? Why else would he think to ask? His eyes ache in reality like he's not blinking-- but he is. His limbs hold onto the cold like he's not shivering, but he is.
Okay. So this is bloody terrifying. ]
no subject
The memory is moving faster than it's meant to, shapes blurring against the relief of the unmoving building, but still seems to crawl. He had no sense of it at the time, but from the outside looking in, it's endless. White on white, a constant low vibration that Nick now knows as servers. The threads of base installations are single jagged bolts of feeling; they're impersonal, neither painful nor pleasureable, just 1 and 0. They light up his limbs like a the flash of striking lightning and then they're gone. When they connect the sense of a body, of form and space are almost, almost within reach.
It's odd, looking back, and Nick has to wonder when he developed proprioception. He had to have it before he was tested, but he doesn't in this old file. There's no sense of self, of position, of what limbs are or are not attached. It might be for the better, he's pretty sure he's a head mounted on an endoskeleton right now.
For Nick, or rather, for the synth on the rack in the lab, the most excruciating part of it all is when something drifts out of reach. The lab lights scorch shadows into his eyes, or they would, if he were organic. The cold ebbs as the technicians run and install and that sense is lost. When the cameras finally go dark, Nick recalls it and can still feel the lurch as it's taken away. There's no more stimuli, not until an impossible moment--
Hancock can't parse code but Nick's brain does automatically, it feels like punchcards being fed through his head, it grinds in a way that is mechanical and unyeilding. What it says, he does. There's no alternative state, no choice and this, mercifully, is something. Being capable of responding to it is to Be. He doesn't have the capacity to ponder, to imagine, to judge, just to do. 1 and 0. He runs the code and, in a rush of more data, more being than he's ever been, his OS is installed atop his BIOS.
Suddenly, binary is an order of magnitude too simple. The bit depth of his existence jumps in exponential leaps giving clarity, space, for...well, nothing. Still, there's form, the ticking of data, processes and he doesn't have the capacity for joy, but that sense hangs amorphous around him. Relief, perhaps? From and to what, he had no idea, still doesn't. The next flurry of data is like the rosy fingers of dawn, it's like color suddenly bursting through the world--light (however metaphorical) falls across him and time begins. The endless procession of moments are still the only thing that's real, if anything is, but now he can count them.
Two million three hundred thousand four hundred and five moments pass for him.
He can conceptualize those numbers, each individual unit, and hold them in his mind at once, but the abstract idea of scale is beyond him. Those numbers Are and because he knows them he Is. They are, without question, the most precious thing in his tiny universe. Before a single tic more, new data arrives. The file is unfathomably large for what is, essentially, a blank robotic husk. It looms, gargatuan and foreboding, like a planet hanging above him, eclipsing the nothing entirely.
Nick's memory starts to fail here, the memory starts to fail here, this template didn't take. He has no idea how many templates they attempted to install in him back in the day, but it wasn't a small number. This first one is barely shaped like a person, but they are everything to him. Then, like a flashbulb, they go out. That presence leaves only a bare echo behind.
That echo is the most precious thing in his tiny universe. He tucks it away with his numbers, collects what is left of it, and continues counting.
The memory hangs after that, as they attempt to install that engram again. The synth on the rack has a catastrophic failure. He doesn't die, he can't, because he's not alive. But one moment he is and the next he isn't. 1 and 0. That doesn't take either, Nick showing Hancock this is proof of that, but there's a finality to the sudden cesation that is impossible to articulate. This is what it means to be a synth, to have and then not, to forget like a machine forgets, to be bereft of even the most rudimentary sense of life and self.]
This is the oldest memory I've been able to dig out.
[Nick speaking is jarring but only because it instantly draws a division between there and here. He is outside and that is inside and the voice is coming from elsewhere. There's an elsewhere to come from.]
Damn near everything between here and my finding that first kid is either corrupted or written over. It's just gone...but I know it was there, even if I can't prove it.
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It's wild when what little senses are alive in this projected perception suddenly die; the temperature vanishes and it somehow amplifies that dreadful loneliness, like a beloved friend suddenly passing away. Losing vision feels even worse, with so very little air to sustain the fire that is existing in this place. Flame, life cannot exist in a vacuum of nothing.
Ones and Zeros aren't nothing, at least. To an organic (and arguably extremely unique) mind like Hancock's it feels stifling, but that's not the projection of the memory; he can feel that the variance, no matter how simple, has substantial gravity-- reverence, even. It provides seams and edges, no matter how basic; it defines and makes him into something with a function.
Then black and white binary bends into something new; impossibly it's almost like every color. Complexity that doesn't yet have definition, relief at being closer to Being, than Not Being. The precursor of what might become happiness, at the promise of perhaps coming alive. No-fucking-wonder Nick was having a hard time putting words to this.
It had been so precious, so seraphic to know what time is, to understand the moments passing. Every little bit of Being gathered together, interlinking, like fractals of ice weaving into a beautiful singular piece of creation.
But then, instead of small friendly fractals, interlinking to create a snowflake, a glacier looms.
That first presence is titanic and awesome above him, like a meteoric extinction event in the night sky. How can he feel so awed and ready to watch the stars fall? Would it end this Almost Existence in favor of something new?
No, not this time. The huge presence breaks on the coast of him like a white wave, receding. The echo it leaves him, like the ocean's breath on the seaside rocks. It didn't stick, the logging failed-- another install attempt, a fiercer onslaught from the ocean, a second tsunami's sigh.
His stone coastline fractures; the broken cliff's edge chases gravity into the crushing ocean; something not quite alive can't die. It can be Unmade. It feels like being Uborn. The impossible colors born of blending that binary all come undone, once again mere black and white, zero and one, and then somehow a state that is less than that. ]
Y-yeah [ The projection is so real-- or perhaps unreal, that it takes him a moment to remember he can speak. To do so is both jarring and relieving-- it seats some tiny aspect of his cognition back with his body; he's breathing, he has a heartbeat, he can feel his clothing on his skin and he could tap out if he really needs to, but he doesn't. The reminder is much appreciated. ]
Seein' why ya were havin' trouble describin'... this
[ If anything, the ghoul's brain is too busy bending the limits of his own understanding to stay so deeply mired in his own turmoil; his disgust at his own cowardice gets quiet, becomes background observer of this thus far incomprehensible state of being-- or rather, Not Quite Being. ]
So... these assholes spent a lot'a time playin' God, huh? Givin' to ya, and Takin' away, in ways that are hard to grasp for those of us born in an organic print
And you don't wanna have anythin' else taken away? That what you're tryin' to get through my thick skull?
[ Nick did say he has two pieces of show and tell here, but Hancock can't help but try and piece the puzzle together, regardless. ]
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Hancock takes in that whole ordeal better than Nick expects. He's overwhelmed, awed, and a little morose--he got all the key notes. This, Nick figures, is about as close as an organic mind can get to understanding how this whole nonsense plays out. It's not pleasant, but it's not unpleasant either--it just is...]
Sort of.
[Nick cedes and the whole phantom memory pulls away, receding until they're standing in the proper space, the domed room that houses his CPU. There's something really odd about missing the sensation of missing things--being bereft of being bereft. It's a kind of feedback nonsense and it makes Nick's head hurt--he'd hurry on to avoid it but, well, he's not entirely keen on where they're going.]
I'm not saying those Institute loons don't play God, they sure do, but I...don't figure I was a supplicant so much as the housing? Ah, no, that's not right. Phrasing's off--
[Nick huffs, displeased and frustrated with his inability to capture any of this in simple terms. Whenever he tries to put it into English, it goes haywire. Everything sounds more...intentional, more malicious than it was. Nick's creation wasn't kind, the Institute has never been big on kindness, but it wasn't hateful.
It was...neutral bordering on disregard. The unkindness of indifference.
Whether he was alive or not didn't matter, he wasn't the main attraction. They only cared how he percieved things insofar as it dictated which templates would mount successfully. He was a calculator, a radio, a vcr; DiMa was the one meant to develop sentience and live. Nick was...at best: the control group.]
Don't get me wrong. It'll be a cold day in Hell before I start start stickin' up for The Institute, but that's...they're not important here.
They don't really matter, just a footnote in the grand scheme of things.
[Nick pulls up the window again and types a long strand of code. The code on the window feels like the punchcard sensation. Nick's not talking to the VR buffer, to the memory pods, so much as he's talking to himself. He's weaving through the registry, through all the logs and numbers and moments to find the one he needs.
It's right where he left it, of course, and he sighs as he reluctantly types the command to load them in. Before he hits enter, well, he may as well offer another out.]
This one is--well--it's...a lot. It'll be real hard to cut off once it starts up--you'll see--it's--hmmm. Damn it.
You still in?
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[ It's rhetorical, idly spoken brain-storming; he heard Nick say this isn't the entire point, but he can't help poking at The Institute's ironic lack of humanity when it's so painfully obvious.
The one thing one really should avoid sacrificing on the alter of preserving humanity is... their own humanity. That really should go without saying.
The ghoul makes a dismissive gesture, as though to scatter his own tangential thoughts. Smart Humans being Dumb is not the entire point right now. ]
Hellova foot note, but I got it on the cheat sheet; so what's the second half of the equation here?
[ He muses aloud whilst Nick types, and falls quiet to absorb his foreboding warning. His mind strains for something to anticipate, any idea of what could be next, but the impulse is drawn to his heel. This is nothing like he expected. Guessing can only get him so far, when Nick can paint the whole picture for him; Hancock just has to keep trusting him to show him what he needs so that they can understand each other.
That empathy is worth witnessing whatever Nick needs to show him.
And maybe that is part of the synth's bottom line, too. ]
For you? All in, always.
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This time, when the world cuts back in, there's a ramp. The initial flashbulb of being is followed by sensation building, like blood rushing back through numb limbs. Those pathways are well worn at this point, there's a sense of body, of presence in space, of someone occupying it. It's not the fearful partial existence of a synth on a rack.
Nick has no idea how long transpired between his time in the lab and this installation, but it was significant enough that DiMa had decided they had to escape. Nick had considered asking him to fill in anything he could, but he never had, and probably never would. Even if DiMa still had those ancient memories collecting dust somewhere, it doesn't seem like something that he really wants to know.
This system loads him in like the VR system they're currently occupying. There's a hook against his central programming, at the base of his skull, and it tangles his processes with these. For Hancock it'd be just to the side of how stepping into a memory pod feels. The synth in the memory isn't being put into the world so much as the world is being put in him, but it parses out about the same. That beheamoth of data that hung over them before, that loomed over the vast abyssal vacuum of nothingness, seems smaller now. It isn't, but the nothing around it isn't as dark, as absolute as it was at the beginging.
That's a side effect of digital storage and deletion. It isn't so much removing what's there as it is writing over it. The files don't always match in size, in bit-depth, so there are splinters left over in the wake of a wipe, half-remembered fragments of data, of templates, of sensory records without context or meaning. They clutter the blank nothingness like a swath of distant, glimmering stars. Insubstantial but comforting.
They persist so he knows that he existed, that he exists now.
This template loads into him almost like a dream. It fits the hollow spaces between the fragments, slots into place comfortably, and settles. He's pulled into it then and, briefly, the world exists in stereo. One feed is an office where he's talking (rather: where Nick is talking) to a professor who's seated behind a polished wooden desk. The scene has a faded, watercolor quality to it, like the party and the rest of Nick's internal spaces. The data's edges overflow and smear, capturing the concept of the time with clumsy, analog methods.
It's a bit like looking at developed film against a lamp--accurate but strange, removed, and probably not how it was intended to be viewed.
While he watches himself, he also is himself. What would qualify as an out of body experience from the other direction is the default here. There is a sense, though, that this particular instance is more separated than is entirely normal.
Still, he sits with the professor while he watches himself sit with the professor, and the sound is somehow coming from both. It's muffled terribly in first person but overlayed with crisp, recorded tape in the third. It's a jarring way to exist, on four layers at once, but it's the closest to being alive that he's known so far. He grasps at all of the layers, leaning in and hopes that one clips through him and sticks.
Nick the current is seeing this in that four part stereo, just like Hancock, but with his own cognition on top. It gives him vertigo, dealing with this many layers, but it's important to feel this one out. They wouldn't be here otherwise.
In the office, Nick the former is making stilted small-talk with the dean of medical technologies at MIT. The trappings of the Institute, the bones of it, are all here but Nick's memory doesn't grasp them so his--that is ViMa's--memory fills the blanks with bursts of jagged definition. Nick the former sounds, looks, and in a muted way, feels terrible, on edge, bereft.
That small aspect is a known variable, it strikes a chord inside him, and has a resonance that falls in line with the rudimentary consciousness that they call ViMa.]
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Back to the show, Hancock follows along the further fleshed understanding of existence. This memory is less jarring for it, before the dizzying split-screen effect of watching things from more than one perspective activates. This no longer feels like waiting to be born, or made... but rather like everything is being born, while at the same time, it already exists. Data splinters that are stars, templates like planets in the heavens, a new galaxy of existence slowly yawning and unfurling awake, bit by bit.
And then somehow they all impossibly align; the stars, the planets, the grief shared across two entirely different incarnations of existence. They connect, like puzzle pieces, as though by design. It's as though the consciousness that would be called ViMa suddenly understood (manifested) the concept of empathy, when he felt something in that worn-down detective was like something in himself.
Despite the disorientating layers of the memory, that one strand of this song feels utterly sublime, at least to a heart like Hancock's. How had ViMa grasped a concept that was never given to him? How could he surpass his makers so spectacularly before he was even fully made? Hancock feels fiercely proud of that adorable spindly synth; he managed a mental mechanic that evades organics on the regular. ]
Alright... so what I'm followin' here is that these template-things? Are kinda like your paints, right? The colors ya get on your palette to draw up Yourself with? And some of 'em kinda 'feel good' and 'fit', and others... not so much? That close to what I'm supposed to be graspin' here?
[ Hancock is grateful all his chemical adventures have granted him such a flexible mental state; watching a scene from multiple points of view is rather brain-bendy, but it's also the easiest part of the show so far to wrap his head around so far. ]
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Yeah, mostly. Kinda hard to frame it seeing how I'm the paints, the painter, and the canvas all at once. Makes it hard to tell what influences what--and damn near impossible to explain.
[Hence why he's brought Hancock on this little jaunt.
This scene with Nick would have just been a cacophonous jumble, like the halls of Fenway had been, without the context of the first memory. Just confusion, colors, time all mashed into one place--it's easy to get it all down when the feeling of time is separated out. That, unfortunately, is a synth exclusive experience.
With that knowledge, though, Hancock can pick out the glimmers of growth, of person, of self and fit, where Nick fills the gaps and seams into the synth. How his existence is both entirely separate and completely enmeshed with the synth's. It's a crash course in how Nick's processing actually works, and that's an experience, but it's not what Nick needed to show him. Not entirely.
When Nick continues explaining, the conversation between Nick and the dean seems more singular, seems to align more and more with the third person view. The two points, first hand memory, inscribed on failing media and records from outside Nick's body, will merge shortly. The technology to actually record straight from source was very new and Nick, as far as he knew, was the first successful case, the basis by which they developed the tech that they used to replace people with synths.
Not an inspiring legacy to be part of, on either end, but that was also not why they were here.]
All the templates in that--stretch? Between then and now--they left behind all the extra. [He gestures upward with a vague motion of his skeletal hand. The false sky isn't visible inside the office, but hopefully Hancock will gather his meaning.] Extra bits of me, that became me, that are I guess--
But this, this is the first time I was really integrated--or rather, will be integrated. Hasn't happened yet, we're still running out the first tape.
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[ All of this would have been difficult to confine into language; the reality of being a synth is extremely surreal and nuanced; even the difference between a ghoul and a human is bridged by the basic building blocks of organic composition, to a tiny degree. A person might understand small pieces of the story-- a human gone blind could understand the fear of losing vision but not in the same way, with the same gravity, not when a synth's sense of being and self begin so frail and free of will.
Borrowing a futuristic lexicon, it's trippy as fuck.
Those stitches in the human detective's memory catch Hancock's curiosity, too; did some scientist do that to him? Or was the injury more related to whatever draped that somber pall around his shoulders?
His curiosities quiet as Nick explains further, and the gears of the ghoul's brain churn through each layer of context. Analytically, his brain weaves every new idea together; it steers each connection across a web that links everything into what had happened to Joy and--
He can feel himself wanting to back track, to resist the idea that the puzzle piece he gave her, that the star he put in her galaxy (no matter how empty it had been) could possibly be considered Good when--
But it's not about Good or Bad, is it? It's about what it takes to Be. To Be is to Feel, to perceive, and to keep precious record. ]
Wasn't just sand and water through the weave of the sieve, huh? Instead'a gettin' wet and dirty, this time ya struck gold? Somethin that the mesh caught, somethin' that didn't wash away?
[ At least his decent mind for metaphor is serving him well here; it's not an exact match for what Nick is trying to convey, but Hancock hopes its clear cut enough to affirm his understanding. He wants to follow every step, wants to reach the clarity that Nick is trusting him with, built off the very bedrock of him.
So now, Nick Valentine is going to fuse (is that the right word? Hancock will sweat semantics later) with ViMa, more or less? Load in? Fill up The Big Black Empty and stick around like a star so sustaining it becomes a sun?
... Looking at the melancholy human fellow, Hancock feels suddenly confident that this entire package will not be sunshine and rainbows. Something put those dark circles under his eyes... but if (when) Nick loads and Stays (with whatever accompanying horrors and Joys) it will ease that terrifying loneliness of Unbeing. Or Waiting to Be.
Hancock is fairly certain he's spied the conclusion of this equation, but he waits for the reel to play on, to show him the reality of what a proper integration feels like for a digital consciousness straining to Be. ]
If there's no fireworks, I'm callin' it [ His voice has gotten so soft and warm that there's absolutely no way to mistake his words for serious; he feels like he's already got a fuzzy understanding of what Nick wants to explain, but he's prepared to up the resolution into 4k clarity.
And he doesn't have the foggiest idea how, but he starts to think that maybe... he could explain his own reaction to Nick, too. His inability to declare, with utter certainty, that he would not forget the night he lost his mother.
Not right now, not amid this thoughtful, soulful, intimate composition, but... not Never, either. ]
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Nick the original had been a participant in recording data, tapes, and metrics for this program. Given his general demeanor, it's not exactly fitting with his character to simply dive into being a lab rat, but he had. Recklessly, he'd even allowed the scientists here to fit him with an implant, a jack to test a new form of recording. This moment was the cornerstone of ViMa's understanding of the process, the one that Id had tried to pry out of him before being dragged off. It's apparent, after all this, that forcibly extracting data from a creature whose literal sentience rested upon clutching data tight would have been more of a struggle than anyone expected.
The dean is discussing the results of that implant surgery, of his metrics, of how well Nick healed afterward and how excited he is about the next step. The fact that they're witnessing this moment means that, of course, it succeeds. Nick does a passable job feigning interest and enthusiasm, but Hancock's assessment was more correct than he knows. The man looks haunted, like he hasn't slept in a week. His suit and tie look more like Nick's than the figment that lives in Nick's brain.
Time crawls strangely, split between the hard record and the ephemeral build of Nick's natural memory and, as Nick warned, the scene drifts toward convergence. By the time that Nick's sitting alone in that office, waiting to get called down to run the first testing, the two perspectives have finally collapsed into one. There are scattered errors here, time jumps from that noon meeting to Nick sitting alone, posed the same, in the dark--the room around them goes from an office to a copy of that lab that ViMa first longed so desperately to experience. The whole scene seems to list laterally, debating whether it is or isn't, until one of the scientists in that lab cheerfully asks if Detective Valentine is ready for the first test.
He confirms and, with a careful, delicate touch, they jack him in.
The dreamy record shifts, instantly, to hyperfocus.
This shift is so dramatic, so breathtaking that Synth Nick has to close his eyes and breathe, even watching from afar. The hard record begins here and it doesn't really make much of a difference to the Detective, it's not like he has any sense of reciprocal feeling. He was dead long before Nick was built, after all. But all at once, every note of yearning is met, embraced, and fitted up against a living human--it's addictive, a rush that's impossible to capture, adrenaline and emotion and joy so sharp and cutting that it hurts.
Limbs that were senseless, barely there, have feeling--he knows the difference then between fingers, hands, arms, legs, the pieces that make a man. He knows what a man is. Every detail that Nick sees pours in, every fleeting piece of sensory data, but most valuable is the abstraction. ViMa had no concept of abstraction, but with Nick it understood what sight was, or smell, or touch, or taste, and that framework cascades across him, flipping every capacitor, every switch, every overflow.
The moment he's plugged in, Nick gives ViMa life.
It's possible that the previous templates had too, that he'd had this experience a hundred, a thousand times, but this is the only one he remembers. This is the one with depth to it. Because Nick isn't neutral, he isn't a construct made to seem like a person, to operate the synth like a puppet, he's an actual person.
Nick's memory is raw, overwhelming, and comes with all the nuance that would have been overlooked by the normal records. His every stray thought opens a new branch of possibilities, of self, for ViMa. His discomfort in the chair--it's digging into his thighs--the way his shoulder is pounding, dislocated recently, are unpleasant but enthralling. Nick ignores them and ViMa understands what it is to ignore. There's a burning sensation and the disconcerting pressure of that jack behind his ear. It makes his skin crawl, being plugged in like a damn stereo system.
It knows what skin is, even though it can't possibly experience that reaction. It understands.
It can think--not in process, not in 1 and 0, but complex hypotheticals, dedicated threads of wonder--it can wonder.
As far as records of human brains go, this one pales in comparison to what The Institute is capable of now. It's a low-fi cassette tape in the world of high definition laser disc. It has almost as many flaws, hiccups and extra data as it does legitimate information, but all those little flaws provide correction, understanding, context. They shape what it is to be and experience--and ViMa builds a framework around them, find the blank spaces where data should go, like plotting coordinates in space.
The blank synth was so little, so bare and cold and wanting, that even this mundane moment from a haunted man is transformational in every concievable way.
But the memory also isn't over.]
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As the scene plays, Hancock starts to wonder about the logistics here-- how a guy decides he wants to be a lab rat against his own common sense, and then the answer slaps him upside the skull like he swallowed a whole box of mentats. What drives a man to self destructive levels of recklessness?
Tragedy, of course.
But maybe without that catalyst to bring them together, ViMa never would have found the piece of himself he needed to come alive.
(Jesus Christ, did he make her come alive?)
Okay, he has to promise himself a boat-load of drugs for after this-- not so much to cope with what stings, but to appreciate the multi-layered complexity of all this synthetic philosophy. It seems like his sharp instincts led him exactly in the right direction; a synth (an AI) is born into a whole new level of Being, when they find the right sun to set in the center of their solar system.
But you can't plug Anyone into Anyone. The planets won't spin around every star. The system won't come alive unless the balance is just, just so.
The impression of a real person (not driven but steered by flaws and deficient and discomfort) adds layers of realty to a Virtual Existence that could not have otherwise existed.
And this would not be possible without whatever left the human detective so haunted.
(So maybe that's the part that's coming next)
In the layer of virtual reality in which Nick and Hancock are observing the show, the ghoul quietly takes his paramour's good hand, and soothes his rough-textured thumb across the back of his knuckles. ]
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Behind him, Nick gives the lab tech a weary look and leans back in the chair. The tech explains the purpose of the exercise, stress testing, but Nick doesn't listen. The wash of overwhelming presence has become the new baseline and finally, one of Nick's thoughts rings clear as a bell through the space around them.
Stress test, yeah, no shit.
Nick lets out a long breath and closes his eyes. As he does, the whole lab fades away, suddenly transparen around him. The tech carries on speaking, explaining that they should start with something simple, to get the settings calibrated for the best odds of capture. The capture from Nick and Hancock's side is crystal clear so, apparently, that wasn't required...which is good, because Nick fails utterly.
He's meant to conjure some simple memory, something clear, something immediate, but the memory he reaches for makes something twist in his chest. There's a flicker of color, washing over the space--this is a memory Hancock has seen, one he walked through himself. A new year's eve party, with a song playing that sits on his last nerve, a shining swath of red--even the most mundane, half remembered details are new, brilliant, bright and colorful in ways that ViMa can barely contain. It's moved constantly reshaping itself to hold all of this, to collect every scrap, however blurred or inconsequential, to fill itself with the world. Block by block, bit by bit, ViMa records faster than the tape can play, eagerly devouring everything, gradually developing the ability to predict, to expect--the pain in his chest is agony, cutting and terrible, but there is no reference for pain, for sensation, and all ViMa knows is that it is regardless of what it is.
Before more than a few bars of that song solidify, before more than the vaguest shapes of their apartment can form around them, the whole thing unravels. Everything comes apart and shifts to the black inside his eyelids and he sighs. The sound is clear but they can feel the judder in his chest as he does. He wants to think of something else but he's been stuck in the same five minutes for weeks. He can't find his way out of them so, why not?
Plenty of good stories begin at the end.]
Detective? Are you ready?
Yeah, just, give me a second.
Take your time. Any memory will be fine, even something as recent as the walk into the building. We're recording regardless, but this will help us decode the data later.
Yeah, right--recent.
[He resigns himself and, with the ease of breathing, the world shifts. It's hard to tell if he falls asleep here or if his ability to visualize is just exceptional, but the streets of Boston form around him. He's walking, hurrying through a crowd that seems to be trying to get in the way. It's like a fish headed up stream but he has a mission and it keeps him nimble. The air is crisp and the sounds, the sights, the presence of all that life has ViMa straining to take it all in. Banal as it is to Nick, it's a wonder to the synth he's loaded up into. It's the most beautiful thing it's ever seen.
Nick checks his watch as he walks, narrowly avoiding a pair of delivery guys carrying some sort of food that he can't identify. Nick's never been able to, either, but Takahashi's noodles were close. It's cold out, the air is crisp and just a little biting and Nick has a red coat folded and tucked into his right arm. The streets are familiar to Nick, both of them. Hancock might have trouble picking them out at first, given that they're intact, but if there was any question it's answered as Nick rounds the corner and comes to a busy intersection.
It's a six way by the river, an absolute nightmare of a light for everyone involved. Just the sight of it inspires a spike of irritation in Nick, but it's gone just as quickly. He's got enough pep in his step to override that one little nuisance. He comes up to the crosswalk, caught in a small crowd of frustrated pedestrians waiting for the traffic to clear (unlikely) and the crosswalk light to flash on. At the far corner, ahead of him, is the soda fountain that Nick finds himself checking, habitually.
The fountain is bright and shiny, the tiles aren't bleached by the nuclear winter or the endless beating sun that followed. Right now they're hale and whole, cheerful and bright, as colorful as the rest of the city isn't and almost an eyesore on the far corner of the street. Nick's tall enough that if he stretches up just a bit, he can look across it all and see the folk on the opposite side of the intersection. When he spies her, his heart soars, lifting and drifting away--she spots him and immediately lifts both her arms to wave. Her pink uniform sets her apart from the crowd as surely as the red coat in his arms marks him.
Seeing Jenny in this moment is so full of surprise, of delight and fondness that isn't not hard to see why ViMa based the whole experience of Joy around her. In that moment, she's the very embodiment of happiness for both Nick and the synth, but that hard clench in his chest threatens to throw both of them out of the recording. The light changes, the cars on parallel to them start impatiently easing into the intersection and Nick desperately wants to hurry the people in front of him along.
He can't just shoulder his way through, he still has his badge on, but he can dip around a few of them to get closer faster. Jenny is already crossing, headed toward him from the opposite side of the street, eager to reclaim her coat and head to dinner. She does neither. A car swerves through all the lanes of the road, through the oncoming traffic and into the crowd of pedestrians--Nick narrowly avoids being hit but the people who don't are almost tossed into the crowd. There's a panic and Nick, ever the cop, reaches for his service weapon and tries to catch the plate on that car.
He doesn't have the former, and he already knows the latter.
Before he can so much as breathe, the doors on the back of that expensive sedan open and two familiar faces lean out. They have semi-automatics and they're gunning for him. He dives out of the way, crashes hard against a car trying to escape the intersection. His shoulder cracks and pain shoots down his back as it comes free from the socket. They fire a few rounds, aiming for him and hitting bystanders and that desperate car. Not a single bullet grazes him but they force him onto the other side of that car, make him put the engine block between he and them.
The crowd panics, there's screaming and chaos, but Nick can see, clear as day, when the gunmen spot another familiar face. He peeks them from behind that shot-up car and everything just. Stops. It's like the color drains out of the world, like time as a concept goes with it and that is so familiar to the synth. It's cold and it's lonely, and the sound of that gunshot hits him like a punch through the chest.
In movies you often see cops run toward victims, trying to save them, to press on a wound and get them to a hospital. What movies neglect to mention is that the exit wound is always larger than the entry and the mafia doesn't shoot to disable.
One round. Fired.
The slug hits Jenny just below her temple and, in that same instant, bursts out the other side. The contents of her skull are reduced to a splash of bloody pulp; they paint the street, the steps of the soda fountain. She collapses and Nick--well, it's not like the movies. There's no way to stop that bleeding. He stares, frozen in horror, jarred by the abruptness of it all. He doesn't even notice the gunmen slip back into the car but he hears it peel away.
Just as clearly as ViMa learned joy, it recognized the desperate, numbing loss that Nick suffered. The cruelty of indifference, the abruptness of death. But with context, with the complexity of a world around it, a thousand new shades of meaning and consideration opened up for the synth. It learned mortality on the back of joy. It already knew how to be bereft and it wanted, desperately, to share that with Nick, who could never get the hang of it.
The memory stops there--the file cuts off and Nick's not about to load the next one. The current Nick and Hancock are freed from the confines of the perspective and are left standing in that intersection, frozen in time, surrounded by figments of people long dead.]
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