[FIC] R . E . S . E . T .
Title: R . E . S . E . T .
Author: canyousayhot
Team: angst
Prompt: Touch
Word Count: 1750
Rating: PG for Yusuf being a potty mouth
Warnings: None? Maybe a warning for AU? And AI, badampish
Summary: Set in 2217, the world is a very different place. Technology has advanced to the point where androids and humans look, feel, and act alike in virtually every way. However, Arthur is a very special kind of android...
Notes: Beta'd by climb bc she's lovely. Part one of... three, I'm estimating?
*in this future, “the deck” is the standard way of communicating. It is basically a hologram service that’s become cheap enough for public distribution and would be our equivalent of a house phone.
*500 million microseconds is about 9 minutes
“And you’re sure he doesn’t have to stay… down for longer?”
“I swear-“ Yusuf grumbles, and Eames is glad that noise equalizers come standard nowadays. “Remind me again why I keep you on the deck?”
Eames keeps moving around his flat, because staying still never really was an option. “Because I’m the only one able to play a decent game of cards without artificial help.”
“You mean you cheat better than the programmers have ever been able to replicate,” Yusuf amends.
“Oi, those are fighting words, mate.” And though he’s usually quite good with moulding himself to the situation, Eames has never been able to pull the wool over Yusuf’s eyes entirely.
“Yeah? And who are you going to call when you’ve got your knickers in a twist about-“
Eames cuts him off, already aware of the path this particular brand of teasing prefers to meander. “Such a serious bloke all the time, what happened to the jovial man I knew?”
“He stopped answering when you started using him as your personal biotech physician.” Yusuf grumps, but there’s hardly any heat to it.
“I only call you because I know you’re the best,” Eames coos, mostly for the exaggerated gagging he’s sure to get on the other end of the line.
Sure enough, Yusuf delivers. “Go polish someone else’s knob with your false flattery you great slag.”
“But you’re doing me such a service, the least I can do is help a good friend out and return the favo-“
“Did he say he wants to help me out?” Yusuf asks and Eames is sure he’s talking to his cats. Being best mates for the better half of a decade now makes the little things, like using the deck and paying attention to each other, null and void. “The way you can help me out, Mister Eames, is by bucking up and actually listening to me for once. Soft resets should not be this difficult.”
“Are you sure its not better for his- uh,” Eames scratches at his head, glancing over his shoulder and not for the first time it strikes him just how little he knows of the technology that he lives with. “Hard drive or whatever-“
“Hard drive?” Yusuf asks, incredulously. “Hard drive? What era are you living in Eames?”
“You know I’ve no idea how all this works!”
“That much is obvious,” Yusuf says and Eames doesn’t have to be on the same sector to know that the scientist is rolling his eyes. “Let me ask you something.”
“Yusuf,” Eames groans, sounding every bit the child he’s never looked. “I don’t want another history lesson.”
“Too bad, you’re getting one,” he snaps, every bit the charming bioengineer Eames remembers literally running into back when the Core was still new and promising; to him, at least.
Eames almost disconnects but there, in his peripheral, is a silent reminder of why he called in the first place. He hopes this story gets to the point quickly.
“When you think of two hundred years ago, what do you think of?”
As usual, Eames can only think about things that are available in 2217. He always blanks when Yusuf asks this question, but Eames hasn’t made it this far by making unpreparedness a habit.
“I don’t bloody know,” Eames throws his hands up in the air, wracking his brain for the first thing that seems entirely outdated. “Planes!”
“Not helpful to my point, but not wrong either,” Yusuf sighs, continuing on with his original point even though Eames didn’t provide the answer he was looking for. Sometimes he really reminds Eames of his professors. “Two hundred years ago people were just getting computers into their homes. There was, essentially, a generational disconnect. The kids of a household knew how to access information that their parents couldn’t begin to wonder about, let alone ban them from-“
Wondering if he has anything but condiments in his fridge, Eames wanders into the kitchen. Normally, Yusuf is a pretty laid back guy. He doesn’t get into fights, be they verbal or physical, and he has a very specific set of likes. His cats and his biscuits and his science are among the competitors for number one on that list. But occasionally ranting will slip its way between two of the three, and Eames has a sneaking suspicion no one else listens to him when he gets this way.
“So what happens?” It’s rhetorical, so Eames doesn’t pretend to try and answer. “People become scared. People take the blame off of what they’re really afraid of- change- and place it on the vehicle that brings change- the tech.”
He has nothing but mustard and beer in his fridge.
“Of course, that doesn’t stop the vehicle of invention and, in a sentiment I’m sure you’ll enjoy, in many ways having a venue that was mistrusted by their parents made engineering an interesting career to pursue. Networking, processing, data transfer- it was all new and exciting, and it paid to be on the cutting edge. Everyone got in on it, because you could only sell something if it had a purpose- “
Bloody 2217 and they haven’t thought of a way to make going to the grocery obsolete.
“Then, Cobol Engineering made the first move toward animatronics and people were tearing each other apart to get this shit.”
“Yeah, literally.” Eames adds, sliding the fridge back into the wall with a tap of his palm.
On the other end, Yusuf makes a sound that isn’t at all sympathetic. “If Cobol didn’t do it someone else would have. Fear of death is universal. You’ve got to remember, back then losing a leg was a permanent dysfunction. It wasn’t just cosmetic- you’d spend the rest of your life relearning the simplest of tasks. Now, you lose a leg on Monday, paperwork goes through to Proclus, and you’ll be back to whatever stupid thing you were doing by Friday.”
“Every time we go through this, you fail to prove your point.” Eames leans against his counter and watches the other side of the room for movement. He’s still slightly unnerved by how still he can get. “Rather spectacularly.”
Yusuf mutters something and the equalizer picks it up, amplifying it for Eames; such a colorful vocabulary his friend has on him. “You want a point? Grab any kid off the street and ask him what a terabyte is-- I bet they won’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing is stored on drives anymore, they create too much heat and transfer in… microseconds. Nobody can afford to wait that long.”
Eames contemplates pointing out this conversation has taken nearly five hundred million of said microseconds, but Yusuf derails the comment when he asks, “Do you have any idea how much power is stored inside him?”
Pressing his teeth into his bottom lip, Eames looks away; out the windows and at his shitty view of artificial rooftop gardens and road wells as far as the eye can see. “That is not something we talk about.”
“Yeah well, it’s a metric fuckton, okay?” Yusuf sighs, the wind lost from his sails and Eames can’t say he’s sorry to see the soap-box get put away. “So stop worrying at me like a child with a favorite toy, and just boot him.”
Eames laughs and glances at the corner, half expecting that familiar glare to meet his amused grin. Of course, he’s met by the same sight he’s been looking at for the past ten minutes. “I’m going to tell him you called him that.”
“The only person that’s going to affect is you.” Yusuf points out, and Eames cringes because it’s true.
“Now I know why you don’t have many friends.”
Yusuf sounds positively smug when he says, “I have cats, they’re infinitely better.”
“Yeah, later Yusuf.” Eames pulls the device out of his ear and tosses it on the coffee table, not bothering to wait for the reciprocal farewell since Yusuf has never put stock into such social niceties. It saves them both the trouble if Eames just disconnects first.
A deep breath and eight steps later, Eames is across his apartment and standing right where he’d been twelve minutes ago. There’s the irrational urge to turn around and shove the piece back in his ear, call the deck up and get Yusuf back on the line to ask are you sure? But Eames isn’t ready to fully dispose of all of his dignity just yet, so he steels himself and exhales at the wall.
Science may not be his thing but he can certainly appreciate the complexities that go into its application. The effort that people have spent years and unfathomable amounts of money on in the pursuit of making something unreal look… real. Achieving the perfect form and fit, the way tailors used to fit a suit to a person’s form.
Now, the art is in making skin the proper temperature, the proper tone, the proper smell.
Although, that hardly stops some from having the best of both worlds, Eames thinks ruefully.
Fingers slipping around the firm, curved rim of cartilage, Eames figures its probably not okay that he’s noticed these things, but he assures himself he can’t be the first. He’s not nearly that revolutionary and quite frankly, he wouldn’t tell anyone if he was. Pushing the helix of his ear away from the slicked back cut of his hair, Eames’ fingers trace the back of his ear until he reaches the flat part that would be skull on anyone else. With the heel of Eames’ palm resting against the curve of his jaw, Eames applies the pressure and feels the now familiar shock of electricity pass from flesh to flesh.
Eames can see movement behind pale eyelids as the other takes his sweet time to recognize Eames’ biorhythms. Slowly, said eyelids flutter open to reveal familiar brown eyes. Eames smiles when they focus on him, and almost trips over his tongue to say hello. That is, before those thin lips purse ever so slightly and beat him to it.
“Its about time, Eames.” Arthur says, moving Eames’ hand away from his contact point with two cool fingertips of his own.
It’s subtle, but Eames knows better. Arthur doesn’t like prolonged contact after activation. Usually, Eames is better about giving Arthur his space but… sometimes the sync still gets him.
With a slight tingling at his fingertips, Eames moves his hand away from Arthur entirely.
“Good to see you too, darling.”
Author: canyousayhot
Team: angst
Prompt: Touch
Word Count: 1750
Rating: PG for Yusuf being a potty mouth
Warnings: None? Maybe a warning for AU? And AI, badampish
Summary: Set in 2217, the world is a very different place. Technology has advanced to the point where androids and humans look, feel, and act alike in virtually every way. However, Arthur is a very special kind of android...
Notes: Beta'd by climb bc she's lovely. Part one of... three, I'm estimating?
*in this future, “the deck” is the standard way of communicating. It is basically a hologram service that’s become cheap enough for public distribution and would be our equivalent of a house phone.
*500 million microseconds is about 9 minutes
“And you’re sure he doesn’t have to stay… down for longer?”
“I swear-“ Yusuf grumbles, and Eames is glad that noise equalizers come standard nowadays. “Remind me again why I keep you on the deck?”
Eames keeps moving around his flat, because staying still never really was an option. “Because I’m the only one able to play a decent game of cards without artificial help.”
“You mean you cheat better than the programmers have ever been able to replicate,” Yusuf amends.
“Oi, those are fighting words, mate.” And though he’s usually quite good with moulding himself to the situation, Eames has never been able to pull the wool over Yusuf’s eyes entirely.
“Yeah? And who are you going to call when you’ve got your knickers in a twist about-“
Eames cuts him off, already aware of the path this particular brand of teasing prefers to meander. “Such a serious bloke all the time, what happened to the jovial man I knew?”
“He stopped answering when you started using him as your personal biotech physician.” Yusuf grumps, but there’s hardly any heat to it.
“I only call you because I know you’re the best,” Eames coos, mostly for the exaggerated gagging he’s sure to get on the other end of the line.
Sure enough, Yusuf delivers. “Go polish someone else’s knob with your false flattery you great slag.”
“But you’re doing me such a service, the least I can do is help a good friend out and return the favo-“
“Did he say he wants to help me out?” Yusuf asks and Eames is sure he’s talking to his cats. Being best mates for the better half of a decade now makes the little things, like using the deck and paying attention to each other, null and void. “The way you can help me out, Mister Eames, is by bucking up and actually listening to me for once. Soft resets should not be this difficult.”
“Are you sure its not better for his- uh,” Eames scratches at his head, glancing over his shoulder and not for the first time it strikes him just how little he knows of the technology that he lives with. “Hard drive or whatever-“
“Hard drive?” Yusuf asks, incredulously. “Hard drive? What era are you living in Eames?”
“You know I’ve no idea how all this works!”
“That much is obvious,” Yusuf says and Eames doesn’t have to be on the same sector to know that the scientist is rolling his eyes. “Let me ask you something.”
“Yusuf,” Eames groans, sounding every bit the child he’s never looked. “I don’t want another history lesson.”
“Too bad, you’re getting one,” he snaps, every bit the charming bioengineer Eames remembers literally running into back when the Core was still new and promising; to him, at least.
Eames almost disconnects but there, in his peripheral, is a silent reminder of why he called in the first place. He hopes this story gets to the point quickly.
“When you think of two hundred years ago, what do you think of?”
As usual, Eames can only think about things that are available in 2217. He always blanks when Yusuf asks this question, but Eames hasn’t made it this far by making unpreparedness a habit.
“I don’t bloody know,” Eames throws his hands up in the air, wracking his brain for the first thing that seems entirely outdated. “Planes!”
“Not helpful to my point, but not wrong either,” Yusuf sighs, continuing on with his original point even though Eames didn’t provide the answer he was looking for. Sometimes he really reminds Eames of his professors. “Two hundred years ago people were just getting computers into their homes. There was, essentially, a generational disconnect. The kids of a household knew how to access information that their parents couldn’t begin to wonder about, let alone ban them from-“
Wondering if he has anything but condiments in his fridge, Eames wanders into the kitchen. Normally, Yusuf is a pretty laid back guy. He doesn’t get into fights, be they verbal or physical, and he has a very specific set of likes. His cats and his biscuits and his science are among the competitors for number one on that list. But occasionally ranting will slip its way between two of the three, and Eames has a sneaking suspicion no one else listens to him when he gets this way.
“So what happens?” It’s rhetorical, so Eames doesn’t pretend to try and answer. “People become scared. People take the blame off of what they’re really afraid of- change- and place it on the vehicle that brings change- the tech.”
He has nothing but mustard and beer in his fridge.
“Of course, that doesn’t stop the vehicle of invention and, in a sentiment I’m sure you’ll enjoy, in many ways having a venue that was mistrusted by their parents made engineering an interesting career to pursue. Networking, processing, data transfer- it was all new and exciting, and it paid to be on the cutting edge. Everyone got in on it, because you could only sell something if it had a purpose- “
Bloody 2217 and they haven’t thought of a way to make going to the grocery obsolete.
“Then, Cobol Engineering made the first move toward animatronics and people were tearing each other apart to get this shit.”
“Yeah, literally.” Eames adds, sliding the fridge back into the wall with a tap of his palm.
On the other end, Yusuf makes a sound that isn’t at all sympathetic. “If Cobol didn’t do it someone else would have. Fear of death is universal. You’ve got to remember, back then losing a leg was a permanent dysfunction. It wasn’t just cosmetic- you’d spend the rest of your life relearning the simplest of tasks. Now, you lose a leg on Monday, paperwork goes through to Proclus, and you’ll be back to whatever stupid thing you were doing by Friday.”
“Every time we go through this, you fail to prove your point.” Eames leans against his counter and watches the other side of the room for movement. He’s still slightly unnerved by how still he can get. “Rather spectacularly.”
Yusuf mutters something and the equalizer picks it up, amplifying it for Eames; such a colorful vocabulary his friend has on him. “You want a point? Grab any kid off the street and ask him what a terabyte is-- I bet they won’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing is stored on drives anymore, they create too much heat and transfer in… microseconds. Nobody can afford to wait that long.”
Eames contemplates pointing out this conversation has taken nearly five hundred million of said microseconds, but Yusuf derails the comment when he asks, “Do you have any idea how much power is stored inside him?”
Pressing his teeth into his bottom lip, Eames looks away; out the windows and at his shitty view of artificial rooftop gardens and road wells as far as the eye can see. “That is not something we talk about.”
“Yeah well, it’s a metric fuckton, okay?” Yusuf sighs, the wind lost from his sails and Eames can’t say he’s sorry to see the soap-box get put away. “So stop worrying at me like a child with a favorite toy, and just boot him.”
Eames laughs and glances at the corner, half expecting that familiar glare to meet his amused grin. Of course, he’s met by the same sight he’s been looking at for the past ten minutes. “I’m going to tell him you called him that.”
“The only person that’s going to affect is you.” Yusuf points out, and Eames cringes because it’s true.
“Now I know why you don’t have many friends.”
Yusuf sounds positively smug when he says, “I have cats, they’re infinitely better.”
“Yeah, later Yusuf.” Eames pulls the device out of his ear and tosses it on the coffee table, not bothering to wait for the reciprocal farewell since Yusuf has never put stock into such social niceties. It saves them both the trouble if Eames just disconnects first.
A deep breath and eight steps later, Eames is across his apartment and standing right where he’d been twelve minutes ago. There’s the irrational urge to turn around and shove the piece back in his ear, call the deck up and get Yusuf back on the line to ask are you sure? But Eames isn’t ready to fully dispose of all of his dignity just yet, so he steels himself and exhales at the wall.
Science may not be his thing but he can certainly appreciate the complexities that go into its application. The effort that people have spent years and unfathomable amounts of money on in the pursuit of making something unreal look… real. Achieving the perfect form and fit, the way tailors used to fit a suit to a person’s form.
Now, the art is in making skin the proper temperature, the proper tone, the proper smell.
Although, that hardly stops some from having the best of both worlds, Eames thinks ruefully.
Fingers slipping around the firm, curved rim of cartilage, Eames figures its probably not okay that he’s noticed these things, but he assures himself he can’t be the first. He’s not nearly that revolutionary and quite frankly, he wouldn’t tell anyone if he was. Pushing the helix of his ear away from the slicked back cut of his hair, Eames’ fingers trace the back of his ear until he reaches the flat part that would be skull on anyone else. With the heel of Eames’ palm resting against the curve of his jaw, Eames applies the pressure and feels the now familiar shock of electricity pass from flesh to flesh.
Eames can see movement behind pale eyelids as the other takes his sweet time to recognize Eames’ biorhythms. Slowly, said eyelids flutter open to reveal familiar brown eyes. Eames smiles when they focus on him, and almost trips over his tongue to say hello. That is, before those thin lips purse ever so slightly and beat him to it.
“Its about time, Eames.” Arthur says, moving Eames’ hand away from his contact point with two cool fingertips of his own.
It’s subtle, but Eames knows better. Arthur doesn’t like prolonged contact after activation. Usually, Eames is better about giving Arthur his space but… sometimes the sync still gets him.
With a slight tingling at his fingertips, Eames moves his hand away from Arthur entirely.
“Good to see you too, darling.”