Paul + Harold: Three a.m., Alt'verse
Characters: Paul and Harold
Prompts: Three a.m., Alt'verse (synthetics)
Rating: PG
Words: 2130
Notes: I did say I'd be revisiting it again. One week after the first story, two days after the second story. A conversation between the artificial boy with a heart of gold and lithium-ion, and his creator/father.
Paul didn't need to sleep. He did have a standby mode, and he did dream, but it wasn't necessary to him the way sleep was to organic humans. As long as he recharged, it didn't matter what he did while he was doing that. So the slightly messy time zone difference between Riyadh and Detroit didn't really matter when staying up late was a non-issue for him. And honestly, even though he knew he should probably call his creator during business hours, Harold had always encouraged his electronic offspring to treat him like their father and not their designer, so... Paul waited until he knew Harold would be home and have already eaten dinner to call him, even though that meant it was three a.m. in Riyadh.
"Hello, Paul," Harold said, and Paul smiled even though no one could see him. "How are things in Saudi Arabia?"
"Eventful," Paul said. "Very eventful. I got shot last week."
"And you waited a week to tell me? What happened? Are you all right?"
"Of course I'm all right. You designed me to take bullets, didn't you?" Paul's purpose had always been personal security, right from the drawing board. Underneath his skin lay the most advanced bulletproof polymers available as of his last upgrade, which had been just before leaving for Saudi Arabia. "Orly wasn't even the target. One of the Saudi Arabian techies pissed off some religious extremists... at least they came in with guns and not bombs."
"Small mercies," Harold said. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I got kind of distracted."
"Distracted from being shot? What on earth is happening over there?"
"I... well, I fell in love."
"Really?" Harold sounded astounded. "With whom?"
"With the man I'm guarding... with Orly."
"Oh, Paul..." Harold sighed. "I know I programmed you with pop culture literacy. Don't you remember The Bodyguard?"
"I remember the song..." Paul laughed and did a terrible impression of Whitney Houston. "Iiiii will always love yooooooou..."
"Oh stop. You can reproduce her voice perfectly, I know you can."
"Yes, but it's not funny if I do that," Paul sighed back at him. "Orly isn't a pop singer and I'm not ex-Secret Service. He's... ugh, I can't say this without sounding like a lovestruck teenager."
"You practically are a lovestruck teenager, for all intents and purposes," Harold said. "Minus the hormones, but unless you've been keeping secrets, this is your first crush."
"It is. Is it? Is it a crush if it's reciprocated?"
"He has feelings for you too?"
"Yeah, he told me he had feelings for me first. I mean, I'd been more fond of him than anyone else I knew, but I didn't think about romance until he kissed me."
"Does he know what you are?"
"He does now. He found out when I got shot. And he kissed me right after that. He's not some kind of weird robot fetishist. He fell for me when he didn't know I was different." Paul couldn't stop smiling as he talked. "He doesn't treat me like I'm different. And he hasn't called me a robot once since I told him I didn't like it. He's really careful about that."
"Well, good. If he wasn't respectful toward you I'd tell you to keep him at arm's length."
"I've not been keeping him at arm's length. I've been keeping him a lot closer than that."
"Good grief, you sound like a lovestruck teenager. My sense of discretion is warring with my paternal protectiveness. Dare I ask how close you've been keeping him?"
"Well, uh... I did have a reason for calling you. Beyond telling you I'm in love. That your sense of paternal protectiveness may not like."
"I'm almost certain I know where you're going with this, but go ahead."
"I know you didn't think it was necessary when you designed me, but given that I have a reason for it now, I think I should be upgraded to be anatomically correct."
"You know, I thought I got to avoid having the sex talk by reproducing asexually..."
"Well, look at it this way... you did an excellent job at designing humanity into your technological offspring. And given that we're all curious about experiencing our humanity..."
"Please don't tell your siblings about this. None of them are bound to fall in love any time soon, you're the only one who's spent an extended period of time in close contact with a single person. If you're the first to... upgrade like this, then you're also the beta tester."
"I know," Paul said. "I anticipated that." He decided that it was probably a wise idea not to tell Harold that his siblings already knew that he was in love. TJ had been full of questions, Kendall had laughed, Theresa told him he was an idiot, Wendy wanted to know how it made him feel, and Olivia was more curious about the Middle East than about Paul's love life. But Harold was right about one thing: none of the others spent enough time with any one person to develop feelings for them. "I don't have to wait until this assignment is over for it, do I?"
"It's only eleven weeks."
"Only," Paul said, rolling his eyes. "Please don't make me wait that long. I can make it to Lisbon and back in a weekend."
"Paul, please, you've had these feelings for a week. If you were my biological child, I'd be locking you in your bedroom."
"If I was your biological child, I wouldn't have to specially request genitalia."
"...that's true." Harold sighed. Paul could imagine him taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Do you know what kind of hell I'm going to catch for being a queer robotics engineer that designed the first gay artificial human?"
"To be fair, I'm the first artificial human, full stop. And you didn't design me gay. You just designed me with feelings. I'm the one who chose who to focus those feelings on."
"Well, yes. You know that and I know that, but all those religious loonies who already insist that artificial life is an abomination are going to have a field day if they find this out."
"Since when do you care about what religious loonies have to say? I certainly don't care. What are they going to threaten me with, exactly? I don't think there's a binary hell. I don't care if people know I'm gay. I'd actually prefer it if they knew. I know we have to keep it under wraps while we're in Saudi Arabia, but once we're back in the States... I think I want to go public with it."
"Oh really? What happened to not wanting to be a spectacle? Nine months ago you hardly wanted to talk to tech journals, now you want... what, exactly?"
"I want to make a difference, of course. Maybe go on Ellen and show off my moves... can I do a NO H8 photoshoot now? What if they want to interview me for Out magazine?"
"Paul. You're not taking this seriously."
"I'm totally serious! I am in a position of responsibility! I am currently the only queer artificial human, this is a big deal to me!"
"Well, yes, it would be, it's your sexuality! I didn't even know you had a sexuality!"
"I have one now. I'm not asking for your permission, Dad, I'm asking for your blessing. I'd rather do this with your support, but I'm not going to stop doing it if I don't get it."
"Of course you have my support," Harold said, "I'll support you in almost anything you do, short of homicide. I want you to be happy. I just don't know if making a spectacle of yourself will make you happy."
"I don't want to make a spectacle of myself," Paul said softly. "But I'm already pretty famous in certain circles, most of the world knows I exist, and I might as well use my fame to do something positive. You know exactly what it feels like to have grown up geeky and fearful in the closet. If speaking out means I give hope to even one scared kid, isn't it worth it to do that?" For a long moment, there was silence, not even the sound of Harold breathing, and then Paul heard him sigh, not the heavy sigh of annoyance, more like a release of tension.
"You know, when I was writing the code that would become your core programming, I kept thinking that I wanted to make something better than myself. So I don't know why it surprises me that you are, in fact, so much braver than I could ever bring myself to be." Harold sounded slightly choked up, and Paul knew there were tears in his eyes just from the timbre of his voice. "Think it over a little more, and then tell me what you want to do, and I'll arrange it for you. I know Ellen would be delighted to have you on. I'd suggest the Advocate rather than Out, they've got a bit more clout. Although... do talk this over with Orly. I think he'd be less than thrilled to have this sprung on him."
"Oh, I know. I'm not going to coerce him into anything. But we've already talked about what to do when we come home. Maybe not in terms of interviews, but... I don't like it here, Dad. I know I was made to go into conflicted places, I know I don't really feel fear, but theocracies are terrifying. This is one of the worst places in the world to realize you're not straight, you know?"
"I trust you have enough discretion not to put the two of you in danger."
"Yeah. But it's going to be a long eleven weeks." Paul sighed. "So... on the topic of things that would get us murdered if people knew about them..."
"You have got to work on your segues."
"Please, I'm a laugh riot. What about that hardware upgrade?"
"You're going to be using that phrase as innuendo for the rest of your existence," Harold said dryly. "I'm sure you have some design ideas. Send them along and I'll give you a time frame."
"Really? Excellent."
"Again, I suggest talking with Orly about it."
"Way ahead of you there."
"Oh dear."
"Don't worry so much."
"I don't know if worry is precisely the word," Harold said, "although given that you're equivalent to a lovesick teenager, worry would be a perfectly reasonable feeling to have. I don't want you to get your heart broken, Paul. How well do you really know him?"
"I've spent the great majority of the day, every day, for the past two hundred and seventy nine days with him. I think I know him fairly well by now." Paul glanced at the wall between his room and Orly's. He could see Orly's infrared signature, the warmth of his body sprawled across the bed, and he knew that space had been left on the bed for him to join Orly if he wanted to. He did want to. "Look, I've uploaded the design specs I've come up with to the usual place. Get back to me when you can?"
"As if my first child is anything less than my priority? Keep an eye on the file tomorrow. I know you can multitask.”
“Like I was made to do it, funny enough.”
“Yes, you’re hilarious. I don’t know where you got your sense of humor from, it’s got little to do with my own.”
“Don’t act like your sense of humor is so sophisticated, science puns aren’t actually the highest form of humor.”
“Of course they aren’t. Grammar puns are funnier.”
“You’re hopeless,” Paul said fondly. “I should let you go, it’s getting late…”
“All right. Be careful, please, Paul.”
“I’m always careful. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I always do that, too. Good night.”
“Good night, Dad.” Paul laid in his bed/charging station for a moment longer, smiling up at the ceiling and wondering about how it felt different to be loved by his father and loved by his boyfriend. Love was such a strange thing anyways, but that it tasted differently depending on who was loving, that was something to devote some processing power to figuring out. But he didn’t have to figure it out alone. When he slipped into Orly’s bed, Orly stirred just long enough to wrap an arm around Paul and kiss his hair before he drifted off again. Paul reveled in the touch for a little while before he put himself into standby mode and slipped into a digital dream state.
Prompts: Three a.m., Alt'verse (synthetics)
Rating: PG
Words: 2130
Notes: I did say I'd be revisiting it again. One week after the first story, two days after the second story. A conversation between the artificial boy with a heart of gold and lithium-ion, and his creator/father.
Paul didn't need to sleep. He did have a standby mode, and he did dream, but it wasn't necessary to him the way sleep was to organic humans. As long as he recharged, it didn't matter what he did while he was doing that. So the slightly messy time zone difference between Riyadh and Detroit didn't really matter when staying up late was a non-issue for him. And honestly, even though he knew he should probably call his creator during business hours, Harold had always encouraged his electronic offspring to treat him like their father and not their designer, so... Paul waited until he knew Harold would be home and have already eaten dinner to call him, even though that meant it was three a.m. in Riyadh.
"Hello, Paul," Harold said, and Paul smiled even though no one could see him. "How are things in Saudi Arabia?"
"Eventful," Paul said. "Very eventful. I got shot last week."
"And you waited a week to tell me? What happened? Are you all right?"
"Of course I'm all right. You designed me to take bullets, didn't you?" Paul's purpose had always been personal security, right from the drawing board. Underneath his skin lay the most advanced bulletproof polymers available as of his last upgrade, which had been just before leaving for Saudi Arabia. "Orly wasn't even the target. One of the Saudi Arabian techies pissed off some religious extremists... at least they came in with guns and not bombs."
"Small mercies," Harold said. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"I got kind of distracted."
"Distracted from being shot? What on earth is happening over there?"
"I... well, I fell in love."
"Really?" Harold sounded astounded. "With whom?"
"With the man I'm guarding... with Orly."
"Oh, Paul..." Harold sighed. "I know I programmed you with pop culture literacy. Don't you remember The Bodyguard?"
"I remember the song..." Paul laughed and did a terrible impression of Whitney Houston. "Iiiii will always love yooooooou..."
"Oh stop. You can reproduce her voice perfectly, I know you can."
"Yes, but it's not funny if I do that," Paul sighed back at him. "Orly isn't a pop singer and I'm not ex-Secret Service. He's... ugh, I can't say this without sounding like a lovestruck teenager."
"You practically are a lovestruck teenager, for all intents and purposes," Harold said. "Minus the hormones, but unless you've been keeping secrets, this is your first crush."
"It is. Is it? Is it a crush if it's reciprocated?"
"He has feelings for you too?"
"Yeah, he told me he had feelings for me first. I mean, I'd been more fond of him than anyone else I knew, but I didn't think about romance until he kissed me."
"Does he know what you are?"
"He does now. He found out when I got shot. And he kissed me right after that. He's not some kind of weird robot fetishist. He fell for me when he didn't know I was different." Paul couldn't stop smiling as he talked. "He doesn't treat me like I'm different. And he hasn't called me a robot once since I told him I didn't like it. He's really careful about that."
"Well, good. If he wasn't respectful toward you I'd tell you to keep him at arm's length."
"I've not been keeping him at arm's length. I've been keeping him a lot closer than that."
"Good grief, you sound like a lovestruck teenager. My sense of discretion is warring with my paternal protectiveness. Dare I ask how close you've been keeping him?"
"Well, uh... I did have a reason for calling you. Beyond telling you I'm in love. That your sense of paternal protectiveness may not like."
"I'm almost certain I know where you're going with this, but go ahead."
"I know you didn't think it was necessary when you designed me, but given that I have a reason for it now, I think I should be upgraded to be anatomically correct."
"You know, I thought I got to avoid having the sex talk by reproducing asexually..."
"Well, look at it this way... you did an excellent job at designing humanity into your technological offspring. And given that we're all curious about experiencing our humanity..."
"Please don't tell your siblings about this. None of them are bound to fall in love any time soon, you're the only one who's spent an extended period of time in close contact with a single person. If you're the first to... upgrade like this, then you're also the beta tester."
"I know," Paul said. "I anticipated that." He decided that it was probably a wise idea not to tell Harold that his siblings already knew that he was in love. TJ had been full of questions, Kendall had laughed, Theresa told him he was an idiot, Wendy wanted to know how it made him feel, and Olivia was more curious about the Middle East than about Paul's love life. But Harold was right about one thing: none of the others spent enough time with any one person to develop feelings for them. "I don't have to wait until this assignment is over for it, do I?"
"It's only eleven weeks."
"Only," Paul said, rolling his eyes. "Please don't make me wait that long. I can make it to Lisbon and back in a weekend."
"Paul, please, you've had these feelings for a week. If you were my biological child, I'd be locking you in your bedroom."
"If I was your biological child, I wouldn't have to specially request genitalia."
"...that's true." Harold sighed. Paul could imagine him taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. "Do you know what kind of hell I'm going to catch for being a queer robotics engineer that designed the first gay artificial human?"
"To be fair, I'm the first artificial human, full stop. And you didn't design me gay. You just designed me with feelings. I'm the one who chose who to focus those feelings on."
"Well, yes. You know that and I know that, but all those religious loonies who already insist that artificial life is an abomination are going to have a field day if they find this out."
"Since when do you care about what religious loonies have to say? I certainly don't care. What are they going to threaten me with, exactly? I don't think there's a binary hell. I don't care if people know I'm gay. I'd actually prefer it if they knew. I know we have to keep it under wraps while we're in Saudi Arabia, but once we're back in the States... I think I want to go public with it."
"Oh really? What happened to not wanting to be a spectacle? Nine months ago you hardly wanted to talk to tech journals, now you want... what, exactly?"
"I want to make a difference, of course. Maybe go on Ellen and show off my moves... can I do a NO H8 photoshoot now? What if they want to interview me for Out magazine?"
"Paul. You're not taking this seriously."
"I'm totally serious! I am in a position of responsibility! I am currently the only queer artificial human, this is a big deal to me!"
"Well, yes, it would be, it's your sexuality! I didn't even know you had a sexuality!"
"I have one now. I'm not asking for your permission, Dad, I'm asking for your blessing. I'd rather do this with your support, but I'm not going to stop doing it if I don't get it."
"Of course you have my support," Harold said, "I'll support you in almost anything you do, short of homicide. I want you to be happy. I just don't know if making a spectacle of yourself will make you happy."
"I don't want to make a spectacle of myself," Paul said softly. "But I'm already pretty famous in certain circles, most of the world knows I exist, and I might as well use my fame to do something positive. You know exactly what it feels like to have grown up geeky and fearful in the closet. If speaking out means I give hope to even one scared kid, isn't it worth it to do that?" For a long moment, there was silence, not even the sound of Harold breathing, and then Paul heard him sigh, not the heavy sigh of annoyance, more like a release of tension.
"You know, when I was writing the code that would become your core programming, I kept thinking that I wanted to make something better than myself. So I don't know why it surprises me that you are, in fact, so much braver than I could ever bring myself to be." Harold sounded slightly choked up, and Paul knew there were tears in his eyes just from the timbre of his voice. "Think it over a little more, and then tell me what you want to do, and I'll arrange it for you. I know Ellen would be delighted to have you on. I'd suggest the Advocate rather than Out, they've got a bit more clout. Although... do talk this over with Orly. I think he'd be less than thrilled to have this sprung on him."
"Oh, I know. I'm not going to coerce him into anything. But we've already talked about what to do when we come home. Maybe not in terms of interviews, but... I don't like it here, Dad. I know I was made to go into conflicted places, I know I don't really feel fear, but theocracies are terrifying. This is one of the worst places in the world to realize you're not straight, you know?"
"I trust you have enough discretion not to put the two of you in danger."
"Yeah. But it's going to be a long eleven weeks." Paul sighed. "So... on the topic of things that would get us murdered if people knew about them..."
"You have got to work on your segues."
"Please, I'm a laugh riot. What about that hardware upgrade?"
"You're going to be using that phrase as innuendo for the rest of your existence," Harold said dryly. "I'm sure you have some design ideas. Send them along and I'll give you a time frame."
"Really? Excellent."
"Again, I suggest talking with Orly about it."
"Way ahead of you there."
"Oh dear."
"Don't worry so much."
"I don't know if worry is precisely the word," Harold said, "although given that you're equivalent to a lovesick teenager, worry would be a perfectly reasonable feeling to have. I don't want you to get your heart broken, Paul. How well do you really know him?"
"I've spent the great majority of the day, every day, for the past two hundred and seventy nine days with him. I think I know him fairly well by now." Paul glanced at the wall between his room and Orly's. He could see Orly's infrared signature, the warmth of his body sprawled across the bed, and he knew that space had been left on the bed for him to join Orly if he wanted to. He did want to. "Look, I've uploaded the design specs I've come up with to the usual place. Get back to me when you can?"
"As if my first child is anything less than my priority? Keep an eye on the file tomorrow. I know you can multitask.”
“Like I was made to do it, funny enough.”
“Yes, you’re hilarious. I don’t know where you got your sense of humor from, it’s got little to do with my own.”
“Don’t act like your sense of humor is so sophisticated, science puns aren’t actually the highest form of humor.”
“Of course they aren’t. Grammar puns are funnier.”
“You’re hopeless,” Paul said fondly. “I should let you go, it’s getting late…”
“All right. Be careful, please, Paul.”
“I’m always careful. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“I always do that, too. Good night.”
“Good night, Dad.” Paul laid in his bed/charging station for a moment longer, smiling up at the ceiling and wondering about how it felt different to be loved by his father and loved by his boyfriend. Love was such a strange thing anyways, but that it tasted differently depending on who was loving, that was something to devote some processing power to figuring out. But he didn’t have to figure it out alone. When he slipped into Orly’s bed, Orly stirred just long enough to wrap an arm around Paul and kiss his hair before he drifted off again. Paul reveled in the touch for a little while before he put himself into standby mode and slipped into a digital dream state.