Room 401, Monday Midday

[ultron_junior]

Seven-year-old Victor hadn't been able to figure out how to get music onto an iPod from a computer that didn't have iTunes, but teenage Victor faced no such problems. He borrowed Alec's iPod again and spent the morning putting songs on it -- a mix of classical, electronica, world music and rap that represented the best of his collection plus a few

Comments

[dirtiest_skank]

"You grew up," Olive noted -- seventeen year-old Olive, it should be noted -- from where she was peeking in the doorway.

[ultron_junior]

"Feels like it happened overnight," Victor agreed. He hit the key combination to lock his laptop and grinned over at her. "Is it just me, or was that kind of a fantastic weekend?"

[dirtiest_skank]

"On the plus side, I got to build a fort and live on cereal for most of the weekend," Olive noted thoughtfully, stepping in to lean against the wall. "On the downside, tiny me was a lot nicer and more forgiving than I am now, and I'm pretty sure I hugged Topher, so. Hit or miss. But you seemed like you had fun. Seven year-old Victor was a blast."

[ultron_junior]

"You got to build a fort with my awesome engineering help," Victor corrected. "And yeah, he was, wasn't he? Now I feel less like I missed out on the whole childhood thing."

[dirtiest_skank]

"Yeah, it was weird being like, little, and -- wait." Olive eyed him, frowning a little. "How do you mean you missed out on having a childhood?"

[ultron_junior]

"Well, I was technically only made four years ago, something like that," Victor told her off-handedly. This was no big deal, right? "I have the fake memories, but now I know jumping off a swing for real feels pretty much like it does in my head."

[dirtiest_skank]

...yeah. She'd figured at some point the android thing might come up again in such a way that she couldn't just act like it was fine without dealing with it, and apparently right now was "some point."

Olive was going to try and keep her face from showing how much that little bit of information kind of...messed with her head, but it was an uphill battle, in light of how much she liked him and thus how hard it was to lie.

"You're four?"

And she'd worried about the jailbait aspect when she turned eighteen to his seventeen next month. Ha ha. Ha.

[ultron_junior]

"Only in a technical sense," Victor repeated. He didn't think of himself as four, he didn't act four, and it wasn't relevant to his daily life whether his childhood memories were real or fake, so it took him a minute to figure out why Olive looked slightly stricken.

"Oh God, is that a little too weird for you?"

[dirtiest_skank]

"Um." Okay, there was a right answer here, and the right answer was obviously, 'Of course not, I like you no matter when you were made,' but even saying that sounded weird to Olive, so she was sort of waffling on what the correct response was here.

"No, she hedged, after a moment, "no, it's not like...dealbreaker weird, or anything." There. That much, she was confident in. "It's just...sorry. Caught me off-guard."

It was really weird. More than the age thing, it was a reminder that he wasn't entirely human, and she wasn't entirely sure how to deal with that.

[ultron_junior]

Victor frowned again, waved her vaguely towards his bed. This seemed like a please-sit-down kind of conversation.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't think about it a lot. It's weird for me, too, knowing so much of the stuff in my head is just -- simulated."

[dirtiest_skank]

She did as gestured, shuffling over and perching on the edge of his bed. "I bet," she offered, not without sympathy. "I'm trying to get it, I promise. I just -- hearing stuff like that totally reminds me that...you know, someone made you and you weren't born?" She winced, and added, "And that sounds awful, like I'm like...judging you or something? And it's not that, I just like...forget, most of the time. We don't even have androids where I'm from. Except in sci fi. Or probably at Google headquarters."

[ultron_junior]

"Even at home I'm pretty weird," Victor said wryly, rubbing his fingertips up over his forehead and into his hair. "Though maybe I wouldn't be weird at all at Google."

He frowned, stared into space for a moment. "I -- I'm glad it's not a dealbreaker," he said first, then, apologetically, "And ... I have no idea what else to say."

[dirtiest_skank]

Olive winced. "See, I don't want to make you feel weird, and now I feel bad 'cause you were so cool about my pretending-to-be-an-uberslut thing." She shook her head, sighing. "And I was just planning on coming in here and being cute about telling you I was gonna bite you in Spanish and then I got all -- distracted. Um. Is it okay if sometimes I need a minute? I mean, I barely have dated...non-robotic boys. So my learning handicap here's already pretty bad."

[ultron_junior]

"You can bite me in Spanish anytime?" Victor offered, momentarily distracted. "Look, I get it, you can take a minute if you need it. I've never been with anybody who wasn't about as big a freak as me, you know? I don't know what a normal learning curve is. And I understand not being born is ... kind of a big thing for regular people."

[dirtiest_skank]

"I just forget," Olive admitted. "And then when it comes up all these weird questions that I have no business asking you kind of...pop into my head. But like, it's not that huge a deal! It's just a mental adjustment thing for me, you know? But like...I don't really care if you were born or built, honestly. It's just weird to hear that the guy you're dating was technically not around until your freshman year of high school."

[ultron_junior]

"I'm pretty sure eighth grade was real," Victor volunteered. "At least, it's where things I remember get more vivid. But that's still your freshman year, so, uh ... not actually helping a whole lot."

The last bit came out in a mumble, and he reached over to try to take her hand. "Look, if you're dating me pretty much anything you want to know is your business. Sometimes the answer might be that I don't know, but it doesn't mean I'm avoiding the question. Or if you just want to not talk about it, I can do that too."