becoming human / a+e (d:bh au)

There is no birth, only this: the cheerful little song a washing machine makes when it's done it's job.

⟣ ⟢

Avriel sits in the back of a CyberLife truck, waiting patiently for the case he's being dropped into to load into his system. His fingers, bone white where they touch the interface of the small computer in his lap, vibrate at such a high frequency that it would be unnoticeable to the human eye.

But the person sitting across from him is not human.

He opens his eyes and the sound of running water flows through him, tagged to a visual of a Japanese zen garden. Fingers of sunlight push through the canopy created by a maple tree. Avriel nods, the corner of his mouth flicking up briefly into a smile.

"Have you received the case file?" his handler, Gloria, asks him.

"Yes Ma'am. Looks similar to the case we dealt with three weeks ago," Avriel says and pulls his hand back from the console. Synthetic fluid runs back over his structure quickly, hiding the imperfection of his being in a matter of seconds. Avriel flexes his hand absentmindedly, as if the change was painful. It is only a reflex action programmed to give him a false humanity.

"It is important we solve this quickly," Gloria tells him, "I don't need to tell you why that is."

He only nods and the garden bleeds away, leaving him sitting in silence in the back of the truck once again. Avriel arrived exactly ten minutes and thirty nine point eight seconds ago but he has yet to be deployed. That's not much of an issue in a case like this one, where the violence enacted was already performed weeks ago.

Avriel is used to this wait period, it has happened more times than the android can count on one hand. The humans always hold on until the last possible moment and they're all out of ideas before they call him out of storage.

But a human ego is a strange thing, something Avriel is grateful not to have.

As he waits, his cognitive function begins to slip. His system, unique to him, balances it by having his hands begin their idle function- he drums his nails against the metal bench he sits upon. tap, tap, tap, in the same staccato rhythm of that washing machine's song.

"Hmm," Avriel says to no one as ten minutes becomes fifteen, "Bureaucracy."

Finally, at time mark seventeen minutes twenty-four point one three seconds, the door of the van opens and Avriel stands up. The circular light on his forehead flashes a steady green and his armband is visible as per standard. The officer at the door to the truck grins up at him, "You again, huh?"

At her appearance, information begins flowing onto Avriel's visual feed. Officer Adroxis, born September 12, 2016. Twenty-two years old, assigned to Deviant Unit, no criminal record, holds permit to carry hand gun.

The question is rhetorical, but a connection can be made here through the use of a human conversation construct known as 'banter'. "Me again," he says with a nod and ducks his head to exit the back of the truck.

That's to be expected as Avriel is the only RK800 currently in use. He doesn't tell her this, she probably knows.

He moves quickly towards the location of the crime, nodding politely at officers he has interacted with before along the way. This isn't because he is happy to see them again, Avriel has simply been programmed with a set of scripts created to help him seamlessly integrate into a team.

At the doorframe to the living room, he is stopped and told to wait. Avriel does as he is told and leans impassively against the wall for two minutes and fifteen point two seconds, until he is finally allowed to enter.

At first, he ignores the detective standing beside the body, focus immediately caught on the decomposition happening at his feet. A quick scan tells him the victim's name, despite the rotting flesh. It matches with the one provided in the case file he uploaded twenty minutes ago.

Carlos Ortiz, born October 27, 2008, died October 17, 2038 twenty-nine years old, confirmed criminal record. Ten days shy of thirty years old. It means nothing to Avriel, who has only been in use since August.

He then raises his eyes to look at the writing on the wall.

I AM ALIVE.

His scan tells him that the blood is human but anyone could have known that. The question is whether it's Carlos' or not. Avriel analyzes it quickly, sensors measuring the width of each stroke.

"The writing, It's mathematically perfect," he says.

Finally, he turns to face the detective.

"Yeah mate, no shi-"

The detective's face is pulled downwards, as if a weight is anchoring the corners of his mouth and the furrow in his brow.

First things first, Avriel scans him. A red circle appears around the Detecive's face, writing appearing directly below that. Jason Song, known name is Eden Le Roux. Born in 2014, no recorded date. Expat from Sydney, Australia. Assigned to Deviant Unit. No criminal record. A link to a news article pops up, about a fourteen year old boy found as the lone human survivor of an android fight ring. A picture of him from ten years ago comes up beside the headline.

Avriel watches Jason take him in, his processors in his eyes catching the exact moment that Jason's expression turns from one of indifference to dislike. He skims the article quickly as the detective tells him that his help is not needed. The details are gruesome, it's no wonder he doesn't like androids.

"I have orders," Avriel tells him even as Jason tries to dismiss him.

He's used to prejudice from the cops, they've seen the full extent of what a deviant android can do though, it's logical.

Another man approaches, this one nervous looking, like he has something to hide. Avriel scans him quickly in case he does. It's much the same as the other members of this unit, nothing to see.

While he waits for the Detective to finish with the newcomer, Avriel looks around the room some more, scanning anything that looks useful. His eyes catch a small bit of plastic peeking out from under a well worn armchair. He bends down to retrieve it and as soon as he pulls it out, he knows what it is. He doesn't even have to scan it.

Red ice, a synthetic stimulant composed of trace amounts of thirium, acetone, lithium, toluene, and hydrochloric acid. Interesting, he passes it to the newcomer standing beside Jason, known as Eden.

"Twenty-eight," Avriel corrects.

"It was kicked under the armchair in the struggle, detective," Avriel says, pointing out the places the victim and his assailant moved through the room as he recreates it in real time through virtual reality. "Red ice can cau-"

"Don't touch anything else."

Avriel pauses, head falling to the side slightly at the human's tone, as if he's trying to hear better and the movement is simply a programmed quirk instead of a slightly annoyed idiosyncrasy in his system.

"Don't talk to anyone, don't touch anything, just stay out of the way. Got it?"

"Got it," he says with a nod, and then steps back closer to the wall so that the forensics team can move around him with ease.

Sometimes he forgets that humans do not like being corrected, not even by the technology they themselves created.

Avriel stands there, fingers tapping against his leg as the forensics team works around him. While he waits, he scans Dimova next. Sabine Dimova, born August 11, 2015. Twenty-three years old, assigned to Deviant Unit. No criminal record, holds permit to carry hand gun. His gaze flicks away again and it falls on a knife on the carpet. A simple scan shows it to be from a popular knife block found at most home stores. The knife itself is a chef's knife, six and a half inches long and covered in flaked, dried blood.

Avriel looks back up at the wall. I AM ALIVE it reads. The circular light to the right of his temple flashes yellow for a brief moment as his processor works to try and match the blood by appearance alone, but it is not possible. He glances at Jason, Dimiva and the others. They are occupied.

He was ordered not to move, but a higher order outweighs that- the order to solve the case. It allows him to walk over to the wall, technically that's staying out of the way, and then press his tongue against the hand-painted letters. It's not like that's touching either, that's tasting. It's different.

Avriel leans back away from the wall, chin resting on his knuckle and thumb as he processes. The blood sample finds its match in Carlos, the body, almost immediately thanks to his criminal record. It records the sample as roughly four weeks, give or take a few days old, which also matches Avriel's scans of the body.

He looks back up at the letters, eyes scanning, pulling them apart piece by piece. Just as expected, there are no prints stamped into the blood to mark a human assailant. That does however, confirm that the human was killed by an android.

Avriel turns to share this information with Detective Jason, but the man is busy barking orders at a team that walks on egg shells around him. It is a strange comfort to realize that he is not the only thing in the room that the detective is unkind to.

Since everyone seems preoccupied, Avriel exits into the kitchen next. He immediately notices the hole in the knife block where the kitchen knife is missing from. He is eyes then go to the kitchen table, where a flyer for Eden Nightclub sits. Everyone knows about that place, a legal brothel, powered entirely by androids.

All the pieces of this case are starting to come together for Avriel. The red ice, the exorbitant number of stab wounds, the testimony on the walls and Carlos' criminal past, combined with the kitchen knife is enough for him. He sweeps his gaze around the room once more and is about to turn back into the living room when he notices a baseball bat that has rolled under the table.

He reaches down and picks the bat up.

"Ah," he says, the light on his forehead turning yellow, briefly flashing red, then turning back to green. Avriel raises the bat, then drops it back into his open palm. There are traces of blue blood on the end, long evaporated but the processors in his eyes specifically can pick it up.

There's movement in the doorway back to the living room. Avriel looks up to see the Detective standing there, staring at him.

"I told you," he says with a shrug, "I already have orders." Then he tosses him the bat, "Get a load of this, there are traces of blue-blood on the end. It looks like our victim attacked the android with this bat, hitting him three times before the android took a knife from there." Avriel pauses and points at the knife block, "Who then stabbed the victim, who made an attempt to retreat into the living room."

He gestures at the rotting flesh just behind Jason.

"Obviously, the retreat was unsuccessful," he says, "But Im sure you already know all that, right, detective?"

"No," he answers in agreement.

Then Avriel steps forward and takes the bat back, running a thumb over Eden's fresh prints, burning them away. Another officer from the forensics team enters and Avriel smiles politely before scanning them. His brow furrows the littlest bit before he drops the bat into an evidence bag. "You should really pay that parking ticket, officer," he says before turning back to the detective glaring at him.

He takes a moment to consider his body language, displayed carefully to appear relaxed, but his posture gives him away. That, and the waves of venom running off of him like rainwater. Avriel didn't understand that phrase until he'd stood in the detroit rain to experience it himself.

The lady at the diner on third street called it a 'detroit baptism'.

"This isn't guesswork detective, but the amalgamation of every piece of evidence we've seen so far laid out for me in a virtual space, a reenactment," Avriel says. He looks around the room once again, scanning for blue blood. There are too many spots of it on the floor to create a clear path.

There's a doorway out into the hall, the entrance to the living room that Jason leans in, then a door leading to the outside. Avriel scans the knob for any evidence of human blood as well as blue. After writing on the wall with Carlos' blood, there'd have to be traces.

None.

His brow furrows to mimic a human's expression when in deep thought as he processes that information. He hadn't noticed any blood on the front door either, though he was certain the forensics team would have already looked for that.

"Hmm," he says, for the benefit of the humans in the room. Humans don't enjoy silence. Then Avriel pushes the back door open, letting the night in. The garden behind the house is well kept, but something tells Avriel that wasn't Carlos' doing. Still, it's near untouched.

"No trace of blue blood out there," Avriel says, turning back in. The doesn't make logical sense when nearly every surface in the kitchen holds traces of it. "From what I can see," he says, gesturing at an invisible mark, "The HK400 was heavily damaged, we'd know if it left."

Avriel looks around the room once more, then his head falls to the side as the floor plan he was loading in completes.

"Oh," he says, then looks upwards. There's a seam in the sealing and a worn bit of metal where a string used to be wound around it. Avriel nods up at it, then looks at Jason, "I think we should check the basement."

Hopefully the human is as smart as his files say he is. Spelling it out for him might give the android the opportunity to escape.