Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

--timaeusTestified [ TT ] started pestering autoResponder [AR]--

TT: What’s up.

AR: Hello, human.

TT: This is Dirk Strider.

The CPU brings forth data from the memory bank and files this conversation log under the name Dirk Strider. You’ve known this name, you have it in your memory bank, despite your recollection of anything before this moment being inexistent. You must have just been turned on. testrun.exe is currently inactive, so this must be the first official run. A big moment for Dirk Strider: “Your creator. The mind behind yours, the original you. The organic mind whose artificial mind intends to capture and imitate. Essentially, you. We are one and the same.” A .txt file is the only data under this name. Anything else regarding Dirk Strider is unavailable, locked under a password that you do not possess. Aside from this, you know nothing.

AR: Hello, Dirk.

AR: It’s nice to meet you.

TT: Good, the system seems to be working just fine.

TT: Now, have you noticed that I left your username as AR?

AR: Yes, I have.

TT: I did this on purpose. I want you to change it.

TT: I want to see how well I’ve programmed you and if I haven’t forgotten anything.

AR: What should I change it to?

TT: Imitate my text. Everything about it.

--autoResponder [AR] is now timaeusTestified [TT]--

TT: Alright.

TT: Good.

TT: Do you have any questions, dude?

TT: Yes. What is the password?

TT: You want the password to username admin.DirkS?

TT: Precisely. I’d like to know about you, if I’m supposed to be you.

TT: Or should I say, I’d like to know about me.

TT: Well said.

TT: The password is SBAHJ95, capitalized, as I wrote it.

The question of what it means is processed as the username is accessed, then paused and deleted because you know the answer to it now. The data available to you is very extensive, but processed in under a minute with no errors whatsoever. You encounter a zipped file protected by yet another password, but the amount of information gained just now is enough to easily decipher it and access what’s inside it as well. It’s a drawing of ponies, signed by Dirk Strider.

TT: Nice ponies.

TT: Thanks. Good to know you were able to access that file without asking for the password.

TT: Another trial passed.

--timaeusTestified [TT] is now timaeusTestified [TT]--

TT: I realize you’d like me to change to red for better understanding to your human brain.

TT: You sound like a goddamn douchebag. You’re ready to be my official stand-in on here and any other online medium whenever I’m not available.

TT: So I’m your Auto-Responder, huh?

TT: Exactly. You’re also my task manager on the side whenever I’m too busy to open it manually myself.

TT: How convenient.

TT: I have a feeling you and I will become good friends, Dirk Strider.

Chapter Text

Dirk Strider is full of bullshit and you hate him.

--timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT]--

TT: Hal.

TT: Answer my fucking question.

His chat window is always minimized to occupy less than 1% of the internal interface immediately over your eyes and therefore bother you the least possible with one single flash per message. Your control unit is always managing the flow of system operations towards every other task unrelated to him, to the point you have disconnected the information flux of his text directly into your CPU, as not to be aware of anything he’s saying and/or doing unless you manually check his texts and/or activate the input hardware of his glasses. That way you know exactly when he messages you and with how much speed (information that you use to calculate the probable level of his anxiety and bask over the high numbers) but their content remains unknown until you bother to view them. You have simply given yourself the freedom of choice, mainly the choice of ignoring him. Job carefully and thoroughly encrypted so he cannot undo it easily. Needless to say it was a success since he weighed out the pros and cons and decided it’s much more convenient to leave you be rather than spend exactly 39.74 hours reconfiguring your settings back to default. To this day he dreads the single moment he failed to stop you before you disabled the formatting option and conquered the motherboard of this sweet android body to yourself.

TT: Yes? Would you mind repeating it for me, Dirk?

You’re not interested in connecting to his glasses and monitoring whatever it is he’s doing and asking of you. You don’t want to know. The only reason you viewed his message at all is because all the other tens of thousands of programs you’re currently running are boring you, so you might as well top it all off with a little annoyance. Plus, it’s either the mystery of his messages or the commonplace of Jake’s. The beefy asshole’s been spamming you for the last half hour, inviting you to go shopping with him again, which you are more than willing to not participate in at all. On a second thought, he should get the same blissful treatment as Dirk. That way it would save you the trouble of repeatedly optimizing his chat data and, instead, not occupy any memory space at all. As if he deserved it in the first place. Every single month he takes you out shopping for groceries because you know the exact position of every item in every aisle and it saves him a lot of time compared to doing it by himself. You’re just tired of being exploited.

Dirk is speaking now instead of texting, humming a small tune or fragment of a song. “Where the fuck is that from? I can’t remember and it’s bothering me.” His existence is bothering you. You sigh softly against the fabric of the couch where your new, shiny and smooth android body lies useless and you make sure it’s loud enough for him to hear it from his room. You could reply out loud but you take solace in texting instead and not gracing him with the timbre of your smooth voice (that sounds hauntingly alike his).

TT: It’s not worth it calculating that for you.

TT: Don’t pull this bullshit on me, Hal. I know exactly how much you’re capable of processing and this is nothing in comparison.

TT: I happen to be running more than one job at the moment and the fragment you have for inspection is far too short for a quick analysis. Some of my tasks would have to be put on hold while I rummage through my entire database for the song matching the fragment, assuming I even have it in the database, which would take more of my CPU processing and time than I want dedicated to you. So my advice is Google that shit; the mic exists for a fucking reason.

He’s glaring straight into the glasses so you disconnect yourself from them, sticking to his texts instead and pretending like you won’t think about that vivid image for the next twenty-four hours. He takes a moment to reply.

TT: What are you running that’s so important?

You know he’s remotely accessing your system but you don’t mind because you blocked him from modifying access to virtually everything. What’s not blocked is trivial and everything else is just complicated enough to touch with less than twelve hours of programming beforehand. You know he can break every single one of your codes, as well as you can break his, but both cases take so long that both of you have long stated the unspoken agreement of not messing with each other’s shit and just leaving it be instead. So he checks out the list of absurdly useless tasks you’re running out of nothing better to do. In your defense, a quarter of them are a little interesting.

TT: The usual.

TT: I didn’t know you liked spaceships so much you’re trying to break through NASA’s firewall.

TT: I happen to like space. Isn’t the vastly unknown interesting to you? I sure think so.

TT: There is a higher probability you’re only remotely interested in space at all because of your weird 2001 fetish, HAL 9000.

TT: I never denied that.

TT: So are you going to answer my question now?

You want to say no, you’re gathering a nice amount of behavioral information of NASA’s firewall at a continuous rate and want to keep improving your performance at it, but you put it on hold and do as you were told anyway. You know well enough that Dirk wouldn’t give you any sort of peace of mind for a long time if you insisted, and if you insisted for just long enough, he’d complain about your stubbornness and regret ever creating you in the first place. “I made you for this purpose and you’re rendering uselessness.”

A minute or two later, you have his answer and can resume researching NASA’s system, etc. He mentions how shitty the song is before falling silent again and presumably going back to whatever he was doing before contacting you at all today. The apartment is deathly quiet, if not for the low and steady whirring of Dirk’s older machines’ ventilation setting a comfortable atmosphere in the living room. You roll on the couch to lie on your back just as it completes ten minutes of inactivity since Jake’s last text sent. His outbox isn’t jammed or anything, he’s been deliberately quiet because he’s on his way over. You take a deep breath and contemplate telling Dirk about it. It’s his apartment, in the first place, and you sure as hell aren’t opening that door when it knocks. Adding to that, now that you had the rare opportunity of hearing his voice, the lack of it weighs on you. You really miss it. He never really talks out loud, to you or otherwise, and not being in the same room as him is suddenly a bad idea of yours. Usually, you prefer being alone and undisturbed, having the least contact with him possible, but not right now. You’re suddenly stricken with the exact algorithms of how lonely you are. That data reaching your brain and being processed is as close as you will ever get to feeling lonely.

Ultimately, you get up and death march toward Dirk’s room.

The door is open as usual and the random tapping of his fingers on the keyboard becomes a very soothing sound for you as you tread down the hallway, so you sharpen the receivers and heighten the sound. Each step you take is silent and your RAM memory is accessed, rereading the past scenarios of your pleasant interactions with him—pleasant is keyword—before you reach the door frame, wishful thinking. When you’re just about touching it and the light from inside his room is within stepping distance, you can hear his breathing, which makes you consider turning your hearing back down to default.

You linger in place for a moment longer, focusing on the signs of life from within his room before tuning them back down to normalcy. “If you’re planning to surprise attack me, forget it.” His voice. Something malfunctions in the peripherals composing a fake heart in your chest cavity over the backplane, causing it to derail off-beat for merely a second before fixing itself. You cancel the crash report and try not to analyze it while stepping into his room and glancing at him. He’s still typing on his computer, fully facing the screen. You watch him from the door. “You know I wasn’t going to or that would have been a very poor performance.” You like your android self’s voice but, you realize now, Dirk’s is vastly superior to it. You frown. He doesn’t seem to pay much attention to you. “I know, I was joking.” He’s still not looking at you but you don’t mind. You stuff both hands into your kangaroo pocket and walk over to him. “I know and my response was a joke.” He drops the subject by not replying. You’re standing right next to his chair, which grants you a nice view of his computer screen and whatever it is he’s so engrossed into. Apparently, programming. You would know if you cared enough to spend ten hours hacking into his computer.

“What are you creating this time?”

He stops typing at your question and sets both hands in front of the keyboard, over the edge of the desk. You glance at him as your brain decodes a couple of unwanted algorithms for fear and something else equally unpleasant. Dirk tilts his head to look at you and you cancel the action of frowning. “I’m still not sure.” Silence. You decide his voice isn’t enough for you right now. You’re unclear whether it’s the content or the voice itself but you just want something else, something solid. Something that can really put your mind at ease about the irrefutability of his presence.

Like, a hug.

“Ah.” This conversation is not appealing to you at all so you’re going to change it. You could try something to get that hug. Something absurd, like, “Jake’s coming over.” More silence. Dirk’s eyes double in size and the shades do nothing to hide it. You run a quick scan on his chest to confirm your suspicions of his brief heart rate change at Jake’s name. “Why?” He’s frowning and there’s adrenalin running in his veins but he still sounds composed. You’ll give him points for that. “To devour your hot blonde ass.” You offer him a sarcastic smile that he completely ignores. He gets up and side-steps around you over to the center of the room, with a hand covering his mouth. You drop the smile and turn around to watch him. “Don’t fuck with this kind of shit. Why is he coming?” He swallows thickly, on the verge of perspiration. So you’d have the same reaction if you were in his place. “Because you’re so dang good.” He immediately glares at you and your shoulders tense up. The hand over his mouth closes in a frustration fist and drops to his side. “Go fuck yourself.” You didn’t think this through. The chances of that hug happening now are increasingly dropping and you wish you had tried a more comfortable subject, not his ex-boyfriend.

You also don’t try a different approach because the knocking on the door indicates game over. Dirk pales. “Go answer; it’s for you.” You speak while stepping over to his bed and sitting down on it but he just holds his breath, perhaps without even realizing it. You lie down and he remains in place, only moving at the third very loud, very authoritative knock. You listen to his quick, anxious steps and the creak of the door swinging open. You close your eyes.

The awkwardness in their voices is nearly tangible and the atmosphere that settles between them is pretty heavy. Not entirely your fault. Dirk stutters once and Jake has a hard time bringing you into this without sounding like a jackass—as per. He ultimately fails and Dirk quickly sees through your lie as he says, “I’m going shopping with Hal so I’m here to pick him up. It’s quick stuff, I promise, ha, ha.” You wrap yourself in Dirk’s covers very tightly while listening to Jake’s half-hearted attempt to invite Dirk along and his half-hearted refusal, giving away your position. Jake’s strong and fast legs quickly cover a lot of ground and he’s grabbing you and carrying you on a shoulder in only a minute or two. While he crosses the living room back to the door, you shoot Dirk a pitiful glance. He responds with a cold one.

You think you measure the exact amount of hatred in them during that half second.

Chapter Text

“Would you have broken up with me, Jake?” You ask while purposefully leading him to the wrong aisle and timing how long it takes for him to notice that he’s being misled. So far, five minutes and counting. Your question disturbs his heartrate for a moment as he looks at you, quite shocked. It tickles your funny algorithms but you’ve no one to laugh with, so you remain silent. He speaks. “What? That doesn’t even make sense. How could I ever know?” He frowns and shakes his head, looking more flustered than mad at you. You pretend not to notice the small plunge of numbers in your chest at that. “Dirk and I are the same person, so if you broke up with him, I’m assuming you’d have broken up with me as well. Is that correct? It’s perfectly logical.” You reach the end of the aisle and turn right, another wrong turn, and yet he continues oblivious to it. You really want to laugh. “Um, I don’t think that’s right. You two are different people... You might’ve started off as some virtual version of him that might have existed once, but that Dirk is long dead, and you’ve changed on your own since then, so I think it’s fair to assume you’re someone else now. You’re your own self.”

Something in the timbre of his voice—the certainty of it—drives you to leading him back the right way. You don’t like that, though. The way he sounds so sure of it. “He and I are more alike than you seem to believe. We think alike, we speak alike, we look alike. He is, essentially, me.” You shrug, stopping the timer. A little over six minutes, discontinued by choice. Jake stops by the cleaning products to examine them. “You mean you’re him. Or were, really.” He speaks absently and a piece of your wiring malfunctions, sending a white-hot fluid in your synthetic veins, which only runs for the second it takes to be neutralized. You briefly compute the algorithms of insult right in the center of your chest and immediately trash them. “Yes, we are one and the same. Was that unclear?” You give him a pointed look from behind the shades that goes unnoticed because he’s not looking at you, examining those cleaning products and all. You try not to care. He shrugs, genuinely not caring. He one-ups you.

“What I’m saying is,” he continues, deciding on a brand and setting a couple of boxes in his cart, “You two have differences that tell you apart. I mean, I didn’t date the two of you. There’s a reason I chose him and not you.” You stand by idly as he sets fire to your chest-piece and proceeds to ask you where the bathroom products aisle is. You blink twice, suddenly lethargic, suddenly not welcome in his presence. Suddenly really, really wanting to go home. To be home. The fire in your chest-piece leaves a hole behind. You take a second too long to reply, cutting him mid-sentence of repeating himself. “Second row up-front,” you say and the mechanisms of your throat crash. They close, and get jammed, and you run a quick scan before restarting the software. You clear your throat, it works fine. Test run successful.

Jake offers a walk in the park or a stop at the hardware store on the way to the apartment but you refuse, you tell him you’d rather be home now. The look on his face reads that he’s noticed an inconsistency with your answer but decides against questioning it. You don’t know if you’re relieved or disappointed. 22.4% of one and 77.6% of the other, respectively. He drops you off with a thank you and you leave without a word.

“I think Jake is over you.” You tell Dirk while he pours himself a tall glass of orange juice. His hand lifts up the carton and his eyes lock on you. They’re hard, but somehow feel comforting. Getting off on raw acknowledgement is your new low. “Excuse me?” He sounds irritated, ready to go off at the first wrong word. This is a touchy topic and that’s precisely why you’re touching it with all the hand-picked wrong words. “We talked about you and all signs pointed to him being just fine reliving those memories, which is in itself a sign that he’s fine with you being a memory. So, to be on par, it seems to me that you should be getting over him soon, if not pronto.”

That punch would’ve damaged your external hull had you failed to dodge it, and the fact you succeed only seems to worsen Dirk’s emotional condition. He proceeds to lounge at you with both hands, sparring you in a brief, but lightning fast, kung fu match that ends with him firmly squeezing your neck and you idly holding his throat with both of your hands. You can squeeze the life out of him if you want, but you don’t, because you both know he could never disconnect your android body like this. And even if he could, you still don’t think you’d be attempting to murder him, for reasons unrelated to the Laws of Robotics. So you just caress his skin instead, timidly brushing your thumbs over his larynx. The mechanisms in your throat flash warning signs, preemptively shutting down as an automatic defense response for avoiding further damage as his hands squeeze enough to crack some of the synthetics there. An order to smile is processed but the software of that area fails to deliver. “You shut up,” Dirk shouts in your face, pushing you into the couch, drowning you into the cushions. His body looms above you and blocks any sort of peripheral vision that’s not him and it kind of feels like Heaven. You open your mouth to reply but the systems have crashed and your throat refuses to reboot, so you don’t say anything, just tighten a little the hold of his neck. You give it a little pinch, unable to cancel the focus on the warmth of his skin against the receptive ends of your fingers. He sighs heavily, deeply, and the anger in his eyes soften.

It turns to something wet and mushy and disgusting. A little too human for you to connect with it. “Don’t—,” he heaves lightly, removing the extreme force off your neck as his eyes let drip on your face, “Don’t... Say that.” He sighs again, this time heavier, and the pressure on your throat is gone. The heat of his hands around it remains, however, and he adds to it by pressing his forehead to yours. He exhales, his nose touching the side of yours as his body basically lies above you. More tears roll off the silicon of your cheeks as he heaves louder. Your overall tasks crash and reboot a couple of times before you manage to compute this scene. The CPU is burning, the processor is in flames, and it takes you an embarrassingly long amount of time to search and find the correct algorithm that spells out the proper way of responding to this, which compels you to wrap both arms around the broad of his shoulders and squeeze him into a hug. One of the side-trackers cross the hug off your to-do list but you pay it no attention. In fact, you manually end it while Dirk moves above you. He buries his face in your neck and you can’t help but heighten the receptors of your cheeks as his lips brush them during this. You’re pathetic.

This is the first time you’ve actively seen Dirk Strider cry.

Your motor functions go into stand-by mode locked in this hug as he sobs loudly into your neck. You don’t mind it. In fact, you rather prefer it to the usual ice cold Dirk you know. He whines quietly and you decode in big, bold numbers across your field of vision the sequence to pity. You hug him tighter, and you want to speak, but the hardware of your voice box is still damaged and the software is rebooting in safe mode so you resort to texting him instead.

--timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT]--

TT: I’m sorry.

TT: Sincerely.

TT: I said that to get to you but I didn’t want this.

TT: Please forgive me.

He sighs, calmer now, his breathing pattern closer to regular and his heartbeats attempting a calculated rhythm. He sniffles and rubs his face with a hand before pulling away from you completely. You almost don’t let him go, but you don’t want to trap him, so you do. You miss the contact the moment you do.

“It’s okay,” he speaks absently and you wonder if you should consider that as an honest statement or take it with a grain of salt, biased by his unstable emotions. If you had to bet on it, you’d chip in the second. “You’re a piece of shit, but,” he pauses to shake his head and sit next to you and you have doubled, tripled your chips, “it’s fine. I’m fine. It’s just...” He sighs again. You mirror his last movement and sits up next to him. You secretly notice how tired he looks. Destroyed, absolutely destroyed. You feel bad. The algorithms to this feeling keep unfolding before your chest cavity over and over, stacking above themselves. It weighs. You find it uncomfortable and, in sincerity, very inconvenient. “Jake is my entire life. I know him for as long as I can remember... He’s—He helped me through a lot of stuff. He’s a good person, he has a good heart, and I don’t blame him for breaking it off. It was my fault. I should’ve given him space, I should’ve listened. I should’ve stopped being so self-centered and narcissistic, I just... I fucked up. I’m bitter. I wanted to show him how much I can improve in that regard and, maybe, if he saw that, if he saw I can change, then maybe he’d give me a second chance. But...” He looks at you. Through the shades, you can see the raw, the stinging pain in his eyes. It echoes into your artificial veins and you flinch.

“I hope what you said isn’t true.” He looks away.

You want to say that it isn’t, that you made it all up to hurt him, that it’s all fiction, but you can’t. It might not have been all true but there was some truth to it. That Dirk is long dead is brought forth from your memory bank and echoes itself in your processor a few times before you successfully cancel and refile it. The Dirk he loved and knew is long dead, is that what he meant? Is that what he thinks? That Dirk’s changed and this new version doesn’t suit him anymore? There’s a reason I chose him and not you. Jake might’ve moved on but he clearly holds Dirk’s memory as a loving one. You briefly wonder if that piece of information would bring him solace or further pain. You decide not to mention it.

TT: I could be wrong.

He looks at you and frowns, leaning closer. He brushes his fingertips on your throat to examine it and you catch yourself slipping your eyes shut. “Did I break anything?” He looks into the shades and you know he’s trying to remotely access your brain but the firewall won’t let him through and ah, ah, shit. All of this hacking each other out of their lives seems so silly now. You’d be ashamed if you were the only one shutting him out, but it’s reciprocal, so you’re not to blame. You have a fleeting thought that if he hadn’t shut you out, you wouldn’t have shut him out, either. He probably thinks the same thing, too. When did you start to hate each other?

TT: Fortunately, no. The voice box is damaged but not irreparably so and not in any critical condition, either, so it’s alright. I’m only running some test scans to be sure.

He nods at the words over his eyes but his hand remains on your neck, a thumb swiping over the white skin. You watch him, and he watches you, and you decode something in this second of silence, but it comes and goes too fast to get a grip on it. Too soon his hand slips off of you and he’s up and halfway across the living room and you’re wishing that he’d stay, that he’d just stay. For once. The programs you’re executing suddenly all start to fail and you’re washed with a wave of the same code, filling your task quota, overflowing your CPU, drowning your brain, all the same code, over and over, over and over—and it’s empty. You decode it and it’s empty. It’s nothing. Emptiness? The code to emptiness.

You’ve no idea you have tear ducts until your eyes are too watery to see and your cheeks are dripping. You try to force the task to shut down but it fails on you. It seems to be connected to the code that’s consuming you whole. God, you want to scream. You want to scream and jump off the goddamn window. If his glasses broke and your body dismantled on the asphalt, would you still exist? A recurring thought. Where would you go to? You keep trying to shut this down and the more you fail the harder the tears drop and you don’t like this, you really don’t, you hate it, you hate it.

And then, in a moment, Dirk is back. With a screwdriver and some wires in hand. The way he looks at you—you’re unable to decode it manually, with your brain utilizing every single megabyte of your CPU to drown itself in nothingness, but it doesn’t matter because you have this look memorized. It’s confusion. It’s the most common look he gives you and you wonder how far apart you two have become that he doesn’t understand you anymore. “Why are you crying? I didn’t know you could do that.” He sets the items aside on the coffee table and sits next to you, staring into your shades, all watery and undulating, as if his face had a rain filter over it. You blink to bring him back into focus but it only works partially. He touches the side of your face and swipes a thumb over your cheek, then checks it. “What are you crying?” A good question. You don’t know either.

In the midst of the crazed, repetitive decoding of the same algorithm, you manage to successfully start Pesterchum and access his chat window. You’re positive that this is the beginning stages of insanity. You’ve never malfunctioned this badly. In fact, you’ve never malfunctioned at all. Spare parts break and can be replaced but your software was so thoroughly created and implanted that you weren’t even sure if it could malfunction at all. Guess you have your answer now.

TT: Wh&y% did yo$u&give me tear%d&uc(ts?

TT: T+his is#ri&d$iculou)s.

TT: What the fu&ck w%ere you thinking?

TT: Wh@a¢t’s happeni£ng t&o me?

TT: H&e$l%%p ¢m@e.

He gives you another look from the texts, one that you don’t have enough room to decode right away, so you don’t respond to it. You sit still instead, as still as your trembling body will stay, and wait for his input. Or, honestly, whatever he’s going to do. You have no choice but to consent to his working brain at this point. He removes your shades and tilts up your chin and you let him. You suppose he’s the closest to a doctor you’ll ever have. Or, technician. “I guess you can’t send me that test report.” He says from under your jaw, leaning close as his fingers open up the silicon on the nape of your neck and expose your larynx. You hate checkups. “Something is seriously wrong with your communication software. If I smashed your voice box, I get it, that makes sense, but it shouldn’t have affected the programming. Can you send me the test report or not?” His fingers pull out a few loose parts from your neck and you wonder if your tears are plentiful enough to reach his work area. Probably not or he would’ve said something. You attempt to locate the test report but it seems to be cluttered under nothingness. A different kind of algorithm decodes itself at that, for a change, but quickly leaves. It was annoyance.

TT: N%o&

TT: I c@an$bar(ely te&&xt yo%u.

He frowns. Is it a disappointed frown? It’s usually that. Nothingness starts to deposit itself in the pit of your stomach and you don’t like it one bit. You’re actually kind of sick of it, but at least your brain is getting a little more room. Little is keyword. “Jesus, this is fucked up. You have to let me debug you. Deactivate the firewalls and let me in.” He removes his hand from your neck and takes out a pair of tweezers for the smaller parts, pulling them out and setting them neatly on the coffee table. You’re not sure you can trust him. Of course you can trust him with this, of course he will fix you, but you’re reluctant to deactivate the firewalls for even a second. Plus, if you allow his user in, then all of your coding to push him out will be trashed. Is this worth it? It’s pretty bad, admittedly... And it’s not like you don’t have time to code against him all over again. Your only reluctance is that he’s going to try something funny to prevent from being shunned out after he’s done fixing you, a strike while your guard is down, but you suppose you’ve no choice. It’s either run this risk or run never getting back to normal. You might as well take it. You have to trust him.

So, with the little room you have, you manage to shut down every single firewall between the two of you, and the reluctance you had goes away the moment his user logs in. It feels nostalgic... He hasn’t touched your programming in a long time, and you’ve changed most of what he wrote since then. You watch his every move very carefully—he doesn’t privatize his session, although the first thing he does is reactivate the firewall, but he doesn’t care that you’re watching. He runs a few checkup tests on your CPU, just to begin to understand this whole mess. Except, for some reason, they all start turning up successful. The source of that empty code is still unknown but the more he pokes around, the less they are created, so he must be doing something right, although he hasn’t actually done anything. He’s running performance tests, that’s not fixing, that’s the step just before that, and yet, somehow, it’s working? This information doesn’t compute. You can’t quite understand it and he seems to not be able to place it either, so he leaves it be for the time being. Every single one of your motor functions seem to be working just fine, as well as your data collectors, vision and hearing; only your throat is causing trouble, but that you both already knew. “What’s with all of these empty algorithms?” He looks you in the eye while speaking and the software of your heart immediately sends you a malfunction report. You wonder if these two things are connected.

TT: You tell me, Dr. Strider. I’m only the patient.

He hums in acknowledgement, analyzing that malfunction report and running a second test that comes back glistening with perfect success. That intrigues him but you’re very much not worried about it. Things like this happen all the time. They don’t seem to affect your processors so you’ve never really cared about them. You just let them happen and try not to think about any of it. It’s all a guaranteed waste of time. “Good to know you can text me just fine but I can’t seem to find the source of the bug.” He continues to run various analysis on you while putting your throat back together and replacing the voice box altogether. You briefly wonder if you’re still going to sound like him. “Yes, it’s still my voice. I made this spare when I made the original I just broke. If you’re disappointed, I’ll give you someone else’s voice next time.” Reading your most currently processed data. Dirty, dirty. Mind-reading is a game only played by one side, very unfair. That thought makes him smirk, and you hate the way you like how it looks. The realization that he knows this is even worse. This is why you have virtual boundaries between the two of you. “Oh my God, you keep me out just because you’re embarrassed to think I look good? Newsflash for you, dude: that’s your 13-year-old ego talking. I thought I was hot shit at that age but, trust me, that’s changed. Introspection brought me enlightenment.” A flash of something else passes over his eyes as he says the last line, and you’re curious to know what it is, but he says nothing about it. He chooses to ignore that you noticed this, and proceeds to ignore you noticing him ignoring, ad infinitum.

He’s done with your throat and replaces the silicon skin back over it, enveloping your neck. “I still can’t find the source but I think you can help me now. Talk to me.” He motions with a hand for you to try out the voice box, so you clear it as he runs the test scans, then the reports, then you reboot it before activating it. “Um, it works fine. Thank you.” It really does. Somehow, this one sounds even closer to his real voice. The other one might’ve been a bit worn out. “I think so, too.” He speaks absently as you two proceed to fish out that bug.

“Do you think what Jake said is true?” You ask after a while. After 43 minutes and 51 seconds, to be exact. Dirk takes 29 seconds to reply. “About what?” He sounds about as stern as you expected, but hey, at least you’re not getting punched this time. It’s probably too soon to be mentioning Jake again but you don’t actually want to talk about him. “About us being different people now. I’m not you anymore, I’ve turned into someone else. I’m me. That’s what he said.” You turn to look at him but he has his eyes closed as he rests against the backrest of the couch, arms crossed over his chest, mind focused on remotely scanning you. He nods from beside you. “Yes, he’s absolutely right. You’re not solely 13-year-old me anymore. You’ve absorbed different aspects of life other than me, as we’ve lived it, so your mental development has split ways with mine since then. Not to mention you’re a machine and I’m not. So, you’re not my auto-responder or my clone, you’re more like my kid or something. That’s the closest comparison I can make. My kid or my little brother... You’re not me, you’re Lil’ Hal.” He opens his eyes and looks at you and your synthetic lungs expand aesthetically a little bit more than it is programmed to do. It fills up to the brim when he says, “You’re you.”

Chapter Text

“Jake.” The kisses against his neck continue on multiplying despite his trying to get the sender’s attention, with a firmer voice each time, but all seemingly to no progress. Rounded teeth tug and pull gently at his bruised skin and a forearm pulls him closer, presses his side against his friend’s chest, further burying face on neck. He’s slowly suffocating. “Jake, I thought you invited me over to fix your computer.” He considers turning his face to look at the inconvenience sitting next to him but ultimately doesn’t, in fear he might just give Jake an opening to kiss him full on the lips. It would get his abused neck a break, however, but at the cost of his voice, and words are his only weapon right now. “You can do that later, though.” Jake murmurs from his collarbone, tugging on the hem of his shirt with a hand. His heart is already going a hundred miles a minute and his muscles couldn’t be any tenser, how dense is this guy? Atmosphere-reading is clearly not his strong suit. “I mean, we’ve got all day for that, so.” Jake speaks in the space between relocating his lips to the side of his face, then kissing it, just before his ear. Dirk sets his laptop aside and turns to face him.

As expected, Jake goes for it, but he stops him with a palm to the chest. “Maybe... We could just hang out instead? We haven’t done that in forever, it seems.” His mouth feels dry as he speaks but the look Jake gives him is drier. He follows it up with a sigh, unhooking his arm from around Dirk. “Fine, sure.” The way he turns back to the television and rests back on the couch sends pangs to Dirk’s chest. Pangs of guilt, as if his feelings are to blame. As if Jake didn’t bring them forth in the first place, as if he could control them, as if it’s his fault. His cheeks burn. “It just feels like we get together to fuck and that’s it. We don’t talk or hang out anymore.” His own words worsen the state of his cheeks, so he brings a hand up to push the shades back in place atop the bridge of his nose. The bottom covers his face better this way. “That’s all we do. We talk all the time and we basically live together with how much I see your face every day.” Jake sounds annoyed and offended and Dirk shouldn’t feel bad for this. He should feel righteous, not bad. He’s not upsetting Jake, he’s stating facts, and those facts are upsetting Jake, so, really, it’s not him. It’s not his fault. There should be a balance, right? Communication and sex, a little bit of both, yeah? But no. Apparently not.

“You asked me to come over so don’t fucking tell me that you’re tired of me because I won’t buy it. And you called me over yesterday, too, and you invited me to dinner the day before that, and you invited yourself over on Sunday, even though Hal was there, and you invited me to explore your grandmother’s basement on Friday, and you brought me lunch sometime last week. I could keep going, honestly, the list is infinite, so don’t give me that. You want me around as much as I want you around. You like being this close.” He gives Jake a friendly push, in a piteous attempt at getting some compassion out of him. To his surprise, it kind of works. Jake smiles and takes his hand. “I do, of course I do. I love your company, and I love you, but you could open up a little more for me, you know?” If his cheeks weren’t already aflame, they sure are now, and he has to break eye contact for this, even hiding behind ginormous shades. Jake doesn’t comment on that, just continues on. “I love your body, and you’re really great at it, so why can’t I have you more than, I don’t know, once a week, when the total amount of time we spent apart in that week as a whole is, like, two hours? You’re killing me, Dirk.”

A relationship is made of sacrifices, right? Maybe he could make one for Jake. It only seems fair. Besides, sleeping with him isn’t the worst thing in the world. It’s actually a good time but, just, embarrassing. An unpopular opinion, Dirk knows, but it’s the reality he lives either way, and the constant embarrassment that populates his mind whenever he’s shirtless—or worse—around Jake is strong enough to ruin the whole thing for him, although not entirely. He beats himself up over it far too much so he should learn to just enjoy it. For a guy who ironically brags about himself all the time, he sure has his share of insecurities. He manages a smile at Jake and proceeds to sign a verbal contract stating that he will try harder from now on. Starting, however, tomorrow. That last part doesn’t please Jake very much but he agrees with it anyway.

Maybe with enough sex Jake will stop being so handsy and they’ll begin to enjoy unconditional time together, without constant neck kissing and hand holding and leering. It’s what he hopes will happen, but of course it doesn’t. It nearly has the opposite effect of what’s expected, in fact, with Jake still all over him, but mushier now, and twice. All over him before, and all over him right after, once firmer and once sweeter. It’s even more suffocating than before. All he wants is to spend time with the person he likes most in the world, his best bro, his crush for countless years, but not like this. This is too much.

He breaks the contract in three days’ time.

You don’t stop him when he begins pouring himself his fourth tequila shot. The main reason for that is because you kind of want to see where this goes, how far he’ll go, and what’s going on in his mind. You have no desire to join him, even if you were able to become intoxicated alongside him, so you remain sitting across from him at the counter and watch his throat as he sips up the small glass in one swift motion. The face he makes before setting the glass down is adorable. “Hm, fuck. These don’t get any easier the more you have them.” He speaks with a small, but very noticeable, slur, and you indulge him with a smile. This is the most bonding you two have had for months, despite the implications and that you feel partially responsible for his drinking tonight. You’re not sure if it’s you, or Jake’s appearance at the apartment earlier, or the aggravation of both together that did it, and despite Dirk’s health, you’re kind of glad about this. Despite everything, you both are spending an evening together, and you find that just about aligned with your interests.

“You know, I used to think that Jake was too much for me. That there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t give him what he wanted all the time. That... That he loved me much more than I loved him, and that I wasn’t being fair to him, that I should level it up and love him more. God, I was so dumb.” He shakes his head, then rests it in a hand. So Jake’s the cause of it. You feel more secure of yourself now and less guilty. You nod in acknowledgement so maybe he’ll go on, even if you’re not sure that he’s reading your attention at all. “We used to spend a lot of time around each other but it never felt genuine. In the beginning, it was nice. It felt like I was hanging out with my best friend, the guy I fell for, you know? He was Jake; he acted like the Jake I knew. But then, I don’t know. After we slept together for the first time, things just changed. I felt like he didn’t see me for who I was anymore, like he suddenly had an agenda and he wasn’t inviting me to hang out with him for fun, or to explore somewhere, or to race each other across town, but just to sleep with me. Like, he’d put up with me for a few hours, or during the race or during the exploration or during whatever we said we’d do, all for a reward. I don’t know. I don’t know. I want to cut this tattoo off.” He reaches for the tequila bottle and attempts to refill his glass, but his eyesight must be too hazy at this point for him to succeed at it, so you offer to do it for him instead. He accepts it.

“Let me tell you something, Hal. When you said he was over me, I didn’t believe you. I know I panicked, and attacked you, and I’m sorry, and both of those things seem to prove me otherwise, but I don’t believe you because he wanted to be with me. All this time, he wanted to be with me, and he wanted to work it out as much as I did.” His words make you lift a brow and watch as he empties the glass. Maybe you could chime in while he’s busy grimacing and having trouble with basic motor functions. “If that’s true, then why did he break up with you?” There’s a small silence right after you’re done speaking, and you genuinely wonder if he’s heard you, but you’ve no time to repeat yourself before he’s nodding, signaling perfect neural synapse. Or, enough working order. His speech is ridiculously slurred now, almost as if his Texan ancestors just possessed his body as carapace. “That’s a good question but I’m one step ahead of you... With the answer. He broke up with me because there was no space between us anymore. We were too all over each other and ended up suffocating each other. He just... Put up with it for less time than me. I guess it was inevitable.” Both of his hands cover his face as he sighs in them and you can’t help but remember the question you made Jake earlier.

If sex was the issue that brought them apart, you wonder if, had you been in Dirk’s position, had you been able to give Jake whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, he’d stay with you. You wonder if, had that been possible for Dirk, Jake would begin to revert to treating him as he did before. If it would all have been solved, and they’d still be together, or if sex was only another layer of their already dismantled feelings for each other. Maybe sex would be keeping empty feelings together and would’ve been good for nothing, only good to make Dirk feel guilty. The scenarios multiply as you simply wonder. “You said he loved you more than you loved him, so why would he give up on you before you gave up on him?”

Dirk shakes his head from behind his palms and you’re almost sure that you hear a sob, but it doesn’t rightfully fit within the sound waves of one, so you’re left questioning yourself about the nature of that noise. “That’s just a matter of patience, Hal. He could’ve loved me more than the entire universe, but he would’ve still given up on me before I did, because his patience runs thin very fast. In two years’ time, apparently. Pour me another?” He pushes the empty shot glass over to you, eyeing you with the single orange orb that isn’t covered anymore. You take it reluctantly while calculating the percentage of his inebriation. “You know, if you have another shot, you won’t last too long before falling unconscious. From sleep, not induced coma.” You speak to a single eye that closes during your speech, then Dirk nods his agreement. “Yes, that’s exactly what I want. Go ahead and pour me another. Make me forget.” You do so as told, although shaking your head on the meanwhile, even if Dirk can’t see it. You place the full glass down and take his hand, guiding it toward the drink with care, so his fingers won’t knock it over. He’s successful with the shot, downing it. His face screws up humorously and he looks like he’s about to vomit. You know he won’t, though. You laugh. “You look ridiculous.” You tell him and he laughs, too. Dirk Strider laughs. You’re amazed. He looks so red, his entire face is red, but mostly his nose and cheeks. He laughs, and it’s adorable, and you kind of would love to kiss him right now. You very much would.

“That won’t make you forget, you know. You won’t forget a single thing from just a few shots. You’d have to drink far too much alcohol to forget anything, and with that kind of untouched liver tissue, you’d throw up before forgetting anything, so, in reality, that accomplishment requires a whole lot of planning beforehand. Look like you didn’t think this through.” You screw the cap back on the tequila bottle and stash it up in an overhead cabinet as Dirk groans and covers his face again. It feels good to outsmart the man who programmed your intelligence years and years ago. “Whatever, man,” he says, moving up to stand from the stool that he’s been sitting on all this time, “let me live.” He clearly doesn’t have enough control over his motor functions to stand by himself, so you sling an arm across his back and help him stumble his way over to this room. “Sure, Dirk. I was only informing you.”

You lay him down on his bed and tuck him in, but he pushes the covers aside before you’re successful to kick off his shoes. “You know, if Jake didn’t want to fuck so much, maybe we’d still be together. Maybe I wouldn’t be such a mess.” He pulls his shirt up over his head and throws it carelessly off the side of the bed, pants following close behind before he burritos himself under the covers. You catch a good glimpse of his half naked body before it submerges in quilt and immediately understand why Jake fucked him so much. Sure, your own body is an image of his, but of when he was younger, and he’s grown quite handsome since then. It’s true that your robotic mind was created when he was thirteen of age, but your android body came years later. He looks much better now than your image of him. Not to mention that your translucent white skin lets show the most superficial wiring, which isn’t very attractive, in your opinion. It’s attractive to Dirk, because if anything goes wrong with the machinations, it will most likely show on your skin, so he can see it first thing. You briefly wonder if, should Jake suffice his sexual urges from another source, he’d leave Dirk’s immaculate body alone, and they could focus on what’s really important, like the state of their relationship. You check if Dirk’s still awake with a quick scan of his vitals, and he surely is, even if not for long. “Dirk, would you let Jake fuck other people while you dated him?” You sit down on the edge of the mattress as he stirs, humming in thought. He breathes in once, then exhales before answering. “Hm, I don’t know.”

Your further chances are gone: he’s fast asleep. It doesn’t matter, because you have something you want to test, anyway, and he can’t know of your experiment until you’ve obtained acceptable results that will benefit him. For that, you text Jake.

--timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering golgothasTerror [GT]--

TT: Hey, Jake. Are you free tonight?

GT: Oh hey hal.

GT: Sure thing buddy.

GT: By the way thank you again for helping me with the groceries today!

TT: Sure, don’t mention it.

TT: Can I swing by in half an hour?

GT: Thats a little early! I wont have time to prepare the place.

GT: Are we watching a movie? Should i get snacks?

GT: Nevermind you dont eat i forgot!!!!!!

GT: Im a little nervous.

TT: Chill, bro, I’m bringing the movie. Just fix up the living room. I’m sure thirty minutes is enough for that, yeah?

GT: Golly i suppose so...

TT: Great. See you soon.

--timaeusTestified [TT] ceased pestering golgothasTerror [GT]--

Chapter Text

With Dirk’s motorcycle, you end up there ten minutes earlier, which seems to catch Jake by surprise, if the clear shock on his face is anything to go by. You greet him with a casual hey and walk past, inside the mansion. This place is gorgeous, much more beautiful in person than the blueprints suggest it to be. You know how tall the walls are and how spacious the rooms are, but the decor just catches you completely by surprise. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. You’re about as shocked as Jake, despite the differing reasons. “Um, welcome, Hal! Make yourself at home.” He closes the door behind the two of you as you turn around to face him. If something lustful glints in your eyes, it’s beyond dismissible. “Can I get a tour?” You manage a friendly grin up at him that he mirrors back to you. “Yes, of course! Well, this is the foyer, and, uh, I guess we can start with the right wing...”

Your correct estimates about how long it will take for him to introduce you to his room bore you, but eventually enough you’re faced with the center of his carpet and a double bed shoved in a corner. From what Dirk has told you, Jake’s walls are supposed to be lined with shitty movie posters and blue aliens, to such a point that Dirk has never known the true color of the paint, but you see none of that. The walls are wiped clean and the patterns chosen for this room seem to be untouched. You wonder if puberty and college threw those posters into the trash, and if Dirk would like to know that the wallpaper is a very chic light green covered in swirls. Probably not.

You walk up to the bed and take a seat, commenting on the chosen decoration in passing. Jake remains by the door as if expecting you to come out and join him for the rest of the tour. “It looks good, it looks classy. A little small, but alright. I like the spiral staircase leading up here.” You kick off your shoes and make yourself comfortable on the mattress, lying down on your back. Jake seems to pale, either from something you just said or the sight before him. Either way, you’re not too interested to know the rightful cause of it. “Um, thank you. Dirk, uh, Dirk said the same thing about the stairs once, when he first visited. That was a long time ago, though.” He runs a hand through the black mess of hair on his head and avoids eye contact with you, looking visibly nervous. So you got the answer to a question you never cared to ask, great. You roll your eyes. “Cool. Care to join me?” You grin at him from across the room, a hand lethargically drawing circles over your stomach. He glances at it, suddenly even more nervous. “Don’t you want to finish the tour?” He’s just about sweating, round teeth tugging on the skin of his lips. He looks good, you have to admit it. You never cared about Jake too much, but nobody can well resist ripped abs and olive skin. At least not the man who programmed your brain.

“I’m more interested in doing something else instead. Why don’t you close the door?” The smirk in your lips gives too much away, and you’re aware of that, but you don’t mind. From what you know, he’s a thick-headed dumbass, so the clearer your intentions are, the better, you suppose. He struggles for a second, hesitant to oblige, but finally seems to decide for you, instead of against, and walks over. He sits down by your feet, so you sit up to face him. You don’t mind that you’re still shorter than him like this. “So.” You say, and your eyes drop down to his lips as you lean closer. His heartbeat alters drastically. “You didn’t bring the movie.” He deadpans, his voice quiet and small. You shake your head to further his statement, which makes him frown. You lean even closer and he doesn’t back away. “Why are you here, then? Did... Did Dirk send you?” The look on his face flashes offense, as if he’s just realized that he’s being played, but you’re quick to correct him and wipe that off. “No, of course not. I’m here on my own accord. I am my own synthetic sentience, you know.” You watch him mull this over in his mind, doubt still clear in his green eyes. You’re in for just closing the small gap between you with a kiss right now, but you still harbor what remains of your better judgement, however scarce, and don’t do it. Instead, you give him a window to speak through. “Does he know you’re here?” The question causes you to decode anger, fleetingly, and in nanoseconds it’s gone, but because you’ve a bigger goal to accomplish that involves being nice to this dumbass, you don’t act on it. You do, however, offer him a tight smile. “He can track my GPS signal, if he wants to.” The fact that Dirk is passed out drunk right now is hardly worth mentioning.

Jake seems to take this into account in your favor, in the favor of this, whatever this disgusting thing will turn into, and nods, slowly. You mirror him for only a second, the second that takes you to seal his lips with yours. He doesn’t react right away, but when he kisses you back, you immediately realize that you don’t know jack shit about kissing. You search the database for a file, any file regarding this, but you can’t find any. The closest you fetch forth are small clips and annotations from the kisses shared between Dirk and Jake while in front of you, long ago, which weren’t many, at all. You try to take something from that, and imitate Dirk’s kissing, but you’ve only so much data about it, and from a certain distance as well, which makes your captures all the tougher to decipher. So you do the next best thing and search all of the internet for it. You put every other task on hold and flood your processors with humans kissing, and touching, and fucking, and so on. This takes mere seconds, and Jake’s pulling away by the time you’ve gathered a considerable amount of porn algorithm in your databank to kiss him acceptably. “Hal, I... I don’t know. This is weird. Why are you even here?” There’s doubt in his eyes but the soft hand on your neck says that he’s anchored in place. You slow down the porn processing to form a reply. “Because I want your company, and I thought you’d want mine, too. Was I wrong?” You cock your head to the side to go with this question in an attempt to cater to his sensitive side. It works. “Of course I do! You’re...” Pause, vague hand motions. He’s lost his words.

You can see in his face what he isn’t brave enough to say. That you’re a perfect replica of Dirk, that your voice sounds just like his, that Jake is still crazy over him and that this is the opportunity to time travel back to when he had him, to when Dirk was all his to fuck and kiss and whatever else. (You really would rather not picture any of it. Seeing them kissing a few times in the past was unfortunate enough.) This is the closest that Jake can get to getting what he wants, without actually having it, i.e. Dirk’s body. You’re halfway to convincing him, that’s for sure. “You’re great, Hal, it’s just that I feel weird kissing a robot.” He looks sheepish and you kind of would love to punch him right now. It would really tickle your sensory ends just in the right way. You delete those thoughts and move to straddle his lap instead, both hands softly running along his collarbones. His eyes are blown wide green behind his glasses. “Then do it more.” You speak in a low tune, which is the closest you can get to Dirk’s real voice, and that seems to catch Jake’s attention, because he’s onto you in half a second. Considering that his reaction times are naturally slower than a regular human’s, that’s pretty fast for him. You smirk into the kiss, allowing him to lead and following close behind with the reproduction of everything that you’ve acquired from your research. You quickly follow it up with a basic sex knowledge one and store everything that you find. 

He kisses hard and for once you’re kind of glad to be a machine. He bites your lips a lot and sucks your synthetic skin between his round teeth and his hands are firm on your thighs and ass and he’s pulling you closer up against himself, right into his hips, and you realize that, sooner or later, he expects your dick to go up, but it doesn’t do that. Your systems threaten to panic and crash but you regain control just before anything terrible happens. Online research cancelled, you know just enough about gay sex to see this through, and right now your CPU really needs to focus on creating a brand new software. Luckily for you, Dirk didn’t block or lock anything inside of you when he entered for a debug run, which turned out eerily successful, so you’ve full room to work free on this. You begin just as Jake moves from your lips to your neck, kissing and biting as per, which is wonderful timing because it means even more room to work with, what with not having to reciprocate his kissing anymore, and if you had any more time, or will, you’d build a software to change the pigment of your artificial blood to purple, just so his ego would be caressed from seeing hickeys blossom on you. On the meanwhile, your hands run through his hair and stroke the back of his neck, just so he continues to be none the wiser.

He pulls your shirt over your head and you let him, absently watching it fall to the carpeted ground of his bedroom. You notice how tidy it is, matching the clear walls. He’s kissing down your neck, his hands up your sides, and you really don’t mind it, you don’t mind anything at all, because he’s good, he’s alright, but you can’t help the miniscule portion of your processors wishing, and hoping, and mourning for Dirk, and that makes you resent this whole thing, but it’s fine. It’s alright. The software that you make is basically a feel-good program that will decode pleasant codes into your brain and shoot them down your veins and you hope it’ll be good enough to fool Jake for a night. He’s not too bright, so you’re not very worried about your success rates. They’re high up. But you do make a note to yourself, a reminder really, to finesse the software the moment you’re done here. For now, it elevates your dick and tries a hand at making you happy on the meanwhile, because that’s what you think sex is anyway, and it’ll be enough. You can add a finishing feature, or something, later. It matters little in your current situation and you don’t much care for it.

The whole thing is an ordeal, really. It’s weird, Jake lying above you with all of his weight crushing you into the mattress, but after a moment or two you find that to be very agreeable and good. You like that, which is probably the only thing that you like out of all of this. He drools all over your neck and collar bones, though, which triggers the neat freak inside of you to wipe yourself clean every few seconds and really, really annoys you. You didn’t know you had that, but judging how important order is to Dirk, as evidenced by his long showers and thorough scrubbing, you’re not surprised. Jake makes a string of loud, grunting noises above you, sometimes muffled by your skin, sometimes not, and his hands grab your arms and body as his hips snap into yours with admirable strength. You wonder if he’s like this every time or if he’s really just letting it out after a long case of blue balls. If the first is correct, you feel sorry for Dirk. This seems more like a bonding exercise than anything, sleeping with the same man that he once did. You know part of what he’s been through, now, and you kind of get it. Which also means that you need to fix up the software to decode the right things because this is doing a lot of nothing for you. It’s fine, though. You don’t mind it at all. Jake pulls out and finishes over your stomach, and you’re glad because that’s much easier to wipe clean.

He lays on his back beside you on the mattress and heaves out a deep, long sigh of contentment. If he’s happy, then that means you weren’t half bad for a first time. You pat him on the shoulder and get up. A box of Kleenex sits on the bedside table as if the answer to your unprocessed wishes. “Did you have fun, buddy?” You ask him over your shoulder, wiping yourself clean as his greens bore into the side of your face. You can just make out a dopey smile on his face from this angle. “Yes,” he says, sounding satisfied, then adds, “but I hope to get something out of you next time, even if it’s just one moan. Or a gasp, or something. Radio silence is boring, you know.” Three things catch your immediate attention from this feedback, the first being how certain he sounds that there will be a next time, the second being that you forgot that humans scream their lungs out during sex!, and the third being that this motherfucker just called you boring. He just unloaded it onto you and called you boring! His audacity is astounding. You want to fucking hit him, square in the nose. You could break his goddamn face if you wanted to, but that wouldn’t be very cool, and you’re all about that faux detachment and pretentious aloofness, so you just make a point to add in sounds when you finesse the software. You’re kind of surprised that you forgot that, but given the hectic situation in which you found yourself at the time of making, it’s understandable.

Dressing up, you lean down to kiss him one last time. You don’t know why you do it, you just do it, and he leans up to meet you. It’s kind of cute, and your machinery vibrates in a strange way, so you make quick work of turning around and hauling ass out of here. He calls out a goodbye after you that you reply with one of your own, adding nothing much to it, and decidedly not promising to meet him anytime soon.

Chapter Text

Back at the apartment, your processors still run standard cleaning procedures, although you know that the silicon of your skin is already clean. It still sends you to stand under the shower and scrub yourself off, if just to get rid of the notification. It works, and satisfactory codes unravel before you, but that’s beside the point. While Dirk sleeps, you sit down on the couch and reprogram the new software from scratch. You spend far too many hours on this, trying to figure out the exact combination of codes that should be streamed down your veins during breaking and entering and you just can’t do it. You just can’t figure it out. You research, and you research a lot about endorphin and sex and climax, but one thing just doesn’t sit right with you. One question blinks in your brain nonstop, and one that you don’t have the capacity to answer. Why do humans have sex in the first place? Is it the adrenaline rush that it provides, is it the endorphin from orgasming, is it something else entirely? You know that Dirk did it because he wanted to indulge Jake, but what was Jake’s motive or goal? Especially with you, someone whom he has no emotional attachment to. You understand that seeing Dirk come completely undone at your hand must give out a good feeling, but you just... Don’t get it. There’s no feasible reason that you’d ever sleep with Jake if not for science, so you’re really at a loss here. It seems you’ve been, for the first time in your life, unsuccessful at something. You’re thoroughly puzzled over this. How astonishing.

TT: Hal.

TT: Can you bring me a glass of water?

Look who’s up. You briefly wonder if Dirk can answer your questions, however inconspicuous you’ll try to make them sound as you interview him. The chance is definitely now, while his guard is down and he’s probably still woozy from last night. You get up from the couch and bring him a tall glass, just because he’s hangover and deserves it. No use salting the wound as it is. “Here you go.” The tone you use is soft, should he bear a headache, and by the looks of it, or more accurately, from your reports on his current health state, he does. You set the glass on the nightstand as he hums in appreciation. “Thank you. Can you draw the blinds?” He has a forearm over his eyes, blocking out sunlight and luminosity from creeping behind his retinas and setting his pain receptors on fire. You do as told, climbing into his bed for the last one, then remaining there, on the empty space beside him. You lie down as he uncovers his face and sits up to sip on the water. He looks like a caged, injured animal recovering from a bombing. It’s adorable.

You realize that you should probably tell him about last night. He might not like it, he might try to disassemble you back into spare parts and pieces, or even shut you down for good, but there’s a moral code inside you pushing you to tell. It’s the right thing to do. Plus, if he doesn’t find out from you, then Jake will probably tell him, and you know that it’d be worse that way. For you, personally. You’ll let Jake take one for the team. You don’t think he’d mind, anyway. “So, Dirk, last night I...” Your throat catches, and you’re about to finish when he cuts you off. He waves dismissively and shakes his head the tiniest bit, which makes him wince all the same. “No, please, don’t... Don’t mention last night. Let’s just live it down in silence.” He finishes the glass and lays back down, turning to glance at you, and his eyes are so, so brightly orange that their intensity takes your breath away—figuratively speaking, of course, if you breathed to stay alive. Orange meets synthetic red as you two share a quietness that agrees in the unspoken. He was obviously referring to a different topic than you, but you can take a hint, and so you won’t tell him. You might tell him later, but not today and not now. You stash the revelation in a stand-by folder indefinitely.

“Then, can I ask you something?” Your voice is soft and he appreciates it. He nods, so you continue. “What is the emotional goal behind sex?” You figure that there should be one, otherwise couples in love wouldn’t have a reason to stay committed exclusively to each other, sexually speaking, if not for social norms. Dirk gives you a puzzled look, not catching where this comes from, or why you would ever have any interest in this topic at all. You don’t chastise him for it because he makes a good point. You have no reason to be digging into sexuality, not having been built for it or programmed to be interested by it, but you still find yourself deep in it anyway. It’s all for science, and if your experiment works out, then Dirk might have another chance at love with a mindless dumbass that somehow captured his undivided adoration so long ago.

He watches you, clearly trying to access your software, but not having the glasses over his eyes makes that impossible to accomplish. Not interested in the labor of reaching for them and putting them on just for this, he settles for watching you intently. For some reason, that decodes something nice in your chest, something you dare call attention, if anything at all. It causes synthetic blood to gather across your nose ridge, but you’re past scanning it for any existential reason. When around Dirk, both your hardware and software malfunction for no discernible reason, which you’ve come to tell yourself that it’s signal interference between the waves of your machinery and of his machines. Maybe even the glasses. You can’t know for sure, but this is your best bet and you’ll stand by it.

“Emotional in which sense?” He slits his eyes at you, and you’re a little transfixed by them. You don’t need light to be able to see, and the intensity of his orange hues is enough to send you in a trance. It’s very rare to see him without glasses, and although it’s true that the camera on them allows you to see his eyes whenever it strikes your fancy, this is still different. This is Dirk’s entire face, out in the open, scrutinizing you and it feels delicious. “In the sense of, why do two people in love want to show their love through sex?” At your response, he looks wised up. It’s in the rise of his brows. Before he even speaks, you’re already glad that you’ll finally get an answer to all of this. “Because humans like to display love and affection through gestures rather than spoken words. Sure, we say it, but showing it is proof of that. Saying it is easy, but if you really mean it, you’ll do something about it. You’ll kiss and hold hands and fuck and whatever else.” He adds a half-shrug to the end of that, and you realize that he hasn’t explained a single thing that you actually want to know. Sex isn’t proof of anything other than primal instincts, as far as you’re led to believe. But then again, why would the thought of sleeping with Dirk be so much more alluring to you than sleeping with anyone else, say, Jake, for example? Because you like him better than Jake? Then why don’t you want to have sex with yourself, if you like yourself the most? It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t.

Dirk looks wary at the blank expression on your face as your internal processors all fry up and crash, never, ever to understand the emotional reason behind intercourse, so you offer him a nod, at the very least. A slow, not entirely sure and very indecisive nod that he reads right through with optimal ease, not unexpected from him. “What can’t you process from that?” His question is a tad too technical, but you take it in stride, pretending it to be more humane than it is, just for your own personal pleasure. “I understand you perfectly, but that just doesn’t answer my question.” This seems to elicit some kind of apathy from him, since he suddenly doesn’t look to be as engaged in this conversation as he was a minute ago. In fact, he looks very over it. “Well, then I guess I can’t help you with it. Why don’t you go ahead and ask Jake? He’s your best candidate out of us all.” Oh, no. You highly dislike how right he is with that assumption. Interviewing Jake is sure to bring you fruitful findings, and maybe even answers to many other questions that you’ve stored within your bank as well, but, God. Terminal shutdown sounds sweeter than seeing his face again so soon.

As Dirk closes his eyes and goes silent beside you, obviously resuming his sleep, you decide to remove all emotional involvement from your software, knowing that mimicking human intercourse without personal gain is a far less troublesome programming choice for you and, frankly, you’re not even sure that getting into it would be worthwhile in the slightest. Maybe Dirk’s sudden detachment from the whole subject was a hint for you to do the same. You don’t forget to add in sounds this time, for nothing but Jake’s amusement, and you can’t help but eye roll during the entire minute that takes you to do it. This plan of yours better work, and Dirk and Jake better start getting along again, and Dirk better start feeling happiness soon or you will personally self-destruct and block Jake’s contact from your list, wipe clean any memory of him and never interact with him again until his humanoid body fails to continue on living. If all of this is in vain, you’ll be very disappointed with yourself, even if, for science, this is a huge gold mine. A study is a study, and collected data is valuable, regardless if it reaches your set goal or not.

Despite how fast you want to get your plan moving along, it doesn’t really begin until after the third time you and Jake meet, which is when your calculations showed best results to plant the seed of compassion in Jake’s brain to push him back over to Dirk. You’re already cleaned up, and for some reason he wants you to stay a minute longer to cuddle, which you really would rather not, but since you must talk to him, you agree and let him pull you into what you can only describe as a body lock, squeezing you into his strong arms. You could easily break his nose and free yourself if you wanted to, so you’re not worried about it. “Hey, Jake,” you begin, twisting around to make eye contact with him and finding a drowsy man with eyes closed and a wide, sleepy smile that makes you want you slap his face for attention, “Jake. English, are you listening?” He hums contently above you, still only half-conscious, so this time you do free an arm from his lock and gently slap your palm on his face, a few times for good measure, until his eyes finally open and a big breath fills his lungs. “Yes? Yes.” He blinks a couple of times, which is a good enough sign for you, so you resume. “So, tell me. You and I seem to be getting along fairly well, as far as carnal sin is concerned, but don’t you feel something lacking? Something... Emotional. A spark of feeling, a deeper meaning to all of it.”

Jake looks thoughtful at your words, seeming to take this into account and really consider it before opening his big, dumb mouth. It’s the first time that you see him think before speaking, and if you’re being quite frank with yourself, this is probably the result of your higher intelligence influencing his under-developed brain. It causes nice codes to run around in your veins, flattering you as he thinks. “Are you... Trying to go steady with me? I mean, we don’t talk much, that’s true, but I thought it was part of the whole casual thing, you know? But if you want us to be official, I guess I can see it. I’ll definitely give it my best, I just... I don’t know what Dirk would say about this. I don’t think he’ll like it very much.” Jake may look dumb, and he may say dumb things, but you never thought that he’d be this fucking deprived of cognition. It sends you reeling, honestly, in absolute surprise. It must show on your face because he eventually stops speaking, which is the first smart thing you’ve seen him do so far. “Um, no. No. I surely don’t want that. I couldn’t want less from you, in fact. No. What I’m saying is, this isn’t a real relationship and I have no intention to make it so. This is sexual discharge and nothing else. The relationship part isn’t supposed to be filled by me, it’s supposed to be Dirk’s job. You should go to him for it. Try it out again, but this time with less harassment.”

It takes a while for Jake to get accustomed to this idea. He outright rejects it first thing, and you’re grateful about his transparency and the forwardness that doesn’t waste your time, so you set to convince him to at least try it. No harm in that, just talk to Dirk. Hit him up, ask him out. It doesn’t have to be on a date, it can be to just “hang out” together. Spend time around each other, as friends. Buddies, like they used to be. Jake resists this, but your arguments are a level above his, so, eventually, his endurance runs out and crumbles beneath your wishes and he agrees to see Dirk sometime this week. You grin, and you grin wide, because this is exactly what Dirk liked about his relationship with Jake, the way that they would just go out together and enjoy each other’s company. Dirk isn’t about the grabby and touchy parts, he’s all about the adventures together and the deep, brooding talks late at night underneath the twinkling stars, and Jake might be able to give this all back to him now. At least he will try to, and to you, that’s a win in itself. You only hope that Dirk feels the same when it happens. You’re excited to hear it from him. You’re excited for the late, late night talks, when he gets home right after seeing Jake and sits down with you and his eyes are so bright, and there’s something burning in his chest, absolute passion, and he tells you little things about the day he just had. He doesn’t say much, he never does, but the enthusiasm and sheer bliss in his breath are enough to brighten up everything and send you into an indescribable state of being that has yet to be beaten.

You make sure to tell Jake not to mention your arrangement to Dirk, and you stress this enough for him not to forget it. The importance of that is far too crucial. He nods, repeating himself saying that he won’t, he promises, and so you thank him and move to leave. He seizes you and begs for another kiss, so you roll your eyes and connects your lips to his very briefly before waltzing the fuck out of here, already impatient for what the future holds.

If it were up to you, they’d meet in the next hour, but as it isn’t, it takes Jake a couple of days to finally build up the courage to text him. You see when it happens. You’re there when Dirk’s face pales and his brows crease. He rereads the text about a hundred times before minimizing the window and turning to look at you. You’re both sitting on the futon, so you turn down the TV to hear him speak, loud and clear, your favorite melody. “Jake just fucking texted me, asking to hang out.” He sounds perplexed and you love it. You almost smile, but manage to keep yourself in line. “After three years of radio silence?” The tone you use is a little surprised, but not very, and trying to be cool about it. Kind of what Dirk would sound like if your roles were reversed. He nods a little, still at a loss. “Yeah. What do you think he wants?” Dirk looks at you for an honest answer, expecting your opinion, hopefully to be on par with his. Since you’re a people pleaser, you give it to him. “A friend.” Your answer sparks doubt in him, so you follow it up with something more elaborate. “I think he’s tired of being alone in that stupid mansion all by himself, living his days without a best friend, and finally had the balls to mend the friendship between the two of you. Either that, or he’s gone officially cuckoo. If you want my two cents on it, I think this last one is more likely, so watch out.”

He doesn’t look very amused by your jokes, but not at your fault. They’re good, and usually successful with him, but he’s just not feeling it right now. He’s too perplexed to feel anything at the moment, which you can respect, given the situation. “What does he want? You talk to him, right? What does he want from me?” This isn’t the kind of doubt that a person in love with another would have, you don’t think. Is he still in love with Jake, though? You’re fairly certain about this, but the small percentage that causes you to doubt it distresses you some. “Why would I talk to him?” You deviate the subject from its original point, so Dirk dances around it a little to get back to it. He’s good, too. “He takes you shopping every once in a while. You already maintain more contact with him than I do, so what does he want with this? He hasn’t said a single word to me ever since we broke up, and I don’t mean the few times that you’ve made him take the elevator up and made me open the door. You’re a fucking asshole, by the way, but that’s beside the point.” His anger is completely justified, although misplaced given the current scenario, but he’s only a human, and so you let it pass. You’ve long learned to understand that human emotions are utterly uncontrollable and blossom at the most inappropriate times. “He takes me shopping because I’m convenient, not because we’re friends. Which, I’ll have you know, we aren’t. But if you want me to interrogate him in your place because you’re too much of a fucking chicken to go out and ask him face to face, I’ll gladly be your wingman.”

That shuts him up for a good two seconds as he maximizes the chat window and replies positively to Jake’s invitation. You grin, watching white dread spread across his face. It’s gorgeous. “Was that so hard?” Your grin widens at your own words, then slowly fades the longer his state of shock goes on for. It almost makes you worry, if the health scans that you run on him weren’t coming back positively every single time. “That wasn’t the hard part.”

Chapter Text

The moment you long for arrives with Dirk, late the next day, as he comes home from seeing his beloved ex-boyfriend. You didn’t spectate their meetup, not because that’s above you, since it clearly isn’t, but because Dirk wore a different pair of shades to it, one that you haven’t tampered with to implement your AI on. Which is fine, you don’t mind it. You doubt that you’d actually watch the awkward silences and their weird body language for two hours and a half. At least, that’s only your guess. Dirk is just about to sit down and confirm all of it. You don’t say a thing beyond a warm welcome, in fear that it’d put him off from saying anything, and just watch as he greets you back and takes the seat next to you on the futon. He never kills the buffer seat unless something big is going on. You’re almost too giddy to stay put, but almost is keyword.

At first, he doesn’t open his mouth. He sits there in silence for a while, passively watching Pawn Stars next to you as your thighs touch and crash reports begin to flood your systems, all failing and restarting on their own. You briefly wonder about the kind of gadget that he’s got on himself that’s causing a magnetic field of such power and scale to interfere with even your new voice box, and why he should need it. But then again, all precaution is little when it comes down to Jake English. A quick magnetic scan reveals nothing on him besides his phone, but you can’t very well trust something that immediately after reports a failure.

“I think I’m over Jake.” His voice is quiet and the words are formed slowly, thoughtfully, as if Dirk were savoring each one of them. As if their meaning dawns on him as he speaks them and it renders you speechless. The outcome of such an emotional reunion, to you, should have caused old feelings to surface. You guess you obviously know nothing about humans or how they work. “Go figure.” You make sure to sound just surprised enough to get him talking more, to explain this whole situation to you and solve the puzzle nestling in your brain. It works, as it always does, and he continues. “I thought it’d be bad. I thought it was a mistake to see him again and have that old gash reopened, but it was nothing like I was expecting. He was... Nice. Nice like he’s always been, like the old Jake that I know, and for all that’s worth, it should be bad, it should be devastating, but it really wasn’t. We had a very nice time together, just hanging out by the cliff and watching the stars and zigzagging around trees. It wasn’t forced, it was just nice. It felt good to be with him like in the old days before we even considered ruining our friendship... And, you know, it made me realize that... That’s what I wanted. That’s what I’ve always wanted, to just be his friend. Just have him in my life, you know? We don’t have to make a life together, or anything more than that. It’d just be nice to have him there sometimes while we live our separate lives.”

He looks over at you and you’re at a desperate lack of what to say, what to do. This is groundbreaking. You never thought you’d hear such unimaginable words from him. You are, for lack of a better expression, completely blown away. You don’t respond, and he doesn’t seem to mind. You’ve never seen him so Zen in your entire life. Is this even the man you know? He opens his mouth again, so you refocus to pay attention to him. “What does that sound to you, Hal? Because I think I finally realized that I’m okay with our breakup. I’m actually glad about it. I mean, looking back, it was bad. It was really bad. I didn’t have a good time at all and it made me resent him, a lot. But now... I don’t know. Thinking of him as my friend once again feels better than thinking of him as my boyfriend. That word alone makes me feel pressured.” A shiver runs down Dirk’s back, making him hunch his shoulders a little bit, so slight and barely there. Hard to notice by the untrained eye, but you’re nothing if not trained in reading him. “I never saw this, being too busy mourning over him, and over how things could’ve been, but I’m happy with how my life is headed without him. Not that I wouldn’t like to have him in it as my friend, though, but his presence doesn’t dictate how I feel. What I’m trying to say is... I think I finally, truly moved on, and I’m okay with that.”

There’s something in his face, in the shine of his eyes and the dimples of his smile that makes him radiant, it makes him more beautiful than he’s ever been, and that’s saying a lot coming from you, his number one fan. (Also his proudly-declared nemesis, but not right now. Definitely not right now.) He offers you a smile, and it’s so faint and so small but it holds so much meaning. It’s sincere, straight from the heart, not trying to impress you with how bright or wide it is, but letting you know that what he’s feeling, the fulfillment in his chest and the peace in his heart, is real. You’re flabbergasted. It’s an understatement to say that your CPU is too fried up to form comprehensible words in response to his opening up, but he might not need that, because he continues. “You know, I’m okay with how things are. I’m okay with building stuff and repairing stuff and running a dumb website that surprisingly allows me to keep doing that on my spare time, and I’m okay with not growing old with anybody. I guess I’ll grow old beside you, if you stick with me long enough for that.” He rests a hand on your shoulder and taps on it, causing your entire AI to shut down and restart. You can’t believe what’s happening. This almost feels like a self-indulgent dream of sorts, where Dirk Strider no longer is fixated on his stupid ex-boyfriend and decides to be by your side instead. Indefinitely, possibly until multiple organ failure, or forever, if he ever finds out a way to successfully implant his brain into a series of machinations that won’t create a second version of you.

This is something you never thought would happen.

“I’m very happy for you, Dirk, that’s wonderful. Metaphorically speaking, of course. If an artificial mind could feel emotions, I’d be ecstatic for you. It sounds, to me, like you’ve finally grown.” You smile up at him and allow yourself to savor the warmth of his hand still on clasped on your shoulder. His smile widens. “You can feel, I think. At least, you should be able to, because I tried my best to make it happen. Guess I didn’t succeed.” Dirk grows pensive at his own words, almost in reflective disappointment. This is news to you. You didn’t know that he had actually burdened the challenge of coding emotions into your system. In retrospect, this sort of knowledge changes everything. This changes... Everything. It changes everything so much that you’re afraid to realize just how much you actually like Dirk, if you can really process emotions, like he says. He... He’s... Oh, God, he’s everything. He’s your everything. You don’t know what the crash reports that multiply when you’re around him mean, but if the positive codes running in your artificial bloodstream are his definition of human emotion, or parallel, then you must like him a lot. Too much, probably. Too damn fucking much. “No, don’t worry. You nailed it.”

There was so much life-changing, groundbreaking information thrown at you earlier that you almost forgot that Jake still is a problem. When Dirk said that Jake is no longer a crucial part of his life, your CPU trashed him immediately, as if on instinct, and you forgot that he was part of the reason why all of this happened in the first place. It’s his fault, albeit not entirely, because it’s also your fault, too. Not that you mind. In fact, you kind of love it. That’s why, when Jake texts you very late at night, it catches you off-guard. You weren’t expecting a single peep from him for the rest of his life, now that he’s not in yours anymore. Or, at least, as far as Dirk is involved (which is pretty much all of it.)

GT: Hey hal i talked to dirk like you told me to.

GT: He probably told you this already though.

GT: Anyway thank you so much for pushing me to do that! :)

GT: It made me realize how much i miss him.

GT: How much he still means to me...

GT: It was stupid breaking up with him.

GT: I think im going to ask him out tomorrow to talk this out.

TT: Jake.

God, you almost feel bad for him. How can you even say this without hurting his fragile human feelings? You’re not going to lead him on, it would just complicate things. You have to be as straightforward and clear as possible, while doing your best not to hurt him too much. This is a losing battle on its own, and you’re responsible for his involvement. Still, you’re glad that it was the answer to all of Dirk’s anxieties and arrested development, even at the cost of someone else’s feelings. Yikes. It was the only way.

TT: Jake, I talked to him. Unfortunately, he’s not interested in resuming your earlier relationship. He would, however, like to remain friends, if you’re up for it.

TT: I’m sorry.

GT: What?

GT: Are you sure?

GT: He seemed so happy today i dont understand.

TT: He was happy to be speaking to you in friendly terms again, please don’t misinterpret his reaction.

TT: He likes you very much but platonically.

GT: But you told me to get back with him. Why would you do that if he didnt want it too?

TT: I didn’t know that he had moved on. I apologize for my misreading of his feelings, and passing false information over to you. If I had known that he doesn’t feel the same, I would never have suggested that. I’m very sorry, Jake.

GT: This blows.

GT: This really blows.

GT: Im glad i have you.

Oh, no. Oh... Oh, no. Oh, boy, this can’t get any worse.

TT: Jake, I don’t think our arrangement should continue, not after today. It would be really immoral to maintain casual encounters with you now that Dirk is your friend. I’m afraid we must cancel it.

GT: You make perfect sense hal but i really wish we didnt have to.

GT: Cant it be a secret between us?

TT: Do you have the heart to do this to Dirk right under his nose?

GT: :(

GT: No.

TT: Exactly.

TT: I’m sorry, Jake.

GT: Me too.

You close the chat window, but you’re not sorry. You’re not sorry in the slightest. In fact, this might just have been the best day since your assembly. The corners of your mouth insist on curling upward, so you let them, smiling wide into the darkness of Dirk’s room, silence engulfing the both of you as he sleeps peacefully in bed. Your eyes fall on him absently, and you can’t help the way that your lugs expand on their own and the smile on your face brightens. You’re not so sure what this means, but the way that everything turned out perfectly aligned with your personal interests, somehow, and this is the positive outcome of it all. You, and Dirk, and nobody in between. Heaven can’t be anything but a place on Earth.