SEQUENTIAL ━ Connor // RK800 ✔️

eighteen ━ the creator

However impressive it was to see the infamous human will at work and on display through Mia, he couldn't help but be concerned of her decision to push herself past fatigue just then. And for what? All this uncomfortableness for his sake?

Moments like these had Connor inching ever closer to drawing the harsh conclusion that Mia was simply too kind to androids for her own good.

At least to him, he felt she could have been a little colder, a little less empathetic. But that just wouldn't be Mia anymore, his processing unit declared and Connor had to agree.

Before he could linger too long on matters concerning her heart, Connor urged his scan along and spotted the signs of tension in her shoulder blades and back neck area. Humans had pain receptors almost everywhere, a whole body riddled with sensors ready to pick up on the smallest change in order for their brain to have the time to do something about the condition and stop it. He knew that, which made it ever the more impressive to realize that though she certainly could feel the pain building up in her upper back, she conditioned herself to remain focused on the road.

By then, Connor was on the verge of having enough of this madness and just asking her to switch places with him. There were only so many realizations of her pain he could have before starting to piece together that perhaps he shouldn't have left her behind the wheel to begin with. When his processing unit conjured up the idea of offering her massage later in exchange for letting him drive the remaining few miles to Mr. Kamski's house, Connor was about to call it a day and simply speak up about this impressive display of willpower turned into a torturous view of Mia hurting herself for his behalf. He couldn't watch it any longer and, preparing to interfere, he busied his unit with searching up and downloading all the useful modules on medical massages that could help her shoulders.

To conceal his heavy processing on the data he wanted to install as it translated into a flashing yellow color taking over his LED, Connor had looked ahead at the road for the first time in what could easily have been hours. His coin fell into the palm of his hand and it was then, in the corner of his eyes, that he spotted the first movement from Mia.

With long yawn still on her lips, she reached out and switched on the radio. "Music should help," she muttered.

"If you're too tired to stay awake, I should take over," Connor didn't miss his chance to offer.

Not dropping her gaze from the road, Mia kept flicking through the channels, most of which were filled with interference, "And risk having your damage double by the time we reach Elijah?" Stopping on a stable frequency, Mia blindly moved his hand slightly to the side and grabbed hold of the volume adjuster. "I'd rather not have him scold me about not taking care of our precious and truly expensive state-of-the-art prototype, thank you very much." She raised the volume high enough that should Connor have wished to continue their short lived conversation, he would have had to shout.

Only Connor was too busy playing over in his mind the words she had used to describe him, pulling apart how those words alone could have caused his Thirium pump to feel a little too excited in his chest. If he used the available catalogs of data on human behavioural patterns, then he'd have drawn a simple line of connection between 'praise related words affecting functionality' and affection, only he wasn't a human and he surely wasn't a deviant, now that they've test for that possibility too. He was rather certain the RK series had no specifications that would enable him to even compute 'affection' in the first place, so he ultimately had to kill that thought with a little reassurance — once Mia upgrades my code, all these emotions that don't belong will be gone.