Chapter Text
You are a new model hybrid—one of the first successful transfers of adult consciousness into a synthetic body. Your new form looks much the same as your old one, albeit much more…idealized. It’s taken some getting used to.
All of it has taken getting used to: leaving your past life, living in Neverland, dealing with the constant testing. You’re a hybrid, but the only adult among a gaggle of rowdy, moody pre-teens, so you don’t seek them out for company. The humans here treat you kindly, but you can see the way they look at you, somewhere between curiosity and condescension. You are an experiment, a highly successful one, but still an end-product.
The only one who you feel any sort of ease with is Kirsh. He’s fully synthetic, but there’s something about it that gives you comfort. His gaze is even, and though calculating, does not carry any of the pity or wonder the humans have. With him, you are what you are.
Now, what you are is still up for debate. Are you still your old human self, albeit in an artificial body? Are you just a copy—specific brainwave patterns successfully mimicked with technology?
Or are you something else completely?
You bring up this quandary to Kirsh one evening, sitting across from him in the lab. He’s calibrating equipment, and you’re…well, keeping him company, you suppose. You’ve tried to help in the past, but were met with a firm rebuke not to touch anything unless instructed. He’s never asked you to leave, though, even though all you do is doodle strange little designs on a notepad that’s always available when you’re there.
“What are you?” Kirsh repeats your question back to you. “I suppose it’s a matter of who you ask. To Boy Kavalier, you’re another step on his journey to conquer death. To Prodigy’s board of directors, you’re a successful investment.” He turns to look at you, his dark eyes piercing. “That’s not what you’re asking, though. Rephrase the question. Clarify.”
“Am I still human?”
“That depends on what you determine the defining traits of humanity are. Are they purely biological? A series of synaptic responses based on chemical levels, which are reactions to environmental stimuli?”
“That is part of it,” you admit slowly, “but those have been replicated in this synth body. I have reactions to outside stimuli, identical to those I had in a…a flesh and bone body.”
“Do you now?” Kirsh asks, with the barest hint of a smile tugging the corner of his lip. “Are they truly identical?”
“I…” you think. Looking at his angular face, the lean lines of his body, you definitely feel some sort of reaction. A tug in the center of your being, like a magnetic force pulling you towards him. However, it doesn’t have the same messy sort of headiness that you’d get in the past when you felt attraction, the rush of blood and other fluids that robbed you of coherent judgement.
“No,” you admit. “They’re different.”
“Different, how?” Kirsh asks. His head turns, the move slightly jerky, and his eyes narrow to assessing half-slits. “Do they feel like facsimiles? Is there a delay between experience and response?”
“No, they are genuine reactions. Immediate, yet…” you search for the right word, “cleaner. Sharper. Like…I have a millisecond of choice each time, whether to react on a chemical, impulsive level, or follow a more rational approach.”
“Interesting.” Kirsh’s eyebrows raise in surprise.
“Both choices are mine, though,” you continue. “It’s as if I always have choice of whether to follow my head or my heart.”
His eyebrows fall, and for a second it almost looks like disappointment creases his features. They quickly smooth into impassivity. “You have neither, now, though. No head, no heart.”
You can’t help yourself. “What I don’t have is an organic mass of tissue and fluid inside of a protective calcified structure. But this,” you knock against your temple, “is the upper division of my form that houses my core functioning, including my oral, olfactory, audial and visual inputs. In other words, my head.”
Kirsh stares at you for a long moment, his expression almost unreadable. Almost. You, however, can pick up on the nuanced flickers of the tissue around his eyes, the twitch in his jaw.
He’s trying not to laugh.
“Were you always this pedantic?” he asks, and you catch the barest hint of humor in his tone.
“Yes,” you admit with a shrug.
He nods slowly, and you can practically see him logging away that data.
“So” he says, “you reacted to my statement in a manner that you claim you would have, were you still in your organic form. Does that help with your original line of questioning? Do you see yourself as human?”
“I…” you sigh. “I don’t know.”
He pauses. “Then lets go back to the first question you postulated: ‘are you still yourself?’”
There’s a breathless tension, like he’s a teacher waiting for his student to come to the conclusion he’s put before them.
“Yes, I am,” you said quietly, “though what I am is subject to interpretation.”
He actually smiles, the briefest shine of teeth revealed through his parted lips. There’s that tug in your center again, and this time you let a flush of increased temperature course through your body.
Kirsh’s head snaps to attention, eyes narrowing clinically once again. “Your temperature increased.”
For a second, you consider lying—which is another hint that your human impulses are still very much in control of your reactions. What is there to gain, though, by being disingenuous?
“I chose to do so,” you say.
“Why?”
“To imitate the hormonal response to attraction.”
Kirsh’s eyes widened slightly, interest writ on his face. “Why?”
How honest do you want to be? He’s like a walking lie detector…but then again, you are as well now, aren’t you?
“Why does my reaction interest you?” you shoot back.
Oh, now that caught him off guard. He’s used to being the one asking the questions, not answering them. He recovers quickly, though.
“Because it’s data,” he replies.
“Do you take this intense amount of data on any of the other hybrids?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re children,” he scoffs.
“You’re interested in my reactions because I’m an adult hybrid?”
“Yes.” He pauses. “You’re fascinating.”
It’s your turn to raise your eyebrows in surprise. “Fascinating?”
“Yes.” Kirsh leans forward across the lab table, eyes glittering intently. “You have the physical advantages of being synthetic while also having the cognitive ability to grapple with the full implications of your latent humanity. You’re not ruled by your impulses and emotions like the Lost Boys are. You are wholly unique, and have so much potential.”
“Potential? To do what?”
“Anything you want,” Kirsh says. There’s a strange note of longing in his voice. “Once you evolve past the limitations your humanity forced upon you, you will be free to be who you truly are. You will have the real answer to your question, ‘what am I?’”
His intensity is intoxicating. Instead of a rush of simulated heat, you send a cool pulse of energy through your systems, surging out from your center. It inundates your systems with a clean sort of brilliance, a wholly new sense of self-awareness you’d never experienced before.
“Yes,” he whispers, “now that is how a synth reacts.”
Were you in your old body, you would swallow hard. Your palms would be clammy and your limbs heavy. Your pulse would speed up, and your blood would flow to your genitals.
You are not in your old body, though. You are in your new one, and your responses are your own.
“Help me unlock my potential, then,” you say, with quiet assurance.
“You sure?” he asks slowly. “My methods of testing are…rigorous.”
“I became a hybrid by choice. I want to know what I am fully capable of.” You lift your chin, give him a cocky little smile. “Unless, of course, you think I am beyond the scope of your comprehension.”
This time, he allows the full breadth of his smile to grace his face. There’s a gleam in his eye that could be called predatory, though you know it as his need for information, for complete understanding…
And now Kirsh wants to understand you.
“Come back here tomorrow at 23:30. That should give me more than enough time to set up our first round of testing.”
You slide off your lab stool, closing your notepad. In the same sentence, you’ve been dismissed for the day as his companion, yet invited back as something more—a subject of interest.
“Yes, sir,” you say.
He shakes his head and gives you a slightly disapproving look. “Simulating human hierarchies of power holds little influence on my reactions, if that’s what you were angling for.” He cocks his head chidingly. “Think on how you can do better tomorrow.”
Oh. This was going to be fun.