Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(The card sits on the metal counter in front of him. It is handwritten; Connor’s handwriting analysis algorithm loads automatically, and tells him that the writer is right-handed and probably of Scandinavian descent, based on the particular looping of the gs and the ps. The index card itself dates back to the 1960s; Connor stops that process before it can run further, because knowing the exact manufacturing date and batch of this particular card is immaterial and unimportant. The card sits there on the counter, staring him in the face with all of its humanity. Fingerprints have covered the surface and smeared the ink. There are traces of mold growing where someone once picked it up with wet, sugary fingers about thirteen years ago.)

Connor feels like he might be timing out.

(The card is wrinkled, stained, bent: loved. There is something so human about it, buried deep in every trace he can analyze. Connor wants to brush his fingertips along the surface of the recipe card and lick them to see what he can learn: there’s obviously flour, sugar, something that’s probably vanilla. Is there DNA? Human skin cells? How far back could his analysis suite trace the history of this card? Would his sensitive fingertips tell him the year, the day? How would the ink taste on his tongue?)

None of this is relevant.

Connor reaches out and minutely adjusts the recipe card until it is resting at a perfect parallel to the edge of the bakery counter. Scones, Connor thinks. It is his third week of employment at Roasted!, and he is going to attempt scones.

The recipe card was given to him by Hank Anderson: one of many in a stack, rubber-banded and dusty, that were chucked at Connor after his brief on-boarding and safety training (“Don’t burn it down,” Hank Anderson had growled, and Connor had nodded). Connor chose it for its well-balanced levels of simplicity and complexity: it has fewer ingredients than the majority of the other recipes in the stack, but it does require a new technique he is interested in learning. It seemed a reasonable compromise, faced with this many choices.

Connor’s programming is used to choices, but not at this breadth or depth.

(Focus. Scones.)

2 cups flour

¼ cup white sugar

½ tsp salt

2 ½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

 

Sift dry ingredients.

Connor is alone in the bakery at the moment. Connor’s shift starts at 04:30. Hank Anderson has added Connor to his security system, grumbling at the thought of waking up that early, and Connor lets himself in every morning, into the quiet safety of the Roasted! bakery and his new role here. His first week he made nothing but cupcakes: simple, easy, chocolate and vanilla. He added chocolate chip cookies his second week. Both were made using directions formed from a weighted average of popular recipes listed online, and from what Connor overheard, both were solidly good and therefore fairly unremarkable.

Now, in his third week, Connor wants a bit of a challenge. He is approaching deviancy in slow, careful steps. Much like his baking.

Cut in ¼ cup shortening.

He’s never had to cut in a baking fat before. A quick search provides him with plenty of context, and Connor quickly finds the pastry blender. His research suggests chilling it, so Connor holds it between his hands and lowers the pressure of the thirium flow in his fingers until his hands reach standard freezer temperature. He monitors the dropping temperature of the metal tool until it reaches the standard refrigeration point, and then begins his task.

It is critical that the shortening is dispersed throughout the dry ingredients in a particular fashion. This will ensure the scones reach the correct level of what humans call flakiness. Connor easily calculates the optimum size of shortening pocket as per this particular recipe, but he finds his manual technique not advanced enough to know how to reach it. Inefficient. He will need to practice.

(Of course an RK-800 wouldn’t have the programming necessary to properly cut shortening into a dough. These hands were made for other tasks.)

He eventually cuts in shortening to the point where continued manipulation will decrease the quality of his dough. It isn’t ideal, but Connor is learning when to, well, cut his losses is the human phrase. A strand of programming points out that his distribution of fat is not perfect and thus he should discard this bowl and begin again from scratch. Connor clears the notification. It is easier to do today than it would have been last week.

¼ cup currants (double if raisins)

1 cup buttermilk

Add currants and milk. Dough should be sticky.

Connor adds his currants and buttermilk and stirs while his processors look up an acceptable human definition for sticky dough. He watches approximately two hundred and seven videos of bakers working dough during the next two minutes, and allows his programming to filter through them until he has a preconstructed understanding of what he’s aiming for.

Turn onto well-floured board and knead about one minute.

Kneading is one of Connor’s new favorite things.

When the job had been suggested, Connor had rejected it almost immediately: him, an advanced RK-800 model, baking? Absurd. Here, three weeks into this quiet new employment, he continues to be surprised at how well parts of it suit him. The precision of baking, measuring his ingredients to the milligram. The physicality of it, the act of stirring and mixing. The presence of something tangible at the end.

Kneading is comforting in its simplicity. Connor’s hands work the dough, in perfect imitation of the videos he compiled and assimilated, just as he preconstructed. Dough does not stick to synthskin or to Cyberlife electrothermoplastic fingers. It simply is worked, a thing Connor can put energy into and see the result. A passive action; the irony in the phrase is not lost on him.

All of the acts of baking, so far, have been …grounding.

(The way none of it, absolutely none of it, is anything like the work he was designed to do.)

Cut into rounds and bake on ungreased sheet 12-15 minutes at 450F.

There is a note written in a different script beneath this:

Cathy bakes hers at 350F for 15-20 minutes. I have done both and prefer the hotter temp.

These recipes were thrown at him by Hank Anderson. Connor wonders: who is Cathy? Who is the author? Whose scones is he making, if ‘Cathy’ has her own separate version? The two handwriting samples show a number of similarities. Is this a relative?

(Connor again suppresses the urge to sample the recipe card. He is fairly sure that Hank Anderson would not react well to seeing an android lick his collection of recipes. No matter that his tongue is tingling thinking about it. A quick online search will most likely answer the questions about Hank Anderson’s ancestors anyway.)

Connor thinks idly as he shapes each scone on its ungreased baking sheet. One reason he took this job was because human rituals around food are fascinating, and if Connor is going to be living with humans, he wants to learn everything he can. This seems like its own small ritual: shaping these scones, cutting them from the mass of the dough, carefully placing each individual scone onto the sheet. Hoping that his strange android hands have managed to work the ingredients together to a point where once he applies heat, the end product will be good enough to produce human enjoyment.

Small rituals. Connor lives by them, these days.

This is maybe not Connor’s absolute favorite time of the day, but it is one of them; he devotes a train of thought to it, and decides that it’s perhaps his third-favorite, overall. It’s the quiet of the bakery, the safety inherent in a human-owned place, the knowledge that while none of this is Connor’s in truth some of it is, in fact, his, if only for this moment: his bakery, his realm. The feel of human gluten beneath his synthetic fingernails; a dough that will never set in the wrinkles of his knuckles. A space where he doesn’t have to consider anything outside of a single mission he has set for himself - make scones - and there are no dangers other than, perhaps, the risk of imperfect bakery goods.

(A risk he has hard-programmed himself to accept — at least, until he learns to do so on his own.)

Third-favorite time of day, Connor decides, and the thought of having favorites cheers him extensively.

His favorite time - and he will never admit this verbally, Connor knows, because it’s far too sentimental for an RK-800 created to do the things he can do - his absolute favorite time of day is two hours after he starts, when Hank Anderson stumbles through the door some time between 06:00 and 06:30 and opens Roasted!, usually cursing up a storm and complaining about whatever weather has decided to greet him this morning.

Hank Anderson is a mystery. Connor has, of course, done a preliminary online search, so he knows the things the general Detroit public knows: Hank was a cop, promoted all the way to Lieutenant following a few select and very successful red ice busts. Hank Anderson quietly accepted these awards and his Lieutenancy and seemed poised for a breakout career.

Hank Anderson also just as quietly left the Detroit Police Department three years ago, following a car crash newspapers call a miraculous survival. According to county records, Roasted! opened seven months later.

(Connor could access the local, state, and federal records if he wanted to. He could gather together all the known information about Hank Anderson and run it through his own advanced protocol to develop a solid picture of the ex-Lieutenant.)

(He will not. Connor knew he would not the second he scanned the articles about Hank’s car accident. Something dropped inside of him, deep like water into a well, and he suddenly somehow knew he wouldn’t be satisfied by any information his programming could find. Either he would hear it from Hank Anderson himself, or he would not hear it at all.)

(Hank is still a mystery, though.)

Hank is a force of nature himself. He throws the door open nine days out of ten, usually already muttering under his breath, cantankerous and wild like the coffee-shop isn't even his choice as he ritualistically throws switches in a very careful order, flicking on his water and steam and roaster and whatever other gadgets he hasn’t let Connor examine yet to start preparing them for the day. He blusters his way through the front, checking everything carefully with clever thick fingers, and no matter how grumpy his mood he always stops to swing open the door into the bakery and grunt, without fail: “Morning, Con.”

“Good morning, Hank.”

This is Connor’s favorite moment of the day, always. No matter the day.

Because sometimes, Hank will pause — like today, when the scent of the scones is drifting out of the commercial oven, and Connor’s synthetic fingers are thick with a dough he somehow messed up and is trying to salvage. Hank pauses, one broad hand on the door, and his entire face softens, as if Connor has done something right.

“Smells good, Con,” says Hank, and then he backs out of the kitchen, still grumbling.

Connor freezes, and he cannot help the small smile that blooms on his face. His fingers are thick with unacceptable pastry dough and the oven timer will buzz in approximately six point three seconds and Connor is smiling, something small but real, as he listens to Hank swearing at the standard coffeepot.

(His favorite time of the day is this. Because it feels like he’s standing in his own place, doing something only his hands can do, and Hank Anderson approves of his work like he’s just another human.)

— — —

Connor’s second favorite time of the day is mid-afternoon, when Cole Anderson comes home from school. Cole is about nine years old, and Hank has arranged with the school to drop him off at the coffee shop rather than at their house. Cole doesn’t always hang around - Hank pays one of his neighbors to take Cole some days, and he has activities on others - but he stops in most days to hug his dad and grab a snack.

It’s Connor’s second favorite time of the day because Cole makes a point of coming back to the bakery to say hi to Connor, now. Every day without fail Cole will shuffle his way back to greet Connor, and ask about his day, and sometimes tell Connor a thing or two about school while he sits on the counter and swings his legs, the one with the brace usually kicking almost as high as the other. Cole doesn’t always stay; usually he just yells his hello, but on the days that he does, Connor likes it. Cole is much friendlier than his father. Although this might be because Cole is still a child. Connor hasn’t had very much exposure to children.

(Cole is a mystery, but he is a mystery because he is a child, an entity Connor’s programming holds very little information on. Hank is a mystery because of what he is. It is entirely different. Connor likes having mysteries to solve. It uses many of the advanced tools he was designed with, without dragging in memories of his original purpose. He was programmed to be able to understand humans, but Hank Anderson remains un-understood.)

(Connor is finding he enjoys longer-term objectives.)

Earlier, Connor had set aside one of the currant scones, and so when he hears Cole outside in the cafe, Connor pops it under the broiler just a bit to warm it up and has it ready to hand Cole when he peeks through the bakery doors. He has been saving an icing glaze for the last batch, and he dribbles some of it over the warm scone right as the doors fly open.

“Hi, Connor!”

“Leave ‘im alone!” Hank Anderson bellows from the front, although Connor’s social integration protocol detect that Hank is being funny rather than serious. It makes him smile at Cole, who he genuinely likes. Cole grins back. There’s a small gap between his top front teeth that reminds Connor of his father.

“I saved this for you,” says Connor, holding the plate out. “The icing is special.”

“Holy shit, icing!” Cole yells, ecstatic.

“You watch your fuckin’ mouth!” Hank yells from the counter, and Connor and Cole both break down giggling.

(“May I ask why the establishment is called Roasted!?”

Hank Anderson snorts, and then rubs a hand over his mouth, obviously amused.

“The city council wouldn’t let me call it Fuckin’ Coffee.”)

Connor had asked Hank about Cole’s colorful vocabulary on his eighth day here. Hank had told him that it was too late to watch his own damn mouth, and the compromise was that Cole was allowed to use any language he wanted at the coffeeshop and at home and nowhere else, and he expected Connor to support that.

(Connor had realized a few days later that he actually finds it cute. This probably should be disturbing to him, as an android, but he can’t seem to feel sorry about it.)

“You mean hecking shit,” Connor says in response, and Cole melting into a pile of giggles is good enough, but the sound of Hank guffawing as he rings up customers is even better.

(Connor likes this. He liked his time at the DPD well enough, but it’s all clouded with his own concerns and worries: about deviancy, about the androids they were chasing, about wondering whether anyone would have his back. This is simpler, but cleaner at the same time: jokes and dialogue that won’t have major repercussions.)

(Connor actually thinks, sometimes, in-between other processes, that he likes teasing both Hank and Cole.)

“Alright,” says Connor. “Should we make one for your dad?”

“He doesn’t deserve it,” says Cole, always ready to slot into the role of sassy child, “but I guess we can.”

Connor lets Cole pick a scone out of the tray reserved for the last push (scheduled at 15:30, although Connor and Hank are still arguing about hours) and then lets him set it on the board for the salamander and push it in. Usually Connor is very picky about the reheating methods used on his baked goods, but he has decided the goal here is to make Hank and Cole Anderson happy, rather than the mission of perfectly reheating a scone being suggested by his internal protocol. Connor is learning the difference between the two. It frames everything in a new way.

“Pull it out,” Connor orders, and Cole’s hands are steadier than expected for a kid who went through significant vehicular trauma three years ago. “Alright. Set it here, and then I’ll help you spoon the— Please do not do that with the icing. Do you think I am going to let you eat it if it spills on the wax paper?”

“Worth a try,” says Cole, incorrigible and unbending.

“Maybe later,” says Connor, but together they drape an interesting amount of the glaze on top of the chosen scone, and harden it for a few seconds under the salamander, and when Cole marches out of the kitchen to present the plate to his dad, Connor follows, leaning up against one of the double doors to keep it open while he fails to hide his interest in watching.

“Hey, Dad!” The thing is, the clientèle of Roasted! just love Cole - as they should, Connor thinks - so scenes like this end up gathering the attention of the customers. Connor is …unused to this attention, but Cole never seems to mind. “Connor made me a special scone, so then we made YOU a special scone, and you have to eat it and tell me how good it is.”

“I’ve been smelling them all damn day,” Hank Anderson mutters. “I know how fuckin’ good they are. But okay, Cole, if you and Connor made it, I need to taste it. That’s fair.”

“We can eat them together,” Cole says happily, climbing up onto the chair at the desk in the corner. Cole mainly uses the chair to get onto the desk, where he likes to sit. His climbing is a little clumsy due to the leg brace, but Cole never lets that stop him. Connor respects that.

“Come on, Connor, take a load off,” says Hank, as he rambles over to the desk and straddles the chair backwards. “Have a scone.”

“Scone party!” Cole cheers.

Hank pauses. “Can you have a scone? Here you are, working in a bakery, can you even eat?” He pauses. “I don’t believe I haven’t even asked you that yet. Christ, I’m an asshole.”

Connor has not moved away from the safety of the doors. He feels strangely reluctant to insert himself into this family scene. “I have a small combustion chamber that can — Yes. I can eat, technically. Small amounts only.”

“I’ll share,” Cole announces, and Connor has no choice but to leave the doorway and approach. He settles himself against the wall, a small distance away, and accepts the corner Cole breaks off of his scone. “Here,” Cole says happily as Connor looks at it. “I gave you some with icing.”

“Thank you,” says Connor. He watches Cole shove nearly half the remaining scone into his mouth.

“Jesus, Cole.” Hank knocks his knuckles against Cole’s leg brace. It’s an affectionate gesture Hank seems to use often. “Have some damn manners in front of Connor.”

“It’s alright,” Connor says. He doesn’t want to be the reason Cole gets in trouble. He looks down at the baked good in his hand, and before he can talk himself out of it, pops it into his mouth.

His analytical tongue already knows the chemical composition, but results flash across his HUD anyway. Connor dismisses them and tries to focus on the combination of ingredients together. It’s… strange. Unusual. The individual components are still trying to register, but for a brief moment Connor thinks he can taste the scone. Flakiness. The word flashes through his programming.

“Do you like it?”

Connor glances at Cole as he — swallows is the human word for the process. His oropharynx components spin and grind, sliding the piece of scone out of his mouth, dropping it into his internal waste combustion chamber. No anomalies are detected; Connor will be able to process the material.

“Yes,” Connor says thoughtfully, because he thinks it’s the answer Cole wants to hear. The taste of the scone has little meaning to him; Connor has tasted the dough already. What he likes, he is realizing, is being included in this. He likes the fact that Cole gave him a piece better than he liked the scone itself.

“Thank you,” he adds, belatedly. Cole gives him a delightful little grin. His mouth is full of half-chewed scone. It’s quite awful.

— — —

Connor is somewhat chagrined to find out that the very human adage practice makes perfect does, in fact, apply to scones. And deviated androids.

His second batch of scones are even better than the first. By the third round, he is cutting in the shortening in a manner indistinguishable from a number of professional bakers he’s watched online. The scones, themselves, look more professional.

Connor allows himself a little smile, happy and proud, when he pulls the afternoon’s perfect fourth batch out of the oven.

And then Hank Anderson barrels through the door.

“Holy shit, Connor,” says Hank, and he’s grinning widely, elated. He claps a big hand onto Connor’s shoulder; Connor looks up at him, blinking.

“Hank,” says Connor, concerned. “Is something wrong?” Hank’s smile and body language are projecting only positive things, but this is new behavior, and Connor wants to make sure he understands it. It’s only 13:17, so it probably isn’t Cole.

“Wrong?” Hank’s laugh is warm and the hand on his shoulder squeezes down. “No, Connor. We just hit our break-even target for the week and it’s only Wednesday afternoon. It’s the opposite of wrong.”

Connor makes a noise as he contemplates this. On one hand, this sounds promising if Hank will be able to take all the remaining income of the week and put it into profits. On the other hand, the fact that this isn’t the normal state of operation for Roasted! has Connor a tiny bit concerned. He resolves to download an accounting module the next time he needs updates. Just so that he can look at the numbers.

“Congratulations,” he says to Hank Anderson eventually, hoping that it’s enough.

Hank barks out a laugh. “No, you’re missing the point. Fuckin’ androids,” he adds, but Connor’s programming picks up the fondness of it and lets it slide. “Congratulations to you, Con, you dumbass. Your scones knocked it out of the park this week.”

Connor blinks in surprise.

His original programming made him very responsive to praise, so that isn’t what’s so shocking. He is aware of that. This is a new situation for him, though: receiving praise from someone who isn’t an - owner - for something that he, Connor, has done of his own volition. Once the words have fully processed - why he’s lagging, Connor has no idea - a rush of warmth has him almost staggering, clutching a fisted hand to his chest for some reason.

Something about Hank’s demeanor softens as he watches Connor. “Yeah, man, these are fantastic. Whatever you did, you did it fuckin’ well. Nice work, Con.”

Connor has the urge to look away, to duck his head at the praise, which is strange; before deviation he had no issues straightforwardly accepting the compliments of his peers and handlers. Now, he has to hold himself still. “Thank you, Hank. I’m glad they were so successful.”

“Do me a favor,” Hank says, and he actually picks up the warm tray of scones, no hot pad needed. “Head out early. Take the afternoon off. Go do something fun.”

Connor immediately feels his processes spin, his LED flipping into the yellow. “But I haven’t started any of the breads. The yeast has to sit for—“

Hank’s hand hasn’t left his shoulder. It squeezes again, fond and steady. “Connor. You’ve been here twelve hours a day since you started, other than Tuesdays. I worry about you. You’re doing fantastic enough work, okay? C’mon. Do it because I asked you to.”

Connor can’t stop looking at Hank Anderson. Some portion of - weight, stress, worry? - has lifted off of his face. Hank’s smile is crooked and there are wrinkles at his eyes, and Connor is scanning hard, saving this new piece of data alongside his normal understanding of Hank.

Do I have to? Connor almost asks. But no normal human would refuse a free afternoon off, so instead, he nods.

“Alright, Hank.” He pauses as he takes the towel off of his shoulder and folds it to rest on the counter. “Please tell Cole I said hello.”

“And you have fun,” says Hank, fists on his hips in what Connor thinks of as traditional fatherly body language. “We’re gonna work out this schedule eventually, Con. I can’t have you putting in twelve-hour days all the time. For now, go do something fun. Enjoy yourself.”

Connor tries very hard not to bite his lip as he goes to get his jacket.

“Thank you, Hank,” says Connor, turning to look at Hank one last time before he leaves.

“Get the fuck out of here,” says Hank, but it’s said kindly with a smile.

— — —

Connor walks home.

He lives at the top of a small apartment building, relatively close to one of the bridges to Belle Isle, along with Markus and the other leaders from Jericho. Markus shares the penthouse floor with North, Simon, and Josh; Connor wanted a private space, so he lives on the fourth floor, in a neat double-bedroom human apartment. They were given the building as part of concessions from the Mayor of Detroit after their revolution; ironically, they were given the building because it had been condemned after failing water inspections for three years. Android water needs are different enough that they’d been allowed to have it, along with a number of other buildings unsuitable for humans that would suit androids.

The Mayor had made a big deal about how the housing was contingent on Jericho’s efforts towards peaceful coexistence, of course. Every so often, there are vague threats about revoking their access. Connor — doesn’t know how to feel about it.

(He doesn’t know how to feel about a lot of things that Jericho - the name the media has co-opted for the android movement - has to manage. He gives his opinion when requested, but the one time Markus had flat-out asked Connor for assistance, he’d only been able to stammer out a few noises before tapping open their mental link to say, I can’t.)

(The fact that Markus had understood makes him feel almost as guilty as the fact that he can’t help.)

Connor’s apartment is nearly empty.

He has a couch, because he likes to sit when he’s reviewing things. He keeps tea and coffee in his kitchen, in case anyone from the DPD might stop by (both Chris Miller and Jeff Fowler have, both only once, to see how he was settling in). He is currently looking for a bed, because he would like to try one for stasis; the surplus of his incoming paychecks from Roasted! are being set aside in an account to do so. Connor also thinks about shelves, a coffee table. Maybe books. He doesn’t know exactly what he wants, but he browses catalogs sometimes when he doesn’t need stasis, so he’s starting to sort out his own preferences.

It’s January in Detroit, which means it’s grey-dark and spitting down a rain-snow combination that soaks into Connor’s jacket. He should consider one more suited for this weather; these kinds of temperatures aren’t severe enough to cause errors, but consistent soaking from inclement weather will absolutely ruin Connor’s small and particular wardrobe. The first things he learned that he liked were items of clothing, and maybe he’s being precious about them, but they’re important.

Connor palms the elevator control and makes his way up to the fourth floor, where he then touches his doorlock. A scan tells him that Marcus, North, and Josh are all upstairs, but strangely enough, Connor isn’t quite in the mood to see them.

Instead he methodically hangs up his jacket, then moves to the empty, bedless bedroom where he keeps his clothing. He hangs up his dress shirt and his jeans, putting on a plain white t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Hank has told him before that he doesn’t have to dress for the kitchen like he did for the DPD, but it’s what Connor is comfortable in, at the moment. He does dress differently at home; he’s learning about the comforts of clothing, slowly but surely.

(Once he’d realized that his appearance, as projected through clothing, was important to him, Connor had set it as a high priority. This is something humans also have complicated feelings about, so it feels important for him to explore it for himself.)

After that he sits down tentatively, in the corner of his couch, and draws his knees up. He wraps his arms around them, and stares at his blank wall.

There’s no reason for an android to have a television, unless they have human guests; Connor doesn’t.

Hank doesn’t seem to understand why Connor is happy to work from 04:30 until 16:30 every day that Roasted! is open. It isn’t just because Connor is an android and doesn’t get tired. It’s because Connor is the most advanced android prototype and when he’s left with nothing but the shards of his own broken programming, sitting alone in his home with nothing to do, he gets… stuck. There’s nothing here that could make a mission; nothing to become a worthy task. He barely needs to clean.

The apartment is spacious, as far as they go; Connor has come to understand that a two-bedroom space in Detroit, in his location, is a human luxury. It doesn’t feel like it, though. He doesn’t have enough lamps, because technically Connor doesn’t need light to get around, but it leaves the place dark, just another one of Detroit’s shadows. The second bedroom is completely empty; the only thing in the primary bedroom is his small limited wardrobe and the hamper he occasionally uses to pretend that he needs to clean his clothing on a human-like schedule. The bathroom’s contents consist of thirium-lipid oil for his joints and a body wash he’d bought hopefully but can’t bring himself to use. The open space meant to encompass a living-dining room combination only contains his couch.

It’s dark, and empty, and a bit chilly; he should have grabbed a flannel. He’d much rather be in Hank Anderson’s warm kitchen, attempting some other kind of recipe and maybe talking to Cole once he’s home from school.

An afternoon off shouldn’t seem like a punishment, but. How is Connor supposed to explain that to someone like Hank Anderson, who is only human but still works nearly every hour of every day? Hank would be able to fill an afternoon, easily. He could go play with Cole, watch a movie, make a meal. Play with the dog, maybe. Take a nap. Hank Anderson would probably treasure an afternoon off.

Connor doesn’t know what to do.

He could… go for a walk. Connor doesn’t need to walk for exercise, and the physical movement does little for him, but the visual stimulation can be calming, sometimes entertaining.

He could go upstairs, find Markus and North and Josh. Have a social interaction. Hear about their days, their work.

He could… head downstairs in the building, look for someone new to talk to.

He could look up any one of a thousand hobbies that scroll across his HUD the second he queries, and could order supplies, and could start a number of projects in the moment, to see whether he likes them.

Instead, Connor rests his cheek on top of his knee and looks out of his windows. January in Detroit is cold and dark, and it feels like a human urge he hasn’t yet identified, but he isn’t quite ready to move yet.