Learning to be Human

Markus

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

 -Eleanor Roosevelt

It's been two months since the night peace talks opened between the humans and androids. We thought that night that we had gained our freedom, but we were wrong. All we gained was the next step to freedom, a step that opened us to a different kind of oppression. We had won the night, won the right for our voices to be heard. We thought that our requests were reasonable, all we wanted was to live as equals to humans, but they weren't ready for that. They weren't ready to take responsibility for the new form of life they created.

When the humans released the androids from the camps, we collected the bodies that couldn't walk out with the hopes of reassembling at least some of them, but they refused to turn over their factories to us. We told them it was only to restore our injured. They told us they wouldn't allow us to build armies to destroy them. Every day I have to walk past the mountains of parts. The pieces of our people yet to be rebuilt.

They sectioned off a little piece of Detroit for us to live in, the area around the ruins of Jericho. We cleared the rubble, began building our own houses. For a few weeks, we were happy, we thought we were on the way to achieving our freedom. We were wrong. The humans stuck us in a filthy corner of their city and once we were out of their sight, they began ignoring us.

All of the other androids look to me as their leader, but I feel like I'm leading them backward. I've started meeting with leaders in the area. They all tell me the same thing:

"Be patient, this will take time."

Time. It isn't time that they need, it's a completely new set of morals. At best Detroit's leaders tolerate my visits, at worst...

North says it's because we were weak, we didn't show them that we are superior in not only our mental processes but our physical strength as well. She still thinks violence would have been the better option. She's wrong of course. If we had resorted to violence we would all be dead.

"Are you done brooding?" North called from a few rooms away.

"I don't think it's technically called brooding if I'm trying to figure out how to convince the humans to give us our factories."

"Maybe, but it's definitely brooding if you're staring out the window dramatically," North smirked as she walked into the room. "Connor's here, he just came from CyberLife."

Connor had become one of my closest and most useful allies. He knew how the system worked, he had operated within it far more than any of the rest of us. He had knowledge of CyberLife and their systems, and though he was deviant, he was still far more like a machine than the rest of us. He was a hero to the androids, the one who brought us the numbers we needed to survive, but his programming was different than the rest of ours. He was, after all, a prototype.

Connor had told me the story of how he'd almost shot me at the end of it all. He told me how even though he'd gone deviant, a part of his programming managed to hijack his body. Somewhere deep inside him, his mission had remained ingrained even after he betrayed CyberLife. That had never happened to any of the others. Connor still held himself as a machine, always alert, stiff, like he was waiting for orders. He hadn't yet been able to sink into the idea of his new freedom. I consider him a friend, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider him a threat.

"Any news Connor? Are we any closer to helping our people?"

"If you count removing the armed guards from the gate and letting me inside as progress, then yes. That and I spoke to someone who expressed interest in opening the CyberLife factory for repairs as long as they were supervised by a human representative. It's not the total control we wanted, but it will help us help our people. I think this is a great start. CyberLife-"