Chapter Text
Androids weren’t as indispensable as human beings were. If an android wasn’t reparable, it would only make sense to throw it away. An android was a creation of utility, for a specific purpose. There were droids in pretty much every job one could imagine. They didn’t replace humans, not by a long shot. Cheaper androids were used for repetitive, menial tasks. If you wanted something with actual intelligence or finesse, things started to get a lot more expensive. The better quality droids were usually reserved for entertainment and were only appreciated by the hyper wealthy.
At least, they’re enjoyed by the hyper wealthy until they break and are deemed unfixable by the local droid mechanic like Johnny had been. And now here he was, laying in some dump far from the glittering lights and luxury he had been manufactured for. His legs were mangled and broken, wires and metal skeleton exposed for the sun to wreak its damage upon. He remembered years ago, when he had first been turned on, he had genuinely doubted that he was an android. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable, he was expensive enough that he mostly passed for a human.
How naive he had been.
His body had broken, and like any machine he was now sitting on a heap of trash and waiting for the slow decay of the elements or for some other intervention to finally end it all. Whether the intervention was a curious animal or an opportunistic human looking to scrap him for parts, he just wished they’d hurry the fuck up . He didn’t even know how long he’d been here, but he was so fucking bored . The most exciting events in his life lately had been a crane dropping a pile of trash near his makeshift shelter he had managed to pull together when crawling around the junkyard, and a vulture who had mistaken him for a human attempting to peck at him.
He didn’t sleep, didn’t need to, but lately he had just spent most of his time laying on the ground with his eyes closed. The only interruptions to this long term meditation being when he had to push himself into the sunlight to recharge his battery.
Why hadn’t he let the battery die by now? His life was over anyway, and he was going to eventually go crazy from the boredom. He could just let it die and he’d power down to never turn back on. Then he would truly sleep. Forever.
But he couldn’t do it. Every time he got the notification that his battery was low, he found himself instinctually pushing himself into the light to recharge. He couldn’t face whatever oblivion dead androids went to. Not yet. Even if he had spent days and days at this dump, to the point where his once human-like skin had begun to dry out and take on a more silicone-like texture. He had been able to turn off the mimicry settings that made him breathe and blink to appear more human. The novelty of that liberation had worn off fairly quickly. If a human could see him now, he was sure he’d sit at the peak of the uncanny valley.
When he grew tired of keeping his eyes shut, he’d watch the traffic in the sky or the horizon of the nearby city and imagine the various lives that people might have been living. Sometimes he’d imagine himself as a human, living a normal life. It was painful, but at least it was something to think about rather than ruminate in the nothingness that was now his life.
That nothingness was finally interrupted by distant singing. Not good singing, mind you. It was the obnoxious and tone deaf singing of a person entertaining themselves while working. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but it was getting closer. Johnny realized as he began using the internet to translate that the voice was singing in Italian.
Johnny didn’t have the energy or motivation to hide, so he continued to lay on the ground and stare up at the sky, watching the cars fly overhead. If this was someone coming to scrap him for parts, he at least wanted a nice view before he met his end.
Any human in his situation would have had to blink or reflexively react to a person walking over to them while they lay on the ground, but since Johnny wasn’t a human he didn’t do any of that. He was still as a corpse as a tall man with long, sandy hair and a broad-brimmed hat walked over and took a look at his person lying on the ground. The man had a backpack and a belt full of various tools. Johnny felt the insatiable urge to swat at him as he blocked his view of the sky and grinned down at the android with a mouth full of golden teeth.
“Well, lookie what I found!” The man knelt down, his face inches from Johnny’s. “An entertainment droid at the dump! I hit the jackpot today, nyoho!”
Nyoho? Nyoho ? What kind of sound was that for a human to make? Was it a laugh? No. He had to stay still for now.
That became harder as the man began toying with his limbs and bending them. He felt a jolt of pain as the man bent his bad arm. While he hadn’t hurt his arms in his accident, that arms metal skeleton had gotten slightly bent when he had been tossed out here, and since he still had pain receptors installed, when the man bent the limb, it felt like he was bending and moving a broken arm. Johnny’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, but that was the only expression of pain he allowed.
“Wow, other than the legs, you are in perfect condition, mio amico ! I am gonna make a ton of credits off your parts.” The man’s face was over his again, grinning wide. “Thanks, man.”
Johnny replied casually, seeming to come to life. “No problem.”
“AHHHHH!” The man jolted away from Johnny in terror, launching himself away from the suddenly alive droid.
Johnny held his stomach as he cackled. “Your face! You shoulda seen your face!” He used his good arm to push himself into a sitting position. He mimicked the Italian man’s look of sheer horror, then burst out giggling.
The Italian glared hotly at him. “That wasn’t funny! How was I supposed to know your battery wasn’t dead!” The man scooted back over to him and poked his stomach. “You scared me to death, cazzone !”
Johnny grinned, ignoring the cracking of his lips. “I been stuck here for a while, I needed that.”
The man’s anger softened into…concern? “Based on the texture of your skin, you’ve been out here, what? Two weeks? Maybe three?” He scooted closer. “You’ve been turned on that whole time, out here by yourself?”
Johnny nodded. “Yep. Mechanic said my legs were completely fuckin’ busted, so I was tossed in the garbage.” He shrugged. “So… you’re gonna scrap me?”
The Italian man shook his head. “Are you kidding me? An operational entertainment droid? Once you get a good shower and get cleaned up, you’re gonna make me the coolest guy in my neighborhood!” The man grinned. “I’m sure that mechanic was some two-bit piece of shit who didn’t know a chassis from a servo, I used to work for one of the biggest android manufacturers in the world as a dev. I’ll be able to fix you up.”
Johnny couldn’t help but perk up at that. If he could get his legs fixed, maybe he’d be able to escape this sleazy looking weirdo. “You really think you can fix me?”
“Yeah, might need to replace some stuff. Are you installed with pain receptors?”
Johnny frowned. “Yeah, why?”
The man hissed through his teeth. “That might suck for you.” He pushed himself up onto his feet. “So…an athlete droid?”
Johnny nodded, putting a pin in Gyro’s statement about the reparation process sucking due to his functional pain receptors. “How’d you guess?”
He shrugged. “Well, most droids don’t get pain receptors unless they’re doing heavy labor or athletics to be able to alert that something is being strained or broken within their circuitry. You’re way too pretty and expensive looking to be a manufacturing or labor droid.” The Italian looked around the dump. “My car isn’t too far from here, you mind me carrying you?”
Johnny pursed his lips, hating the idea of being treated like a broken machine, but what would he do? Crawl around this junkyard and get snagged on some exposed wires and glass and cause further damage? He could only hold his arms out like a toddler rather than voice consent. Even if this was necessary, his pride wouldn’t let him verbalize his need for assistance.
He was scooped up by strong arms, finally lifted from the ground and dust of this junkyard. “I’m Gyro, by the way.”
Johnny couldn’t help but feel a bit taken aback at being carried in a bridal style like this. It felt way too intimate to be carried this way by a stranger, but then again he’d already sunk to the very pit of pathetic. “Johnny.”
“Johnny, please for the love of god turn your mimicry settings back on, you’re gonna give me nightmares if you keep staring into the void like that.”
“You just said you were a droid dev, shouldn’t you be used to androids looking this way?”
“Yeah, and I always made sure to turn on mimicry before testing ANY of you fuckers.” Gyro grumbled as he cautiously stepped over hazardous debris. “It’s just common courtesy if you’re an HRD.”
“HRD?” While Johnny himself was an android, Gyro seemed to know a lot more technical lingo when it came to his kind. Maybe he really was telling the truth about being a dev.
“Human replica droid. A lot goes into making you look human, so when you turn those settings off it triggers the uncanny valley in a way that nothing else in this world can. It freaks me out. I still have bad dreams about it sometimes.”
Johnny scowled. “Why do I have to cater my appearance and mannerisms for you?”
Gyro glanced down at him. “Consider it a thank you for pulling you out of the scrap pile.” The cheerfulness he’d had earlier was completely gone, and his bright green eyes had a hint of panic in them. This wasn’t casual banter anymore, Gyro was begging him.
Johnny sighed, turning the settings back on. Doing so caused him to reflexively blink rapidly and take in a heaving deep breath. Once his settings adjusted, he nodded. “That’s fair, I guess.”
“Thank you.” Gyro mumbled. “My car’s just a couple meters away.”
“Good.” Johnny looked away from Gyro. He had wanted to ask why Gyro was so freaked out about androids despite working on them, but was interrupted as he got a look at Gyro’s car. “Jesus Christ, you’re not driving that thing are you? That’s just a piece of trash, right?”
He looked at Gyro for assurance and only received a wide, golden grin. “My baby! After I left the company and started scrapping stuff from the junkyard, I revamped her.”
Johnny’s face curdled into a look of disgust. “Are you crazy? That thing’s a fossil! It still has rubber tires! It’s gotta be at least a hundred years old!”
“She has a name. Valkyrie’s a 1971 Ford Thunderbird, so she’s well over a century old. You should have more respect for your elders, nyoho!”
“You’re really comparing me to some shitty pollution machine?” Johnny sneered at the obnoxiously purple car.
Gyro faked a gasp of offense as he set Johnny on the ground and unlocked the car door. “Just because she can’t fly doesn’t mean she isn’t perfect just the way she is! And she’s not a pollution machine anymore, I had to replace the engine. You couldn’t get an internal combustion engine to work these days. I certainly tried, the sound of the muffler would have been so cool!”
Johnny laid his head on the ground and sighed, debating whether to try and drag himself back to the dump to escape this absolute crackhead of a man. The guy said he was a former dev, and a job like that would have at least given him financial comfort. If he still had the job, he would have been able to afford to live a life similar to the ones Johnny had once entertained. But this guy was foraging for scrap and driving garbage, which meant he was at the bottom of the bottom of modern society. If he had once been a dev, he had really let himself go to be living like this.
“How come you didn’t take a job working as a mechanic or something after quitting? You could at least support yourself that way.”
Gyro paused as he opened the rear driver’s side door. “I don’t work with androids anymore. You’re the first droid I’ve seen since I left the company.” His tone was sharp and sudden, as if slamming the door on the subject as he grabbed Johnny by the armpits to pull him towards the car.
Once Johnny was comfortably inside the car (as comfortable as he could get with his fucked up legs) and Gyro was in the driver’s seat, he decided to make another attempt to learn more about his…savior. “So what do you do other than scrapping?”
Gyro keyed the ignition. “Well, I worked on HRD’s, which required a lot of medical and anatomical knowledge of the human body. You’d be surprised if I opened you up how much of your insides resemble a human’s. I work at a medical clinic. We can cover your legs and pretend you’re a human there if anyone starts asking questions about how we got ahold of an HRD.”
Johnny really didn’t like the idea of being opened up, so he took Gyro’s word for if his internal machinery resembled human organs or not. “So…you’re a doctor?”
“No. I didn’t go to medical school, and I don’t have a medical degree. I’m…basically the only medical care people around here can afford.” Gyro spoke as he turned to drive on the dirt road heading into the shanty town nearby. Most roads weren’t well maintained these days, since most people used flying cars.
Johnny frowned. “That’s awful, what if someone needs surgery or a specialist?”
Gyro shrugged. “I’ve done a couple surgeries and they turned out okay. And if you’re living here, you don’t see a specialist. That’s just how it is.” He sighed. “I’m as good as it gets with my cybernetics and knowledge from my old job. Some of the locals will steal drugs from the city and that’s how we survive.” He glanced back at Johnny, and he noticed the Italian’s green eyes glowing dimly now that they were in the shade of the car.
After a few minutes of silence, Johnny spoke again. “Do you like being here?” He couldn’t imagine why anyone would enjoy living here. Most of the buildings had broken windows and something collapsing. The people here looked dirty, with cybernetics that were either out of date or broken. He had thought Gyro looked sleazy when first meeting him, but it seemed he was above average when it came to citizens of this town.
Johnny could see Gyro smile a bit in his rearview mirror. “Yeah, I do. I like helping people, especially those who really need it. It might seem like shit, but it’s become my home the past few years. Everyone here knows each other, pretty much, and we all stick together and take care of each other. You don’t get that kinda community anymore these days, so it’s a rare and special thing to see in action.”
“If you say so…” Johnny replied wistfully as he stared out the window to watch dilapidated buildings go by. Gyro seemed like a nice person, despite his…eccentricities. The thought of taking advantage of Gyro’s help and escaping quickly became more difficult and guilt-ridden.
As the man drove, Johnny realized that there was no reason for him to even try to escape this place. Where would he go? Back to the rich people and horse racing? They wouldn’t just take him back after throwing him away. Even if he was fixed up, he was still without purpose. That realization after feeling a shred of hope made Johnny’s metaphorical heart sink. “Are we there yet?” He asked to try and pull his mind away from this awful train of thought.
“Jesus, living with rich people made you impatient. I live over the diner that’s a few blocks away.”
Johnny only rolled his eyes in response and went back to watching out the car window.
Sure enough, the car finally slowed down and came to a stop on the street in front of a bar. Johnny hoped there was a robot god he could pray to to ask them to keep them away from anyone that might be in the diner. While being out of the dump was surreal and a dream come true, he was not ready to interact with people.
Other than Gyro. Gyro was okay. But everyone else needed to leave him alone.
Speak of the devil, the Italian opened the door to begin pulling Johnny out of the car. When he was far enough out of the car, Johnny grabbed Gyro’s shoulders for support to pull himself out.
“Your legs don’t hurt, do they?” Gyro’s tone was concerned as he lifted Johnny out of the car.
Johnny shook his head. “They’ve hurt since the accident, it’s something I’ve had to get used to.”
Gyro pursed his lips. “Let’s see if I can fix that when we get upstairs.”
“Why?” The android frowned. “Why are you so willing to help me? It’ll probably cost credits to fix me up. It’s not like I can help you in the meantime.”
Gyro grunted as he steadied his feet while taking on Johnny’s weight. “Told you, it’ll be cool to have an HRD here. And we can easily steal what we need.” Gyro grinned down at him in an attempt at reassurance, but the kooky smile did anything but. “I couldn’t just leave you out there, I couldn’t imagine being stuck out there all by myself. I’d go crazy.”
“I’m an android, I don’t need to socialize and do stuff like eat and drink water like you do.” Even so, Gyro was right. He had been losing his mind out there. It was still hard to believe he had finally left.
As Gyro approached the diner, Johnny had hoped that there would be some kind of side door or something for Gyro to use to get to his apartment above. However, once they got close enough, the door to the bar opened and a woman with a short, pink bob stepped out. “What the hell is that?” She scowled at them.
“Found one of those fancy entertainment androids at the dump!” Gyro chirruped.
“What did I say about bringing shit home from there?”
Gyro scoffed. “C’mon, HP, how am I supposed to pass on a find like this? He’s conscious and everything! Say hello, Johnny!”
Johnny looked at the woman with wide eyes. “Hello.”
Hot Pants sighed and held the bridge of her nose. “I swear to god, if I find out you stole a fucking android from rich people I will kill you myself.”
“Not stolen! They threw away a perfectly good HRD!”
Johnny raised his eyebrows. “My legs have exposed wires and metal hanging out.” He looked at Hot Pants. “I was an athlete droid and they said my legs aren’t fixable.”
Hot Pants’ eyes softened. “Really? They just threw you away and you were stuck out at the dump like that?”
Johnny shrugged. “I mean, I’m useless now.”
Hot Pants pursed her lips and stepped aside, holding the door open. “Come inside, let’s give Gyro a break before taking you upstairs.”
“Oh thank god.” Gyro breathed as he rushed past Hot Pants, clearly out of breath as he struggled to keep his hold on Johnny. The android had feared the man would drop him just before setting him down in the nearest open booth.
Once Gyro had sat down and managed to catch his breath, he looked over at Johnny. “Can you eat and drink?”
Johnny shrugged. “A little.”
“You like coffee?”
Johnny nodded.
Gyro looked over at Hot Pants. “Two coffees, please.”
Hot Pants raised an eyebrow as she glanced at Johnny, but didn’t question the request. People who lived in these conditions had probably never seen an android like him before, let alone understood his different…features. Johnny could do pretty much anything a human could do, it was just that he didn’t need to do it the way a human did. Johnny didn’t eat or drink a lot or particularly often when he had done it in the past, but it was a lot like chewing gum for humans. It was a nice, stimulating experience and tasted good, but there was zero nutritional value to the activity.
When she set down two coffee mugs in front of them, his own mug had a chip in it. He sipped the coffee and found the taste to be stale and bitter, but the feeling of something warm going down his throat felt nice. “Not bad.” Johnny mumbled.
Gyro raised an eyebrow. “You must not have taste buds.” He sipped his own coffee and grimaced when setting his mug back down.
Johnny frowned. “I do, I was just tryna be polite.”
Gyro rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Once we’re done, I’ll take you upstairs and see if I can start working on your code to shut off your pain receptors. I might be able to do it, depending on what systems you’re using. I can’t really do anything physical until I take you to the clinic tomorrow morning where all of my tools are.”
The concept of not experiencing a constant razor’s edge of pain seemed foreign to Johnny, despite it only being his normal since his accident a few weeks ago. This all seemed too good to be true. Like any minute he’d realized this was some vivid fantasy his mind had created and he’d be back at that dump. “That’s…awfully kind of you. I have no idea how I’ll ever repay you for helping me like this. Especially if it turns out that you can’t fix me.”
Gyro pursed his lips and set his coffee down. “Johnny…this isn’t something I expect to be repaid for. You needed help, and I helped you. Leaving you out there would have been cruel.”
“I’m not a human. I’m an android, and a broken one at that.” Gyro had been a dev, why wasn’t he understanding this? “Even if you fix my legs, I can’t just go back to my owner and pretend like nothing happened.”
“Johnny-”
“You humans have written thousands of words worth of books and philosophies about what your purpose is.” Why wasn’t Gyro understanding this? He should have known better than anyone, if his background was really true. “Androids know what their purpose is. Mine was to compete in horse racing for the entertainment of wealthy humans. I can’t do that anymore.”
Gyro grit his teeth, it seemed that Johnny had hit a nerve. “Why does that matter? Why the fuck do you have to have that as a reason to exist?”
Johnny ignored the rising volume of the human’s voice. “No matter how advanced androids become, that’s what separates a human from a droid. An android knows what they are made for, a concrete, objective meaning to their life; being unable to fulfill that reason to exist is tantamount to a human losing their own subjective, perceived purpose. Can you imagine how that would feel for you, Gyro? Wouldn’t you wanna die if that happened?”
Instead of answering reasonably, Gyro growled and threw his mug onto the floor, making Johnny jump a bit at the sound of the ceramic shattering. He stood up, then without any retort or farewell left the small diner.
Johnny was left to sip his coffee in silence until Hot Pants came over with a dustpan and broom. “He’s paying for that mug.” She growled, glaring at the entrance to the diner where Gyro had stormed out just a few minutes ago.
“Why did he get so angry?” Johnny mumbled, still perplexed. He hadn’t insulted Gyro in any way, hadn’t yelled at him or said anything offensive.
“I’m not really sure. I think it has to do with what happened at the company he worked for.” Hot Pants mumbled as she swept up the remains of the mug. “I don’t really know any of the details, just that when he got here he avoided talking about androids like the plague and avoided any questions about his old job. I didn’t really hear what you guys were saying, but it’s probably hard for him to take you in like this.”
Johnny stared into the black liquid in his mug. “If he doesn’t want to fix me anymore, would you mind taking me back to the dump?”
“No. He’s gonna at least make you functional enough to help me out here to pay for that mug he fucking destroyed during his temper tantrum.” She grumbled as she went to the nearby trashcan to dispose of the ceramic.
Johnny nodded. “Fair enough, I guess.” He held out his mug. “Can I have a refill?”
“Sure,” She replied begrudgingly before grabbing his mug and going behind the counter to fulfill his request.
Johnny managed to go through another two refills of coffee before Gyro came back, now changed into what appeared to be pajama pants and a tank top that showed off his impressive biceps and broad shoulders. There was no greeting or words exchanged between them as he approached, other than Johnny yelping in surprise as Gyro picked him up from the booth without warning or permission. This time, he didn’t carry Johnny bridal style, he just threw the android over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and walked out of the diner. He then opened a door next to the diner entrance that led to a set of stairs and what was presumably his apartment.
“Okay.” Gyro grunted as he tossed Johnny onto his couch in his crowded and cluttered apartment. “Listen, I get you’re a bit down because of everything that’s happened.”
“That’s certainly one way to put it.” Johnny mumbled as he stared up at the Italian with wide eyes, still processing being snatched from the diner.
Gyro shrugged. “I can’t do much about any of that. I can’t reverse time to make whatever happened never happen. All I can do is try my best to fix your legs and offer you a life here. I took you out of that junkyard physically, but you have to take yourself out of it mentally. You get me?”
“My mind is right here, with my body. I don’t quite understand you,” Johnny mumbled.
The Italian groaned in frustration. “What I’m trying to say is that I can only help you so much, you need to meet me halfway here. Even if you can’t fulfill your old purpose, you can find a new one here. But now you can decide what you want that to be instead of some rich person telling you, capiche ?”
Johnny shrugged. “I guess.”
Gyro nodded. “Great.” He left Johnny, heading towards a short hallway and a room within it. There was a bit of shuffling and clanging, then he emerged with a laptop and a toolbox. “Okay, then let’s get started.”