SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

three ━ new priorities

"All systems are running perfectly," Connor said, lifting his exposed arm.

"Let me help you," Mia got up instantly, taking his arm and setting it back down to carefully reach past the blue fluid veins for the end of the wire. Connor used his free hand to unplug the wire from the back of his head, and by the time he placed it back on the table, Mia had already closed up his arm's carcass, allowing him to reactivate his synthetic skin over the spot. "I got it from here," Connor stepped in to fix up the end of his sleeve, brushing against her hand to do so.

Mia leant back in her seat, "Let's see if the update works then." She turned to her screen and typed in something which Connor only needed the patience to find out all about — Mia had gotten him used to full transparency in their workspace, as she too believed that helped their overall efficiency. Just like clockwork, Mia begun explaining, "I will temporarily set your mission as bringing a glass of water from the kitchen. Having a priority allocation option to orders should now give you the ability to ignore orders which do not allign with your main priority."

At the same time with his LED's short flicker, Connor got up, "Mission acquired."

Taking a deep breath, knowing this was the moment of truth, Mia turned around with her chair to watch him, her hands on her knees gripping a little tighter. "Connor, sit back down," she gave a first order unalligned with his mission.

He registered the order, however unlike yesterday, he realized the order's conflicting nature with his mission turned it to bulk information, capable of being ignored and discarded.

"Connor," Mia called once he was already in the kitchen. "Stop!"

It felt odd to not follow her voice command, but Connor concentrated on the mission, reaching out in the cupboard for an empty glass.

One more test was necessary — in order for the update to be a success, Connor had to still be able to follow orders which alligned with the mission given to him.

Mia got up from her seat to watch him, remaining within reach of her keyboard in case the code would show any security risks, "Connor, please fill the glass with water before bringing it to me."

The lack of a time restriction on the mission allowed the added command to be ruled under android protocol to follow orders, therefore Connor paused, turned towards the sink and filled the glass with water before returning.

"Mission accomplished," Connor handed Mia the glass of water, unable to fight a little twitch of a smile in the corner of his lips.

She sighed relieved.

"Now," she took the glass and set it on the table, taking instead his suit jacket from the back of his chair, "Officer Owens can no longer tell you to sit out a whole day of work."

Though Connor's initial instinct was to take the jacket himself, once Mia held it out by the shoulder line to him, he understood what she meant and turned around instead, allowing her to dress him. "It seems your worries have been misplaced, Mia."

"Yeah, yeah," she sounded bashful and if he had to take a guess, Connor would be pretty confident just then to say that there was a smile on her lips while she neated out the creases of his jacket by draggin her hands down the sides of his arms. "I am a decent programmer or whatever." Her gaze lingered a little while longer on the blue letters writing out clearly 'Android' on his back, but fortunately, she needn't think too much about why it caught her attention just then of all times. Connor turned around.

"You are objectively brilliant," he insisted on her understanding the compliment, looking now down at her quickly fixing his tie. He could have done that himself and he did not understand why she insisted to fix his appearance on her own, but he was able to rule it under a need to stay busy in order to ignore the praise. "It is humans of your intelligence who allowed me to be here today," he had to add.

Mia dropped her gaze, unable to hide her smile in any other way. Since lookint down seemed insufficient immediately, she turned back to her computer, "I'm going to set your current mission as 'integrating in the local police station and taking part in their daily acitvity'. It's a bit wordy, but it covers the basics for the time being. How does that sound?"

"Sounds fitting," Connor agreed. "Then it's probably time for me to head to the station."

She wished him 'good luck', which to his understanding was a common phrase for humans, even those who agreed luck was hardly detrimental in day to day activities, but Connor didn't make it out of the house.

"Oh, wait!" Mia quipped in from behind just as he reached the door. He stopped and before he knew it, she broke her rush of catching up to him by wrapping an arm around him and staggering him forward for a brief moment. "Can't let my dad down and forget about the daily Connor picture."

She already had her phone up in the air and the camera ready to snap that one picture she needed. The moment was over before Connor could even correct his posture for the picture and her speed left him stunned for just about enough to all of sudden find himself standing alone before the door again. This break from his initial course of action broadened his awareness of the surroundings for longer than he intended though. From the corner of his eye he spotted the basket of flowers has been moved from the kitchen table to the top of the shoe cabinet near the door sometime between the moment of his arrival last night and the moment Mia woke up in the morning. The note from Mr. Kamski was no longer there and he wished to ask about the whole ordeal, but most importantly, noticing the flowers reminded Connor of last night as a whole and one particular event had him turn around more decisively.

"Mia," he called out, making her abandon the text message she was typing out to her father, as well as her coffee, just to look at him. "You should be able to sleep in your own bed tonight. I took care of that spider when I came in yesterday."

She was silent at first. Had she not heard him well?

"Oh," finally, she smiled. "So that's what you were doing off working hours. I saw activity on your systems showing up on your report late at night and was actually meaning to ask you about it before you mentioned the whole deal with the officer. I forgot all about it aftet that," Mia tapped the side of her head, a funny gesture in Connor's eyes, since he was pretty sure she was trying to scold her brain over this minor inconvenience. "That solves that, I guess." She shrugged and raised her cup of coffee to him, "Thanks, Connor."

He responded with nothing but a nod, the sort he supposed humans give other humans in a workplace, the sort his programming affirmed would help warm a human up to a machine by imitating gratitude or appreciation of such. Mia seemed delighted by it, so Connor didn't spend any more time in the house at all.

On the porch though, he stopped again. His sensors had detected extra weight and located it to the left pocket of his pants. His hand slipped into the pocket and his gaze dropped to confirm his find — the coin. She must have slipped it inside the pocket during the picture, he deduced the only possible explanation, given that his sensors did not alert him of the coin while inside the house. Nonetheless, he placed it back in the pocket.

Looking up had Connor accidentally scan an odd detail in the grass of the small porch yard area.

Footprints. Belonging to shoe of size 10.

He let his gaze scan the whole yard and found the footprints stopped in front of the window to the left of the doorway, then went away, back to the sidewalk. Whoever came over did not stick around. Connor made a note to check the perimeter of the house once he returns from the station that night, but did not linger around any longer, given the lack of urgency to his drawn conclusion.

• • •

AUTHOR'S NOTE |
A bit of a longer chapter, as it was required to go into detail and I didn't wanna be cheap on any small fact this time around. Things are building up ✨️ and they are building up nicely, if I say so myself. I am really glad the plot is linking up according to plan so far.