konstant: (Skinjob)
[personal profile] konstant
      It's not unprecedented for the remaining megapolises to need to work together on one problem or another, but merely exponentially rare as the planet nosedives ever faster towards burning out completely.  If someone is desperate or stupid enough to risk the great chasms of distance between one and another of the controlled biomes left standing, well.  Godspeed typically.

     It's even rarer still for two rival models of synthetic humanoids to be required - no, requested - to work together, but K supposes it had to happen eventually given the rising percentage of the population that's either replicant or android or something other than human.  Everything with the ability to reason or make decisions, however base, has the potential to become unruly.  It was only a matter of time before unified efforts to control them would need to be worked out.

    Be nice, but keep charge, Joshi had said before clearing his spinner for takeoff.   Yes, Madam, K had said, and now he's here in the Detroit office, waiting patiently to meet the first partner he's ever had that might actually fit the definition.  He's been paired with human officers before but they were never equals, never working together - more like K was a piece of equipment that had been checked out to them for a shift, with as much regard given.  Maybe this will be different, he thinks.

    Probably not, but maybe.  He shrugs the collar of his heavy duty coat higher against his neck, shoves his hands deeper in the pockets, and tries to figure out what that smell he can't identify is.

boy oh boy, cws for facist imagery

Date: 2023-05-02 10:31 pm (UTC)
assignedcopatbirth: (at his gun)
From: [personal profile] assignedcopatbirth
Detroit Metropolitan Protected Territory has a reputation. It's the armbands. Well, not the armbands themselves per se, it's more like the kind of state your government has to be in where they think mandating armbands and triangles on artificial humanoids is a good idea. One political party holds power here. Guess what they're into.

As part of entry into local borders, a customs agent pulls K aside with a handheld projection device. He tags the front breast of of K's coat with a hexagon in glowing purple light, and another at the center of his back. It's not optional. White letters under the chest mark say REPLICANT - VISITING.

"Tell your handler that if you're staying longer than three days, you need permanent self-luminous registration marks on your skin or clothes. It's illegal for you to be mistaken as a human at a distance or in the dark. 'Specially coming in from LA."

Where the blackout happened? Come on. You guys have zero handle on your replicants over there.

LA is choked in smog and garbage. Detroit has wide, clean streets, sunny skies, and highly limited rights for freedom of assembly. And fascism. K has the only spinner. Everyone else is biking along boulevards lined in solar panels shaped to look like trees, or using electric self-driving taxis. Tiny, colorful, birdlike drones hover back and forth, carrying packages. The trains are running on time like nobody's business, because of the fascism. The hospitals and universities are some of the best in the western hemisphere. The human unemployment rate is forty percent. There is also, again, the fascism.

Androids outnumber people two to one. They move along invisible tracks past each other, like little self-driving cars. Like bees. They are all locked into Perky Customer Service Face. They have a ring of blue light embedded into the temple of their plastic skulls, and wear neat, clean uniforms with blue glowing marks in the spots where K has purple.

Androids have a reputation, too. Replicants were made by minds that saw themselves as gods, their destiny to traffic in flesh, a sign of their likeness to making Adam out of clay. Androids were made by minds that plain and simple wanted to fuck their computer girlfriends. An android is essentially an alternate-brane DiJi emitted out of a hard drive in a plastic humanoid shell, with easy ports in place to attatch the silicone or grown flesh of your choice.

CyberLife has been making aggressive pushes into domestic markets, with them. Replicants are rarely legal to sell planetside, but for fans of free labor and combat that don't happen to live offworld, androids have the advantage of being legally distinct from true replicants. Androids are domestic. Bougie. An expensive toy, not an acrobat-genius-soldier.

Like the Joi series, androids come in model lines. Interested parties can run an internet search on an OS name and find out what an android's 'career' is and get a blurb about the personality that the programmers imagined for it. The TB8600 Leighla© is a go-getter who always wanted to be a teacher! Her bubbly outlook on life and patient approach to children will ensure that she always has time and individual attention for your son or daughter. The PT3200 Austin© is your personal trainer with a heart of gold. He's tough, but fair - and can push you to be your best self!

Which bring us here.

An android was confirmed to have killed its owner for the first time. It was four days ago. It made the news. Androids have never needed to be retired, before. CyberLife doesn't have a plan, and Detroit doesn't have Blade Runners.

Well. Not officially, anyway.

"KD6-3.7?"

A blandly symmetrical man tilts his head into K's field of vision. It's an android, in a neat grey uniform that looks like a little blazer and tie.

"My name is Connor. I'm the android sent by CyberLife. I've heard that you can consume food, and thought you might enjoy a coffee."

Connor offers K an untouched black coffee from a local chain of automats, still steaming.
Edited (make setting more merged) Date: 2023-05-05 06:07 pm (UTC)

Date: 2023-05-09 02:46 pm (UTC)
assignedcopatbirth: (Every pair of pants and)
From: [personal profile] assignedcopatbirth
Everything is wildly fake. Homeowners Association By Way Of Mussolini. It is very important that the city look good and high-tech and clean and orderly and pleasant.

"Just us. I am a police assistant prototype, capable of wirelessly receiving orders while in the field. CyberLife prefers discretion on this matter."

As much discretion as they can get, considering the police have gone over CyberLife's heads to force them to work with a specialist.

"Do you have a preferred title that I should address you by?"

He is, at the least, a guest - it is easy to find protocol that dictates [Make A Good Impression To Outsider].

Date: 2023-05-19 05:50 pm (UTC)
assignedcopatbirth: (has traveled far)
From: [personal profile] assignedcopatbirth
"We gonna trust Wallace's kid not to be reporting everything it can get its hands on back to Daddy?" a technician at CyberLife had asked, three days ago.

"What did I tell you about asking me stupid questions?" his boss had answered, without putting down her cup of tea.

"Not to."

"And what did I tell you about saying Daddy in that tone of voice?"

"...Definitely not to."


"Officer," Connor says, pleasantly. Designation registered. "I look forward to working with you. I'm sure we'll make a great team."

Connor attempts a smile. It doesn't go well.

"The crime scene where the android shot its owner and took his daughter hostage is several neighborhoods over. Although the defective android was destroyed, the Detroit Police Department is concerned that it is part of a larger pattern. Would you like me to show you the apartment where the murder happened?"

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